I do know the history of Intel (and if I didn't, I could easily google it). I wasn't saying that google needs an "outside grayhair", simply that disdain for good business practices is at best ignorance and at worst stupidity. Business administration is specialised knowledge, just as Java programming or growing tulips. To think that you can manage a 1000+ people company using nothing more than common sense is idiotic.
I don't think Google will fail, but simply because, no matter how arrogant that duo is today, they will be forced to learn how things work and eventually Google will become a well-managed company (which doesn't mean it has to lose its spirit and philosophy).
I never ever had to take off my shoes when flying. Not in Japan, not in Russia, not in Switzerland, not in France, not in Germany. I suspect that if I am ever asked to do that, I would refuse on principle (even if that means I risk not flying). I may also be impolite and say some rude things to a person, who demands I take my shoes off. I probably won't kick them in the nuts, though.
I wasn't aware Google proved anything like that. It's easy to grow and prosper if you stumble upon a gold mine and get more cash than you can burn. So far Google has only one business to speak of and I haven't seen them invent anything else. I don't doubt for a second that their flock of PhDs can create many neat web services, but if we are talking business, then I don't see any innovations from them besides AdWords/AdSense the idea for which they "borrowed" from Overture.
We will see how they will cope with inevitable problem. That would be a true test and the article does say that Sergey and Larry did "grow" and learned a thing or two. Hopefully they won't be as arrogant in the future.
I am aware of various organisational problems that can be caused by a bad CEO. But guess what, Intel's president has a blog where every Intel employee can comment on corporate strategy. CEO != "corporate despot". Good CEOs not only listen, but they actively solicit feedback and do lots of other neat things so that the organisation can function better.
And, while Doerr may generally considered to have intelligence similar to that of other VCs, his track record and his experience are clearly more impressive. And laws of probability are not applicable to VCs (in the sense that you probably mean it), who invest before the company is publicly traded (there is no evidence that their valuations agree with theory of efficient capital markets).
As for investing in Kamen. He did it, because Kamen did have a revolutionary product that could change the world. The main reason why we deride Segway today is that Kamen manage to fuck up the business so thoroughly. It's all in the book ("Code Name Ginger" - that famous book, which caused the original information leak). Brilliant idea, amazing technology, great product, pathetic management. Same with Webvan (it was Webvan). Sound idea, bad management, a few stupid decisions and voila - Chapter 11. Sadly, Doerr doesn't always have huge leverage, not in the least because "genius" entrepreneurs liks Kamen and Page/Brin believe they are ubergods and deserve to be courted by a crowd of courteous VCs.
Technology is important, but good business sense is vital. Pretending it is not so is digging your own grave.
It's amazing how lucky these chip manufacturers are. Imagine to what lengths people need to go in other industries in order to convince customers to upgrade. If all you are selling is a damn chocolate bar, there is only so much that you can do to improve it. They had perfectly edible chocolate bars 100 years ago and there isn't much besides slapping "10% free" on the package that you can do. Ditto for things like headphones, ballpoint pens and pretty much everything else.
But the manufacturers of memory chips, hard disks, even CPUs, have it really easy. All they need to do is solve the technological problem of doubling the capacity/performance and the customer is eager to shell out some $$$ to get the new version. No focus groups are needed, no expensive marketing surveys. The only thing you need to do to please the customer is basically improve the obvious performance metric by 100%. You don't need to lie and twist the facts as those guys in cosmetics do with "73% more volume" for your eyelashes or "54% healthier hair" bullshit. You just make your CPU twice as fast and that flash chip twice as large, and you are done.
And if you really want to, you can say it will make Internet faster, or something...
Indeed, it is extremely funny that you think a corporation is likely to be more ethical than a human being. While we all know that human beings can be greedy, violent, lying immoral bastards, somehow, when incorporated, these humans produce a wonderful, white and fluffy creature known as American corporation that would never do anything bad. Do you also believe that all elected officials receive two wings and a halo with their mandate as well?
Well, I don't really know what to say to you. I guess it's too late to consult a dictionary...
I am sure that Larry and Sergey are smart fellas. But they don't know everything. Nobody does. John Doerr is a very smart guy and when he says something about how a business should be ran, smart people listen, I bet even Bill Gates does.
