Stanislaw Lem's 1976 short story "One hundred and thirty seven seconds" ("Sto trzydzieci siedem sekund") is strangely similar to this (except for the fact that they eventually conclude the article-writing neural network can see 137 seconds into the future).
Oh, I knew they could extract (very limited) parallax information from the plenoptic image data, I just didn't know they had coded that into their software (they didn't have it the last time I checked, they were only doing refocusing).
I stand corrected. Last time I'd checked out their software all it could do was refocus. Once they finally support simultaneous refocusing and wiggling (which is technically possible, by limiting the amount of each)... their cameras will still be just as useless.
No, it isn't. The only information you can get is the one from the light hitting the lens. That's effectively limited to parallax information between the edges of the lens (in reality, less than that, but let's pretend). In other words, as I wrote above, "unless the lens is wider than the distance between two eyes, you can't really use this to create realistic stereoscopic images at a macroscopic scale".
Having two lenses is not a requirement to capture stereoscopic images. It can be done with a single (big) lens, and two slightly different sensor locations. But you're limited by the distance between those two sensors, and a single large lens isn't necessarily cheaper or easier to use than two smaller ones.
What this system does is use the out-of-focus areas as a sort of "displaced" sensor - like moving the sensor within a small circle, still inside the projection cone of the lens - and therefore simulating two (or more) images captured at the edges of the lens.
But, unless the lens is wider than the distance between two eyes, you can't really use this to create realistic stereoscopic images at a macroscopic scale. The information is simply not there. Even if you can extract accurate depth information, that is not quite the same as 3D. A Z-buffer is not a 3D scene; it's not sufficient for functional stereoscopy.
Microscopy is a different matter. In fact, there are already several stereoscopic microscopes and endoscopes that use a single lens to capture two images (with offset sensors). Since the subject is very small, the parallax difference between the two images can be narrower than the width of the lens and still produce a good 3D effect. Scaling that up to macroscopic photography would require lenses wider than a human head.
No. Lytro's software allows refocusing in post (at a huge cost in terms of resolution). It does not try to extract any parallax information from the image.
> Being a Kernel Developer is a lot like being a Navy Seal [...]
Being a Kernel Developer is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman. First you PEEK, then you POKE. You think you're doing great, but suddenly she tells you that you're too BASIC, and gives you a C. Treating her like an object can be a plus (or two), but if you get linked to her publicly you might have to commit. And if you fail an interrupt and some of your bugs make it into the kernel, you'll end up supporting that mistake for the rest of your life.
Not sure if you're trolling or just very ignorant.
Any good 35 mm film camera in the market can do up to 120 FPS, usually 240 (and these aren't even specialized slow motion cameras). Slow motion is far easier and cheaper to do with film than digital sensors. All you need to to is speed up the camera motor, and compensate the exposure by using higher-sensitivity film.
Because some idiots think the stuttering look of lower FPS gives it a more "film-like" look, which looks more intellectual.
It's even worse when the original animator rendered it at 60 fps and someone decides to change it later, because then they make the 30 fps version by deinterlacing, which means they don't just lose fluidity, they also lose vertical resolution, and you end up with something that stutters and looks pixellated or blurry.
If you remove the polarizing filters both eyes will see both images and you lose the 3D effect (you just get ghosting). The polarizing filters (on the projectors and glasses) are what makes sure each eye only sees images from the correct projector, they're not related to the projection speed.
Alternating frames requires active shutter glasses, which are more expensive. And, indeed, that's how active shutter 3D works, but, until now, one eye was seeing the film 1/48th of a second behind the other, since the two cameras were typically in sync to make post-production easier. With 48 fps cameras, active shutter systems will finally be able to feed each eye 24 "correct" frames per second (i.e., one eye will see frame 1L, then the other eye gets frame 2R, then 3L, 4R, etc.). Of course, if they just speed up the current system, they'll be doing 96 updates per second and one eye will still be slightly behind the other (but now just be 1/96th of a second), but my point is that 48 fps cameras have an advantage for active shutter stereo 3D even if that final movie is played at 24 fps.
