I've also just read something also very interesting for your case...
Apple has XGrid working for MacOSX, very powerfule grid computing, essentially the same as MPI. There's also the possibility of doing network rendering of blender through XGrid. I don't know how compatible Maya is with blender, but there must be filters existing. Not to mention that blender is open source.
I think that what you're looking for is a renderfarm for computer graphics rendering, right?
in that case, you should be looking at PVM or OpenMOSIX or even MPI. In either case, since you're going to have more data crunching than actual data transfer, I think that even T100 would be enough. gigabit will be nice, but fiber is not worth it. Drqueue is nice... if you can get it to work, and I didn't. We used pvmpovray for many things, and I think that might be worth a look. pvmpovray exists for gentoo with an ebuild script, which would make the installation and configuration the minimum pain for it. But that option requires a conversion from maya to povray files.
Also, I don't know what the pricing is going to be like, but if it were up to me, I'd take the Opterons, because I believe they are faster, although I'm not positive on that, and because I know they're well supported under linux, and again, I think that's a more personal choice to make, but the impression I got from AMD is that you always get the most for your buck. The Opterons also let you find replacement parts or upgrades a little easier than the G5 if you burn a CPU or motherboard.
That's just my $.02 worth of advice.
what next? patent on hearing and listening??
on
Hardcore Java
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
this is really getting on my nerves. The RIAA is trying to get money, I can understand that, but this is going too far!
I mean, seriously, no matter WHAT they try for a secure technology, it's anti-technology will appear. They cracked Apple's DRM, and I'm sure there are ways to crack just about any security technology.
Don't they understand that???
What exactly do they want? money? and how do they pay for the millions it costs to pass their patents??? Do the artists get anything?
I'm just about fed up with them!
I'm willing to pay the artist for the music, but not the companies that try and steal the artist's money! What percentage of an album goes to the group you want to listen to? not much. In fact, it's probably less than 25%!
Does it really cost $15 per Disc to put a it in print, make a colored print cover and put the whole thing in a clear case??
I could do it for less than $5 per CD, and still make money, if I sold as many as they do!
Someone in Congress needs to tell the RIAA to change it's strategies, not the laws!
The laws usually are made to defend the citizen's rights, not that of a group of money-thirsty companies!
That's the end, I'm not paying for any music anymore. Any music I want to hear, I'll go to a concert or record myself.
A general boycott will stop them short, and maybe they'll change their minds after all.
Sorry if this doesn't make any logical sense, but I'm really infuriated by the fact that they're trying to patent digital radios, when they don't patent normal radios people record on tapes!
ok, sorry, I grossly misunderstood how it works... I thought it would just give more power for the justice system to enforce copyright laws. thanks for enlightening me.
Wait, wouldn't that same bill also allow the Attorney General to prosecute people infringing the GPL?
If we use the open licenses more and more, it serves us in the end, no? Or does it apply only to copyrights made with the copyright office?
I think this could be indeed a useful law in the future, if used by us GPL lovers. What do you think?
new interface compared to what?
it's the 2.2x style. Have you looked at the part "Understanding the interface"? It's not the way the buttons are arranged anymore.
Either part of it has been rewritten and the rest hasn't or else you're not using blender 2.3x yet.
I'm sorry, but to me that documentation is not as useful as it could be. I don't mean to be insulting, but blender does lack up to date documentation.
Thanks a bunch, I'll keep that in my bookmarks... I was looking all over for that. Maybe advertising that link a little better on the blender website would help;)
All the various functions are there and everywhere else in blender, but it's just so complex to get to them... the mouse/keyboard system is good, but needs some practice, and the fact that I haven't found a complete listing of all keyboard shortcuts yet limits the ability to improve all that well. mostly it's just a matter of "looks", not feel. I did need 6 months to learn how to use blender through the keyboard/mouse system though!
then tell me where I can download the pdf version of the paper manual? It's not the same documentation. The manual is based on it, agreed, but it's not as exhaustive. And I use the open doc project alot, I just haven't found any screenshots showing a blender 2.3 interface: it's all based on 2.2, except perhaps the Python API section which has major differences. Minor differences in the interface are not mentioned, and that's the criticism I have for that documentation: it's a good source of knowledge for experienced users like you, who apparently code and have been with blender since 2.2, but not for people who start on 2.3. I didn't mean any offense, but I have looked hard for recent docs, and aside from new tutorials, nothing major really new outside the manual has been done since version 2.2x.
yes, indeed, available for people who can afford $45 for the 2.3 paper book manual. It isn't available for download yet. And now with the game functions re-integrated they're going for yet another re-write of the docs. Read again, I'm not dumb, I've been using blender for the better part of 6 months.
that's nice to have the functionality again... but it's something more to learn for newbies in blender. As if blender wasn't complex enough...