Doerr also has many stories when genius inventors completely fucked up their companies based around revolutionary inventions. Segway flopped primarily because Dean Kamen ignored everything that Doerr said. And that included Kamen's obstinate desire to micromanage everything and to prevent the CEO from doing his job. In its short history Segway has already lost 3 CEOs, two presidents and three top marketing execs!
CEOs are people who run businesses. If your company has several thousand people working for it and is worth a few billions dollars, you need a CEO, and you need to give him the authority to do things. Otherwise you will fail.
If Larry and Sergey do not grow wiser, the company will fail, PageRank or not. You can't build a business on technical ideas alone.
Note: Yes, I know that there are lame overpaid CEOs. And hiring a CEO doesn't necessarily mean changing the corporate culture.
I would say that giving a hundred bucks would work better. Or gift vouchers. 1$ donations may work if you have millions of users. But if the product is a niche one, but very-very-very useful to you, consider giving a noticeable contribution. Consider how much the commercial software costs - from tens to hundreds of dollars. Why then do you believe that giving just a few dollars is sufficient for open source projects?
Seriously, considering that only very few people donate to small projects, if you want to make (even a small) difference, give generously. You don't have to pay for every open source product you use, in fact, you don't have to pay at all, but if you do want to say "thanks", don't offend the programmer with a 2$ donation (equivalent probably to 3-5 minutes of his time).
There is nothing in SI that prevents humans from using it. In Russia the "pollitra" (literally half-a-litre) is a very common unit of volume. So common, in fact, that, when buying vodka, people would often buy two pollitras instead of 1 litre.:) Also, units such as "nol-dva" (zero-two) and "nol-tri" (zero-three) are very usable to refer to 0.2l and 0.3l volumes respectively.
Similarly, the common size of a land plot is "shest sotok" (six hundreds), meaning, of course, 600 square metres. And most people seem to be entirely capable of saying how much meat they want using SI units. You don't need a Ph.D. to ask for "300 grams" or "700 grams" of meat.
Ditto for everything else. There is no rational reason whatsoever not to use SI units and metric system in general. All it takes is a little determination from the government to mandate its use where it matters and people will adapt very soon.
I personally don't give a shit about ignorant Americans or Brits who are/were so intent on using non-metric systems. It's their damn fault and it's their damn problem. They lose productivity, not me.
All this is an inevitable outcome of capitalism. If it is already ridiculous to you, a citizen of the United States, imagine how insane and asinine it looks to people outside your country.
In my country all works created before 1973 are in public domain. In my country filmmakers do not get permission to use a trademark in the movie. In my country people sharing files are not sued and only large scale commercial pirates need to worry (somewhat) about law enforcement. In my country there exists for 11 years a ligitimate online library with 5Gb of free books in unencumbered formats, including works of most modern authors.
I am not saying that my country is perfect, I am just saying that for the majority of the people US-like copyright is abhorent and they have no respect to it.
As for your sad complaint about the necessity of CCL, I fully agree. I curse the day I decided to become a Wikipedia (which, BTW, uses GNU FDL, not CCL) editor, because now I became conscious of what I copy and what is the legal status of it. Not that it prevents me from pirating music/movies/books/software, but I'd rather not think about it at all.
Check out Apple Games. I guarantee that you will be surprised.
My younger sister wants to buy a laptop and is seriously considering an Apple (no "halo effect", just word of mouth). She asked me about games and initially I responded with a comment similar to yours - there aren't many games available for Mac.
However, I actually bothered to check whether I was correct and went to apple.com. As you can see for yourself, the quantity and quality of available games is more than satisfactory. Many bestselling games are available in all possible genres. While this may not be enough for me (I'd like to play all good FPS games on top graphics settings with a relatively new graphics card from ATi/nVidia), there are definitely enough games on Apple for a casual gamer.
My sister doesn't need to play all PC games and she doesn't care for particular titles/franchises. If she can get 5-10 titles per year, that would probably be enough.
You seem to be very confused about financial matters, so let me clarify things a bit. First, earnings per share is not a relevant indicator if you don't give the share price.
