I agree there are some purposes for which VRML is okay. But I think that something better than VRML would also have this capability.
Another example, is the near impossibility of having a chat-type application in VRML. I want an object in my wrl file to have a socket associated with it etc.
Another beef I had with VRML is the emphasis on javascript.... I don't have any bones to pick with javascript, but I just don't think it'll go anywhere without working with perl in a nice integrated fashion.
Several 'experts' have recommended that I look at Java3D for future applications. This comes from some of the very few people out there who do have VRML sites.
Does it work on linux? I dunno.. when I get up the strength to make another foray into the 3D world... I'll try it.
I spent quite a bit of time looking at VRML. In a word, it sucks and here's why. The concept behind VRML is exactly that of HTML. It's a markup language. While this is sufficient for stuff you read and browse through, it's not sufficient for an interactive environment. VRML comes in world files which generally have a.wrl extension. Typically this 'world' is loaded into your VRML browser, and then rendered as appropriate. If you hit a particular link, it loads up another.wrl file from the server and sends ya over there.
While this method is fine for web pages.. it's *not* fine for an interactive 3D environment. That's the problem... you need something more interactive than a highly-static format.
There are *some* facilities for doing things dynamically with VRML, but from what I saw, they were mainly hacks with javascript etc that look like they weren't really planned during the original design.
The sum of this analysis is that taking what works for web browsing and just 'doing it in 3D' is not the right philosophy.
Here's a fair example, you can't do anything dynamic that would require changes to the wrl file loaded in the browser. To do that.. you have to reload the wrl file... which is unreasonable. Almost any sort of behavior the objects you create are going to have... has to be predefined in the.wrl file. (I said almost).
Without the use of such a devastating weapon, the world at large would not know the true consequences of a nuclear war.
Had the nuclear arms race occurred before the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon, I doubt humanity would have survived the ensuing nuclear firefight.
This is why I would've chosen to use the bomb directly, rather than try to induce a tidal wave... even if we could induce a tidal wave.
The world was on a precipice at that time, and few people outside the scientific community really understood the magnitude of the problems we would face with this new technology prior to the example set in these bombings.
Of all the things. Why would we *not* have this kind of setup using *standard* networking protocols? 100Mbps ethernet is *plenty* for what they're doing: 96khz * 32 bit samples * 16 channels ~ 50Mbps On a *local* LAN, that shouldn't be a problem for 100bt or 1000bt.
Why on earth would we want to go for specialized networking protocols just for a different application?
Their technology will only limit music equipment for ages to come in the same way MIDI has.
In fact, I'd prefer to see the darn thing running over IP. Perhaps we don't want to be routing this stuff around the net right now... but why limit the capabilities?
I think these guys are scared and are trying to lure musicians off into an area that would be more lucrative for the music hardware industry.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I think in the end, Sun will be ambivalent towards linux. They want to sell hardware and storage solutions. If that's on their unix platform, fine.. if not, fine... as long as you're buying their relatively kick-ass hardware. I doubt Sun has any beef with people who want to run sparcLinux.
I could even see them becoming a linux vendor... way way way down the road.
IMHO, OSS will just gut the traditional software industry's profit margins... *but* the overall computing industry will make huge gains.
Unless these participants have a particular bug in mind, is this really practical? The source code must be very large, and I doubt even if you were able to stay awake the whole 48 hours that you'd really be able to contribute something really useful. Might get lucky and spot a few nasty and obvious innefficiencies I suppose, but I don't really buy it. On the other hand, you could come prepared with a bitmap for a new logo or something like that...
Another option, is maybe their developers aren't that good and need a lot of pointers?:-)
The infinitely defined portion of the gaussian curve doesn't add anything... because as x -> inifity, gaussian(x) -> 0 much faster... off the top of my head, I can't remember the expression for the gaussian though.
Not every pseudo-random event that you plot will produce a gaussian curve... tracking the rolls of a die will be just a flat linear curve, while tracking the sum of two dice rolled together will produce a guassian bell curve...
There's also more fun you can have with a 'Lorentz' distribution.... as well as however many other distributions there are out there.