I appreciate the gesture though, but there's really going to be a need for a complete rewrite of the online doc... most of it dates from the 2.2 era.
So get those renders and movies and now games coming along!
It's time for it now...
I think that indeed there is free software to do movies and rendered animations using raytracing. First, Cinelerra can use a linux cluster for movie rendering.
Second, there's a whole bunch of modellers/raytracers out there that perform very well: Povray is the oldest and most advanced, and can run on a pvm cluster, yafray is relatively recent and can use an openmosix cluster for networked rendering, Blender now integrates a raytracer AND exports to yafray. Those are the 4 programs I know of that I use, but there are more, I just haven't looked for more.
So, yes, there is free software for movie rendering already!
that's just great! Not only does MS find a way to make more money, but they also find a way to make hackers and virus writers even more happy by putting ultra vulnerable systems back on the web...
I mean, sorry, but this just doesn't sound like a good idea to use win 2000 now that the source code has leaked!
Not to mention the ever-growing number of viruses that will infect these machines and create a non-protectable because obsolete "virus pit" of the internet... It's like keeping someone with chicken pox in a public place: most people are vaccinated, but the few that aren't risk death if they get the disease.
Oh, and of course it's an attempt to keep the youth prefering windows.... Everytime I read slashdot I get more unneverd by MS's outrageous actions! This is against common sense!!!
When will law start following common sense???? probably not until the next Wallstreet crash because of the stupidest lawsuit ever... (which I thought was going to be SCO/IBM but it's not going to be bad enough to make a change in the legal system necessary...)
God, I wish there was a way to email her, or leave a comment on her website... I mean, she's gut guts and a really cool head. Maybe a little help with the english in some spots could help, but DAMN!!! She was lucky herself, her father knowing and getting her and her father out of the place... I also have a few questions, did she ever happen to see any weird animals? Back in the mid-nineties (I was about 10 then...) there were rumors of double-headed veals, 8 legged newborn horses and featherless chickens (which by now we have without radiation!) and plants that looked like they came from a prehistoric age... Elena, your sharing of those pictures with the world might help teach mankind of the power of science and avoid an even worse thing from happening again. And that is something you can be proud of, even if your life is short, you have accomplished a great deal by revealing publicly one of the taboos of the modern world. For this I would like to thank you.
John
Don't you remember reading on/. just a couple of years earlier that the Chinese government had officially announced that for any future systems it will purchase it will use linux instead of Microsoft windows because "it is insecure and closed, when we know what's happening with linux"
So I don't think they'll EVER get a hold in China... at least not from the government. But since it's a communist country, they'll impose linux to their citizens... Funny in a way that a communist country will give the largest choice of equivalent programs to their citizens as opposed to a capitalist like the US which uses ONLY MS Office... But we'll see, time will tell!
Funny that it took so long for MS to realize they'd been had... I remember a friend of mine translating KDE documentation in french about 4 years ago...
Not to mention the fact that asian fonts have been almost constantly present under linux, as far as I can remember.
Besides, China already has Dragon Linux, and they wouldn't switch back to windows for anything else than a nuclear war threat... and even then it'd be a tough challenge! So guess what: that's not going to make a difference in the long run. MS has lost the initiative, and they're trying to make believe they still have it... I hope we can prove they're behind the Opensource community, and have been ever since linux came to being!
wrong :
SONY=best tech stuff, but expensive
HP=good wide distribution & support, relatively cheap
EMACHINES=extreme power
IBM=good linux support & good machines can be used for servers
DELL=GATEWAY= crap, don't even think about linux on those boxes, nor of upgrading or replacing anything. if you need to buy another card, it's cheaper to buy another box.
I thought I'd read on the web somewhere that Intel no longer had the lead, but that AMD was the technological leader nowadays. I totally think that the Windows tax is unjustified whatsoever, but the Intel tax also seems unfair to me. What do other people think?
