I could go for that. In fact, wouldn't it be a nice idea to have one of those $1.000.000 prizes for creating a more-or-less self-contained garbage dump cleanup 'mechanism'? A bit like Wall-e on steroids? Little robots that sift through garbage, other 'robots'/machines to clean it if necessary and sort it. Include some disassembling robot machines that can handle GSMs, TVs, computers, refrigirators etc. These complex elements could also be collected from the dump for processing elsewhere. No need to have everything in one place. Even a partial solution would already be nicer that what happens with the garbage now. (a bit like that ocean cleanup boom they designed for the Pacific Garbage Patch. Sure, it is not perfect. Far from. But it sure is better than just ignoring the problem like we humans seem to be fond of doing...)
The future of VR? I don't know. As for the current crop of VR-equipment, they're generation 1 after all. I'm not sure if VR will survive the coming years.
My first contact with VR was on Google's Cardboard (on a plastic&metal headset, not a cardboard one) Experience there did no go beyond a novelty as in "Hey, this is pretty cool!" Lanterns for Google Cardboard was pretty relaxing.
I did go out and got me a Gear VR (the black and white one) when I got my company issued Galaxy S6 Later, I upgraded to a new Gear for my USB-C equipped S8. While on S6, I could play for 10-15 minutes before overheating, this issue has gone completely on my S8.
I must say, from the beginning I was pretty impressed with the Gear VR and played with it for a good 2 years. Now it only gets some occasional use. It is still a great piece of equipment for demoing however. (having no need for cables or PC certainly helps) People who see VR for the first time just love it. They don't run out however to buy a Vive or a Rift.(or PSVR, or Windows MR or Google Daydream or even Oculus Go)
Some years ago, during the DK1 and DK2 period, I was going to buy one the moment it came out so when my PC died I bought a i7 equipped with a GForce GTX 980. The price of the Rift at launch however put those plans to rest. The price of the Vive killed them. Now that they have come down in price (€450 for a Rift with Touch controllers) I'm kinda interested again but am torn between a good set of Windows MR goggles and a Rift, mainly because the resolution.
So, we're now end 2018. What does the future hold? The Rift and the Vive are getting long in the tooth and never really got any real traction. The success of the PS4 console and the wealth of AAA outfits familiar with programming for it seems to have pushed the PSVR in the winner slot although spec wise, it comes up somewhat short. Gear VR quality can now be had for cheap in form of the Oculus Go. Google's Daydream never seems to have taken off and neither did the Google-inspired Focus. Oculus Quest, which will not come out for several months has some advantages over Rift/Vive but also some serious disadvantages (it is quite a bit less powerful than the 'real' VR headsets.). Unless some breakthroughs are realized in the next 2 years it is quite possible that no major manufacturer will be willing to jump in and VR will (again) disappear from view. That would be sad....
Something I have not seen mentioned is the use of VR in combination with fitness equipment.
Currently, a typical fitness room has a bunch bikes, some treadmills for running, some rowing apparatus a few stepping machines and the like.
Doing exercise on those is pretty much a solitary and boring activity.
How nice would it not be to have VR-enabled fitness equipment where you could bike/run in a nice virtual environment with the speed you're pedaling/running having an effect on the speed you move through the virtual world, where you could row on a virtual river and hear the oars hit the water, see birds, butterflies and fish all around your in a beautifull nature setting, where the stepping machines would let you climb crumbling medieval towers so that you get a nice outside view every x steps and so on.
All the while you would be able to optionally see your speed, calories burnt etc floating in front above you
You could even add some more adrenaline-pumping experiences where every now and then you get chased by a bear or a wolfpack or whatever to do your minute of cardio workout...
Just like the mentioned arcades, this would move the high cost of the VR equipment to a centralised place shared by a lot of people and would give people an incentive to work out (well, it woud give me an incentive to work out.)
I'd go train there....
As has been noted, this video is TWO YEARS OLD, while there is a much more recent redirected walking" article available using a much more advanced teechnique....
It seems to be about goalposts and definitions. One could have the same discussion with "Does peg legged Pete have an artificial leg?" Some would say "Yeah, sure. Artificial leg." Others would say" No way. It's just a piece of wood, driftwood even, that he uses to hobble around on. An artificial leg is something else" and they would keep saying that even after we'd have the "six-million dollar man" legs.
