I was part of the initial RIF when Disney bought Lucasfilm, when they canned over a third of the company. My replacement was internal so I didn't really have to train anyone, but it's aggravating to see how Disney still calls a 'retention bonus' a 'severance'. In my case I was required to stay on at the company for almost five months to get my 'severance'. Apparently they don't know what a severance really is (compensation for past work, not future.) I bailed early so I wouldn't kill myself and forewent a few months of salary, just for my mental health. That place is pretty devious.
In any case, I'd buy my Star Wars tickets right now if I could. Despite their shenanigans, they produce some entertainments that are like crack for a child of the 80's.
Maybe he's not actually trying to tease your brain, but find out if you're an idiot that hasn't heard this scenario in the 200 or so years it's been floating around.
You should seriously consider a small NAS. Windows is not an ideal media server OS. I'd almost argue that Linux isn't even that great for the purpose, considering the horsepower you need to give it to serve video. Better to get hardware that's purpose-built to do what you want it to do. Plus most NASs have remote, web-based admin. Easy peasy. Easier to expand drives on-the-fly while running instead of having to tear apart a PC tower or box or whatever, keep a keyboard and monitor in your attic, etc.
I'm partial to Synology, and they make a couple devices that hit the sweet-spot when considering drive bays, drive sizes, media capability and cost.
Note that Synology runs Plex (as well as other media servers), as well as a wealth of other useful stuff that takes close to zero configuration (file shares, cloud backup, use it as a Time Machine target, etc.)
I've built a MythTV box. It was fun, but ultimately I decided that my time was worth more than what I was spending maintaining the thing and fixing things that broke when I upgraded and whatnot.
It's funny. In my 20's I'd spend 10 hours of my time to save 20 bucks on some stupid little project. Now in my 40's I'll spend that 20 bucks to have 10 hours of free time instead.
Since a NAS is essentially a box with drives in it, there's fewer things to break due to the dust that it'll suck in. I have mine in my livingroom and I have to clean it out about once a month. In an attic, you'd have to build some kind of acrylic box with a ventilation system in it, one would guess. If you live in a cooler climate you probably won't have to worry about heat so much, but it's the dust that will kill you in any environment. Maybe get the parts to an old hood (like in your kitchen, the ventilation thingy over your stove) and modify that to suck the air/dust away from whatever device you end up with, and blow it out your roof.
Hey, you know what solves process problems? Software that can enforce processes.
Restricting editing of a document only leads to severe pain. However, some sort of system that, say, tells you *who* is editing that file might be handy.
I don't think this is a two-step process. Improvement of the process itself and implementation of said process (through software) should be done at the same time. Monkeying with the current process, changing it all around, then implementing a new system based on that is a pretty big waste of time.
Agreed that putting files on a filesystem and setting people loose on it is a bad thing, but don't take a step backward just so you can take two steps forward.
Aside from Perforce itself, non-developers should look into Perforce Commons, a web-based frontend to document storage. It's all drag-and-droppy and pretty and has search and etc. etc. It's a good solution if the organization is paranoid about having all their documents in the cloud.
If they're not paranoid about that, why not Dropbox or something similar? They have their desktop apps so non-developers won't have to be confused about web interfaces and whatnot.
A few years ago I resigned myself to the fact that every thing about me, probably even my DNA sequence, is out there on various systems and will get stolen or compromised one day. I do what I can to keep things secure, but there's only so far I'm willing to go. If you have been reading a few security blogs over the last few years, you'd know that more and more experts (whoever they are) are recommending that corporations focus more toward mitigation of security breaches while taking resources away from prevention. It's kinda like getting mugged or in a car accident. Eventually, it's just going to happen to you. This is how we live in 2015.
Backing up to DVD or thumb drives or whatever is so 1990's. You may as well have a stack of Zip disks. Physical media is as stealable as anything else in your house. And BTW, if you do get burglarized, guess what the first thing is that they take? That's right, any box in the bottom of your closet or in your garage with a lock on it.
The cloud is technology agnostic so format doesn't matter, you shouldn't have to worry about that. It'll evolve over time but that's not your concern.
Buy yourself a little NAS, load it with 4-5 fat drives. Put everything important on it. Back your laptops and PCs up to it. Encrypt what you feel like encrypting. Push it all to Glacier, which costs a penny per GB. Done. No trips to the bank. No wasting time burning media that will degrade. No physical items to lose.
