Slashback: Blender, Paly, Dragon 284
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.
No good deed goes unpunished??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No good deed goes unpunished??? (Score:2)
whats funny is that the real article says nothing about Wi-fi it just says the districts policy is that only employees can touch the computers now.
Re:No good deed goes unpunished??? (Score:2)
whats funny is that the real article says nothing about Wi-fi it just says the districts policy is that only employees can touch the computers now.
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. :)
Re:No good deed goes unpunished??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Blender (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, getting used to it. It's set up for the advanced user (read: keystrokes for EVERYTHING!), not for the newbie-point-and-clicker.
It's kinda like Slack, but in the 3D app land.
Re:Blender (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Blender (Score:5, Interesting)
Point being, 3d modelling is Hard, and I would expect any reasonably capable 3d modeller to be difficult to learn, even with a well designed UI.
Blender doesn't necessarily have a horrible UI. It's just a targetted one, meant for power users who need fast access to a lot of functionality.
Not to say it couldn't be improved.
-John
Re:Blender (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Blender (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Blender (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who complain about Blenders UI wouldn't manage with any 3d application. If you read any of the numerous tutorials on Blender, you can get the hang of the UI in less than a half hour. I'm not saying be efficient and quick, but at least use it without difficulty.
3d modeling applications with more power than TruSpace can't have that user friendly of an interface because of the sheer number of functions it has to have in quick access. If you look at Maya, they have spent tons of time in the UI, and their biggest contribution was the pie menu. Using Maya for an hour, vs. Blender you will notice Blender has faster keystrokes (while Maya is more "usable") but after 10 hours, Blender is more usable.
Their GUI also works in fairly standard fashion, with menus and hotkeys. The button tray at the bottom (default) is easy to see, and after you know what the icons mean (5 minutes of reading) it makes sense. I'm going to reiterate this point: Most people that complain about Blender and it's interface haven't read any of the documentation on it and spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out.
It isn't a mail client, it's a 3d modelling application.
Re:Blender (Score:4, Interesting)
Not so. I was able to pick up Maya, 3DS Max and Lightwave and start editing meshes pretty quickly just by playing with the interface. I have read a couple of Blender tutorials and it still seems like too much work.
Re:Blender (Score:2, Informative)
I haven't used 3DS much, but my first impression of it was worse than Blender.
I read the Castle tutorial on Blender and felt very comfortable with it. Which tutorials did you read?
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Yeah, pressing the tab key is just so hard.
Seriously, get over it. I made the same complaints when i was a blender newbie, and the developers basically just said "shut up, we like it this way".
At this point, I think the pain/cost of making all the expert users retrain themselves is worse than just having the occaisonal new user get used to the way things are.
Re:Blender-Power users vs newbies. (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. Most of these arguments come from the "everything is an appliance"[1] crowd. If it doesn't have a big red "push me" button, then it's too hard. Thing is for those of us whom "time is money" (and make good amounts too), the Blender interface (much like the wordperfect interface) is right up our alley. Remember our tools are for "work", not for "play".
[1] I'll leave it to the audiance who got that trend started.
Re:Blender (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
That's why they sell books, because they give the software away for free. Kind of forced compensation, but I think it's a great model.
Re:Blender (Score:4, Informative)
That depends on what you mean by "get the hang of the UI". Sure, you can figure out that buttons can be pushed and that everything in Blender looks like a button. At least form could fit the function, y'know?
The main problem is that the UI doesn't give you any clue how to perform tasks. For example, might know, for example, that you need to add bones to your mesh. But how to do that?
I know that it can be done, but looking through the menus and tabs, I can't see hide nor hare of anything like a Add Bones option. Once the bones are added, how are they supposed to be parented to the mesh? Again, the UI doesn't give any clue.
Just because you (or any other number of users) can figure out how to do great things in Blender - and Blender is an amazingly powerful program - doesn't mean that it's got a good UI. I could just as easily point to the Persistance of Vision Raytracer [povray.org] and claim that it's got a great user interface, because lots of people can use it and produce great work with it.
It's great that you can memorize a zillion different keystrokes, but I can't. That means I can't use Blender without an Internet connection, so I can download the outdated manual, or search for an outdated tutorial, or head over to the friendly folk on #blenderchat for some help.
- Most people that complain about Blender and it's interface haven't read any of the documentation on it and spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out.
