Author: Steve OHearn

Blur Studio, Autodesk, and the Human Face

The video below is about a software tool called Face Robot, from Blur Studios. It’s the result of a collaboration between a movie studio and a software tool creator. Below is a brief interview with representatives from Blur Studios and the software creators at Autodesk, talking about how they worked together to figure out how best to solve one of the biggest challenges in computer-generated filmmaking, namely – animating the human face.

Note that the one of the speakers refers to an organization called Softimage – pronounced with something of a French accent. Softimage is part of Autodesk.  See below.

That’s just a brief interview with some of the leading edge creators in the world of filmmaking and animation.

For an example of what Blur Studios does, stay tuned for a future blog post here at Skere9.com.

GloZell, Jay Leno, and YouTube: Behind The Scenes

I recently added a new Star to the Skere9 Gallery:  GloZell.  In an earlier blog post, I posted something she did last year that is just hysterical (IS YOU OKAY? Everybody’s Going Cray Cray).

Now that you’ve seen her work, check this out: her “behind the scenes” story about how she started on her own by going to sit in the audience of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and began blogging about the line of people waiting to go in – for two years. No, I don’t mean people were in line for two years. I mean she went every day for TWO YEARS to sit in line and wait to go into the show, and then blogged about the experience.

Until Jay Leno kicked her out. Amazing story, see below.

We’re definitely watching GloZell, one of the most interesting YouTubers I’ve ever seen.

Scott McNealy, Senator George Allen, My Friends, and Me

I posted earlier about Scott McNealy, Java, and Oracle Corporation.  On the day I met McNealy, the C-Span cameras were rolling, and this image is from the online video archive at C-Span:

The February 8, 2011 C-Span recording of the Scott McNealy luncheon

Mike Doyle is the National Press Club member who organized the event for that day.  Senator George Allen had just been elected to the United States Senate from Virginia a few weeks prior to this photo, and was a guest of Scott McNealy’s.  For those who might not know, Senator Allen is the son of legendary NFL football coach George Allen, who is near and dear to all of us longtime fans of the Washington Redskins.  I was seated just in front of Scott, with my colleagues and friends who I’d invited, John Peets, and Josh Parreco, a Java guru who has gone on to a pursue a career in the field of medicine – I look forward to visiting Dr. Parreco’s practice very soon.  And at the podium was that year’s president of the National Press Club, Dick Ryan, a great guy.

The full video of the original event, titled The Future Of Technology, is at the C-Span video archives, here.

Oracle and Java – A Good Brew

Scott McNealy, Steve O'Hearn, February 8, 2001, National Press ClubI first met Scott McNealy on Thursday afternoon, February 8, 2001, at about 12:15 in the afternoon.  Not that I was keeping track or anything.  But I was starting to teach a new Java course that night, based on curriculum I’d created, so the timing was particularly striking to me personally.  McNealy was the CEO of Sun Microsystems, creator of Java. McNealy was the featured speaker at the National Press Club’s luncheon that day.  I’d brought a couple of professional colleagues and friends to meet him.

The Java programming language was already important to Oracle systems, which was why my company was launching the new course.  Our company, db-Training, already taught coursework in Oracle development and database administration.  We were very early to recognize the significance Java would have to the Oracle database.  There was a key architectural similarity between the two products that was rare among the various competing products of the time.  I’ll explain.

The Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) wasn’t – and isn’t – just a database.  It’s an operating platform.  This fact cannot be overstated, especially to those who haven’t worked with Oracle.  The RDBMS stores data and houses software snippets, in a container that can operate on any operating system.  So if you created a database application in the Oracle RDBMS – and I did, quite a few of them – you could do so without a concern for what operating system your application may end up running on.  The trick was that you just moved the application into a version of the RDBMS designed for that new operating system.

But if you created a database application in, for example, traditional COBOL or FORTRAN or something else, you had to concern yourself with the operating system in which you were going to execute the program.  Is it Microsoft Windows?  Which version? Is it Unix?  Or something else – an Apple computer of some sort?  For each new environment, you would have to recompile your FORTRAN or COBOL or whatever program, being aware that the compilation may result in errors, even if it had compiled perfectly well on another operating system already.

With Oracle, you didn’t have to bother with that nonsense.  Create your app in the Oracle database, and you’re done – it’ll work on any operating system, you just have to move the app to the appropriate RDBMS.

However – you couldn’t use FORTRAN (well, ok, you could, but just go with me on this, you Pro*Fortran people).  You had to use an Oracle proprietary language called PL/SQL.

I love PL/SQL.  I love it so much, I wrote a book about it.