I'm assuming whoever will fly that wing will know all of this, and will therefore find at what point the wing stalls at a high altitude to learn how to handle the beast. That's why you have a chute : if you stall on purpose but can't recover, you eject, and honestly, if you can take off and make the thing fly high enough there's no reason you can't reach a safe altitude for testing.
I'd like to remind you that the original flying models that led to the B2 and X29 were not computer controlled. Besides, progress has been made since, and even in the 60 -- when super computers did NOT exist -- Northrop developped the B36 which was a flying wing. It lost the contract to the B52 only because of a higher maintenance cost. So it can, and probably WILL work as hoped. Stop being pessimistic. If the pilot puts on a parachute for the first flights (I'd recommend for any flight anyways) I don't see what could go so badly wrong.
And what about the B2 then? excuse me, but I think flying wings can be every bit as secure as a conventional aircraft. RC flying wings are extremely stable and have none of the above mentioned problems. Besides, there are always ways to solve instability. I've seen enough RC models to believe that a full scale glider like this one will work. It's more a matter of knowing how to fly than having a "fully stable" design. The X-29 is intentionally unstable, and yet tested with a human crew! Besides, what are parachutes for, if not to save lives?
I've looked at the video, and the thing seemed pretty stable in the air. What might really influence the well flying of the thing is whether or not they pay attention to the variation of the Reynolds factor. If they size the model in a way that the Re of their wing grows along with it, then no big problem. But if the Re grows less than the size and scale, that's where you might run into trouble. I did a stduy of airfoils last year as an independent study in high school, and ended up with quite a bunch of stuff. Anyways, I'd say give it a go! You can always add a parachute to the pilot for the first couple of flights, and see how it will react in any given position...
Good luck
Doesn't it sound a bit weird to anyone that all of a sudden we see a mass generation of trials against linux companies/contributors/users? I mean, first the SCO story, still not finished, then the licenses for XFree86 and Apache, and now Mandrake Linux is going to have to change names... How much further will this go?
Could this all be coordinated somehow to make Opensource illegal, or improper for use in a bunch of countries?
Who's next at court for having a linux distribution on his pc?
Slashdot Mirror
I've also just read something also very interesting for your case... Apple has XGrid working for MacOSX, very powerfule grid computing, essentially the same as MPI. There's also the possibility of doing network rendering of blender through XGrid. I don't know how compatible Maya is with blender, but there must be filters existing. Not to mention that blender is open source.
I think that what you're looking for is a renderfarm for computer graphics rendering, right? in that case, you should be looking at PVM or OpenMOSIX or even MPI. In either case, since you're going to have more data crunching than actual data transfer, I think that even T100 would be enough. gigabit will be nice, but fiber is not worth it. Drqueue is nice... if you can get it to work, and I didn't. We used pvmpovray for many things, and I think that might be worth a look. pvmpovray exists for gentoo with an ebuild script, which would make the installation and configuration the minimum pain for it. But that option requires a conversion from maya to povray files. Also, I don't know what the pricing is going to be like, but if it were up to me, I'd take the Opterons, because I believe they are faster, although I'm not positive on that, and because I know they're well supported under linux, and again, I think that's a more personal choice to make, but the impression I got from AMD is that you always get the most for your buck. The Opterons also let you find replacement parts or upgrades a little easier than the G5 if you burn a CPU or motherboard. That's just my $.02 worth of advice.
this is really getting on my nerves. The RIAA is trying to get money, I can understand that, but this is going too far! I mean, seriously, no matter WHAT they try for a secure technology, it's anti-technology will appear. They cracked Apple's DRM, and I'm sure there are ways to crack just about any security technology. Don't they understand that??? What exactly do they want? money? and how do they pay for the millions it costs to pass their patents??? Do the artists get anything? I'm just about fed up with them! I'm willing to pay the artist for the music, but not the companies that try and steal the artist's money! What percentage of an album goes to the group you want to listen to? not much. In fact, it's probably less than 25%! Does it really cost $15 per Disc to put a it in print, make a colored print cover and put the whole thing in a clear case?? I could do it for less than $5 per CD, and still make money, if I sold as many as they do! Someone in Congress needs to tell the RIAA to change it's strategies, not the laws! The laws usually are made to defend the citizen's rights, not that of a group of money-thirsty companies! That's the end, I'm not paying for any music anymore. Any music I want to hear, I'll go to a concert or record myself. A general boycott will stop them short, and maybe they'll change their minds after all. Sorry if this doesn't make any logical sense, but I'm really infuriated by the fact that they're trying to patent digital radios, when they don't patent normal radios people record on tapes!
indeed, it's a problem in america, and not just with one generation, with all of them! So lets do it. If that's not worth it, then what is???
ok, sorry, I grossly misunderstood how it works... I thought it would just give more power for the justice system to enforce copyright laws. thanks for enlightening me.
