Web based 3D has been tried and failed many times. I should know, I have been asked to participate in at least three major "3D web" implementations, all of which where hyped initially (Most as "Web 2.0") but have all gone down the digital drainpipe.
I suppose that it could just be my fault, but seriously: Leave 3d to the game developers. They have the resources, experience and tools, and even they can't get it right most of the time.
...they aren't going to put it back in the bottle, they at best will sue you for releasing it.
This is the single most stupid advice I've seen today.
Gee, the best case is they'll sue you. How great is that? They have more legal resources than a single guy and can sue him into oblivion. And they're right, they can (and will) win. (according to what the OP posted about their contract.)
Yeah, sure we would all benefit from the code, but the original poster of the question would get sued into oblivion and his company would become a shitty place to work for all the other programmers through no fault but some vigilante dickweed. Hurray for us! Hurray for open source! It's like saying it's okay to steal money as long as I spend it and they can't get it back.
It sickens me when people use purely self serving arguments and claim it's for everyone else's good. It does disservice to me, them, and the open source software movement.
There is lots of video of someone scrolling around a virtual screen, but no one types more than three letters on the thing. I want to see it being used properly, not being held and stroked smugly by a Japanese guy in a turtleneck. (I already own enough Apple stuff, thank you!)
In fact people are shown typing on regular keyboards several times in close up. You'd think the CEO could be shown typing on one at last, but no, he's typing away on a traditional 101-key keyboard. (And a full-size display).
One thing that would drive me nuts is not being able to touch type. You can't even rest your fingers on the keyboard without causing trouble. Never mind there appears to be no tactile indicators for the home row. (And don't get me started about the vertical key alignment. Z is not below Q, it's below W...)
I usually search the internet for things I don't already know. This seems like a really good way to keep me fenced into the stuff that I already know or that I've heard about from my friends.
I'd much rather have a search tool that eliminated all social network information from it's database. Never in my life have I wanted to search for "What did Mike do last night?"
I have an almost unique fist and last name. Almost, there's one other guy with the same name. It turns out he's a children's television director. A few years ago I started getting calls from pre-teens who wanted to wanted to be actors. This got my attention (and kind of creeped me out) so I went to investigate.
It turned out that my portfolio web site got top Google page rank, his IMDB page #2. So kids, being kids, weren't smart enough to figure out that my web site wasn't the portfolio of a TV director and contacted me through it.
Searching through Google I didn't find anything incriminating or even embarrassing about either of us, but I have some friends who haven't learned about how the words Privacy and Internet interact yet, and I don't know anything about this alter-ego except he makes a living filming children.
So I thought I'd take some precautions.
I basically Google bombed myself. I set up pages on some of my spare domains that link back to my name and portfolio as well as linking to the various articles and other popular things I've done over the years. (I made sure I didn't link anywhere that was dynamic and uncontrollable like message boards or blog posts with comments.)
Now I have a very solid (and flattering) first page of Google. It would take my involvement in a major crime or tragedy to get any unwanted results on that first page.
I also do a line of contracting under a pseudonym. (When you do programming and photography, people seem to think you can't do either properly.) The pseudonym is pretty common name that I chose after Googling a few to see what gave the best results. Working under another name is as simple as filing a DBA or FBN with the county, and letting the bank know so you can cash your checks. Yes, it's public record, but they rarely show up on Google.
But I've tried to do everything that doesn't legally require my name under one pseudonym or other. I don't need those stupid rants I posted to usenet 20 years ago to come back to haunt me. Sure, everyone does it, but we like plausible dependability.
This article has been live for something like 10 hours and there are a total 2 posts (by my settings) that have a "5" rating. That's proof enough right there that this is a waste of everyone's time. If it was smart there would be supporting posts, if it was stupid there would be Funny or Insightful digs.
Instead what we have is obviously some garbage that no one can talk about intelligently or even gives a shit about.
Sorry for wasting your time, AC, I was hoping otherwise.
Free mod points to anyone who can give me the "So What" summary. The summary is useless and the linked articles failed to inform. Usually this just mans a circle jerk, but who know, there might be something useful or important in there.
Well.. I have a Sony TX and I would suspect that it's probably competition for the Air. The Sony has a smaller (and also LED lit) screen, but is lighter and only slightly thicker. And it has a dual layer DVD burner inside.
