Blender used by Sony and Sun

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Two somewhat related news items today: Sun uses Big Buck Bunny material to demonstrate their JavaFX Media Component For Streaming Video and Sony promotes its blu-ray authoring ‘on-Q Create’ software for Java with Elephants Dream footage. Sun properly credits BBB, while Sony violates the Creative Commons license by not crediting (although I can’t be 100% sure – after trying to start java for 1 minute, my browser crashed. Anyone interested in my opinion on Java? ;-)

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    • BlenderLovingSquirrel

      ..and then the world!

    • Nemesis#13

      i hate java, too…

    • http://opensource.org/blog/8 Michael Tiemann

      SONY is a good actor here: http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/

      I’m sure that if they are failing to give proper credit they will positively respond to a friendly notice.

    • Shane

      I reckon your opinion of java might be compatible with mine (and non-compatible with anything else)

    • ispyamoose

      Most large companies, at least in my opinion, probably don’t care or realize whether or not they step on other people’s toes.

      Like Michael Tiemann said, I think it would be proper to send them a friendly notice.

    • GreenBoy

      There is a link back to the big buck bunny website. Doesn’t that count as giving credit? hmmm, but nothing for the elephants dream image.

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @Greenboy: yes, I think so. That’s why I said Sun is doing it right ;-)

      I think it’s a great suggestion to send a friendly note to Sony, but I don’t have time to chase up a contact for this. Anyone up for that?

    • ispyamoose

      http://news.sel.sony.com/en/corporate_information/contact_us

      Here are all of the contacts for the Sony Corporate Communication Team.

    • jayh

      Is anyone really surprised that Sony is the guilty party?

    • ispyamoose

      @jayh: Nope, not in the least bit.

    • http://www.watchmike.ca Mike

      All Sony had to do was give credit below the image – is that so hard to do?
      No one is asking them for royalty payments or a license or something – you’d think they’d sooner just give attribution.

    • dyf

      Sony did it again??
      i thought they learned their lesson from here:
      http://lame.sourceforge.net/open_letter_sony_bmg.html

    • Michael

      But Sony put “Elephants Dream” right smack in the center of the picture- isn’t that credit enough?

    • Unsettlingsilence

      On the other hand doesn’t the fact that the picture has the name of the movie in it to some degree give some notoriety to it? I does not fully comply perhaps, but on the other hand the image is not a random screen shot at least. I’m not a fan of sony and their promotion of drm but I think someone interested in the movie displayed may as likely search the name in the image as click on an obscure link at the bottom of the page, though it would be nice to have both.

    • Newbie

      This is a cool site but what’s the beef with Java and JavaFx? I think it’s a pretty cool application. Shitty thing that Sony did though.

    • http://www.instinctive.de Alexander Ewering

      My experience with Java is basically: Crashing/freezing browsers, cheap-looking, slow applications, and totally bloated and an artificially over-complicated programming experience. Especially for the typical browser-embedded interactive application (but also for pretty much everything else), Flash/Flex are so dramatically superior to Java that it’s a total surprise to me that this crappy stone age technology still hasn’t disappeared into history books.

    • Icono

      I second Alexander’s post. Right on target.

      Shouldn’t the title be “Blender works used by…” or “Blender Foundation art used and credited by Sun, but the people at Sony were obviously going for a last minute jerk of the year award nominee” because I was excited that Sony and Sun were actually using Blender. Very depressing.

    • What Alex said ^

      Java apps always freeze my browser, then it freezes my computer and I have to ctrl alt delete everything. Application built with Java are slow and buggie and non responsive. I hate java, java games java anything I only use it when I’m forced to.

      Why can’t programmers learn how to program using real languages.

      I say, write sony a nice letter along with a copy of the CC license. Maybe they would be willing to give the BF a nice donation Even a nice legal battle would get BF mentioned on the 9 O’clock news. ‘ SONY! STEALS AND TAKES ADVANTAGE of HELPLESS non-for profit’ hehe there would millions coming to see what Blender is all about.

    • NCubed

      @ Michael:

      (Nothing personal) Not when at the bottom of the page it says “© 2008 Sony Creative Software Inc. All Rights Reserved.”

