That isn't actually a very good example because most of the realism from that particular image comes from the caustics (IIRC that image was created as a demonstration of POVRays caustics capabilities), and caustics drastically increase render time for a scene. Adding caustics and global illumination will quickly take the speed down from 30fps to.3fps.
Don't get me wrong, real time ray tracing will be awesome, but it will be a long time before we can do real time ray tracing with that kind of quality.
most (all?) parachutes have a saftey backup that will automatically open the chute at a certain altitude. There are also contraptions that is essentially a bit of string tied to the cord at one end and the plane at the other that will pull the cord and open the cute once it's an appropriate distance from the plane.
While I'm not a big fan of EA, they do come out with something decent on occasion. Skate was pretty good, and was quite different than the Tony Hawk series. I'm also looking forward to Spore.
No guessing needed, it has always been > 0! [because] 9/11/2001 is a constant and equals approximately 4.09e-4
Begging your pardon, but 0!==1, and 4.09e-4 < 1, so how can 4.09e-4 be > 0! ?
</smartass>
I would say that wide distribution is far more important than money for true art. People don't create true works of art to lock up and only be viewed/listened to/etc. by those with money. True art is a message, and the more easly a message can be distribtued the more it encourages the production of art.
Someone who makes music or paintings or whatever else just for the money is a craftsman, not an artist.
Counterpoint: Perhaps the reason a lot of students haven't found the literature that is tought in english classes is because english classes don't teach material that engages students, or where literature that would be otherwise engaging is used in class, the things that make it interesting are glossed over and watered down to avoid discussing controversial topics.
I'm not saying that one's privacy or religion is right or wrong, but both of these things are private matters. ...Except for, you know, the people who don't believe in privacy.
the problem with this idea is that it assumes that people are stealing the movie because they want to get the movie without paying for it. While that probably represents some portion of the people who steal dvds, I would suspect that many others are stealing just to steal. Dvds tend to be out on the shelves in large quantities, so they are probably one of the easiest things to steal, and some people just wanna steal something.
IANAL but... From the perspective of someone who has done a lot of freelance work, both development and graphic design, retaining copyright is not unheard of, but it sounds like someone screwed up in the negotiation process. When doing freelance work, it's common to retain copyright, even when offering an exclusive license, because it allows the developer to create derivative works. This allows the freelancer to re-use code modules in other projects without having to worry about being sued by clients. From the perspective of a business, this doesn't necessarily hurt you. Depending on how your license is written, you may still have the right to modify the source for your use internally. You'll really need to get a lawyer to work out the details of your rights.
Whenever I have done freelance work, I have always stated up front where I stand on retaining copyright. In general, I retain copyright for projects unless stated otherwise - but I let the client know that upfront and that it is open to negotiation (in general, I charge the lowest rate for clients who want a non-exclusive license, more for clients who want an exclusive license where I retain copyright so I can use modules in future projects, and the most for transfer of copyright).
As for work for hire, as a rule of thumb, a project is work-for-hire if the project is created using company resources, so if the contractor used your companies computers and office space, then it could reasonably be considered work for hire, whereas if you gave them specs and they came back with a disk, it might be harder to make the work-for-hire argument. Once again, you'll have to talk to a lawyer about that, since there are all kinds of subtleties and differences from state to state, country to country, etc.
I would say, get a lawyer and try to work out your situation in this instance, and consider that you may have to chalk up a lesson learned. In the future, discuss this with contractors before hiring them.
Although I thought that this mythbusters experiment was kind of interesting (although apparently flawed in it's statistics) - they did leave out one aspect that I thought could have potentially effected the results. In their experiment they had Kari fake yawning to see if seeing one person yawn would make someone else yawn, but they didn't test to see if there were any environmental factors that could cause people to yawn. If there were some environmental factor that caused people to yawn, then it would certainly give the appearance of yawning being contagious because all the people in the area would be yawning.
