This is not about any particular framework. It's about OSS server technology slowly creeping into everyday webapps and beyond. And Firefox/Mozilla Rich Clients in XUL lurking around the corner. Same goes for Flash stuff like Flex or Breeze. MS is fighting those too with new Products like "Office Live Meeting" and such. In MS much fear I sense about that.
Ajax on the other hand is a new buzzword for an ancient technology that usually is called "Doing neat client side stuff with Javascript". Some type A new economy wiseguy over at AdaptivePath brought it up and wrote an essay on rich clients with the assistance of the official web economy bullshit generator. And now - naturally - MS is picking it up. MS is king when it comes to buzzwords (and bullshit) and since they've got it all set up allready they now have a reason to sell more ASP.Crap servers for 10 Bazillon Dollars each. That's all it is about.
BTW: If you want to check out a wepapp-juggernaught I'd suggest Zope, aka 'What RoR wants to be when it grows up'.
To actually answer your question: I'd build a larger, fast and strong braile-type grid grouping each braile-type-patch within a elevated, push-button border to give at least as much input as a regular keyboard and as much output as a complex CLI. Add cording and you've got even more possibilities. I'd build out- and input all around it. It would be something simular to the bash or zshell cli combined with Turbovision - but without overlapping windows. The fast and strong grid would even make it possible to play action-like games. Given enough solid OOAD an interface like that could even join a party on World of Warcraft without much changing of the game. Maybe not as a standard character but as a sprite of fairy that flies around smaller obstacles by itself.
I'm quite shure this all could be achived with an open source unix variant with no sweat at all. You'd have to build the interface device and get going with some basics but from there on I'd actually leave it to blind developers to build their own system. And that would be a box that doesn't need a new GFX card every odd month to stay up-to-date. Unbelievable.
...it actually is quite strange. But then again this is a hobbyist, so may dare I say: Nice piece. Nice effort. But it does have room for improvement. May I recommend a source of inspiration? For building everyday stuff into pictures, I suggest looking at paintings from the man that 'builds pictures' - as he calls it - and is generally considered one of the greates painters of our times. One of his goals actually is to inspire people like you and me to do this kind of stuff themselves.
... in 5 days is activate "Show tabs all the time" and "Open in background in a new tab upon middle click" by default in IE 7. Because the Mozilla / Firefox people are to slowpoky/conservative to do this, MS has a chance here. But with the default settings of Outlook being nearly even more crappy than outlook itself I actually don't expect them to be that innovative.
Of course we all know, as most of those who've taken the time to stick a thumb at arms length into high moon and a horizon moon, that the big low hanging moon is mostly an optical illusion. Yet it isn't a pure one, since the focal length of our eyes change when we raise our head. This effect most certainly varies from person to person, but can be observed if you concentrate on the focal behaviour of your eyes and it's abilty to change it's focal length. Which, by the way, can be trained. There are older reports of north american natives you could see better with the naked eye than a pioneer with binoculars.
Where everybody and his brother has a hand canon in his night stand and still has the good ole (and crazy) pioneer spirit and is thus willing to defend his land with his life? Imagine this scenario: "Yo, fellas, LA Compton has been 0wnZ0r3D by WallMart. They want to build a parking lot and a waste dump. Please move out. Here's 1000$ for yer cardboard trailers each, now bugger off." I mean isn't this a really stupid idea to pull this of with US citizens? We germans are used to this (our goverment doing crazy shit like siezing property for the common good) as we believe in law and order, the compentence of authorities (a german kind of extreme wishfull thinking) and the common good. But americans? No way. Very bad idea if you ask me.:-) Talking about not just pissing of the entire middle and far east but also your own people...
The DMCA isn't a problem. It's a nutcase law, I give you that. But it isn't a problem, since the law counts for everybody.
Applied with a good sense of creative nonsense it can protect anybody from anything. Apply the DMCA to ways to access your personal data and sue anybody who sends you comercial mail into next wednesday.
