I got the Nook Simple Touch because I really wanted a physical button for turning pages. I have been quite happy with the device.
My Nook is currently on loan to my father, whose hands shake a bit. He has real trouble with any touchscreen device; touchscreens are designed to do things when you touch them, and with his hands shaking he keeps doing things he didn't mean to do. With the Nook Simple Touch he can hold his hands on the bezel and use the hardware buttons to flip pages. (He's still having some trouble with it, but I think once he gets used to it he won't have any more trouble. But any device without hardware buttons is ruled out for him.)
Also, I really like the way Barnes and Noble designed their Nooks to take standard protective covers. You can choose from a variety of covers, with various features and colors and price points. I got a simple cover that can be secured with a permanently-attached elastic band, so that if I throw it in a backpack, the cover will stay closed.
I paid $140 for my Nook and I am satisfied that it was money well spent. I might just go pick up one of the $80 ones tomorrow.
The plan the Republicans proposed lowered taxes on the richest people in the country (lowering the top rate possibly to 28% from the current 35%). Logic dictates that if this plan truly does generate any revenue at all it will be at the expense of the middle and lower classes paying more in taxes.
Actually, no, logic does not dictate any such thing.
Suppose the current tax structure favors the uber-rich holding their money in tax shelters. Now suppose that we lower the top tax rate, and the uber-rich pull some money out of the shelters and start spending it. If a rich guy buys a yacht, the company that made the yacht makes money, and all the 99% guys who work there (painting the yacht, installing carpet in the yacht, etc.) all get paid money.
And the above example is very simplified. The rich guy might not buy one yacht, he might invest in a business, or start up a business. The ripple effects could be large.
In short, the government may collect more money from a lower tax rate if the economy heats up: a smaller percentage slice of a larger pie might be a larger serving of pie.
Now, how does the above hurt the poor? Guess what: it doesn't.
Personally, I believe that the US economy is "over-taxed". I have a very specific meaning for "over-taxed": I mean that if the tax rates were lowered, and nothing else was changed, that the size of the economy would grow and total tax revenues would increase.
I personally favor lowering the tax rate, and if revenues increase, lowering it again, and iterating until we find the "optimum" tax rate.
This is not a new idea; look up "Laffer Curve". Some people reject the idea, but I don't think you can argue the basics. Do you really think that rich people will invest as much money when their profits are taxed at 99% as they will invest when their profits are taxed at 1%? At 99% tax rate, you collect very little because there is little activity. At 1% tax rate, you collect very little because the tax rate is so low. At some point in the middle there is an optimum point, and I think it is stupid to set the rate higher than that. Which is more important, to punish the rich, or to get more money?
Why would the Democrats even consider such a proposal?
Whereas the Republicans represent a bunch of people who believe we are already over-taxed, and that raising the tax rate further is insane, especially during a depression. They think that raising taxes will result in millions more people becoming unemployed, that you can't punish the 1% without hurting the 99%. Why would the Republicans even consider any proposals to raise taxes?
The fact that Democrats are offering any cuts at all to social programs is a true act of compromise.
When the Republicans on the super committee offered any tax increases at all, that was a true act of compromise. It was not reported as such, and I'll bet you don't view it as such.
Disclaimer: I'm a minarchist libertarian, not a Republican or a Democrat.
Others have already mentioned MIDI stuff, flight sim stuff, and the Griffin Powermate. But nobody has mentioned a jog/shuttle controller yet.
Depending on what you are doing, one or more of these might be useful. Contour has two different models and I am sure there are other brands out there too.
I guess I should. I worked for JJ for three years, and writing stuff about him on Wikipedia seemed too much like sucking up to the boss. But now that he is retired, there is no reason why I shouldn't contribute some edits.
ALE (Or ALAC, as it seems to be called this week) was released for the third generation iPods. At the time, there was no FLAC decoder that could run on the DSP on these devices.
This is interesting. Clearly there wasn't an ALE decoder that could run on the DSP chips, either. So Apple chose to create a new coder rather than do porting work on FLAC.
Do you think there was technical merit in this decision? In other words, is there something about ALE that makes it run better on DSP chips than FLAC should?
Incorrect. AAC was developed in an MPEG standards process. It was mostly based on the work of James D. Johnston ("JJ") who worked for Bell Labs at the time.
Basically, AAC started out as "PAC", which was JJ Johnston's follow-on to MP3. See slide 5 of this presentation (PowerPoint format, sorry, but LibreOffice Impress does open it):
JJ was quite unhappy with some of the compromised in MP3, compromises that were forced upon him by the standards process. PAC was his improved coder, which didn't include the parts he didn't like from MP3. PAC won the "bake-off" between prospective coders; it was enough better than the others that MPEG reconsidered their "backward compatible" strategy and decided to go ahead with "non-backward compatible" (NBC).
The Wikipedia page on AAC makes strangely little mention of JJ Johnston and his contributions, but if you look at the footnotes you will notice "J D Johnston" being frequently mentioned, especially in conjunction with the patents involved.
JJ is a good guy who deserves more credit than he gets on Wikipedia.
Get an Android smart phone and write some custom Android software.
Either customize a scientific calculator program to match the phone dialing keypad, or write your own phone dialing software with a calculator keypad.
Plus there is the option of calling your friends from your address book and not even dialing the phone, or using Google Voice Search and just saying the digits.
I don't know what to tell you about lock keypads, public phone keypads, and the like. Just avoid them I guess? (Where I work, I can't use a bathroom without using a phone-style keypad.)
I agree with you that the incompatibility is annoying. I never bothered to do anything about it; I just adapt. But if you want to make your own custom solution, that doesn't seem sillier to me than the people who insist on using Dvorak keyboards or whatever.
Recently the Nook Color got an update. The 1.3 software update seems to have significantly improved speed. YouTube videos are now watchable. They are still a bit slow, but not completely unwatchable like before.
I think a YouTube app would help a lot, but there isn't one in the Nook store yet.
Oh, and now that I've spent $250 on a Nook Color, a real Android 3.2 tablet is shipping for $100 more:
I agree with you. If CBS actually had a design patent on LCARS, they would be on solid ground legally; but I don't think they do have one. Can they really claim copyright infringement on a "look and feel"?
But CBS could and did send a DMCA takedown notice, and Google didn't fight it.
