By : Jon Peddie (Mar 2006)
The stuff that we take for granted today, mip-mapping, texture
mapping, z-buffers, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, tri-linear
filtering, cubic mapping, and on and on, was due largely to developments
on the big, old iron of computer graphics, the dinosaurs. Those
giant machines made by General Electric, Evans & Sutherland,
SGI, Sun, and Cray, and huge mainframes from IBM, DEC, and Control
Data, and workstations from Apollo, Adage, Jupiter, and Ramtek,
to name a few, were the cauldrons of 3D development. Every one
of those companies, with one notable exception, is basically out
of business, or out of the (graphics) business. Their remnants
are compressed in the earth and turned into the oil that makes
the modern graphics market thrive and strive.
By : Jon Peddie (Mar 2006)
Did you ever stop to think about all the portable media
players we have? I'm not even a media freak and I have several. My phones,
for example, will play MP3 tunes for me, if I wanted them to. Kathleen
has a Rio flash MP3 player, and I have a generic USB flash memory MP3
player and a pretty blue Zen disk-based MP3 player (with FM radio).
I also have a radio, made by PogoI use to record radio programs
when I can't listen to them; it's a PRP (personal radio player) and
it does MP3 as well. My DSC camera will even record and play audio,
and of course my laptop does it too. And Kathleen still has a MiniDisc
player.
By : Jon Peddie (Mar 2006)
This year Cebit and IDF fall at the same time so JPR is splitting
up to try and get as much of the big picture as possible.
By : Jon Peddie (Mar 2006)
I can't stand too much more fun. That's all this is,
y'know, fun, fun, fun, 'til daddy takes the T-bird away.
Getting dual-cored in San Francisco, hung-over in Hannover in the
snow, and San Jose for the games. The reality of it is you attend
conference meetings or press conferences all day, and then host
or be hosted by clients in the evening, and for us poor folks with
deadlines (I now understand the word dead better than ever),
we're writing late into the night and/or too early in the
morning before repeating it all again.
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