Not only that, but often times you run into a situation where there is a legitimate problem, but the user thinks that it's problem foo, when the problem is actually problem bar. Of course, the user, convinced that the problem is foo, will tell you whatever they think you need to hear in order to fix foo. Often times foo is simply a set of the most disasterious and unlikely problems, because those are the only ones big enough for the user to take notice of, and more subtle problems which can be easily fixed by a knowledgable person go unnoticed by the user.
Only one of the PS3 games I mentioned is actually a PS2 game (FF XII) - Godfather is available on PS2- but I have the PS3 version. I do play GC games on occasion, but the GC also suffered from having a few excellent killer titles, and everything else pretty much sucking.
That reminds me of some old soundtracks for SNES games that were sold as CDs that were shaped as characters from the games. The one that specifically sticks out in my mind is the Yoshi's Island soundtrack, with a CD shaped like Yoshi. I never actually owned any of them, but I definitely recall seeing them in the catalogs that used to come quarterly with Nintendo Power.
I concur with this sentiment. I got the Wii on launch for Zelda- which is a great game, but once I had finished zelda I haven't played the wii a whole lot. Red Steel got a little play, but really the game sucks. Elebits was a lot of fun for about a week until you realize how repetitive it is. Wii Play actually has some fun mini-games, but they are over so quickly you would swear the game was developed for a hyperactive three year old with the attention span of a gnat. So overall, after zelda the Wii sat unused except for a quick VC game or using the internet channel to watch youtube videos while waiting for the pizza guy (The Wii is the only console I have in the living room, since because of the nature of the controls it's not feasable to play it in my office sitting a foot away from a small TV).
On the other hand, both the PS3 and 360 get fair amounts of play. Oblivion on the 360, and Godfather, Motor Storm, Resistance: Fall of Man, and FF XII on the PS3 all get regular play.
Of course, as mentioned, since Super Paper Mario came out yesterday, the Wii will probaby get quite a bit more attention for a little while. Only about 2 hours into that game so far, but it's quite a bit of fun.
Actually, one of the reasons that I have many movies is that I have no wife, no kids, and have a good job in a town with nothing to do- except stay home and watch movies. You're right about having exhausted most things worth watching. I've been going at this rate for about 9 months, since I moved to where I'm at now, and lately it's been difficult to find much worth watching. Most of my recent purchases have been BBC and Discovery Channel documentaries (Over the weekend I just picked up and watched Walking with Prehistoric Beasts and a BBC Documentary on Auschwitz (wait? do I lose now? does that count as godwining the thread?)).
I have a PS3 and an HDTV, I generally buy 2-3 DVDs a week, and although I've had a PS3 for a few months now, I only have 3 BluRay movies- and one of them came with the system. The reason doesn't have anything to do with price (I don't mind paying a bit extra for HD, although I would buy fewer titles overall if I bought more stuff on BluRay- and I would probably be a bit more selective) or DRM (By the time hard drives are big enough that ripping disks is reasonable, the format will be cracked wide open- it's already cracked a little bit). Instead it's the fact that the choices suck. The reason some of these titles are only selling a couple hundred copies is that there are only a couple of hundred people who actually liked the movies they offer. Part of it is the cost, there are certainly movies that are worth it to me at $15, but not at $25- but more than that there seem to be some movies that are innately "I _want_ to see that in HD!" and other movies no so much. The problem is they aren't really selling many of those must see in HD titles. They aren't even selling many of the "If I'm going to buy it anyway, why not get it on BluRay" titles. Instead, they seem to be selling a bunch of "why in the name of $diety would I waste my time or money on that crap" movies, and hoping that people will buy it anyway because they don't have any choices. Of course, they do have a choice, since regular DVDs still work. A great movie is often even more amazing in HD, but a crappy movie in HD is still a crappy movie. If they really want to get the format moving, why in the world can I get Ultraviolet and Dinosaur on BluRay, but not the Lord of the Rings or Godfather trilogies?
Based on what I've seen on the shelf at best buy, HD-DVD offers better movies, but I'm reluctant to fork over the $200 for the 360 HD-DVD add-on for a format that seems to be sinking even worse than BluRay.
I'm fairly sure that this is incorrect. I am not a geneticist so I could be mistaken, but based on everything that I've read the current understanding is that Chimps and Humans diverged from a common ancestor. For some time after the split, there was inter-breeding between human and chimp ancestors.
