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The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

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Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#61

Post by McKayDavis »

prpl wrote: post #45
McKayDavis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right out of high school I started as an intern at PTC in Research Park shortly after they acquired CDRS from E&S. CDRS was originally started by some of the researchers from the University of Utah that created the Alpha_1 NURBS modeler. After PTCs org wide rebranding, it was called Pro/Concept. I worked on the other product in the group called Pro/3D Paint. It was the first product to use projective texture mapping…

When was that? I mentioned in another thread I used alpha_1 in high school at the U (2002). I had actually had Autocad (R16) 3D CAD experience at the time, but alpha_1 was a lot of fun. I ended up making a 3D Model of Escher’s Belvedere. One of the guys was going to “print” it down in the lab in the bottom of MEB (they did have some form of 3D printer) but thought it might be hard and unstable. I ended up getting it…

I don’t know the exact year the CDRS group was acquired by PTC, but it be around the same time I attended the same High School Computing Institute in 1996.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#62

Post by jacquesm »

herewulf wrote: post #43
elliotec wrote: post #18

The University of Utah was also the fourth node of ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet - https://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/arpanet/ On a personal note, this is also part of why I exist at all. My father came from England very young, worked his way through agriculture jobs in California, and somehow found himself with a job offer at the u of u as an electron microscopist. Met my mom there. Details are…

The U of U still has a large block of public IPs that they use for all their "internal" systems. No need for NAT there! That was at least 100% true as of around 15 years ago. I know the CS and engineering departments are still using that block. Hard to imagine that it still holds true for WiFi APs, etc and the proliferation of devices.

That's how the internet should have been.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#63

Post by jacquesm »

dgacmu wrote: post #56
riceart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1994 was way way after dialup Internet access was mainstream (both Yahoo and Amazon were founded that year). Any first access in the state would be sometime in the 80s. By 1993 there were already national level dialup ISPs. > that was about as long [15 minutes] as it took to load one webpage with one image. Very hyperbolic. A simple webpage with text would load in seconds on a 28.8k modem. A single image would usuall…

This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university. (I helped create the third public ISP in…

I was still fighting local telcos in Canada in 2003 to get filters removed so I could go above 9600 baud.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#64

Post by dgacmu »

photonerd wrote: post #59
dgacmu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university. (I helped create the third public ISP in…

Wow, Utah really lagged on getting an ISP, huh? From a UK perspective: my family got dual up in ‘94, there were lots of ISP options & it was basically impossible to buy anything slower than 28.8k new (at retail anyhow, I’m sure you could special order) as no-where stocked them. 28.8 took over fast . I think the UK had lots pf ISPs at the time because without a local number to call it was VERY expensive rather than ju…

Population density helps a lot with internet access. Distance to COs is smaller, easier to wire, shorter backhaul, etc. The salt lake city metro area had reasonable density but, particularly 30 years ago, it wasn't like .. most places in the UK or Europe.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#65

Post by supportlocal4h »

photonerd wrote: post #59
dgacmu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university. (I helped create the third public ISP in…

Wow, Utah really lagged on getting an ISP, huh? From a UK perspective: my family got dual up in ‘94, there were lots of ISP options & it was basically impossible to buy anything slower than 28.8k new (at retail anyhow, I’m sure you could special order) as no-where stocked them. 28.8 took over fast . I think the UK had lots pf ISPs at the time because without a local number to call it was VERY expensive rather than ju…

Commercial ISP. People had dialup internet access before there were commercial ISPs.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#66

Post by westurner »

cubefox wrote: post #53
johnnyanmac wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really get what happened there. They found out 20 years later than it was a cropped image from Playboy, and eventually both Playboy and the model were fine with it being used for research purposes. Then another 20 years later people re-discovered this and now it was sexist? Regardless, I read some other literature and I do agree that it was probably well past time to update a reference image that wasnt…

[flagged]

(All humans have those. New York already fought for their legal right to public anatomy, too.)