The summary includes a link to the wiki article about it being killed by lawyers. This in turn includes the text of the DMCA takedown notice. Take a look:
lxxxxxxn@cbs.com to support-portal@google.com Reply - More info Aug 23 Options
AutoDetectedBrowser: Internet Explorer 7 AutoDetectedOS: Windows XP IIILanguage: en IssueType: lr_dmca Language: en agree1: checked agree: checked android_app_developer_1: Moonblink android_app_name_1: Tricorder android_app_url_1: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.hermit.tricorder companyname: CBS country_residence: US description_of_copyrighted_work: LCARS graphical user interface dmca_signature: Lxxxxxxn dmca_signature_date_day: 23 dmca_signature_date_month: 8 dmca_signature_date_year: 2011 full_name: Lxxxxxxn hidden_product: androidmarket location_of_copyrighted_work: LCARS graphical user interface, an example of which can be viewed at the URL below: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-trek-padd/id446277240?mt=8 represented_copyright_holder: CBS Studios Inc.
Now, I used to have an app on my Palm PDA that pretended to be a tricorder but didn't actually do anything (other than make some chirp noises and display various jokes). That's not what this is; this "tricorder" app displays the outputs from various sensors on an Android phone. You can get a magnetic compass, sound data from the microphone, GPS data, etc. The DMCA takedown isn't about this functionality, but just about the LCARS interface.
The solution is obvious: reskin the app, using an Android sort of theme, and for extra safety change the name. The result shouldn't bother CBS anymore.
I don't even really like LCARS much.
P.S. I presume that CBS will go after the people who install LCARS themes on their desktops. What a waste of time.
You might tell them you are going to pretend to be a robot, and tell them to give you instructions to pick up an object (let's say an apple), carry it across the room, and set it down. Write out instruction cards they have to use, cards that say things like "lower hand", "close hand", "raise hand", "walk forward", etc.
The fun will be when they realize that robots don't have common sense, and if they tell you to walk you just walk until you hit something. Or maybe they didn't tell you to line up the hand with the apple, and your hand closes on air.
Perhaps with fourth graders you might just bring a laptop that is set up with Python, and use Python's "turtle graphics" features to draw progressively cooler things.
I spent some time last night playing with my wife's Nook Color, and found that Flash videos are too slow to be useful. Each Flash video had a note appear above it, "This video is not optimized for tablet playback"; I never did figure out any video that did not display that tag.
So, it rather sucks for watching YouTube. I have seen video playing back smoothly on the Nook Color, so I know it is possible, but the general case for playback of web video sucks.
I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it's good to have options.
That was just flamebait. A color book reader makes sense.
I have been reading ebooks for years on my old Palm TX PDA, but I finally bought a pair of actual ebook readers: a Nook Color and a Nook Simple Touch (a/k/a a Nook Second Edition).
I bought the Simple Touch for the crazy long battery life you get with e-ink, and the readability in bright sunlight, and I took it with me camping last week.
But most of the time I am not camping, and most of the time 8 hours of battery life is plenty, so the Nook Color is great. I got it for my wife, and she has been reading magazines on it. With a responsive multitouch high-resolution display, she can zoom in on the magazine and pan around; and each article has a GUI button that pops up just the text of the article in a convenient font in a popup box. So, one can see the magazine as the graphic designers intended, but one can also read a magazine article conveniently without needing to zoom and pan.
A Nook Color is a $250 Android tablet. The 7 inch display is a good size for my wife: small enough it is convenient to carry around, big enough to read conveniently. It doesn't have Bluetooth, GPS, a camera, etc. but her phone has all that and the Nook does what she wants. Not only is the Nook Color an Android tablet, it has good e-reading software built in. So it's going to attract customers who want to read things (such as magazines) in color, and it's going to attract people who want a $250 tablet device.
I have no plans to root the Nook Color and install a real Android ROM image. The Nook Android system works well, she can surf the web and watch Flash videos, and the special Nook app store has plenty of apps.
And, I'm hoping that the Nook DRM will make Netflix offer their streaming client app for the Nook Color sometime soon. (I already have Netflix streaming on my phone, with its tiny display, but I want it on a tablet device!) If Netflix came out with the streaming client for Nook color and it wasn't out for Galaxy Tab or Xoom, I might just buy another Nook Color, for me.
My wife has very little interest in my e-ink Nook. She really likes the bright, sharp screen of the Nook Color. If something happens to her Nook Color, she will want to immediately replace it, which is the test of a good gadget.
In short, there is a legitimate use case for a color ebook reader with "only" 8 hours of battery life.
Amazon, by not having a color ebook reader, is losing sales to the Nook Color and possibly to real tablets like the Galaxy Tab or Xoom. It absolutely makes sense for them to jump in to this market.
Linus likes to say things that are a bit over-the-top. He trusts that his audience can detect the tongue-in-cheek nature of the comments.
I do the same thing. If I say something like "I hate and fear Perl", I don't mean it literally.
Some people were upset about Linus's presentation about Git where he bashed Subversion. I thought it was pretty clear that he was exaggerating his comments for comedic effects, and I was entertained rather than outraged.
Linus does sometimes say things I disagree with. He resisted having an official kernel debugger for years, because he said kernel developers should be able to hold everything in their heads and not need a debugger to help them. (Did he ever give in on that?) But this current issue is a non-issue.
Microsoft "borrowed" a huge amount of tech from Apple. They massaged it with macro-preprocessors and did some other near-mechanical transformations to functionally project the Macintosh Toolbox onto a pseudo-object concept they had been calling "windows" (windows on code).
This is an extraordinary claim. I'd like to see some evidence to support this claim.
As I recall, Apple did the early Mac development in Pascal, while Microsoft was very devoted to C in those days. You are claiming that Microsoft stole actual source code from Apple, and mechanically translated it? And Microsoft got that stolen code to run decently on the sucky 8088 processor, while the Mac got to run on the so-much-better 68000 processor? I find this rather difficult to believe.
And Microsoft started Windows before they had dealings with Apple; Bill Gates visited Xerox too, same as Steve Jobs. So Microsoft threw away what they had already written in favor of the stolen translated code? Or what, exactly?
Back then, they had to cut a lot of corners, and figuring out which corners to cut is real engineering.
Yes, exactly. Apple made their own engineering so much easier by standardizing on a 68000 processor, while Microsoft kept trying to shoehorn a GUI desktop onto an 8088 (or at least 8086). (For Windows 3, they gave up on that and required at least a 286, and quickly standardized on 386 or better.)