It probably is a good idea to have more than one copy of everything, just know that as soon as you make physical media of something, it's outdated. Someone else on this thread mentioned keeping a NAS at someone else's house, perhaps your grandma in another state. I'm personally not that paranoid about my stuff so I don't do that, but it's probably a good practice.
Fewer and fewer laptops are coming with dvd/bluray drives built in. Over the last decade we have seen fewer and fewer models of external drives/burners in stores. The writing is on the wall. In perhaps a decade or two you won't have choice, your stuff will be in the cloud (or whatever they change the name to), may as well get on that business now.
"Drive space is cheap" can be interpreted as "Throw more storage at it", a notion the IT community dismissed as absurd over a decade ago. If I just kept throwing drives at my data, I'd quickly run out of physical space on my NAS, would have to buy a 10 bay unit and put six more drives in it, etc., etc. People who say 'drive space is cheap' never actually adhere to that philosophy, which is a weird paradox because they're more likely the ones that manage their storage in a more sane way, yet they give out this horrible advice.
Or maybe these are the people that have 30 TB of storage on a small 'heater' next to their TV, but with 3 year's worth of time machine backups on it. Either way, 'drive space is cheap' is pretty lame.
OP doesn't mention how long he's been wearing progressives. It takes a while, up to two weeks, for your eyes to get used to progressives. And you absolutely can not wear any other glasses while you are getting used to progressives. My first 2-3 days with progressives saw me stepping off curbs early and almost eating it on stairs all the time, but after a few days I fell in love with them. The warping on the lower sides is gone, since my eyes don't naturally look there any more, and I can wear them all the time without worrying about not being able to, say, see a street sign then quickly look at my speedometer, without losing focus.
I'm far sighted and wear the glasses all the time, except when sleeping of course, so my eyes don't 'defocus', for lack of a better word.
As an added bonus I've noticed my posture at work has improved, since the glasses force me to look straight ahead with my chin level. I slouch less and find it harder to lean back in my chair with my head tipped back... all the lazy things you do that trick you into thinking you're more comfortable, but just end up tweaking your back.
Stick with progressives for at least two weeks before you give up on them and do something cumbersome like carry around extra pairs of glasses with you, in addition to whatever's on your face. You'll end up needing a European carry-all to keep track of all your stuff.
Entitled jerk-face acts like a whiny bitch and gets tossed from a flight? I'm not sure I see the problem here.
Oh wait, I do. It's that we as a people have become so uppity that if we don't get our way we act like petulant children, and cry and moan and stomp our feet so the whole world can see.
I applaud SWA for being so in tune with Twitter that they could take action so quickly. They should go all the way an ban this crybaby from all future flights.
From the beginning of time until about 50 years ago, women were considered second class citizens pretty much everywhere in the world. You realize that in this great country of ours, women have had the right to vote for less than 100 years?
A few million years of oppression isn't just erased in a few decades, there is still psychic debris in our collective conscious, and it'll be there for some time.
So, you know, help the ladies out and quit being a wuss.
Because the woman was at work. People working, even out in the open with a nametag on, have different protections that the average joe in the same place. I'm sure her union had something to say about Southwest and hostile work environments.
Actually, most states have laws that allow for a reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Just because you step outside your front door doesn't give people the right to be an asshole to you.
Especially if you're at work, where there actually are much stronger laws protecting your privacy.
So, uh, the name of the company is NETflix. From day one there has been a clear intention, it's right there in the name.
We're in a transitional period. As Netflix gets more clout and the market realizes that people don't want to go to a different website to stream this movie or that, the selection will get better.
The notion that streaming is a 'dead end' and physical media is the wave of the future is patently absurd.
The issue with the US government is really communism, read up on your American history a little bit before posting stupid crap like this.
Granted, by this time it's more of a grudge than anything. BTW, China has a lot more at stake when it comes to the US, like carrying a significant amount of our debt and as you so eloquently explain, importing every manner of toy and electronic device. It behooves the US to allow travel there. It has nothing to do with communism but everything to do with commerce. Cube doesn't have as much to offer the government.
Having been to Cuba, I kinda fear what would happen if the US had unfettered access to the country. Despite all its problems, it's largely untouched by US interests, and that was refreshing. I don't even think Cuba has the concept of a franchise, except maybe when it comes to gas stations. There's no such thing as a 'chain' there, everything is one-off. Although, for some reason you can get M&M's and Pringles. Other than that, you're forced to go native and it was pretty great.