"As a direct and proximate result of such unfair competition, Plaintiff [Teller] has suffered, and will continue to suffer, monetary loss and irreparable injury to his business, reputation, and goodwill."
I give him the last one; his goodwill definitely comes out of this injured, but how exactly has Teller suffered "monetary loss and irreparable injury to his business [and] reputation" ? Teller wasn't selling a kit with the trick, so he's not going to lose any "potential sales". No one seriously believes that people planning to go see or hire Penn & Teller will change their minds and hire Gerard Bakardy instead, and Bakardy made it perfectly clear that his trick was inspired by Teller's, so there's no damage done to Teller's "reputation", either (i.e., there's no suggestion that Teller may have copied Bakardy).
In other words, this smells like a pure "copyright troll", trying to deny someone else a chance to do something similar even though that person is in no way a competitor or a threat.
Apple's Final Cut Studio costs $1.2k (and includes not only video editing but also DVD / BD authoring, sound mixing, compositing and muti-format compression).
Adobe's CS Production Premium costs $1.4k (and includes all the above plus Photoshop, Illustrator, and a few other well-established applications).
Avid's Media Composer costs 2.3k (that's about $2.2k for the Avid logo and $100 for the software - still slightly overpriced).
All three packages above are production-proven, well-established in the professional market, supported by most relevant equipment manufacturers, and have hundreds of high quality plug-ins available from 3rd parties. And you say you're trying to sell (unknown) "video editing software" for $10k? Good luck with that.
Even assuming you're including some high-end compositing software (not that you'd need to; After Effects has come a long way), you can get Production Premium + Nuke (or Fusion) for $6.3k, and that would give you access to both AFX and OFX plug-ins. You could even throw in 3DS Max or Maya ($3.5k) and still be under $10k.
Did this article somehow get lost in the depths of the Slashdot queue for 20 years?
Wait, so when a judge uses copyright law to protect an artist from a company trying to rip off his work without any payment or acknowledgement, that's "why copyright is wrong"...? So I guess you think that if Sony or Universal decided to rip off some indie band's songs, put together an autotuned boy band to sing them, and then sell that version without any compensation or mention of the original authors, it would be "wrong" to sue them?
I have a feeling you didn't bother to read the actual verdict or understand what this case is about (but somehow still thought your opinion would be relevant). At least I hope you didn't, otherwise what you're saying is that there's no point in trying to make a living as an artist, because any company should be allowed to copy your work and keep all the profits.
Did you even bother to read the verdict? Nevermind, it was a rhetorical question (if you had, you would know that there no connection between this case and stock photography, because the basis of the verdict isn't even the photo itself, it's mainly the artistic work done on the photo, and the events that led to the creation of the "knock-off" image).
1. Company X was using artist A's image commercially (on its products' packaging) without giving credit or paying royalties. 2. (2011 verdict) Court ordered company X to pay the artist. 3. Company X director decided to create a similar image, to avoid paying the author. 4. Company X director wasn't even able to take a similar enough photo so he photoshopped elements from an image bank plus some of his photographs (and removed people, erased the sky, etc.) to create something similar to the work of artist A, and used it in his company's packaging instead of the original. 5. (this verdict) Court rules that company X is still trying to profit from artist A's work and must compensate him.
Which part of this do you have a problem with, exactly? How do you expect "society" to punish company X through "good taste" ? How are the people buying company X's products even supposed to know that their packaging uses a knock-off version of someone else's art? Do you think Microsoft or Zynga should be allowed to copy any independent game they come across without any compensation or acknowledgement of the original authors' work?
Good taste and not lawsuits should dictate our behaviour.
What planet do you live on? Is this some sort of Hyacinth Bucket form of free capitalism? "Oh, dumping all those chemicals into that river was in such poor taste. No, Richard, don't sue the factory, let's just glare at them disapprovingly, I'm sure the people buying their products on the other side of the world will vote with their wallets and everything will magically fix itself."
Laws exist for a reason, and, if anything, this case shows that (occasionally) copyright law can still be used to protect the actual artists. I'd expect Slashdot's readers to praise the judge, but of course, for that they would have to actually read the verdict, which I guess is asking too much. It's so much easier to post self-important rants about how clueless judges are and how any verdict spells doom for mankind due to [insert totally unrelated comparison].
