The worldwide film industry (and consumers) are already used to having English/American movies subtitled or dubbed and then released in foreign markets.
I doubt the movie would do as well if Square did the opposite: make a Japanese movie and then release it in the US.
At some point, a 3D scene has to be converted to 2D to display on your monitor. One part of the graphics pipeline that enables this is a Perspective Projection. Basically, a projection is a transformation that moves from a k-dimensional space to a k-1 dimensional space. What can get fucked up when this happens is the texture mapping on objects in the scene. When you do the (interpolated) texture mapping in image space rather than scene/world space, it turns out to look a lot better. I'm not sure what they really mean by "perspective corrected" though.
Bilinear and Anisotropic mip-mapping
Mip-Mapping is a different type of texture mapping. If you want more info on this, go to some graphics dev sites that talk about it. It's pretty standard stuff
Gouraud Shading
A method for determining the colors on a polygon by linearly interpolating (weighting) certain pre-specified colors (such as those at the vertices of the polygon). Again, standard stuff
Alpha-Blending
Method for handling transparency by blending together layers of generated images together with specified opacity (alpha) values. More standard stuff
Fogging
Well, fog. Not sure what they mean by it being able to handle fogging though.
Z-Buffer
The standard method used by graphics accelerators to draw stuff in the scene. Basically, when you draw stuff, you only want to draw the stuff closest to the camera, because the other stuff behind the closest stuff is blocked.
GLX 1.3, Mesa, DRI
3D graphics libraries such as OpenGL and Direct3D, but ones for Linux instead of Windows.
I don't see anything very special about the above features... It's pretty standard stuff that you'd want to see in a GeForce 2 or so nowadays. If it's not all hardware-implemented, it's not impressive at all.
I don't see anything really awesome like Vertex and Pixel Shaders, along with the other new features that are implemented by the GeForce 3 / XGPU in hardware...
I'm sure I made a mistake above.. Maybe someone else can correct me.
There are tons of gaming sites out there that focus on news. The only "problem" is that they are usually platform specific, except for the big ones, but that can be solved by some perl scripts:) Here's a list of sites I visit often (too much?):
Gamers.com - Not too much info nowadays (they got bit too)
The GIA - Fairly good coverage of major events. Very review and gameplay heavy, rather than industry news.
Gamasutra - Industry news in a simple format, though more finance and 3rd party tools related
FGN Online - Pretty good coverage. It's now an IGN affiliate.
A good number of the above are fairly major publications. Snowball.Com is in trouble as well, but IGN is their biggest crowd attraction, and IGN Games has to be near the top too, so it should last a little while. Core is a major publication in Japan with a real circulation. ZDNet + C|Net together have enough muscle to keep GameSpot going.
The GameCube is not in trouble. It never was, it never will be. Why would Hiroshi Yamauchi say it is right before E3? Well, duh: To secure support for the product at a time when it is very shady as to who will win the console war.
If Yamauchi says "We won't ship this really cool game console that will make us a lot of money on the Pokemon and Miyamoto game sales alone unless you people kiss our asses at E3," what do you think is gonna happen? The press is gonna pay attention to Nintendo's booths a lot more than they had planned on doing and Nintendo fans are gonna send tons of letters to their favorite gaming press reminding them to do so.
Fear not - Nintendo has mucho mula in their bank accounts. Yamauchi is doing this to make sure the money they spend on E3 is worth every penny.
They aren't NASA robots, they are FIRST robots. What's FIRST? FIRST stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology"
The robots in the competition are made by kids (not NASA scientists).
FIRST is an organization funded (and founded) by Dean Kamen. Kamen is a genius inventor. A profile of him is on the FIRST web site here. His company, DEKA, is the one making the so-called 'IT', or 'Ginger' (that scooter thingy).
I like Yahoo!. Not because it's a big company. Not because it's "got everything I'd ever need!" Not because it's the best for searching (I use Google for that).
Yahoo! shows that two kids out of Stanford really can make a difference with their Graduate theses. That's why I like Yahoo!
The person asking Slashdot about this is a "general manager"? Shouldn't this mean this person has an MBA degree? Shouldn't this also mean this person should already KNOW about the structure of the modern day corporation?
Oh wait, right. He's a PHB.
For one thing, this person asks "to whom do they report?" ALL officers report to the Chief Executive Officer (that's why he's a CHIEF EXECUTIVE). The CEO usually reports to the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, if there is one.
The Windows (as in, Win32) customization scene has been around for a long time.