Windows 2 was a dancing bear: the wonder was not that the bear danced so well, the wonder was that it danced at all.
This is why I find it impossible to believe that Microsoft was able to mechanically translate Pascal and get it to run in Windows 2. Also, your comment here on Slashdot is the only place I have ever seen this claim made, and I don't know you, so frankly I don't put much stock in anything you say. Evidence or it didn't happen.
MSWindows 3 could not compete, and they did not understand enough about GUI to do it on their own.
Whoa wait, Windows 3? Apple sued Microsoft and HP over Windows 2 plus HP New Wave. So you aren't talking at all about what I was talking about then? I still would like to see the evidence, but I'm wondering why you are dodging and shifting topics.
That is not deniable if you understand the programming and have ever looked at the orgiinal Mac toolbox code and the materials given to Mac programmers and compared it with the equivalent from MSWindows 95.
Wait, you are claiming you can tell that Microsoft stole code and mechanically translated it just by looking at APIs? Isn't it rather more likely that Microsoft implemented similar APIs by writing C code on their own? I don't think it's even illegal, or even immoral, to look at another company's API and make your own API similar, so you haven't convinced me of anything yet.
What Apple is being questioned for now is a bit different, although it is sort of the same. Apple is trying hard to defend tech they spent real time and money developing. They are trying to show how the other implementations map onto their tech.
If I understand correctly, Apple is trying to claim that any rectangular tablet with a bezel around the touchscreen is an unfair copy of their product. That's not acceptable.
Apple also tried to patent many obvious multitouch gestures, such as pinch-zoom. The obnoxious thing is that they succeeded in many cases. It's hard to blame Apple, the blame there needs to fall on the patent office.
I assume the above will be as hard for you to understand as my earlier comment about non-practicing entities.
Has it ever occurred to you that, if I have trouble understanding something you wrote, the problem might be with your writing and not with me?
Fortunately, I don't actually care what you think about me, so I'm not going to get bent out of shape about this. But, word of advice here, many people don't like it when you imply that they aren't smart enough to understand your writings. This is not the way to make frien
I think the original problem is that you start out being reminded of the look and feel suit against "Windows" and end up dodging and focusing on HP.
As I said before: Apple sued both HP and Microsoft, the screenshot I am talking about was Windows with HP New Wave running, and Apple had used the customization features of New Wave to make the screenshot look more like a Mac.
Since that is what I said in the first place, how is this "dodging" or "shifting topics"?
And hey look, I tried a Google search and this time hit on the correct search words to find it. Here is a Google Books scan of the InfoWorld computer magazine. See page 5, under the heading "Windows Are Common, But Their Implementations Vary". There is a picture of the black-and-white New Wave screenshot submitted by Apple, and another picture of the default colors for HP New Wave.
So, I trust that I have adequately explained to you what HP has to do with the topic at hand? Just as a refresher, in case you forgot: Apple supplied a screenshot of HP New Wave running on top of Microsoft Windows as part of its lawsuit against both Microsoft and HP.
If Microsoft is doctoring the end product to hide Apple tech, trying to un-doctor the end-product is not unreasonable.
I disagree. You can use the word "un-doctor" but it is still dishonest doctoring of evidence. It was stupid, too, because there was no way they were going to get by with that without a challenge, and it just made Apple look bad.
Apple was sort-of justified in grasping at straws
No. Doctoring evidence is not justified at any time.
Funny those same straws turn into logs these days for non-practicing entities, but that's another insanity.
Dude, I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to mean. If the idea is important, perhaps you should rephrase it.
If knowing the ending ruined all enjoyment, we wouldn't re-read books or watch movies again.
Still, there can be extra fun in enjoying a story for the first time and not knowing what will happen. You can only experience a story for the first time once; and if someone spoils the ending for you, you can't even do it once.
I really enjoy a good mystery story where the author plays fair with you, and you actually have a chance at figuring out who did it.
One of my favorites: the novel Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett, available as part of an omnibus volume called Lord Darcy. I was blown away by the reveal, the first time I read it, but Garrett totally played fair with the reader. If you are clever you can figure out what happened.
Ironically, one of the pleasures of re-reading Too Many Magicians is seeing how deftly Garrett inserted the clues that would let the reader figure it out. Everything is there but nothing is obvious.
I believe that is what you are talking about. It is not clear from that link whether Apple won or whether Digital settled, but either way Apple didn't lose.
It looks like a desktop metaphor GUI to me. I am not clear on how much of that metaphor Apple can legitimately claim to own, but Apple and everyone else were all copying Xerox.
Note that in GEM you don't drag a floppy disk to the trash to eject it, and there are many other Apple-isms not present in GEM. So okay, I'll say it: this isn't a ripoff of Mac OS. Not as I define a ripoff, anyway.
But Digital was forced to make changes, so my opinion doesn't seem to be very useful.
Apple lost but NOT because MS didn't copy Apple...
Offtopic. The topic is that Apple submitted, as evidence, screenshots of HP NewWave running on Windows, and had used the customization features of NewWave to make it look very much like the Mac; this despite the out-of-box look being very different.
And don't make MS out to be an innocent here.
Where did I do that?
Don't be a hater without trying to understand.
Where did I do that?
Apple's no innocent here, but they deserve props for what that have truly innovated.
Offtopic. I was discussing one specific incident, which I thought was sort of related to the recent incident where Apple changed the aspect ratio of an image of a Galaxy Tab to make it look more like an iPad. I was not discussing whether or not Apple "deserves props" for innovation, just their legal shenanigans.
Or is it okay to submit doctored evidence if you "deserve props" for innovation?
As I recall, Xerox pretty much killed any future noise in this direction by pointing out that they had developed the GUI to begin with and if Apple was victorious over Microsoft, well, that would obviously mean Xerox could beat the living snot out of Apple.
No, that never happened. Xerox didn't keep the case from going to court; the case went to court and Apple lost.
This reminds me of the "Look and Feel" lawsuit against Windows, way back a couple of decades ago. Apple sued Microsoft and HP, claiming the "look and feel" of Windows was too close to the Mac. As part of the evidence, there was a screen shot of a Mac desktop, and a screen shot of Windows with some HP shell software (called "New Wave") running. But to "improve" the screen shot, Apple had used the user-customization features of New Wave to customize the desktop, and every customization made it look more like an exact copy of the Mac.