Second, your claim that drug companies are not more profitable doesn't mean anything. In a country with a developed stock market no company is more profitable (adjusted for risk) than any other. Microsoft isn't more profitable, despite using illegal means to extort money from PC users. If Medellin cartel was a corporation and was traded on NYSE, it wouldn't be more profitable for shareholders, because all those future cash flows are already included in the share price.
It may be a good policy decision to regulate drug companies. But it must be made using macroeconomic analysis, financial indicators of the companies have absolutely nothing to do with it.
I'm not sure whose side of the coin you're arguing.
I am arguing with you, so we are on the opposite sides of coin.:)
I'd say that the prerendered quality is advancing faster than the videogame quality.
This is simply not true, and my examples from 1984-1989-1995-2001 demonstrate it. Prerendered CGI is improving very fast, but real-time PC graphics are improving even faster.
There is no point in doing raytracing if you can avoid it. But in filmmaking the cost of renderfarms is never the limiting factor, so these people are not very motivated in cutting corners. On the PC the situation is different, that's why nVidia and ATi are forced to constantly invent new ways to do the same thing faster.
Check out this and this. The gap is already very small and it's getting smaller ridiculously fast. Some things are still missing, first of all, realistic lighting and shadowing and realistic pixel shaders, but these technologies are only 1-year old on the PC, so give them some time (i.e. 2-3 years) to fully shine.
If you know the facts, there can be no doubt about it - real-time graphics will soon catch up with rendered CGI.
Boo... No need to start flaming. I've read both your post and the parent. MyIS said that the gap between real-time game engine renders and pre-rendered animation (not clear whether he meant cartoonish animation as in Incredibles or realistic animation as in Advent Children) becomes smaller.
You countered it with a very expressive "Eh.." and complained that the "guy" still looks unnatural, as if anyone claimed he was already supposed to look natural instead.
I chimed in and pointed out that you don't have a clue. The graphics today are not as good as prerendered animation. We could do half-decent lighting only for a year or so. We could do satisfactory focus/blur effects for half a year. Bumpmapping is about one year old. Of course, the graphics are worse than prerendered animation. But the gap is closing. In 1984 Lucasfilm made a CGI short with motion blur, while PC could render not-so-realistic graphics of Sopwith. In 1989 Spielberg could render convincing digital water in Abyss, while on the PC the water was still usually rendered using a two-colour sprite. In 1995 Pixar made Toy Story and id Software made Hexen. But in 2001 we saw somewhat realistic Final Fantasy in the movies and somewhat realistic Max Payne on the PC. The gap is closing and it will likely be closed in less than 5 years, because, as I pointed out, in 2010 we will probably achieve not just animation quality, but videorealism in games.
So would you please stop complaining about hexagonal guns. And learn to read. The parent said the gap is getting smaller, not that it has already disappeared.
Duh. Of course, he is unnatural, it's only 2005 and noone is saying Unreal 3 Engine is photorealistic. However, guys from both Epic and id Software believe that somewhere around 2010 it will be finally possible to render a videorealistic level fly-by of a static world in real time on commodity hardware using one of their new engines. Expect to have realistic motion (including human motion) around 2015.
Today, no matter how impressive the visuals are, they are not fully realistic, not fully natural, and the designers/programmers are fully aware of it, thank you very much.
Meanwhile "house of flying daggers" brings up nothing at all. Of course, IMDB and RT both find Shi mian mai fu for me. So Google Movies is an amateurish product, which gets a lot of exposure by virtue of Google leveraging its monopoly on search.
I applaud Cory's practice of releasing his books for Free. I share some of his views and concerns, but his writing is very poor. His "I, Robot" is a contrived and lame story, quickly slapped together to push Cory's agenda. The literary merits of it are next to none, so don't bother reading it (sadly, I read all of it).
There aren't many interesting ideas there either. Cory tries to make a point that implementing 3 laws of robotics goes hand in hand with building up a totalitarian state, but ignoring these precautions would somehow make all robots moral and friendly and allow science to progress and flourish, bringing humans uploading, complete lack of crime and other goodies.
