"Groundless threats of legal proceedings (1) If a person threatens to bring an action against another person ( threatened person ) on the ground that the threatened person has infringed: (a) a registered trade mark; or (b) a trade mark alleged by the person to be registered; any person aggrieved by the threat ( plaintiff ) may bring an action (either in a prescribed court or in any other court having jurisdiction) against the person making the threat ( defendant ). [...] The plaintiff may also recover any damages that he or she has sustained because of the defendant's conduct."
We also have a kind of loser pays here; not in all cases, but I think where the judge determines that the loser shouldn't have brought the action in the first place, or has caused the winner unreasonable costs. It's not perfect, but it prevents the kind of systemic abuse of the system that you USians seem to be suffering. Your legislators seem to be caught up in a fantasy world where imagined infringements of sacrosanct constitutional rights are more important than demonstrated failures and injustices caused by the status quo. Good luck with that whole Democracy thing, anyway. I've heard it's the bomb.
Before Google Maps there were plenty of Free Software projects doing the same thing, but without such a slick UI. Now they've seen how to do it right, they're catching up. For a Free online mapping framework that works as nicely as Google Maps, try ka-map:
You can zoom all the way from orbit to street level, in your web browser, in freely-navigable realtime 3D; also publish data directly to a spatial database and once we get the kinks out (want to help?) dynamically search within the 3D world.
The X in X3D stands for eXtensible. It includes a mechanism for extensions and profiles (which are sets of extensions on top of whichever core profile you choose). This shortcuts the long ISO standards cycle. So if you want to support IK, morph targets, physics, whatever: you write the extension, implement it, and propose it for inclusion in the next ISO round.
For example, there's a Web3D working group adding programmable shaders to X3D right now. I've seen two separate running implementations; all the cute features of the new graphics cards. Shiny chrome! Rust! Toons! Wheeee!
Sure, this is a non-trivial amount of work, but it's easier than any other way you could do this. You don't have to reinvent the core profile, so you can concentrate on your extensions. You'll get feedback from other consortium members, which will probably actually improve your new profile. You can build on the work of others, and others can build on your work.
Web3D consortium membership is cheap. For individuals it's $100, and for corporations it's way less than W3C for example.
It's possible that Sony's Collada will take off; if it turns out as open as they're saying, I think it will. I've seen too many proprietary Web3D formats backed by big names fail to expect that path to ever work. If Collada does take off - great! It's XML as well, transforms to and from X3D should be very straightforward.
The planet-earth project is building a realtime, immersive, user-created map of the whole world and everything in it. It's inspired by Earth from Snow Crash, among other things. We're building an open platform called 3map, Free Software under the GPL.
We now have running code and actual funding from the Telstra Broadband Fund. We're on a one-year timeline. Contributors are more than welcome;)
Are you insane? 1 MHz? How did you overclock your C64 beyond the native 60Hz?
Editorial comment is traditional
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 1
You've never heard the word "editorial"? Or the phrase "editorial comment"? Editors have been adding their subjective comments to stories in traditional media since time immemorial.
"Impartiality" is a fad started by the wire services who need to sell their stories to both left and right-wing outlets. Far better to have an editor who is clear about their perspective, like Michael and the other/. editors.
What you describe above is the job of a sub-editor. And we all know that slashdot doesn't have any subs; if they did, the articles would be devoid of the speling errors that currently lend their charm to this site.
Check out Wings3D - it's a wonderful dedicated low-poly modeler, inspired by Nendo (the little brother of Mirai, which is the tool of choice for many professional game modelers).
Wings3D is Free Software, and it's already surpassed Nendo in many areas. The user experience is unmatched - closer to modeling with clay than I've ever got on a computer before.
There are versions available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, and if you want to make a port to your favourite platform or add your favourite feature the source code is available.