If I remember correctly though, a poisson distribution is just a discrete gaussian distribution. Basically for n infinity.
that's not real connectivity however..:-) If I want my toaster at work, to talk with my coffee maker at home... I can't reasonably use IP masq... unless I have some weird port forwarding stuff... which.. while I'm sure it exists.. isn't that great of a solution.
You question is very valid... until now, there's been only conjecture.. no hard observations. It's going to be very difficult for them to make sure what they're looking at is actually a black hole... not a brown dwarf... of a neutron star... or whatever they call those atomically collapsed monstrosities.. I'm guessing they're looking for a particular way in which this gas will doppler shift... something that won't follow the newtonian laws of gravity? Or possibly they expect this gas to actually dissappear as it enters the schwartschild radius thingy?
Well, we measure gas by the gallon... volume... What's the volume of a blackhole? undefined... We can just call it zero.. or perhaps for fun we could call it the schwarzschild(sp) radius (cubed and 4/3'd)... One would be infinite mileage, one would be pretty damn low..:-)
They released about 12 million shares to the public.. Even at $100/share (not a current price) that would be $1.2Billion total capitalization. Is there somethign I'm missing here? where is the $4B number from?
It doesn't have to fly in court. They simply send a letter requesting royalties.. *threatening* to take them to court if they are not paid. They make these royalties low enough, that the companies doing business find it more cost effective to pay the $1M rather than $10M for court costs. Now, suppose a device maker refuses to pay... they simply send them a notice licensing them to make their product free of royalties... hence preserving their ability to make justified threats against other companies.. (If the patent was dragged into court and struck down, they couldn't threaten anymore.. because it'd be frivolous harassment..) As long as they avoid a judgement.. they've got a nice little gold mine.. many companies will just pay the money.... because they won't be asking for much.
I think the real problem is that the patent office cannot distinguish between something that is fundamentally and conceptually new... and something that is just the natural progression of the technology. Downloading music and playing it on a player is a direct result of increased bandwidth. With enough bandwidth, it's a complete no brainer. While some of the methods people invent to get that bandwidth might be patentable, the obvious tag-along effects should not. Unless that quote from the company was incorrect, I think we have enough of the story to accurately judge this to be a mistake on the patent office's part. He's planning on collecting a royalty from every company building digital audio players.. whether they've heard of his company or not.
Who's really going to pay for yet another episode of (insert stupid sitcom here) anyways... Maybe this method would bring some intelligence to content. Of course, it's rather merit-based.. which tends not to work well with the free market.
I would see a tremendous drop in the amount of money authors and publishers make... because outside of the computer industry, a lot of people are really struggling to make ends meet... and are more motivated to buy something when they know that their friend isn't just going to get it for free.
I think this model would tend to make a few fanatical people bear the burden of cost of development, while the uncaring or penny-pinching majority would pickup everything for free.
This may not be a bad thing.. but we really have to think here, is this something that people in the free market would prefer? Are they really going to increase revenues by this method? I kind of doubt it. And unless we're going to strip copyright laws as they are now, they're not going to voluntarily change to a model in which they make less money.
I hope someone tries this and shows that it either succeeds or not. It doesn't matter that I would prefer it to work, if it just doesn't produce the profit margins current authors and publishers expect.
Of course, this raises the specter that there *is* plenty of good free content out there already.. (mp3.com).. it's just sometimes hard to find..
Ahh, but raving anonymous cowards and patronizing snobs generate more than half the code... well adjusted people don't spend their time in this fashion!:-) Wait.. wait.. I'm well adjusted... really!:-)
Ripping stuff off for use on your own personal website is a far cry different from a company usurping control over their user's content and republishing it for a profit beyond the agreement initially formed.
When someone gets a geocities account, they know that geocities/yahoo will advertise on their site... that's the obvious deal.. they do not know, that yahoo is going to take their content, and resell it independantly.
I think yahoo selling a collection of geocities stuff would merit a class action suit..:-) kind of a strange one though:-)
And *requiring* that all mail transfer programs have that as a feature? I think not.. more government regulation is not a good thing. Governments govern best when they govern least.
I think sending commercial email (unsolicited or not) would likely be a federally regulated thing, unless the email message never happens to cross state lines. (fairly unlikely for most of this stuff) I don't know what they plan to prove with this.