Same with artificial life. Is it life, but not really, just a good approximation because it is "artificial". Or is it "life" that did not arrise through the ongoing natural evolution process.
When talking A.I, we're not talking artificial humans or even "general artifical intelligence" (whatever that would be) but something that gives the impression that the thing on the other side (of the screen, the board, the table, the whatever) is intelligent. For the champion Go player, if he was to play against AlphaGo without knowing so, he would not be able to tell if he was playing a human or a machine. So, AlphaGo, in that incarnation ( it can learned to a totally different skillset) is real A.I for Go in a sort of successfull but limited Turing test. Same for Big Blue for an even more limited chess Turin test. Now that we know Big Blue can beat world champions and AlphaGo can beat human Go champions, we kinda say, meh, yeah, we know it's better than humans but it's not real A.I. Things will progress piecemeal in this fashion untill we have natural conversations with our digital assistants (on phones? Tablets? Robots?) knowing that they are not real humans but acting as if they were. And still people will say "Yeah, but that's not real A.I"
Got me a cheap plastic Archos VR viewer with headband (â26 tax&shipping included), loaded some apps on my 2-year old Note3 and came away pretty impressed. There definitely is some nice stuff floating around on Cardboard (Lanterns, Seaworld VR2, Titans of Space, Deep Space VR and so on) .
Then Samsung launched their consumer Gear VR for a measely â100 at about the same time my company phone came up for renewal. My interests having been raised, I immediately opted for the Samsung S6 even though the LG G4 seemed a better phone. So now I'm a blown away Gear VR user. I never was a real Gamer. Todays games just take too long for me so the type of games on the Gear (small, short and simple) being closer to mobile games really got to me. Marine Rift, Bravo Six, Gunjack are just awsome, even without positional tracking. And that is just on a memory constrained, mobile device! So yes, the moment Oculus Rift comes out, I'll be getting one. (Ok, I just might wait to see what the Vive brings to the table...) Luckily I should already have a suitable PC (i7, Nvidia 980)
So there, one happy and impressed VR user right here. (we seem to be in the minority...)
As for the future of VR, with everything that is coming out in the near future (like the Gear look-alike from China which will take any phone, not just Samsung), I have a pretty optimistical view for VR as an entirely new gaming/experience/documentary environment (although the article's one year prognosis should better be spread out over 5 years...)
Ok. So it's going to be more than $350. Personally, I found it a pretty low price to start with. Now the question is how much more? $400? $500? $750? Everything up to $500 would be ok, I guess. If you are willing to spend $350, then $500 isn't a real dealbreaker. Anything more than that and it's a different ball game.
Of course, there is always the HTC Vive ( Playstation VR as well, but I'm not a console person.) so we can always see what those will cost.
As for games, enough people have said that sims will be very nice with this ( Space, car, plane,...) it's a best fit were games are concerned. Some immersive horror games à la Alien: Isolation will work as well. But nothing with harsh, sudden movement like the FPSes we know today. I'm sure they'll come up with some variation of it though... For me, immersive landscapes would be nice as well. Something like the aquarium simulators, but you're sitting right in them. Oceans, lakes, great Barrier Reef, but also a pleasing meadow. You're sitting by the tree line, there are rabbits playing around your feet, squirels coming up to you, some deer pass a couple of dozen feet from where you are, a bear lumbers towards you, has a sniff and crashes in the underbrush behind you etc. Old peoples homes would be ideal for those experiences. Same with guided tours of famous places. More Grand Canyon than the Louvre because detail will be less then current crop of games at the start. And that is just the first version. Once we get a kinect-like camera on it so our hands/arms/bodies will be imported in the game at the same time enabling a form of AR, once we go wireless, higher resolution, eye-tracking for better detail i'm pretty confident ( well, ok, I hope....) that in 5 years we won't be able to imagine entertainment/ infotainment/edutainment without it.
Last remark of Eben is very important, I think. When you're finished playing with the matrix effect ( and yes, they should really think of photographing something more dynamic - people jumping, water splashing, fireworks, etc) you simply store that wooden frame and build the 3d people scanner (I would love to have a 3d print of my daughter, my wife,...). Finished with that? Store the wooden frame next to the first one and come up with something else to do with your 48 Raspberry Pies. After all, each of them is a full-fledged, if somewhat underpowered, PC.
