LaserBoy 09-01-2008 !!!

[cruch]

Hell yeah! You are so right about that! It is a shame, but we all are different people. Some is completly idiots (not mentioned any names, you know who) and others not

[Anthony]

OMG... and i thought this forum was really different from other forums i visited an started myself.

Same shitt different forum...


Sadfully forums are narrowband media when i comes to emtions and expressing yourself.
I have often had problems expressing on typed/text media.
And some find it really safe sitting behind the computer and writing things that they would SAY totally different when conversating in person.

I really don't know james in person... and i am an newbee on this forum, but i really think the way he communicates on this forum comes from beeing or feeling different than others....not being understanded.
James...beleve me... sometimes it is better to let things go and focus the energy/badfeelings at somethign different.

You are a creative person...art? focus it on that.... and maybe give it some time and find out that things aren't always as you see/beleve it.

I have bumped my head noumerous times and lost friends doing some of the things you are doing now


best regards

Anthony

[Banthai]

OMG... and i thought this forum was really different from other forums i visited an started myself.

Anthony .... yes it is different and yes over the last years this place has been about sharing and learning ..... we have people here from hobbyists to owners of Pro Lasershow companies ..... but i have never known any of them to stand on a pedistal and shout " look at me im so fucking smart " like this one person has ..... ok this guy is the only member i have ever known on this forum to pull this sort of shit ... so dont worry buddy the rest of us are here to enjoy, share, learn, and generally have a good time.

i tend to treat people how i like to be treated .... and that is with respect and kindness

I feel embarassed as this is the first time i have ever lost it in this manner on this forum .... and my guess is Mr Fruitloop is sitting there grinning from ear to ear because of the attention hes creating and he will still hammer on and on about how right he is and everyone else is wrong

fortunately i cant read his replies as hes now on "ignore"
but unfortunatey i still can see the quotes that buffo posted

and

Sometimes I shake the trees to see what falls out.

is a classic .... which i intreperate as

"i like to stir the shit up for my own amusement"

it must really suck to be you James ...


Karl


PS ... love the TAGs by the way

[James Lehman]

In summary:

In early 2004, after having spent several months developing code in C++ to be able to achieve the special effects that would distinguish my laser show, "First Night Akron 2004", I was introduced to Matt Pollack, who, at the time, was the chair of "The ILDA Technical Standards and Specifications Committee". While continuing my work with the C++ code that would become LaserBoy, I had several telephone conversations with him. In one of these conversations, he disclosed to me the method that was propose to be the new standard for 24 bit color to be added to the long standing ILDA file format, of which I was already very familiar. This happened before any proposed changes were shown to the public on the ILDA website.

I started to work immediately on my code to make it comply. My project literally exploded when I made the transition from palette to true color. because I was actually using palette mode video card addressing previous to this change. Once I translated everything I was doing into 24 bit color, I was able to do EVERYTHING I ever imagined with colors! I could even import the wave files that were made by LaserBoy back into LaserBoy and have a place to store the RGB values. I could show multiple palettes on the same screen and create methods for translating from one palette to another or from palette to true color and back.

All of this work took some time, in which I was still actively posting on alt.lasers and the laserist list and in phone communications with Matt. Eventually, the new 24 bit proposal was made public on the ILDA website. I examined it and I was confident LaserBoy was in compliance with it.

As I am known to do, I let EVERYONE know about the successes I had achieved with my latest alterations. I took pictures and video that proved my new 24 bit abilities and made them part of my website.

Then I asked, in a public forum, for other examples of 24 bit ILDA files so that I could compare, test and collaborate with other newly reformed 24 bit laser artists. It took a while, but after some persistence I got 2 files sent to me from Matt.

When I tried to open these files in LaserBoy, they failed! I was really concerned, so I looked at the files in a hex editor. That is when I discovered that the section headers for the format 3 data were different. My first reaction was that something was wrong with these files! Then I looked up the ILDA file format standard proposed change for 24 bit color on the ILDA website and it had been changed!

This change was in the form of DESTROYING the uniform header that has served us all for years for every other section of the ILDA file format.

It had been replaced by something half the size and with both important information taken away and useless information added; and the obvious void of 16 bits.

reference:
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/ilda_file_format.html

Let me elaborate:
The ILDA file "format" is a group of what I call "sections". The whole thing is "the format". Each section is a chunk of information made of a uniform header that describes the identity and character of the data that follows, followed by that data. Each section header is exactly the same structure of 32 bytes of information that unite the concepts of whatever data follows. Each section header contains...