Big Bang Burger Bar, Prime Material (Reuters) - Today Eric S. Raymond officially dubbed the current incarnation of "The Universe"(tm) as a 'success'. Though lesser known powers, such as God, were occasionally referred to as having been influential in the evolution of the universe, ERS pointed out that without the trendy governing body OUI (Open Universe Initiative), the Universe's presence would have largely been ignored. "Sure, our little community is very familiar with the Universe, but other people in the industry need a marketing-style interface to the Universe. Frankly all this talk about Big Bangs and background radiation makes our whole community of Universe lovers looks like communists in their eyes.", said an Obi-Wan Kenobi dressed ESR while speaking and whirling a hula hoop at the UniverseWorld Expo '99 keynote address. "OUI brings the Universe to those who don't care about the principles of their existence. It gives it to them in a fashion they can deal with such that they don't have to agree with or for that matter understand the principles upon which the Universe was founded. Though the Universe would have continued to hum along as it was without us.. the OUI is solely responsible for people's awareness of it's existence." "This is not about being the lap dog of corporations interested in leveraging the Universe against competitors, but rather making corporations aware." The Universe is a lesser known reality put together and developed by a wide flung group of deities which communicate over the 'Internet'. Industry experts consider the Universe a significant challenger to the current reality market dominating 'Hell' developed by Satansoft.. Universe users are known to send vicious email messages to those who would threaten it's existence. "It really doesn't help when people misrepresent our community like that." said ESR.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree there are some purposes for which VRML is okay. But I think that something better than VRML would also have this capability.
Another example, is the near impossibility of having a chat-type application in VRML. I want an object in my wrl file to have a socket associated with it etc.
Another beef I had with VRML is the emphasis on javascript.... I don't have any bones to pick with javascript, but I just don't think it'll go anywhere without working with perl in a nice integrated fashion.
Several 'experts' have recommended that I look at Java3D for future applications. This comes from some of the very few people out there who do have VRML sites.
Does it work on linux? I dunno.. when I get up the strength to make another foray into the 3D world... I'll try it.
I spent quite a bit of time looking at VRML. .wrl extension. Typically this 'world' is loaded into your VRML browser, and then rendered as appropriate. .wrl file from the server and sends ya over there.
.wrl file. (I said almost).
In a word, it sucks and here's why.
The concept behind VRML is exactly that of HTML. It's a markup language. While this is sufficient for stuff you read and browse through, it's not sufficient for an interactive environment.
VRML comes in world files which generally have a
If you hit a particular link, it loads up another
While this method is fine for web pages.. it's *not* fine for an interactive 3D environment. That's the problem... you need something more interactive than a highly-static format.
There are *some* facilities for doing things dynamically with VRML, but from what I saw, they were mainly hacks with javascript etc that look like they weren't really planned during the original design.
The sum of this analysis is that taking what works for web browsing and just 'doing it in 3D' is not the right philosophy.
Here's a fair example, you can't do anything dynamic that would require changes to the wrl file loaded in the browser. To do that.. you have to reload the wrl file... which is unreasonable.
Almost any sort of behavior the objects you create are going to have... has to be predefined in the
VRML is unpopular for a reason.
Without the use of such a devastating weapon, the world at large would not know the true consequences of a nuclear war.
Had the nuclear arms race occurred before the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon, I doubt humanity would have survived the ensuing nuclear firefight.
This is why I would've chosen to use the bomb directly, rather than try to induce a tidal wave... even if we could induce a tidal wave.
The world was on a precipice at that time, and few people outside the scientific community really understood the magnitude of the problems we would face with this new technology prior to the example set in these bombings.
Of all the things. Why would we *not* have this kind of setup using *standard* networking protocols?
:-)
100Mbps ethernet is *plenty* for what they're doing: 96khz * 32 bit samples * 16 channels
~ 50Mbps
On a *local* LAN, that shouldn't be a problem for 100bt or 1000bt.
Why on earth would we want to go for specialized networking protocols just for a different application?
Their technology will only limit music equipment for ages to come in the same way MIDI has.
In fact, I'd prefer to see the darn thing running over IP. Perhaps we don't want to be routing this stuff around the net right now... but why limit the capabilities?
