It sounds like he could have just saved it to PS in 1997 and have been done with it.
I have a Project Gutenberg CD from 1994 that's still perfectly usable because the data is isn't in some proprietary format. The data migrated off of optical media long ago and resides in various places within backup copies of my media hoard.
I recently encountered some bit of data that was encoded in a proprietary format but didn't really need to be. Nothing about the data required the extra features available from the proprietary format.
It turned out that a file from proprietary app X generated a file that couldn't be properly displayed on other copies of the same app without first being converted to a non-proprietary format.
Some people do really perverse things to avoid giving you data in a reasonable format.
Even in 1997, I could run a 1985 OS in emulation and therefore the entire tool chain associated with any file format you would care to name. This problem is not nearly as hard as some people make it out to be. Although it's made artificially difficult by the sort of company Vint is trying to make excuses for here.
If you are really worried about stuff being readable 20 years from now then perhaps you should really act like it.
This problem didn't just magically appear yesterday.
The obvious one would be printing. This is an area where both platforms are unnecessarily crippled by their OS vendor for no apparent good reason. This highlights why tablets are not really general purpose PCs. They kind of resemble them but really aren't much different than game consoles.
The moment you think outside the box, the PC is going to be a much better problem.
Although this isn't inherent to tablets. The tech is there. Policy just gets in the way.
Absent change, the absence of artificial barriers that interfere with random weirdos making unexpected killer apps is where PCs will continue to have the edge.
The policy of deliberate ignorance also destroys the entire point of the Patent system to begin with.
Patents exist to encourage the disclosure of interesting trade secrets so that everyone can benefit from them. If everyone is scared away from the patent database, then those patents really have no legal basis to exist.
The same goes for patents that are useless as documentation.
Every creative work is meant to be "pirated" sooner or later.
Clearly then the telephone wasn't nearly as novel as you would like to have us all believe.
The idea of the lone inventor also feeds into the idea of the benevolent dictator or Robber Baron in the style of Any Rand. The idea that the little guy exists in isolation from the state of the art also allows for granting the "captain of industry" far more power and influence than he deserves. Apply to the "corporate person" if no obvious figurehead is available.
> Having one person dictate what is and isn't patentable opens a huge can of worms that can hinder innovation
That is MORONIC.
The lack of a patent does not "hinder innovation". People can still choose to bring new products to market even if they don't get to benefit from a virtual land grab.
You're just repeating the same old tired megacorp propaganda.
It's property is it not? Then start treating it like property.
TAX IT.
That's not socialist. Property taxes predate socialism but at least 1000 years. So if these people want virtual property created out of thin air then let them pay taxes on it like I do on my house.
Tax it. Assign it a known value. Make it easy to assess tort claims like patent violations and software piracy.
Give some incentive to put things in the public domain after they are no longer worth the tax bill.
No one believes that tired old bit of propaganda anymore.
Necessity is the mother of invention, not avarice.
This is the problem when you start treating creative work as "property". You get obscene rhetoric that implies that any restrictions on the virtual land grab is some sort of theft.
> And, yes, there's "tech" angle in that the iPhone takes good enough pictures to be used for photojournalism
Yes there's certainly a tech angle in the CLAIM that you can replace a real camera with a phone. That is a claim that is very likely to be in dispute as there are quite a lot of people that have done photography with these devices.
A useless grey blur is unlikely to be useful for photojournalism and that's a likely result you're going to get from an inferior device in a lot of situations.
It does not take a lot of photography experience to realize this but it does take some.
It doesn't matter if your a pro or an amatuer. There are just some shots you're not going to be able to get with a phone or a cheap consumer camera. When you are out in the world, you often don't get to dictate the circumstances of a shot.
It's "art photography" where you can control conditions.
Journalism requires something capable of handling the world as you encounter it.
A sports University will have a CIS program more firmly rooted in theory. Such a program will also have more robust basic education requirements including math, science, the humanities, and even engineering depending on the school/department.
The party school will have all of the "useless" stuff that hiring managers like to treat as not directly relevant to the job.
Schools are very upfront about what kind of classes they offer and require. If you are at all familiar with the schools in question, you hardly need the candidate to provide a comprehensive list on their resume.
You can simply look at where their degree is from.
> This "solves" the major gun issue in the world: kids playing with guns and casual handling of guns.
Is that supposed to be sarcasm? Did you forget your sarcasm tag? That must be the case. Otherwise you're a big fat idiot that should watch less TV news.
An "assault rifle" is usually just a magazine fed hunting rifle. There's nothing particularly special about such weapons. They just look big and scary because they don't have any wood trim and they come with a pistol grip.
Although professional shooters are the best and most appropriate beta testers for this kind of new technology. This stuff should not be forced on the rest of us until cops are fine with it.
Slashdot Mirror
You clearly haven't the remotest clue what the Nazis actually did.
Tiny form factor anything would have set you back a pretty penny in the 90s. Even now a lot of small form factor stuff is ridiculously overpriced.
That's one area where stuff like the PI wipes the floor with other stuff.
