Why is Linden Lab providing a Hardware Package?

When Linden Lab announced it's beta Second Life Enterprise Product, many were surprised by the $55,000/year price tag. Others were just as surprised by the fact that they were providing hardware, two dedicated servers as well as the software. The question was why?

The obvious answer was that if deployed on a shared server in the enterprise, the app would lag and would impact negatively any other app fighting for CPU cycles. It would be like giving a vicious dog to a family and then saying we need to train you to control it.

The second reason may be more obscure, but even more fascinating to speculate on.

A month or so ago I posted:

• RealTime is the new Web 3.0

• No need for a Viewer - Nvidia does Rendering on the Server

Let's first speculate that the Lab's engineers do not live in a vacuum and the are fully aware and testing new and future offerings from Nvidia, AMD and Intel. L ets assume they have some contact with Autodesk, Dassault, Microsoft, Google. Now a leap.... Lets assume they are not stupid. Lets take the speculation further and believe they are developing SL 2.0 with streaming content and backend rendering with Nvidia, AMD & Intel.

Just think: No viewer required, full IP protection, Natal ready. Remember Lotus & Mitch Kapor failed to lead with a GUI for 123 and Microsoft ate them alive. I don't think the lesson went unlearned. Linden Lab's SL is like 123 was in 1989, based on 6 year old architectures & technologies.



Here is a quote from the Develop3D blog about Reality Server from Nvidia:.

For those that wish to set up their own facility there are three different packages. In true American style there is no small - instead just a M, L and XL. Medium is a 2U rack mounted system with 8 Tesla GPUs and is suitable for smaller architectural offices and product design teams with 10s of concurrent users. Of course, this depends on the intensity of use and some customers may need to dedicate four GPUs for a single task. The 'Large' package features 32 Tesla GPUs for 100s of concurrent users, while 'XL' features 100 Tesla GPUs for serving 1,000s of users over the web.

Nvidia is still working on overall system costs, but with a single Tesla cards costing in excess of 1,000 EUROS one may speculate that a medium system would cost around 15,000 - 20,000 EUROS just for the hardware. On the software side, however, customers should expect a one-time licensing cost of 2,000 EUROS plus 20% maintenance per Tesla card.

From complex architectural visualisations and 3D city modelling to product design and automotive styling, the CAD-centric target markets for RealityServer are huge. And with mental ray already the rendering engine of choice for most major CAD developers, one may speculate that it's only a matter of time before RealityServer becomes a widely supported platform for CAD.

What makes this technology particularly interesting is the fact that it is designed to use GPUs in the Cloud and not CPUs, but this is also a current barrier to deployment. None of the large Cloud service providers currently offer GPUs in their facilities, but Nvidia expects this to change early next year. This coupled with the expected release of RealityServer-compatible CAD products should make 2010 a very interesting year for rendering in the Cloud.

The above costs fit very nicely inside the Lab's pricing model & server-side storage of 3D content inherently protects 3D intellectual property, with clients receiving only images of the 3D content they are interacting with.

If the Lab does not do this someone else will. Anyone have some VC to invest ~LOL~

Looking at 3D Marketplaces

With all the discussion about mesh content and freebies on Xstreet let's look outside the box, and not at Rendrosity, DAz3D or SpeedTree but at other marketplaces for models. Below are four sites from the two largest CAD vendors & one from Google (Yes, Google Skecthup is CAD). You will note how much, if not all is free, and how much is provided by manufacturers. If I am an Architect or a Mechanical Designer I will not pay for a representation of products and the associated meta data (specs, price, logistics, etc) to incorporate it into my work anymore then I would buy a catalog.

Now that is not true when the digital product is "the product" like a photograph or a music track is it?

How much content in a virtual world is a product and how much is a representation of a product? The differentiation is not defined in copyright law but in standard business practices and what makes the author/owner/distributor money or gives them a competitive advantage for their core business. Do auto manufacturer's charge whenever a car is shown in a movie or do they pay the studio to have it shown? Rates paid are based on eyeballs, be it to consumers or the professionals (specifiers). Can Linden Lab become a platform to promote RL products via representations or will it just be a 3D Napster? That question was not settled in 2007 when the corporate experiments tested the platform.