The standard battery is replaceable and has 5 hours of life. I have an extended battery in mine and can fly from San Francisco to Tokyo (~10 hours) without running out of power.
I like the bigger screen on the Air, but I have to agree that the battery is a bit of a deal breaker. I'll wait for the next rev and see if they fix it.
And for some reason I don't rememebr the titles as well as I remember the experiences.
First computer game was coin-op tabletop Pong in some restaurant while the family was traveling cross country. I remember the whole family watching it like a TV for the whole meal. Then I was finally allowed to put a quarter in it and I lost almost immediately. Then we got in the car and left that town far behind.
The first home game machine was a Pong clone. Came with two paddles and you screwed it into the rabbit ears in the back of the TV. However it didn't have a switch to go between channel 3/4, it would only work on channel 3. But since I was right next to the CBS channel 3 transmitter, even without an antenna hooked up I couldn't get a good enough signal to get it to work. I was denied my revenge against Pong.
First educational game was some kind of math/space invaders game on my TI-99 4/a. Yeah, I don't remember the game, but I remember thinking that educational games were crap. Fast forward 25 years where I designed them for a living. That early awful experience was one of the driving forces.
The first multiplayer experience was when I was in my first year of college (1990). I sat down at a terminal and someone had left it connected to some random TinyMUD. I didn't even know there were multiplayer games! I dicked around with it for a while, but didn't really figure out what I was doing until much later. It left a lasting impression.
Later that same year I played a 2 player jet fighting sim over modem (direct dial-up, probably 300 baud). We spent 15 minutes flying towards each other, saw each other for about 1/4 of a second as we overflew each other and then got disconnected.
Around that time I played the first game that I stayed up all night playing. It was Dune 2 and it had me enthralled. I stayed up playing until the sun was well into the sky. It was a totally new type of game play that took both thought and prompt action. Started my general interest in RTSG.
The first game I pirated was Karateka on the Apple ][. Turns out that the copy protection kept it from working on my Apple//c because it couldn't access some inner disk sector.
I remember spending a few hours typing in hex codes from the back of InCider or Byte magazine to get a Missle Command style game.
I don't remember the first game I programmed. I'm sure there were dozens. The first one I wrote in assembly was a basic version of Lemmings (The first game I played on a Amiga, and the first game I played with a mouse.) However it ran too fast to be much playable and only had one level. (Remember the Turbo button?)
There are a lot more, but one thing I learned in all of the intervening years: I'm really not very good at Pong.
Hunh. And here I was thinking that my 2Ghz computer could run-time compile code faster than my old 4Mhz computer could run native code.
Glad you set me straight on that.
C++ & Python does seem to be a weird and cumbersome choice though. But when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. I hope at least the core simulation is all one language.
I'm not the GP poster, but... I've got one and I use it.
Yeah, I'm a douchebag. So what. I don't give a shit, I just like my peace and quiet. I like to be able to have a relaxing dinner without The Game flickering in the background, and I'll happily be labeled a douchebag by Random Internet Guy. I'm not sure where you've asked, but I've tried asking. Usually doesn't work "Oh, the manager won't let us turn it off." "Oh, just want to catch the scores, I'll turn it off in a bit [sic]." "I think somebody's watching it.[sic]"...
And yet, for some reason, 90% of the time I turn the TV off no one notices enough to turn it back on. No, I don't go to sports bars (or CES) trying to be a dick with it, but I suppose I am just as bad as someone who would do that. Again, I don't care.
You're at least as self righteous as I am. Re-read your post if you don't believe me. The only difference is I'm calm enough not to use all-caps. I hate TV's, you hate me for hating TV. Cool.
I think all of Gizmodo should be banned for life from CES. Hell, all of Gawker Media. I'm not sure I would have issued Gizmodo a press pass in the first place. I read Giz regularly for a while but their cheap antics and unapologetic bad judgment put me off.
(And if I get banned for life from a restaurant for turning off their TV, that's fine too. That's a win-win situation.)
You might be first. And I might be second, but most people would rather feel in control, even if it's dangerous to them. Mostly we like someone to blame.
If I get killed by a drunk driving accident, that's tragic.
If I get killed by a robot car, that's stupid. As soon as the first family of five dies in a robot car accident it's the Butlerian Jihad, regardless of the system's overall safety rate.
It's the same mental disability humans have when comparing fear vs safety of driving to flying.