There are many programs out there that allow you to change their interface, sometimes only in how they look (WinAmp), but other times in how they act (K-Jofol).
Within the past few years, there have been a number of "shells" that have come out that allow you to ditch explorer (the start menu / taskbar / desktop combination) and use your own interface, like an X-Windows window manager.
Microsoft is trying to have the best of both worlds - a standardized user interface, with the ability to change it all. Personally, I don't think it's gonna work very well, but that may be just because I used to be on the Litestep development team.
Have you heard of LanSonic? It's a box that is basically two things in one: a rack-format MP3 player, and a network based storage unit.
So, you can store your MP3s on this thing and play them either through your stereo (by hooking this thing up to the speakers), or through your computer (by mounting the harddrive(s) in the box over the ethernet connection).
You can even get it in a number of harddrive configurations - including 0. So, if you've got your own drive of MP3s already, you can just move it into this box and that's it. I'm not sure what file systems the box understands, but I'm sure it's something standard...
If you really want to see 3D used as part of the web, try metastream. The latest version of the technology is seriously close to photographic quality, and it doesn't want to take over your whole screen. It's not useful for designing an entire site as a 3D world, but it can add enough 3D to your site to differentiate it from others.
I was just at an Apple recruiting event yesterday, and they obviously had a demo of OS X. The presenter was also a recent graduate from my college (Carnegie Mellon). Of course, he knew that most of the people in the room were used to Linux and command line interfaces.
To prove that OS X was not just a nifty a GUI, but an honest-to-god POSIX-compliant BSD-based distribution, he opened up a terminal window and proceeded to type in the following:
emacs foo.c
Then, in emacs:
#include
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
printf("Hello world!\n");
}
^X^C
Then back in the terminal:
make foo
./foo
I think when he did that, the amount of applause that filled the room was the most applause a terminal window has ever gotten:)
Recently, Fortune updated their "40 Richest Under 40" Index. Meaning, it lists the 40 richest people under 40 living in America.
Every single person on that list is an executive or founder of a technology company - with the exception of Number 40: Michael Jordan, and even he is on the Board of Directors for MVP.Com.
Now, guess how many graduated from college? More than half? Hah. The site is slow, so I wish I could go and count how many of them actually did, but I remember that many of them dropped out, and one never even went - the former CEO of Datek Online was once Datek's mailroom clerk.
Should techies not going to college expect to become that rich? Certainly not, but there's no reason that forgoing academia can lead to a dismal life...
I'm sorry this is OT, but I thought that people would be interested and Slashdot would probably not make a story out of it. I just wanted to point out that the Slashdot Copyright notice at the bottom of the page has changed - it now says "... The Rest Copyright OSDN"
OSDN is the Open Source Developer's Network. So, I'm guessing that VA's corporate structure has changed or something like that and Slashdot is now not its own entity. Am I right? I wonder if it means some changes are coming around the bend...
I keep telling people this, but no one seems to listen...
Okay, you know the current Cartoon Network, and how it shows a lot of Scooby Doo and older American cartoons? Well, all those are being moved off to another network - called Boomerang!
What's left after you take out the old stuff? New stuff and Anime. Sooo, there ya go - a "separate anime network" (maybe not 24 hour anime, but some of CN's original programming is pretty good. For example, Power Puff Girls and Dex's Lab).
The creator of Gnutella did not do so entirely on his own time - he released it as a product of NullSoft. In this case, it is NullSoft that has to take responsibility for it. And since AOL is now the proprietor of NullSoft, they must take responsibility for what NullSoft creates.
A long time ago when Mozilla was in the initial stages, there was a utility that let you replace the Internet Explorer engine with Mozilla's engine. Does anyone know where I can find this? I just love NetCaptor as a browser, but it only uses the Internet Explorer engine... If I had the time, I'd code one based on Mozilla just like it, but I don't...
Beware to the people that are interested in optical networking, unless you are so interested purely from a research standpoint.
Optical Networking is the term to be talking if you are a Venture Capitalist these days. VCs are just pumping more and more money into any company that has optical networking in its business description. And, just as dot-coms had their flops, so will optical networking.
Optical Networking stocks are also flying through the roof, just as dot-coms did a year or two ago.
I'll be wary of optical networking for a good while until several leaders truly come out ahead of the pack.
I know exactly what went on - I worked for the company for a time.
Yes, they wanted to get rid of stuff. I'm just saying it from a "That's my baby" point of view. I'm sure the developers of software that got sold (I was working on other stuff) are totally down about how their software has basically disappeared from development because one company decided to sell it, and another decided to drop it.