It appears LL has now decided there is some value in supporting 3D meshes? Why? They can support (ie: charge) partners, the architects & specifiers of the look and feel of corporate & branded virtual workspaces and worlds to play in the big leagues. I doubt Herman Miller would object to the use of their chairs in the corporate board room of a Fortune 500 company since many manufactures have high prim mesh models for free, with meta-data.

That leaves the Main Grid, millions of potential eyeballs, the consumers (LL's definition of residents, not mine). Here I believe the only thing the Lab can do is to control what gets into SL like a network controls what gets on TV or radio. If you want a copy for the public/consumer SL Grid, you will need to buy it on Xstreet, not upload it for 10 linden and then make it a freebie, and you will only be able to buy it from whoever has the provable license rights.

You may notice I no longer see Linden Lab as proponents of the free and open internet model anymore, not even a competitive hosting company, but like an Ad Agency, Television Network, ISP or worse a Bank.

You can't mix and match the two business models or it will all be a free for all. LL is not Google, Autodesk or Dassault with a growing core business to support being the distributor of millions/billions of objects. Linden Lab cannot ignore professional 3D meshs but if they don't restrict imports they will be the 3d Napster, swamped and sued to death.

Take a look.

Dassault Systems 3DVia

Google 3D Warehouse

SolidWorks 3D ContentCentral

Autodesk Content 3D Warehouse

Autodesk Seek


There is hope though, in the OpenSource/OpenSim model of independent avatars, distributed storage and IP controls.

Eloh Eliot's new skins on Xstreet SL™ now only L$6,000,000 ~woot~

Eloh Eliot has set the price of her fabulous new and previously free skin super collection " ✻✻LIFE of LUXURY✻✻ Eloh Eliot Gorgeous Masterskinworks Skin Collection 2008-2009 on Xstreet SL™ at L$6,000,000 with the following tiny print:

**LIFE of LUXURY** Skincraft Division of the Americas is a wholly-owned subsidiary of LoL-Iota Heavy Industries, GmbH. Eloh Eliot brand used with consent, courtesy of & (Another). Xstreet delivery not guaranteed. 10% restocking fee on all refunds. See licensing agreement for details, terms, warnings, side-effects, and usage of this product. Special thanks to Kat—buy her AOs! Consult your accountant before purchasing. Batteries not included. Do not eat. This is not a freebie. Caveat emptor. Full perm files provided. Skins proudly made in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Lippert, and Schreckhorn. Or it gets the hose again. We love you, Philip! Please come back and save us! Void where prohibited. © 2008-2009 LoL-Iota Heavy Industries, GmbH.

and made the following posts on her blog:

Oh, can I have a bear?

&

A Reasonable Proposal: For Preventing the Freeloading Culture of Second Life and Its Proponents From Cluttering Xstreet and Annihilating the Fundamental Values of Commerce, Society, Kingdon & Country

I believe she should be awarded this years Linden Prize

clipped from NWN & Blogs.SecondLife.com

The Lindens have opened up the application process for their 2010 Linden Prize, which awards USD$10,000 to SL projects that best fit these criterion:

• Work in Second Life that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life. YES
  
• Distinctive, original work using Second Life that clearly demonstrates high quality, execution, function, aesthetics and technical sophistication. YES
  
• Work that has the capacity for inspiring and influencing future development, knowledge, creativity, and collaboration both inside and outside of Second Life. YES

From

Applications for the 2010 Linden Prize are now open!

"The Linden Prize will award one Second Life Resident or team with $10,000 USD for an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world. This annual award is intended to align with Linden Lab’s company mission, which is to connect all people to an online world that advances the human condition."

How will Microsoft Counter Chrome OS & OpenGL in the Browser?

Listen and learn. Read between the lines.



IE now really sucks bigtime, but this is a game of leapfrog & Microsoft is not dead. Just think about Natal & IE 9.0 in late 2010, Imagine a powerful browser that is a Windows powered DirectX game platform, targeted to the future of 100s of CPU cores and 100s of GPUs on one chip.