I took one of these person-to-person trips to Cuba two years ago and it was pretty awesome. It's nice to travel somewhere that hasn't been ruined by American interests yet (no Starbucks, no McDonald's, etc.) It wasn't that difficult, you can find tours through chambers of commerce or other travel groups.
The restrictions are not extremely enforceable, but know that the Cuban government is looking after you, too. Don't make an ass of yourself while there. In any case, roving around the country in an air conditioned tour bus was quite desirable, it was hot.
Aside from that, if you have some cultural relevance (teacher, sports figure, musician) you can go without it being a 'person-to-person' cultural exchange, I think you just have to clear it with the US Treasury. My guess is that Schmidt et al were able to do that, to spread the good word of a truly American company.
So I'm guessing their control subject brains were in jars and were collected 100's of years ago, because if you pick 64 random dudes anywhere on Earth, 64 of them will be porn watchers.
The most straightforward way to get Youtube on the Roku 2 is to buy a Roku 3. The youtube channel works fine on there. Not sure when the Roku 2 channel will be out but they're apparently working on it.
Besides, most people consider beaming content from a tablet or phone to be straightforward, and there are a multitude of apps for the Roku 2 that support beaming youtube.
No. What this woman did was basically the equivalent of pointing a smartphone at someone and saying 'it's not recording', but continuing to point the phone at them when they say they don't want to be recorded. Checking your mail and pointing a phone at someone are two different things.
From what I understand from other people that were there, everyone was drunk and this alleged 30-something blogger isn't exactly innocent.
In six months to a year, everyone will be embarrassed that the ever put a Google Glass on their face.
The over head for most US VFX shops is already razor thin, it is not a profitable industry as it is.
Most of the overseas, subsidized countries are emerging economies that are trying to kickstart their tech industries. It makes sense for them to subsidize as their economies grow. To subsidize in the US, it means that we taxpayers will be the ones subsidizing, and I find it hard to believe the general population of the US is going to have any sympathy for the lowly VFX artists and go along with subsidizing their industry. We barely supported the car industry when it collapsed, and that is arguably a more American rah-rah-rah industry than VFX.
I don't like it or agree with it, but that's the reality in the US.
There is no longer a 'very top' of ILM. The place was decimated last year.
Another related part of the problem is one the VFX industry created on its own. Throughout the late 90's and early 2000's, new studios were popping up all over the place and got into an arms race by undercutting each other to get the work, thinking that maybe on the next show they'll charge the movie studios more based on the awesome work they were doing. Instead, they trained the movie studios to expect low-cost, high-quality effects work, and everyone is now losing out. The VFX industry has not been profitable for ages.
When the US VFX houses got to the point where they couldn't cut any more without going out of business (or they did go out of business), cheaper labor abroad started to get hired. Talent is everywhere and the movie studios just want cheap labor. Labor has always been cheap overseas but the US VFX industry now finds itself in a place where it has to compete globally, and they're hurting for it.
And anyway, all the big movie studios have overseas subsidiaries that they'll just funnel the money through. I think the US VFX workers have their heart in the right place, but they'll still end up getting squashed.
I can say from firsthand experience that Kim Libreri speaks in nothing by hyperbole and is a world class d-bag.
That being said, there is some merit to this concept, at least as it applies to the type of movies Disney will be churning out under the Lucasfilm moniker for the next decade or so. It won't eliminate post-production, but as others have said it will move some of it to actual production time, and streamline some of the repetitiveness in vfx production, namely animating the same stormtrooper dying in different ways.
I don't know how this technique will help when rendering things like fire, water or buildings collapsing. But when rendering and re-rendering known things (stormtroopers, Millenium Falcon, etc.) it'll give the director some insight into how his shot will actually turn out, without having to wait months and months for it. Seems more like previz on sterroids, which was more than good enough for a video game.
Some directors have an eye for that stuff. As much as people hate on Michael Bay, he's crazy good at visualizing things like this without having to actually see them, but other directors not so much. It'll be a neat toy for directors new to the big-time effects picture. But I don't think it'll go much beyond that.
The technique was originally spearheaded by Lucasarts in the production of 1313 (and another game, I think) to animate characters in a realistic way instead of by hand. The technology was shared with ILM and now, obviously, they have to carry it on. It's a shame the 1313 game will not likely see the light of day. I think it would have passed the scrutiny of the average Star Wars fanatic.