The literal string "ILDA" followed by three binary zeros,
the section type: a number from 0 to now 5 (6 different section types),
an eight character identifier for this section (it's name),
an eight character identifier for the person or company that created this section (your handle),
the number of elements that are in the data that follows this section,
the natural order number of this sections in the file,
the total number of sections to be found in the whole file,
the scanner or projector that this information is to pertinent to,
another byte, that is as yet unused, to round out the structure to be a full 32 bytes.

As a data storage format, it is kind-of short-sighted, but it works!. In proto-code, it looks something like this:

class ilda_header
{
// literal string "ILDA\0\0\0" (7 char)
char format ; // 0, 1, 2 or 3... and now 4 & 5
string name ; // exactly 8 char
string owner ; // exactly 8 char
u_short quantity ; // number of points or colors
u_short identity ; // number of this section in file
u_short total ; // total number of sections in file
char scanner ; // scan head this section is for
char future ; // not used
}; // total of 32 bytes... and then the appropriately formatted data follows...

This might not be the most fabulous thing ever invented, but it works very well for Planet Earth as a medium of color laser vector art exchange!

When I found this discrepency, of course I "disscussed" this with Matt on the phone, at some length and in multiple conversations.

He gave me a bunch of what I would call "readings from cue cards" and an email address of the person I really should be talking to; ... you gessed it... Peter J!

My last coorespondence with him reads thus:

Hello James,

since you are no ILDA member, I can not spend more time on explaining
basic principles of files formats to you.

But you can easily dig up the information on the net. Search the net
for "chunk based file format" or similar. I am sure there is a lot
of information available.

Best regards,

Peter Jakubek
LaserAnimation Sollinger GmbH
pjak@snafu.de


James Lehman wrote:
> "If the proposed ILDA standard is unclear, I will be happy to discuss
> details with you and help Matt Polak to update the draft to make it more
> easy to understand."
>
> ...Is what you said. You also said...
>
> "The new header format, which indeed differs from the old format, has been
> chosen as it will allow to add more extensions in the future, without
> breaking compatibility with implementations that follow the current
> proposal. This was not the case with the old header format."
>
> Please explain this statement.
>
> ~James.

Let me make a sidebar statement here:
None of this 24 bit ILDA extension idea was mine. I get it. I love it. But taking credit for someone else's good ideas, to me, is like wearing someone else's clothes or walking around with someone else's smile on my face. It is not something I have ever done. I just understood the idea and I went with it.

The "CHANGE", after the first publicly posted proposal that took place, is so heinous and stupid that it can no longer be seen as just my opinion.

This is the bloody knife that killed "Format 3".

Reasonable suspision of this issue has been offered by carmengary in this thread.

And now, finally, the series of events has been corroborated by Bill's acknowledgment of the changes and public postings of format 3. He also goes on to submit his dislike for format 3 and his preference for format 4 & 5. His commitment to the long standing format 2 is still unknown to me.

This, as yet unexplained, event destroyed the marrieage between format 3 and LaserBoy; thus ruining the importance, newness, effect and value of LaserBoy in the market of free ideas, destroying my ideal of ILDA, and aliennating me from anything standard or normal about the laser business.

Attitudes derived from my defense of this unfortunate incident have made me feel obnoxios, argumentative and unwanted in general, on alt.lasers, the laserist list and even the PL (Thanks, guys!).

I know it. carmengary knows it. Bill and Patrick and anyone else who gets it and cares (about a total of 5 or 6 people on Planet Earth) KNOW IT! And some of us are appalled and very upset!

I submit: we all now have format 4 & 5.

Fine!

But what is the reason for ruining format 3?

Currently the bloody knife is in the hands of ILDA itself. It no longer matters what that orginization does. This issue will forever stand as a test to the very core issue of why they exist.

James.

[Pangolin]

James, to quote Ronald Reagan (who wrote me a very nice letter of commendation by the way): There you go again!

I will paste in an email which will hopefully show you exactly WHO was on the side of keeping the format consistent, and WHO was asking for it to be changed. And perhaps the most important discovery -- WHEN all of this took place!

I honestly didn't look very long or very hard for this, nor did a cherry-pick this email. I really don't want to waste a whole lot of my own time, or that of the readers, and I wholehartedly emphasize my original idea to simply go through the emails, step by step, with everyone watching, so that they can all know the truth.

Nevertheless, this is an email that appeared on the Technical Committee List Server. This is a public list so there is no doubt that many other people also have this same email, and thus, it isn't something that I can fabricate or modify.

By reading the email below, you will get the flavor that it was me who was arguing FOR a consistent header (not against it), and also arguing FOR Format 4/5, just as I always said. As I have written in the past, it was primarily Peter and Matt who favored changing the header. It was their idea, not mine. This has nothing to do with Pangolin.

