game art: textures, features, perspectives
Friday, June 23, 2006, 12:27 PM - Games, Howto
;)
Gamasutra publishes an excerpt from 3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop(Focal Press, February 2006). Where we read PS though, we might as well say Gimp. Blender and Gimp are very close friends aren't they.
More videogames here
27 comments Before there was Linux
Tuesday, May 30, 2006, 03:54 PM - Copyfight
Andy Updegrove on Squaring the Open Source/Open Standards Circle:
"Before there was Linux, before there was open source, there was of course (and still is) an operating system called Unix that was robust, stable and widely admired. It was also available under license to anyone that wanted to use it, and partly for that reason many variants grew up and lost interoperability - and the Unix wars began. Those wars helped Microsoft displace Unix with Windows NT, which steadily gained market share until Linux, a Unix clone, in turn began to supplant NT. Unfortunately, one of the very things that makes Linux powerful also makes it vulnerable to the same type of fragmentation that helped to doom Unix - the open source licenses under which Linux distributions are created and made available.
Happily, there is a remedy to avoid the end that befell Unix, and that remedy is open standards - specifically, the Linux Standards Base (LSB). The LSB is now an ISO/IEC standard, and was created by the Free Standards Group. In a recent interview, the FSG's Executive Director, Jim Zemlin, and CTO, Ian Murdock, creator of Debian GNU/Linux, tell how the FSG works collaboratively with the open source community to support the continued progress of Linux and other key open source software, and ensure that end users do not suffer the same type of lock in that traps licensees of proprietary software products."
Why we all sell code with bugs
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 10:59 PM - Apt-get Install
Eric Sink in The Guardian
The world's six billion people can be divided into two groups: group one, who know why every good software company ships products with known bugs; and group two, who don't. Those in group 1 tend to forget what life was like before our youthful optimism was spoiled by reality. Sometimes we encounter a person in group two, a new hire on the team or a customer, who is shocked that any software company would ship a product before every last bug is fixed.
Every time Microsoft releases a version of Windows, stories are written about how the open bug count is a five-digit number. People in group two find that interesting. But if you are a software developer, you need to get into group one, where I am. Why would an independent software vendor - like SourceGear - release a product with known bugs? There are several reasons:
· We care about quality so deeply that we know how to decide which bugs are acceptable and which ones are not.
· It is better to ship a product with a known quality level than to ship a product full of surprises.
· The alternative is to fix them and risk introducing worse bugs.
Sure. May I add: because every time you fix your own bugs you can sell the product again. Or sell the patches.
The Economics of Programming Languages
Friday, May 19, 2006, 10:01 PM - Theory
David N. Welton proposes <i>the most salient points of the economics of programming languages, and describes their effects on existing languages, as well as on those who desire to write and introduce new languages</i>.
Programming languages, like any product, have certain properties. Obviously, like any other sort of information good, production costs in the sense of making copies are essentially zero. Research and development (sunk costs) are needed to create the software itself, which means that an initial investment is required, and if the language is not successful, chances are the investment can't be recouped. This applies to many information goods, but programming languages also have some qualities that make them special within this grouping. Namely, that they are both a means of directing computers and their peripherals to do useful work, but they are also a means of exchanging ideas and algorithms for doing that work between people. In other words, languages go beyond simply being something that's useful; they are also a means of communication. Furthermore, in the form of collections of code such as packages, modules or libraries, programming languages are also a way to exchange useful routines that can be recombined in novel ways by other programmers, instead of simply exchanging finished applications.
Read the article
Five Steps to Font Freedom
Monday, May 1, 2006, 03:02 PM - Beautiful Code, Copyfight
Think about these scenarios: You don't need to own a font to read a book set in Goudy. You don't need to own Futura to watch a Wes Anderson film. You don't need to own Times to read the Times. You don't need to own any fonts to watch television. Why not? Because that would be insane. And yet this same logic doesn't apply on the internet. Online, a person needs to own a fully licensed version of a font in order to view it in a web browser. You are reading Arial right now. That's right, Arial. Why? Because everybody on Earth has a licensed version of Arial on their computer. The great democracy of the internet has failed to produce typography any better than the least common denominator of system fonts. As a designer, I hope you are outraged and offended. So what can you do about it?
link
via
Wireless Freedom
Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 10:16 PM - Apt-get Install
OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for wireless routers. Instead of trying to cram every possible feature into one firmware, OpenWrt provides only a minimal firmware with support for add-on packages. For users this means the ability to custom tune features, removing unwanted packages to make room for other packages and for developers this means being able to focus on packages without having to test and release an entire firmware.
Link to site
Link to docs
This Essay Breaks the Law
Friday, March 31, 2006, 07:57 PM - Copyfight
By MICHAEL CRICHTON Published in The New York Times, March 19, 2006
* The Earth revolves around the Sun.
* The speed of light is a constant.
* Apples fall to earth because of gravity.
* Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes.
* Elevated uric acid is linked to gout.
* Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease.
* Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.
ACTUALLY, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient's test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.
Read the rest of the article
Also: Over 5000 nanomedicine/nanotech patents have now been granted, and the patent land grab continues unabated.
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