In San Francisco you need to be in a pretty deep dark Faraday cage to not pick up at least 1 "2WIREXXX". These are what AT&T has been handing out as DSL modems for the past few years.
Out of they box they are WEP based and have their serial number as a password. (So if you don't feel like sniffing it you can easily brute force it).
There is no manual provided with it and no indication of how to change the password or run in WPA. (Fair enough. For most people that would just confuse them but it took some Googling for me to even find out a web admin interface even existed.)
I'm looking at 7 of them right now from my living room. I haven't looked but I would guess any device that is this widely distributed has an active hacking community around it...
To the contrary, they know exactly how to bid on a government contract: You bid low so you can get any funding at all. Then you keep your head down so no one will notice your cost overruns.
But I still feel that belt tightening is overdue at NASA. No way we're getting back to the moon, much less mars without more clever thinking applied to off-the-shelf components. The most successful of recent NASA projects have been the most thoughtful and focused, not the highest spenders.
All I hear is "Loose weight", "Spend more time with my depressing spouse", "Spend more time at the depressing gym."
Well of course no one keeps those. Who wants to do that crap?
Why not resolve to do something you'll enjoy.
Resolve to have more and better sex than last year. Resolve to earn more for less work than last year. Resolve to find something new that makes you laugh. Resolve to cross more things off your "Before I Die..." list. Resolve to spend less time around people you don't like.
And it just might turn out that you're spending time enjoying your life that a lot of the other things take care of themselves.
Wow! A whole application development platform that is impossible to create anything useful! That is one hell of an achievement. Whoda thought they'd get through nine revs of a product that is worthless?
Make me wonder why 98% of users have the player installed though. Probably some joke I'm unaware of.
Slashdot Mirror
This is so it'll be easier to identify the bodies after the plane blows up, right?
Web based 3D has been tried and failed many times. I should know, I have been asked to participate in at least three major "3D web" implementations, all of which where hyped initially (Most as "Web 2.0") but have all gone down the digital drainpipe.
I suppose that it could just be my fault, but seriously: Leave 3d to the game developers. They have the resources, experience and tools, and even they can't get it right most of the time.
This is the sort of thing a MORE oppressive theocratic regime does.
Just because I beat my wife harder than you do doesn't preclude you from being a wife beater, or make spouse abuse in any form any less abhorrent.
Gee, the best case is they'll sue you. How great is that? They have more legal resources than a single guy and can sue him into oblivion. And they're right, they can (and will) win. (according to what the OP posted about their contract.)
Yeah, sure we would all benefit from the code, but the original poster of the question would get sued into oblivion and his company would become a shitty place to work for all the other programmers through no fault but some vigilante dickweed. Hurray for us! Hurray for open source! It's like saying it's okay to steal money as long as I spend it and they can't get it back.
It sickens me when people use purely self serving arguments and claim it's for everyone else's good. It does disservice to me, them, and the open source software movement.
There is lots of video of someone scrolling around a virtual screen, but no one types more than three letters on the thing. I want to see it being used properly, not being held and stroked smugly by a Japanese guy in a turtleneck. (I already own enough Apple stuff, thank you!)
In fact people are shown typing on regular keyboards several times in close up. You'd think the CEO could be shown typing on one at last, but no, he's typing away on a traditional 101-key keyboard. (And a full-size display).
One thing that would drive me nuts is not being able to touch type. You can't even rest your fingers on the keyboard without causing trouble. Never mind there appears to be no tactile indicators for the home row. (And don't get me started about the vertical key alignment. Z is not below Q, it's below W...)
I usually search the internet for things I don't already know. This seems like a really good way to keep me fenced into the stuff that I already know or that I've heard about from my friends.
I'd much rather have a search tool that eliminated all social network information from it's database. Never in my life have I wanted to search for "What did Mike do last night?"
I have an almost unique fist and last name. Almost, there's one other guy with the same name. It turns out he's a children's television director. A few years ago I started getting calls from pre-teens who wanted to wanted to be actors. This got my attention (and kind of creeped me out) so I went to investigate.
It turned out that my portfolio web site got top Google page rank, his IMDB page #2. So kids, being kids, weren't smart enough to figure out that my web site wasn't the portfolio of a TV director and contacted me through it.
Searching through Google I didn't find anything incriminating or even embarrassing about either of us, but I have some friends who haven't learned about how the words Privacy and Internet interact yet, and I don't know anything about this alter-ego except he makes a living filming children.
So I thought I'd take some precautions.