While I am not going to argue that uploading rules and running several copies of a mind can be good, this books makes a piss poor job of arguing these points. Better ignore it. I hope that it's eventually released under some CC license and it can be rewritten by a better author.
You see, this is an expected situation in a capitalist society where market demand drives production and the lowest common denominator determines what kind of media is produced.
The day before yesterday I was reading about the history of Bolshevo Commune in Korolev, Russia. In 1920s Yagoda and Dzerzhinsky ordered a small commune to be created, with a number of orphans, some homeless kids and some young repeat offenders. And, of course, some dedicated pedagogues that cared about one thing only - change these kids into productive members of a communist society.
I will spare you the details, but through mutual respect, through self-governance and democracy, through gradual introduction of the kids to education, culture and sport, they managed to change that small bunch of misfits (and everyone who joined later) into several thousands of honest, enlightened, professional and inquisitive people, working for the well-being of the country in several newly built factories, farms, workshops, etc. Many of the juvenile delinquents became factory directors, specialists, sportsmen and scientists.
I'm sure those kids didn't get to play GTA or listen to gangsta rap much...
Even if it is true that this poor SOB learned to kill police officers in the game, the lawsuits are still absolutely devoid of merit.
Yes, videogames influence kids, yes, playing GTA may make you more violent (though it can very well make someone else LESS violent), but it's not a simple causal relationship such as with smoking and cancer.
Out of tens of millions of people who played various GTA versions, only a handful committed a violent crime that can be somehow connected with this video game. It should be obvious to anyone that the effect (if there is some) can only be responsible statistically for very few crimes. If you randomly take 10 million people, there will be a few cop killers and carjackers. Of course there are some among GTA players.
Folks, next time you want to break your NDA and share Apple or Microsoft pre-release software, please follow these simple steps.
1) Find some warez on your disk. 2) Read up some NFOs. 3) E-mail some pirate group and say you have some useless^H^H^H^Hful shit. 4) If they are interested, ask for an FTP address to upload it. 5) Upload the files. 6) Enjoy knowing that millions of people can safely get the "stuff" from their favourite P2P, you are completely safe (unless the copies are signed) and managed to "stick it to the man".
P.S. Stop seeding when the file was fully uploaded to the network.
No, it wouldn't. But I am sure everyone would have much more respect for Apple, if it openly offered the guy to pay 1000$ compensation to them and have it settled. Apple can publicly state that redistributing their software is wrong, but they don't want to harm people.
Personally, I'm rooting for big advancements in non-invasive brain interaction systems. What's wrong with invasive systems?
Many of us are living longer, so the chances of all of us spending part of our lives partially or completely disabled continues to climb. You may be surprised, but the advances that give us longer lives also take aging and related illnesses away from us.
You may be already open minded enough to listen to this. USSR was not a corrupt dictatorship fighting for world domination. First, it was never particularly corrupt (more corrupt than Denmark, but probably less corrupt than the United States or France). Second, it was a typical dictatorship only under Stalin. After that it was a relatively democratic society (although less democratic than, say, Switzerland), although in a very different form than Western democracies.
It wasn't bent on world domination any more than the United States were. And the goals of that potential domination was to help other countries. You probably don't remember United States sending huge amounts of economic aid abroad to its third world allies. Soviet Union, on the other hand, helped industrialise (or at least tried to) half a world.
Finally, the big secret is that Soviet Union actually was rather effective. Its inefficiency is mostly a myth. Since it didn't have a market economy, the prices were set, which inevitably led to deficit of many consumer goods. Now it doesn't mean that citizens lived very poorly, it just means that when the prices are set below equilibrium, there is a deficit and you see empty shelves. Today the supermarkets in Russia are full of enticing goods just like in the US, but people on average live poorer than in the USSR. Soviet Union had a really powerful economy, with economic growth most of the time, with 4% of GDP spent for science, with huge spendings on education and culture, and with a rather high quality of life. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons a systemic crisis emerged and everything collapsed due to bad management. But that doesn't mean that the USSR was a failed model.