Yes, Disney was the artist of both characters, but That is immaterial. (I mean, who gives a f*ck about the artist when money is involved)
The point is that Oswald's copyright did not belong to Disney when he created Mickey, an Oswald look-alike with round ears. So according to this, Mickey is clearly a rip-off of the copyrighted Oswald image and Disney should have been sued into the ground for STEALING SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY!!
Indeed, the CODEA app which is LUA based is very, very nice. Even I (BASIC programmer because I'm too lazy to learn something new), was able to make a program in that environment. The community is great as well. However, Apple being Apple, it is restricting Codea to only let the user enter his programs manually (ok, cut-n-paste is allowed too). Codea is being forced to revert some functionality that let it load external programs based on the.codea suffix. Pretty retarded by Apple if you ask me. I realize they do this to gain/maintain control over the applications the user can install, but their actions really rub me the wrong way.
Let's revisit that statement when one of your kids or family members get hooked on hard-drugs or when you or someone close to you comes home to a ransacked house... That has a habit of changing one's mind toward crime. It's never really bad AS LONG AS IT HAPPENS TO OTHERS! I guess I'm a right-wing bastard because I can only applaud the use cases quoted in the article. Now, if they install this on journalist's PC or on the PCs of opposition groups (anti-nuclear, greens, etc) THEN you might have a serious beef with the nazis who put it on there.
With all this hunting-for-al-qaida's-money going on, why is it not simply a question of going to the HongKong account and find out who witdrew the money? Surely the bank there can't say "Oh, we have no idea, we hand out half a million dollars cash to anyone without verification of their identity?" I mean, bank secrecy is dead no?...and if the bank doesn't want to play ball, how come the whole finanial community doen't stomp it 6 foor under ground for aiding and abetting financial crimes??...or is it only a serious crime when it hits rich people or goverments and f*ck the little guy?
The standalone, blanket statement that copyright infringement is OK for music and films paints things a bit too black & white, I'm afraid.
I'm sure the majority here will indeed have no issue with the infringement of an incredibly one-sided copyright regime as long as it is for personnal use.
I'm equally sure most of us WOULD see an issue if this were done for commercial/for profit reasons (Selling Bootleg DVDs & CD's or cracked SW out of the boot of one's car at one end, bulk duplication of DVD masters by organized criminal gangs with webshops or even complicit retail outlets at the other end)
To infringe GPL on the other hand, one has to go quite a bit further than downloading it for personal use. Coorporations/people are free to download it and use it. They can even hack the hell out of it and use it througout their organisation. No infringement there....
The issue only arrises when a CHANGED copy of a GPLed SW is offered for sale with the changes NOT being available (even a small fee for processing and postage would still render it OK)
So the reason for these seemingly contradictory positions is simply that both 'infringements' are of a different level.
Read it and weep, puny feature^^^^^^smartphone makers!!
1. This baby has 2 cameras, one of which is a whopping 5Mpel! This wipes the floor with everything that came before!
2. It can now even do sci-fi like video calls (ok, Wifi only, but still...) Bet you never though of that one!
3. The ebook reader can even read PDF! Ha!! In your faces!
4. It even runs more than 1 program at the time! Emulate this, suckers!
Yes sir, visionary Steve (all blessings be upon him) did it again!
PS Just kidding. Look like real nice kit, but a tad too expesive for me.
Copright was from the time that multi-media was limited to books. So for books, the idea is still valid. One should have to pay the creator/writer for the right to print ('copy') his work for larger diffusion.
So, one could revise current copyright to say that copyright on books should be something like the livespan of the author or 40 year, whichever lasts longest.
Voila, author and family protected without going overboard.
The same could be extended to music, although this becomes difficult as you have the music and the performance(s). For the music itself, no problem. Music notation is almost like a book. That could get the same rights. Performance is a different thing. One could of course argue that the performer is already paid for his/her performance (certainly the case with live shows, they will have been paid for the music video etc) and thus no copytright needed whatsoever on the performance, just on the music itself. Music video's would be treated more like film. So, write music and get copyright protection lasting 40 years or lifespan.
