The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is an open source graphics toolkit. It is a platform independent graphics engine with parallel rendering support. VTK has an active development community that includes laboratories, institutions and universities from around the world. VTK has several large collaborations between Kitware and national organizations such as Sandia National Labs, Los Alamos, and Livermore National Labs, who are using VTK as the foundation for their large data visualization research efforts. – Wikipedia.org

I’d thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both) couldn’t get a clue if it were continued

Note: The penguin which is call Tux is the mascot of the Linux operating system. Linux is the centerpiece of the Free Software movement.

The line below should look like this (the letters a-z all lower case):

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy

But instead it looks like this:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy

For some reason various letters don’t show up. If you don’t see a problem then take a look at this screenshot:

Edit: I learned that the problem was that I had multiple versions of the Courier font installed on my computer. I used the Mac application, Font Book to remove the duplicate font and the problem went away.

LuxRender is a new, open-source, free software rendering system for physically correct, unbiased image synthesis. Rendering with LuxRender means simulating the flow of light according to physical equations. This produces realistic, photographic-quality images. – LuxRender.net

As I understand it, an unbiased renderer is one which attempts to simulate the physical properties of light. Biased renderers allow you to create images which would not be possible in the real world. For instance light in a biased renderer travels directly from light sources to objects in their path. Once the light strikes an object it stops there. Any surfaces in the shadows would be perfectly black. In unbiased* renderers the light travels from light sources to the objects in the scene and then continues to bounce around until then energy drops to an insignificant level.

* July 4, 2009, When I originally posted this I wrote biased which is incorrect. Unbiased = close to real world physical light simulation. Biased = fake, less realistic

Arabic
Persian
Chinese, simplified
Chinese, traditional
Cyrillic
Hindi
Greek
Korean
Yiddish
Japanese
Tamil

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a great game where you try to move a ball across the screen by drawing objects with a crayon. This is what it would be like if your drawings came to life (well, sort of). I played it myself and it’s tremendous fun.

Zoomed out

Zoomed in

Xrez is a company that is in the business of creating extremely high-resolution gigapixel photography.

Apple has been running the “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials since 2006 without a word from Microsoft. Finally Microsoft has responded and created an ad which says, “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”

From TechCrunch.com

[The new Microsoft ads] show lots of fascinating people saying that they use PCs. They highlight the fact that many people may be somewhat offended by the idea that they can’t be interesting or cool if they don’t use a Mac.

Suddenly, Apple looks a little elitist. I mean, they were elitist before, but in a way that made you want to be a part of the club. Now, they just seem a little snobby.