Re:Any Pixar employees here?
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Pixar For Sale?
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I'm not a pixar employee (I wish... I'd pay to be one... are you listening pixar???)... but from the outside it looks like the company has its own momentum. I, at least, have always associated Pixar more with John Lasseter than with Steve Jobs... actually, I've been a pixar fan since Toy Story, but wasn't until relatively recently (around the time Monsters Inc. came out) that I realized he was involved in it.
Re:Disney would be stupid not to buy
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Pixar For Sale?
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· Score: 1
I agree that the best Disney would do is to buy pixar and then leave them alone.
I'm sure that Disney is also full of talented and creative people that care as much about art and storytelling... the big difference is that Disney has a bunch of execs calling the shots that care more about focus groups and a comitee style aproach (hey, Shrek had a fart joke and made lots of money, we need to do better, our next movie will have more fart jokes) and don't really get what makes a movie great.
On the other hand, Pixar had John Lasseter that's the guy that mostly call the shots when it comes to the movies they make, who he came from a background as animator and has the idea that if you have a great story first, the rest (the money) will just naturally follow, and so far it has worked.
IMHO, if pixar was to be bought by Disney, even if the entire staff is left as it is, but with the disney execs calling the shots on movies and stories, they would end up just where Disney is now.
On a side note, we'll see how Disney does with its next movies. Chicken Little doesn't look that good so far to me, but it's being directed by Mark Dindal, and he did Emperor's New Groove and Cats Don't Dance, and I liked both, so I'll just take a wait and see.
Lilo and Stitch (80 millions budget, made 145 millions in the USA) and I think Brother Bear too (don't have numbers at hand, but I remember hearing that it broke even in the US but made a nice profit worldwide and is popular on video). But of course, Eisner couldn't have movies that broke the standards by actually making a profit, so he shut down the Orlando animation facility after those.
IMHO standars make more sense when it comes to low to middle end apps (including photoshop) than with higher end apps.
The general idea (from a quick reading of TFA) is that developers have a good idea of what will they find on a standard install of linux, so that there are less problems tracking down dependencies and the like, so that it's easier to create/port a program that will install and run right away for almost any distro (or so I've heard, I admit not being a linux user myself). This works best for programs that are supposed to work alongside with other programs, like adobe's own photoshop/aftefx/premiere combo... though lots of people might prefer photoshop/avid and the like, which could create problems if (just to give an example, no idea if these programs even have linux ports) photoshop was tested and optimized for redhat, while the others one for another distro.
It is much less of a concern when it comes down to high end programs like Maya or Houdini, where you'll very easily pay over 5 or 10 grands on a single program, or much more on more specialized software like medical stuff and the like. Basically when you go on that level that the software costs so much it's much more likely that the computer they run on will be designed around the program (instead of the program around the computer), and a set of standards are much less of a concern since you would just pick the distribution the software designer recomends (and quite a few will just not give you support unless you do that).
Or at least that's how I see it from this side of the monitor..:)
They do that already. When I go to google.com I get the venezuelan version in spanish (it even says the country below the google name), I have to configure it manually if I want the english version, regardless of the ISP use. So if they have that system already working, I'd guess it would be very easy for them to just redirect any access to gmail from the UK to googlemail... and maybe ask to put the entire email in the login like MSN and hotmail does so that you can access gmail accounts within the UK or googlemail accounts on other countries.
I work for a video producing company, and we use wmv a LOT, not because we want to (I do prefer MPEG myself), but because there are times when a video needs to be shown tomorrow, so it need to be aproved tonight (or, most likely, changes need to be done that'll keep me up all night making them) and for the time being I haven't found any other format that is small enough to email (most of the companies we work for keep the email attachment limit to 10 megs) yet good enough to be seen (barely, but enough to aprove/change the video), plus we can be sure that everyone involved will be able to see it without us spending two hours on the phone trying to explain to them how to make it work.
All of them use MPEG for their videos once it hits their intranet, though. The only real time we use WMV is when we need to email it.
Wonder how long until they add a capcha thing to that one (if they haven't already, don't have any number handy to try it). My cell phone provider here in Venezuela have had a simmilar system for a while on their website, but recently lots of people started using it to spam so they added a capcha system a few months ago (and a bit annoying one at that, you not only have to read the numbers but also input them by clicking on a keypad that shows up on the page where the numbers appear in random locations on it).