When will we see HTML on a Prim?

I am as guilty as everyone of reporting the news, watching the blogshere and then not returning or posting about developments after the initial flash of interest. What happens is that we get a very fragmented view of the State of the Art. So today I will revisit something that has been on and off the radar for 4 years...

HTML on a prim, Awesomium , Sirikata, Solipsis & the LLMedia API

History:

• June 21 2005: Town Hall with James Linden Topic: Future of HTML in SL
• February 2006: Callum Prentice (Linden) uBrowser first version was released
• July 2006: Millions of Use speculates: What Happens When We Combine Virtual Worlds and the Web? We All Get on the Same Page.
• September 23, 2006: Jeff Barr's Web Page on a Prim!
• August 31, 2007: Vint Falken's First Visit to OpenSim & Reports on OpenSim's HTML on a prim testing
• October 2. 2007: Tao Takashi reports on Linden Lab's 4 Stage plan - "HTML on a prim is getting ready for prime time"
• March 6, 2008: Parcel Media Changes in 1.19.1 Release Candidate & New Release Candidate - html on a prim phase 1 is the big news!
• March 25 2009: I report on Demo for Awesomium v1.0.
• July 3, 2009: . A demo for NaviLibrary v2.0 and Awesomium. This demo uses Ogre for Rendering like RealXtend and Sirikata
• August 27, 2009: T. Linden Introduces the LLMedia API
• Since October 2009, Snowglobe supports Media Rendering Plugins.
• ??
  

The flip side of the coin is 3D in the browser
Take a look at these videos, now 6 months old.

Sirikata



Solipsis



Quote below is from The Linden Lab Wiki

Will media rendering plugins be incorporated into the Second Life Viewer in the future?

There are no plans to build media rendering plugins back into the main codebase for the Second Life Viewer at this time. In fact, just the opposite is happening. Linden Lab is migrating the current media rendering engines out of the Second Life Viewer code, and making them into separate media rendering plugin libraries.

Linden Lab will continue to ship the existing media rendering plugins with the installer for the Second Life desktop application, making it easy for users to get the basic complement of media rendering engines on first installation of the Viewer. However, there are exceptions, like the Apple QuickTime player, which the end-user download and install prior to installing the Second Life Viewer.

For new media rendering plugins, Linden Lab is considering bundling them into the installer for first-time installations of the Second Life Viewer AND providing independent downloads for easy update of previously downloaded Viewers.

If you are developing a media rendering plugin, and would like it to ship with the Second Life installer, please contact Linden Lab at sldev@lindenlab.com.

Will Linden Lab create an "app store" for these plugins?

At this time, Linden Lab is not providing an app store for media rendering plugins.

This release is simply a way to get developers engaged in using the media API and creating interesting media rendering plugins for the Second Life Viewer.

Linden Lab will be monitoring demand for a unified catalog of media rendering plugins, and may choose to provide such a service in the future.

https://svn.secondlife.com/svn/linden/branches/2009/plugin-api/indra/media_plugins/awesomium/

When will we ever get 2D and 3D together? Can "The Lab"create plugins only for SL Enterprise to add value, justify the $55,000 price tag? Have they already? Comments welcome. :-)

Things don't change

The below reminds me of the world we are in today were 3D is the new internet enabled Hobby, If all those people doing baked textures and 3D meshs, how many pay Autodesk for a license of Maya and 3DStudio Max. Things don't change

In an “open letter” dated February 3rd, 1976 and published in several computer magazines of the day, Gates, a twenty-year-old Harvard dropout who’d started a company named “Micro-Soft” with buddy Paul Allen less than a year before, was all fired up over widespread piracy of the company’s first product, BASIC for the Altair microcomputer.

To make the point. that sharing can destroy a business model but it can also jump start, promote a business product, & create standards, the above image and some text were clipped from a publication that grew up in the early days of the PC and now would be all but dead if not for links and Google snippets of it's online content. -> PCWorld

& from WorldCAD Access

Nov 17, 2009

World Leader in CAD Gives Away Software to the World Leader of Piracy

Autodesk donates software worth US$50 million to 50 Chinese universities and secondary vocational schools. It is natural for CAD vendors to donate their software to places of higher learning. Siemens PLM Systems (UGS) is probably the biggest donor, going by press releases announcements. I've always wondered how often these donations are made primarily to lower the corporate tax bill.