I basically Google bombed myself. I set up pages on some of my spare domains that link back to my name and portfolio as well as linking to the various articles and other popular things I've done over the years. (I made sure I didn't link anywhere that was dynamic and uncontrollable like message boards or blog posts with comments.)
Now I have a very solid (and flattering) first page of Google. It would take my involvement in a major crime or tragedy to get any unwanted results on that first page.
I also do a line of contracting under a pseudonym. (When you do programming and photography, people seem to think you can't do either properly.) The pseudonym is pretty common name that I chose after Googling a few to see what gave the best results. Working under another name is as simple as filing a DBA or FBN with the county, and letting the bank know so you can cash your checks. Yes, it's public record, but they rarely show up on Google.
But I've tried to do everything that doesn't legally require my name under one pseudonym or other. I don't need those stupid rants I posted to usenet 20 years ago to come back to haunt me. Sure, everyone does it, but we like plausible dependability.
They might not be "appreciating" nature, but they say imitation the sincerest form of flattery.
And I certainly wouldn't try to access data like that off-site.
However I've found that getting a user to not store files locally pretty much requires not having local storage.
Did I say my mod points?
This article has been live for something like 10 hours and there are a total 2 posts (by my settings) that have a "5" rating. That's proof enough right there that this is a waste of everyone's time. If it was smart there would be supporting posts, if it was stupid there would be Funny or Insightful digs.
Instead what we have is obviously some garbage that no one can talk about intelligently or even gives a shit about.
Sorry for wasting your time, AC, I was hoping otherwise.
Free mod points to anyone who can give me the "So What" summary. The summary is useless and the linked articles failed to inform. Usually this just mans a circle jerk, but who know, there might be something useful or important in there.
Yeah. And we all know you can't use numbers bigger than 8-bits on a 8-bit CPU.
What. What? And this got moded "Informative"??
Well.. I have a Sony TX and I would suspect that it's probably competition for the Air. The Sony has a smaller (and also LED lit) screen, but is lighter and only slightly thicker. And it has a dual layer DVD burner inside.
The standard battery is replaceable and has 5 hours of life. I have an extended battery in mine and can fly from San Francisco to Tokyo (~10 hours) without running out of power.
I like the bigger screen on the Air, but I have to agree that the battery is a bit of a deal breaker. I'll wait for the next rev and see if they fix it.
And for some reason I don't rememebr the titles as well as I remember the experiences.
//c because it couldn't access some inner disk sector.
First computer game was coin-op tabletop Pong in some restaurant while the family was traveling cross country. I remember the whole family watching it like a TV for the whole meal. Then I was finally allowed to put a quarter in it and I lost almost immediately. Then we got in the car and left that town far behind.
The first home game machine was a Pong clone. Came with two paddles and you screwed it into the rabbit ears in the back of the TV. However it didn't have a switch to go between channel 3/4, it would only work on channel 3. But since I was right next to the CBS channel 3 transmitter, even without an antenna hooked up I couldn't get a good enough signal to get it to work. I was denied my revenge against Pong.
First educational game was some kind of math/space invaders game on my TI-99 4/a. Yeah, I don't remember the game, but I remember thinking that educational games were crap. Fast forward 25 years where I designed them for a living. That early awful experience was one of the driving forces.
The first multiplayer experience was when I was in my first year of college (1990). I sat down at a terminal and someone had left it connected to some random TinyMUD. I didn't even know there were multiplayer games! I dicked around with it for a while, but didn't really figure out what I was doing until much later. It left a lasting impression.
Later that same year I played a 2 player jet fighting sim over modem (direct dial-up, probably 300 baud). We spent 15 minutes flying towards each other, saw each other for about 1/4 of a second as we overflew each other and then got disconnected.
Around that time I played the first game that I stayed up all night playing. It was Dune 2 and it had me enthralled. I stayed up playing until the sun was well into the sky. It was a totally new type of game play that took both thought and prompt action. Started my general interest in RTSG.
The first game I pirated was Karateka on the Apple ][. Turns out that the copy protection kept it from working on my Apple
I remember spending a few hours typing in hex codes from the back of InCider or Byte magazine to get a Missle Command style game.
I don't remember the first game I programmed. I'm sure there were dozens. The first one I wrote in assembly was a basic version of Lemmings (The first game I played on a Amiga, and the first game I played with a mouse.) However it ran too fast to be much playable and only had one level. (Remember the Turbo button?)