Wait, wouldn't that same bill also allow the Attorney General to prosecute people infringing the GPL? If we use the open licenses more and more, it serves us in the end, no? Or does it apply only to copyrights made with the copyright office? I think this could be indeed a useful law in the future, if used by us GPL lovers. What do you think?
new interface compared to what? it's the 2.2x style. Have you looked at the part "Understanding the interface"? It's not the way the buttons are arranged anymore. Either part of it has been rewritten and the rest hasn't or else you're not using blender 2.3x yet. I'm sorry, but to me that documentation is not as useful as it could be. I don't mean to be insulting, but blender does lack up to date documentation.
Thanks a bunch, I'll keep that in my bookmarks... I was looking all over for that. Maybe advertising that link a little better on the blender website would help ;)
All the various functions are there and everywhere else in blender, but it's just so complex to get to them... the mouse/keyboard system is good, but needs some practice, and the fact that I haven't found a complete listing of all keyboard shortcuts yet limits the ability to improve all that well. mostly it's just a matter of "looks", not feel. I did need 6 months to learn how to use blender through the keyboard/mouse system though!
then tell me where I can download the pdf version of the paper manual? It's not the same documentation. The manual is based on it, agreed, but it's not as exhaustive. And I use the open doc project alot, I just haven't found any screenshots showing a blender 2.3 interface: it's all based on 2.2, except perhaps the Python API section which has major differences. Minor differences in the interface are not mentioned, and that's the criticism I have for that documentation: it's a good source of knowledge for experienced users like you, who apparently code and have been with blender since 2.2, but not for people who start on 2.3. I didn't mean any offense, but I have looked hard for recent docs, and aside from new tutorials, nothing major really new outside the manual has been done since version 2.2x.
yes, indeed, available for people who can afford $45 for the 2.3 paper book manual. It isn't available for download yet. And now with the game functions re-integrated they're going for yet another re-write of the docs. Read again, I'm not dumb, I've been using blender for the better part of 6 months.
that's nice to have the functionality again... but it's something more to learn for newbies in blender. As if blender wasn't complex enough... I appreciate the gesture though, but there's really going to be a need for a complete rewrite of the online doc... most of it dates from the 2.2 era. So get those renders and movies and now games coming along! It's time for it now...
I think that indeed there is free software to do movies and rendered animations using raytracing. First, Cinelerra can use a linux cluster for movie rendering. Second, there's a whole bunch of modellers/raytracers out there that perform very well: Povray is the oldest and most advanced, and can run on a pvm cluster, yafray is relatively recent and can use an openmosix cluster for networked rendering, Blender now integrates a raytracer AND exports to yafray. Those are the 4 programs I know of that I use, but there are more, I just haven't looked for more. So, yes, there is free software for movie rendering already!
that's just great! Not only does MS find a way to make more money, but they also find a way to make hackers and virus writers even more happy by putting ultra vulnerable systems back on the web... I mean, sorry, but this just doesn't sound like a good idea to use win 2000 now that the source code has leaked! Not to mention the ever-growing number of viruses that will infect these machines and create a non-protectable because obsolete "virus pit" of the internet... It's like keeping someone with chicken pox in a public place: most people are vaccinated, but the few that aren't risk death if they get the disease. Oh, and of course it's an attempt to keep the youth prefering windows.... Everytime I read slashdot I get more unneverd by MS's outrageous actions! This is against common sense!!! When will law start following common sense???? probably not until the next Wallstreet crash because of the stupidest lawsuit ever... (which I thought was going to be SCO/IBM but it's not going to be bad enough to make a change in the legal system necessary...)