In both cases, this copright protection would extend only to commercial copying (books, sheet-music) of the articles. No legal shenannigans like music in a Taxi, elevator music etc. Some negotiation could of course be done to see where non-commercial and commercial meet.
Note that I extend this copyright to the original author! Transfer of ownership of a copyrighted work to another entity (a company or maybe a benefactor wanting to help the author) would automatically lead to a copyright period of 10 years, not to exceed the copyight period that would have been the case were the item would remain property of the author. Same as for work done as a service, which is how I beliieve the music inustry works. The music creators 'create' for the company and are paid by the company for this. So no need for additioanl protection, they are already paid. Since however ownership of the copyrighted work does not reside with the creator but with the company, copyright would be limited to 10 years (and lets be fair, todays Lady Gaga song will have limite value in 2020...)
Now, films are a different matter. There is no single 'creator'. Usually, the rights will belong to a company. I would buy the argument that the film roll containing all the frames of the film is the same as a book and thus should get the same treatment, but in the absence of a single 'creator' and allowing fo the enormous cost of such a project, I would limit this to 30 years fix with a stipulation that a non-DRM encumbered verion needs to be deposited in a central 'storage' à la Library of Congress or so.
However, films can have 'additional' value. Take Star Wars... The initial film should already be public domain, free for anyone to copy, use excepts from, change the soundtrack etc. Public domain of the film and all its frames. This however would not extend to the characters. The StarWars 'franchise' is worth a lot more than the first movie itself. To a lesser extent the same is true for 'serial' books (Harry Potter, Hercule Poirot, Jack Ryan...) Just because a film/book they star in is PD does not mean everyone can use the characters to their liking or make their own commercial follow-ups. (non-commercial fan-movies are somewhat different but here again, some give and take would be required). Just the reproduction would be allowed. This would mean all the 'old' Mickey movies would be PD but the mickey character would still be protected. This protection would NOT be based on copyright but on a new kind of IP, maybe a 'renewable' 5-year license. So as long as the character 'owner' (human or company)is interested in it, he/she/it would pay the fee to be allowed to commercialize it practically indefinitely. If he no longer pay for the protection, the character becomes 'public domain', free for everyone to do with as he pleases.
Wings 3D (http://www.wings3d.com/), a popular subdivision modeler, was written in Ehrlang as well. That's were I first heard of the language some years ago...
Haven't seen this one yet: Microsoft DOESN'T drop the ball. Not a single erroneous 'black screen' anywhere in the world... Then some clever chap somewhere reverse-engineers the shutdown procedure and is able to trigger the shutdown mechanism through other means!! ie no checking if the Vista is genuine or not, just tell the system it is NOT and have it shut down. Beautiful.
Strange that I didn't see Wings3D mentioned yet. ( http://www.wings3d.com/ )
It's an open-source subdivision surface modeler held to great esteem in the modeling scene
Kdawson submitted some anti-Blender tirade written by gmueckl. Fair enough, the guy has a right to his opinion. I want to check it out so I go to the never-changing site of AoI and look at the gallery. Well, maybe they keep their best stuff somewhere else....That stuff has been there forever. Next I go to K-3D, fondly remembering the build-in tutorials in the 'old' K-3D, the one before the never-ending refactor. Site doesn't load. Head over to Moonlight3D. Hey, I remember that from about 10 year ago! Sad story: guys write Moonlight (closed source) Later they come up with Moonlight Atelier. Loads better but still closed source. (Linuxgraphics.fr had a nice Moonlight section) They open source the old code base, lose interest in Atelier and that's it. End of story. OK, so some guys decide to try to revive the old codebase, did some hacks and changes. Project died. This seems to be the legacy. Go look at news. Hey! Who's that posting there? It's our old friend gmueckl! So the anti-Blender tirade looks like a serious bout of jealousy to me... If that is the competition Blender has, I suspect it'll be on top for quite a bit longer.... Just compare development pace, feature set, support (2 modern Blender books with a third one on order), roadmap.