    • Jeremy

      @Alexander Ewering

      Switch Flash/Flex and Java, and I’ll agree with you one-hundred percent. I’ve honestly never had problems with Java. Flash is another story, though. Flash should have been left as vector animation tool, maybe with video playback too. Hopefully some of the stuff in HTML5, combined with SVG and Javascript (and a standards complient Internet Exporer), will get rid of Flash once and for all. I wouldn’t mind Adobe promoting Shockwave again. It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything done in Shockwave, but I remember it being pretty capable and never having much trouble with it.

    • gokudomatic

      I feared to be alone but Jeremy is there.

      No, I disagree with most of you guys. Java is really a wonderful language that works very well when well used.
      half of the blame of the problems people usually see can be given to the developers that don’t follow the java architecture and make sluggish GUI. and the other half can be given to a bad user installation.
      After all, I’ve myself the same feeling for python than you for java. But most of you would say that python is wonderful.

      you know, it’s java 6 today, not java 1. Give it another chance and do a clean reinstall of java. After 10 years, be sure it has improved a lot.

    • http://www.blender.com.br Ivan Paulos Tomé

      Java patch:

      void presentation (sonyBluRay a, Java j){
      //try(CCC());
      installOn(qRootKits, silent);
      System.out.println(“New Blu raid”);
      start(userUnknowService);
      if(una(“sonyBluRay”)){
      CCC();
      }
      else{
      try{
      planetEarth();
      }
      catch(Exception e){
      avoid();
      }
      }

      :P

    • Eonmach Realm

      10 set s$=”sony”
      20 set j$=”java”
      30 set blender$=”cool, nice and fast blender3D”
      35 ´
      40 if s$ = blender$(anything about it) then 100
      50 if j$ = blender$(anything about it) then 100
      60 goto 100
      70 `
      100 print @ 180,180 color 10, foreground 11 “COOL!!!”

      …my “basic” opinion, old, old times…

    • http://siranikosbox.blogspot.com siraniks

      yeah, Sony must put credits for that. They used Elephants Dream picture and didn’t credits or give a link right below the picture like the Sun do.

      I would like to contact the Sony for that but do I have any rights to do that?

    • http://glass-flame.blogspot.com bbjam

      Flamewar jfw = ProgramingWarFactory.createFlameWar(“Java”);
      PostableSite ps = System.web.get(“blendernation”);

      try {
      jfw.init();
      } catch(BoringException be){
      System.exit(0);
      }

      ps.post(jfw.getPostable());

      //I know that there is not a flame war going on here (wtg guys), but I just had to.

      //I have a irrational love of Java :P

    • vidrazor

      Shouldn’t blender foundation be “in charge” of contacting Sony about the credit issue? I think best to notify BF and let ‘em go at it through whatever channels it needs to go by.

      Obviously there’s a big blender fan at Sony (and possibly more than one), so let’s not be too harsh about issue. I mean, they used ED for their illustration. Sure, they didn’t go about it as well as they should have, but a little proper diplomacy will go a long way, methinks.

    • http://www.scatteredpixel.com nowherebrain

      Who doesn’t hate java.

    • jacques

      I also hate java and concur with much of the above. it is:

      - artificially complicated. you just need to look at the names and the double version numbering they use for their products: jre, j2ee, jdk, then on top of this you add the FOSS versions openjdk, icedtea… I’ll be happy when all of them disappear.
      - bloated and slow to load and run
      - most java apps are badly written and crash a lot. even widely used ones like the facebook photo uploader applet. what a shame…
      - the only added value in a java based app is extra comfort for the developper (Eclipse IDE + cross-platform). For the end user, it is nothing but a big pita.

    • redbyte

      Guys chill…
      Taking them to court? They used one image. It’s not like they made a TV commercial using Elephants Dream footage, with words underneath saying, “With the Power of SONY” or something.

      As ‘UnsettlingSilence’ already said, they put the words “ELEPHANTS DREAM” in the image. That’s enough press in my opinon.

    • crazyjack

      LOL – just as I was receiving a popup for java updates when I read the comments.

      But yes, sony is guilty and that’s it. the agreement does not say put a picture and we will be happy.
      give credit were it is due

    • ccherrett

      I have written over the last 8 years one of the fastest, lightest weight webapps I have ever come across. Anyone saying Java is slow and bloated is talking about a small portion of the Java world. I personally love running JSP and Servlets for many applications I have coded in the past and present. My clients comment on how fast it responds due to it’s compiled nature on the server.

      So possibly before you guys decide to rant on your half knowledge, do some homework.

      And those that think Sun did wrong for using a picture…. Take them to court. Oh wait that is Ton’s call.

