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23 June 2009
A note on today's talk posting [Updated 6/24]
Update, June 24: After digging further into the issues surrounding this talk, we’ve decided to withdraw it altogether. It wowed, but also misled. Our apologies to those upset by this episode. Our thanks to those who alerted us to the problem. Meanwhile, we’re on the look out for a new, better way to showcase this powerful technology. – Chris Anderson, TED Curator
Below is the content from the original blog post:
Our posting this morning of Chris Hughes’ mini-TEDTalk from TED@PalmSprings has prompted a flurry of aggrieved responses [GIF] from the open source software community.
The talk was a two-minute demo of “augmented reality” software (in which real-world video is combined with computer-generated graphics). Hughes showed it working inside a browser using Flash and won enthusiastic applause from the live audience. But when we posted the video today, commenters felt he was claiming too much personal credit for the software and had not mentioned the two development projects on which it was based, Papervision 3D and the FLARToolkit.
To be fair to Chris:
+ He had not come to TED prepared to give a demo. Instead, he had been showing the software privately, but the excitement it generated prompted a request for an impromptu demo. In two minutes, there is not a lot of time to give out a credit-roll.
+ In an interview he gave right afterward, he acknowledged the toolkit on which his demo was based, describing it as “unbelievably awesome.”
+ On his blog, he has also clarified the extent of his contributions, and has published the code.
Given the controversy, he has agreed that it makes sense to remove the video from the Talks section of the TED.com and repost a new version here on the blog with attributions added. Here it is:
His efforts have brought the excitement and potential of augmented reality to a much wider audience, and We are eager to showcase this technology in more depth at a future TED. Our thanks to all who’ve helped us navigate through this issue.
Sincerely,
Chris Anderson
TED Curator
Discuss this Blog Post
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Martin Heidegger
Jun 23 2009I am happy to see that the TED team responses to the – maybe too – harsh reaction from the community(me included). I am very happy that the Flash AR could find a big audience, and I am glad he lended his voice.
Explanation for outsiders: AR is really a pushed topic on Flash conferences around the world which is why its treatend so much tension: Everybody knows its not Hughes effort at all.
I don’t want to sound fussy but he stated “unbelievably awesome” to the ARToolkit which is from 2006/07, written in C and can not be used on a browser in contrary to the FLARToolkit which was itself a huge amount of work. Using a ted talk video to make a ordinary video texture(as offered by the tools) are a very simple thing to do – same goes for publishing.
I want to state that I have no personal anger against Chris Hughes. It can happen that you loose your nerves when you are really excited about such a great opportunity and I am sure that he has some great abilities. Pride can be a hard enemy
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CLAUDIO ABRAHAMSOHN
Jun 23 2009I wholly agree with Chris Anderson’s comments. I was privileged to spend some quality time talking to Chris Hughes after his presentation. I did not detect any pride. Much to the contrary. While delighted with the opportunity to present at TED, he was almost surprised at all the fuss over his presentation, and gave full credit to the fantastic tools he had used to create it. I also found him to be a profoundly ethical and moral young man. If there are any sins to be found in this story, don’t look for pride in Chris Hughes’s presentation. Jealousy and sour grapes in some of the miffed reactions is more fertile ground
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Martin Heidegger
Jun 23 2009I am pretty sure that your discussion with Chris was good, I am also sure that he is competent. At the TED stage its common sense to present something revolutionary – something new – and beeing able to present something so – uhm – moving like AR sure makes you proud of presenting that.
To bring up the honesty and say: “Actually I didn’t do a single stroke on that” takes for sure some power in that situation. Since he seems to be aware about all the things he used, it looks like a small lie for pride which we bloated.
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A TEDster
Jun 23 2009Thanks Chris. This is far better.
