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Sunday, September 19, 2004 |
Flickering
 
The Illusion of Motion in the Digital Age
Animation, by definition, is a series of still images that create the illusion of motion because of an optical phenomenon known as Persistence of Vision (I sure do miss Liz Levy's blog!). The computer age makes it easy to create the illusion of motion and now, Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing.Net points us to a page of Flickering Stereoscopic Images that create MOTION and the THIRD AXIS right before your eyes.
A few months ago they had a link to the 1882 Transit of Venus Reanimated. In 1882, astronomer David Peck Todd shot 147 consecutive plates of the transit of Venus across the sky. Now, two modern astronomers at the Lick Observatory have scanned them and turned them into a Quicktime movie; a film "shot" years before Edison made his first moving picture.
Similarly, in 1612, Galileo made a series of sunspot drawings at approximately the same time of the day. Published a year later in Istoria e Dimostrazioni Intorno Alle Macchie Solari e Loro Accidenti Rome, Galileo's 1612 Sunspots Reanimated are visible centuries later.
Of great interest to me, Argument from Design generated a 1865 Quicktime Virtual Reality Gentleman using old images. I've been a fan of Hans Nyberg's Stunning QTVR Panoramas for quite some time. [Cyndi Greening's Radio Blog]
4:52:55 PM 
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Waiting for Africa Cine Week, by Amit Tyagi, Cinema Minima
Waiting for Africa Cine Week, by Amit Tyagi, Cinema Minima's Correspondent in Nairobi, Kenya. The seventh Africa Cine Week will be held 2004 October 4 - October 9 in Nairobi, Kenya. The competition is open only to local Kenyan productions. Categories range from features to student films: the idea being to encourage local production. What does this year's edition promise? One local feature (so you know who will get the 'Best Feature Film' award); a few local documentaries and local productions; plus stalls and programmes on sale or for exchange.
URTNA, a pan-African organisation of broadcasters has organised an exchange where broadcasters meet and exchange programmes with each other. Very little cash buying, as none of them really have cash (and they keep their cash to buy five-year-old 'foreign' programmes), but programmes do get exchanged each year. It tells you a lot about user tastes and demands to follow these exchanges. And there is a model for small-scale, non-commercial programme exchange here: its all tape-based, older Beta-SP's dominate though DVCAM is increasingly around. [Amit Tyagi reporting from Nairobi, Kenya] Amit Tyagi is Cinema Minima's Correspondent in Nairobi, Kenya. [Cinema Minima]
8:48:19 AM
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Prone to Failure, Insecure, and, in Many Ways, Unchanged
Microsoft and Innovation
A recent wire story headline "Ballmer touts Microsoft's innovation despite Longhorn snafu" sounds like a bad joke. Microsoft, even though it gives an annual "Microsoft Innovation Award" is a company based on the opposite of innovation. The company is masterful at controlling costs and marketing, but it has hardly innovated, ever. Given its near-monopoly position it doesn't have to and it certainly isn't built to.
This online editorial says it all:
The Microsoft Steps:
1. Let someone else develop a new product.
2. Let someone else establish a commercial market.
3. Give away a free often inferior product.
4. Use your access to the operating system to enhance the product.
5. Incorporate the product into the operating system and include it in the distribution.
6. Eliminate the competition and control the standard.
(from John Kostura, 7/29/2000, website named The Edge)
The list of Microsoft "innovations" involves a set of programs that are based on other people's developments. For example:
- Microsoft Basic based on DEC Basic
- MS-DOS based on CP/M
- Windows based on Mac OS
- Microsoft Word, based on Word Perfect
- PowerPoint (bought the company that developed it)
- Excel based on Lotus 1-2-3
- J+++ based on Java
- MSN based on Yahoo
- Internet Explorer based on Netscape Navigator
- Windows Media Player based on RealOne Player
- Microsoft TaxSaver based on Turbo Tax
- Windows CE based on PalmOS
Microsoft is now working now on an iTunes killer as well, "borrowing" the proven idea from Apple's site and planning to market the hell out of it. The company is very skilled at avoiding copyright infringement suits (it smartly dodged the Apple suit). Most of its internal moves have been small improvements; the big ideas come from elsewhere. It has repeatedly been sued for stealing code from other companies.
But the big story is Microsoft's attempt to stifle innovation. Just by its size and ruthlessness, it scares of potential competitors. Over the years, the company has built a habit of buying up potential competitors, driving the out of business, or allowing them to function at a weakened level to give the appearance of competition. Microsoft is so dedicated to maintaining its position in the market that it has hardly enhanced its Windows operating system in years, and each new version, with only mild changes, becomes more and more difficult to produce. It spends most of its time now trying to fix the security bugs that spring up like holes in an rotting roof in a hurricane.
Microsoft, in its near monopoly position, acts like the dog in the manger. (For those unfamiliar with expression, that barking canine scares off the livestock from their feed, feed which it can't eat itself.) The reality is now that we have a competitive hardware market, which has given us unimaginable speed, storage capacity, and connectivity, and we are slowed down in the software side by software that is still prone to failure, insecure, and, in many ways, unchanged for the last five to ten years. Aftre all, major changes aren't in Microsoft's interest.
[Oligopoly Watch]
8:38:34 AM
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© Copyright 2009 Gary Santoro.
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