The DMCA only becomes so oppresive in the US because they don't have the 'loser pays all' paradigm. Which is the only way any civil legal system makes sense. Not having 'loser pays all' is the next best thing to corporate fascism (sic).
Here in germany I have a friend that has trouble with big players in his field bringing up heavy legal caliber against him (he's into booksales on the web and it's about the german pricefixing law for books, even Pearson is involved). He goes to state court this month and if the corporate assholes lose he can carry on doing his business. In the US he'd be broke allready.
Bottom line: Add 'loser pays all legal expenses of trial' to the system and have every hotdog stand apply the DMCA to each and everyt aspect of their small business - and the insanity of this law becomes aparent to anybody with basic brain functions. And it will eventually disapear.
to prevent being crushed by the overwelming success of the rising Uber-frameworks 'Ajax' and 'Ruby on Rails'. These 4th millenium technologies are going to squish everything else that is even remotely related to the internet and Apple is intelligent enough to know this. Just like everybody who reads slashdot. It's a shame. First Longhorn anounces it's upcoming search technology and now this. It's all downhill from here on, Apple. RIP. It was nice with you.
RUBY! AJAX! ORGASM! Hit it with a RAIL! R! O! R! ROOOOOAAAAR! RUBY ON RAILS! So fucking awsome I gotta,... I, OMFG!!!111!! I'm coming, I'm gonna, OMG... say "I like your monkey!!!" SAY IT! -.... OOOOooooohhhh, Rubyajaxrails, yeaaaah!! I've got it! Yeah! I've got a vision, people, a vision! We're gonna have Ajax and we're gonna put it on Rails and it's all gonna be like Lucy in the Sky with Rubys. Oh my gosh am I seeing some shit.... This is so awesome......and any Beta mindfart about it is like ten times ten Ajax orgasms! (And now for the real thing watch this post being modded +10 Insightfull)
One of the reasons Flash is so popular is because it's next to impossible to write spy- or malware with it. Flash is extremly picky about client side security, since it's the most widespread web/internet client plattform in existance and they don't want to lose that edge. Good reasoning if you ask me.
The dot-boom was a hype. Bazillian normals hopping on the bandwagon and banks and the goverment (at least here in germany) spending utterly insane amounts of money on the whole thing. The crash was nothing but a large bushfire taking out the weed and wannabees. People who were into the business for the sake of "computer stuff" being their thing, were in it way befor the boom and were in it after the bomb exploded. It's nobody else but these professionals gaining momentum after 10-15 years of a steady growing IT. Let's face it friends: 6 years ago, when everybody with more than 2 braincells knew that OSS is the only way to go and that 30 000 $ for a MS server package or Dreamweaver Ultradevs template engine just can't be the last word, nobody would care. People would buy licences of utter crap, such as the "twister" from that nutcase sham company "Brokat". It was all insane maniacs and idiots all around that didn't see the potential of the whole thing and just fell for cool visions and nice websites predesigned in a 8 week Photoshop 5 session (Yeah, really, I've seen it with my own eyes). Like kids using a ferrari as a scateboard ramp, not aware what it's really all about. All the idiots doing this back then have utterly failed. It's now that OSS, server side apps, intelligent appliances, minimum basic standards and computers are everywhere that the field is actually gaining some real momentum. This is what we are experiencing right now. And this time it actually will be an actual service industry and actually will start nibbling at other enterprises, such as print (Books and Newspapers), Television, Radio, Cinema, and other sorts of classic media we were used to up to now. As it is allready doing right now 'as we speak'.
That's all that's happening - a technology who's time has come slowly taking over. The bomb and all it's idiots that came and went was just a minor hickup.
Re:CP / Diamond Age Weapons Fabs, Insurance
on
Fab
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· Score: 1
I've got an interessting tid-bit on that: Rumor has it that Lego dropped their Mindstorms Line not because it wasn't profitable, but it was to easy for people to built hellmachines (bombs, traps, etc.) with them and thus various officials forced them to drop it. A rumor of course, but an interessting one nonetheless.