Slashdot Mirror
I could go for that. In fact, wouldn't it be a nice idea to have one of those $1.000.000 prizes for creating a more-or-less self-contained garbage dump cleanup 'mechanism'? A bit like Wall-e on steroids? Little robots that sift through garbage, other 'robots'/machines to clean it if necessary and sort it. Include some disassembling robot machines that can handle GSMs, TVs, computers, refrigirators etc. These complex elements could also be collected from the dump for processing elsewhere. No need to have everything in one place. Even a partial solution would already be nicer that what happens with the garbage now. (a bit like that ocean cleanup boom they designed for the Pacific Garbage Patch. Sure, it is not perfect. Far from. But it sure is better than just ignoring the problem like we humans seem to be fond of doing...)
Wasnâ(TM)t that Commander Keen? With the futuristic blaster and the obese gorillas throwing fireballs from behind bars?
Imagine a Beowulf..... ah, fuck it. I'm too old for this crap.
Soma for the Epsilons was Brave New World.
The future of VR? I don't know. As for the current crop of VR-equipment, they're generation 1 after all. I'm not sure if VR will survive the coming years.
My first contact with VR was on Google's Cardboard (on a plastic&metal headset, not a cardboard one) Experience there did no go beyond a novelty as in "Hey, this is pretty cool!" Lanterns for Google Cardboard was pretty relaxing.
I did go out and got me a Gear VR (the black and white one) when I got my company issued Galaxy S6 Later, I upgraded to a new Gear for my USB-C equipped S8. While on S6, I could play for 10-15 minutes before overheating, this issue has gone completely on my S8.
I must say, from the beginning I was pretty impressed with the Gear VR and played with it for a good 2 years. Now it only gets some occasional use. It is still a great piece of equipment for demoing however. (having no need for cables or PC certainly helps) People who see VR for the first time just love it. They don't run out however to buy a Vive or a Rift.(or PSVR, or Windows MR or Google Daydream or even Oculus Go)
Some years ago, during the DK1 and DK2 period, I was going to buy one the moment it came out so when my PC died I bought a i7 equipped with a GForce GTX 980. The price of the Rift at launch however put those plans to rest. The price of the Vive killed them. Now that they have come down in price (€450 for a Rift with Touch controllers) I'm kinda interested again but am torn between a good set of Windows MR goggles and a Rift, mainly because the resolution.
So, we're now end 2018. What does the future hold? The Rift and the Vive are getting long in the tooth and never really got any real traction. The success of the PS4 console and the wealth of AAA outfits familiar with programming for it seems to have pushed the PSVR in the winner slot although spec wise, it comes up somewhat short. Gear VR quality can now be had for cheap in form of the Oculus Go. Google's Daydream never seems to have taken off and neither did the Google-inspired Focus. Oculus Quest, which will not come out for several months has some advantages over Rift/Vive but also some serious disadvantages (it is quite a bit less powerful than the 'real' VR headsets.). Unless some breakthroughs are realized in the next 2 years it is quite possible that no major manufacturer will be willing to jump in and VR will (again) disappear from view. That would be sad....
Something I have not seen mentioned is the use of VR in combination with fitness equipment.
Currently, a typical fitness room has a bunch bikes, some treadmills for running, some rowing apparatus a few stepping machines and the like. Doing exercise on those is pretty much a solitary and boring activity.
How nice would it not be to have VR-enabled fitness equipment where you could bike/run in a nice virtual environment with the speed you're pedaling/running having an effect on the speed you move through the virtual world, where you could row on a virtual river and hear the oars hit the water, see birds, butterflies and fish all around your in a beautifull nature setting, where the stepping machines would let you climb crumbling medieval towers so that you get a nice outside view every x steps and so on.
All the while you would be able to optionally see your speed, calories burnt etc floating in front above you
You could even add some more adrenaline-pumping experiences where every now and then you get chased by a bear or a wolfpack or whatever to do your minute of cardio workout...
Just like the mentioned arcades, this would move the high cost of the VR equipment to a centralised place shared by a lot of people and would give people an incentive to work out (well, it woud give me an incentive to work out.)
I'd go train there....
As has been noted, this video is TWO YEARS OLD, while there is a much more recent redirected walking" article available using a much more advanced teechnique....