I think the downloading is illegal too... but they just can't get you for downloading unless they prove you were downloading, and the only real way to do it would be to provide the copyrighted material and catch people downloading, which would be entrapment and only law officers can legally do it. Then again, IANAL and I'm not in the US either..:)
Maya complete can he bought for $2000, and they also offer the free learning version (heavily watermarked, though) and an educational version for around $400 (that's exactly like the $7000 version except that you're not allowed to make commercial work with it). You can also go with XSI that has a basic version for $400, and that is a tool pro's use (used in Van Helsing and Harry Potter 3, just to name the two ones that pop up to my mind right now), or a free version that limited in the size of the renders but isn't nearly as heavily watermarked as maya PLE.
There no real idea. I do know that in the spanish version of the copyright warning thing that they show here in Venezuela before DVD/VHS movies, it does specify rentals as one of the things expressely forbidden without the copyright owner's consent, at least since I've had my first VCR (a betamax). I think in the US (I know it's like that here in Venezuela) libraries are under a different law, though, they have fewer restrictions.
The one thing I do know is that back when I was watching out for the wing commander movie (big wing commander fan here... I even midly enjoyed the movie * ducks *), the rental version came out first priced at around $250 or $300. I've also seen here at least two DVD movies I've rented that have a non skippable/non FFable mexican anti piracy commercial that the retail versions didn't have.
Not that it matters here, anyway... other than blockbuster every single rental place here has mostly copied DVDs, and usually they have a premium spot (a full wall on the place I usually go to) for shakycam versions of movies that are either showing on the theaters, or haven't started showing yet... and at least twice I've seen a movie available there for rental a few days before it's released in US theaters...:)
Rental DVDs are different (and much more expensive) than retail DVDs. If this comes to pass, probably rental DVDs will come with a signal that will let the home equipment know it's a rental, and disable the copying for that DVD.
A little bit of both. Record exects being a PITA by not allowing digital music to be sold without some kind of DRM, and the iPod being the digital player owned by about 90% of the potential market, the main other form of DRM (WMA) not being compatible with iPods, and apple refusing to license their form of DRM.
IIRC Peter Jackson said in an interview that the director's cut of the LOTR movies was the theatrical ones, which is why he called the other ones "extendeds".
A director's cut is a movie exactly how the director wanted it, and then usually stuff are cut out for censure, lenght, confused screening audiences and the like. In LOTR case, according to Peter Jackson at least, are exactly how he wanted them in the theatrical versions, and then he added the extra parts as something extra for the book fans, but he cutted in the first place because it hurted the flow of the movie. IMHO there are a couple of things in the extendeds that should have been in the theatricals, though... like for example when Gandalf tells Frodo about Smeagol... since in Two Towers Frodo already knows about it but is never shown when he heard the name in the theatrical of Fellowship.
I may be feeding a troll, but what the law says is that when a public administration is going to buy software, it must look first for free (as in libre) alternatives. If none are found, or are not as good/adequate than comercial ones, then the comercial ones are used instead.
The actual law (the one they have on the untranslated link in the summary) says (paraphrasing):
- Unrestricted use of the program for any purpose (first item of parent post) - Exhaustive inspection of the working mechanisms of the program (third item) - Creation and distributing of copies of the program (basically the 5th item, but they don't mention freedom, change to "it allows", but in esense is the same) - Modification of the software and freedom to distribute said modifications and of the new resulting sofftware, under these same conditions. (doesn't say the same license, but simmilar)
Still is basically the same, the word "source" isn't mentionted, but it's implied if you're allowed to modify the program, I'd think.
One quick comment. I haven't followed much google's indexing so not 100% sure how it works/will work, but on section 1c (Commercial vs. nonprofit), the fact that the index is freely accesible doesn't mean it's nonprofit, as google is clearly looking to profit from it (with adwords and I'd guess with links to sales on amazon and simmilar).
The one thing that made me run Opera now is that Firefox sometimes starts to hog 100% of processor usage after keeping it open for a while (a day or two), which is something I do most of the time. Can't really say why, and can't really replicate it because it happens at different time intervals (sometimes hours, sometimes days, sometimes not at all) but when it does I have to kill the process to make it go away. Same thing happens with thunderbird, so for the time being I'm using opera for mail and browsing, so far haven't had any problems with its RAM and CPU usage.
I know I've heard of other people having the same problem, but haven't looked much into it either.
but IIRC the name Indians isn't really correct either, but they were called like that because Christophes Columbus though he had arrived at India (which was his original plan except that he didn't count of America being in the middle between Spain and India).
However, since I'm from Venezuela, my knowledge of US history is limited to what I've seen on looney tunes, but I do remember talking about that in high school about that regarding the native venezuelans (that are sometimes called indios).
It will be interesting to see how this goes from here. I have to say it's refreshing to see someone trying something new (since Sony and Microsoft so far seem that will only offer stronger versions of what they already have) and I can see how this can work very nicely, but the big factor there will be the games.