The problem is that they aren't exactly cutting off the customers. They are cutting off their service, certainly, but they are still collecting their money. It would be different if they were to say, actually offer unlimited service, but if someone is using more than 5GB a month, then they use a clause in the contract to drop them as a customer. Instead they cutting off access at 5GB a month, but forcing the customers to keep paying during the 2 year contract period.
Not to completely disreard your point, but sometimes it is substantially more difficult to create lower polygon models of things. Yes, games for more powerful systems often have more art assets- and that can correlate to more cost to pay artists- but at the same time there are certainly cases where a more powerful system means that artists and programmers don't have to spend as much time optimizing.
Do all the components need to actually exist? If not, I'd say that I want a machine with a quantum co-processor. Heck, if we're really getting outlandish, maybe with DNF installed as well.
If we're going to be looking at reality, I've been considering putting together a core2 quad system with 8GB of ram which is totally worth it now that Maya has a 64-bit version.
As far as things that would be neat, but that I wouldn't actually spend any money on, I think it would be neat to have dual SLI video cards (does that even work under Linux?), and a KillerNIC, and one of those physics acceleration cards.
There are also a lot of parents who buy the consoles "for their kids" but play them as well. Often times it's easier for the parent to justify buying it for the kid than forking over the money for a system for themselves (especially since an adult with kids might not have the time to play the conosle themselves to justify the cost of the newer gen consoles).
I do agree that it seems absolutely nonsensical to think that there are parents who own game consoles, and their kids don't play the games at all.
Big budget games with licensed engines can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, but even in the PS1/N64, and possibly back into the SNES, days, big budget games were expensive to make. Now days though, you couldn't even make tetris for a console and get it out there for less than a million dollars- and that's the difference. Back in the days of the SNES- and even more so in the NES and Atari years, one or two people with a few thousand dollars to make carts could get a game out there and start making money.
Slashdot Mirror
That isn't actually a very good example because most of the realism from that particular image comes from the caustics (IIRC that image was created as a demonstration of POVRays caustics capabilities), and caustics drastically increase render time for a scene. Adding caustics and global illumination will quickly take the speed down from 30fps to .3fps.
Don't get me wrong, real time ray tracing will be awesome, but it will be a long time before we can do real time ray tracing with that kind of quality.
most (all?) parachutes have a saftey backup that will automatically open the chute at a certain altitude. There are also contraptions that is essentially a bit of string tied to the cord at one end and the plane at the other that will pull the cord and open the cute once it's an appropriate distance from the plane.
I'm not sure if you are saying the parent is "wrong" or the link is wrong...in either case I agree.
While I'm not a big fan of EA, they do come out with something decent on occasion. Skate was pretty good, and was quite different than the Tony Hawk series. I'm also looking forward to Spore.
Begging your pardon, but 0!==1, and 4.09e-4 < 1, so how can 4.09e-4 be > 0! ?
</smartass>
I would say that wide distribution is far more important than money for true art. People don't create true works of art to lock up and only be viewed/listened to/etc. by those with money. True art is a message, and the more easly a message can be distribtued the more it encourages the production of art.
Someone who makes music or paintings or whatever else just for the money is a craftsman, not an artist.
Counterpoint: Perhaps the reason a lot of students haven't found the literature that is tought in english classes is because english classes don't teach material that engages students, or where literature that would be otherwise engaging is used in class, the things that make it interesting are glossed over and watered down to avoid discussing controversial topics.
I'm not saying that one's privacy or religion is right or wrong, but both of these things are private matters.
...Except for, you know, the people who don't believe in privacy.
the problem with this idea is that it assumes that people are stealing the movie because they want to get the movie without paying for it. While that probably represents some portion of the people who steal dvds, I would suspect that many others are stealing just to steal. Dvds tend to be out on the shelves in large quantities, so they are probably one of the easiest things to steal, and some people just wanna steal something.
