I don't think there are many people who'd really enjoy a job without purpose.
In my country there are programs to keep unemployed people busy with artifically created jobs - those are mostly pointless, and definitely not enjoyed by those forced to do them. I suppose people used to a high workload might think they'd enjoy a job with nothing to do, but I don't think that's going to stick when they actually have one.
I didn't mean to say you're supposed to enjoy you downtime at work - as that's probably not possible - but that's a good idea to learn to keep yourself busy when such a downtime does occur. I feel that's an important skill many people seem to be lacking. At least that's my impression from watching (un|under)employed and retired people.
While it's true that motorcycles do not at all qualify as "safe", they usually have the rider thrown forward, and, most likely, over the the opposing object during a collision. This contraption on the other hand seems to ram the rider right into the opposing object.
Meaning the survival chances go from infitesmal small to nil.
[...] because (as many people have already said) people don't buy games for the actors. While that's probably true, I personally avoid games with bad voice acting.
Annoyingly, most games in my native language (interestingly both localizations and originals) have incredibly bad voice acting - no idea why that is.
But I can imagine it's partly because as voice acting for games doesn't pay as much, they don't get many good actors. Not that I think 100k isn't a lot of money, but I also have no idea how much work this guy had to put into it.
Last I checked, nobody was working on Freestyle.
Neither on its Blender integration, nor otherwise. Even getting it to compile in its current form is a bitch, as it requires legacy libraries and assumes 32 bit pointers all over the place.
Last thing I heard from the Blender integration project was that it's useless for animation anyway, as it doesn't provide a way to keep its settings across multiple frames.
But that thing about the API's interesting news.
You seriously need to learn to keep yourself busy.
Most likely, something like that will happen to you again - but it's usually temporarily. You're going to get a new job every time?
Then what're you going to do after retirement?
I don't know. If part of Greenpeace criticism was the lack of information Apple provided, like it's now with Nintendo, getting that information was a victory.
Greenpeace, as far as I can tell while not being personally involved with them, is a very large, but also very loose organization. As such, actual activism can only be organized and performed by small entities within that organization.
The "management", for lack of a better term, will then be involved with publicity work, fund raising, etc., stuff you need a certain amount of buerocracy for. Their main purpose then would be propaganda, hailing the smaller subgroup's victories, providing media coverage and, by exposure, funding.
That's at least sort of how the few NGOs I got know work, and from what I've gathered, Greenpeace fits that picture.
Which I'm not going to take your or Steve Job's word for.
I'm not totally dismissing the possibility that Apple was planning to cut back on its use of hazardous substances, it just seems... too convenient to react to Greenpeace' criticism by claiming to be in the middle of changing their ways.
That doesn't exactly make them "ecoterrorists", or even "nutjobs".
Also, a letter by Steve Jobs isn't very highly rated on my list of credible sources in refuting a claim attacking Apple...
Well guess what, plastic still is cheaper.
And it will be for a while - even at something like 300USD/barrel.
The industry is very much dependent on that stuff, and wood or steel is a lot harder to process. Can't very well let the tree grow into the required form, and steel casting? What's the boiling point of steel? How much energy does it take to reach that temperature?
Not feasable.
Doesn't this make th Wii the greenest? OK, so it may not be the easiest to recycle, but it's an order of magnitude better on power consumption! No, it doesn't. That's be like assuming, uh, bad analogy coming up, a manufacturer of small cars being "greener" than a manufacturer of big cars, solely based on that information.
That assumption breaks pretty quickly - they cater to different markets. While the small cars might consume less fuel, they usually sell in much higher numbers. So if there are any environmental problems in the manufacturing process, it won't matter which manufacturer is affected - the small car manufacturer, like Nintendo, sells a lot more, amplifying the effect of their assumed environmentally unsound behaviour.
Well, it does make sense to have companies publish this information, as it would enable consumers to make it a factor when deciding to purchase something, making it possible for them to vote with their wallet on environmental issues.
Not disclosing that information makes you wonder - why wouldn't they publish something that could make their products more appealing to a certain crowd? The most obvious answer would be that that information would make their product less appealing.
Nintendo probably have all kinds of mostly harmless reasons not to put that info on its website, maybe it wasn't even a conscious decision. Looking at it from Greenpeace's viewpoint though, with its natural distrust towards corporations, it makes sense to go with the obvious answer.
PS. For all those Blenderheads out there who haven't already seen it... check out www.indigorenderer.com for photorealism. Great, another photorealistic renderer for Blender.
NPRs been around for so long, why doesn't anyone make one compatible with Blender?
Are they so hard to make?
Portability probably is the main reason. Those tools are often marketed as a part of a "platform", as in the hardware and the OS don't matter (that's the idea anyway), that everyone that knows how to use the tool can do so on whatever system that happens to be en vogue at the moment.
Also, these tools are very specialized. Very often, a desktop environment's standard widget set won't provide all the widgets the tool needs.