Slashdot Mirror
I do know the history of Intel (and if I didn't, I could easily google it). I wasn't saying that google needs an "outside grayhair", simply that disdain for good business practices is at best ignorance and at worst stupidity. Business administration is specialised knowledge, just as Java programming or growing tulips. To think that you can manage a 1000+ people company using nothing more than common sense is idiotic.
I don't think Google will fail, but simply because, no matter how arrogant that duo is today, they will be forced to learn how things work and eventually Google will become a well-managed company (which doesn't mean it has to lose its spirit and philosophy).
I never ever had to take off my shoes when flying. Not in Japan, not in Russia, not in Switzerland, not in France, not in Germany. I suspect that if I am ever asked to do that, I would refuse on principle (even if that means I risk not flying). I may also be impolite and say some rude things to a person, who demands I take my shoes off. I probably won't kick them in the nuts, though.
1. I have drunk some KCN (potassium cyanide).
2. I am still alive.
I just proved that potassium cyanide is not poisonous to humans. Or did I?
I wasn't aware Google proved anything like that. It's easy to grow and prosper if you stumble upon a gold mine and get more cash than you can burn. So far Google has only one business to speak of and I haven't seen them invent anything else. I don't doubt for a second that their flock of PhDs can create many neat web services, but if we are talking business, then I don't see any innovations from them besides AdWords/AdSense the idea for which they "borrowed" from Overture.
We will see how they will cope with inevitable problem. That would be a true test and the article does say that Sergey and Larry did "grow" and learned a thing or two. Hopefully they won't be as arrogant in the future.
I am aware of various organisational problems that can be caused by a bad CEO. But guess what, Intel's president has a blog where every Intel employee can comment on corporate strategy. CEO != "corporate despot". Good CEOs not only listen, but they actively solicit feedback and do lots of other neat things so that the organisation can function better.
And, while Doerr may generally considered to have intelligence similar to that of other VCs, his track record and his experience are clearly more impressive. And laws of probability are not applicable to VCs (in the sense that you probably mean it), who invest before the company is publicly traded (there is no evidence that their valuations agree with theory of efficient capital markets).
As for investing in Kamen. He did it, because Kamen did have a revolutionary product that could change the world. The main reason why we deride Segway today is that Kamen manage to fuck up the business so thoroughly. It's all in the book ("Code Name Ginger" - that famous book, which caused the original information leak). Brilliant idea, amazing technology, great product, pathetic management. Same with Webvan (it was Webvan). Sound idea, bad management, a few stupid decisions and voila - Chapter 11. Sadly, Doerr doesn't always have huge leverage, not in the least because "genius" entrepreneurs liks Kamen and Page/Brin believe they are ubergods and deserve to be courted by a crowd of courteous VCs.
Technology is important, but good business sense is vital. Pretending it is not so is digging your own grave.
It's amazing how lucky these chip manufacturers are. Imagine to what lengths people need to go in other industries in order to convince customers to upgrade. If all you are selling is a damn chocolate bar, there is only so much that you can do to improve it. They had perfectly edible chocolate bars 100 years ago and there isn't much besides slapping "10% free" on the package that you can do. Ditto for things like headphones, ballpoint pens and pretty much everything else.
But the manufacturers of memory chips, hard disks, even CPUs, have it really easy. All they need to do is solve the technological problem of doubling the capacity/performance and the customer is eager to shell out some $$$ to get the new version. No focus groups are needed, no expensive marketing surveys. The only thing you need to do to please the customer is basically improve the obvious performance metric by 100%. You don't need to lie and twist the facts as those guys in cosmetics do with "73% more volume" for your eyelashes or "54% healthier hair" bullshit. You just make your CPU twice as fast and that flash chip twice as large, and you are done.
And if you really want to, you can say it will make Internet faster, or something...
Indeed, it is extremely funny that you think a corporation is likely to be more ethical than a human being. While we all know that human beings can be greedy, violent, lying immoral bastards, somehow, when incorporated, these humans produce a wonderful, white and fluffy creature known as American corporation that would never do anything bad. Do you also believe that all elected officials receive two wings and a halo with their mandate as well?
Well, I don't really know what to say to you. I guess it's too late to consult a dictionary...