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Jonas Grimfelt
Jun 23 2009TED is in most cases on the edge when it comes to technology, but AR is far from new technology (in labs already in the 80s-90s) – actually the open-source toolkit was released years ago and is ported to plenty of platforms/languages already. I actually met the guy behind it on my university – cool dude that should have demo it on TED like he did on my uni. I feel this guy is taking some sort of technology leader role, which he is not – nothing new, and I’m chocked that people in the crowd get so impressed. AR is all over the web and YouTube – u been sleeping in the classroom? =)
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Oliver Lardner
Jun 23 2009I can see how a simple case of withholding the full story (“I didn’t actually build this”) could get out of hand and I appreciate that there might be circumstances I’m not aware of. But Chris didn’t “forget” to mention his own name, twice, which is a name far less deserving than the names of the people who actually built the demo or even the name of the port.
FLARToolkit while being great on flash, is actually not a very good example of “Augmented Reality” of which he was touting.
Check this out (look ma, no marker!): http://www.t-immersion.com/
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No Dice
Jun 23 2009I’m sorry, but a huge majority of the community that this technology applies to already knew about the toolkit. There is little excuse for Chris’ “part” in this, which is nominal at best. His contribution was tracking down an organizer and forcing them to acknowledge something that already existed.
He should not have been invited to speak on it at that very same conference. Indeed, had he been forthcoming with the organizer in that he had done absolutely no original work at all, I sincerely doubt that he would have been invited to speak at all. Reading his own blog entry (at http://spazout.com/ted_2009_and_why_it_was_the_best_thing_ever) it is clear that he approached this as an opportunity to sell himself, more than as an opportunity to share the technology. Quotes:
“Is today the day that I build something cool enough to get my [redacted] invited to TED?”
“something that I would tell a TED organizer in the hope that I could pique their interest in seeing a demo of my work.” -
No Dice
Jun 23 2009More quotes:
“In my mind, I’d pretty much convinced myself that I was gonna rock this one.”(not particularly incriminating, but he definitely had a lot of confidence in someone else’s technology)“Life goals:
Get Invited to TED – done
Speak at TED – done”Honestly, the best course of action is to note clearly before clicking on the video exactly how much work he did. Such as “This is a presentation of existing work at (x) using (y) toolkits.” Follow that up with inviting the *original* authors to TED to make a real presentation to replace his, and it could be considered a professional resolution.
Editing in some “attributions” which don’t clearly show that he presented someone else’s work is hardly sufficient. Had he done this at an academic institution, he’d be up against a plagiarism tribunal, facing possible failure and expulsion. But apparently TED isn’t that concerned.
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Ralph Hauwert
Jun 23 2009As one of the instigators of todays “fuzz” about Chris his presentation, I’d like to follow up on this correction publicly. My issue doesn’t reside only with the fact that Chris conveniently forgets to mention the projects which are about 95% of the work, but does remember his own name twice.
It’s not only that he says “I wrote”, “We’ve managed”, and “I’m doing this with a browser and Flash”, as well as the fact that he says “We’ve ported ARToolkit to Flash”.
It’s not his first blog report on his TED experience, where he points out the route of cornering a TED Curator to show him “his” awesome demo.
It’s not the fact that his awesome demo is factually a modified tutorial, which counts up for the remaining 4% of work, leaving about 1% to him.
It’s all of that combined that paint an image of someone overly eager (maybe in the spur of the moment) to be on a stage and even to this point in time refusing to acknowledge his blatant rip off. 1% of work ?
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Martin Heidegger
Jun 24 2009I think you have to clearify this: When I program something with flash, the flash platform, windows, all those small libraries that make it work, browsers – that was all efforts by others to bring me to the result.
The point about this presentation is that he did 1% of the new things that he presented. 1% of the work that is new and astonishing and that brings the applause.
As I mentioned before I think its a human habit to claim things like that which are hard to get under control in extreme situations like TED.
Everything would be resolved if he really (in a open, not self agreeing way) explained that he is human and that he failed – case resolved.