It seems to be about goalposts and definitions. One could have the same discussion with "Does peg legged Pete have an artificial leg?" Some would say "Yeah, sure. Artificial leg." Others would say" No way. It's just a piece of wood, driftwood even, that he uses to hobble around on. An artificial leg is something else" and they would keep saying that even after we'd have the "six-million dollar man" legs. Same with artificial life. Is it life, but not really, just a good approximation because it is "artificial". Or is it "life" that did not arrise through the ongoing natural evolution process. When talking A.I, we're not talking artificial humans or even "general artifical intelligence" (whatever that would be) but something that gives the impression that the thing on the other side (of the screen, the board, the table, the whatever) is intelligent. For the champion Go player, if he was to play against AlphaGo without knowing so, he would not be able to tell if he was playing a human or a machine. So, AlphaGo, in that incarnation ( it can learned to a totally different skillset) is real A.I for Go in a sort of successfull but limited Turing test. Same for Big Blue for an even more limited chess Turin test. Now that we know Big Blue can beat world champions and AlphaGo can beat human Go champions, we kinda say, meh, yeah, we know it's better than humans but it's not real A.I. Things will progress piecemeal in this fashion untill we have natural conversations with our digital assistants (on phones? Tablets? Robots?) knowing that they are not real humans but acting as if they were. And still people will say "Yeah, but that's not real A.I"
Got me a cheap plastic Archos VR viewer with headband (â26 tax&shipping included), loaded some apps on my 2-year old Note3 and came away pretty impressed. There definitely is some nice stuff floating around on Cardboard (Lanterns, Seaworld VR2, Titans of Space, Deep Space VR and so on) . Then Samsung launched their consumer Gear VR for a measely â100 at about the same time my company phone came up for renewal. My interests having been raised, I immediately opted for the Samsung S6 even though the LG G4 seemed a better phone. So now I'm a blown away Gear VR user. I never was a real Gamer. Todays games just take too long for me so the type of games on the Gear (small, short and simple) being closer to mobile games really got to me. Marine Rift, Bravo Six, Gunjack are just awsome, even without positional tracking. And that is just on a memory constrained, mobile device! So yes, the moment Oculus Rift comes out, I'll be getting one. (Ok, I just might wait to see what the Vive brings to the table...) Luckily I should already have a suitable PC (i7, Nvidia 980) So there, one happy and impressed VR user right here. (we seem to be in the minority...) As for the future of VR, with everything that is coming out in the near future (like the Gear look-alike from China which will take any phone, not just Samsung), I have a pretty optimistical view for VR as an entirely new gaming/experience/documentary environment (although the article's one year prognosis should better be spread out over 5 years...)
Ok. So it's going to be more than $350. Personally, I found it a pretty low price to start with. Now the question is how much more? $400? $500? $750? Everything up to $500 would be ok, I guess. If you are willing to spend $350, then $500 isn't a real dealbreaker. Anything more than that and it's a different ball game. Of course, there is always the HTC Vive ( Playstation VR as well, but I'm not a console person.) so we can always see what those will cost. As for games, enough people have said that sims will be very nice with this ( Space, car, plane,...) it's a best fit were games are concerned. Some immersive horror games à la Alien: Isolation will work as well. But nothing with harsh, sudden movement like the FPSes we know today. I'm sure they'll come up with some variation of it though... For me, immersive landscapes would be nice as well. Something like the aquarium simulators, but you're sitting right in them. Oceans, lakes, great Barrier Reef, but also a pleasing meadow. You're sitting by the tree line, there are rabbits playing around your feet, squirels coming up to you, some deer pass a couple of dozen feet from where you are, a bear lumbers towards you, has a sniff and crashes in the underbrush behind you etc. Old peoples homes would be ideal for those experiences. Same with guided tours of famous places. More Grand Canyon than the Louvre because detail will be less then current crop of games at the start. And that is just the first version. Once we get a kinect-like camera on it so our hands/arms/bodies will be imported in the game at the same time enabling a form of AR, once we go wireless, higher resolution, eye-tracking for better detail i'm pretty confident ( well, ok, I hope....) that in 5 years we won't be able to imagine entertainment/ infotainment/edutainment without it.
SHAFT won and he did all the tasks walking BACKWARD!! How cool is that!
Last remark of Eben is very important, I think. When you're finished playing with the matrix effect ( and yes, they should really think of photographing something more dynamic - people jumping, water splashing, fireworks, etc) you simply store that wooden frame and build the 3d people scanner (I would love to have a 3d print of my daughter, my wife,...). Finished with that? Store the wooden frame next to the first one and come up with something else to do with your 48 Raspberry Pies. After all, each of them is a full-fledged, if somewhat underpowered, PC.