      Bart. You usually do not fly articles like this without jumping in to calm it down.

    • http://siranikosbox.blogspot.com siraniks

      @vidrazor, yeah your right BF should handle this, but this is just a small issue and it is not one of the biggest problem to handle.

    • musk

      Hey guys everybody bashing on Java… I wonder if you actually know how much java you are actually using. I do not have any problems with Java at all. In fact Eclipse is running perfectly fine. And I’m developing java backends for huge websites 10000 and more hits a day with no problems.

      Anyway good going and just tell Sony to adhere to the CC. It isn’t really hard. And sorry to say but the Name Elephants Dream does not count as proper copyright assignment.

    • Reaction

      I’ve never had any problem with Java – it works unnoticed in my experience. Flash, on the other hand, must be the biggest steaming turd of bandwidth wasting junk ever invented. Bloat, bloat and more bloat. And there’s always a newer version that I “need” to install, just so I can watch yet another hourglass spinning round while another utterly pointless ‘Intro’ video chokes my connection.

    • nemyax

      > Blender used by Sony and Sun
      That’s a misleading headline.

    • http://pablographics.deviantart.com/gallery/ Pawel

      I’m not a coder, just a user, but I have to agree with Reaction and others who dislike Flash. Flash always causes lags, and Flash-based sites are usually a disaster if you don’t have an ultra-fast connection (I hate all those big company sites where a hundred elements load only to display some tiny intros and low-resolution pictures with tiny letters, which you can’t even make bigger like in html). On the other hand, I personally don’t remember many problems with Java.

    • http://j.veirasgalisson.free.fr/blog/ RooL

      It’s not about, Java, Flash or even Python, it’s about the use of CC content. I think Sony and Sun use these pictures because they’re free. I don’t mind if they’re credited, it’s some avertising for open source and CC content. But Sony MUST credit Elephants Dream.

      And about the other problem, usually I prefer java than flash, but here I couldn’t see the video, and firefox crashed, so…

      Sorry, I think my english is quite bad, I didn’t take the time to verify my text.

    • VanPelt

      Weren’t Sony the guys who put a rootkit on their CDs without telling anyone?

    • Tony

      Before everybody pigpiles on Sony, I’d like to point out that Sony is a very direct supporter and contributor to the Bullet physics library.

      http://www.bulletphysics.com/Bullet/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1322

    • Tony

      Not that they shouldn’t credit ED, of course. I’m just pointing this out for a little balance.

    • http://www.instinctive.de Alexander Ewering

      The Flash virtual machine (Flashplayer plugin) is around 1.8MB, the Java virtual machine is… what? … 25 MB? Or more by now? And that’s not bloated?

      The “It’s the developers’ fault that Java apps suck” argument is completely void. It only supports what I said earlier: That Java is an artificially over-complicated programming language that appearently no-one can handle.

      Likewise, the “bad user installation” argument. Why are there no “bad user installation” problems with Flash? Maybe because it’s just a single DLL of 2MB size, and it simply doesn’t take over the system and put random cups in my tray, like Java does?

      And then, this “Flash is so bloated and slow” argument. That’s mainly because Flash offers far more possibilities than Java and HTML/CSS/Javascript, so people tend to overuse them, sure. However, ANY average HTML/CSS/Javascript website could be done with a TENTH of the bandwidth in Flash, because you need no images to ‘fake’ color gradients, you need no images to make round-cornered boxes, instead, you can do it all as vectors with a few bytes (oh, and scalable, too!)… you also don’t need 10 browser incompatibility workarounds per piece of Javascript interaction.

      ’nuff said. Screw Java. Flash for world domination!

    • http://www.instinctive.de Alexander Ewering

      Oh, I know that Java is not limited to applets in browsers! But that’s what 99% of people think of when they hear ‘Java’. Maybe on the server-side and in more generic applications, Java works better. It should stay there then, and leave the “Interactive browser-based application” market for what can handle that better: Flash :)

      Sorry for taking over this post (REALLY!)

    • gokudomatic

      Alexander, are you trying to get a flamewar so much? I don’t have time for such useless activity.

      1)25MB? Holy S…! OMFG! We’re all gonna die! With our 4GB RAM, it will kill every computer on the world!

      Now, look at AIR(flash for desktop) VM for a helloworld sample. Private bytes: 33MB. Working set: 36MB. How is it better than Java? Adobe bloated the work, not SUN. No, in fact, nobody bloated anything. They’re all trying to do their best. You must just stop to be so childish and to criticize all your gut on something you don’t know.