One advantage Nintendo has is that they make lots of games themselves, and they're mostly good, but I don't think they could survive with only their own games for their console, and this controller is different enough from the standard (and from other consoles) that it might scare away other developers.
I'll hope for it to succeed, though... I'd personally love to play a first person star wars game where I swing the controller around like a lightsaber to control it on screen... I know I've done it already with the TV ones..:)
Well, to be fair, you mostly do that today. There are quite a few standalone modellers (Silo being the first that pops to mind), there are apps for texturing (deep paint), there's also zbrush that can model, but its strenght lies in creating highly realistic bump/displacement maps easily, there are programs that work for rigging and animating (it's not really practical to separate them into different programs, the animation's workflow depends too much on the rigging) like Sega's Animanium, Alias's Motionbuilder or even Project:Messiah that has been around for a looooooong time, and standalone renderers, like mental ray or renderman.
There is the posibility for studios these days to pick one program for everything, or smaller programs for different areas, even different programs to do different things even if they're fully capable on their own (before mental ray was bundled with maya it wasn't uncommon at all for companies to use lightwave as a renderer), or just do what big companies do, create their own programs.
That's actually why maya is so big around big name studios, because its embedded programming language (MEL) is VERY powerful, so you can literally use maya as a backend and write your own programs around it (that's what Pixar does, for example... the water simulator in finding nemo was heavily based on maya's particle dynamics engine).
On a more personal note, I do prefer to have one single program to do everything (well, maybe except texturing, I prefer a regular graphics program for that) than several to do small things. I guess I prefer to spend more time practicing my 3D than learning different UIs for each little part of the process.
"...a lot of European gamers would rather just have an English-language-only release."
I guess it depends on the country. In my experience when visiting Spain a year and a half ago, most of them don't like anything that isn't in spanish, even when the user speaks english. I guess it's what they're used to since all movies are dubbed in spanish there (here in Venezuela only kid movies are dubbed, the rest come in original language with subtitles).
Back then the Terminator 3 game was coming out, and one of the big selling points in the TV ads was that the voice actor for the terminator was the same that does Schwarzenegger's voice in the movie's dubs..:)
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I'm not a pixar employee (I wish... I'd pay to be one... are you listening pixar???)... but from the outside it looks like the company has its own momentum. I, at least, have always associated Pixar more with John Lasseter than with Steve Jobs... actually, I've been a pixar fan since Toy Story, but wasn't until relatively recently (around the time Monsters Inc. came out) that I realized he was involved in it.
I agree that the best Disney would do is to buy pixar and then leave them alone.
I'm sure that Disney is also full of talented and creative people that care as much about art and storytelling... the big difference is that Disney has a bunch of execs calling the shots that care more about focus groups and a comitee style aproach (hey, Shrek had a fart joke and made lots of money, we need to do better, our next movie will have more fart jokes) and don't really get what makes a movie great.
On the other hand, Pixar had John Lasseter that's the guy that mostly call the shots when it comes to the movies they make, who he came from a background as animator and has the idea that if you have a great story first, the rest (the money) will just naturally follow, and so far it has worked.
IMHO, if pixar was to be bought by Disney, even if the entire staff is left as it is, but with the disney execs calling the shots on movies and stories, they would end up just where Disney is now.
On a side note, we'll see how Disney does with its next movies. Chicken Little doesn't look that good so far to me, but it's being directed by Mark Dindal, and he did Emperor's New Groove and Cats Don't Dance, and I liked both, so I'll just take a wait and see.
Lilo and Stitch (80 millions budget, made 145 millions in the USA) and I think Brother Bear too (don't have numbers at hand, but I remember hearing that it broke even in the US but made a nice profit worldwide and is popular on video). But of course, Eisner couldn't have movies that broke the standards by actually making a profit, so he shut down the Orlando animation facility after those.
You can already. Just add -site:(URL here without the ()'s) at the end of the search, as many as sites you want not to be listed in the results... :)
IMHO standars make more sense when it comes to low to middle end apps (including photoshop) than with higher end apps.
:)
The general idea (from a quick reading of TFA) is that developers have a good idea of what will they find on a standard install of linux, so that there are less problems tracking down dependencies and the like, so that it's easier to create/port a program that will install and run right away for almost any distro (or so I've heard, I admit not being a linux user myself). This works best for programs that are supposed to work alongside with other programs, like adobe's own photoshop/aftefx/premiere combo... though lots of people might prefer photoshop/avid and the like, which could create problems if (just to give an example, no idea if these programs even have linux ports) photoshop was tested and optimized for redhat, while the others one for another distro.