Working in The Real World is the Future

by Jon Brouchoud

Great work... I grinned through the whole thing.

Chrome OS now in Open Source

Google Chrome OS Webcast from marketingfacts on Vimeo.

Effective 11/19-2009 Google is releasing the Chrome OS code to the public under an open source license, along with the associated design documents. "As of today, the code will be fully open," said Chrome OS director of engineering Matt Papakipos, "which means Google developers will be working on the same tree as external developers."

Linden Lab now monitizing the Long Tail & Bites the hand that feeds it.

Image sourse: wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Ouroboros_1.jpg

In January of 2008 almost two years ago, still infused with nieve optimism, long before the OpenSpace tsunami, after the rise and fall of the Corporate/SL Developer wave, I posted here a prediction for 2008. I predicted that 2008 would be a year of the long tail. I proselytized that the creative community of residents all along the tail would be a force that would be "the tail that wagged the dog".

How wrong I was.

I was living high on the hog at the time, courtesy of a good friend, high above Hippotropolis, a Linden owned sim for open source developers, their reward for all the hard work in 2007 fixing the then buggy SL viewer, that leaked memory, and crashed as a mater of course. Nicholaz Bearsford was my benefactor, having almost single-handedly patched the dike (even fixing the famous shoe up your ass bug). The Lindens awarded him 1/2 the sim along with a shiny new Mac after he received 95% of the votes as contributor of the year.

By April 2008 Nicholaz was gone.

Here is a quote from his Blog dated April 5, 2008

When I started, I thought LL™ folks were just a bit overworked and with some outside help from a group of friendly open sourcers and code sorcerers the viewer would turn into a solid, stable and even sleek piece of software.

The realization took me some time, but eventually it did dawn even on the optimist which I am, that it was not going to happen. Not through the Linden™s themselves, and certainly not through contributions from the coding community, because the Linden™s were increasingly ignoring the contributions.

There was a time when code submissions were readily accepted, then they were more and more cherry picked and these days, as far as I can tell, they are ignored at large, even if they are addressing the most basic and obvious problems like crashes (and I am not at all speaking of GUI changes).

The way I see it now, the best I could hope to achieve here would be to build a fork (spawning an independent viewer) and trying to keep up with their server side changes. This would be a time intensive and tedious task, which would require inspiration and a vision.

If there is something that has changed over the last year, it is a loss of faith and a loss of the feeling of being inspired. Noting all the changes which happened to the platform on a meta level (governance™, management™ and the like) this 2nd™ experience got more and more trivial and in my view. It merely turned into a pixelated copy of the real world.

Is it just me or did they shrink the size of the "Your world. Your imaginantion" slogan on the web site over time? At the moment it's covering little less space than the text "IBM™ and Linden Lab™" and about one tenth of the space of "CSI:NY™". Is it just me or did the showcase images on the Second™ Life™ website got more and more meaningless over time, now essentially just showing ordinary people standing around or shopping?

Remembering the time when I started, I envy everybody who is still inspired by what SL™ is offering. I had a hell of a time there and I wish I could make it come back.

But these days when I look at the blog, or the Jira or when I occasionally browse over the mailing list, more often than not I'm irked or shaking my head in disbelief or both.

In technical terms, with the current state of the 2nd world, like daily outages on the server, new leaks in the viewer, other problems, it would be like starting all over and probably even worse because now the binary crash reporter is removed from the viewer (this was the tool which I used to locate 90% of the crashes I found).

*sighs*

Putting off this decision and hoping things would change again did work for some time, but eventually I can't ignore the facts. So let me be straight and say that they way things look now there won't be any new builds from me.

At the moment I simply don't have the time, but to be true to myself and you, probably even if I had, I'd be no longer willing to put up with Bullshit™ any more.