Then along came Java, and its Java Virtual Machine.   I think Oracle Corp was quick to realize that the JVM was to Java what the Oracle RDBMS was to database applications – a buffer between the Java program and the operating system, which meant that you could write a single application in Java, and then move it from operating system to operating system by swapping your existing JVM with one that fit the new operating system.  You didn’t have to recompile or rewrite code.  You just had to do a one-time installation of the JVM at the new location, that’s it.

Just like the Oracle RDBMS.

When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, a lot of conspiracy theorists rolled their eyes and figured Oracle would destroy Java somehow.  I was pretty confident Oracle wouldn’t do that.  It made good business sense for them to support Java.

I was there at Oracle Open World when Scott McNealy spoke.  You could tell he was impacted powerfully by the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.  I don’t think it was his preference, but rather an economic necessity.  I’m sure he would’ve kept Sun independent if possible. But since he had to sell, Oracle was the best way to go.

And now – history has shown that Oracle has been very good to Java, according to InfoWorld.

I could’ve told you that years ago.  Oracle needs Java.  It was a good fit, and still is.

 

 

Dumb Movie Lines: The Last Woman On Earth (1960)

Movie Poster: The Last Woman On Earth (1960 film)I just watched The Last Woman On Earth, an old 1960 film by Roger Corman.  Some sort of plague or something wipes out just about everyone in the world, and there’s just a handful of people left.  It’s a good old classic sci-fi movie.

But good old movies are not immune to the occasional dumb line.  I just saw one scene where the only people remaining (that the viewer knows about) is one woman, and two men.  So naturally the two men get in a fight over the woman, and one man kills the other.  It’s a bit involved and the murder wasn’t necessarily intentional, but it was clear that the surviving man hated the dead man and had been fighting him.  So as he, the one remaining man on Earth, leans over the dead guy, along with the one remaining woman left alive on Earth, the surviving man begins to come to his senses, and states what the woman – and the viewer – already know: “I killed him.”

And then he looks at the woman: “when will we ever learn?”

WE?  He actually says “we”.

I was waiting for the woman to say “What’s this WE stuff, YOU killed him, mushbrains.”

But the woman takes it in stride.  I guess women are used to that sort of thinking.

It reminds me of an old joke: the Lone Ranger and his native American sidekick Tonto are watching a horde of Indian braves bear down on them in full battle fury. “Looks like we’re in trouble, Tonto,” says the Lone Ranger to his companion, to which Tonto replies: “What you mean ‘we,’ pale face?”

 

 

Jokes: Overheard at the Olympics

  • Paul Hamm, Gymnast: “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.”
  • Boxing Analyst: “Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.”
  • Softball announcer: “If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.”
  • Basketball analyst: “He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn’t like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces.”

 

Lawsuits: Are software developers liable for security breakdowns?

TechRepublic is asking an interesting question:  should software developers be sued for security failures in their code?

They point out that if a restaurant serves you food that makes you sick, you can sue.  You might not win, but you can file a lawsuit.

the LawAnd you’re probably already imagining a host of other scenarios like this – if a car is defective and you’re in a crash as a result, or if you’re on an elevator and it shuts down unexpectedly and you’re thrown forward, etc.  For any of these, you can sue.

So what if a software system upon which you rely – fails in its promise, implied or explicit, to protect your information from unauthorized access?

A lot of software license agreements include declarations from vendors that they are not responsible for security breakdowns.  You know this, of course, because you carefully read the several dozen pages of license agreements that pop up every time you want to download an MP3 file containing your favorite pop song for 99 cents.

European bodies are beginning to take legal action to overturn these waivers, opening up software developers to legal liability.  TechRepublic reports:

… a House of Lords committee recommend[ed] such a measure be implemented in 2007 and European Commissioners argu[ed] for the requirement in 2009 – however agreements to this effect have not been passed

Do you think these agreements will be passed?  And if Europe passes these agreements, is the U.S. far behind?

And if so, what will that do to software vendors?

I have a theory:  if these laws come into being, I predict that software will stop offering password protection of any kind whatsoever. If they don’t write it into the software, they won’t be held liable for any implied protection.  After all, by omitting any protection whatsoever, what could someone sue them for?

Mediawiki is the software that drives the Wikipedia.org website.  Their software uses optional logins for identifying contributors, but not for protecting information – in fact, the point of a wiki is to publish everything, not protect anything.  If you wish to protect it, you move it into a password-protected folder at the web server (HTTP server) level.

I think that’s the direction in which all software will go, if these laws pass – all password protection will end, and information security will go modular, with just a few dedicated vendors taking on the challenge of providing some sort of plug-and-play or location-based security, and by “location” I mean on your hard drive, or in the cloud.

The dedicated vendor that figures out how to move into that space reliably will make a killing in the market place.

Provided they don’t get sued.

For the full article, see http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/should-developers-be-sued-for-security-holes/1109