I think these guys are scared and are trying to lure musicians off into an area that would be more lucrative for the music hardware industry.
I want my keyboard speaking IP damnit...
This proposal is just nuts.
A *real* hitchikers guide would have one of the sub-ether hitchiking thumb do-hickeys!
Erm.. I think that's how it was spelled!
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
:-)
I think in the end, Sun will be ambivalent towards linux. They want to sell hardware and storage solutions. If that's on their unix platform, fine.. if not, fine... as long as you're buying their relatively kick-ass hardware.
I doubt Sun has any beef with people who want to run sparcLinux.
I could even see them becoming a linux vendor... way way way down the road.
IMHO, OSS will just gut the traditional software industry's profit margins... *but* the overall computing industry will make huge gains.
On the other hand, I could be just stupid..
Unless these participants have a particular bug in mind, is this really practical?
:-)
The source code must be very large, and I doubt even if you were able to stay awake the whole 48 hours that you'd really be able to contribute something really useful.
Might get lucky and spot a few nasty and obvious innefficiencies I suppose, but I don't really buy it.
On the other hand, you could come prepared with a bitmap for a new logo or something like that...
Another option, is maybe their developers aren't that good and need a lot of pointers?
The infinitely defined portion of the gaussian curve doesn't add anything... because as x -> inifity, gaussian(x) -> 0 much faster... off the top of my head, I can't remember the expression for the gaussian though.
Not every pseudo-random event that you plot will produce a gaussian curve... tracking the rolls of a die will be just a flat linear curve, while tracking the sum of two dice rolled together will produce a guassian bell curve...
There's also more fun you can have with a 'Lorentz' distribution.... as well as however many other distributions there are out there.
If I remember correctly though, a poisson distribution is just a discrete gaussian distribution. Basically for n infinity.
This article is nothing in and of itself.
that's not real connectivity however.. :-)
If I want my toaster at work, to talk with my coffee maker at home... I can't reasonably use IP masq... unless I have some weird port forwarding stuff... which.. while I'm sure it exists.. isn't that great of a solution.
end of rambling.
You question is very valid... until now, there's been only conjecture.. no hard observations.
It's going to be very difficult for them to make sure what they're looking at is actually a black hole... not a brown dwarf... of a neutron star... or whatever they call those atomically collapsed monstrosities..
I'm guessing they're looking for a particular way in which this gas will doppler shift... something that won't follow the newtonian laws of gravity?
Or possibly they expect this gas to actually dissappear as it enters the schwartschild radius thingy?
Well, we measure gas by the gallon... volume... What's the volume of a blackhole? undefined... We can just call it zero.. or perhaps for fun we could call it the schwarzschild(sp) radius (cubed and 4/3'd)... One would be infinite mileage, one would be pretty damn low.. :-)
The article says AIX and AS400's will be running on it. Not likely x86 compatible.. but why would they want that anyways? :-)
Yeah, I'll admit.. it's the way to go for professional apps.. and probably the way to go for this particular app, but it *is* expensive...
9 3193.htm
http://www.onsale.com/category/inv/00031159/014
They released about 12 million shares to the public.. Even at $100/share (not a current price) that would be $1.2Billion total capitalization.
Is there somethign I'm missing here?
where is the $4B number from?
Thanks,
Brian
It doesn't have to fly in court. They simply send a letter requesting royalties.. *threatening* to take them to court if they are not paid. They make these royalties low enough, that the companies doing business find it more cost effective to pay the $1M rather than $10M for court costs. Now, suppose a device maker refuses to pay... they simply send them a notice licensing them to make their product free of royalties... hence preserving their ability to make justified threats against other companies.. (If the patent was dragged into court and struck down, they couldn't threaten anymore.. because it'd be frivolous harassment..)
As long as they avoid a judgement.. they've got a nice little gold mine.. many companies will just pay the money.... because they won't be asking for much.
I think the real problem is that the patent office cannot distinguish between something that is fundamentally and conceptually new... and something that is just the natural progression of the technology.
Downloading music and playing it on a player is a direct result of increased bandwidth. With enough bandwidth, it's a complete no brainer. While some of the methods people invent to get that bandwidth might be patentable, the obvious tag-along effects should not.