      2) java swing follows a different gui philosophy than the crappy win32 one. And in practice, it’s not such a big difference. No wonder that most vb6 devs screw up their java app. They must learn to develop, first.
      And look. How many crappy flash app there are on the net? Enough for some to consider flash as something crappy too.

      3) java evolved during time. it doesn’t require a specific installation like most win32 apps, but it’s not only a single dll plugin like flash. ALL you have to do is to delete the current java JRE folders, and to install the latest one. I don’t say it’s the cause for sure, but at least we will know if it was the problem on your computer.

      and your last point is indeed true, and indeed the problem. Sun is trying for years to recover from the failure of the applets in the 90s. If you don’t make the effort to look what they after so many years, they could come with the Grail that it won’t make a difference if you don’t look.

    • http://www.instinctive.de Alexander Ewering

      gokudomatic: yes, I love being communicative and to discuss :)

      I agree that Flash has become much more bloated too in the past years, and yes, that’s a problem and a questionable development. It’s not necessary at all either, as full-featured interactive communities have already been developed in Flash 4 back in 2001. It’s the general problem that software companies always seem to have to change something even though it’s already perfect. Adobe (Acrobat?) Reader 5 was OK too – It’s now at version 8 or 9, 5 times the download size, and 5 times as slow, with no visible benefit. It’s sad that good stuff needs to get worse just because people need to stay employed.

      Maybe you’re right on a few points about Java and I should read more.

    • http://twoday.tuwien.ac.at/pub panzi

      Java has it strong side on the server, not the client. While I like Java (the language) I loathe many of the over bloated and complicated frameworks and API for Java (like JSF).

    • MrE

      JAVA? Isn’t that the piece of software that doesn’t come in 64 bit flavor (for 64x Vista) so i still can’t use Minefield the way i want to and have to resolve problems by using 32 bit IE?!

    • Hubert

      Java screwed up for me. I’ve grown to hate it over the years, ever since I was… what, four years old? I’m not the biggest fan of Flash either.

      It’s still great to see the attention Blender and its projects are getting. Sony seems to me like the type of company to crush that CC license, though.

      :)

    • Anonymous

      Fixed:

      ‘Blender Used by Sun, Stolen by Sony’

    • Ashworth

      I think Both Sony and JAVA are totally worthless. Suns alright I guess, fairly wothless though. At least it’s cool to see blender getting some spotlight, even though it may be exploitive and not really constructive.

    • http://wesnoth.org DDR

      Earlier, I noticed no one actually mailed Sony with a complaint – this is a bit of a problem all FOSS has. I know one game that had some of it’s graphics illegally copied for use in a web game. No action was taken, as no one could be bothered.

      Same here, and, honestly, Elephant’s Dream did get their name in the image…

    • kurt

      @Alexander Ewering

      “….That’s mainly because Flash offers far more possibilities than Java …”

      Ever tried flash on Linux??

    • phexitol

      To those above who say “Java is great when done well”: you are correct. It is not the fastest, but it gets the job done. I use Art of Illusion (www.artofillusion.org), which is written in Java, and it runs smoothly.

      However, those who think that bad Java is the minority are simply naive. Ask anyone who works in a corporate environment, and they’ll tell you about their experiences with Java-based apps – slow, buggy crap written by junior grade programmers. This, unfortunately, is the face of Java to the uninitiated.

    • jacques

      I think there’s a pattern in the previous comments on Java: most of the positive ones are given from a developper’s perspective, and most of the negative ones, from a user’s perspective.

      How can it be good if end-users loathe it ? (OK, not all of them…).
      It’s a programming environment, it should be semi-transparent to the user, and it definitely isn’t.

    • Simonced

      Arf, Sony has got big feet, that’s true.

      About the Java and Flash stuff, the problem is that we have to install libs to see some content.
      In my opinion Internet should be browsable out of the box.
      Sure Java can be used for other many things.
      In my experience, even on linux, I don’t encounter so many problems, but it’s tricky to make those 2 plugins working well.
      About java, it’s a very heavy structured language, an example is that we can’t even concatenate a string without the use of the String library. It’s well structured but really slow to code (I refer to some experience of it few years ago, it may have changed).
      To balance the Java critics a bit, I don’t have problems with Eclypse or NetBeans, both big apps I mainly use in all my projects. But Yeah, it eats very much memory…