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Comment Re:Blocking customers in BRIC and Ukraine (Score 1) 349

Full disclosure: I am involved with the web presence of Phil's Hobby Shop.

No, [PhilsHobbyShop.com] doesn't even ship to anywhere outside the US and Canada

Your previous post inspired me to add statistics to the software that powers PhilsHobbyShop.com. I have statistics, and Canada isn't even second place. It's USA, then someone else, then Canada. On the other hand, it could be that you're reporting a problem with the web software. Did something break when you went to PhilsHobbyShop.com, added an item to the cart, began checkout, and put in a non-U.S. shipping address? It doesn't appear so: the first order I saw when I logged in to an administrative interface was from (you guessed it) Ukraine.

For many businesses, the vague possibility of making an international sale is outweighed by the very real and persistent attacks coming from these dubious nations.

Then how do companies like Amazon and eBay, with their worldwide presence, fend off these attacks?

For individuals, the possibility however slim of making a sale to the Ukraine or Russia or China is eliminated, also eliminating any necessity of allowing traffic from those nations.

If a stateless firewall blocks all packets from these countries on all protocols and all ports, this would result in end-user confusion when one visits a legitimate web site hosted in one of those countries.

Is there a potential benefit that you intend to exploit there

More revenue. Lots more revenue.

Comment Re:Painting the bike shed (Score 1) 320

But there are tools which could be used by 4th graders, that's not the problem. But 3D modelling is a field for experienced artists.

Simple programs like Voxel Fun (Android) and Minecraft (PC) are introducing children to the concept of voxel sculpting. Or is there a huge step from that to mesh sculpting?

Did you ever try to make anything more complex than a box with blender or Maya?

I made this, this, and this in Blender. That probably makes me an edge case.

Comment The expense of native development (Score 1) 320

You use C++ or C and OpenGL for the library and use the same code for all 3 platforms.

That covers Windows, Mac, and Linux. But then you have to replace your computer with a Mac to test the Mac OS X version of an application, or if your current computer is already a Mac, you have to buy a Windows license to test the Windows version of your application if you didn't already have one to test your site in IE. And you also have to convince end users to trust, download, and install your applications, a barrier that a web application doesn't have. And on mobile, you have to buy one of each platform to test on, you have to pay per platform per year to target anything but Android, and Windows Phone doesn't use OpenGL at all.

Comment Download link (Score 1) 320

And how does your library run on BROWSERS on all 3 platforms?

It doesn't. The server uses the user agent to determine which platform the user is on and sends a link to download the native application compiled for the appropriate platform. Then the user uses the browser to download the native application and installs the native application on his computer.

Comment Painting the bike shed (Score 1) 320

I can teach a 4th grader to create simple, but complete and useable websites in notepad.

Can you teach a 4th grader to make SVGs in Notepad?

But did you ever try to create 3D content? And it's definitly not the lack of tools for creating it.

At this point we're still at the stage where you have to draw your own fonts because a set of primitives to create the most basic 3D content isn't shipped with the platform. I agree that more work needs to be done, but waiting for a set of primitives before delivering a platform is like waiting for unanimous consent on the final color of the bike shed before beginning any construction.

And now look at the most frequented websites today: In what way would Facebook or Twitter and whatever webmail client you're using need it?

It's not Facebook or Google+ or Twitter or webmail itself that needs to be 3D; it's more about what you Like or +1 or tweet about or Send Link.

Comment Are sellers willing to make these models? (Score 1) 320

Online stores like Amazon tend to show multiple views of products. Why not just provide a 3d model users can rotate themselves?

Because most businesses selling products through Amazon.com haven't laboriously modeled all the details of all the products that they sell in Blender. In some cases I've seen while working in online toy and hobby sales, you're lucky to have a flat picture at all because the seller outsources most of its warehousing to the distributor, and these distributors don't provide pictures for all products. So how do you recommend that these sellers efficiently build a mesh of each product with diffuse and specular textures? Are online sellers supposed to depend on manufacturers to provide these models when the manufacturers would prefer that end users visit a brick-and-mortar store than buy online?

Comment Difference between Chrome and IE 8 (Score 1) 320

The differences between IE, Firefox and Webkit browsers are far smaller than the differences between Windows, OS X and the various Linux distros.

Even if you have to do something that works on both the latest version of Chrome/Firefox and the latest version of Internet Exporer available for the latest service pack of Windows XP? The best strategy I've seen to handle advanced HTML5 features that don't polyfill well is to punt and require IE 8 users to install Google Chrome Frame.

Comment Permission boundary (Score 2) 320

or you could just write something in OpenGL and compile and run it anywhere you want natively.

Running something natively generally involves crossing an end-user permission boundary. Remember ActiveX? Furthermore, more and more often, running something natively requires gaining permission from a multinational company to whom device owners have delegated the power of curation, such as Apple or the game console makers.

Why must we shoehorn every last thing onto a platform that was meant to display text?

Because it provides a sandbox such that the permission boundary of downloading and installing a native application is not necessary.

Comment Real life is a fairly flat land (Score 1) 320

Every day I am thankful that my life consists of no more than navigating a 2D space.

The everyday life of the majority of people has a fractal dimension far closer to two than three. When you navigate the real world, you navigate in a plane, with one dimension north and south and the other dimension east and west. Even when you go up and down, it's typically in discrete units called "floors" or "stories" (spelled "storeys" in the Commonwealth) which can be regarded as separate planes.

Comment Noninteractive vs. interactive (Score 2) 320

Noninteractive "geometric projections of 3d scenes onto a 2d viewing plane", such as Mona Lisa, can be done server-side. Interactive ones, such as Quake, can be rebuilt for each client platform. True, duplicating effort for each client platform poses an entry barrier, but I can think of a few Slashdot users who regularly post comments showing a desire for entry barriers for anything interactive in order to protect end users from having their time wasted by a glut of novice productions.

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