*sighs again*

I am grateful for all the feedback I have gotten and also that I had the honor to help you people out there to have a better time in this alternate experience. I guess many people will be disappointed and I'm truly sorry for that.

But things have changed a lot over the last few months and I want to move on. In fact I guess I alreay have ...

Nick

Over the past two years, I have watched the Lindens trash one community after another: The open source developers, the gamblers, the land owners, the merchants, the alternative/x rated community, the mentors & volunteers, even the education community. All along the way they have followed a predictable path, while spouting the "We love our Residents. They are our strength. What is good for them is good for us." PR line. Yes it is just PR it is not CR (Customer Relations). Let me ask what group is left to become disenchanted? Find one and they predictably will be next until all that is left is The Lab and consumers of the "products" they sell.

Just this past week "The Lab" made another change.

Roadmap - Managing Freebies on Xstreet SL

Like so many small changes looked at alone, each can be argued as being insignificant, just tuning, to fix a problem and spun as good for all, but watch what people do, not what they say. Step back and look at the big picture and you will see why In January 2008 concurrency was hitting the high 55,000 range and is now (almost two years later) seldom above 75,000. The Lab spins that as growth. I see it as the dog that continually bites it's own tail.

As of this morning there are 1145 responses to Roadmap - Managing Freebies on Xstreet SL <- You need to go here to join or witness the cascade of anger.

Surprisingly, though my prediction in 2008 was optimistic the image above was from that same post. Maybe I did not see what my subconscious was telling me.

Avatar - The Movie

RealTime is the new Web 3.0

I was wondering why Linden Lab would experiment with providing a hardware platfrom with their SL Enterprise. I can understand shipping SL in a box, but why the hardware? To beat the lag? for now.....

This leads to the question of just how does it scale and what is the next wave of server side technologies under development. While Linden Lab worked on SL Enterprise with IBM, they are also Microsoft connected. Will Microsoft and/or Linden Lab use Silverlight & Moonlight - Sharepoint & high end rendering servers like OnLive and or Nvidia Reality Server to build a new real-time immersive virtual world application?


Bob Muglia, President of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, talks with TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor about Azure, Silverlight, and the impact of RealTime. Recorded June 19, 2009.


via: http://www.ExtremeTech.com - Video of the demonstration given to me during my interview for Extreme Tech with Sumit Gupta of Nvidia and Randy Ochs of Mental Images. Shows how RealityServer can provide photorealistic images in real time to nearly any computing device with a web connection, even smart phones. Images that used to take hours to render even on powerful workstations are now done in seconds and streamed to a remote client over the Web to be viewed in a browser or other client application. Read the interview on Extreme Tech using the link at the top of this description.

ADD this to Microsoft Natal and you get the idea.

Speculation is for a November 2010 release, 5m units global ship, 14 games, and super-low sub-£50 price. MCV his week revealed first details regarding the launch of Microsoft's Project Natal.

Our sources say the innovative controller-free 360 camera will be released worldwide in November 2010.

This and other details have emerged following a behind-closed-doors Microsoft tour of UK publishers and studios – the format-holder has been demoing the tech and detailing its 2010 plans in order to spur more development support.

Microsoft is planning to manufacture 5m units for day one release, with a mix of console and camera plus solus SKUs expected.

The device should cost under £50 when sold solo. One publishing source says Microsoft is “trying to get as close as possible to ‘impulse buy’”. Another even says the camera could even retail for just £30.

14 games are being readied for launch.

Natal was unveiled earlier this year at E3 in Los Angeles. The device uses an array of cameras and microphones to track player movements.

Activision, Bethesda, Capcom, Disney, EA, Konami, MTV, Namco Bandai, Sega, Square Enix, THQ and Ubisoft all committed to make games for the device in an announcement made at last month's Tokyo Game Show.

It’s expected a large chunk of launch games will be first-party offerings from studios such as Rare with third-party games to follow. It is not known if Lionhead’s widely-discussed Milo, which uses advanced AI to create realistic characters, will be in the mix.

