I'm just trying to ask my self a curious question: 'has brain drain contributed to this castration or is it as a result of the castration?' Now, what is the restitute to killing this state of affair such that we stop whining over the obvious? Are we intellectual subservient such that we are unable to make 'good use' of our skills and knowledge without having an expat's (intelligence) view? I remain here. On 12/06/2011, ndungu stephen <ndungustephen@gmail.com> wrote:

It took Pixar 20 years to make a successful 3D software and hardware environment - to become profitable .. all thanks to investors like Steve Jobs who had extra cash to keep a 'good invention alive, but a loss making venture non-the-less'

The others seeing the success, just bought the engine and proceeded from there; cutting down 20 years of a research - to create 3D environments, films and games.

Of course, Pixar could not give them everything - so these other companies had to figure some things out.

=====================

When Ford, Mercedez and the rest came up with the vehicle engine, and the overall design of the car i.e the driver seat, co-driver seat, the passenger seats, the four wheels.. etc Companies like Toyota took it up from the basic and earlier design, of a hydrocarbon engine - without going through the 100 yrs of steam engines and experiments preceding the first successful engine deployment.

=====================

In order to reach the skies, you are either a giant - and if not, you may need to step on the shoulders of giants.

12 cents.

Aki, I feel your pain. There is something we cannot afford to ignore in this conversation. The purpose of the government is to serve its people. They are elected there to bring development. FDI is a piece of development but it is far from the entire answer. I have been working in Kenya sine 2005 and have known and worked with the government on various levels. I have seen so much money and resources wasted on nothing. What allowed Silicon Valley to become what it was, is the ability for creative minds with solutions to find solid investment for their growth. In Kenya we lack this investment. And what is moreso we lack the political will to make it happen. I can say this through extensive experiences where I have had project almost fail because the CDF literally stole their money, to begging for assistance from MPs to help train children in ICT basics and being so sexually harassed that I had to stop receiving their phones calls and having the government pick up tabs for expensive lunches for no value to the people. Our leadership is wrong and so heavily corrupted we take it as normal. I have worked with companies and come up with inventions and innovations but very limited implementation in Kenya because of the insidious nature of the system. Four CCK proposals and a Cooperative movement company formed and never implemented later, we rely on external grants, donations, and scrimping by on meager resources. Now 6 years into learning to become "Kenyan" and to serve her people, I have seen that there is something broken here on a profound level that no one wants to acknowledge. The TALK does NOT MEET the walk. BUT AKI if people who actually care sit back and do nothing nothing will ever change. It has become an entangled web which is not going to disappear in a day. It is going to require a concerted effort for change nationwide. Just think about the current situation, the cost of all commodities just rose by several shillings after the budget speech. The budget speech was given by a man recently returned from he HAGUE being tried by the ICC. This man is OUR FINANCE MINISTER. His father's face is printed on the money, which is used like toilet paper while people are starving. The country is killing itself. This is where technology has a role to play and why it is SO Important. With data there is clarity, with clarity comes transparency, and with transparency comes justice. Justice is something Kenya is largely WITHOUT at this point of time. This is a point which has been written about over and over again and published as fact. In Kenya there is much work to do and if we only give the people the opportunity to do it! Google, Microsoft and the likes have their place, but by all means do not give the people's development loan money and hard earned taxes to companies. Give us a chance. American companies became great because of protectionism. Check the history. This is a trade complaint of developing countries all the time. So why on God's green Earth, would we, Kenya as a developing country, blossoming with inventive well educated minds do this to ourselves? http://www.hakizetu.info Twitter: @hakizetu On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Steve Obbayi <steve@sobbayi.com> wrote:

Just some Corrections.

Pixar gave up making hardware after four years. and started on Animations.

It took them 3 yrs to to come up with a successful 3D movie (Toy Story) not 20 (true 3D technology is barely 20 yrs old. What you thought was 3D around that time was clever use of 2D projections to give illusions of 3D.

It was Disney that held the key to Pixars continuity as they gave pixar the distribuion advantage of Toy STory without which they would have closed shop... but nooooooo give credit to Jobs

Pixar is not a player in the Gaming Industry, Game Industry Players are Epic games (Unreal) and Id Software (Id Tech 5), Ubisoft (Dunia), Crytech. And a few other propriet engines. These guys have the best 3D Engines and these are the real pushers of 3D technology together with hardware vendors such as Nvidia and ATI without which Pixars techology would be useless. The effects that the renderers can do rely on the hardware.

What Engine did others buy? Pixar does not have a 3D Engine for licence... Marionette is propriety abd secret... what about Renderman? It is a renderer. Thats the only one they licence. It runs as a pluggin on other software Like Maya or 3Ds (Ask any animators or modelers these two apps both developed by Autodesk are the industry standards. Pixar uses them too). Btw all 3D houses use propriety tools/plugins and scripts developed in-house. This is what gives them an edge over their competition.

Pixar didnt giveany body anything, infact its pixar uses their software and buids plugins and scripts just like ILM and the rest. Renderman usually runs as a plugin on top of Maya, 3Ds and other modelling tools. If it didnt it would not work

In short, Pixar is highly successful as a content provider. They have really talented artists and writers and financial muscle with Disney as the daddy... oh of course their in-house developers are really smart too.

Your points are thoroughly understood

----- "ndungu stephen" <ndungustephen@gmail.com> wrote:

...

It took Pixar 20 years to make a successful 3D software and hardware environment - to become profitable .. all thanks to investors like Steve Jobs who had extra cash to keep a 'good invention alive, but a loss making venture non-the-less'

The others seeing the success, just bought the engine and proceeded from there; cutting down 20 years of a research - to create 3D environments, films and games..

Of course, Pixar could not give them everything - so these other companies had to figure some things out.

=====================

When Ford, Mercedez and the rest came up with the vehicle engine, and the overall design of the car i.e the driver seat, co-driver seat, the passenger seats, the four wheels.. etc Companies like Toyota took it up from the basic and earlier design, of a hydrocarbon engine - without going through the 100 yrs of steam engines and experiments preceding the first successful engine deployment.

=====================

In order to reach the skies, you are either a giant - and if not, you may need to step on the shoulders of giants.

...

12 cents.

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-- Crystal "Naliaka" Watley Kigoni Executive Director Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development crystal@voicesofafrica.org http://www.voicesofafrica.org/ Twitter: VOA4SD Skype: crystal.naliaka Facebook group: Voices of Africa<http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_103722386364001&ap=1#%21/group.php?gid=139035902779599> Facebook cause: Voices of Africa<http://www.causes.com/causes/102634-voices-of-africa-for-sustainable-development?recruiter_id=16731206> YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CrystalKigoni LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=20585778&trk=tab_pro> "You must be the change you wish to see" - Gandhi

@Crystal, thanks for the depth insight. For me, and I've written this many times, is the change will come from within technology but am not yet ready to do anything about a very very complex problem on each road that you look at and that has been in existence probably even before independence in developing countries. I cannot give up on my core of creativity and put my energies into a website/forum to create public debates/info which will further distract and take me away from what I do. As @Ndungu mentioned and provides another good insight, social networks are making online debates possible and may also help create a better situation. I don't want to be an activist nor create another forum for debates nor be involved in negative politics but somewhere deep down within the technology sector, according to me, lies an answer that may propel the positiveness that may help like minded people. Just don't know what it is yet and how long it will take to work it out. Rgds.