Are there higher resolution test images for ML? Maybe something inanimate that can't be judged and thus can't go to heavem anyway.

sklearn.datasets.load_iris, load_digits, : https://scikit-learn.org/stable/datasets/toy_dataset.html

Sklearn.datasets sample images has an image of a flower but not a USA!: https://scikit-learn.org/stable/datasets/loading_other_datas...

The W3C RDF Primer could describe Shape rdfs:Class'es instead of People and their contact information rdfs:Property(s). An Object-Oriented Programming and Linked Data exercise: Arrange these Classes into a hierarchy, according to their features: Shape, Square, Rectangle, Triangle, Quadrilateral, Triangle.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#67

Post by nla »

sohkamyung wrote: post #40
anderspitman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biography of the Pixel looks really good as well (by the other founder, Alvy Ray Smith). Been on my list for a while

I've read "The Biography of the Pixel" book. It's an amazing and educational book about the history of computer graphics and the definition of a pixel by Smith.

yes for sure!

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#68

Post by dahart »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #51
cubefox wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the Stanford Bunny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_bunny Or, more distantly related, the test photo Lena , which recently fell victim to political correctness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

Yeah, I don't really get what happened there. They found out 20 years later than it was a cropped image from Playboy, and eventually both Playboy and the model were fine with it being used for research purposes. Then another 20 years later people re-discovered this and now it was sexist? Regardless, I read some other literature and I do agree that it was probably well past time to update a reference image that wasnt…

FWIW, this isn’t an accurate summary of what happened with the Lena image at all, and the story and reasons behind it’s decline are easily available online. If you want to understand it, maybe it’s worth looking up?

Lena is publicly on board with the movement to stop using her image for research, and it is irrelevant that Playboy has waived their copyrights. The reasons the image is discouraged are to promote professionalism, diversity, and respect in research. The journal Nature says “the Lena image clashes with the extensive efforts to promote women undertaking higher education in science and engineering”. [1] The paper “On alternatives to Lenna says “ Whatever its merits, the Lenna image’s origin is incompatible with our community’s sincere attempts to encourage diversity and respect in Science and Technology”. [2] (And references “ A centerfold does not belong in the classroom”. [3])

It’s more or less the same as hanging pin-ups at work- most people understand why that’s a bad idea, regardless of whether it was acceptable in the past. Imagine if female teachers put up Chippendale’s posters in the classroom, or nurses put them in the hospital, and argued that anyone who complained was just being PC police and unreasonably sensitive. Just because some people might not care doesn’t mean everyone is okay with it, and even if you don’t care about it, it’s still clearly unprofessional.

I’m sure it’s completely unintentional and that you and parent comment don’t mean to sound unsupportive of our social advances of women. I’m sure like most people here you actively support and encourage women to learn and work in STEM fields, and advocate for equality. So please consider more carefully the message that pushing back on the Lenna image sends and how it might reflect on you from other people’s point of view.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0337-2

[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500340.2016.1...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-playboy-centerfold...

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#69

Post by dahart »

ozarker wrote: post #20

Peter Shirley is a University of Utah guy right? His Ray Tracing in One Weekend series is brilliant

Pete came to Utah after a bit of a relative graphics drought in the department, right when I was trying to absorb as much as I could. I literally glommed onto him, learned as much as I could about ray tracing, started working on his path tracer, and I can honestly say working with Pete changed my life. That’s a long story, but incidentally he named his path tracer “Eon” after how long it took to produce a decent image. He’d also arrived with a codebase that predated modern C++, we often used prefixes in class and variable names. His prefix was ‘gg’ which I don’t remember what it stands for, but the prefix was so common he broke the ‘g’ key off of his keyboard.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#70

Post by pfannkuchen »

cubefox wrote: post #50
westurner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer graphics > History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_graphics#History History of computer animation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_animation

Reminds me of the Stanford Bunny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_bunny Or, more distantly related, the test photo Lena , which recently fell victim to political correctness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

> which recently fell victim to political correctness

It amazes me how much this stuff rhymes with Christian fundamentalism, almost like they’re slowly reinventing it.

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