I am sure that Larry and Sergey are smart fellas. But they don't know everything. Nobody does. John Doerr is a very smart guy and when he says something about how a business should be ran, smart people listen, I bet even Bill Gates does.
Doerr also has many stories when genius inventors completely fucked up their companies based around revolutionary inventions. Segway flopped primarily because Dean Kamen ignored everything that Doerr said. And that included Kamen's obstinate desire to micromanage everything and to prevent the CEO from doing his job. In its short history Segway has already lost 3 CEOs, two presidents and three top marketing execs!
CEOs are people who run businesses. If your company has several thousand people working for it and is worth a few billions dollars, you need a CEO, and you need to give him the authority to do things. Otherwise you will fail.
If Larry and Sergey do not grow wiser, the company will fail, PageRank or not. You can't build a business on technical ideas alone.
Note: Yes, I know that there are lame overpaid CEOs. And hiring a CEO doesn't necessarily mean changing the corporate culture.
I would say that giving a hundred bucks would work better. Or gift vouchers. 1$ donations may work if you have millions of users. But if the product is a niche one, but very-very-very useful to you, consider giving a noticeable contribution. Consider how much the commercial software costs - from tens to hundreds of dollars. Why then do you believe that giving just a few dollars is sufficient for open source projects?
Seriously, considering that only very few people donate to small projects, if you want to make (even a small) difference, give generously. You don't have to pay for every open source product you use, in fact, you don't have to pay at all, but if you do want to say "thanks", don't offend the programmer with a 2$ donation (equivalent probably to 3-5 minutes of his time).
There is nothing in SI that prevents humans from using it. In Russia the "pollitra" (literally half-a-litre) is a very common unit of volume. So common, in fact, that, when buying vodka, people would often buy two pollitras instead of 1 litre. :) Also, units such as "nol-dva" (zero-two) and "nol-tri" (zero-three) are very usable to refer to 0.2l and 0.3l volumes respectively.
Similarly, the common size of a land plot is "shest sotok" (six hundreds), meaning, of course, 600 square metres. And most people seem to be entirely capable of saying how much meat they want using SI units. You don't need a Ph.D. to ask for "300 grams" or "700 grams" of meat.
Ditto for everything else. There is no rational reason whatsoever not to use SI units and metric system in general. All it takes is a little determination from the government to mandate its use where it matters and people will adapt very soon.
I personally don't give a shit about ignorant Americans or Brits who are/were so intent on using non-metric systems. It's their damn fault and it's their damn problem. They lose productivity, not me.
All this is an inevitable outcome of capitalism. If it is already ridiculous to you, a citizen of the United States, imagine how insane and asinine it looks to people outside your country.
In my country all works created before 1973 are in public domain. In my country filmmakers do not get permission to use a trademark in the movie. In my country people sharing files are not sued and only large scale commercial pirates need to worry (somewhat) about law enforcement. In my country there exists for 11 years a ligitimate online library with 5Gb of free books in unencumbered formats, including works of most modern authors.
I am not saying that my country is perfect, I am just saying that for the majority of the people US-like copyright is abhorent and they have no respect to it.
As for your sad complaint about the necessity of CCL, I fully agree. I curse the day I decided to become a Wikipedia (which, BTW, uses GNU FDL, not CCL) editor, because now I became conscious of what I copy and what is the legal status of it. Not that it prevents me from pirating music/movies/books/software, but I'd rather not think about it at all.
Check out Apple Games. I guarantee that you will be surprised.
My younger sister wants to buy a laptop and is seriously considering an Apple (no "halo effect", just word of mouth). She asked me about games and initially I responded with a comment similar to yours - there aren't many games available for Mac.
However, I actually bothered to check whether I was correct and went to apple.com. As you can see for yourself, the quantity and quality of available games is more than satisfactory. Many bestselling games are available in all possible genres. While this may not be enough for me (I'd like to play all good FPS games on top graphics settings with a relatively new graphics card from ATi/nVidia), there are definitely enough games on Apple for a casual gamer.
My sister doesn't need to play all PC games and she doesn't care for particular titles/franchises. If she can get 5-10 titles per year, that would probably be enough.
You seem to be very confused about financial matters, so let me clarify things a bit. First, earnings per share is not a relevant indicator if you don't give the share price.