I'm just moving from x86 Linux (Debian) to "mainly Mac". Zero fuss out-of-the-box avantgarde functionality is the reason. Check out any online hardware store and view the list of current x86 CPU sockets and you now why. I personaly couldn't care less wether my Mac runs on x86 or PPC. But you can bet your right arm that as soon as Mac gets to become the pissy fumbly ten-bazillion different component standards and driver issues DIY plattform the PC is today, I'm switching back. Unless, of course, anything Mac is cheaper by then. But I doubt it. As long as Apple keeps a firm grip on a overseable list of components and I can get a good cinema screen with a good computer built into it that has me rolling the moment I unpack it and switch it on for the first time, they might aswell use VIA CPUs if they fancy that.
Please explain: What is the big fat hairy deal?
on
Ajax On Rails
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· Score: 1
Ok. So someone built a webpage with java script rich client features and some server stuff to deal with it. Right? Well, this is as old as the hills. Web developers where doing this 5 years ago. But this is called Ajax and suddenly everyone goes crazy. Then there is ROR. I checked Ruby on Rails about a year ago. Then again a little more just the other month. It looks like Zopes younger brother. Not half as powerfull, and 5 years to late. But with Ruby, as to add even more extra geekness or what?
Please understand: I think all these OSS PLs, Appservers and Web technologies are great. I love to use them for my work, and when a new one pops up - it happens every odd week - I'm the first one checking it out. I just would like to understand what all the extra excitement is about. Could someone please explain? I'm serious.
...that Mac Users are by far the best Software customers. They feel they're making a safe investment when buying it. (And they have more trouble getting pirated software) I've spent more money on non-game software for my half year old iBook than for any other computer I've owned (and own). Flash MX 2004 Pro and Lightwave 8 easily mount up to orders of magnitude in software costs. Opposed to that, measuring productivity of Wintel and Mac in money earned I'd say the mac is about two to three times more productive. And after moving from PC Linux as my main workhorse to Mac OS X I must say that Linux doesn't cut it to good either. Allthough I still like a good solid KDE 3.4 or E install like everybody else. But considering the fuss you have to go through to get a decent PC (good components that fit each other) up and running with a decent enviroment (good Debian Install or a beefed up, secured and patched Win2k) I must say I'm sticking with the Mac. So be it that a current PC is faster. A 20" iMac, sans noisy ugly box with zero hard and software hassle is the better choice in most cases other than extreme gaming. Buy, unpack, turn on -> works.
Cudos to this guy going through all the trouble so potential PPC Users don't have to. The G5s exeptionally bad real life performance with Apache and MySQL is an eye opener for me, as I am considering XServe as a plattform for the stuff I deliver. However, the G5s highest LW Raytracing performance is comforting, as I just bought an LW 8 license for Mac OS X the other week:-). Very informative article indeed.
The Blender Foundation did precisely this. And they've come a long way since, including forcing commercial competitors to rethink their pricing. (www.blender.org)
The Human Brain is so powerfull (far more powerfull than a computer) because it forgets. Imagine each time you write you'd remember all the pain it took to learn it. Imagine each time you scated, you'd remember all the bruises it took to learn it. No fun. On top of that comes the following: A huge part of what we memorize is stored into our nervous system and physical body. Me typing this just now for instance happens to a large part independently of my brain. Brain damaged people can still learn manual skills without forgetting them. Braindumping onto a computer would reveal that what's stored in our head-organ is nothing much more than an huge mess of impressions and abstractions of those. Something like the entire internet without google or other structuring measures. Our brain needs a physical body we identfy with and regular intervals of shutdown (sleep) in order to function properly. It needs a wide array of non-brain rythmic processes in order to even think properly. Dumping them pure informational contents of a human brain onto a HD in order to store what we know would bring disappointing results.