God, I wish there was a way to email her, or leave a comment on her website... I mean, she's gut guts and a really cool head. Maybe a little help with the english in some spots could help, but DAMN!!! She was lucky herself, her father knowing and getting her and her father out of the place... I also have a few questions, did she ever happen to see any weird animals? Back in the mid-nineties (I was about 10 then...) there were rumors of double-headed veals, 8 legged newborn horses and featherless chickens (which by now we have without radiation!) and plants that looked like they came from a prehistoric age... Elena, your sharing of those pictures with the world might help teach mankind of the power of science and avoid an even worse thing from happening again. And that is something you can be proud of, even if your life is short, you have accomplished a great deal by revealing publicly one of the taboos of the modern world. For this I would like to thank you. John
Don't you remember reading on /. just a couple of years earlier that the Chinese government had officially announced that for any future systems it will purchase it will use linux instead of Microsoft windows because "it is insecure and closed, when we know what's happening with linux"
So I don't think they'll EVER get a hold in China... at least not from the government. But since it's a communist country, they'll impose linux to their citizens... Funny in a way that a communist country will give the largest choice of equivalent programs to their citizens as opposed to a capitalist like the US which uses ONLY MS Office... But we'll see, time will tell!
Funny that it took so long for MS to realize they'd been had... I remember a friend of mine translating KDE documentation in french about 4 years ago... Not to mention the fact that asian fonts have been almost constantly present under linux, as far as I can remember. Besides, China already has Dragon Linux, and they wouldn't switch back to windows for anything else than a nuclear war threat... and even then it'd be a tough challenge! So guess what: that's not going to make a difference in the long run. MS has lost the initiative, and they're trying to make believe they still have it... I hope we can prove they're behind the Opensource community, and have been ever since linux came to being!
wrong : SONY=best tech stuff, but expensive HP=good wide distribution & support, relatively cheap EMACHINES=extreme power IBM=good linux support & good machines can be used for servers DELL=GATEWAY= crap, don't even think about linux on those boxes, nor of upgrading or replacing anything. if you need to buy another card, it's cheaper to buy another box.
haha, yeah, right... Excuse me, but who had to withdraw false advertisements in the UK? Apple? noooo... impossible!!
I thought I'd read on the web somewhere that Intel no longer had the lead, but that AMD was the technological leader nowadays. I totally think that the Windows tax is unjustified whatsoever, but the Intel tax also seems unfair to me. What do other people think?
I'm assuming whoever will fly that wing will know all of this, and will therefore find at what point the wing stalls at a high altitude to learn how to handle the beast. That's why you have a chute : if you stall on purpose but can't recover, you eject, and honestly, if you can take off and make the thing fly high enough there's no reason you can't reach a safe altitude for testing.
I'd like to remind you that the original flying models that led to the B2 and X29 were not computer controlled. Besides, progress has been made since, and even in the 60 -- when super computers did NOT exist -- Northrop developped the B36 which was a flying wing. It lost the contract to the B52 only because of a higher maintenance cost. So it can, and probably WILL work as hoped. Stop being pessimistic. If the pilot puts on a parachute for the first flights (I'd recommend for any flight anyways) I don't see what could go so badly wrong.
And what about the B2 then? excuse me, but I think flying wings can be every bit as secure as a conventional aircraft. RC flying wings are extremely stable and have none of the above mentioned problems. Besides, there are always ways to solve instability. I've seen enough RC models to believe that a full scale glider like this one will work. It's more a matter of knowing how to fly than having a "fully stable" design. The X-29 is intentionally unstable, and yet tested with a human crew! Besides, what are parachutes for, if not to save lives?
I've looked at the video, and the thing seemed pretty stable in the air. What might really influence the well flying of the thing is whether or not they pay attention to the variation of the Reynolds factor. If they size the model in a way that the Re of their wing grows along with it, then no big problem. But if the Re grows less than the size and scale, that's where you might run into trouble. I did a stduy of airfoils last year as an independent study in high school, and ended up with quite a bunch of stuff. Anyways, I'd say give it a go! You can always add a parachute to the pilot for the first couple of flights, and see how it will react in any given position... Good luck
Doesn't it sound a bit weird to anyone that all of a sudden we see a mass generation of trials against linux companies/contributors/users? I mean, first the SCO story, still not finished, then the licenses for XFree86 and Apache, and now Mandrake Linux is going to have to change names... How much further will this go? Could this all be coordinated somehow to make Opensource illegal, or improper for use in a bunch of countries? Who's next at court for having a linux distribution on his pc?