Unless that quote from the company was incorrect, I think we have enough of the story to accurately judge this to be a mistake on the patent office's part.
He's planning on collecting a royalty from every company building digital audio players.. whether they've heard of his company or not.
Okay... maybe a bit of an extreme reaction on my part... but I'd like to see attention steered towards technical issues rather than stardom.
IMHO
Gee, (insert prominent developer name here) lost five pounds and has a new shirt!
Who's really going to pay for yet another episode of (insert stupid sitcom here) anyways...
Maybe this method would bring some intelligence to content.
Of course, it's rather merit-based.. which tends not to work well with the free market.
I would see a tremendous drop in the amount of money authors and publishers make... because outside of the computer industry, a lot of people are really struggling to make ends meet... and are more motivated to buy something when they know that their friend isn't just going to get it for free.
I think this model would tend to make a few fanatical people bear the burden of cost of development, while the uncaring or penny-pinching majority would pickup everything for free.
This may not be a bad thing.. but we really have to think here, is this something that people in the free market would prefer? Are they really going to increase revenues by this method? I kind of doubt it. And unless we're going to strip copyright laws as they are now, they're not going to voluntarily change to a model in which they make less money.
I hope someone tries this and shows that it either succeeds or not. It doesn't matter that I would prefer it to work, if it just doesn't produce the profit margins current authors and publishers expect.
Of course, this raises the specter that there *is* plenty of good free content out there already.. (mp3.com).. it's just sometimes hard to find..
Ahh, but raving anonymous cowards and patronizing snobs generate more than half the code... well adjusted people don't spend their time in this fashion! :-) :-)
Wait.. wait.. I'm well adjusted... really!
That's cuz they're afraid of the hulkster! :-)
Ripping stuff off for use on your own personal website is a far cry different from a company usurping control over their user's content and republishing it for a profit beyond the agreement initially formed.
:-) kind of a strange one though :-)
When someone gets a geocities account, they know that geocities/yahoo will advertise on their site... that's the obvious deal.. they do not know, that yahoo is going to take their content, and resell it independantly.
I think yahoo selling a collection of geocities stuff would merit a class action suit..
And *requiring* that all mail transfer programs have that as a feature? I think not.. more government regulation is not a good thing. Governments govern best when they govern least.
I think sending commercial email (unsolicited or not) would likely be a federally regulated thing, unless the email message never happens to cross state lines. (fairly unlikely for most of this stuff)
I don't know what they plan to prove with this.
Yeah, I heard he's lost weight too!
He's also been abducted by aliens and is going to marry the reanimated corpse of Princess Diana.
More news at 11..
ESR and OUI takes Credit for Success of Universe
Big Bang Burger Bar, Prime Material (Reuters) -
Today Eric S. Raymond officially dubbed the current incarnation of "The Universe"(tm) as a 'success'. Though lesser known powers, such as God, were occasionally referred to as having been influential in the evolution of the universe, ERS pointed out that without the trendy governing body OUI (Open Universe Initiative), the Universe's presence would have largely been ignored.
"Sure, our little community is very familiar with the Universe, but other people in the industry need a marketing-style interface to the Universe. Frankly all this talk about Big Bangs and background radiation makes our whole community of Universe lovers looks like communists in their eyes.", said an Obi-Wan Kenobi dressed ESR while speaking and whirling a hula hoop at the UniverseWorld Expo '99 keynote address.
"OUI brings the Universe to those who don't care about the principles of their existence. It gives it to them in a fashion they can deal with such that they don't have to agree with or for that matter understand the principles upon which the Universe was founded. Though the Universe would have continued to hum along as it was without us.. the OUI is solely responsible for people's awareness of it's existence."
"This is not about being the lap dog of corporations interested in leveraging the Universe against competitors, but rather making corporations aware."
The Universe is a lesser known reality put together and developed by a wide flung group of deities which communicate over the 'Internet'. Industry experts consider the Universe a significant challenger to the current reality market dominating 'Hell' developed by Satansoft..
Universe users are known to send vicious email messages to those who would threaten it's existence. "It really doesn't help when people misrepresent our community like that." said ESR.