The only thing holding this technology back is the culture at Lucasfilm. I think it's changed drastically but I don't know that it's changed drastically enough. Each production thinks they know the best way to do things, and they don't normally use the exact same pipeline. Custom tools are always hanging off the software end of the production. They tried to build a sort of universal pipeline at one point, but nobody wanted to risk using it and fall too far behind in production, so they normally fell back to the same base pipeline and tweaked it from there. Nobody had the time to follow through to the end of a completely new pipeline.
But now that Lucasfilm is mainly in the Star Wars business, maybe they'll be able to pull it off. They'll be able to build this new pipeline and use it to spit out a movie in two years, right? A movie they haven't even hired the principle actors for? Nor have a complete script? And with a third less employees than they had before April?
I worked for the parent of a major studio that recently got purchased by a much larger media company and was shut down, and I was also eventually shown the door. Broke my heart but it was a good run while it lasted.
Your friend is likely young enough to be pretty resilient as far as job prospects go, so he owes it to himself to follow his passion first, then worry about having a steady gig when he's in his mid-30's.
Yes, a lot of studios are sweatshops, etc., etc., but you (ahem, 'he') might find his niche in just the right spot and be the happiest guy in the world. Otherwise, he has a corporate job and will always be wondering what he missed.
Plus, you tend to learn a lot more, and learn it a lot quicker, when you're in the middle of a disaster. The highs are high, the lows are low, but on some level it's always a fun ride.
Looking to the future, if you lose your job because a studio folded, it's easier to get another job. If you leave a job because you're bored, it makes it look like something is wrong with you, you're not a team player, etc. I highly suggest that he not take the job he has on the table if he plans on looking for other jobs and leaving. If he then leaves (or gets asked to leave) the second job, it looks bad. At his age he's gotta grab the balls of that bull and hold on for dear life. Taking the safe route, career-wise, can wait.
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As long as our scientists understand science, that's all that matters. Eat it, Sweden!
I was part of the initial RIF when Disney bought Lucasfilm, when they canned over a third of the company. My replacement was internal so I didn't really have to train anyone, but it's aggravating to see how Disney still calls a 'retention bonus' a 'severance'. In my case I was required to stay on at the company for almost five months to get my 'severance'. Apparently they don't know what a severance really is (compensation for past work, not future.) I bailed early so I wouldn't kill myself and forewent a few months of salary, just for my mental health. That place is pretty devious.
In any case, I'd buy my Star Wars tickets right now if I could. Despite their shenanigans, they produce some entertainments that are like crack for a child of the 80's.
Maybe he's not actually trying to tease your brain, but find out if you're an idiot that hasn't heard this scenario in the 200 or so years it's been floating around.
For some reason 'small apartment' plus 'spare blender' cracked me up. You could get rid of that second blender and double your media sever capacity!
Sorry, crawlspace, not attic. Blow it out the side of your house, not your roof. :) Look to your clothes dryer's ventilation system for inspiration.
You should seriously consider a small NAS. Windows is not an ideal media server OS. I'd almost argue that Linux isn't even that great for the purpose, considering the horsepower you need to give it to serve video. Better to get hardware that's purpose-built to do what you want it to do. Plus most NASs have remote, web-based admin. Easy peasy. Easier to expand drives on-the-fly while running instead of having to tear apart a PC tower or box or whatever, keep a keyboard and monitor in your attic, etc.
I'm partial to Synology, and they make a couple devices that hit the sweet-spot when considering drive bays, drive sizes, media capability and cost.
Note that Synology runs Plex (as well as other media servers), as well as a wealth of other useful stuff that takes close to zero configuration (file shares, cloud backup, use it as a Time Machine target, etc.)
I've built a MythTV box. It was fun, but ultimately I decided that my time was worth more than what I was spending maintaining the thing and fixing things that broke when I upgraded and whatnot.
It's funny. In my 20's I'd spend 10 hours of my time to save 20 bucks on some stupid little project. Now in my 40's I'll spend that 20 bucks to have 10 hours of free time instead.