Also, this email proves one other EXTREMELY important fact. This email is from November 18 of 2002 -- long before James claims to have worked on LaserBoy. This proves that changes to Format 3 were done LONG BEFORE James even worked on LaserBoy. Therefore it must be that James basically completely misinterpretted Format 3 to begin with.

In fact, here is one very fundamental question for you James. If you think the format was changed AFTER you implemented it in LaserBoy, would you please provide the document which showed what the format was BEFORE you implemented it in LaserBoy? After all, such a document would certainly support your conspiracy theory, don't you think?

---------------------------------------------------

Within the email below, the "indented" portions (with >) are comments I made in a previous email. The writer is Peter Jakubek. This email is from November 18, 2002


Dear Bill,

thanks for your detailed reply.

> Yes, but your proposal already breaks the chain. If you incorporate format 3
> into the mix, already the current software will not be able to load this
> format.

Yes, unfortunately this is true there is no "right" way of doing this. However, there is a chance that most software will be able to skip the section by searching for the next occurrence of "ILDA". If we fix the header spec to allow reliably skipping over unknown/unwanted sections we can at least add things in the future without breaking implementations that correctly implement the new skipping.

> And don't forget, the user already has a lot of choices with the existing
> ILDA format. For example: Do they want to save in 2D ILDA or 3D ILDA? Do
> they want to incorporate the ILDA palette or not? And god forbid there is a
> blank frame in the middle somewhere...

Well actually I think it would be better to get around many choices for the user. At least for future revisions we could allow to add information based on what is available. E.g. an intelligent software could check if there is any 3D information, automatically save 2D if possible, using 3D if any Z coordinate != 0. Same with other attributes. On reading the same "intelligence" could be used. Just skip whatever you don't know or can't handle.

I do not even think we really need to care for 2D or 3D anymore. I think in the past where memory shortage was an issue that really mattered. But today I don't think we really need another 2D vs. 3D format.

> Yes but you only get "compatibility" when programs can understand it in the
> first place. The incorporation of ANY new format code will necessarily
> require all users to re-write their software until we get the "section
> length" in there.

I do not agree that you get compatibility only if *all* the information is understood in the first place. Sure, if beam brush information is there and not known then you can't use it. Still it would be great if the image data can be used, especially if you don't care for the beam brush at all.

> My point is that if they have to rewrite for format code
> 3, why not rewrite for format codes 4 and 5 which are conceptually simpler
> and have other benefits?

Because I don't see the benefits. If we fix the header now, we can at least in the future reliably add features.

But with the "Steve" approach ALL software needs to be updated, even if the beam brush information (or whatever we add in the future) will be ignored.

> Not really, because with each new section, you can not simply read the data
> in as one stream -- you must allocate memory for these partial sections, try
> to piece all of the sections together along with the original frame data,
> and then free the memory for the sections. This hardly seems "easier to
> implement" and it makes "streaming" FAR!!! more difficult. A client of ours
> recently generated an ILDA file with around 80,000 frames, for the purposes
> of streaming using a simple playback device. With ILDA24 as proposed by
> Steve and recently tested by Pangolin, you simply read in the point data and
> spit it out. With your proposal, streaming really is FAR more difficult and
> requires a much more powerful processor, memory management, etc.

Streaming is one example where I would agree that the "Steve" format might have some advantages. Nevertheless, it would only be required to be able to buffer the data for one frame. No matter if there is one frame, or X-thousand in a file. Allocating a buffer for each of the different sections and then collecting the data is just one way of implementing this. But this is going to far, don't want to start a "how to implement this right" war. I just don't see the complexity.
And if we keep breaking current implementations by adding extensions in the future we will either not be able to update the format often or cause all the programmers to update the software for each extension. I think with my approach would only be required if you need the new information.

Anyway, I don't even have a vote on the committee, so it's up to the members of the committee to carry this discussion on.

Thanks for your time,

Peter Jakubek
LaserAnimation Sollinger GmbH
pjak@lasergraph-dsp.de

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[Things]

Wow ... just wow ....

I cant even think of anything to say, but erm ...

wtf.

[James Lehman]

Check it out!

I started the second highest rated thread on the PL!



James.

[thesk8nmidget]

haahaha!

but as they say, if you're not first you're last!

[James Lehman]

Hmmmm. Are you encouraging me? Seems like you're encouraging me! Now I'm number two with a bullet.... I can't let my fans down!

With feedback like this, it gets a LOT easier.

Trust me.

James.

[James Lehman]

Hey buffo!

(see start of thread)

Give me a call when you want your next LaserBoy phone session.

It's all good. Seriously looking forward to it.

James.