This is - of course - tres cool. I envy Lucas and his minions who are going to work there. I'd like to work in such a facility. Being a 3D Animator is hard work but I figure it would be very rewarding. Imagine something like "Yeah, I did the Shading on the Podrace" or "Yepp, T-Rex. He's mine." - Neat.
However, I think this is more of Lucas fullfilling his dreamstudio than something extremely future focused. Movies and their making as we know it are about to go through radical changes. I even figure Lucas knows this, since he's actually partly lead the way. Global viewing habbits and a big shift in the classical work and entertainment preferences ("work up the sweat at day, zero activity passive entertainment at night") will have todays movies decline in importance. I actually expect Video Gaming (in it's broadest sense) to outrun moviemaking within an decade or two.
Just think of an ultra high resolution, lightweight tablet, wireless broadband everywhere and the promise of constant revenue streams for MMORPG providers. On the tram? Log in and re-outfit your character. In the car? Dial into the Chatroom and check with the Clan how things are going. That's not far away at all. A game like World of Warcraft, Phantasy Star or Ragnarok is just to complicated for Grandma nowadays, because the AI avatars leading you on a tour through the virtual world aren't there yet. But they will come.
Let me get this straight: 1) You are the only sysop. 2) You've got 7 servers that must be up 24/7. 3) And you haven't even a single backupped spare with a watchdog to switch over when things go haywire?
Sorry, pal, but you're either bullshitting us or you gotta get some basics of your outfit sorted out before thinking of a satellite pager or other exotic stuff - that is not your current problem.
Having dealt with that, I recommend http://www.iridium.com/ for all your satellite communication needs. They are the satellite phone people. And they have a satellite SMS aswell.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the jokes to your comment, I have them covered allready.
This is not about any particular framework. It's about OSS server technology slowly creeping into everyday webapps and beyond. And Firefox/Mozilla Rich Clients in XUL lurking around the corner. Same goes for Flash stuff like Flex or Breeze. MS is fighting those too with new Products like "Office Live Meeting" and such. In MS much fear I sense about that.
Ajax on the other hand is a new buzzword for an ancient technology that usually is called "Doing neat client side stuff with Javascript". Some type A new economy wiseguy over at AdaptivePath brought it up and wrote an essay on rich clients with the assistance of the official web economy bullshit generator. And now - naturally - MS is picking it up. MS is king when it comes to buzzwords (and bullshit) and since they've got it all set up allready they now have a reason to sell more ASP.Crap servers for 10 Bazillon Dollars each.
That's all it is about.
BTW: If you want to check out a wepapp-juggernaught I'd suggest Zope, aka 'What RoR wants to be when it grows up'.
To actually answer your question:
I'd build a larger, fast and strong braile-type grid grouping each braile-type-patch within a elevated, push-button border to give at least as much input as a regular keyboard and as much output as a complex CLI. Add cording and you've got even more possibilities.
I'd build out- and input all around it. It would be something simular to the bash or zshell cli combined with Turbovision - but without overlapping windows.
The fast and strong grid would even make it possible to play action-like games. Given enough solid OOAD an interface like that could even join a party on World of Warcraft without much changing of the game. Maybe not as a standard character but as a sprite of fairy that flies around smaller obstacles by itself.
I'm quite shure this all could be achived with an open source unix variant with no sweat at all. You'd have to build the interface device and get going with some basics but from there on I'd actually leave it to blind developers to build their own system.
And that would be a box that doesn't need a new GFX card every odd month to stay up-to-date. Unbelievable.
...it actually is quite strange. But then again this is a hobbyist, so may dare I say: Nice piece. Nice effort. But it does have room for improvement.
May I recommend a source of inspiration?
For building everyday stuff into pictures, I suggest looking at paintings from the man that 'builds pictures' - as he calls it - and is generally considered one of the greates painters of our times.
One of his goals actually is to inspire people like you and me to do this kind of stuff themselves.