Mistranslation (Re:gibberish)
on
Sony PCG-U1
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The Japanese name for this thing is "Ichiban chiisai Vaio", which translates directly as "number 1 small Vaio". An idiomatic translation would be "The smallest Vaio", although in Japanese as well as English "Number 1" also connotes "best". There's no suggestion in the Japanese name that it's aimed at kids; rather that it's ultra-portable, something you could put in your purse, fit into your 3-square-meter million-dollar Tokyo apartment, or use on a packed Shinkansen. The English trademark "my first Vaio" gives a different impression of the device, at least to native English speakers, but native English speakers are not the primary audience for this.
"Hypermedia" already has a meaning. Mr. Katz is attempting to coin a new usage for it here, which is only tangentially related to its current meaning.
In its current usage, "hyper" refers to beyond, as in "hypertext" (with a connotation of "beyond linear").
Mr. Katz is attempting to redefine the "hyper" in hypermedia to mean "hype" (a contraction of hyperbole), or possibly "hyper" as a contraction of hyperactive. This kind of misuse of terms which already have an important and useful meaning is damaging to communication.
The Web is an example of hypermedia, and television is not.
I define it thus: hypermedia occurs when multimedia information is structured in a hyperlinked information space. Simple enough? Please Jon, find another term with which to flag your rant. You'll only confuse and irritate your readers, especially playing to the/. audience, who undoubtedly know the existing meaning of the term.
The OS X build is looking good. On my G4 dual 800 with a GeForce 3 card I get 90fps in game, while on my P3 dual 800 with a GeForce 3 I get 30fps on the same settings.
Have you all - gone - completely - insane?
VRML rules the Universe, and I will explain why.
There are comments that VRML is slower than specialised game engines. Well, duh. It's a general solution, they are specific solutions. There are many things that you can do in VRML that are not possible in game engines. For example, arbitrarily large worlds. Every object being active and scriptable. In the Quake engine, it's not possible to make a door rotate on its hinge. Quake only allows for sliding doors. In VRML, of course, any object can do anything. In Quake, the largest space you can make is the size of a dance hall. In VRML, you can make a space as big as the solar system, and zoom in to a grain of sand. If you've ever tried to use a game engine, you'll know; they're great within their constraints. But those constraints are severe.
VRML is the only general, extensible solution for VR. And it happens to be an open standard, controlled by a consortium with Open Source as a core part of its platform. It's come a long way since 1997. It's integrated into MPEG4 - go to The MPEG4 spec page and do a search for "VRML". It's been extended with NURBS, geospatial capabilities, and more. It's fully scriptable with Java, ECMAScript, and whatever else you want to plug into the open source.
There are comments here that what we need is and XML language for Web3D. OK, fine, you got it. VRML has an XML encoding; it's called X3D. The old encoding still works too.
It's out there now, being used in real applications to actually do stuff with VR beyond running around in a maze shooting blocky 256-colour monsters. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
If you want to know what's actually going on now, the best source for general Web3D info is Sandy Ressler's about.com site.
If you want cool tools for VRML, go to the new kings of Web3D - ParallelGraphics. They have authoring tools for Windows, and a browser for Mac and Windows. Unfortunately they are WinTel-centric, so no Linux, and no Mac authoring. Shout at them until they come around. Nicely, of course.
If you want a visual VRML authoring tool for Windows, go to Spazz3D, the most useful tool to ever have such a stupid name.
But this is Slashdot, so here's the dirt: for the Free Software/Open Source angle, go to OpenVRML. They have a browser for all major platforms, and if you don't like it, you can fix it yourself.
All your Intellectual Property are belong to Them
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 1
I see a lot of comments that the traditional union stuff; higher pay, shorter hours, aren't what we want, and I agree. But what about that clause in your contract that says 'everything you create or think of, whether on or off company time, awake or asleep, belongs to $company'? What about your right to own what you create in your own time? Your right to release it under the GPL or whatever damn license you like?
These contract clauses are industry standard, and if you ask your employer about them, they'll say 'oh, we don't enforce that' - but it's in writing, and if you come up with the next killer app in your basement, you can bet they'll want a piece/the whole thing.