Besides, try looking at the default Blender interface and imagine all those buttons to look like your desktop environment's.
At least for KDE, Gnome, and Windows, I don't find that idea very appealing.
When you're used to Blender's interface, probably every other interface is going to be weird for you.
Having learned 3D modelling using Blender, I find using other packages' interfaces very strange.
Especially Cinema4d's.
Renting commercial renderfarms tend to be a lot cheaper if used to render Blender files.
So cheap, it's afforable by hobbyists.
Also, there's the BURP project - distributed Blender rendering using the BOINC infrastructure.
It has some serious render power, but the output is copyrighted by the project and released under a very limiting (but probably not enforcable) license.
In the strictest sense of the word "intuitive", you're right of course.
But argueing that way gets us nowhere - "intuitive", in how it's used when talking about human-computer interfaces, means pretty much this:
"similar to whatever I'm used to" Modern software most of the time goes out of its way to provide an interface that's as close as possible to what people are used to - and with good reason. Because, like you said, computer interaction is not intuitive, people have learned a particular interface paradigm, and to deviate from that standard would mean people won't know how to use it. That limits exposure, and in a usually market driven software world, that's a bad thing.
Blender's market driven too, Blender Foundation wants as many people to use its software as possible, even when they get no immediate benefits, they get more developers, in some cases funding by selling books/tutorials/DVDs, and, most importantly I guess, public attention.
So, instead of using up so much text to explain the concept of conservative software interfaces, lets' just stick to "intuitive", shall we?
When I was there (in 2006), they seemed to have some kind of content filter that tried parse encrypted data streams.
Not successfully of course, but it sure made the encrypted traffic flow annoyingly slow.
Really?
Buzzwords are not entirely derived of meaning, it's just that they don't convey a clear message, more of an idea. Granted, most of the time, that idea has a lot of different interpretations, making the buzzword nearly meaningless.
But you wouldn't really argue that when someone calls something "Web 2.0", that there's no way to know what is meant, would you?
Yeah, and QQ certainly seems like a respectable company you'd really want to have control over your communication;)
Okay, I'm kind of trolling - don't have any personal experience with them. But watching people use their service, helping clean computers from malware spread via QQ, and their market dominance scared me.
And you don't think it's better for the smallish company to have taken this money directly from the rich person, as opposed to from the bank, where there'd be interest and another layer of dependencies involved?
Which way is better for the economy at large, I cannot say. I'd just rather trust the company, and would want them to have as much control over their resources as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think there are many people who'd really enjoy a job without purpose.
In my country there are programs to keep unemployed people busy with artifically created jobs - those are mostly pointless, and definitely not enjoyed by those forced to do them. I suppose people used to a high workload might think they'd enjoy a job with nothing to do, but I don't think that's going to stick when they actually have one.
I didn't mean to say you're supposed to enjoy you downtime at work - as that's probably not possible - but that's a good idea to learn to keep yourself busy when such a downtime does occur. I feel that's an important skill many people seem to be lacking. At least that's my impression from watching (un|under)employed and retired people.
Because Engadget can handle a slashdotting?
Just a guess...
While it's true that motorcycles do not at all qualify as "safe", they usually have the rider thrown forward, and, most likely, over the the opposing object during a collision. This contraption on the other hand seems to ram the rider right into the opposing object.
Meaning the survival chances go from infitesmal small to nil.
Annoyingly, most games in my native language (interestingly both localizations and originals) have incredibly bad voice acting - no idea why that is.
But I can imagine it's partly because as voice acting for games doesn't pay as much, they don't get many good actors. Not that I think 100k isn't a lot of money, but I also have no idea how much work this guy had to put into it.
Last I checked, nobody was working on Freestyle.
Neither on its Blender integration, nor otherwise. Even getting it to compile in its current form is a bitch, as it requires legacy libraries and assumes 32 bit pointers all over the place.
Last thing I heard from the Blender integration project was that it's useless for animation anyway, as it doesn't provide a way to keep its settings across multiple frames.
But that thing about the API's interesting news.
You seriously need to learn to keep yourself busy.
Most likely, something like that will happen to you again - but it's usually temporarily. You're going to get a new job every time?
Then what're you going to do after retirement?
Well, he's right[tm].
I don't know. If part of Greenpeace criticism was the lack of information Apple provided, like it's now with Nintendo, getting that information was a victory.
Greenpeace, as far as I can tell while not being personally involved with them, is a very large, but also very loose organization. As such, actual activism can only be organized and performed by small entities within that organization.
The "management", for lack of a better term, will then be involved with publicity work, fund raising, etc., stuff you need a certain amount of buerocracy for. Their main purpose then would be propaganda, hailing the smaller subgroup's victories, providing media coverage and, by exposure, funding.
That's at least sort of how the few NGOs I got know work, and from what I've gathered, Greenpeace fits that picture.