IIRC the default settings were colorful, but Apple customized all the colors to black on white to more exactly match the Mac. They moved around icons. I think they even renamed "Recycle.Bin" to "Trash". (But it's been quite a few years so maybe my memory is making that up.)
Sorry, no links to support my memory; Google didn't find me any screenshots from this pre-Internet lawsuit.
This sort of trick doesn't win you any friends in the court, and it always gets revealed, so it's kind of stupid that Apple tried it.
Intel has been doing that forever, from the 486SX, which just had a broken FPU
Some people here on Slashdot seem really upset about this software upgrade thing. But I was upset about the 487SX, and I still grimace when I think about it.
Before the 486, you had the 386 CPU chip, and the 387 FPU chip. A 386 motherboard would have a second socket for the FPU; probably the socket was empty when you bought a 386 system, but you could buy a 387 for a speed boost.
The 486 was the first Intel CPU with an integrated FPU. So, the 486SX was a way for Intel to sell a cheaper part, and to sell 486 chips whose FPU was defective. I get that. I'm cool with that.
The real 486 was called the "486DX". SX == no FPU, DX == FPU.
The 486SX and the 486DX were pin-compatible. If you wanted to upgrade a 486SX system, you could simply pull the 486SX out and pop in a 486DX.
But Intel tried to push a motherboard design where there were two sockets: the 486SX socket, and the 487SX socket. Instead of unplugging the 486SX and putting in a 486DX, you were supposed to leave the 486SX in place, and buy a 487SX, which was just a 486DX with an incompatible pinout (including one extra pin). You couldn't put a 487SX in a 486DX socket. When you put in a 487SX, the motherboard would disable the 486SX and it would just sit there, with the 487SX doing all the work, as it really was just a 486DX. (And an integrated FPU sharing cache with the rest of the CPU is better for performance.)
I found the whole 486SX/487SX thing to be breathtakingly obnoxious. It's one thing to provide multiple price points and find a way to sell CPUs with a defective FPU. It's quite another thing to engineer up a whole system that was cynically designed to lock up a perfectly good 486SX chip and trick a user into buying a special 487SX chip instead of just getting a 486 as an upgrade.
To make it even stupider, the 487SX cost more than a 486, because the 486 was being mass-produced. I found a Google Books scanned copy of InfoWorld that said the 487SX was 30% more expensive than an equivalent 486 chip! ($799 vs. $588 for a 25 MHz part) And a 25 MHz 486SX must have cost $258 because the cost of leaving the 486SX in place and adding a 487SX was $1057, vs. $588 for the 25 MHz 486DX plus having a spare 486SX you could sell or give away.
Nobody I knew ever bought a 487SX, and I don't think many companies even built computers with a 487SX socket. Even Intel can't push that kind of cynical "solution" and have wide success with it.
So essentially what you're saying is "Plug anything into XP and it's going to work. But you might have to put in a CD that came with the thing, or go to the manufacturer's webpage.
Basically a fair assessment. Given that Windows is the most popular desktop OS, most device makers provide drivers that will work.
Some of those drivers suck and cause problems, but with a name brand like HP you are probably okay.
However with Ubuntu it's a crapshoot that anything you plug in will work, and there's really no guarantee that there's a driver for it, but in the off chance there is a driver it's going to be a good one."
Wow, you really sound like you hate Ubuntu. Or are you actually a huge fanboy for Windows? Either way, chill out, dude.
"in the off chance"? The more mainstream and popular a device is, the better the support. If you have some unusual scientific lab equipment, odds are low that there is an Ubuntu driver; if you have an HP printer, odds are it will Just Work. With generic USB devices like keyboards and mice, odds are they will Just Work. Most video cards and sound cards and network adapters will Just Work (although the video cards might need vendor drivers to get 3D to work). For scanners, odds are more mixed.
I like Linux, and use it every day. I'm not going to lie to people and tell them that device support is 100% when it clearly isn't.
But it doesn't completely suck either. It usually takes me less time to install Ubuntu than to install Windows on the same hardware. And when I'm done, there are applications (LibreOffice, etc.) and not just a bare OS.
And the friends and family members I have set up with Ubuntu don't pester me for support help, because once it's working, Ubuntu keeps on working. I'm the one who gets called when malware 0wns somebody's Windows computer, and I hate that.
Windows XP needs expert maintenance to keep it running properly. You need to install antivirus and keep it updated, you need to run Windows Update, you need to keep various software packages up to date (and they all have their own ways to update). Printers and such all support XP, but you have to figure out where to get the driver and which one to use; whereas with Ubuntu the driver support isn't 100%, but the stuff that does work will really Just Work with no fussing. (Where I work, there is a networked printer that Ubuntu talks to perfectly, and it took well over an hour to get it working under Windows 7. And I had to install some wacky HP software that I really hate, to get it to go.) And even if you do everything right, after a few years the system will get kind of slow and bogged down, at which time you should really do a bare-metal reinstall to speed things up again.
Ubuntu should run well on any computer from the "Designed for XP" era. It has one unified package manager. The Ubuntu Software Center is a place where kids can get stuff for free, and it's legal and it won't be malware.
When I give away computers, I put Ubuntu on them. (Sometimes I also put Windows on them, if the person getting them has a need for Windows. But kids have no actual need for Windows, and Ubuntu works great.)
Very well, then: WebM was designed to be free of patents other than the On2 patents that Google owned and freely licensed to allow the use of WebM.
Does the above statement meet your required level of precision?
Neither WebM or the related VP8 or Matroska projects were ever designed to be patent free. They were all built around free licenses, not patents. Not the same thing at all.
If any software uses patented technology, the patent owner can control the use of that software. Those projects most certainly did intend to avoid using any patented ideas.
I was using the phrase "patent free" informally, intending to communicate the idea that WebM is "free" of any "patents" that would require the user to get a patent license. I apologize that this did not meet your required level of precision.
Under current rules, I doubt that it is possible to create an image or video format that is patent free.
This is pretty much the contention of MPEG-LA. More specifically, they claim it is impossible to make any video format that doesn't infringe on one or more patents from their patent pool.
Google on the other hand spent $100 million for On2, spent months presumably vetting the patents situation, and released WebM. Google, and presumably Google's lawyers, do not seem to agree with your statement. I am hoping they are correct.
Slashdot Mirror
I got the Nook Simple Touch because I really wanted a physical button for turning pages. I have been quite happy with the device.