It's needlessly difficult to negotiate these clauses out; there's lawyer overhead, and if you bring it up in an interview you're gonna look like a troublemaker. This is the kind of thing that only changes if many people stand up at once and say 'this clause is stupid and unacceptable' - which requires collective organisation, also known as a union, or professional association, or whatever.
Non-compete clauses (you may not work on anything in technology$ field for x years after you leave us) tend to get thrown out of court, but they exist anyway, and shouldn't, at least not in such a broad form.
There are plenty of other stupid clauses in contracts, and rather than wages, this is the kind of thing an association could fix for us. Unpaid overtime isn't an issue for those of us on hourly contracts or who expect it in exchange for a fat salary, but I agree that it's an issue that server support types could organise around... [ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
Hey there Doc.
planet-earth uses GeoVRML as the basis for our main data representation. See the thread around 4 below entitled Remember 'Earth' from SnowCrash? for more info; you may have to reduce your threshold to see it, it's currently rated (Score:2, Insightful).
Note that there's an open source GeoVRML implementation, and planet-earth itself is GPL. [ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
I'm the instigator of the planet-earth project. I'm a mere interface designer myself, but we do have real hackers involved as well. We have a CVS running at sourceforge, and are starting to document our architecture. More info is, of course, at the website.
The main insight driving our project is derived from the data-is-difficult problem noted in another thread. We distribute the data-collection tsk among all our users. This is, of course, the only approach known to scale. Everyone knows a little about their local area. Handheld GPS units are becoming widespread, which makes things even easier. The readings from these things are superseding survey data these days.
Even if you don't know your lat/long, you can still contribute to the planet-earth database: it's an immersive 3D navigable representation, with landmarks, waypoints etc. - so just zoom around until you find your house, and attach some metadata to it - This is My House! or This is My Local Cafe and it has Very Good Coffee but lousy service. If there's no geometry there, then upload a VRML file, or choose from the library of available archetypes.
You don't have to navigate it in 3D if you don't want to; data is separated from representation, in other words, we do XML.
We allow multiple conflicting data and geometry at the same point in geospace/time, no problem - it's up to the user's filter set to decide which version to display, based on their preferences. Dynamic filter queries, good stuff.
There's plenty more to this, of course. Ask me in this thread, or email (address at the website).
V.
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
It's odd... the Slashdot readership seems to be changing. This site has always been pro free software and open standards, and anti proprietary software and closed standards. That's the ethical stance to take, and there's no more necessity to present the other side of the story than there would be to present "the other side of the story" than the mainstream media would do when reporting on the arrest of a homicidal maniac.
Objectivity in media is, in any case, a lie, invented by wire services so that they could sell their canned reports to both left and right wing newspapers. Every publication is informed by the views of its management and staff ; it's more honest to do as Slashdot does, and just declare your biases up front.
So I wonder what draws all these trolling incoherently pro-MS people here, with their extremely thin arguments, and studied reluctance to ever engage an interlocutor by responding to a refutation. It frightens me to think that people might be such dupes as to actually think that MS has been a force for good (other than MS employees, who have plenty of motivation to deceive themselves, or who take comfort in the positive efforts of their own ethical group within the belly of the beast (remember though the admonition that it is impossible to do good within an evil system - this is what i try to live by, though i realise that many sincere and intelligent people disagree))... so, in order to avoid the yawning chasm of that thought, i prefer to believe that these pro-MS trolls are one guy at an IP-spoofed terminal at Redmond Marketing. Please let it be so. [ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
>The site: www.cosmosoftware.com has been >down for months.
Like any large organisation, CAI (who own Cosmo Player now) has lots of people in it working on different things in different ways. It does seem like VRML is Too Open for some people there right now (or something), but others are working hard to get cosmosoftware back up again.
In the meantime, I run a mirror at www.karmanaut.com/cosmo/player/. I host versions for Mac and Windoze, and link to SGI for the IRIX version. Sure, it's a 3 MB download, but what do you expect for cyberspace? This is a bigger deal than some HTML parser, kids. How big is Q3Test for Linux? 33MB? I agree that crowbarring cyberspace into a browser plugin is a stupid idea - but we've got to start somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
groundless trademark claimants get sued by you!