Stationary Cycling through Google Street View

by: ashendabblederbezed
This is just a first test upload to demonstrate how I hooked up a Vuzix VR920 head mounted display and a bike sensor to my computer to allow me to have a bit more of an enjoyable experience while peddling away the calories in my garage on the stationary bike.

Microsoft bans 1 Million Xbox Live players

With all the interest in IP theft and technologies that "IP & service providers may or may not be able to introduce to protect virtual IP & goods from piracy the post clipped below from siliconindia news bureau Friday,13 November 2009 got my attention

Bangalore: Microsoft has banned as many as one million players from its Xbox Live gaming service. The company alleges that these users modified their consoles to play games, which are illegally downloaded from file sharing sites. "All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty, and result in a ban from Xbox Live," the software giant said in a statement.

The move comes amid the release of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," the highly anticipated Xbox 360 game of the year, reports InformationWeek. The so-called 'warez' copies of the game reportedly showed up on pirate sites prior to its release - a development that may have prompted Microsoft to take action, possibly in concert with or at the behest of Infinity Ward, the games publisher.

Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with Digital Rights Management technologies designed to detect pirated software, but some players have successfully 'modded,' or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections. It was not immediately clear how Microsoft detected the jury rigging.

Consoles banned from Xbox Live will still function if games are played offline, but players banned from the Xbox Live service will not be able to sign into their accounts or engage other players over the internet.

A player banned from Xbox Live told the U.K.'s Radio 1 that he was "gutted" and "distraught" by the decision. The player admitted paying an electronics store more than $100 to modify his Xbox so it could play pirated games. The Xbox Live gaming service counts more than 20 million members, according to Microsoft. Earlier this year, the company extended the Xbox warranty to cover a problem known as "The red ring of death."

Read more: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/104/1040853p1.html

As noted by Erica Driver and Sam Driver in a recent blog post, SL Enterprise customers have nearly two dozen alternatives they could choose from after they look at the Lab's "unique offering and pricing scheme" (I am being kind) . The list they provide on their about page makes for interesting research.

Here is the partial list of Emersive Environment/Simulator vendors covered by ThinkBalm

Altadyn American Research Institute, Inc. (ARI) Applied Research Associates (Virtual Heroes) Breakaway Ltd. Engineering and Computer Simulations (ECS) Forterra Systems IBM Icarus Studios InXpo Linden Lab Nortel ON24 OpenSim ProtonMedia ReactionGrid Sun Microsystems Teleplace The Value Network (VenueGen) Unisfair VastPark Virtual Italian Parks (Moondus)

Progress Continues at realXtend

image from: The Extending Reality blog

0.0.2 preview release of next-generation realXtend software

Clipped from the post at The Extending Reality blog

Here you can see some of the interesting properties of the new technology. A couple of the users are logged in using the traditional realXtend avatar service, others have OpenSimulator authentication and one of them uses the new OpenID-based method. One of the most important features for us is the ability to easily move between worlds without dependencies to central authorities and OpenID seems to fit the bill quite nicely.

Reactions to Enterprise 2.0 & SLE

The image/cartoon from http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2008/04/good-reasons-fo.html : is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 License.

I clipped the following to illustrate the Corporate take on Web 2.0 and Second Life Enterprise

Enterprise 2.0 technology is only starting to become really enterprise ready

Because of a lack of understanding of how the modern enterprise infrastructure works, my belief is that a lot of the existing E2.0 offerings have gaping holes in them that must be addressed if they are to survive long term in the environment they wish to play in beyond the proverbial "server under someone's desk". I was surprised, for example, during the Google Wave keynote that the speaker referred to the desire to put as few restrictions in place in the security model as possible to ensure the maximum degree of collaboration. Examples like these, among many others, show that there is a long way to go before these tools can be used pervasively in the enterprise without serious repercussions. I am certain that regulations around archiving, audit, document retention, privacy regulations etc. along with technical requirements like delegated authentication, encryption, etc. can not be adequately addressed with many of these tools in their current ungoverned state in the enterprise and this will be a liability in these tools adoption until it's addressed.