... in 5 days is activate "Show tabs all the time" and "Open in background in a new tab upon middle click" by default in IE 7.
Because the Mozilla / Firefox people are to slowpoky/conservative to do this, MS has a chance here.
But with the default settings of Outlook being nearly even more crappy than outlook itself I actually don't expect them to be that innovative.
Of course we all know, as most of those who've taken the time to stick a thumb at arms length into high moon and a horizon moon, that the big low hanging moon is mostly an optical illusion.
Yet it isn't a pure one, since the focal length of our eyes change when we raise our head. This effect most certainly varies from person to person, but can be observed if you concentrate on the focal behaviour of your eyes and it's abilty to change it's focal length.
Which, by the way, can be trained. There are older reports of north american natives you could see better with the naked eye than a pioneer with binoculars.
Where everybody and his brother has a hand canon in his night stand and still has the good ole (and crazy) pioneer spirit and is thus willing to defend his land with his life? :-) ...
Imagine this scenario: "Yo, fellas, LA Compton has been 0wnZ0r3D by WallMart. They want to build a parking lot and a waste dump. Please move out. Here's 1000$ for yer cardboard trailers each, now bugger off."
I mean isn't this a really stupid idea to pull this of with US citizens? We germans are used to this (our goverment doing crazy shit like siezing property for the common good) as we believe in law and order, the compentence of authorities (a german kind of extreme wishfull thinking) and the common good.
But americans? No way. Very bad idea if you ask me.
Talking about not just pissing of the entire middle and far east but also your own people
The DMCA isn't a problem. It's a nutcase law, I give you that. But it isn't a problem, since the law counts for everybody.
Applied with a good sense of creative nonsense it can protect anybody from anything.
Apply the DMCA to ways to access your personal data and sue anybody who sends you comercial mail into next wednesday.
The DMCA only becomes so oppresive in the US because they don't have the 'loser pays all' paradigm. Which is the only way any civil legal system makes sense. Not having 'loser pays all' is the next best thing to corporate fascism (sic).
Here in germany I have a friend that has trouble with big players in his field bringing up heavy legal caliber against him (he's into booksales on the web and it's about the german pricefixing law for books, even Pearson is involved). He goes to state court this month and if the corporate assholes lose he can carry on doing his business. In the US he'd be broke allready.
Bottom line: Add 'loser pays all legal expenses of trial' to the system and have every hotdog stand apply the DMCA to each and everyt aspect of their small business - and the insanity of this law becomes aparent to anybody with basic brain functions. And it will eventually disapear.
to prevent being crushed by the overwelming success of the rising Uber-frameworks 'Ajax' and 'Ruby on Rails'.
These 4th millenium technologies are going to squish everything else that is even remotely related to the internet and Apple is intelligent enough to know this. Just like everybody who reads slashdot.
It's a shame. First Longhorn anounces it's upcoming search technology and now this. It's all downhill from here on, Apple.
RIP. It was nice with you.
What Ruby on Rails wants to be when it grows up.
Now you did it. After you said that my Ajax has gone all agile.
RUBY! AJAX! ORGASM! Hit it with a RAIL! ... I, OMFG!!!111!! I'm coming, I'm gonna, OMG ... say "I like your monkey!!!" SAY IT! - .... OOOOooooohhhh, Rubyajaxrails, yeaaaah!! ...and any Beta mindfart about it is like ten times ten Ajax orgasms!
R!
O!
R!
ROOOOOAAAAR!
RUBY ON RAILS! So fucking awsome I gotta,
I've got it! Yeah! I've got a vision, people, a vision!
We're gonna have Ajax and we're gonna put it on Rails and it's all gonna be like Lucy in the Sky with Rubys.
Oh my gosh am I seeing some shit....
This is so awesome...
(And now for the real thing watch this post being modded +10 Insightfull)
One of the reasons Flash is so popular is because it's next to impossible to write spy- or malware with it.