I work in post-production, and while some of the stereo-handling algorithms are impressive from a technical point of view (like the stuff in Eyeon Dimension and The Foundry's Ocula), and while I think stereo 3D is here to stay for video games (at least after consoles add some improvements to head tracking), I doubt it will be more than a passing fad for movies. It's simply not compatible enough with human vision, even when done properly (head movements spoil the effect, the difference between convergence point and focus plane puts stress on your eyes, etc.; it's as if someone nailed your head to the cameras). When I'm watching a movie, I'm a spectator, I don't feel any need to be "in" the movie; I'm fine with being an infinite distance way. Anything that makes watching the movie less comfortable is going to detract from the experience.
Anyway, although there are ways to extract 3D information from 2D image sequences (not from individual images), as done by camera trackers such as SynthEyes, PFTrack, etc., the result is a very low resolution point cloud, which is really only useful to calculate the camera position and / or track some scene features, not to create a usable stereoscopic image pair.
The only vaguely acceptable way to get stereo is to project the frames onto a (simplified) hand-made 3D model of the shot (typically a grid deformed by a displacement map), and then render it from two virtual cameras. This can take ages (to set up; rendering is quick) and is generally the kind of work you offload to some intern you don't like much. Even then, the results are generally less pleasant to watch than the original (mono) footage. If you're interested in seeing how this is done, search for "Stereo Conversion NAB" on YouTube, and you should find a few examples.
There is no way to convert individual frames from 2D to 3D in real time for the same reason that "digital zoom" can't show you text that was smaller than the sensor's pixels; the information is simply not there. You can, obviously, write an algorithm that adds made-up depth information to any image, just as you can write an algorithm that adds random text to zoomed images, but I doubt that would improve your movies in any way.
Shakespeare was one of the most respected actors, playwrights and poets of his time (although he also wrote a lot of crap; a bard has to pay the bills). Harry Potter is simplistic and highly derivative fantasy for young children. I doubt anyone will be talking about it in ten years (unless the publishers totally run out of ideas and need to revive it), let alone one hundred. The same goes for "Twilight" and other recent fads. They contain no "ideas", obscure or otherwise, nor do they need to; they're entertainment.
Your idea that Nobel prizes should be awarded based on "how many people read this author" is like suggesting that the physics Nobel should be based on "how many people are familiar with this theory" or that culinary prizes should be awarded based on "how many people eat this dish" (I guess Plain Rice would win every year, possibly followed by the Big Mac). I can't tell if that was just a really bad argument of if you completely missed the point of what Nobel prizes (and merit awards in general) are.
Your last sentence is just weird. First, because nearly every book is available instantly via the internet now (and will continue to be forever). Surely you are aware of that, no...? And second because Nobel prizes aren't awarded to books, they're awarded to authors (for the sum of their work), so the only place where you might be able to find "a dusty copy of this year's Nobel winner" is in some sort of human clone bank.
On the contrary; Saw arguably pushes some boundaries (though they're pretty easy boundaries to push, which makes the effort rather pointless). Harry Potter does not. It's just cliché linear plots (much like an old video game - run through level after level, with a boss at the end) with a universe that is mainly a ripped-off (and dumbed-down) Unseen University, from Pratchett's Discworld series. It was cleverly marketed, and it's competently written, but it doesn't really explore any new avenues, either in terms of style or theme. The same can be said about the fad that replaced it (teenage emo vampires, as seen in the "Twilight" series and its derivatives). And the same can preemptively be said about whatever literary fast food the publishers decide to put their marketing weight behind after the teenage model vampires have been milked.
Dan Brown is simply one of the worst writers ever to get published, and certainly the worst ever to receive that amount of advertising. This is just a small sample of his "skills". He does, arguably, come up with "interesting" plots, but those plots only work if the reader is a) able to ignore the atrocious writing and b) as ignorant about history, science and geography as Dan Brown himself, since he can't even place rivers in the correct continents (let alone establish credible connections to real historical facts, as he pretends to).
