Slashback: Blender, Paly, Dragon

The last Slashback of July brings you updates on the open-source Blender and Diebold's approach to voting security, and a skeptical look at the design origins of the Dragon V CPU, John Poindexter's very own future, and more. Read on for the details.

A cleaner UI would be nice in the next round. Qbertino writes "Blender 2.28 - the first major release after it was GPLd after a $100,000 community source-code buyout in October last year -- is finished. It's now got a wide variety of added features such as Audio Sequencing (as mentioned earlier) and a complete redo of the built-in Python engine for your 3D scripting convenience and import/export empowerment. It runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris and that other OS :-). See the full changelog here and get the new version binaries here. Cheers to the Blender folks and: Happy Blending!"

Just close the curtain on your way out, citizen. utunga writes "After recent claims that their voting systems were grossly insecure, Diebold has issued a rebuttal which has in turn been panned. One question this raises : Do programmers now have worry that their comments ... such as - 'Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.' - might wind up in the media (or worse, in court) as evidence for one side or the other ?"

Correspondence school? chipace writes "The newly released Dragon-V CPU could have deeper roots in Austin, Texas than in China. The Alchemy Au1500 (AMD) displayed at Comdex 2002 has a lot in common with the new CultureCom Dragon-V cpu (or is it the other way around?). Both have identical MIPS32 cores (16k instruction + 16k data caches), Ethernet MACs, USB 1.1, PCI 2.2, SDRAM controller ... same power consumption. I'm not saying they are pin-compatible... just that this is by no means an original chip (seeing as the Au1500 has been available for over a year). Is the Dragon-V a ground-up development that CultureCom is describing, or is this just another case of a Chinese company doing reverse engineering?"

They can swim out and try, though. Complete Bastard writes "The Australian is reporting today that Aussie corporate Linux users, including AusRegistry, which runs Australia's domain name registry, are also starting to say no to SCO's licensing scheme. After reading the recent /. roundup of corporate ire, it would seem the business world is starting to truly make it's opinions known in this issue..."

The wisdom of the free market. skwang writes "Do you think John Poindexter should keep his job? The head of Pentagon's department responsible for Terrorism Information Awareness (formerly Total Information Awareness) and most recently known for his Policy Analysis Market, which would allow investors to buy future's contracts in middle east events such as the overthrow of King Adbullah of Jordan, has himself a futures contract on Tradesports, as reported by CNN.

Investors can now buy futures contracts to speculate on whether or not Poindexter will keep his job after August 31st. Since Poindexter's contracts are new, they do not represent an accurate indicator of his job security."

Could be too late: Eponymous Coward writes "CNN writes "Retired Adm. John Poindexter, who created a firestorm this week with his plan to create a futures market that would capitalize on predicting terror attacks, will resign in coming weeks from his post at the Pentagon, a senior defense official said Thursday. The official said the research that Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness program (TIA) were conducting had become just too 'unorthodox'." Ya think?"

No good deed goes unpunished. Anonymous Coward writes "In regards to the June 25th Article 'WiFi Exposes Sensitive Student Data': The School district has decided to boot all volunteers, the story is here..."

Seems like a harsh way to treat long-time volunteers with expensive skills.

Volunteer work does not pay

[Anonymous Coward]

In reference to the Palo Alto story, I have learned to be wary of volunteer work. People just don't appreciate what they don't pay for. If you volunteer to do something, people act like your time is of no value, so they will feel free to waste your time.

Maybe the school district will understand the value of these past volunteer services when they finally have to break down and pay someone. The added bonus is that a paying job will be created. I know volunteer work is full of good intentions, but a side effect is contributing to unemployment.

Re:I finally understand what Free software is abou

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying, then, is that if someone breaks into my office and downloads the source to my proprietary programs and then distributes the source on Kazaa, he's only guilty of breaking and entering?

Diebold source code...

[Handpaper]

Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.
This looks like a job for the FSF. How far are the binaries being distributed? Since they contain GPL code, it shouldn't be too difficult to make a case for source code release, which would open the whole app to peer review (and, if the article is even halfway right, hilarity).

Re:Confusing UI

[AvantLegion]

One could say that a violin has a confusing UI. Does that mean it's broken? No. But it does mean that you need to know what you are doing.

"The violin sucks. It's too confusing."

"Do you read sheet music?"

"Uh, no. Would that help?"

This is a nonsense example.