They also screwed up MetaCreations' product line. They bought up almost all of MetaCreations' products, and now where are they? In development limbo. Dammit...
AnimeOnDVD.Com is basically the source for anime on DVD news. This past Monday, the site's main artist - Bethany Neal (who drew the marvelous Divi-Chan) and her husband, Justin, passed away in a car accident.
I don't know the details since that's what was posted on AnimeOnDVD. There is an address to send condolences to the family:
Bethany and Justin Neal
130 SW 112th Street
Seattle, Washington 98146
Well, then, you aren't watching enough television.:P Let me go through some of the best American animation there is, and you tell me why it totally has let you down...
The Simpsons - The best American comedy on television. Also the longest running - coming up on its 12th season on the air, The Simpsons is the longest running sitcom on television, animated or not. And who can't like the really well thought out irony with real world implications?
Batman: The Animated Series - From the mind of Paul Dini. This is the only animation I know that has both a very dark, gothic feel to it (and even adult themes) and has made it onto network television. The story lines were perfectly done, and the animation was excellent - not too detailed, but not plain and dull like many Looney Tunes.
Spawn - Another very gothic and dark series, although it only aired on HBO due to nudity and much more adult themes than bad guy vs. good guy.
X-Men - X-Men was just a great Saturday morning cartoon. The story lines were great, and who doesn't like the X-Men anyway?:P If you haven't seen the X-Men at all, Fox is going to start re-airing the episodes from episode 1 starting August 21st at 4 PM weekdays.
Futurama - Another Groening masterpiece. Many people don't like it because it's "not The Simpsons." But that's exactly what Groening wanted to do - something "not Simpsons," but still packs a punch.
Family Guy - This is another one that seems to get dumped on a lot. But people don't seem to realize that it's just as not-PC as South Park, and it's managed to stay on network television as well. Stewie (the baby) is the absolute greatest - he's bent on killing his parents to escape his daily drudgery and he does it all with a British accent:P
Seriously Taco, there's good stuff that comes out of America. You just have to look a little.
Slashdot Mirror
PS/2's have been able to run linux for a while. In fact, since 1990.
I think you mean PS2.
The worldwide film industry (and consumers) are already used to having English/American movies subtitled or dubbed and then released in foreign markets.
I doubt the movie would do as well if Square did the opposite: make a Japanese movie and then release it in the US.
At some point, a 3D scene has to be converted to 2D to display on your monitor. One part of the graphics pipeline that enables this is a Perspective Projection. Basically, a projection is a transformation that moves from a k-dimensional space to a k-1 dimensional space. What can get fucked up when this happens is the texture mapping on objects in the scene. When you do the (interpolated) texture mapping in image space rather than scene/world space, it turns out to look a lot better. I'm not sure what they really mean by "perspective corrected" though.
Mip-Mapping is a different type of texture mapping. If you want more info on this, go to some graphics dev sites that talk about it. It's pretty standard stuff
A method for determining the colors on a polygon by linearly interpolating (weighting) certain pre-specified colors (such as those at the vertices of the polygon). Again, standard stuff
Method for handling transparency by blending together layers of generated images together with specified opacity (alpha) values. More standard stuff
Well, fog. Not sure what they mean by it being able to handle fogging though.
The standard method used by graphics accelerators to draw stuff in the scene. Basically, when you draw stuff, you only want to draw the stuff closest to the camera, because the other stuff behind the closest stuff is blocked.
3D graphics libraries such as OpenGL and Direct3D, but ones for Linux instead of Windows.
I don't see anything very special about the above features... It's pretty standard stuff that you'd want to see in a GeForce 2 or so nowadays. If it's not all hardware-implemented, it's not impressive at all.
I don't see anything really awesome like Vertex and Pixel Shaders, along with the other new features that are implemented by the GeForce 3 / XGPU in hardware...
I'm sure I made a mistake above.. Maybe someone else can correct me.
A good number of the above are fairly major publications. Snowball.Com is in trouble as well, but IGN is their biggest crowd attraction, and IGN Games has to be near the top too, so it should last a little while. Core is a major publication in Japan with a real circulation. ZDNet + C|Net together have enough muscle to keep GameSpot going.
The GameCube is not in trouble. It never was, it never will be. Why would Hiroshi Yamauchi say it is right before E3? Well, duh: To secure support for the product at a time when it is very shady as to who will win the console war.