It should be noted that the more sophisticated vendors absolutely understand what they need to do to be viable in a truly enterprise context but they are decidedly in the minority. Linden Lab, creators of the Second Life 3D virtual world, had a major announcement at the conference in unveiling Second Life Enterprise that had nothing to do with sexier avatars, but instead decidedly focused on the unsexy topics like providing a private and secure virtual environment with enterprise manageability capabilities. Similarly, Novell, long a networking and infrastructure stalwart from Enterprise 1.0, unveiled Novell Pulse, with a set of enterprise class capabilities on top of Google Wave. These vendors realize that completely unstructured capabilities that do not bolt into the enterprise mechanisms of governance have little chance for broadscale adoption.

above via: a twitter lead to:
Nenshad Bardoliwalla's Blog on Strategy-Driven
Execution

Nenshad Bardoliwalla was most recently the CTO for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) at SAP

Move over Google Earth

Love this. Built in his spare time with a bunch of friends.


Sneak preview of an amazing three dimensional model of the entire planet on which anyone can build their own homes or shops anywhere on earth. It was built by a tiny team led by Michael Fotoohi, managing director of Micazook.com and a bunch of friends all working in their spare time (Take a bow .Daniel, Jarek, Bartek and Marcin and Lukas) . Think Wikipedia meets Google Earth (Google Earth it isn't) mfotoohi@micazook.com

via: Rita J. King via: Joshua S. Fouts via: Mal Burns

GPUs on the grid

image from CL Lab" www.cse.buffalo.edu

Russ Miller, principal investigator at CI Lab, stands in front of the server rack that holds Magic, a synchronous supercomputer that can achieve up to 50 Teraflops.

Enhancing the performance of computer clusters and supercomputers using graphical processing units is all the rage. But what happens when you put these chips on a full-fledged grid?

Meet “Magic,” a supercomputing cluster based at the University of Buffalo’s CyberInfrastructure Laboratory (CI Lab). On the surface, Magic is like any other cluster of Dell nodes. “But then attached to each Dell node is an nVidia node, and each of these nVidia nodes have roughly 1000 graphical processing units,” said Russ Miller, the principal investigator for CI Lab. “Those GPUs are the same as the graphical processing unit in many laptops and desktops.”

That’s the charm of these chips: because they are mass-manufactured for use in your average, run-of-the-mill computer, they are an extremely inexpensive way of boosting computational power. That boost comes at a price, however.

“These roughly 1000 processors on each nVidia node are programmed in a synchronous process, basically bringing us back to programming methods of the 1960s,” said Miller.

Magic has been hooked up to Open Science Grid and the New York State Grid since February.

via: http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1002127 - iSGTW is an international, weekly, on-line science-computing newsletter

From the mouth of CAD guy

" So, conclusion for today. I’m thinking about immersive world where design, engineering and real people are all connected to dream, design, plan, build and manufacture life around us. And, in my view, this is a perfect time for today’s CAD/PLM/BIM vendors to think about a future of their products. How to catch up before Google’s next leapfrog? Just not to find themselves in place of GPS manufacturers today."

via:Oleg Shilovitsky (Note: Oleg says "I work at the Dassault Systemes Group, the content included in my blog is my own personal opinion, experience and thoughts and it does not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of my employer.)"

No need for a Viewer - Nvidia does Rendering on the Server

A quote by Tom Hale caught my eye and I have not gotten it out of my head, to paraphrase he said that Linden Lab was preparing for the next wave of technology. I have reported on mental images & Reality Server before but it is time to revisit it, because this just may be the next wave of innovation Tom spoke of.

About mental images: mental images, founded in 1986, is the recognized international leader in providing component and platform software for the creation, manipulation and visualization of 3D content. Its world leading rendering and other technologies are used by the entertainment, computer-aided design, architecture, scientific visualization, and other industries that require sophisticated images primarily as part of their software products and application services. mental images is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NVIDIA Corporation with headquarters in Berlin, Germany, a subsidiary in the United States, mental images, Inc., and a subsidiary in Melbourne, Australia, mental images Pty. mental images has a multinational staff of top qualified engineers exclusively dedicated to basic research and development in the area of 3D graphics and 3D Web Applications and Services technologies. For more information, visit www.mentalimages.com.

via: dcccafe.com

Couple this with Nvidia's Next Gen NVIDIA Fermi (GT300) Chip and you get Ray Tracing

Fun - Making RL Virtual

the fun theory

We believe that the easiest way to change people's behavior for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it The fun theory. Do you have an idea that uses fun to change behaviour? Enter now for the chance to win €2500. http://www.thefuntheory.com

ACTA - The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

This image has been released into the public domain by its author, Zcrayfish. This applies worldwide.