Ps.: Right now he states like “Well I should have said it so you don’t blame me afterwards.” – thats just not it.
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Milan Orszagh
Jun 24 2009“The point about this presentation is that he did 1% of the new things that he presented. 1% of the work that is new and astonishing and that brings the applause.”
Actually, NO. Well, two no.
1, I can tell you that even if you would just download FLARToolKit and compile one of the examples there (comes with Papervision3D) you would just get the same applause as he did.
The ONLY thing he did was replacing a default cube from the FLAR example and loading a 3D model instead (which takes around 20 minutes to do if you never did that before) and the video “texture” which is like another 20 minutes.
2, It’s not a new thing. Not only almost every Flash developer who is working with Papervision3D looked into FLAR and most likelly did the EXACTLY same thing just to test it out, but there are far beyond better showcases of FLAR Papervison3D.
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Blake Callens
Jun 23 2009The original video is still on YouTube:
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Emily McManus
Jun 24 2009Thanks, Blake! Fixed.
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Pierre Rossouw
Jun 24 2009Someone likened this to slapping a TED logo on Google and talking about search without mentioning that someone else made the engine. Not acceptable.
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onliner98 geller
Jun 24 2009Interesting video, though it’s worth noting that augmented reality has gone further than this in the field of games. The link below includes a video demo of a current augmented reality game, and a pretty amazing demo showing an augmented reality “scene” involving a cityscape that pops up from a table.
The video is here:
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/148251,altered-vision-researchers-making-augmented-reality-more-than-science-fiction.aspx -
Dmitry Fedorov
Jun 24 2009“Hughes showed it working inside a browser using Flash and won enthusiastic applause from the live audience.” — That’s understandable. Audience was applauding to other people work, though. “In two minutes, there is not a lot of time to give out a credit-roll.” — But there is some time to lie, eh? He said he ported code, although he didn’t any porting, just compilation of already ported code. “In an interview he gave right afterward, he acknowledged the toolkit on which his demo was based” — Yeah, he acknowledged ARKit, not FLAR, still ignoring Saqoosha’s work and trying to get some credits. “His efforts have brought the excitement and potential of augmented reality to a much wider audience” — His efforts have brought a lot of anger from the flash community and did significant reputation damage to TED itself because of: a) he was demoing stolen stuff and b) he was lying to the audience about his involvement. Now ppl will be in doubt about other speakers too.
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cris heir
Jun 24 2009“there is not a lot of time to give out a credit-roll”
No need for arrogance. Do your research, assess his contribution, and then please, do not speak of time for credit-rolls. (Hint: the guy has ZERO contribution – there is no software written here.)
This talk was purposefully misleading.
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Punit Singh
Jun 24 2009Mr.Cris one thing is sure, TED is for new ideas concepts and innovations not taking something which is out there and rebuilding it on a different platform.
I might be something super cool for SW world but I don’t expect to see flash/web based AR on TED.
If this coding has right to have a place @ TED there are many more revolutionary codes out there.
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Chris Anderson
Jun 24 2009Thanks for these comments. It’s clear we did too little due diligence on this one and accordingly, we are revising a few internal procedures. The original version of this talk has been removed from ted.com and will shortly be off youtube and any other sources we distributed to. We’ll find a better way to showcase this technology at a future TED. I appreciate all the input. We’ve learned from this.
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j lee
Jun 24 2009TED organizers, where is your due diligence? Shame on you and shame on Chris Hughes.
The really sad part is that Chris Hughes didn’t even bother to change the AR marker image he used in his TED talk, he is using Saqoosha’s original “hiro” marker. Furthermore, if you look at the code he put up on his blog, it’s a straight copy and paste of Saqoosha’s and Miko H.’s code! Makes me sick, this. Chris Hughes is not even really apologetic, he’s just trying to cover his ass!