If Yamauchi says "We won't ship this really cool game console that will make us a lot of money on the Pokemon and Miyamoto game sales alone unless you people kiss our asses at E3," what do you think is gonna happen? The press is gonna pay attention to Nintendo's booths a lot more than they had planned on doing and Nintendo fans are gonna send tons of letters to their favorite gaming press reminding them to do so.
Fear not - Nintendo has mucho mula in their bank accounts. Yamauchi is doing this to make sure the money they spend on E3 is worth every penny.
They aren't NASA robots, they are FIRST robots. What's FIRST? FIRST stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology"
The robots in the competition are made by kids (not NASA scientists).
FIRST is an organization funded (and founded) by Dean Kamen. Kamen is a genius inventor. A profile of him is on the FIRST web site here. His company, DEKA, is the one making the so-called 'IT', or 'Ginger' (that scooter thingy).
I like Yahoo!. Not because it's a big company. Not because it's "got everything I'd ever need!" Not because it's the best for searching (I use Google for that).
Yahoo! shows that two kids out of Stanford really can make a difference with their Graduate theses. That's why I like Yahoo!
The person asking Slashdot about this is a "general manager"? Shouldn't this mean this person has an MBA degree? Shouldn't this also mean this person should already KNOW about the structure of the modern day corporation?
Oh wait, right. He's a PHB.
For one thing, this person asks "to whom do they report?" ALL officers report to the Chief Executive Officer (that's why he's a CHIEF EXECUTIVE). The CEO usually reports to the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, if there is one.
The Windows (as in, Win32) customization scene has been around for a long time.
There are many programs out there that allow you to change their interface, sometimes only in how they look (WinAmp), but other times in how they act (K-Jofol).
Within the past few years, there have been a number of "shells" that have come out that allow you to ditch explorer (the start menu / taskbar / desktop combination) and use your own interface, like an X-Windows window manager.
Microsoft is trying to have the best of both worlds - a standardized user interface, with the ability to change it all. Personally, I don't think it's gonna work very well, but that may be just because I used to be on the Litestep development team.
Obligatory links:
Skinz.org
DeskMod
Litestep.net
desktopian.org
And those link to many more...
Have you heard of LanSonic? It's a box that is basically two things in one: a rack-format MP3 player, and a network based storage unit.
So, you can store your MP3s on this thing and play them either through your stereo (by hooking this thing up to the speakers), or through your computer (by mounting the harddrive(s) in the box over the ethernet connection).
You can even get it in a number of harddrive configurations - including 0. So, if you've got your own drive of MP3s already, you can just move it into this box and that's it. I'm not sure what file systems the box understands, but I'm sure it's something standard...
It seems quite reasonable, actually....
If you really want to see 3D used as part of the web, try metastream. The latest version of the technology is seriously close to photographic quality, and it doesn't want to take over your whole screen. It's not useful for designing an entire site as a 3D world, but it can add enough 3D to your site to differentiate it from others.
I was just at an Apple recruiting event yesterday, and they obviously had a demo of OS X. The presenter was also a recent graduate from my college (Carnegie Mellon). Of course, he knew that most of the people in the room were used to Linux and command line interfaces.
:)
To prove that OS X was not just a nifty a GUI, but an honest-to-god POSIX-compliant BSD-based distribution, he opened up a terminal window and proceeded to type in the following:
emacs foo.c
Then, in emacs:
#include
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
printf("Hello world!\n");
}
^X^C
Then back in the terminal:
make foo
./foo
I think when he did that, the amount of applause that filled the room was the most applause a terminal window has ever gotten
Recently, Fortune updated their "40 Richest Under 40" Index. Meaning, it lists the 40 richest people under 40 living in America.
Every single person on that list is an executive or founder of a technology company - with the exception of Number 40: Michael Jordan, and even he is on the Board of Directors for MVP.Com.
Now, guess how many graduated from college? More than half? Hah. The site is slow, so I wish I could go and count how many of them actually did, but I remember that many of them dropped out, and one never even went - the former CEO of Datek Online was once Datek's mailroom clerk.
Should techies not going to college expect to become that rich? Certainly not, but there's no reason that forgoing academia can lead to a dismal life...
The list is here.
I'm sorry this is OT, but I thought that people would be interested and Slashdot would probably not make a story out of it. I just wanted to point out that the Slashdot Copyright notice at the bottom of the page has changed - it now says "... The Rest Copyright OSDN"
OSDN is the Open Source Developer's Network. So, I'm guessing that VA's corporate structure has changed or something like that and Slashdot is now not its own entity. Am I right? I wonder if it means some changes are coming around the bend...