Beginning of the end for Apple as a fashion statement.
Yes, Disney was the artist of both characters, but That is immaterial. (I mean, who gives a f*ck about the artist when money is involved) The point is that Oswald's copyright did not belong to Disney when he created Mickey, an Oswald look-alike with round ears. So according to this, Mickey is clearly a rip-off of the copyrighted Oswald image and Disney should have been sued into the ground for STEALING SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY!!
Indeed, the CODEA app which is LUA based is very, very nice. .codea suffix.
Even I (BASIC programmer because I'm too lazy to learn something new), was able to make a program in that environment. The community is great as well.
However, Apple being Apple, it is restricting Codea to only let the user enter his programs manually (ok, cut-n-paste is allowed too). Codea is being forced to revert some functionality that let it load external programs based on the
Pretty retarded by Apple if you ask me. I realize they do this to gain/maintain control over the applications the user can install, but their actions really rub me the wrong way.
I can find a Windows Mobile version on the site.... Any idea if there available somewhere else?
Let's revisit that statement when one of your kids or family members get hooked on hard-drugs or when you or someone close to you comes home to a ransacked house...
That has a habit of changing one's mind toward crime. It's never really bad AS LONG AS IT HAPPENS TO OTHERS!
I guess I'm a right-wing bastard because I can only applaud the use cases quoted in the article.
Now, if they install this on journalist's PC or on the PCs of opposition groups (anti-nuclear, greens, etc) THEN you might have a serious beef with the nazis who put it on there.
With all this hunting-for-al-qaida's-money going on, why is it not simply a question of going to the HongKong account and find out who witdrew the money? Surely the bank there can't say "Oh, we have no idea, we hand out half a million dollars cash to anyone without verification of their identity?" I mean, bank secrecy is dead no? ...and if the bank doesn't want to play ball, how come the whole finanial community doen't stomp it 6 foor under ground for aiding and abetting financial crimes?? ...or is it only a serious crime when it hits rich people or goverments and f*ck the little guy?
The standalone, blanket statement that copyright infringement is OK for music and films paints things a bit too black & white, I'm afraid.
I'm sure the majority here will indeed have no issue with the infringement of an incredibly one-sided copyright regime as long as it is for personnal use.
I'm equally sure most of us WOULD see an issue if this were done for commercial/for profit reasons (Selling Bootleg DVDs & CD's or cracked SW out of the boot of one's car at one end, bulk duplication of DVD masters by organized criminal gangs with webshops or even complicit retail outlets at the other end)
To infringe GPL on the other hand, one has to go quite a bit further than downloading it for personal use. Coorporations/people are free to download it and use it. They can even hack the hell out of it and use it througout their organisation. No infringement there....
The issue only arrises when a CHANGED copy of a GPLed SW is offered for sale with the changes NOT being available (even a small fee for processing and postage would still render it OK)
So the reason for these seemingly contradictory positions is simply that both 'infringements' are of a different level.
Read it and weep, puny feature^^^^^^smartphone makers!!
1. This baby has 2 cameras, one of which is a whopping 5Mpel! This wipes the floor with everything that came before!
2. It can now even do sci-fi like video calls (ok, Wifi only, but still...) Bet you never though of that one!
3. The ebook reader can even read PDF! Ha!! In your faces!
4. It even runs more than 1 program at the time! Emulate this, suckers!
Yes sir, visionary Steve (all blessings be upon him) did it again!
PS Just kidding. Look like real nice kit, but a tad too expesive for me.
Copright was from the time that multi-media was limited to books. So for books, the idea is still valid. One should have to pay the creator/writer for the right to print ('copy') his work for larger diffusion.
So, one could revise current copyright to say that copyright on books should be something like the livespan of the author or 40 year, whichever lasts longest.
Voila, author and family protected without going overboard.
The same could be extended to music, although this becomes difficult as you have the music and the performance(s). For the music itself, no problem. Music notation is almost like a book. That could get the same rights. Performance is a different thing. One could of course argue that the performer is already paid for his/her performance (certainly the case with live shows, they will have been paid for the music video etc) and thus no copytright needed whatsoever on the performance, just on the music itself. Music video's would be treated more like film. So, write music and get copyright protection lasting 40 years or lifespan.