He doesn't have an argument. First because he never read those authors. Second because the point of the Nobel prizes is not to distinguish the average or popular; it's to distinguish the exceptional (which is even more important when they are not widely known or easily accessible).
J. K. Rowling's and Dan Brown's "award" is their bank account. Just because their books are profitable (much like McDonalds' "food" is profitable) that doesn't mean they've contributed much (if at all) to the progress of human society, or that we should give them literary awards. Books and literature aren't exactly the same thing.
"The Butt" is quite fun (in a sort of Kafka-meets-Jonathan-Swift way), although it loses some momentum after the middle (when the main character needs to cross the desert, the story also gets kind of dry - which might be deliberate), and the ending is a bit predictable and cartoonish. The book is probably more enjoyable if you've travelled a bit across Australia or northern Africa.
"Walking to Hollywood" is also pretty good, especially if you can get the references to films and the film industry, and enjoy books written by an "unreliable narrator" (think Wodehouse).
Don't expect very deep plots (although there's always plenty of subtext); Self is all about language tricks (that sometimes expose why we think about things the way we do) and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
I think you're confusing the creation of a consistent and detailed fantasy universe with the introduction of new literary styles or social ideologies. Dr. Frankenstein wanting to create life is a social and philosophical issue (even more so when you consider that Frankenstein was a man and the book was written by a woman). Dracula having pointy canines (instead of Nosferatu's pointy incisors) is not. Tolkien's influence in fantasy writing was of the latter kind. He took a lot of different concepts of elves, orcs, and so on, and created such a consistent world that most writers coming after him simply accepted his definitions. But none of his books raises particularly deep issues, nor are they written in a particularly distinctive or innovative style.
Tolkien's real achievement is not The Lord of the Rings, it's Middle Earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Stanislaw Lem's 1976 short story "One hundred and thirty seven seconds" ("Sto trzydzieci siedem sekund") is strangely similar to this (except for the fact that they eventually conclude the article-writing neural network can see 137 seconds into the future).
Oh, I knew they could extract (very limited) parallax information from the plenoptic image data, I just didn't know they had coded that into their software (they didn't have it the last time I checked, they were only doing refocusing).
You could... if your lens was about the size of a galaxy. ;-)
I stand corrected. Last time I'd checked out their software all it could do was refocus. Once they finally support simultaneous refocusing and wiggling (which is technically possible, by limiting the amount of each)... their cameras will still be just as useless.
No, it isn't. The only information you can get is the one from the light hitting the lens. That's effectively limited to parallax information between the edges of the lens (in reality, less than that, but let's pretend). In other words, as I wrote above, "unless the lens is wider than the distance between two eyes, you can't really use this to create realistic stereoscopic images at a macroscopic scale".
Having two lenses is not a requirement to capture stereoscopic images. It can be done with a single (big) lens, and two slightly different sensor locations. But you're limited by the distance between those two sensors, and a single large lens isn't necessarily cheaper or easier to use than two smaller ones.
What this system does is use the out-of-focus areas as a sort of "displaced" sensor - like moving the sensor within a small circle, still inside the projection cone of the lens - and therefore simulating two (or more) images captured at the edges of the lens.
But, unless the lens is wider than the distance between two eyes, you can't really use this to create realistic stereoscopic images at a macroscopic scale. The information is simply not there. Even if you can extract accurate depth information, that is not quite the same as 3D. A Z-buffer is not a 3D scene; it's not sufficient for functional stereoscopy.
Microscopy is a different matter. In fact, there are already several stereoscopic microscopes and endoscopes that use a single lens to capture two images (with offset sensors). Since the subject is very small, the parallax difference between the two images can be narrower than the width of the lens and still produce a good 3D effect. Scaling that up to macroscopic photography would require lenses wider than a human head.
No. Lytro's software allows refocusing in post (at a huge cost in terms of resolution). It does not try to extract any parallax information from the image.
> Being a Kernel Developer is a lot like being a Navy Seal [...]