Since a NAS is essentially a box with drives in it, there's fewer things to break due to the dust that it'll suck in. I have mine in my livingroom and I have to clean it out about once a month. In an attic, you'd have to build some kind of acrylic box with a ventilation system in it, one would guess. If you live in a cooler climate you probably won't have to worry about heat so much, but it's the dust that will kill you in any environment. Maybe get the parts to an old hood (like in your kitchen, the ventilation thingy over your stove) and modify that to suck the air/dust away from whatever device you end up with, and blow it out your roof.
Hey, you know what solves process problems? Software that can enforce processes.
Restricting editing of a document only leads to severe pain. However, some sort of system that, say, tells you *who* is editing that file might be handy.
I don't think this is a two-step process. Improvement of the process itself and implementation of said process (through software) should be done at the same time. Monkeying with the current process, changing it all around, then implementing a new system based on that is a pretty big waste of time.
Agreed that putting files on a filesystem and setting people loose on it is a bad thing, but don't take a step backward just so you can take two steps forward.
Aside from Perforce itself, non-developers should look into Perforce Commons, a web-based frontend to document storage. It's all drag-and-droppy and pretty and has search and etc. etc. It's a good solution if the organization is paranoid about having all their documents in the cloud.
If they're not paranoid about that, why not Dropbox or something similar? They have their desktop apps so non-developers won't have to be confused about web interfaces and whatnot.
Please downvote anyone that says 'SharePoint'.
A few years ago I resigned myself to the fact that every thing about me, probably even my DNA sequence, is out there on various systems and will get stolen or compromised one day. I do what I can to keep things secure, but there's only so far I'm willing to go. If you have been reading a few security blogs over the last few years, you'd know that more and more experts (whoever they are) are recommending that corporations focus more toward mitigation of security breaches while taking resources away from prevention. It's kinda like getting mugged or in a car accident. Eventually, it's just going to happen to you. This is how we live in 2015.
Backing up to DVD or thumb drives or whatever is so 1990's. You may as well have a stack of Zip disks. Physical media is as stealable as anything else in your house. And BTW, if you do get burglarized, guess what the first thing is that they take? That's right, any box in the bottom of your closet or in your garage with a lock on it.
The cloud is technology agnostic so format doesn't matter, you shouldn't have to worry about that. It'll evolve over time but that's not your concern.
Buy yourself a little NAS, load it with 4-5 fat drives. Put everything important on it. Back your laptops and PCs up to it. Encrypt what you feel like encrypting. Push it all to Glacier, which costs a penny per GB. Done. No trips to the bank. No wasting time burning media that will degrade. No physical items to lose.
It probably is a good idea to have more than one copy of everything, just know that as soon as you make physical media of something, it's outdated. Someone else on this thread mentioned keeping a NAS at someone else's house, perhaps your grandma in another state. I'm personally not that paranoid about my stuff so I don't do that, but it's probably a good practice.
Fewer and fewer laptops are coming with dvd/bluray drives built in. Over the last decade we have seen fewer and fewer models of external drives/burners in stores. The writing is on the wall. In perhaps a decade or two you won't have choice, your stuff will be in the cloud (or whatever they change the name to), may as well get on that business now.
"Drive space is cheap" can be interpreted as "Throw more storage at it", a notion the IT community dismissed as absurd over a decade ago. If I just kept throwing drives at my data, I'd quickly run out of physical space on my NAS, would have to buy a 10 bay unit and put six more drives in it, etc., etc. People who say 'drive space is cheap' never actually adhere to that philosophy, which is a weird paradox because they're more likely the ones that manage their storage in a more sane way, yet they give out this horrible advice.
Or maybe these are the people that have 30 TB of storage on a small 'heater' next to their TV, but with 3 year's worth of time machine backups on it. Either way, 'drive space is cheap' is pretty lame.
OP doesn't mention how long he's been wearing progressives. It takes a while, up to two weeks, for your eyes to get used to progressives. And you absolutely can not wear any other glasses while you are getting used to progressives. My first 2-3 days with progressives saw me stepping off curbs early and almost eating it on stairs all the time, but after a few days I fell in love with them. The warping on the lower sides is gone, since my eyes don't naturally look there any more, and I can wear them all the time without worrying about not being able to, say, see a street sign then quickly look at my speedometer, without losing focus.
I'm far sighted and wear the glasses all the time, except when sleeping of course, so my eyes don't 'defocus', for lack of a better word.
As an added bonus I've noticed my posture at work has improved, since the glasses force me to look straight ahead with my chin level. I slouch less and find it harder to lean back in my chair with my head tipped back ... all the lazy things you do that trick you into thinking you're more comfortable, but just end up tweaking your back.
