Last I heard, Pixar at least uses Maya, which is proprietary but gives out some pretty good crippleware for free (the "learner's edition" has a full featureset but watermarks rendered output.
It, incidentally, runs on Windows, Mac, Red Hat and SUSE.
Of course, they don't use it exclusively. I was delighted to notice that one of the heros showed briefly in The Incredibles had a POV-Ray logo on his costume. POV-Ray is halfway open-source (not GPL, modification allowed only for the purpose of porting or adding to the feature set), but it's much better for still images than animation because it renders frame-by-frame (see povray.org for more and some very shiny examples)
Now if I can only get that assigned as my Computer Architecture textbook next semester, I'm set...
Seriously, I was most impressed that while the details have changed, so much of the information in the book is still very valid today. The explanation of registries, addresses, arithmetic, etc. is actually quite good. It's very impressive for a children's book.
Unfortunately, University Presses (and publishers of academic journals in general) stand to make HUGE profits because of the stranglehold they have on the market, however narrowly focused a market it is. University libraries are forced to continue subscribing to journals in order to stay respectable, even as those subscriptions climb upwards of ten or even one hundred thousand annually. The people who actually use the journals, mostly faculty, never see the cost. (Incidentally, prestigious journals do not pay their contributors, because being published in Nature or something of its ilk is enough of an honor)
While it is possible to request an article from another university, inter-university requests for a given journal are usually limited to five per year, on the assumption that if a university has that much demand for it, they need their own subscription.
As an undergraduate student, I can just about promise you that it's only the over-achievers who will ever write multiple essay drafts and submit them to the machine.
The rest of us will just write our papers the night before, and at that point there isn't time to come up with elaborate methods to trick the program.
When I was taking Spanish in high school, my teacher always told me that recognition was a much lower mental skill than composition. This is true--years later I can still *understand* spanish, but I can't speak it myself. Having a password system that relies on this lower-order mental process is a great idea. Recognizing the correct password would be much easier than remembering it, but the process for cracking it would be just as hard as cracking an alphanumeric password if enough pictures were used.
That said, I do end up memorizing most things this way--I know pin numbers, telephone numbers, and even my password by the "feel" of typing them, and I usually can't remember what they are when I'm not using a keyboard or number pad.
Yeah, that's pretty much the case. George Lucas is, I believe, on an active quest to destroy every remaining copy of the Holiday Special in existence. Not that bad an idea on his part, since it does feature:
At least a full half-hour of Wookie-only speech, without subtitles
A coked-up Carrie Fisher hanging off of Chewie
Bea Arthur as a singing cantina owner forced by the empire to close her cantina. But not before she sings the longest song on earth
Boba Fett's first canon appearance (the Holiday Special came out before Empire Strikes back), in a cartoon where he tricks Han and Luke with the evil tactic of calling them "friend" every five minutes
Chewie's son, Lumpy. Lumpy shows up later in the novels, but this is where he got his terrible name.
A cooking show with a multi armed cook, one among many totally nonsensical vignettes.
Oh, it's a beautiful thing. There *are* a few copies still floating around the internet... I'd recommend you find one.
The original order was:
Lion, Witch, Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician's Nephew, Last Battle
(I think) the new order is:
MN, LWW, HHB, PC, VDT, SC, LB
Yeah, that really bothers me, especially since the canon *changed* by the end of the series and it's impossible to get a sense of that if you read it in chronological order. Plus, who would read a series where you don't get an uninterrupted version of the *real* main characters until books four and on? Moving Magician's Nephew to the first book was wrong (I don't know that I would have read any more of the series if it started out like that instead of with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe... it's a terrible "let's draw people into this fantasy world" book), but sticking A Horse and His Boy *between* The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian? Sacrilege....
I'm young enough that I'm fortunate I read the books early, because they changed the order only a year or two later. Most people my age, and almost everyone just a bit younger, thinks of the series as going in the other order, and that makes me very, very sad.
I don't think that the radio show will be as horrible as that, though. TV and radio always screw up the order of things--that's just a fact of life. I think anyone who is inspired to read the books by the radio show (new converts... muahahaha!) will be able to handle it. Other people are just stupid anyway
*realizes that is off-topic. Drinks Earl Gray tea and thinks hard about the number 42 to bring self back*
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In fact, Pixar has released a couple of its own plugins
It, incidentally, runs on Windows, Mac, Red Hat and SUSE.
Of course, they don't use it exclusively. I was delighted to notice that one of the heros showed briefly in The Incredibles had a POV-Ray logo on his costume. POV-Ray is halfway open-source (not GPL, modification allowed only for the purpose of porting or adding to the feature set), but it's much better for still images than animation because it renders frame-by-frame (see povray.org for more and some very shiny examples)
I had this problem with Safari and Quicktime, but MPlayer was able to play it without a glitch.
Seriously, I was most impressed that while the details have changed, so much of the information in the book is still very valid today. The explanation of registries, addresses, arithmetic, etc. is actually quite good. It's very impressive for a children's book.
Unfortunately, University Presses (and publishers of academic journals in general) stand to make HUGE profits because of the stranglehold they have on the market, however narrowly focused a market it is. University libraries are forced to continue subscribing to journals in order to stay respectable, even as those subscriptions climb upwards of ten or even one hundred thousand annually. The people who actually use the journals, mostly faculty, never see the cost. (Incidentally, prestigious journals do not pay their contributors, because being published in Nature or something of its ilk is enough of an honor)
While it is possible to request an article from another university, inter-university requests for a given journal are usually limited to five per year, on the assumption that if a university has that much demand for it, they need their own subscription.
I'd like to give him a chance to present his argument. If only he'd give me a chance to read it.
CollegeBoard is rolling in dough. And what do they do with this money? Develop things like e-raters so they don't have to pay for graders.
The rest of us will just write our papers the night before, and at that point there isn't time to come up with elaborate methods to trick the program.
That said, I do end up memorizing most things this way--I know pin numbers, telephone numbers, and even my password by the "feel" of typing them, and I usually can't remember what they are when I'm not using a keyboard or number pad.
Poor babies. Sometimes when you have terrible customer service, you sell music without the artists' permission and the press demonstration of your service fails, you have a bad product. But then again, maybe not...
Oh, it's a beautiful thing. There *are* a few copies still floating around the internet... I'd recommend you find one.
Frodo and Sam didn't even end *up* together and they left out the part where Sam goes to Valinor too (although admittedly that's an appendix.)
Lion, Witch, Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician's Nephew, Last Battle
(I think) the new order is:
MN, LWW, HHB, PC, VDT, SC, LB
I'm young enough that I'm fortunate I read the books early, because they changed the order only a year or two later. Most people my age, and almost everyone just a bit younger, thinks of the series as going in the other order, and that makes me very, very sad.
I don't think that the radio show will be as horrible as that, though. TV and radio always screw up the order of things--that's just a fact of life. I think anyone who is inspired to read the books by the radio show (new converts... muahahaha!) will be able to handle it. Other people are just stupid anyway
*realizes that is off-topic. Drinks Earl Gray tea and thinks hard about the number 42 to bring self back*
There's something to be said for *any* article including the words "I'm not a big fan of diversity" Oh Microsoft... where would we be without you?