Well, the same goes for most people who use any software. But one of the points of a UI is to expose functionality of the product. And that's something that Blender does terribly, even for someone like me who's been struggling with the UI for a couple years.There are other Free software programs that support animation, such as Art of Illusion [sourceforge.net] and Anim8or [anim8or.com]. There are up and coming contenders, such as JPatch [sourceforge.net] and Wings3D [wings3d.com] that don't yet support animation, but promise to in the near future. As powerful as Blender is, I'm hanging my hopes one one of these less powerful, but more user friendly applications.
(In fairness should note that Ton has recently set up a forum for the improvement of Blender, and one of the main focuses on Blender 2.0 will be an improved user interface.)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Excuse me, not sure about the window Blender, all I do is the linux version anymore. Have they implemented tooltips "balloons" for the windows versions yet?
SB
Re:Blender (Score:4, Informative)
Blender is an OpenGL application, and draws it's own widgets and windows, so it has the same look and feel on all platforms.
Blender has implemented a lot of improvements to the interface from the earlier releases. But (as others have pointed out) 3D animation is hard. Many operations are non-trivial, and require a number of steps. A more clear UI would be helpful, but not under these circumstances.
There are also a lot of 'hidden' functions that people don't know about. For example, there are constant requests for Blender to have more Wings3D [wings3d.com] sort of modelling features. Blender already supports things like face select and extrude along normal but finding out about them is a different matter. (I doubt I can remember what key combination brings up extrude along normal, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to go about finding it from within Blender.)
Anyhoo, I think what Blender needs is good integrated documentation. The Blender team seems hellbent on keeping the download as small as possible, and don't want to include anything that's not necessary with the core download.
Still, integrated help would solve a number of problems:
Just a thought.
Re:Blender (Score:3, Interesting)
If you think that having a text entry w
Mod this up (Score:2)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
That I'll do, if you weren't exaggerating. Which book should I read?
Re:Blender (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, many people praise blender for its user interface. Yes, it is difficult for someone who hasn't read the manual to use, but once you actually read the manual, you'll soon realize that the interface is pretty easy to use. You can get a lot of things done very quickly because of how the mouse and keyboard interact. No, it does not conform to most u
Re:Blender (Score:2, Interesting)
I last used an early version of blender...so my opinion may be dated...but the documentation sucked as badly as the interface. With most 3D apps, you can just look at it and know what you're seeing. With blender, screw actually manipulating objects, just figuring out what's in front of you can be a pain.
Re:Blender (Score:2)
I last used an early version of blender...so my opinion may be dated...but the documentation sucked as badly as the interface. With most 3D apps, you can just look at it and know what you're seeing. With blender, screw actually manipulating objects, just figuring out what's in front of you can be a pain.
OK, have you used Maya before? Take a look at its interface and try to create a scene without the manual. Try the same thing with any non-trivial modelling program. Sure, the simple applications all let y
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Maya Got it Right (Score:3, Insightful)
The key to a good UI isn't really widgets or anything (although Blender's are
Re:Maya Got it Right (Score:2)
Also, to become truly proficient in any app, it's a prerequisite that you learn the keyboard shortcuts; if you don't, you cannot be considered proficient. You're also much to slow at using the app if you don't use shortcuts...and if you've ever been in a production environment, you'll know that you need every se
Oh rubbish (Score:2)
But, for apps that are extremely "vertical" (heavily used by a very small, elite group of users) a whole different set of design principles is sensible. Essentially: make the common things fast, make the rare things possible, and then get the hell out of the way. Being nicey-nice to the uninitiated does NOT
Re:Blender (Score:2)
1) Nethack's interface may be difficult to learn, but it is not cryptic. The keystroke=command paradigm is kept consistent thoughout the game; the hard part is learning all the commands. There's a difference between the large number of commands in Nethack, and the flouting of user interface standards in Blender. Most of my complaints about the Blender interface would be solved if they had a sane menu system, and followed interf
Re:Blender (Score:2)
I certainly wouldn't cite them as examples of a good UI. They aren't quite as bad as Blender -- at least they're consistent, they don't flout UI standards, and come with comprehensive help; all of which I consider among the worst things Blender misses -- but they're not perfect.
The GUI versions of vim help a lot -- giving new users access to commands that they would otherwise have to guess or search through the help files for. Getting started with
Re:Blender - benifits of good GUIs (Score:2)
When I pick up pretty much any decent GUI text editor I can do basic text editing in under 10 seconds, and without any tutorial whatsoever.
Not to mention that:
* I will already know where to look for the load/save commands, also what thier shortcuts will be.
* I can immediately see which functions/commands the editor has available (scan the menus
Re:Confusing UI (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Industrial Interfaces Aren't Pretty For A Reason (Score:3, Insightful)
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 i
Re:Industrial Interfaces Aren't Pretty For A Reaso (Score:2)
Re:Industrial Interfaces Aren't Pretty For A Reaso (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust me; if you do, you'll very soon buy maya, 3dsmax or softimage 3d/xsi.