Flash is extremly picky about client side security, since it's the most widespread web/internet client plattform in existance and they don't want to lose that edge.
Good reasoning if you ask me.
Finally somebody who isn't a total dickhead speaks up on the Ajax craze.
..."
"With DHTML and AJAX hot (or hot again; we've been here before, and I don't like either acronym)
Bingo!
The man's right on.
The dot-boom was a hype. Bazillian normals hopping on the bandwagon and banks and the goverment (at least here in germany) spending utterly insane amounts of money on the whole thing. The crash was nothing but a large bushfire taking out the weed and wannabees.
People who were into the business for the sake of "computer stuff" being their thing, were in it way befor the boom and were in it after the bomb exploded. It's nobody else but these professionals gaining momentum after 10-15 years of a steady growing IT.
Let's face it friends: 6 years ago, when everybody with more than 2 braincells knew that OSS is the only way to go and that 30 000 $ for a MS server package or Dreamweaver Ultradevs template engine just can't be the last word, nobody would care. People would buy licences of utter crap, such as the "twister" from that nutcase sham company "Brokat". It was all insane maniacs and idiots all around that didn't see the potential of the whole thing and just fell for cool visions and nice websites predesigned in a 8 week Photoshop 5 session (Yeah, really, I've seen it with my own eyes). Like kids using a ferrari as a scateboard ramp, not aware what it's really all about.
All the idiots doing this back then have utterly failed. It's now that OSS, server side apps, intelligent appliances, minimum basic standards and computers are everywhere that the field is actually gaining some real momentum. This is what we are experiencing right now.
And this time it actually will be an actual service industry and actually will start nibbling at other enterprises, such as print (Books and Newspapers), Television, Radio, Cinema, and other sorts of classic media we were used to up to now. As it is allready doing right now 'as we speak'.
That's all that's happening - a technology who's time has come slowly taking over.
The bomb and all it's idiots that came and went was just a minor hickup.
I've got an interessting tid-bit on that: Rumor has it that Lego dropped their Mindstorms Line not because it wasn't profitable, but it was to easy for people to built hellmachines (bombs, traps, etc.) with them and thus various officials forced them to drop it.
A rumor of course, but an interessting one nonetheless.
I'm just moving from x86 Linux (Debian) to "mainly Mac". Zero fuss out-of-the-box avantgarde functionality is the reason. Check out any online hardware store and view the list of current x86 CPU sockets and you now why.
I personaly couldn't care less wether my Mac runs on x86 or PPC. But you can bet your right arm that as soon as Mac gets to become the pissy fumbly ten-bazillion different component standards and driver issues DIY plattform the PC is today, I'm switching back. Unless, of course, anything Mac is cheaper by then. But I doubt it.
As long as Apple keeps a firm grip on a overseable list of components and I can get a good cinema screen with a good computer built into it that has me rolling the moment I unpack it and switch it on for the first time, they might aswell use VIA CPUs if they fancy that.
Ok. So someone built a webpage with java script rich client features and some server stuff to deal with it. Right? Well, this is as old as the hills. Web developers where doing this 5 years ago.
But this is called Ajax and suddenly everyone goes crazy.
Then there is ROR. I checked Ruby on Rails about a year ago. Then again a little more just the other month. It looks like Zopes younger brother. Not half as powerfull, and 5 years to late. But with Ruby, as to add even more extra geekness or what?
Please understand: I think all these OSS PLs, Appservers and Web technologies are great. I love to use them for my work, and when a new one pops up - it happens every odd week - I'm the first one checking it out. I just would like to understand what all the extra excitement is about.
Could someone please explain? I'm serious.
...that Mac Users are by far the best Software customers. They feel they're making a safe investment when buying it. (And they have more trouble getting pirated software)
I've spent more money on non-game software for my half year old iBook than for any other computer I've owned (and own).
Flash MX 2004 Pro and Lightwave 8 easily mount up to orders of magnitude in software costs.