TED should remove Chris Hughes video on their site, it’s just a mockery of everything the open source and FLARToolkit community stands for. It’s people like Chris who cause the real innovators like Saqoosha to have second thoughts on sharing their work via open source, which would be a great loss to the open source community.
A tale of two fools this: Chris Hughes and TED organizers. Chris Hughes, a fool for trying to con the world, and TED organizers for allowing TED to be the platform for the con.
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Blake Callens
Jun 24 2009I’m sorely disappointed in TED’s “solution” to this issue. I’m taking the time to lay out the glaring falsities in both Chris Hughes’ statements and Chris Anderson’s post. I’ll have to do this in several comments.
1. “In an interview he gave right afterward, he acknowledged the toolkit on which his demo was based, describing it as “unbelievably awesome.” Completely false. He actually tried to take credit for writing FLARToolkit in that interview. Quote: “Folks ported it from C, which is what it’s written on, onto Java. And then we took the Java port and made it work in Flash.” He had nothing to do with the port to Flash. That was Saqoosha. TED hasn’t even bothered to make a redaction on the post.
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Blake Callens
Jun 24 20092. “On his blog, he has also clarified the extent of his contributions, and has published the code.” Here’s what he said on the linked to blog post: “I%u2019ve tried hard to re-iterate the fact that the demo is based on FLARToolKit & Papervision in all subsequent mentions but it appears that I could have done a better job of it.” The amount of work he did was literally changing, at most, a couple dozen lines of code. His work isn’t very much based on the two, but a complete rip off of the two; just a barely modified pre-existing tutorial.
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Blake Callens
Jun 24 20093. “He had not come to TED prepared to give a demo. Instead, he had been showing the software privately, but the excitement it generated prompted a request for an impromptu demo. In two minutes, there is not a lot of time to give out a credit-roll.” More omission that falsity here. On Hughes’ blog, he stated how he actively sought out TED officials to show them the demo.
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Blake Callens
Jun 24 20094. “His efforts have brought the excitement and potential of augmented reality to a much wider audience, and we are eager to showcase this technology in more depth at a future TED. Our thanks to all who’ve helped us navigate through this issue.” His efforts amount to almost nothing! What “brought the exitement” was TED showing this video to an audience who had never seen any AR before, and nothing more. If they had done their job and properly vetted this guy (read: do a fast Google search) they would have seen that he was full of crap.
I think that everyone involved in getting this video out is now just busy trying to cover up their blunders without admitting their true culpability in the situation. I think, more than anything, this is unfair to Saqoosha. The man put hundreds, if not thousands of hours into making AR in Flash possible and TED’s solution is to give a two second annotation to the video and a small link in the post, but still throw Hughes up like he’s the man.
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Blake Callens
Jun 24 20095. Just a comment. If this had been my code that Hughes had claimed, and not from a guy in Japan who still might not even be fully aware of this, any mention of Hughes would be gone from this site by now, or several people would be receiving court summons.
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j lee
Jun 24 2009At least the TED organizers are humble enough to admit their mistake and apologize.
Meanwhile, look at Chris Hughes’ blog posting, boasting about how he cornered TED organizers into letting him talk at the conference, and how he achieved his dream of speaking at TED. Enjoy it Chris, because it’s unlikely you will EVER AGAIN be invited to speak at ANY conference after this moronic fiasco.
It’s a good thing that Ralph Hauwert called Chris Hughes out on this con, otherwise who knows how much more damage this egomaniac would have caused. If I was Chris Hughes’ boss, I would sack him for bringing my company’s reputation into disrepute.
People like Chris Hughes are the poster childs for the ills of modern day America: love of celebrity without any CHARACTER. American Idol contestants are more important than the millions of people who dedicate their lives to real useful and valuable contributions to society.
Grow up, Chris. Grow a pair of cojones.
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Christian Giordano
Jun 25 2009I have to admit, I am impressed by the courage and effort of Ted people to response and analyze further the issue which headed to the point of not defending any more Chris H. position, and removing that shameful video. All without removing all these nasty comments (including mine) by angry people. Well done TED!