A more realistic one would be if someone created a violin that operated very differently from all the other violins on the market, and also had "different" sheet music that required lots of re-learning.

That's what a piece of software that ignores industry standards in things like UI is equal to.

Re:Cribbed from the Wine Project?

[bfree]

We'll in the worst case, if they did excessively copy from the LGPL wine code then they would still not have to release the source of their system, they would simply have to release the "modified" code from the voting system. If they had "de-libraried" the MMIO functions then they could provide a test case for the GPL but I imagine they would simply re-library it with the blessings of the wine projects and release the source to this library LGPL. The LGPL allows you to hide YOUR code while diclosing what you do with IT'S code.

Poindexter at the Hellmouth

[Anonymous Coward]

creating a futures market for terrorism as a way to glean info, should be lauded on Slashdot. It is a geek's solution to an information problem. Having it excoriated in Congress and the media is exactly what happens every time a "Poindexter" stands up and suggests what seems like a great idea to geeks: dumb people just don't get it and the geek gets ostracized. We should salute you, John Poindexter...

Unfortunately, even though Slashdot is a geek site, it isn't that educated, at least when it comes to econ, so probably Poindexter will be ridiculed here too...

Re:Poindexter at the Hellmouth

[Concerned Onlooker]

The problem I had with it was the potential for abuse. Athletes aren't allowed to bet on games and for the same reason the CIA shouldn't be allowed to "bet" on things that they can have an influence over. Especially when they might be tempted to create even more chaotic and violent situations than they normally do.

Blender - great success

[myklgrant]

As an avid Blender user I consider Blender to be one of OSS's greatest success stories. Since going GPL the rate of improvement has been rapid (the audio sequencer was wanted for years) and the fact that the community made it happen despite it being considered commercially "dead" is a tribute to the power of open source. Makes you wonder what dead code is out there that can be "rescued" by the OSS community.

Re:I finally understand what Free software is abou

[LineNoiz]

That is a logical conclusion to that particular argument; one which underlies most of the "copyrights are evil" nonsense that gets bandied about on slashdot.

I don't think there are many people that claim "copyrights are evil." No sane person would deny that people deserve to own what they create. The typical /. argument is that perpetual extension of copyright is evil, not copyrights themselves.

Re:So can i cash in now?

[WatertonMan]

The problem with the DARPA project was that it "looked" bad. Personally I think it was a brilliant idea. It is the ultimate distributed analysis and works for the same reason capitalism does. But as cool as it sounded I pretty much knew it would be in trouble.

The problem really isn't Poindexter. All the projects I've heard of sounded very creative and the kind of thinking out of the box they were demanding immediately after 911. The problem is that Poindexter was hopelessly naive regarding the real world conservativism of the American public. (Conservative in the social sense and not the political sense)

Combine that with all his historic enemies due to Iran/Contra and he really should have seen this one coming.

[If you didn't read the article] Diebold seems...

[arete]

[If you didn't read the article] Diebold seems reasonable

Their rebuttal said that. But they're using a wireless network to the stations, and sending results over the web.

Whether or not their systems are actually vulnerable, they're clearly lying.

Re:the dragon chip..

[Anonymous Coward]

Reverse engineered a chip? Is this practical? More likely they just copied the design.

Industrial Interfaces Aren't Pretty For A Reason

[KagatoLNX]

Seriously, Blender is not for use in "casual 3D". You don't necessarily use it to just make a logo, or render 3D text. Blender is designed to be used to model very high-quality models, paint them, animate them, and generally do things that are both complex and time consuming.

In any program that "simplifies" something, there is a danger of oversimplification. In making the impact of the interface milder, you will dilute your capability to use it for actual work.

Put simply, Blender is a sportscar of an interface. Sure, the Porsche can ride a little rough and be kind of touchy. Heck it's even expensive to maintain. Do you want one for free?

Spend 3 weeks animating a single scene. Fight with 3D Studio MAX or some other overblown UI. Then come back to me and tell me that an interface that is flexible beyond imagination isn't what you need.

Put another way, actually do it for a living an you'll find out why it is that way.

As for "industry standard violins", think electric guitar. Well, it doesn't play like any other guitar--but actually listen to it and you may change your tune.

Re:the dragon chip..

[etan]

Based on *what*? The cores are identical because the caches are the same size? That seems like a completely uninformed and baseless assertion. Can someone post a URL with specifications?

Re:No good deed goes unpunished???