Second, your claim that drug companies are not more profitable doesn't mean anything. In a country with a developed stock market no company is more profitable (adjusted for risk) than any other. Microsoft isn't more profitable, despite using illegal means to extort money from PC users. If Medellin cartel was a corporation and was traded on NYSE, it wouldn't be more profitable for shareholders, because all those future cash flows are already included in the share price.
It may be a good policy decision to regulate drug companies. But it must be made using macroeconomic analysis, financial indicators of the companies have absolutely nothing to do with it.
I'm not sure whose side of the coin you're arguing.
:)
I am arguing with you, so we are on the opposite sides of coin.
I'd say that the prerendered quality is advancing faster than the videogame quality.
This is simply not true, and my examples from 1984-1989-1995-2001 demonstrate it. Prerendered CGI is improving very fast, but real-time PC graphics are improving even faster.
There is no point in doing raytracing if you can avoid it. But in filmmaking the cost of renderfarms is never the limiting factor, so these people are not very motivated in cutting corners. On the PC the situation is different, that's why nVidia and ATi are forced to constantly invent new ways to do the same thing faster.
Check out this and this. The gap is already very small and it's getting smaller ridiculously fast. Some things are still missing, first of all, realistic lighting and shadowing and realistic pixel shaders, but these technologies are only 1-year old on the PC, so give them some time (i.e. 2-3 years) to fully shine.
If you know the facts, there can be no doubt about it - real-time graphics will soon catch up with rendered CGI.
Boo... No need to start flaming. I've read both your post and the parent. MyIS said that the gap between real-time game engine renders and pre-rendered animation (not clear whether he meant cartoonish animation as in Incredibles or realistic animation as in Advent Children) becomes smaller.
You countered it with a very expressive "Eh.." and complained that the "guy" still looks unnatural, as if anyone claimed he was already supposed to look natural instead.
I chimed in and pointed out that you don't have a clue. The graphics today are not as good as prerendered animation. We could do half-decent lighting only for a year or so. We could do satisfactory focus/blur effects for half a year. Bumpmapping is about one year old. Of course, the graphics are worse than prerendered animation. But the gap is closing. In 1984 Lucasfilm made a CGI short with motion blur, while PC could render not-so-realistic graphics of Sopwith. In 1989 Spielberg could render convincing digital water in Abyss, while on the PC the water was still usually rendered using a two-colour sprite. In 1995 Pixar made Toy Story and id Software made Hexen. But in 2001 we saw somewhat realistic Final Fantasy in the movies and somewhat realistic Max Payne on the PC. The gap is closing and it will likely be closed in less than 5 years, because, as I pointed out, in 2010 we will probably achieve not just animation quality, but videorealism in games.
So would you please stop complaining about hexagonal guns. And learn to read. The parent said the gap is getting smaller, not that it has already disappeared.
Duh. Of course, he is unnatural, it's only 2005 and noone is saying Unreal 3 Engine is photorealistic. However, guys from both Epic and id Software believe that somewhere around 2010 it will be finally possible to render a videorealistic level fly-by of a static world in real time on commodity hardware using one of their new engines. Expect to have realistic motion (including human motion) around 2015.
Today, no matter how impressive the visuals are, they are not fully realistic, not fully natural, and the designers/programmers are fully aware of it, thank you very much.
Meanwhile "house of flying daggers" brings up nothing at all. Of course, IMDB and RT both find Shi mian mai fu for me. So Google Movies is an amateurish product, which gets a lot of exposure by virtue of Google leveraging its monopoly on search.
I applaud Cory's practice of releasing his books for Free. I share some of his views and concerns, but his writing is very poor. His "I, Robot" is a contrived and lame story, quickly slapped together to push Cory's agenda. The literary merits of it are next to none, so don't bother reading it (sadly, I read all of it).
There aren't many interesting ideas there either. Cory tries to make a point that implementing 3 laws of robotics goes hand in hand with building up a totalitarian state, but ignoring these precautions would somehow make all robots moral and friendly and allow science to progress and flourish, bringing humans uploading, complete lack of crime and other goodies.