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Ryan Richards
Jun 25 2009I think I have seen this before. But thanks for sharing this one up!
Ryan
Timeshare Relief -
allister brizan
Jun 25 2009I agree that the talk didn’t give enough credit BUT I feel strongly compelled to make a fundamental point:
TED is interested in this technology only because Chris Hughes was demoing it at TED. So, If in the future, a better talk is done you STILL have to thank Chris Hughes.I look at the posts and I still see an angry, vocal minority (even if rightly so). I think it unfortunate that the video is completely removed, the second version I think was the best thing for the FLARToolkit who are getting no exposure at all right now (papervision is widely used already). Do remember that when this talk is redone by some great-but-boring coder that FLARToolkit has to thank ARToolkit for doing the really hard work and ARToolkit has to thank Sun for java and sun has to thank….. welcome to open source.
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Martin Heidegger
Jun 25 2009I thought I don’t want to write anything about that anymore…
This reads like: Doing a bad thing is good to get another good thing done.
But: If Hughes would have been honest from the start he might have done the best thing to the community possible and he would have been a hero.
Lying is something that does harms all involved parties: TED’s name has been put to custody; Other speakers will be watched with critical eyes in future; The flash community became angry(anger isn’t really healthy); The public will find out about this tech a lot later and last but not least Hughes name has a pretty dirty image right now and as you mention: The video has been removed: His initial action was worthless.
All just for 2 minutes of fame? I do not thank Chris Hughes for presenting it that way. I am thankful that someone enlightend TED to a topic which is hot on youtube…
btw.: If I remember Saqooshas talks: He always refers to the great work done by the ARToolkit.
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allister brizan
Jun 25 2009You all sound like the RIAA because you miss the ethos of open source.
I don’t mind much that you all burning Chris at the stake, after all, in my opinion he did lie about his involvement but who, exactly, does he owe an apology (other than maybe TED). Which one person owns this great technology? The person who started ARToolkit? The person who has the most code is papervision?
If these projects are truly open source then we all own it (i am checking licenses). Everyone who is angry is angry because they believe that they own papervision/FLARToolkit and something has been stolen from them.I am trying to look at the bigger picture. How do you present the work of an open community? That is a much more productive discussion to have.
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Martin Heidegger
Jun 25 2009He should apology to all the people that he misled (the audience). He should apology to TED for the misleading. He should apology to those persons who’s authorship he ignored.
Open source has its limits when you earn money with it and when its about authorship. The GPL license is a great example. When people publish source, they have most times just the honor of the community – this is a very sensible topic. That might be a major reason why open source licenses treat authorship as important part.
For the discussion: Important is WHAT you present!
He presented the “AR using flash in the Browser; made simple”. He didn’t present “Flash Player in a Browser” or “AR on a Tag Basis”. This leap was made by not the ARTK or PV3D. Making AR work in a browser has been archieved by Saqoosha (which code he used). Simpler to use by Mikko. He took the credit for the presented leap all(!!!) for himself. If you present something you didn’t do, don’t state that you did it and everything is fine.
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cris heir
Jun 25 2009I disagree with the nature of your protest. This technology HAS to be displayed, but the talk made everything possible to obfuscate the actual availability of the technology. No mention of the underlying tools (available to everyone [ideas already shared]) resulted in zero-sharing of the message.
As simple as that: this technology is available, open-source. If TED wants to display it, it should provide space for a new talk, better explaining the possibilities, and explicitly pinpointing where the technology can be obtained.
Chris made a selfish attempt at self-promotion. There is no room for gratitude.
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No Dice
Jun 25 2009It’s all nice that you want to be forgiving at the end, but if people try and find the video, I’m sure they’ll find the legions of angry posts explaining that this isn’t Chris’ technology. Many of those posts tell what the real technology is. Hence, no need for the video.