It is much less of a concern when it comes down to high end programs like Maya or Houdini, where you'll very easily pay over 5 or 10 grands on a single program, or much more on more specialized software like medical stuff and the like. Basically when you go on that level that the software costs so much it's much more likely that the computer they run on will be designed around the program (instead of the program around the computer), and a set of standards are much less of a concern since you would just pick the distribution the software designer recomends (and quite a few will just not give you support unless you do that).
Or at least that's how I see it from this side of the monitor..
They do that already. When I go to google.com I get the venezuelan version in spanish (it even says the country below the google name), I have to configure it manually if I want the english version, regardless of the ISP use. So if they have that system already working, I'd guess it would be very easy for them to just redirect any access to gmail from the UK to googlemail... and maybe ask to put the entire email in the login like MSN and hotmail does so that you can access gmail accounts within the UK or googlemail accounts on other countries.
Depends on the use, though.
I work for a video producing company, and we use wmv a LOT, not because we want to (I do prefer MPEG myself), but because there are times when a video needs to be shown tomorrow, so it need to be aproved tonight (or, most likely, changes need to be done that'll keep me up all night making them) and for the time being I haven't found any other format that is small enough to email (most of the companies we work for keep the email attachment limit to 10 megs) yet good enough to be seen (barely, but enough to aprove/change the video), plus we can be sure that everyone involved will be able to see it without us spending two hours on the phone trying to explain to them how to make it work.
All of them use MPEG for their videos once it hits their intranet, though. The only real time we use WMV is when we need to email it.
Wonder how long until they add a capcha thing to that one (if they haven't already, don't have any number handy to try it). My cell phone provider here in Venezuela have had a simmilar system for a while on their website, but recently lots of people started using it to spam so they added a capcha system a few months ago (and a bit annoying one at that, you not only have to read the numbers but also input them by clicking on a keypad that shows up on the page where the numbers appear in random locations on it).
But that might mean that Maya will finally catch up to Max's advanced teapot modelling tools... :)
I think the downloading is illegal too... but they just can't get you for downloading unless they prove you were downloading, and the only real way to do it would be to provide the copyrighted material and catch people downloading, which would be entrapment and only law officers can legally do it. Then again, IANAL and I'm not in the US either.. :)
Maya complete can he bought for $2000, and they also offer the free learning version (heavily watermarked, though) and an educational version for around $400 (that's exactly like the $7000 version except that you're not allowed to make commercial work with it). You can also go with XSI that has a basic version for $400, and that is a tool pro's use (used in Van Helsing and Harry Potter 3, just to name the two ones that pop up to my mind right now), or a free version that limited in the size of the renders but isn't nearly as heavily watermarked as maya PLE.
There no real idea. I do know that in the spanish version of the copyright warning thing that they show here in Venezuela before DVD/VHS movies, it does specify rentals as one of the things expressely forbidden without the copyright owner's consent, at least since I've had my first VCR (a betamax). I think in the US (I know it's like that here in Venezuela) libraries are under a different law, though, they have fewer restrictions.
:)
The one thing I do know is that back when I was watching out for the wing commander movie (big wing commander fan here... I even midly enjoyed the movie * ducks *), the rental version came out first priced at around $250 or $300. I've also seen here at least two DVD movies I've rented that have a non skippable/non FFable mexican anti piracy commercial that the retail versions didn't have.
Not that it matters here, anyway... other than blockbuster every single rental place here has mostly copied DVDs, and usually they have a premium spot (a full wall on the place I usually go to) for shakycam versions of movies that are either showing on the theaters, or haven't started showing yet... and at least twice I've seen a movie available there for rental a few days before it's released in US theaters...
Rental DVDs are different (and much more expensive) than retail DVDs. If this comes to pass, probably rental DVDs will come with a signal that will let the home equipment know it's a rental, and disable the copying for that DVD.
A little bit of both. Record exects being a PITA by not allowing digital music to be sold without some kind of DRM, and the iPod being the digital player owned by about 90% of the potential market, the main other form of DRM (WMA) not being compatible with iPods, and apple refusing to license their form of DRM.
IIRC Peter Jackson said in an interview that the director's cut of the LOTR movies was the theatrical ones, which is why he called the other ones "extendeds". A director's cut is a movie exactly how the director wanted it, and then usually stuff are cut out for censure, lenght, confused screening audiences and the like. In LOTR case, according to Peter Jackson at least, are exactly how he wanted them in the theatrical versions, and then he added the extra parts as something extra for the book fans, but he cutted in the first place because it hurted the flow of the movie. IMHO there are a couple of things in the extendeds that should have been in the theatricals, though... like for example when Gandalf tells Frodo about Smeagol... since in Two Towers Frodo already knows about it but is never shown when he heard the name in the theatrical of Fellowship.