IANAL but... From the perspective of someone who has done a lot of freelance work, both development and graphic design, retaining copyright is not unheard of, but it sounds like someone screwed up in the negotiation process. When doing freelance work, it's common to retain copyright, even when offering an exclusive license, because it allows the developer to create derivative works. This allows the freelancer to re-use code modules in other projects without having to worry about being sued by clients. From the perspective of a business, this doesn't necessarily hurt you. Depending on how your license is written, you may still have the right to modify the source for your use internally. You'll really need to get a lawyer to work out the details of your rights.
Whenever I have done freelance work, I have always stated up front where I stand on retaining copyright. In general, I retain copyright for projects unless stated otherwise - but I let the client know that upfront and that it is open to negotiation (in general, I charge the lowest rate for clients who want a non-exclusive license, more for clients who want an exclusive license where I retain copyright so I can use modules in future projects, and the most for transfer of copyright).
As for work for hire, as a rule of thumb, a project is work-for-hire if the project is created using company resources, so if the contractor used your companies computers and office space, then it could reasonably be considered work for hire, whereas if you gave them specs and they came back with a disk, it might be harder to make the work-for-hire argument. Once again, you'll have to talk to a lawyer about that, since there are all kinds of subtleties and differences from state to state, country to country, etc.
I would say, get a lawyer and try to work out your situation in this instance, and consider that you may have to chalk up a lesson learned. In the future, discuss this with contractors before hiring them.
Although I thought that this mythbusters experiment was kind of interesting (although apparently flawed in it's statistics) - they did leave out one aspect that I thought could have potentially effected the results. In their experiment they had Kari fake yawning to see if seeing one person yawn would make someone else yawn, but they didn't test to see if there were any environmental factors that could cause people to yawn. If there were some environmental factor that caused people to yawn, then it would certainly give the appearance of yawning being contagious because all the people in the area would be yawning.
Not only that, but often times you run into a situation where there is a legitimate problem, but the user thinks that it's problem foo, when the problem is actually problem bar. Of course, the user, convinced that the problem is foo, will tell you whatever they think you need to hear in order to fix foo. Often times foo is simply a set of the most disasterious and unlikely problems, because those are the only ones big enough for the user to take notice of, and more subtle problems which can be easily fixed by a knowledgable person go unnoticed by the user.
Only one of the PS3 games I mentioned is actually a PS2 game (FF XII) - Godfather is available on PS2- but I have the PS3 version. I do play GC games on occasion, but the GC also suffered from having a few excellent killer titles, and everything else pretty much sucking.
That reminds me of some old soundtracks for SNES games that were sold as CDs that were shaped as characters from the games. The one that specifically sticks out in my mind is the Yoshi's Island soundtrack, with a CD shaped like Yoshi. I never actually owned any of them, but I definitely recall seeing them in the catalogs that used to come quarterly with Nintendo Power.
I concur with this sentiment. I got the Wii on launch for Zelda- which is a great game, but once I had finished zelda I haven't played the wii a whole lot. Red Steel got a little play, but really the game sucks. Elebits was a lot of fun for about a week until you realize how repetitive it is. Wii Play actually has some fun mini-games, but they are over so quickly you would swear the game was developed for a hyperactive three year old with the attention span of a gnat. So overall, after zelda the Wii sat unused except for a quick VC game or using the internet channel to watch youtube videos while waiting for the pizza guy (The Wii is the only console I have in the living room, since because of the nature of the controls it's not feasable to play it in my office sitting a foot away from a small TV).
On the other hand, both the PS3 and 360 get fair amounts of play. Oblivion on the 360, and Godfather, Motor Storm, Resistance: Fall of Man, and FF XII on the PS3 all get regular play.
Of course, as mentioned, since Super Paper Mario came out yesterday, the Wii will probaby get quite a bit more attention for a little while. Only about 2 hours into that game so far, but it's quite a bit of fun.
Actually, one of the reasons that I have many movies is that I have no wife, no kids, and have a good job in a town with nothing to do- except stay home and watch movies. You're right about having exhausted most things worth watching. I've been going at this rate for about 9 months, since I moved to where I'm at now, and lately it's been difficult to find much worth watching. Most of my recent purchases have been BBC and Discovery Channel documentaries (Over the weekend I just picked up and watched Walking with Prehistoric Beasts and a BBC Documentary on Auschwitz (wait? do I lose now? does that count as godwining the thread?)).