Blenders UI sucks. It is not a sportscar, or if it is, it's been sitting under a midden in the garden for 10 years. The only possible reason you say Blender has a good UI is because you haven't used it to really make something.
Trust me; there's a reason why you don't see Blender in production environments. And there's also a reason why the Blender
Re:Confusing UI (Score:2)
Let's take this for example:
I played the flute for many years. Due to similar fingerings on the saxophone, clarinet, oboe, and piccolo, I could technically pick up any one of them and know the notes. However, when you get down to the grit of things, there are variances which make it more difficult than just picking up the instrument and displaying the kind of proficiency I have with a flute. Things such as breath control, positioning of th
Re:Confusing UI (Score:2)
The fact is that many other programs accomplish the same difficult tasks that Blender does, without making the simple ones needlessly painful.
The instrument example doesn't hold up extremely well, no. But I was mainly
Re:Confusing UI-Confused poster. (Score:2)
not documented standards, more like de facto... but to name a few:
consistency across widgets
intuitive reaction to user-input
what would suprise the user the least (wwstustl)
and of course, keep it simple, stupid (kiss)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
It's a single keystroke command: U
Schwab
Who read the Quickstart tutorial [blender3d.org].
Cribbed from the Wine Project? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wine has been under the LGPL for a while now... anyone know more about this 'cribbing'? What exactly was copied, and from what tree?
I haven't heard that the voting system code is available under the LGPL... in fact, I've heard that secret source code is quite important to keep ahead of competitors.
Re:Cribbed from the Wine Project? (Score:3, Insightful)
Looking for that secret source... here's where... (Score:2, Informative)
Straight from Vegas.. (Score:3, Funny)
Should he be fired, odds that this will fix the "problem": 1,000,000,000:1
So can i cash in now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So can i cash in now? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 w
Lousy idea. Here's why (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, these traders would mostly be Americans. Pardon my
Re:So can i cash in now? (Score:2)
for middle-eastern jihadis. Place your bets, win big by
fixing the game.
No, it was stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
With terrorists attacks, only a select group of people would have valid information, namely terrorists and people connected to (or monitoring) them.
If a system wasn't totally anonymous, then no sane person 'in the loop' would ever make a bet, because they would be immediately arrested after an attack.
If a system WAS anonymous, then you have much larger proble
Volunteer work does not pay (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Volunteer work does not pay (Score:2)
What?!? Do you have a study which shows this? Did you consider that the money people save via volunteer efforts gets spent somewhere else? And if somebody is volunteering instead of watching TV or reading
Service Based Learning (Score:2, Interesting)
It was not approved on that cycle, but is still one of the approved ideas in the local power elite and will most likely be pushed through eventually.
A very
Re:Service Based Learning (Score:2)
Re:Volunteer work does not pay (Score:2)
the dragon chip.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the dragon chip.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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:the dragon chip.. (Score:2)
it into their chip.
Diebold source code... (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Diebold source code... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since they are distributed to the state, the source code should be available via the freedom to information act or similar laws.
Re:Diebold source code... (Score:2)
Hope my comments never get public (Score:5, Funny)
Poindexter at the Hellmouth (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, even though Slashdot is a geek site, it isn't that educated, at least when it comes to econ,
Re:Poindexter at the Hellmouth (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Poindexter at the Hellmouth (Score:2)
Yes, there are problems with the idea, as others pointed out (namely that investors might somehow encourage terrorism). Whether there might be some remedy to these problems is unsure. But, to use a horribly overused cliche, Poindexter was thinking outside the box, and decided to examine the worth of an idea that was effective at predicting other difficult-to-predict events.
It is said in advertising that the average con
Re:Poindexter at the Hellmouth (Score:2)
2) assassinate president
3) profit!
blender question. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:blender question. (Score:2)
Don't question the audio sequencing stuff, question the UI. It's a complete laundry list of everything that's wrong w/ software usability today.
Anybody able to run Blender on OS X? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Anybody able to run Blender on OS X? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anybody able to run Blender on OS X? (Score:2)
Blender - great success (Score:5, Insightful)
Poindexter must have played the futures game (Score:2)
now (nytimes registration required blah blah)
-bloo
Technical volunteering (Score:3, Interesting)
Using the same blind logic, the boss locks the only people that know the system out of the system (change all root passwds, change locks on doors etc) and then 'make do' with a poorer quality system that they pay more for. Normally in these cases with small schools, there simply isn't the budget to employ a sysadmin and deploy nice (read expensive) network topologies and so people volunteer.