I hardly think Chris was necessary for this technology to get coverage. Most of the people who need it already know about it. And the technology will keep advancing and improving. I’m sure that it was just a matter of time before it gained the spotlight somewhere in the mainstream eye.
I will give no credit to any entity that claims all credit for itself. Let the public shame people and corporations who do this, so that it isn’t done again. The last thing we need is a famous script kiddie.
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Blake Callens
Jun 25 2009I want to take the opportunity to thank TED and Chris Anderson for redacting the portions of this post that we in the AR community took offense with. That being said, I think, not deliberately, they have forgotten about this post where some of the offenses take place.:
http://blog.ted.com/2009/02/interview_with.php
This is the page that is at the top of the results when searching the site for “Chris Hughes.”
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No Dice
Jun 25 2009Thank you, TED, for reconsidering and dealing with this in an honest, open manner. Please keep in mind that the issue is not completely resolved until someone who has actually contributed to the technology is invited to TED to do a proper presentation. I would suggest contacting the makers of the tutorial, FLARToolkit and PaperVision3D and having them work out amongst themselves who will attend. Once again, thank you for listening.
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j lee
Jun 26 2009If you want to learn how to use FLARToolkit to make Flash-enabled augmented reality, just read the following tutorials:
http://saqoosha.net/en/flartoolkit/start-up-guide/
http://www.mikkoh.com/blog/?p=182
If you download the code that Chris Hughe’s put on his blog for his TED talk, you will realise that he just modified the code from the above tutorials, and then went on TED claiming that he created Flash-enabled augmented reality.
The bottomline is, Chris Hughes lied to get on TED. Once on the TED stage, he further lied saying that he was responsible for the technology behind Flash-enabled augmented reality, when he knew all along that he had nothing to do with creating the FLARToolkit or Papervision3D software libraries.
Chris Hughes tried to take credit for work he did not do. And now he is refusing to acknowledge that he lied on stage at TED.
Just imagine at the next Augmented Reality or Adobe Flash Developer conference: Chris Hughes is going to be a huge laughing stock.
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j lee
Jun 26 2009Note that Chris Hughes TED talk was recorded in February 2009, but only placed on the TED website a few days ago. This means that Chris Hughes had 4 MONTHS to put things straight and yet he CHOSE TO LIE THROUGH HIS TEETH, including lying on his post-talk interview.
Chris Hughes says that he “ported the Java version of ARToolkit over to Flash.” AR Flash developers all know CHRIS HUGHES IS LYING. FLARToolkit was ported over from the Java version by Saqoosha (Tomohiko Koyama), an interactive developer based in Japan.
Chris Hughes claims all this is a mistake and he didn’t mean it. However, if you look at the evidence, it’s clear that everything Chris Hughes did was PREMEDITATED. He planned then carried out his fraudulent scheme: from lying to get on TED, to lying on stage at TED, to lying at his post-talk interview – all on the back of other people’s work, believing he would not get caught. And he hid this lie for 4 MONTHS.
Chris Hughes, you did get caught. YOU ARE A LIAR AND A FRAUD.
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j lee
Jun 26 2009Look at this post that Chris Hughes made on January 15, 2009:
http://mindshare-labs.com/badgevision/So on January 15 2009, Chris Hughes clearly knew that Papervision3D and FLARToolkit was needed to create Flash-enabled augmented reality.
So, how is it that in February 2009, on the TED stage, Chris Hughes CONVENIENTLY forgets all about Papervision3D and FLARToolkit, and dishonestly claims to be the brains behind Flash-enabled augmented reality?
Be a man and tell the truth, Chris Hughes.
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Yuri Syrov
Jun 26 2009What the hell? Overreaction, anyone?
Do not remove the talk and tech demo because he
FORGOT TO MENTION TOOLS HE USED!!!!Edit it, redact, or whatever, just dont remove it completely.