I have a PS3 and an HDTV, I generally buy 2-3 DVDs a week, and although I've had a PS3 for a few months now, I only have 3 BluRay movies- and one of them came with the system. The reason doesn't have anything to do with price (I don't mind paying a bit extra for HD, although I would buy fewer titles overall if I bought more stuff on BluRay- and I would probably be a bit more selective) or DRM (By the time hard drives are big enough that ripping disks is reasonable, the format will be cracked wide open- it's already cracked a little bit). Instead it's the fact that the choices suck. The reason some of these titles are only selling a couple hundred copies is that there are only a couple of hundred people who actually liked the movies they offer. Part of it is the cost, there are certainly movies that are worth it to me at $15, but not at $25- but more than that there seem to be some movies that are innately "I _want_ to see that in HD!" and other movies no so much. The problem is they aren't really selling many of those must see in HD titles. They aren't even selling many of the "If I'm going to buy it anyway, why not get it on BluRay" titles. Instead, they seem to be selling a bunch of "why in the name of $diety would I waste my time or money on that crap" movies, and hoping that people will buy it anyway because they don't have any choices. Of course, they do have a choice, since regular DVDs still work. A great movie is often even more amazing in HD, but a crappy movie in HD is still a crappy movie. If they really want to get the format moving, why in the world can I get Ultraviolet and Dinosaur on BluRay, but not the Lord of the Rings or Godfather trilogies?
Based on what I've seen on the shelf at best buy, HD-DVD offers better movies, but I'm reluctant to fork over the $200 for the 360 HD-DVD add-on for a format that seems to be sinking even worse than BluRay.
I'm fairly sure that this is incorrect. I am not a geneticist so I could be mistaken, but based on everything that I've read the current understanding is that Chimps and Humans diverged from a common ancestor. For some time after the split, there was inter-breeding between human and chimp ancestors.
The problem is that they aren't exactly cutting off the customers. They are cutting off their service, certainly, but they are still collecting their money. It would be different if they were to say, actually offer unlimited service, but if someone is using more than 5GB a month, then they use a clause in the contract to drop them as a customer. Instead they cutting off access at 5GB a month, but forcing the customers to keep paying during the 2 year contract period.
Not to completely disreard your point, but sometimes it is substantially more difficult to create lower polygon models of things. Yes, games for more powerful systems often have more art assets- and that can correlate to more cost to pay artists- but at the same time there are certainly cases where a more powerful system means that artists and programmers don't have to spend as much time optimizing.
Do all the components need to actually exist? If not, I'd say that I want a machine with a quantum co-processor. Heck, if we're really getting outlandish, maybe with DNF installed as well.
If we're going to be looking at reality, I've been considering putting together a core2 quad system with 8GB of ram which is totally worth it now that Maya has a 64-bit version.
As far as things that would be neat, but that I wouldn't actually spend any money on, I think it would be neat to have dual SLI video cards (does that even work under Linux?), and a KillerNIC, and one of those physics acceleration cards.
There are also a lot of parents who buy the consoles "for their kids" but play them as well. Often times it's easier for the parent to justify buying it for the kid than forking over the money for a system for themselves (especially since an adult with kids might not have the time to play the conosle themselves to justify the cost of the newer gen consoles).
I do agree that it seems absolutely nonsensical to think that there are parents who own game consoles, and their kids don't play the games at all.
for most people, shouldn't it be "...antibones, antilivers, brains"?
Hopefully technology being developed for games like spore to allow for more procedurally generated content will help out greatly in this aspect.
Big budget games with licensed engines can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, but even in the PS1/N64, and possibly back into the SNES, days, big budget games were expensive to make. Now days though, you couldn't even make tetris for a console and get it out there for less than a million dollars- and that's the difference. Back in the days of the SNES- and even more so in the NES and Atari years, one or two people with a few thousand dollars to make carts could get a game out there and start making money.