A sad case of biting the mouth that feeds..
The biggest problem with blender. (Score:2)
The thing I most dislike about blender is the renderer. It just BLOWS. You have to do all kinds of tricks to get decent reflections, shadows and things that POV-Ray has been doing since the day of the Amiga. Now if they could find some way to make a POV-Ray export...
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
Is 'that other OS' Mac OS X? (Score:3, Informative)
"Assassination Politics" predates Poindexter (Score:4, Interesting)
Bell is now in jail, supposedly for stalking an IRS agent, but the trial was something of a cause celebre for cypherpunks.
Type "Jim Bell" and "Assassination Politics" into Google for more details. Muldrake [buttersquash.net] was the first I know to point out the similarity between Bell's scheme and Poindexter's terror casino.
Poindexter's out? (Score:2)
The CPU is NOT reversed-engineered (Score:2, Informative)
It is made with help of IBM. The core is PowerPC. The new thing is the chinese character generator.
someone should take the Diebold Test (Score:3, Informative)
simon
Heisenberg's uncertany principle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heisenberg's uncertany principle (Score:2)
All of their bets involve time -- they have a fixed expiration time. The sports-related bets are over at the end of the ganme, and the politics-related bets are all of the nature "Person X will be governor on D date." The datel limitation is because bets must eventually pay off.
In order to make money from their own activities, terrorists would need to place bets of the form "Calamity C will
What Gets Me About The PAL/Poindexter Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Blender on FreeBSD (Score:2)
There's a FreeBSD targetted build shellscript in the main directory, and it works beautifully. (Caveat - I had to copy one
Also, if you're interested in the bleeding edge branch of Blender, Tuhopuu (l
Blender's improvements aren't limited to 2.28 (Score:3, Informative)
Altogether, I think that Blender is a very attractive choice for the 3D hobbyist--someone who enjoys 3D and graphics but is never going to make a living from it. After all, why shell out $1000+ when a little extra effort can get 95% of the features for free? If you plan to have a career in 3D, or have lots of money, it's probably worth it, but as one who's just in it for the fun, the eye candy, and the challenge of making things work, open source offers me four very decent tools to use together: Blender [blender3d.org], Wings3D [wings3d.org], Yafray [uniovi.es], and The Gimp [gimp.org]. All of these work to some degree on Windows, Mac, and Linux, sometimes more. There's never been a better time to get into 3D. And aspiring graphic artists shouldn't turn up their noses at such free tools either. Although you could be more immediately useful to a studio by knowing Maya/Max/Softimage/etc, simply using 3D and graphics programs of any kind will teach you tons that can easily extend to whatever programs you use later.
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not plausible origin of Dragon Chip (Score:3, Interesting)
The real history here is not the foundry, but the architecture. RISC is simpler, not only to run fast but also to design, manufacture and perhaps reverse engineer.
How retarded can you be... (Score:4, Interesting)
2) Intel and AMD have many lines of microcontrollers and simple CPUS. In fact, AMD has a much wider line of these low-end programmable devices than Intel, as that has historically been it's forte. (Ever own a GUS sound card?) So I'd say it was probably because AMD had a wider selection of things to model after.
Or maybe AMD security isn't as tight.
There are lots of potential reasons...
TIA is unconstitional (Score:2)
Re:TIA is unconstitional (Score:2)
That is most silly spelling error ever. PSY ops is a real military term. To spy on citizens is nothing new, and is legal, if there is probable cause. The RIAA is doing it, though I hope they will get their weiner whacked when things go to court.
If however the FBI and the CIA has cause to suspect actions that can harm to US citizens are being planned then it is just plain
Re:Piondexter should have been canned for TIA not (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I finally understand what Free software is abou (Score:2, Insightful)
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
But there's more than one means of user input (Score:4, Interesting)
Vote Fraud (Score:2)
An election worker inserted the card in the machine, not the voter. There were enough people around, keeping an eye on things, that attempting to swap cards would be risky.
There were no reports of fraud or irregularities related to the new machines.
Yeah (Score:2)
But how would you ever know? And anyway, if an election offical was corrupt, they could give out fake cards.
Re:Yeah (Score:2)
[If you didn't read the article] Diebold seems... (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Hey Blender folk, how about an undo! (Score:2)
Many people working with these type of applications make a good habit of creating incremental versions of their work, so that most of the geometry is kept in different states in old files, ready to use either in case of errors, crashes or even as useful refere