[A Commentor]

Which means that the servers will now be really secure, since none of the employees have any idea what they do, and they certainly wouldn't touch them. :)

No that means that they won't have any security patches applied, so whatever holes are discovered/post on the internet, will likely exist for a long time on these servers.

Maya Got it Right

[metalhed77]

Maya has an excellent UI from the little I've gotten to play with that a friend showed me. I've been shown the Blender and Max UIs, and they are atrocious. Besides not all advanced users memorize keyboard shortcuts. I've been using Photoshop pretty regularly for 5 years now and only memorize a small number of shortcuts. Sure photoshop is a much simpler program, but still, well written menus can make memorization not so necessary.

The key to a good UI isn't really widgets or anything (although Blender's are crappy) its the logical organization of the programs abilities coupled with the logical presentation of the data the program interacts with. Blender would also benefit greatly from text based, rather than icon based navigation. Or possibly a Icons with their text name right after them. Most of Blender is a collection of silly random unnmaed buttons which I have little care to mouse over.

Heisenberg's uncertany principle

[autopr0n]

I know that a lot of people have been complaining that people complaining about the government terrorism futures market are idiots, because they're just being emotional about something that could theoretically help fight terrorism or whatever But the futures market thing really is a bad Idea, and not because it's 'immoral' but because it can provide direct financial support to terrorists. All the terrorists need to do is bet on their own activities. In fact, it could cause a lot more terrorism as real criminal gangs get into terrorism as a way of more money. Imagine if the resources of a Columbian drug cartel applied to terrorism. Not good. And plus, terrorist's true plans aren't known to that many people. Unless betting could be totally anonymous, no one who actually knew anything would place any bets.

What Gets Me About The PAL/Poindexter Thing

[Farley Mullet]

So PAL is sufficiently distasteful that it must be shut down, even if decision markets are generally really useful predictors of future events [newyorker.com] (and the fact that the U.S. intelligence community could probably use the help), while invading other countries based on faulty (or falsified) intelligence and wishful-thinking "domino-theory" premises about mideast relations, and despite the inevitable civilian and military casualties and potential terrorist reprisals is a "Sacred Duty". Blows my mind.

Re:Blender

[makapuf]

wrong. There are simple things in 3D modelling, and those should be simple. See Brice.

I think a good interface (be it a programming language or a GUI) should not ADD complexity to the inherent complexity of a task.

Thus, simple thing should be made simple, repetitive tasks should be quick to do, and numerous other ones should be available without learning/remembering too many ways to do it.

Generally, pick two.

I think blender's UI is good at the last two ones.

Re:Blender

[JanneM]

I don't think that is the kind of problem the previous poster had in mind. Take the example with having a row of tiny buttons with less-than-clear icons on them.

Their functionality - or lack of it - has nothing to do with the problem domain. No matter what the application, they are making it harder to use than would otherwise be the case. They are difficult to see, to distinguish between, and easier to make an accidental "misclick" and select the wrong function.

I fully agree that an UI should be designed for the target user population. A desktop (whether Gnome, KDE, Windows, Mac or whatever) tends to be rather plain an uninnovative, and it must be as the target population is, well, everybody. A smaller, specialized segment, such as Blender users, can motivate a much more specialized, targeted UI as well.

But there are also some things that make using an app harder than it should be, no matter what the target population is (assuming it's at least human, and alive). They are things that stretch the sensory or motor-capabilities of the user too much (like finding the right button, when they are too small and too many, bunched together too tight), or stuff that could be one way or another without loss in functionality, and the "backwards" way is chosen. Those kinds of things would be a pure positive to change, with no downside for anyone.

Re:Blender

[Mac Degger]

Sorry, but Bryce is a wrong example; it's a plything with as much use to a production environment as a "my first sony" is to an audiophile. Sure, it makes pretty pictures, but is it parametric? Is it, at all, any good? No.

And that's why Bryce (to you) has a good UI; it's a toy's UI.

Now I'm not defending Blender's UI, but have a look at 3dsmax, maya and softimage; they're all difficult to learn. Blender however seems to go out of it's way to be hard to learn.

Dragon Chip

[betagoat]

It's not a MIPS, it's a PowerPC with standard SoC busses (PLB+OPB), caches, a Chinese language character generator, and a typical collection of peripheral IP blocks, which are licensable from a variety of semiconductor firms.

-=|[betagoat]|=-