/ tma1995121/s129.html
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act
"Groundless threats of legal proceedings
(1) If a person threatens to bring an action against another person ( threatened person ) on the ground that the threatened person has infringed:
(a) a registered trade mark; or
(b) a trade mark alleged by the person to be registered;
any person aggrieved by the threat ( plaintiff ) may bring an action (either in a prescribed court or in any other court having jurisdiction) against the person making the threat ( defendant ).
[...]
The plaintiff may also recover any damages that he or she has sustained because of the defendant's conduct."
We also have a kind of loser pays here; not in all cases, but I think where the judge determines that the loser shouldn't have brought the action in the first place, or has caused the winner unreasonable costs. It's not perfect, but it prevents the kind of systemic abuse of the system that you USians seem to be suffering. Your legislators seem to be caught up in a fantasy world where imagined infringements of sacrosanct constitutional rights are more important than demonstrated failures and injustices caused by the status quo. Good luck with that whole Democracy thing, anyway. I've heard it's the bomb.
- ka-Map
Here's a demo site to see how it works:- http://maps.dmsolutions.ca/
If you're interested in a snowcrash-like spinny Earth, I'm involved in a project to build a Free one of those - you can try it out today atYou can zoom all the way from orbit to street level, in your web browser, in freely-navigable realtime 3D; also publish data directly to a spatial database and once we get the kinks out (want to help?) dynamically search within the 3D world.
The X in X3D stands for eXtensible. It includes a mechanism for extensions and profiles (which are sets of extensions on top of whichever core profile you choose). This shortcuts the long ISO standards cycle. So if you want to support IK, morph targets, physics, whatever: you write the extension, implement it, and propose it for inclusion in the next ISO round.
For example, there's a Web3D working group adding programmable shaders to X3D right now. I've seen two separate running implementations; all the cute features of the new graphics cards. Shiny chrome! Rust! Toons! Wheeee!
Sure, this is a non-trivial amount of work, but it's easier than any other way you could do this. You don't have to reinvent the core profile, so you can concentrate on your extensions. You'll get feedback from other consortium members, which will probably actually improve your new profile. You can build on the work of others, and others can build on your work.
Web3D consortium membership is cheap. For individuals it's $100, and for corporations it's way less than W3C for example.
It's possible that Sony's Collada will take off; if it turns out as open as they're saying, I think it will. I've seen too many proprietary Web3D formats backed by big names fail to expect that path to ever work. If Collada does take off - great! It's XML as well, transforms to and from X3D should be very straightforward.
The planet-earth project is building a realtime, immersive, user-created map of the whole world and everything in it. It's inspired by Earth from Snow Crash, among other things. We're building an open platform called 3map, Free Software under the GPL.
We now have running code and actual funding from the Telstra Broadband Fund. We're on a one-year timeline. Contributors are more than welcome ;)
Are you insane? 1 MHz? How did you overclock your C64 beyond the native 60Hz?
You've never heard the word "editorial"? Or the phrase "editorial comment"? Editors have been adding their subjective comments to stories in traditional media since time immemorial.
/. editors.
"Impartiality" is a fad started by the wire services who need to sell their stories to both left and right-wing outlets. Far better to have an editor who is clear about their perspective, like Michael and the other
What you describe above is the job of a sub-editor. And we all know that slashdot doesn't have any subs; if they did, the articles would be devoid of the speling errors that currently lend their charm to this site.
Check out Wings3D - it's a wonderful dedicated low-poly modeler, inspired by Nendo (the little brother of Mirai, which is the tool of choice for many professional game modelers).
Wings3D is Free Software, and it's already surpassed Nendo in many areas. The user experience is unmatched - closer to modeling with clay than I've ever got on a computer before.
There are versions available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, and if you want to make a port to your favourite platform or add your favourite feature the source code is available.
Download Wings3D immediately, you'll never look back.
--
The Japanese name for this thing is "Ichiban chiisai Vaio", which translates directly as "number 1 small Vaio". An idiomatic translation would be "The smallest Vaio", although in Japanese as well as English "Number 1" also connotes "best".