Note that a judge ordered Yahoo! to release information on the person. They did not do it entirely "just because Apple asked"
I keep telling people this, but no one seems to listen...
Okay, you know the current Cartoon Network, and how it shows a lot of Scooby Doo and older American cartoons? Well, all those are being moved off to another network - called Boomerang!
What's left after you take out the old stuff? New stuff and Anime. Sooo, there ya go - a "separate anime network" (maybe not 24 hour anime, but some of CN's original programming is pretty good. For example, Power Puff Girls and Dex's Lab).
The quote is:
:P
Nelson: "Hey Bart! Your epidermis is showing!"
*Girls and boys in pool laugh at Bart, who is situated on a tree branch about to dive into the pool*
Bart: "Wha!? Huh!? Ahhh!"
*Bart screams as he falls; cut to Nelson talking to Kearney*
Nelson: "See, your epidermis is your hair. So technically I'm right. Excuse me.."
*Nelson walks to edge of pool*
Nelson (pointing at Bart): "Ha Ha!"
Sorry for the OT post
The creator of Gnutella did not do so entirely on his own time - he released it as a product of NullSoft. In this case, it is NullSoft that has to take responsibility for it. And since AOL is now the proprietor of NullSoft, they must take responsibility for what NullSoft creates.
And hence, you get the blame game...
A long time ago when Mozilla was in the initial stages, there was a utility that let you replace the Internet Explorer engine with Mozilla's engine. Does anyone know where I can find this? I just love NetCaptor as a browser, but it only uses the Internet Explorer engine... If I had the time, I'd code one based on Mozilla just like it, but I don't...
Beware to the people that are interested in optical networking, unless you are so interested purely from a research standpoint.
Optical Networking is the term to be talking if you are a Venture Capitalist these days. VCs are just pumping more and more money into any company that has optical networking in its business description. And, just as dot-coms had their flops, so will optical networking.
Optical Networking stocks are also flying through the roof, just as dot-coms did a year or two ago.
I'll be wary of optical networking for a good while until several leaders truly come out ahead of the pack.
I know exactly what went on - I worked for the company for a time.
Yes, they wanted to get rid of stuff. I'm just saying it from a "That's my baby" point of view. I'm sure the developers of software that got sold (I was working on other stuff) are totally down about how their software has basically disappeared from development because one company decided to sell it, and another decided to drop it.
They also screwed up MetaCreations' product line. They bought up almost all of MetaCreations' products, and now where are they? In development limbo. Dammit...
AnimeOnDVD.Com is basically the source for anime on DVD news. This past Monday, the site's main artist - Bethany Neal (who drew the marvelous Divi-Chan) and her husband, Justin, passed away in a car accident.
I don't know the details since that's what was posted on AnimeOnDVD. There is an address to send condolences to the family:
Bethany and Justin Neal
130 SW 112th Street
Seattle, Washington 98146
More information is here.
[rant] It was probably some moron who felt he could drive while having a beer. Fucking morons. [/rant]
I feel like American television has let me down
:P Let me go through some of the best American animation there is, and you tell me why it totally has let you down...
:P If you haven't seen the X-Men at all, Fox is going to start re-airing the episodes from episode 1 starting August 21st at 4 PM weekdays.
:P
Well, then, you aren't watching enough television.
The Simpsons - The best American comedy on television. Also the longest running - coming up on its 12th season on the air, The Simpsons is the longest running sitcom on television, animated or not. And who can't like the really well thought out irony with real world implications?
Batman: The Animated Series - From the mind of Paul Dini. This is the only animation I know that has both a very dark, gothic feel to it (and even adult themes) and has made it onto network television. The story lines were perfectly done, and the animation was excellent - not too detailed, but not plain and dull like many Looney Tunes.
Spawn - Another very gothic and dark series, although it only aired on HBO due to nudity and much more adult themes than bad guy vs. good guy.
X-Men - X-Men was just a great Saturday morning cartoon. The story lines were great, and who doesn't like the X-Men anyway?
Futurama - Another Groening masterpiece. Many people don't like it because it's "not The Simpsons." But that's exactly what Groening wanted to do - something "not Simpsons," but still packs a punch.
Family Guy - This is another one that seems to get dumped on a lot. But people don't seem to realize that it's just as not-PC as South Park, and it's managed to stay on network television as well. Stewie (the baby) is the absolute greatest - he's bent on killing his parents to escape his daily drudgery and he does it all with a British accent
Seriously Taco, there's good stuff that comes out of America. You just have to look a little.
It's not being ported to Linux. It's being open sourced. There's a difference.