Being a Kernel Developer is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman. First you PEEK, then you POKE. You think you're doing great, but suddenly she tells you that you're too BASIC, and gives you a C. Treating her like an object can be a plus (or two), but if you get linked to her publicly you might have to commit. And if you fail an interrupt and some of your bugs make it into the kernel, you'll end up supporting that mistake for the rest of your life.
Most people have 60 fps display equipment in their homes. Many even have 100 or 120 fps display equipment.
Not sure if you're trolling or just very ignorant.
Any good 35 mm film camera in the market can do up to 120 FPS, usually 240 (and these aren't even specialized slow motion cameras). Slow motion is far easier and cheaper to do with film than digital sensors. All you need to to is speed up the camera motor, and compensate the exposure by using higher-sensitivity film.
Because some idiots think the stuttering look of lower FPS gives it a more "film-like" look, which looks more intellectual.
It's even worse when the original animator rendered it at 60 fps and someone decides to change it later, because then they make the 30 fps version by deinterlacing, which means they don't just lose fluidity, they also lose vertical resolution, and you end up with something that stutters and looks pixellated or blurry.
If you remove the polarizing filters both eyes will see both images and you lose the 3D effect (you just get ghosting). The polarizing filters (on the projectors and glasses) are what makes sure each eye only sees images from the correct projector, they're not related to the projection speed.
Alternating frames requires active shutter glasses, which are more expensive. And, indeed, that's how active shutter 3D works, but, until now, one eye was seeing the film 1/48th of a second behind the other, since the two cameras were typically in sync to make post-production easier. With 48 fps cameras, active shutter systems will finally be able to feed each eye 24 "correct" frames per second (i.e., one eye will see frame 1L, then the other eye gets frame 2R, then 3L, 4R, etc.). Of course, if they just speed up the current system, they'll be doing 96 updates per second and one eye will still be slightly behind the other (but now just be 1/96th of a second), but my point is that 48 fps cameras have an advantage for active shutter stereo 3D even if that final movie is played at 24 fps.
Here's the problem with Teller's claim:
"As a direct and proximate result of such unfair competition, Plaintiff [Teller] has suffered, and will continue to suffer, monetary loss and irreparable injury to his business, reputation, and goodwill."
I give him the last one; his goodwill definitely comes out of this injured, but how exactly has Teller suffered "monetary loss and irreparable injury to his business [and] reputation" ? Teller wasn't selling a kit with the trick, so he's not going to lose any "potential sales". No one seriously believes that people planning to go see or hire Penn & Teller will change their minds and hire Gerard Bakardy instead, and Bakardy made it perfectly clear that his trick was inspired by Teller's, so there's no damage done to Teller's "reputation", either (i.e., there's no suggestion that Teller may have copied Bakardy).
In other words, this smells like a pure "copyright troll", trying to deny someone else a chance to do something similar even though that person is in no way a competitor or a threat.
Can you please show us, on this doll, where the hardware engineer touched you?
Apple's Final Cut Studio costs $1.2k (and includes not only video editing but also DVD / BD authoring, sound mixing, compositing and muti-format compression).
Adobe's CS Production Premium costs $1.4k (and includes all the above plus Photoshop, Illustrator, and a few other well-established applications).
Avid's Media Composer costs 2.3k (that's about $2.2k for the Avid logo and $100 for the software - still slightly overpriced).
All three packages above are production-proven, well-established in the professional market, supported by most relevant equipment manufacturers, and have hundreds of high quality plug-ins available from 3rd parties. And you say you're trying to sell (unknown) "video editing software" for $10k? Good luck with that.
Even assuming you're including some high-end compositing software (not that you'd need to; After Effects has come a long way), you can get Production Premium + Nuke (or Fusion) for $6.3k, and that would give you access to both AFX and OFX plug-ins. You could even throw in 3DS Max or Maya ($3.5k) and still be under $10k.
Did this article somehow get lost in the depths of the Slashdot queue for 20 years?
Wait, so when a judge uses copyright law to protect an artist from a company trying to rip off his work without any payment or acknowledgement, that's "why copyright is wrong"...? So I guess you think that if Sony or Universal decided to rip off some indie band's songs, put together an autotuned boy band to sing them, and then sell that version without any compensation or mention of the original authors, it would be "wrong" to sue them?