My Nook is currently on loan to my father, whose hands shake a bit. He has real trouble with any touchscreen device; touchscreens are designed to do things when you touch them, and with his hands shaking he keeps doing things he didn't mean to do. With the Nook Simple Touch he can hold his hands on the bezel and use the hardware buttons to flip pages. (He's still having some trouble with it, but I think once he gets used to it he won't have any more trouble. But any device without hardware buttons is ruled out for him.)
Also, I really like the way Barnes and Noble designed their Nooks to take standard protective covers. You can choose from a variety of covers, with various features and colors and price points. I got a simple cover that can be secured with a permanently-attached elastic band, so that if I throw it in a backpack, the cover will stay closed.
I paid $140 for my Nook and I am satisfied that it was money well spent. I might just go pick up one of the $80 ones tomorrow.
steveha
The plan the Republicans proposed lowered taxes on the richest people in the country (lowering the top rate possibly to 28% from the current 35%). Logic dictates that if this plan truly does generate any revenue at all it will be at the expense of the middle and lower classes paying more in taxes.
Actually, no, logic does not dictate any such thing.
Suppose the current tax structure favors the uber-rich holding their money in tax shelters. Now suppose that we lower the top tax rate, and the uber-rich pull some money out of the shelters and start spending it. If a rich guy buys a yacht, the company that made the yacht makes money, and all the 99% guys who work there (painting the yacht, installing carpet in the yacht, etc.) all get paid money.
And the above example is very simplified. The rich guy might not buy one yacht, he might invest in a business, or start up a business. The ripple effects could be large.
In short, the government may collect more money from a lower tax rate if the economy heats up: a smaller percentage slice of a larger pie might be a larger serving of pie.
Now, how does the above hurt the poor? Guess what: it doesn't.
Personally, I believe that the US economy is "over-taxed". I have a very specific meaning for "over-taxed": I mean that if the tax rates were lowered, and nothing else was changed, that the size of the economy would grow and total tax revenues would increase.
I personally favor lowering the tax rate, and if revenues increase, lowering it again, and iterating until we find the "optimum" tax rate.
This is not a new idea; look up "Laffer Curve". Some people reject the idea, but I don't think you can argue the basics. Do you really think that rich people will invest as much money when their profits are taxed at 99% as they will invest when their profits are taxed at 1%? At 99% tax rate, you collect very little because there is little activity. At 1% tax rate, you collect very little because the tax rate is so low. At some point in the middle there is an optimum point, and I think it is stupid to set the rate higher than that. Which is more important, to punish the rich, or to get more money?
Why would the Democrats even consider such a proposal?
Whereas the Republicans represent a bunch of people who believe we are already over-taxed, and that raising the tax rate further is insane, especially during a depression. They think that raising taxes will result in millions more people becoming unemployed, that you can't punish the 1% without hurting the 99%. Why would the Republicans even consider any proposals to raise taxes?
The fact that Democrats are offering any cuts at all to social programs is a true act of compromise.
When the Republicans on the super committee offered any tax increases at all, that was a true act of compromise. It was not reported as such, and I'll bet you don't view it as such.
Disclaimer: I'm a minarchist libertarian, not a Republican or a Democrat.
steveha
Others have already mentioned MIDI stuff, flight sim stuff, and the Griffin Powermate. But nobody has mentioned a jog/shuttle controller yet.
Depending on what you are doing, one or more of these might be useful. Contour has two different models and I am sure there are other brands out there too.
http://retail.contourdesign.com/?/products/5
steveha
I guess I should. I worked for JJ for three years, and writing stuff about him on Wikipedia seemed too much like sucking up to the boss. But now that he is retired, there is no reason why I shouldn't contribute some edits.
steveha
ALE (Or ALAC, as it seems to be called this week) was released for the third generation iPods. At the time, there was no FLAC decoder that could run on the DSP on these devices.
This is interesting. Clearly there wasn't an ALE decoder that could run on the DSP chips, either. So Apple chose to create a new coder rather than do porting work on FLAC.
Do you think there was technical merit in this decision? In other words, is there something about ALE that makes it run better on DSP chips than FLAC should?
steveha
AAC, developed by Dolby,
Incorrect. AAC was developed in an MPEG standards process. It was mostly based on the work of James D. Johnston ("JJ") who worked for Bell Labs at the time.
Basically, AAC started out as "PAC", which was JJ Johnston's follow-on to MP3. See slide 5 of this presentation (PowerPoint format, sorry, but LibreOffice Impress does open it):
http://www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt/jj/pac_history.ppt
JJ was quite unhappy with some of the compromised in MP3, compromises that were forced upon him by the standards process. PAC was his improved coder, which didn't include the parts he didn't like from MP3. PAC won the "bake-off" between prospective coders; it was enough better than the others that MPEG reconsidered their "backward compatible" strategy and decided to go ahead with "non-backward compatible" (NBC).
The Wikipedia page on AAC makes strangely little mention of JJ Johnston and his contributions, but if you look at the footnotes you will notice "J D Johnston" being frequently mentioned, especially in conjunction with the patents involved.
JJ is a good guy who deserves more credit than he gets on Wikipedia.
steveha
Get an Android smart phone and write some custom Android software.
Either customize a scientific calculator program to match the phone dialing keypad, or write your own phone dialing software with a calculator keypad.
Plus there is the option of calling your friends from your address book and not even dialing the phone, or using Google Voice Search and just saying the digits.
I don't know what to tell you about lock keypads, public phone keypads, and the like. Just avoid them I guess? (Where I work, I can't use a bathroom without using a phone-style keypad.)
I agree with you that the incompatibility is annoying. I never bothered to do anything about it; I just adapt. But if you want to make your own custom solution, that doesn't seem sillier to me than the people who insist on using Dvorak keyboards or whatever.
steveha
Recently the Nook Color got an update. The 1.3 software update seems to have significantly improved speed. YouTube videos are now watchable. They are still a bit slow, but not completely unwatchable like before.
I think a YouTube app would help a lot, but there isn't one in the Nook store yet.
Oh, and now that I've spent $250 on a Nook Color, a real Android 3.2 tablet is shipping for $100 more:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/12/acer-iconia-tab-a100-review/
But my wife likes the Nook the way it is, and we are going to keep it.
steveha
They're copying a "style" of interface.
I agree with you. If CBS actually had a design patent on LCARS, they would be on solid ground legally; but I don't think they do have one. Can they really claim copyright infringement on a "look and feel"?