Stick with progressives for at least two weeks before you give up on them and do something cumbersome like carry around extra pairs of glasses with you, in addition to whatever's on your face. You'll end up needing a European carry-all to keep track of all your stuff.
Entitled jerk-face acts like a whiny bitch and gets tossed from a flight? I'm not sure I see the problem here.
Oh wait, I do. It's that we as a people have become so uppity that if we don't get our way we act like petulant children, and cry and moan and stomp our feet so the whole world can see.
I applaud SWA for being so in tune with Twitter that they could take action so quickly. They should go all the way an ban this crybaby from all future flights.
From the beginning of time until about 50 years ago, women were considered second class citizens pretty much everywhere in the world. You realize that in this great country of ours, women have had the right to vote for less than 100 years?
A few million years of oppression isn't just erased in a few decades, there is still psychic debris in our collective conscious, and it'll be there for some time.
So, you know, help the ladies out and quit being a wuss.
Because the woman was at work. People working, even out in the open with a nametag on, have different protections that the average joe in the same place. I'm sure her union had something to say about Southwest and hostile work environments.
Actually, most states have laws that allow for a reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Just because you step outside your front door doesn't give people the right to be an asshole to you.
Especially if you're at work, where there actually are much stronger laws protecting your privacy.
So, uh, the name of the company is NETflix. From day one there has been a clear intention, it's right there in the name.
We're in a transitional period. As Netflix gets more clout and the market realizes that people don't want to go to a different website to stream this movie or that, the selection will get better.
The notion that streaming is a 'dead end' and physical media is the wave of the future is patently absurd.
The issue with the US government is really communism, read up on your American history a little bit before posting stupid crap like this.
Granted, by this time it's more of a grudge than anything. BTW, China has a lot more at stake when it comes to the US, like carrying a significant amount of our debt and as you so eloquently explain, importing every manner of toy and electronic device. It behooves the US to allow travel there. It has nothing to do with communism but everything to do with commerce. Cube doesn't have as much to offer the government.
Having been to Cuba, I kinda fear what would happen if the US had unfettered access to the country. Despite all its problems, it's largely untouched by US interests, and that was refreshing. I don't even think Cuba has the concept of a franchise, except maybe when it comes to gas stations. There's no such thing as a 'chain' there, everything is one-off. Although, for some reason you can get M&M's and Pringles. Other than that, you're forced to go native and it was pretty great.
I took one of these person-to-person trips to Cuba two years ago and it was pretty awesome. It's nice to travel somewhere that hasn't been ruined by American interests yet (no Starbucks, no McDonald's, etc.) It wasn't that difficult, you can find tours through chambers of commerce or other travel groups.
The restrictions are not extremely enforceable, but know that the Cuban government is looking after you, too. Don't make an ass of yourself while there. In any case, roving around the country in an air conditioned tour bus was quite desirable, it was hot.
Aside from that, if you have some cultural relevance (teacher, sports figure, musician) you can go without it being a 'person-to-person' cultural exchange, I think you just have to clear it with the US Treasury. My guess is that Schmidt et al were able to do that, to spread the good word of a truly American company.
So I'm guessing their control subject brains were in jars and were collected 100's of years ago, because if you pick 64 random dudes anywhere on Earth, 64 of them will be porn watchers.
The most straightforward way to get Youtube on the Roku 2 is to buy a Roku 3. The youtube channel works fine on there. Not sure when the Roku 2 channel will be out but they're apparently working on it.
Besides, most people consider beaming content from a tablet or phone to be straightforward, and there are a multitude of apps for the Roku 2 that support beaming youtube.
No. What this woman did was basically the equivalent of pointing a smartphone at someone and saying 'it's not recording', but continuing to point the phone at them when they say they don't want to be recorded. Checking your mail and pointing a phone at someone are two different things.
From what I understand from other people that were there, everyone was drunk and this alleged 30-something blogger isn't exactly innocent.
In six months to a year, everyone will be embarrassed that the ever put a Google Glass on their face.
The over head for most US VFX shops is already razor thin, it is not a profitable industry as it is.