Which I'm not going to take your or Steve Job's word for.
I'm not totally dismissing the possibility that Apple was planning to cut back on its use of hazardous substances, it just seems... too convenient to react to Greenpeace' criticism by claiming to be in the middle of changing their ways.
Okay, point taken - smelting point.
That doesn't exactly make them "ecoterrorists", or even "nutjobs".
Also, a letter by Steve Jobs isn't very highly rated on my list of credible sources in refuting a claim attacking Apple...
Well guess what, plastic still is cheaper.
And it will be for a while - even at something like 300USD/barrel.
The industry is very much dependent on that stuff, and wood or steel is a lot harder to process. Can't very well let the tree grow into the required form, and steel casting? What's the boiling point of steel? How much energy does it take to reach that temperature?
Not feasable.
That assumption breaks pretty quickly - they cater to different markets. While the small cars might consume less fuel, they usually sell in much higher numbers. So if there are any environmental problems in the manufacturing process, it won't matter which manufacturer is affected - the small car manufacturer, like Nintendo, sells a lot more, amplifying the effect of their assumed environmentally unsound behaviour.
Well, it does make sense to have companies publish this information, as it would enable consumers to make it a factor when deciding to purchase something, making it possible for them to vote with their wallet on environmental issues.
Not disclosing that information makes you wonder - why wouldn't they publish something that could make their products more appealing to a certain crowd? The most obvious answer would be that that information would make their product less appealing.
Nintendo probably have all kinds of mostly harmless reasons not to put that info on its website, maybe it wasn't even a conscious decision. Looking at it from Greenpeace's viewpoint though, with its natural distrust towards corporations, it makes sense to go with the obvious answer.
Don't forget the huge amount of idealistic but often somewhat naive, mostly young people actually doing all the hard work for them...
Though I'd really appreciate a link supporting your claims regarding Greenpeace.
NPRs been around for so long, why doesn't anyone make one compatible with Blender?
Are they so hard to make?
Portability probably is the main reason. Those tools are often marketed as a part of a "platform", as in the hardware and the OS don't matter (that's the idea anyway), that everyone that knows how to use the tool can do so on whatever system that happens to be en vogue at the moment.
Also, these tools are very specialized. Very often, a desktop environment's standard widget set won't provide all the widgets the tool needs.
Besides, try looking at the default Blender interface and imagine all those buttons to look like your desktop environment's.
At least for KDE, Gnome, and Windows, I don't find that idea very appealing.
When you're used to Blender's interface, probably every other interface is going to be weird for you.
Having learned 3D modelling using Blender, I find using other packages' interfaces very strange.
Especially Cinema4d's.
Renting commercial renderfarms tend to be a lot cheaper if used to render Blender files.
So cheap, it's afforable by hobbyists.
Also, there's the BURP project - distributed Blender rendering using the BOINC infrastructure.
It has some serious render power, but the output is copyrighted by the project and released under a very limiting (but probably not enforcable) license.
But argueing that way gets us nowhere - "intuitive", in how it's used when talking about human-computer interfaces, means pretty much this: "similar to whatever I'm used to" Modern software most of the time goes out of its way to provide an interface that's as close as possible to what people are used to - and with good reason. Because, like you said, computer interaction is not intuitive, people have learned a particular interface paradigm, and to deviate from that standard would mean people won't know how to use it. That limits exposure, and in a usually market driven software world, that's a bad thing.
Blender's market driven too, Blender Foundation wants as many people to use its software as possible, even when they get no immediate benefits, they get more developers, in some cases funding by selling books/tutorials/DVDs, and, most importantly I guess, public attention.
So, instead of using up so much text to explain the concept of conservative software interfaces, lets' just stick to "intuitive", shall we?
When I was there (in 2006), they seemed to have some kind of content filter that tried parse encrypted data streams.
Not successfully of course, but it sure made the encrypted traffic flow annoyingly slow.
Really?
Buzzwords are not entirely derived of meaning, it's just that they don't convey a clear message, more of an idea. Granted, most of the time, that idea has a lot of different interpretations, making the buzzword nearly meaningless.
But you wouldn't really argue that when someone calls something "Web 2.0", that there's no way to know what is meant, would you?
Yeah, and QQ certainly seems like a respectable company you'd really want to have control over your communication ;)
Okay, I'm kind of trolling - don't have any personal experience with them. But watching people use their service, helping clean computers from malware spread via QQ, and their market dominance scared me.
OMG, the people I communicate with know my address!
Seriously, you can't hide your IP address, that's public information. Relying on its secrecy for security reasons is a bad idea[tm].
And you don't think it's better for the smallish company to have taken this money directly from the rich person, as opposed to from the bank, where there'd be interest and another layer of dependencies involved?
Which way is better for the economy at large, I cannot say. I'd just rather trust the company, and would want them to have as much control over their resources as possible.