Last theory I heard was that they had help from the Gauls and some as yet unidentified strenght increasing drug
I may be feeding a troll, but what the law says is that when a public administration is going to buy software, it must look first for free (as in libre) alternatives. If none are found, or are not as good/adequate than comercial ones, then the comercial ones are used instead.
The actual law (the one they have on the untranslated link in the summary) says (paraphrasing):
- Unrestricted use of the program for any purpose (first item of parent post)
- Exhaustive inspection of the working mechanisms of the program (third item)
- Creation and distributing of copies of the program (basically the 5th item, but they don't mention freedom, change to "it allows", but in esense is the same)
- Modification of the software and freedom to distribute said modifications and of the new resulting sofftware, under these same conditions. (doesn't say the same license, but simmilar)
Still is basically the same, the word "source" isn't mentionted, but it's implied if you're allowed to modify the program, I'd think.
One quick comment. I haven't followed much google's indexing so not 100% sure how it works/will work, but on section 1c (Commercial vs. nonprofit), the fact that the index is freely accesible doesn't mean it's nonprofit, as google is clearly looking to profit from it (with adwords and I'd guess with links to sales on amazon and simmilar).
The one thing that made me run Opera now is that Firefox sometimes starts to hog 100% of processor usage after keeping it open for a while (a day or two), which is something I do most of the time. Can't really say why, and can't really replicate it because it happens at different time intervals (sometimes hours, sometimes days, sometimes not at all) but when it does I have to kill the process to make it go away. Same thing happens with thunderbird, so for the time being I'm using opera for mail and browsing, so far haven't had any problems with its RAM and CPU usage.
I know I've heard of other people having the same problem, but haven't looked much into it either.
but IIRC the name Indians isn't really correct either, but they were called like that because Christophes Columbus though he had arrived at India (which was his original plan except that he didn't count of America being in the middle between Spain and India).
However, since I'm from Venezuela, my knowledge of US history is limited to what I've seen on looney tunes, but I do remember talking about that in high school about that regarding the native venezuelans (that are sometimes called indios).
It will be interesting to see how this goes from here. I have to say it's refreshing to see someone trying something new (since Sony and Microsoft so far seem that will only offer stronger versions of what they already have) and I can see how this can work very nicely, but the big factor there will be the games.
:)
One advantage Nintendo has is that they make lots of games themselves, and they're mostly good, but I don't think they could survive with only their own games for their console, and this controller is different enough from the standard (and from other consoles) that it might scare away other developers.
I'll hope for it to succeed, though... I'd personally love to play a first person star wars game where I swing the controller around like a lightsaber to control it on screen... I know I've done it already with the TV ones..
Here are quite a few.. :)
_ Links_List
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Tutorial
Well, to be fair, you mostly do that today. There are quite a few standalone modellers (Silo being the first that pops to mind), there are apps for texturing (deep paint), there's also zbrush that can model, but its strenght lies in creating highly realistic bump/displacement maps easily, there are programs that work for rigging and animating (it's not really practical to separate them into different programs, the animation's workflow depends too much on the rigging) like Sega's Animanium, Alias's Motionbuilder or even Project:Messiah that has been around for a looooooong time, and standalone renderers, like mental ray or renderman.
There is the posibility for studios these days to pick one program for everything, or smaller programs for different areas, even different programs to do different things even if they're fully capable on their own (before mental ray was bundled with maya it wasn't uncommon at all for companies to use lightwave as a renderer), or just do what big companies do, create their own programs.
That's actually why maya is so big around big name studios, because its embedded programming language (MEL) is VERY powerful, so you can literally use maya as a backend and write your own programs around it (that's what Pixar does, for example... the water simulator in finding nemo was heavily based on maya's particle dynamics engine).
On a more personal note, I do prefer to have one single program to do everything (well, maybe except texturing, I prefer a regular graphics program for that) than several to do small things. I guess I prefer to spend more time practicing my 3D than learning different UIs for each little part of the process.
"...a lot of European gamers would rather just have an English-language-only release."
:)
I guess it depends on the country. In my experience when visiting Spain a year and a half ago, most of them don't like anything that isn't in spanish, even when the user speaks english. I guess it's what they're used to since all movies are dubbed in spanish there (here in Venezuela only kid movies are dubbed, the rest come in original language with subtitles).
Back then the Terminator 3 game was coming out, and one of the big selling points in the TV ads was that the voice actor for the terminator was the same that does Schwarzenegger's voice in the movie's dubs..