But CBS could and did send a DMCA takedown notice, and Google didn't fight it.
steveha
Oh, and if you aren't geeky enough to already know what this "LCARS" thing is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCARS
steveha
The summary includes a link to the wiki article about it being killed by lawyers. This in turn includes the text of the DMCA takedown notice. Take a look:
Now, I used to have an app on my Palm PDA that pretended to be a tricorder but didn't actually do anything (other than make some chirp noises and display various jokes). That's not what this is; this "tricorder" app displays the outputs from various sensors on an Android phone. You can get a magnetic compass, sound data from the microphone, GPS data, etc. The DMCA takedown isn't about this functionality, but just about the LCARS interface.
The solution is obvious: reskin the app, using an Android sort of theme, and for extra safety change the name. The result shouldn't bother CBS anymore.
I don't even really like LCARS much.
P.S. I presume that CBS will go after the people who install LCARS themes on their desktops. What a waste of time.
steveha
You might tell them you are going to pretend to be a robot, and tell them to give you instructions to pick up an object (let's say an apple), carry it across the room, and set it down. Write out instruction cards they have to use, cards that say things like "lower hand", "close hand", "raise hand", "walk forward", etc.
The fun will be when they realize that robots don't have common sense, and if they tell you to walk you just walk until you hit something. Or maybe they didn't tell you to line up the hand with the apple, and your hand closes on air.
Perhaps with fourth graders you might just bring a laptop that is set up with Python, and use Python's "turtle graphics" features to draw progressively cooler things.
http://code.google.com/p/python-turtle-demo/
steveha
I spent some time last night playing with my wife's Nook Color, and found that Flash videos are too slow to be useful. Each Flash video had a note appear above it, "This video is not optimized for tablet playback"; I never did figure out any video that did not display that tag.
So, it rather sucks for watching YouTube. I have seen video playing back smoothly on the Nook Color, so I know it is possible, but the general case for playback of web video sucks.
Other than video, the web experience is good.
steveha
From TFS:
I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it's good to have options.
That was just flamebait. A color book reader makes sense.
I have been reading ebooks for years on my old Palm TX PDA, but I finally bought a pair of actual ebook readers: a Nook Color and a Nook Simple Touch (a/k/a a Nook Second Edition).
I bought the Simple Touch for the crazy long battery life you get with e-ink, and the readability in bright sunlight, and I took it with me camping last week.
But most of the time I am not camping, and most of the time 8 hours of battery life is plenty, so the Nook Color is great. I got it for my wife, and she has been reading magazines on it. With a responsive multitouch high-resolution display, she can zoom in on the magazine and pan around; and each article has a GUI button that pops up just the text of the article in a convenient font in a popup box. So, one can see the magazine as the graphic designers intended, but one can also read a magazine article conveniently without needing to zoom and pan.
A Nook Color is a $250 Android tablet. The 7 inch display is a good size for my wife: small enough it is convenient to carry around, big enough to read conveniently. It doesn't have Bluetooth, GPS, a camera, etc. but her phone has all that and the Nook does what she wants. Not only is the Nook Color an Android tablet, it has good e-reading software built in. So it's going to attract customers who want to read things (such as magazines) in color, and it's going to attract people who want a $250 tablet device.
I have no plans to root the Nook Color and install a real Android ROM image. The Nook Android system works well, she can surf the web and watch Flash videos, and the special Nook app store has plenty of apps.
And, I'm hoping that the Nook DRM will make Netflix offer their streaming client app for the Nook Color sometime soon. (I already have Netflix streaming on my phone, with its tiny display, but I want it on a tablet device!) If Netflix came out with the streaming client for Nook color and it wasn't out for Galaxy Tab or Xoom, I might just buy another Nook Color, for me.
My wife has very little interest in my e-ink Nook. She really likes the bright, sharp screen of the Nook Color. If something happens to her Nook Color, she will want to immediately replace it, which is the test of a good gadget.
In short, there is a legitimate use case for a color ebook reader with "only" 8 hours of battery life.
Amazon, by not having a color ebook reader, is losing sales to the Nook Color and possibly to real tablets like the Galaxy Tab or Xoom. It absolutely makes sense for them to jump in to this market.
steveha
Linus likes to say things that are a bit over-the-top. He trusts that his audience can detect the tongue-in-cheek nature of the comments.
I do the same thing. If I say something like "I hate and fear Perl", I don't mean it literally.
Some people were upset about Linus's presentation about Git where he bashed Subversion. I thought it was pretty clear that he was exaggerating his comments for comedic effects, and I was entertained rather than outraged.
Linus does sometimes say things I disagree with. He resisted having an official kernel debugger for years, because he said kernel developers should be able to hold everything in their heads and not need a debugger to help them. (Did he ever give in on that?) But this current issue is a non-issue.
steveha
Microsoft "borrowed" a huge amount of tech from Apple. They massaged it with macro-preprocessors and did some other near-mechanical transformations to functionally project the Macintosh Toolbox onto a pseudo-object concept they had been calling "windows" (windows on code).
This is an extraordinary claim. I'd like to see some evidence to support this claim.
As I recall, Apple did the early Mac development in Pascal, while Microsoft was very devoted to C in those days. You are claiming that Microsoft stole actual source code from Apple, and mechanically translated it? And Microsoft got that stolen code to run decently on the sucky 8088 processor, while the Mac got to run on the so-much-better 68000 processor? I find this rather difficult to believe.
And Microsoft started Windows before they had dealings with Apple; Bill Gates visited Xerox too, same as Steve Jobs. So Microsoft threw away what they had already written in favor of the stolen translated code? Or what, exactly?
Back then, they had to cut a lot of corners, and figuring out which corners to cut is real engineering.
Yes, exactly. Apple made their own engineering so much easier by standardizing on a 68000 processor, while Microsoft kept trying to shoehorn a GUI desktop onto an 8088 (or at least 8086). (For Windows 3, they gave up on that and required at least a 286, and quickly standardized on 386 or better.)
Windows 2 was a dancing bear: the wonder was not that the bear danced so well, the wonder was that it danced at all.
This is why I find it impossible to believe that Microsoft was able to mechanically translate Pascal and get it to run in Windows 2. Also, your comment here on Slashdot is the only place I have ever seen this claim made, and I don't know you, so frankly I don't put much stock in anything you say. Evidence or it didn't happen.
MSWindows 3 could not compete, and they did not understand enough about GUI to do it on their own.