While I am not going to argue that uploading rules and running several copies of a mind can be good, this books makes a piss poor job of arguing these points. Better ignore it. I hope that it's eventually released under some CC license and it can be rewritten by a better author.
May be he meant "boulders" (and shit, and trees).
You see, this is an expected situation in a capitalist society where market demand drives production and the lowest common denominator determines what kind of media is produced.
The day before yesterday I was reading about the history of Bolshevo Commune in Korolev, Russia. In 1920s Yagoda and Dzerzhinsky ordered a small commune to be created, with a number of orphans, some homeless kids and some young repeat offenders. And, of course, some dedicated pedagogues that cared about one thing only - change these kids into productive members of a communist society.
I will spare you the details, but through mutual respect, through self-governance and democracy, through gradual introduction of the kids to education, culture and sport, they managed to change that small bunch of misfits (and everyone who joined later) into several thousands of honest, enlightened, professional and inquisitive people, working for the well-being of the country in several newly built factories, farms, workshops, etc. Many of the juvenile delinquents became factory directors, specialists, sportsmen and scientists.
I'm sure those kids didn't get to play GTA or listen to gangsta rap much...
Even if it is true that this poor SOB learned to kill police officers in the game, the lawsuits are still absolutely devoid of merit.
Yes, videogames influence kids, yes, playing GTA may make you more violent (though it can very well make someone else LESS violent), but it's not a simple causal relationship such as with smoking and cancer.
Out of tens of millions of people who played various GTA versions, only a handful committed a violent crime that can be somehow connected with this video game. It should be obvious to anyone that the effect (if there is some) can only be responsible statistically for very few crimes. If you randomly take 10 million people, there will be a few cop killers and carjackers. Of course there are some among GTA players.
Because sharing is good, regardless of what the law says.
Folks, next time you want to break your NDA and share Apple or Microsoft pre-release software, please follow these simple steps.
1) Find some warez on your disk.
2) Read up some NFOs.
3) E-mail some pirate group and say you have some useless^H^H^H^Hful shit.
4) If they are interested, ask for an FTP address to upload it.
5) Upload the files.
6) Enjoy knowing that millions of people can safely get the "stuff" from their favourite P2P, you are completely safe (unless the copies are signed) and managed to "stick it to the man".
P.S. Stop seeding when the file was fully uploaded to the network.
No, it wouldn't. But I am sure everyone would have much more respect for Apple, if it openly offered the guy to pay 1000$ compensation to them and have it settled. Apple can publicly state that redistributing their software is wrong, but they don't want to harm people.
That's it.
Personally, I'm rooting for big advancements in non-invasive brain interaction systems.
What's wrong with invasive systems?
Many of us are living longer, so the chances of all of us spending part of our lives partially or completely disabled continues to climb.
You may be surprised, but the advances that give us longer lives also take aging and related illnesses away from us.
You may be already open minded enough to listen to this. USSR was not a corrupt dictatorship fighting for world domination. First, it was never particularly corrupt (more corrupt than Denmark, but probably less corrupt than the United States or France). Second, it was a typical dictatorship only under Stalin. After that it was a relatively democratic society (although less democratic than, say, Switzerland), although in a very different form than Western democracies.
It wasn't bent on world domination any more than the United States were. And the goals of that potential domination was to help other countries. You probably don't remember United States sending huge amounts of economic aid abroad to its third world allies. Soviet Union, on the other hand, helped industrialise (or at least tried to) half a world.
Finally, the big secret is that Soviet Union actually was rather effective. Its inefficiency is mostly a myth. Since it didn't have a market economy, the prices were set, which inevitably led to deficit of many consumer goods. Now it doesn't mean that citizens lived very poorly, it just means that when the prices are set below equilibrium, there is a deficit and you see empty shelves. Today the supermarkets in Russia are full of enticing goods just like in the US, but people on average live poorer than in the USSR. Soviet Union had a really powerful economy, with economic growth most of the time, with 4% of GDP spent for science, with huge spendings on education and culture, and with a rather high quality of life. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons a systemic crisis emerged and everything collapsed due to bad management. But that doesn't mean that the USSR was a failed model.