I can understand if it’d be sensitive or violating agreements, but none of that !?
Now that I have seen whole talk, it’s out there, thankfully.
I can tell you: “there’s NOTHING in the talk that warrants this reaction”.If anything warrants negative reaction is this TED actions and absolutely non-professional handling of the situation. One word – unbelievable.
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j lee
Jun 26 2009Yuri, you missed the whole point why people are angry at Chris Hughes. He tried to take credit for other people’s work on stage at TED, and then made things worse by lying in his post-talk interview to cover his ass.
How would you like it if you spent hundreds of hours creating an invention, only to find out that someone else presented your invention at TED as their own? This is exactly what Chris Hughes did.
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j lee
Jun 26 2009TED organizers, it is your responsibility to set the record straight on this issue. You need to state clearly that Chris Hughes tried to take credit for work that he did not do in his TED talk, then lied in his post-talk interview trying to cover up his ass.
Look at the evidence, it’s 100% clear that Chris Hughes tried to pass himself off as some kind of Flash AR guru, when all he did was modify someone else’s code and then pretended as if he was responsible for the Flash AR technology, including the specialized Papervision3D and FLARToolkit libraries needed to make Flash AR work.
Until TED makes it crystal clear what Chris Hughes did, this issue will remain contentious and unresolved. This is the least you should do for not carrying out your proper due diligence in the first place and allowing this mess to happen.
The people at HIT Lab USA and HIT Lab NZ are the real brains behind ARToolkit. You should contact one of the true pioneers like Mark Billinghurst to talk about AR at TED.
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Jan Friedman
Jun 26 2009Oh my gosh, just drop it already. It is very clear to everyone what happened, the video was removed and Chris by now must know he made a mistake. There is no need for any further actions or comments from anyone. Everyone keeps making the same points over and over again. We get it. I think he has been humiliated enough, and whether you think he deserves it or not, why kill with a thousand stabs? A statement from TED that harsh against Chris would be going completely overboard. What’s done is done and proper actions were taken. At this point you are just being mean.
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j lee
Jun 26 2009The fact is, Chris Hughes refuses to admit what he has done. Just take a look at his blog. Does he seem sorry for what he did? Look at the code he makes available for download, does he even give proper credit to the tutorials that he ripped off?
None of these “mean” comments would have been posted if Chris Hughes would just behave like a man, own up to what he has done and give a full and unreserved apology for trying to mislead people that he is the brains behind Flash-enabled augmented reality.
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Christian Giordano
Jun 27 2009I understand you J Lee, but I think you are exaggerating now. It’s clear to everyone that Chris did a huge mistake and he didn’t learn the lesson yet. But I think TED did already enough, considering their delicate position, and posting a severe comment every few hours won’t help to make them going any further. I would rather see Chris admitting his mistakes, but this is not gonna happen, is it?
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j lee
Jun 27 2009Christian, my concern is that it’s not really clear to everyone what Chris Hughes has done, especially those not familiar with FLARToolkit. There are still people criticizing TED for taking down the talk. This is why TED must make it 100% clear what Chris Hughes has done, so that his “mistake” can no longer be defended by anyone. There is just no excuse for his behavior.
It’s not that I want to be mean or vindictive, but Chris Hughes is just brushing all the criticism aside without owning up to what he tried to do: take credit for the creation of Flash AR.
What if Ralph hadn’t spotted this and raised the issue with TED organizers? Chris Hughes would have continued on with this lie. He had 4 MONTHS from Feb 2009 to put things right – doesn’t this bother you at all? What has he been telling people about Flash AR these past 4 months? Why does he only start to make excuses in June 2009 when his TED video is posted online and the open source community has been alerted to his “mistake”?
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Punit Singh
I have used something similar long back with a free software that comes as a bundle with Logitech webcam series.
A similar video of what i am talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Gn2TyEyHw.