Whoa wait, Windows 3? Apple sued Microsoft and HP over Windows 2 plus HP New Wave. So you aren't talking at all about what I was talking about then? I still would like to see the evidence, but I'm wondering why you are dodging and shifting topics.
That is not deniable if you understand the programming and have ever looked at the orgiinal Mac toolbox code and the materials given to Mac programmers and compared it with the equivalent from MSWindows 95.
Wait, you are claiming you can tell that Microsoft stole code and mechanically translated it just by looking at APIs? Isn't it rather more likely that Microsoft implemented similar APIs by writing C code on their own? I don't think it's even illegal, or even immoral, to look at another company's API and make your own API similar, so you haven't convinced me of anything yet.
What Apple is being questioned for now is a bit different, although it is sort of the same. Apple is trying hard to defend tech they spent real time and money developing. They are trying to show how the other implementations map onto their tech.
If I understand correctly, Apple is trying to claim that any rectangular tablet with a bezel around the touchscreen is an unfair copy of their product. That's not acceptable.
Apple also tried to patent many obvious multitouch gestures, such as pinch-zoom. The obnoxious thing is that they succeeded in many cases. It's hard to blame Apple, the blame there needs to fall on the patent office.
I assume the above will be as hard for you to understand as my earlier comment about non-practicing entities.
Has it ever occurred to you that, if I have trouble understanding something you wrote, the problem might be with your writing and not with me?
Fortunately, I don't actually care what you think about me, so I'm not going to get bent out of shape about this. But, word of advice here, many people don't like it when you imply that they aren't smart enough to understand your writings. This is not the way to make frien
I think the original problem is that you start out being reminded of the look and feel suit against "Windows" and end up dodging and focusing on HP.
As I said before: Apple sued both HP and Microsoft, the screenshot I am talking about was Windows with HP New Wave running, and Apple had used the customization features of New Wave to make the screenshot look more like a Mac.
Since that is what I said in the first place, how is this "dodging" or "shifting topics"?
And hey look, I tried a Google search and this time hit on the correct search words to find it. Here is a Google Books scan of the InfoWorld computer magazine. See page 5, under the heading "Windows Are Common, But Their Implementations Vary". There is a picture of the black-and-white New Wave screenshot submitted by Apple, and another picture of the default colors for HP New Wave.
Windows Are Common, But Their Implementations Vary
So, I trust that I have adequately explained to you what HP has to do with the topic at hand? Just as a refresher, in case you forgot: Apple supplied a screenshot of HP New Wave running on top of Microsoft Windows as part of its lawsuit against both Microsoft and HP.
If Microsoft is doctoring the end product to hide Apple tech, trying to un-doctor the end-product is not unreasonable.
I disagree. You can use the word "un-doctor" but it is still dishonest doctoring of evidence. It was stupid, too, because there was no way they were going to get by with that without a challenge, and it just made Apple look bad.
Apple was sort-of justified in grasping at straws
No. Doctoring evidence is not justified at any time.
Funny those same straws turn into logs these days for non-practicing entities, but that's another insanity.
Dude, I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to mean. If the idea is important, perhaps you should rephrase it.
steveha
If knowing the ending ruined all enjoyment, we wouldn't re-read books or watch movies again.
Still, there can be extra fun in enjoying a story for the first time and not knowing what will happen. You can only experience a story for the first time once; and if someone spoils the ending for you, you can't even do it once.
I really enjoy a good mystery story where the author plays fair with you, and you actually have a chance at figuring out who did it.
One of my favorites: the novel Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett, available as part of an omnibus volume called Lord Darcy. I was blown away by the reveal, the first time I read it, but Garrett totally played fair with the reader. If you are clever you can figure out what happened.
Ironically, one of the pleasures of re-reading Too Many Magicians is seeing how deftly Garrett inserted the clues that would let the reader figure it out. Everything is there but nothing is obvious.
steveha
Umm... yeah you got a tiny bit wrong there. It wasn't HP, it was Digital... Apple won that lawsuit.
Please see this URL:
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/apple-vs-microsoft.html
Oh look, HP NewWave, not Digital GEM. And yes, Apple lost.
Please see this URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#GEM_.22look_and_feel.22_suit
I believe that is what you are talking about. It is not clear from that link whether Apple won or whether Digital settled, but either way Apple didn't lose.
Tell me this isn't a ripoff of Mac OS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gem_11_Desktop.png
It looks like a desktop metaphor GUI to me. I am not clear on how much of that metaphor Apple can legitimately claim to own, but Apple and everyone else were all copying Xerox.
Note that in GEM you don't drag a floppy disk to the trash to eject it, and there are many other Apple-isms not present in GEM. So okay, I'll say it: this isn't a ripoff of Mac OS. Not as I define a ripoff, anyway.
But Digital was forced to make changes, so my opinion doesn't seem to be very useful.
Apple lost but NOT because MS didn't copy Apple...
Offtopic. The topic is that Apple submitted, as evidence, screenshots of HP NewWave running on Windows, and had used the customization features of NewWave to make it look very much like the Mac; this despite the out-of-box look being very different.
And don't make MS out to be an innocent here.
Where did I do that?
Don't be a hater without trying to understand.
Where did I do that?
Apple's no innocent here, but they deserve props for what that have truly innovated.
Offtopic. I was discussing one specific incident, which I thought was sort of related to the recent incident where Apple changed the aspect ratio of an image of a Galaxy Tab to make it look more like an iPad. I was not discussing whether or not Apple "deserves props" for innovation, just their legal shenanigans.
Or is it okay to submit doctored evidence if you "deserve props" for innovation?
steveha
As I recall, Xerox pretty much killed any future noise in this direction by pointing out that they had developed the GUI to begin with and if Apple was victorious over Microsoft, well, that would obviously mean Xerox could beat the living snot out of Apple.
No, that never happened. Xerox didn't keep the case from going to court; the case went to court and Apple lost.
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/apple-vs-microsoft.html
steveha
This reminds me of the "Look and Feel" lawsuit against Windows, way back a couple of decades ago. Apple sued Microsoft and HP, claiming the "look and feel" of Windows was too close to the Mac. As part of the evidence, there was a screen shot of a Mac desktop, and a screen shot of Windows with some HP shell software (called "New Wave") running. But to "improve" the screen shot, Apple had used the user-customization features of New Wave to customize the desktop, and every customization made it look more like an exact copy of the Mac.