In both cases, this copright protection would extend only to commercial copying (books, sheet-music) of the articles. No legal shenannigans like music in a Taxi, elevator music etc. Some negotiation could of course be done to see where non-commercial and commercial meet.
Note that I extend this copyright to the original author! Transfer of ownership of a copyrighted work to another entity (a company or maybe a benefactor wanting to help the author) would automatically lead to a copyright period of 10 years, not to exceed the copyight period that would have been the case were the item would remain property of the author. Same as for work done as a service, which is how I beliieve the music inustry works. The music creators 'create' for the company and are paid by the company for this. So no need for additioanl protection, they are already paid. Since however ownership of the copyrighted work does not reside with the creator but with the company, copyright would be limited to 10 years (and lets be fair, todays Lady Gaga song will have limite value in 2020...)
Now, films are a different matter. There is no single 'creator'. Usually, the rights will belong to a company. I would buy the argument that the film roll containing all the frames of the film is the same as a book and thus should get the same treatment, but in the absence of a single 'creator' and allowing fo the enormous cost of such a project, I would limit this to 30 years fix with a stipulation that a non-DRM encumbered verion needs to be deposited in a central 'storage' à la Library of Congress or so.
However, films can have 'additional' value. Take Star Wars... The initial film should already be public domain, free for anyone to copy, use excepts from, change the soundtrack etc. Public domain of the film and all its frames. This however would not extend to the characters. The StarWars 'franchise' is worth a lot more than the first movie itself. To a lesser extent the same is true for 'serial' books (Harry Potter, Hercule Poirot, Jack Ryan ...) Just because a film/book they star in is PD does not mean everyone can use the characters to their liking or make their own commercial follow-ups. (non-commercial fan-movies are somewhat different but here again, some give and take would be required). Just the reproduction would be allowed. This would mean all the 'old' Mickey movies would be PD but the mickey character would still be protected. This protection would NOT be based on copyright but on a new kind of IP, maybe a 'renewable' 5-year license. So as long as the character 'owner' (human or company)is interested in it, he/she/it would pay the fee to be allowed to commercialize it practically indefinitely. If he no longer pay for the protection, the character becomes 'public domain', free for everyone to do with as he pleases.
Wings 3D (http://www.wings3d.com/), a popular subdivision modeler, was written in Ehrlang as well. That's were I first heard of the language some years ago...
Haven't seen this one yet: Microsoft DOESN'T drop the ball. Not a single erroneous 'black screen' anywhere in the world...
Then some clever chap somewhere reverse-engineers the shutdown procedure and is able to trigger the shutdown mechanism through other means!! ie no checking if the Vista is genuine or not, just tell the system it is NOT and have it shut down. Beautiful.
Strange that I didn't see Wings3D mentioned yet. ( http://www.wings3d.com/ )
It's an open-source subdivision surface modeler held to great esteem in the modeling scene
It is also an Erlang application....
Kdawson submitted some anti-Blender tirade written by gmueckl. Fair enough, the guy has a right to his opinion.
I want to check it out so I go to the never-changing site of AoI and look at the gallery. Well, maybe they keep their best stuff somewhere else....That stuff has been there forever.
Next I go to K-3D, fondly remembering the build-in tutorials in the 'old' K-3D, the one before the never-ending refactor. Site doesn't load.
Head over to Moonlight3D. Hey, I remember that from about 10 year ago! Sad story: guys write Moonlight (closed source) Later they come up with Moonlight Atelier. Loads better but still closed source. (Linuxgraphics.fr had a nice Moonlight section) They open source the old code base, lose interest in Atelier and that's it. End of story. OK, so some guys decide to try to revive the old codebase, did some hacks and changes. Project died. This seems to be the legacy. Go look at news. Hey! Who's that posting there? It's our old friend gmueckl! So the anti-Blender tirade looks like a serious bout of jealousy to me...
If that is the competition Blender has, I suspect it'll be on top for quite a bit longer.... Just compare development pace, feature set, support (2 modern Blender books with a third one on order), roadmap.