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Making Closed Software Act Like It's Open

Posted by kdawson on from the latter-day-screen-scrape dept.

The Installer writes "Researchers from the University of Washington have managed to add customization and accessibility options to proprietary software without ever touching the source code. Rather than alter program code, Prefab looks for the pixels associated with the blocks of code used to paint applications to a screen, grabs hold of them, and alters them according to whatever enhancements the user has chosen to apply. Any user input is then fed back to the original software, still running behind the enhanced interface."

4 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Oblig. by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 0, Funny

    Obligatory XKCD

  2. "Manipulating software at the pixel level" by Yvanhoe · · Score: 2, Funny

    This quote really made my day...

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  3. Stopgap at best. by headkase · · Score: 2, Funny

    Open Source as a development methodology has already won. It is more scalable: more features, custom features, localization, error removing all work better with it. It is also a lateral organization like a web which avoids some issues that the "Mythical Man Month" talks about which results from hierarchal organization. Close software will never go away but it's utility has already been greatly compromised by Open software. With Open software this extra translation layer is unnecessary you would just modify the source and have a more reliable program intrinsically. Code is Free, get over it.

    --
    Shh.
  4. Re:The real question is- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    'Closed software' is a fact of life for sheeple. This attempt at 'stifling' freedom isn't very impressive, though, and will hinder very many real world users. What if you resize your monitor, does your 'customizations' cause your software to go to DRM hell via deactivation?

    There, fixed that for you.