Opposed to that, measuring productivity of Wintel and Mac in money earned I'd say the mac is about two to three times more productive. And after moving from PC Linux as my main workhorse to Mac OS X I must say that Linux doesn't cut it to good either.
Allthough I still like a good solid KDE 3.4 or E install like everybody else. But considering the fuss you have to go through to get a decent PC (good components that fit each other) up and running with a decent enviroment (good Debian Install or a beefed up, secured and patched Win2k) I must say I'm sticking with the Mac.
So be it that a current PC is faster. A 20" iMac, sans noisy ugly box with zero hard and software hassle is the better choice in most cases other than extreme gaming. Buy, unpack, turn on -> works.
Cudos to this guy going through all the trouble so potential PPC Users don't have to. :-) .
The G5s exeptionally bad real life performance with Apache and MySQL is an eye opener for me, as I am considering XServe as a plattform for the stuff I deliver.
However, the G5s highest LW Raytracing performance is comforting, as I just bought an LW 8 license for Mac OS X the other week
Very informative article indeed.
As a matter of fact, energy waste did come up.
But I guess who cares? This is slashdot, isn't it?
The Blender Foundation did precisely this. And they've come a long way since, including forcing commercial competitors to rethink their pricing. (www.blender.org)
The Human Brain is so powerfull (far more powerfull than a computer) because it forgets. Imagine each time you write you'd remember all the pain it took to learn it. Imagine each time you scated, you'd remember all the bruises it took to learn it.
No fun.
On top of that comes the following: A huge part of what we memorize is stored into our nervous system and physical body. Me typing this just now for instance happens to a large part independently of my brain. Brain damaged people can still learn manual skills without forgetting them.
Braindumping onto a computer would reveal that what's stored in our head-organ is nothing much more than an huge mess of impressions and abstractions of those. Something like the entire internet without google or other structuring measures.
Our brain needs a physical body we identfy with and regular intervals of shutdown (sleep) in order to function properly. It needs a wide array of non-brain rythmic processes in order to even think properly.
Dumping them pure informational contents of a human brain onto a HD in order to store what we know would bring disappointing results.
Sky is blue! ...
MS Office sucks.
Slow news day or what?
This is - of course - tres cool. I envy Lucas and his minions who are going to work there. I'd like to work in such a facility. Being a 3D Animator is hard work but I figure it would be very rewarding. Imagine something like "Yeah, I did the Shading on the Podrace" or "Yepp, T-Rex. He's mine." - Neat.
However, I think this is more of Lucas fullfilling his dreamstudio than something extremely future focused.
Movies and their making as we know it are about to go through radical changes. I even figure Lucas knows this, since he's actually partly lead the way.
Global viewing habbits and a big shift in the classical work and entertainment preferences ("work up the sweat at day, zero activity passive entertainment at night") will have todays movies decline in importance.
I actually expect Video Gaming (in it's broadest sense) to outrun moviemaking within an decade or two.
Just think of an ultra high resolution, lightweight tablet, wireless broadband everywhere and the promise of constant revenue streams for MMORPG providers. On the tram? Log in and re-outfit your character. In the car? Dial into the Chatroom and check with the Clan how things are going. That's not far away at all.
A game like World of Warcraft, Phantasy Star or Ragnarok is just to complicated for Grandma nowadays, because the AI avatars leading you on a tour through the virtual world aren't there yet. But they will come.
Let me get this straight:
1) You are the only sysop.
2) You've got 7 servers that must be up 24/7.
3) And you haven't even a single backupped spare with a watchdog to switch over when things go haywire?
Sorry, pal, but you're either bullshitting us or you gotta get some basics of your outfit sorted out before thinking of a satellite pager or other exotic stuff - that is not your current problem.
Having dealt with that, I recommend http://www.iridium.com/ for all your satellite communication needs. They are the satellite phone people. And they have a satellite SMS aswell.