There's no suggestion in the Japanese name that it's aimed at kids; rather that it's ultra-portable, something you could put in your purse, fit into your 3-square-meter million-dollar Tokyo apartment, or use on a packed Shinkansen.
The English trademark "my first Vaio" gives a different impression of the device, at least to native English speakers, but native English speakers are not the primary audience for this.
"Hypermedia" already has a meaning. Mr. Katz is attempting to coin a new usage for it here, which is only tangentially related to its current meaning.
/. audience, who undoubtedly know the existing meaning of the term.
In its current usage, "hyper" refers to beyond, as in "hypertext" (with a connotation of "beyond linear").
Mr. Katz is attempting to redefine the "hyper" in hypermedia to mean "hype" (a contraction of hyperbole), or possibly "hyper" as a contraction of hyperactive. This kind of misuse of terms which already have an important and useful meaning is damaging to communication.
The Web is an example of hypermedia, and television is not.
I define it thus: hypermedia occurs when multimedia information is structured in a hyperlinked information space. Simple enough? Please Jon, find another term with which to flag your rant. You'll only confuse and irritate your readers, especially playing to the
Have you all - gone - completely - insane?
VRML rules the Universe, and I will explain why.
There are comments that VRML is slower than specialised game engines. Well, duh. It's a general solution, they are specific solutions. There are many things that you can do in VRML that are not possible in game engines. For example, arbitrarily large worlds. Every object being active and scriptable. In the Quake engine, it's not possible to make a door rotate on its hinge. Quake only allows for sliding doors. In VRML, of course, any object can do anything. In Quake, the largest space you can make is the size of a dance hall. In VRML, you can make a space as big as the solar system, and zoom in to a grain of sand. If you've ever tried to use a game engine, you'll know; they're great within their constraints. But those constraints are severe.
VRML is the only general, extensible solution for VR. And it happens to be an open standard, controlled by a consortium with Open Source as a core part of its platform. It's come a long way since 1997. It's integrated into MPEG4 - go to The MPEG4 spec page and do a search for "VRML". It's been extended with NURBS, geospatial capabilities, and more. It's fully scriptable with Java, ECMAScript, and whatever else you want to plug into the open source.
There are comments here that what we need is and XML language for Web3D. OK, fine, you got it. VRML has an XML encoding; it's called X3D. The old encoding still works too.
It's out there now, being used in real applications to actually do stuff with VR beyond running around in a maze shooting blocky 256-colour monsters. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
If you want to know what's actually going on now, the best source for general Web3D info is Sandy Ressler's about.com site.
If you want cool tools for VRML, go to the new kings of Web3D - ParallelGraphics. They have authoring tools for Windows, and a browser for Mac and Windows. Unfortunately they are WinTel-centric, so no Linux, and no Mac authoring. Shout at them until they come around. Nicely, of course.
If you want a visual VRML authoring tool for Windows, go to Spazz3D, the most useful tool to ever have such a stupid name.
But this is Slashdot, so here's the dirt: for the Free Software/Open Source angle, go to OpenVRML. They have a browser for all major platforms, and if you don't like it, you can fix it yourself.
I see a lot of comments that the traditional union stuff; higher pay, shorter hours, aren't what we want, and I agree. But what about that clause in your contract that says 'everything you create or think of, whether on or off company time, awake or asleep, belongs to $company'? What about your right to own what you create in your own time? Your right to release it under the GPL or whatever damn license you like?
These contract clauses are industry standard, and if you ask your employer about them, they'll say 'oh, we don't enforce that' - but it's in writing, and if you come up with the next killer app in your basement, you can bet they'll want a piece/the whole thing.
It's needlessly difficult to negotiate these clauses out; there's lawyer overhead, and if you bring it up in an interview you're gonna look like a troublemaker. This is the kind of thing that only changes if many people stand up at once and say 'this clause is stupid and unacceptable' - which requires collective organisation, also known as a union, or professional association, or whatever.