I have a feeling you didn't bother to read the actual verdict or understand what this case is about (but somehow still thought your opinion would be relevant). At least I hope you didn't, otherwise what you're saying is that there's no point in trying to make a living as an artist, because any company should be allowed to copy your work and keep all the profits.
No, clearly you didn't get it. Go read the actual verdict and stop making a public show of just how much you didn't get it.
Did you even bother to read the verdict? Nevermind, it was a rhetorical question (if you had, you would know that there no connection between this case and stock photography, because the basis of the verdict isn't even the photo itself, it's mainly the artistic work done on the photo, and the events that led to the creation of the "knock-off" image).
1. Company X was using artist A's image commercially (on its products' packaging) without giving credit or paying royalties.
2. (2011 verdict) Court ordered company X to pay the artist.
3. Company X director decided to create a similar image, to avoid paying the author.
4. Company X director wasn't even able to take a similar enough photo so he photoshopped elements from an image bank plus some of his photographs (and removed people, erased the sky, etc.) to create something similar to the work of artist A, and used it in his company's packaging instead of the original.
5. (this verdict) Court rules that company X is still trying to profit from artist A's work and must compensate him.
Which part of this do you have a problem with, exactly? How do you expect "society" to punish company X through "good taste" ? How are the people buying company X's products even supposed to know that their packaging uses a knock-off version of someone else's art? Do you think Microsoft or Zynga should be allowed to copy any independent game they come across without any compensation or acknowledgement of the original authors' work?
Good taste and not lawsuits should dictate our behaviour.
What planet do you live on? Is this some sort of Hyacinth Bucket form of free capitalism? "Oh, dumping all those chemicals into that river was in such poor taste. No, Richard, don't sue the factory, let's just glare at them disapprovingly, I'm sure the people buying their products on the other side of the world will vote with their wallets and everything will magically fix itself."
Laws exist for a reason, and, if anything, this case shows that (occasionally) copyright law can still be used to protect the actual artists. I'd expect Slashdot's readers to praise the judge, but of course, for that they would have to actually read the verdict, which I guess is asking too much. It's so much easier to post self-important rants about how clueless judges are and how any verdict spells doom for mankind due to [insert totally unrelated comparison].
I work in post-production, and while some of the stereo-handling algorithms are impressive from a technical point of view (like the stuff in Eyeon Dimension and The Foundry's Ocula), and while I think stereo 3D is here to stay for video games (at least after consoles add some improvements to head tracking), I doubt it will be more than a passing fad for movies. It's simply not compatible enough with human vision, even when done properly (head movements spoil the effect, the difference between convergence point and focus plane puts stress on your eyes, etc.; it's as if someone nailed your head to the cameras). When I'm watching a movie, I'm a spectator, I don't feel any need to be "in" the movie; I'm fine with being an infinite distance way. Anything that makes watching the movie less comfortable is going to detract from the experience.
Anyway, although there are ways to extract 3D information from 2D image sequences (not from individual images), as done by camera trackers such as SynthEyes, PFTrack, etc., the result is a very low resolution point cloud, which is really only useful to calculate the camera position and / or track some scene features, not to create a usable stereoscopic image pair.
The only vaguely acceptable way to get stereo is to project the frames onto a (simplified) hand-made 3D model of the shot (typically a grid deformed by a displacement map), and then render it from two virtual cameras. This can take ages (to set up; rendering is quick) and is generally the kind of work you offload to some intern you don't like much. Even then, the results are generally less pleasant to watch than the original (mono) footage. If you're interested in seeing how this is done, search for "Stereo Conversion NAB" on YouTube, and you should find a few examples.
There is no way to convert individual frames from 2D to 3D in real time for the same reason that "digital zoom" can't show you text that was smaller than the sensor's pixels; the information is simply not there. You can, obviously, write an algorithm that adds made-up depth information to any image, just as you can write an algorithm that adds random text to zoomed images, but I doubt that would improve your movies in any way.