IIRC the default settings were colorful, but Apple customized all the colors to black on white to more exactly match the Mac. They moved around icons. I think they even renamed "Recycle.Bin" to "Trash". (But it's been quite a few years so maybe my memory is making that up.)
Sorry, no links to support my memory; Google didn't find me any screenshots from this pre-Internet lawsuit.
This sort of trick doesn't win you any friends in the court, and it always gets revealed, so it's kind of stupid that Apple tried it.
Intel has been doing that forever, from the 486SX, which just had a broken FPU
Some people here on Slashdot seem really upset about this software upgrade thing. But I was upset about the 487SX, and I still grimace when I think about it.
Before the 486, you had the 386 CPU chip, and the 387 FPU chip. A 386 motherboard would have a second socket for the FPU; probably the socket was empty when you bought a 386 system, but you could buy a 387 for a speed boost.
The 486 was the first Intel CPU with an integrated FPU. So, the 486SX was a way for Intel to sell a cheaper part, and to sell 486 chips whose FPU was defective. I get that. I'm cool with that.
The real 486 was called the "486DX". SX == no FPU, DX == FPU.
The 486SX and the 486DX were pin-compatible. If you wanted to upgrade a 486SX system, you could simply pull the 486SX out and pop in a 486DX.
But Intel tried to push a motherboard design where there were two sockets: the 486SX socket, and the 487SX socket. Instead of unplugging the 486SX and putting in a 486DX, you were supposed to leave the 486SX in place, and buy a 487SX, which was just a 486DX with an incompatible pinout (including one extra pin). You couldn't put a 487SX in a 486DX socket. When you put in a 487SX, the motherboard would disable the 486SX and it would just sit there, with the 487SX doing all the work, as it really was just a 486DX. (And an integrated FPU sharing cache with the rest of the CPU is better for performance.)
I found the whole 486SX/487SX thing to be breathtakingly obnoxious. It's one thing to provide multiple price points and find a way to sell CPUs with a defective FPU. It's quite another thing to engineer up a whole system that was cynically designed to lock up a perfectly good 486SX chip and trick a user into buying a special 487SX chip instead of just getting a 486 as an upgrade.
To make it even stupider, the 487SX cost more than a 486, because the 486 was being mass-produced. I found a Google Books scanned copy of InfoWorld that said the 487SX was 30% more expensive than an equivalent 486 chip! ($799 vs. $588 for a 25 MHz part) And a 25 MHz 486SX must have cost $258 because the cost of leaving the 486SX in place and adding a 487SX was $1057, vs. $588 for the 25 MHz 486DX plus having a spare 486SX you could sell or give away.
Nobody I knew ever bought a 487SX, and I don't think many companies even built computers with a 487SX socket. Even Intel can't push that kind of cynical "solution" and have wide success with it.
steveha
So essentially what you're saying is "Plug anything into XP and it's going to work. But you might have to put in a CD that came with the thing, or go to the manufacturer's webpage.
Basically a fair assessment. Given that Windows is the most popular desktop OS, most device makers provide drivers that will work.
Some of those drivers suck and cause problems, but with a name brand like HP you are probably okay.
However with Ubuntu it's a crapshoot that anything you plug in will work, and there's really no guarantee that there's a driver for it, but in the off chance there is a driver it's going to be a good one."
Wow, you really sound like you hate Ubuntu. Or are you actually a huge fanboy for Windows? Either way, chill out, dude.
"in the off chance"? The more mainstream and popular a device is, the better the support. If you have some unusual scientific lab equipment, odds are low that there is an Ubuntu driver; if you have an HP printer, odds are it will Just Work. With generic USB devices like keyboards and mice, odds are they will Just Work. Most video cards and sound cards and network adapters will Just Work (although the video cards might need vendor drivers to get 3D to work). For scanners, odds are more mixed.
I like Linux, and use it every day. I'm not going to lie to people and tell them that device support is 100% when it clearly isn't.
But it doesn't completely suck either. It usually takes me less time to install Ubuntu than to install Windows on the same hardware. And when I'm done, there are applications (LibreOffice, etc.) and not just a bare OS.
And the friends and family members I have set up with Ubuntu don't pester me for support help, because once it's working, Ubuntu keeps on working. I'm the one who gets called when malware 0wns somebody's Windows computer, and I hate that.
steveha
Windows XP needs expert maintenance to keep it running properly. You need to install antivirus and keep it updated, you need to run Windows Update, you need to keep various software packages up to date (and they all have their own ways to update). Printers and such all support XP, but you have to figure out where to get the driver and which one to use; whereas with Ubuntu the driver support isn't 100%, but the stuff that does work will really Just Work with no fussing. (Where I work, there is a networked printer that Ubuntu talks to perfectly, and it took well over an hour to get it working under Windows 7. And I had to install some wacky HP software that I really hate, to get it to go.) And even if you do everything right, after a few years the system will get kind of slow and bogged down, at which time you should really do a bare-metal reinstall to speed things up again.
Ubuntu should run well on any computer from the "Designed for XP" era. It has one unified package manager. The Ubuntu Software Center is a place where kids can get stuff for free, and it's legal and it won't be malware.
When I give away computers, I put Ubuntu on them. (Sometimes I also put Windows on them, if the person getting them has a need for Windows. But kids have no actual need for Windows, and Ubuntu works great.)
steveha
WebM wasn't designed to be patent free.
Very well, then: WebM was designed to be free of patents other than the On2 patents that Google owned and freely licensed to allow the use of WebM.
Does the above statement meet your required level of precision?
Neither WebM or the related VP8 or Matroska projects were ever designed to be patent free. They were all built around free licenses, not patents. Not the same thing at all.
If any software uses patented technology, the patent owner can control the use of that software. Those projects most certainly did intend to avoid using any patented ideas.
I was using the phrase "patent free" informally, intending to communicate the idea that WebM is "free" of any "patents" that would require the user to get a patent license. I apologize that this did not meet your required level of precision.
Under current rules, I doubt that it is possible to create an image or video format that is patent free.
This is pretty much the contention of MPEG-LA. More specifically, they claim it is impossible to make any video format that doesn't infringe on one or more patents from their patent pool.
Google on the other hand spent $100 million for On2, spent months presumably vetting the patents situation, and released WebM. Google, and presumably Google's lawyers, do not seem to agree with your statement. I am hoping they are correct.
steveha