Most of the overseas, subsidized countries are emerging economies that are trying to kickstart their tech industries. It makes sense for them to subsidize as their economies grow. To subsidize in the US, it means that we taxpayers will be the ones subsidizing, and I find it hard to believe the general population of the US is going to have any sympathy for the lowly VFX artists and go along with subsidizing their industry. We barely supported the car industry when it collapsed, and that is arguably a more American rah-rah-rah industry than VFX.
I don't like it or agree with it, but that's the reality in the US.
There is no longer a 'very top' of ILM. The place was decimated last year.
Another related part of the problem is one the VFX industry created on its own. Throughout the late 90's and early 2000's, new studios were popping up all over the place and got into an arms race by undercutting each other to get the work, thinking that maybe on the next show they'll charge the movie studios more based on the awesome work they were doing. Instead, they trained the movie studios to expect low-cost, high-quality effects work, and everyone is now losing out. The VFX industry has not been profitable for ages.
When the US VFX houses got to the point where they couldn't cut any more without going out of business (or they did go out of business), cheaper labor abroad started to get hired. Talent is everywhere and the movie studios just want cheap labor. Labor has always been cheap overseas but the US VFX industry now finds itself in a place where it has to compete globally, and they're hurting for it.
And anyway, all the big movie studios have overseas subsidiaries that they'll just funnel the money through. I think the US VFX workers have their heart in the right place, but they'll still end up getting squashed.
I can say from firsthand experience that Kim Libreri speaks in nothing by hyperbole and is a world class d-bag.
That being said, there is some merit to this concept, at least as it applies to the type of movies Disney will be churning out under the Lucasfilm moniker for the next decade or so. It won't eliminate post-production, but as others have said it will move some of it to actual production time, and streamline some of the repetitiveness in vfx production, namely animating the same stormtrooper dying in different ways.
I don't know how this technique will help when rendering things like fire, water or buildings collapsing. But when rendering and re-rendering known things (stormtroopers, Millenium Falcon, etc.) it'll give the director some insight into how his shot will actually turn out, without having to wait months and months for it. Seems more like previz on sterroids, which was more than good enough for a video game.
Some directors have an eye for that stuff. As much as people hate on Michael Bay, he's crazy good at visualizing things like this without having to actually see them, but other directors not so much. It'll be a neat toy for directors new to the big-time effects picture. But I don't think it'll go much beyond that.
The technique was originally spearheaded by Lucasarts in the production of 1313 (and another game, I think) to animate characters in a realistic way instead of by hand. The technology was shared with ILM and now, obviously, they have to carry it on. It's a shame the 1313 game will not likely see the light of day. I think it would have passed the scrutiny of the average Star Wars fanatic.
The only thing holding this technology back is the culture at Lucasfilm. I think it's changed drastically but I don't know that it's changed drastically enough. Each production thinks they know the best way to do things, and they don't normally use the exact same pipeline. Custom tools are always hanging off the software end of the production. They tried to build a sort of universal pipeline at one point, but nobody wanted to risk using it and fall too far behind in production, so they normally fell back to the same base pipeline and tweaked it from there. Nobody had the time to follow through to the end of a completely new pipeline.
But now that Lucasfilm is mainly in the Star Wars business, maybe they'll be able to pull it off. They'll be able to build this new pipeline and use it to spit out a movie in two years, right? A movie they haven't even hired the principle actors for? Nor have a complete script? And with a third less employees than they had before April?
I worked for the parent of a major studio that recently got purchased by a much larger media company and was shut down, and I was also eventually shown the door. Broke my heart but it was a good run while it lasted.
Your friend is likely young enough to be pretty resilient as far as job prospects go, so he owes it to himself to follow his passion first, then worry about having a steady gig when he's in his mid-30's.
Yes, a lot of studios are sweatshops, etc., etc., but you (ahem, 'he') might find his niche in just the right spot and be the happiest guy in the world. Otherwise, he has a corporate job and will always be wondering what he missed.
Plus, you tend to learn a lot more, and learn it a lot quicker, when you're in the middle of a disaster. The highs are high, the lows are low, but on some level it's always a fun ride.
Looking to the future, if you lose your job because a studio folded, it's easier to get another job. If you leave a job because you're bored, it makes it look like something is wrong with you, you're not a team player, etc. I highly suggest that he not take the job he has on the table if he plans on looking for other jobs and leaving. If he then leaves (or gets asked to leave) the second job, it looks bad. At his age he's gotta grab the balls of that bull and hold on for dear life. Taking the safe route, career-wise, can wait.