Shakespeare was one of the most respected actors, playwrights and poets of his time (although he also wrote a lot of crap; a bard has to pay the bills). Harry Potter is simplistic and highly derivative fantasy for young children. I doubt anyone will be talking about it in ten years (unless the publishers totally run out of ideas and need to revive it), let alone one hundred. The same goes for "Twilight" and other recent fads. They contain no "ideas", obscure or otherwise, nor do they need to; they're entertainment.
Your idea that Nobel prizes should be awarded based on "how many people read this author" is like suggesting that the physics Nobel should be based on "how many people are familiar with this theory" or that culinary prizes should be awarded based on "how many people eat this dish" (I guess Plain Rice would win every year, possibly followed by the Big Mac). I can't tell if that was just a really bad argument of if you completely missed the point of what Nobel prizes (and merit awards in general) are.
Your last sentence is just weird. First, because nearly every book is available instantly via the internet now (and will continue to be forever). Surely you are aware of that, no...? And second because Nobel prizes aren't awarded to books, they're awarded to authors (for the sum of their work), so the only place where you might be able to find "a dusty copy of this year's Nobel winner" is in some sort of human clone bank.
So did Ed Wood. Hardly a sign of quality.
Tolkien was a competent writer, but not an exceptional one. His real strength was in creating worlds, not in writing about them.
On the contrary; Saw arguably pushes some boundaries (though they're pretty easy boundaries to push, which makes the effort rather pointless). Harry Potter does not. It's just cliché linear plots (much like an old video game - run through level after level, with a boss at the end) with a universe that is mainly a ripped-off (and dumbed-down) Unseen University, from Pratchett's Discworld series. It was cleverly marketed, and it's competently written, but it doesn't really explore any new avenues, either in terms of style or theme. The same can be said about the fad that replaced it (teenage emo vampires, as seen in the "Twilight" series and its derivatives). And the same can preemptively be said about whatever literary fast food the publishers decide to put their marketing weight behind after the teenage model vampires have been milked.
Dan Brown is simply one of the worst writers ever to get published, and certainly the worst ever to receive that amount of advertising. This is just a small sample of his "skills". He does, arguably, come up with "interesting" plots, but those plots only work if the reader is a) able to ignore the atrocious writing and b) as ignorant about history, science and geography as Dan Brown himself, since he can't even place rivers in the correct continents (let alone establish credible connections to real historical facts, as he pretends to).
He doesn't have an argument. First because he never read those authors. Second because the point of the Nobel prizes is not to distinguish the average or popular; it's to distinguish the exceptional (which is even more important when they are not widely known or easily accessible).
J. K. Rowling's and Dan Brown's "award" is their bank account. Just because their books are profitable (much like McDonalds' "food" is profitable) that doesn't mean they've contributed much (if at all) to the progress of human society, or that we should give them literary awards. Books and literature aren't exactly the same thing.
"The Butt" is quite fun (in a sort of Kafka-meets-Jonathan-Swift way), although it loses some momentum after the middle (when the main character needs to cross the desert, the story also gets kind of dry - which might be deliberate), and the ending is a bit predictable and cartoonish. The book is probably more enjoyable if you've travelled a bit across Australia or northern Africa.
"Walking to Hollywood" is also pretty good, especially if you can get the references to films and the film industry, and enjoy books written by an "unreliable narrator" (think Wodehouse).
Don't expect very deep plots (although there's always plenty of subtext); Self is all about language tricks (that sometimes expose why we think about things the way we do) and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
I think you're confusing the creation of a consistent and detailed fantasy universe with the introduction of new literary styles or social ideologies. Dr. Frankenstein wanting to create life is a social and philosophical issue (even more so when you consider that Frankenstein was a man and the book was written by a woman). Dracula having pointy canines (instead of Nosferatu's pointy incisors) is not. Tolkien's influence in fantasy writing was of the latter kind. He took a lot of different concepts of elves, orcs, and so on, and created such a consistent world that most writers coming after him simply accepted his definitions. But none of his books raises particularly deep issues, nor are they written in a particularly distinctive or innovative style.
Tolkien's real achievement is not The Lord of the Rings, it's Middle Earth.