In June 2008 Cory Doctoro reported in Bong Boing

Secret super-copyright treaty MEMO leaked

Yesterday Cory reported:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

• * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

• * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

• * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

• * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together

Some Background:

In 2007 a select handful of the wealthiest countries began a treaty-making process to create a new global standard for intellectual property rights enforcement, which was called, in a piece of brilliant marketing, the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" (the agreement does not cover currency fraud).

ACTA is spearheaded by the United States along with the European Commission, Japan, and Switzerland — which have large intellectual property industries. Other countries invited to participate in ACTA’s negotiation process are Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. Noticeably absent from ACTA’s negotiations are leaders from developing countries who hold national policy priorities that differ from the international intellectual property industry.

Act on ACTA: Tell the New Congress to Open the Secret IP Pact

Revelations about the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have emerged, and the news is not good for technology users or digital rights. Instead of concentrating on physical fakes and fraud, recently leaked draft language suggests ACTA will provide expansive powers to customs authorities worldwide to search and seize digital technology at the border on suspicion of IP infringements and to widen the criminalization of previously civil IP law way beyond profit-seeking pirates. An entire section of the trade agreement would create new regulations over the Internet and DRM -- but those details remain secret. Write to your representatives now to demand that Congress bring transparency to this clandestine pact.

via: EFF.org

Cory Ondrejka posts his concerns on his blog and twitter

Twitter:

# You can let your Senator know that innovation, progress, and economic strength matter to you http://bit.ly/33fvpgabout 4 hours ago from Brizzly
# Oh, and if you want to be paranoid about world government conspiracies, ACTA should be driving you crazy http://bit.ly/2xnafkabout 4 hours ago from Brizzly
# Are you willing to sacrifice US innovation and competitiveness at the altar of overbroad copyright laws? I'm not http://bit.ly/2xnafkabout 4 hours ago from Brizzly

Blog:

change is hard

I get it. Change is hard. Creative destruction and innovation can destroy your current business.

Tough. Progress is going to happen. Accept it. Embrace it. After 18-months in the music business, I fully understand the pain and fear upheaval brings, but I also saw how really understanding what change is doing to your business opens up new opportunities. Music companies can do a better job today than ever before of connecting artists and fans around the experience of music — and I know they don’t need a huge copyright land grab to it.

Which makes the current leaks from the ACTA negotiations deeply disturbing on two levels. First, willfully blocking your nation from building on inexorable technology trends is an act somewhere between criminal and treasonous. Second, as nations we all face enormous challenges around healthcare, war, displaced peoples, energy, disease, education, poverty and famine. We have a unique moment in history to capitalize on the worldwide excitement about the Obama Administration.

via: http://ondrejka.net/where%27s%20my%20obama/2009/11/04/1124-change-is-hard.html

Can SL Play in China?

Report: No World of Warcraft in China

China's General Administration of Press and Publication, the government arm that regulates online gaming in that country, has reportedly suspended approval for NetEase.com Inc. to operate Activision-Blizzard's online role-playing game World of Warcraft, putting the future of that game in China in question and likely impacting the bottom line of both NetEase and Activision.

According to Reuters, "the regulatory body posted a statement on its Web site that demanded the NetEase affiliate company that operates World of Warcraft to suspend charging users to play the game, and disallow new account registrations." The news service goes on to say. "NetEase launched the World of Warcraft game commercially in China on Sept. 19. Roth Capital Partners analyst Adam Krejcik said the move by the GAPP was not surprising, given previous reports that the agency was displeased that the popular multiplayer online game was launched without its approval."

Via: Virtual Worlds News