Non-compete clauses (you may not work on anything in technology$ field for x years after you leave us) tend to get thrown out of court, but they exist anyway, and shouldn't, at least not in such a broad form.
There are plenty of other stupid clauses in contracts, and rather than wages, this is the kind of thing an association could fix for us. Unpaid overtime isn't an issue for those of us on hourly contracts or who expect it in exchange for a fat salary, but I agree that it's an issue that server support types could organise around...
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
Hey there Doc.
planet-earth uses GeoVRML as the basis for our main data representation. See the thread around 4 below entitled Remember 'Earth' from SnowCrash? for more info; you may have to reduce your threshold to see it, it's currently rated (Score:2, Insightful).
Note that there's an open source GeoVRML implementation, and planet-earth itself is GPL.
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
Good hello.
I'm the instigator of the planet-earth project. I'm a mere interface designer myself, but we do have real hackers involved as well. We have a CVS running at sourceforge, and are starting to document our architecture. More info is, of course, at the website.
The main insight driving our project is derived from the data-is-difficult problem noted in another thread. We distribute the data-collection tsk among all our users. This is, of course, the only approach known to scale. Everyone knows a little about their local area. Handheld GPS units are becoming widespread, which makes things even easier. The readings from these things are superseding survey data these days.
Even if you don't know your lat/long, you can still contribute to the planet-earth database: it's an immersive 3D navigable representation, with landmarks, waypoints etc. - so just zoom around until you find your house, and attach some metadata to it - This is My House! or This is My Local Cafe and it has Very Good Coffee but lousy service. If there's no geometry there, then upload a VRML file, or choose from the library of available archetypes.
You don't have to navigate it in 3D if you don't want to; data is separated from representation, in other words, we do XML.
We allow multiple conflicting data and geometry at the same point in geospace/time, no problem - it's up to the user's filter set to decide which version to display, based on their preferences. Dynamic filter queries, good stuff.
There's plenty more to this, of course. Ask me in this thread, or email (address at the website).
V.
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
It's odd... the Slashdot readership seems to be changing. This site has always been pro free software and open standards, and anti proprietary software and closed standards. That's the ethical stance to take, and there's no more necessity to present the other side of the story than there would be to present "the other side of the story" than the mainstream media would do when reporting on the arrest of a homicidal maniac.
Objectivity in media is, in any case, a lie, invented by wire services so that they could sell their canned reports to both left and right wing newspapers. Every publication is informed by the views of its management and staff ; it's more honest to do as Slashdot does, and just declare your biases up front.
So I wonder what draws all these trolling incoherently pro-MS people here, with their extremely thin arguments, and studied reluctance to ever engage an interlocutor by responding to a refutation. It frightens me to think that people might be such dupes as to actually think that MS has been a force for good (other than MS employees, who have plenty of motivation to deceive themselves, or who take comfort in the positive efforts of their own ethical group within the belly of the beast (remember though the admonition that it is impossible to do good within an evil system - this is what i try to live by, though i realise that many sincere and intelligent people disagree))... so, in order to avoid the yawning chasm of that thought, i prefer to believe that these pro-MS trolls are one guy at an IP-spoofed terminal at Redmond Marketing.
Please let it be so.
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
what's next? multimodal interaction, kids. look it up.
V.
i've started an opensource project to create an immersive global user-created database, as you describe, at www.planet-earth.org. join us.
>The site: www.cosmosoftware.com has been
;)
>down for months.
Like any large organisation, CAI (who own Cosmo Player now) has lots of people in it working on
different things in different ways.
It does seem like VRML is Too Open for some people
there right now (or something), but others are
working hard to get cosmosoftware back up again.
In the meantime, I run a mirror at www.karmanaut.com/cosmo/player/. I host versions for Mac and Windoze, and link to SGI for the IRIX version. Sure, it's a 3 MB download, but what do you expect for cyberspace? This is a bigger deal than some HTML parser, kids. How big is Q3Test for Linux? 33MB? I agree that crowbarring cyberspace into a browser plugin is a stupid idea - but we've got to start somewhere.
Where we go next is for another post