There are a lot more, but one thing I learned in all of the intervening years: I'm really not very good at Pong.
I'm glad the quality has improved so much. Thanks Technology! It's clear that's been the vital missing element in film making.
Hunh. And here I was thinking that my 2Ghz computer could run-time compile code faster than my old 4Mhz computer could run native code.
Glad you set me straight on that.
C++ & Python does seem to be a weird and cumbersome choice though. But when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. I hope at least the core simulation is all one language.
I'm not the GP poster, but... I've got one and I use it.
Yeah, I'm a douchebag. So what. I don't give a shit, I just like my peace and quiet. I like to be able to have a relaxing dinner without The Game flickering in the background, and I'll happily be labeled a douchebag by Random Internet Guy. I'm not sure where you've asked, but I've tried asking. Usually doesn't work "Oh, the manager won't let us turn it off." "Oh, just want to catch the scores, I'll turn it off in a bit [sic]." "I think somebody's watching it.[sic]"...
And yet, for some reason, 90% of the time I turn the TV off no one notices enough to turn it back on. No, I don't go to sports bars (or CES) trying to be a dick with it, but I suppose I am just as bad as someone who would do that. Again, I don't care.
You're at least as self righteous as I am. Re-read your post if you don't believe me. The only difference is I'm calm enough not to use all-caps. I hate TV's, you hate me for hating TV. Cool.
I think all of Gizmodo should be banned for life from CES. Hell, all of Gawker Media. I'm not sure I would have issued Gizmodo a press pass in the first place. I read Giz regularly for a while but their cheap antics and unapologetic bad judgment put me off.
(And if I get banned for life from a restaurant for turning off their TV, that's fine too. That's a win-win situation.)
You might be first. And I might be second, but most people would rather feel in control, even if it's dangerous to them. Mostly we like someone to blame.
If I get killed by a drunk driving accident, that's tragic.
If I get killed by a robot car, that's stupid. As soon as the first family of five dies in a robot car accident it's the Butlerian Jihad, regardless of the system's overall safety rate.
It's the same mental disability humans have when comparing fear vs safety of driving to flying.
In San Francisco you need to be in a pretty deep dark Faraday cage to not pick up at least 1 "2WIREXXX". These are what AT&T has been handing out as DSL modems for the past few years.
Out of they box they are WEP based and have their serial number as a password. (So if you don't feel like sniffing it you can easily brute force it).
There is no manual provided with it and no indication of how to change the password or run in WPA. (Fair enough. For most people that would just confuse them but it took some Googling for me to even find out a web admin interface even existed.)
I'm looking at 7 of them right now from my living room. I haven't looked but I would guess any device that is this widely distributed has an active hacking community around it...
To the contrary, they know exactly how to bid on a government contract: You bid low so you can get any funding at all. Then you keep your head down so no one will notice your cost overruns.
But I still feel that belt tightening is overdue at NASA. No way we're getting back to the moon, much less mars without more clever thinking applied to off-the-shelf components. The most successful of recent NASA projects have been the most thoughtful and focused, not the highest spenders.
All I hear is "Loose weight", "Spend more time with my depressing spouse", "Spend more time at the depressing gym."
Well of course no one keeps those. Who wants to do that crap?
Why not resolve to do something you'll enjoy.
Resolve to have more and better sex than last year.
Resolve to earn more for less work than last year.
Resolve to find something new that makes you laugh.
Resolve to cross more things off your "Before I Die..." list.
Resolve to spend less time around people you don't like.
And it just might turn out that you're spending time enjoying your life that a lot of the other things take care of themselves.
Glad to see the Internet works well, even on holidays. From "Copyrighting the Pyramids" to "Hitler" in less than an hour.
I'd offer a Christmas cookie for the achievement, but even though it was made by a Buddhist, I'd hate to see what kind of war it would start.
Wow! A whole application development platform that is impossible to create anything useful! That is one hell of an achievement. Whoda thought they'd get through nine revs of a product that is worthless?
Make me wonder why 98% of users have the player installed though. Probably some joke I'm unaware of.
In software one year is a very long time.
In hardware it can be the blink of an eye.
Posting a sign "Bridge out 100 ft ahead" is enough warning for a bicycle and most cars, but if I'm driving a freight train I'm fucked.
If you're girlfriend doesn't know you're a pervert then you're doing it wrong.