The funny thing is that Word Perfect used a markup system and exposed the markup codes to the end user so the markup could be directly manipulated.
A competent typist from back in the day could probably just read the file directly.
It sounds like he could have just saved it to PS in 1997 and have been done with it.
I have a Project Gutenberg CD from 1994 that's still perfectly usable because the data is isn't in some proprietary format. The data migrated off of optical media long ago and resides in various places within backup copies of my media hoard.
I recently encountered some bit of data that was encoded in a proprietary format but didn't really need to be. Nothing about the data required the extra features available from the proprietary format.
It turned out that a file from proprietary app X generated a file that couldn't be properly displayed on other copies of the same app without first being converted to a non-proprietary format.
Some people do really perverse things to avoid giving you data in a reasonable format.
> Look at a file from that time and see if you can tell me whether FileName.doc was created in...
Or I could just use simple tools that can tell me the pedigree of a file regardless of what it's named.
Even in 1997, I could run a 1985 OS in emulation and therefore the entire tool chain associated with any file format you would care to name. This problem is not nearly as hard as some people make it out to be. Although it's made artificially difficult by the sort of company Vint is trying to make excuses for here.
If you are really worried about stuff being readable 20 years from now then perhaps you should really act like it.
This problem didn't just magically appear yesterday.
Android is most certainly Linux.
What it is not is GNU.
Stallman's rants about "GNU/Linux" were actually onto something.
The obvious one would be printing. This is an area where both platforms are unnecessarily crippled by their OS vendor for no apparent good reason. This highlights why tablets are not really general purpose PCs. They kind of resemble them but really aren't much different than game consoles.
The moment you think outside the box, the PC is going to be a much better problem.
Although this isn't inherent to tablets. The tech is there. Policy just gets in the way.
Absent change, the absence of artificial barriers that interfere with random weirdos making unexpected killer apps is where PCs will continue to have the edge.
> There have been Linux Game companies before who failed,
10 years ago. A lot can change in 10 years. This article is proof of that.
The policy of deliberate ignorance also destroys the entire point of the Patent system to begin with.
Patents exist to encourage the disclosure of interesting trade secrets so that everyone can benefit from them. If everyone is scared away from the patent database, then those patents really have no legal basis to exist.
The same goes for patents that are useless as documentation.
Every creative work is meant to be "pirated" sooner or later.
Clearly then the telephone wasn't nearly as novel as you would like to have us all believe.
The idea of the lone inventor also feeds into the idea of the benevolent dictator or Robber Baron in the style of Any Rand. The idea that the little guy exists in isolation from the state of the art also allows for granting the "captain of industry" far more power and influence than he deserves. Apply to the "corporate person" if no obvious figurehead is available.
> Having one person dictate what is and isn't patentable opens a huge can of worms that can hinder innovation
That is MORONIC.
The lack of a patent does not "hinder innovation". People can still choose to bring new products to market even if they don't get to benefit from a virtual land grab.
You're just repeating the same old tired megacorp propaganda.
Avarice is not the mother of invention.
It's property is it not? Then start treating it like property.
TAX IT.
That's not socialist. Property taxes predate socialism but at least 1000 years. So if these people want virtual property created out of thin air then let them pay taxes on it like I do on my house.
Tax it. Assign it a known value. Make it easy to assess tort claims like patent violations and software piracy.
Give some incentive to put things in the public domain after they are no longer worth the tax bill.
No one believes that tired old bit of propaganda anymore.
Necessity is the mother of invention, not avarice.
This is the problem when you start treating creative work as "property". You get obscene rhetoric that implies that any restrictions on the virtual land grab is some sort of theft.
So your answer to intrusive government meddling is even more intrusive government meddling.
> And, yes, there's "tech" angle in that the iPhone takes good enough pictures to be used for photojournalism
Yes there's certainly a tech angle in the CLAIM that you can replace a real camera with a phone. That is a claim that is very likely to be in dispute as there are quite a lot of people that have done photography with these devices.
A useless grey blur is unlikely to be useful for photojournalism and that's a likely result you're going to get from an inferior device in a lot of situations.
It does not take a lot of photography experience to realize this but it does take some.
> A professional photojournalist with an iPhone would produce better photojournalism than non-experts with a DSLR.
Nope. The iPhone simply isn't up to the task. It doesn't matter how much expertise you throw at it.
It doesn't matter if your a pro or an amatuer. There are just some shots you're not going to be able to get with a phone or a cheap consumer camera. When you are out in the world, you often don't get to dictate the circumstances of a shot.
It's "art photography" where you can control conditions.
Journalism requires something capable of handling the world as you encounter it.
Except the camera isn't just a tool. It's more like one of the ingredients. Suddenly your haute chef is using canned ingredients and rotten produce.
Some shots just aren't going to be possible with a phone period.
A sports University will have a CIS program more firmly rooted in theory. Such a program will also have more robust basic education requirements including math, science, the humanities, and even engineering depending on the school/department.
The party school will have all of the "useless" stuff that hiring managers like to treat as not directly relevant to the job.
Academic arcana can be useful even in IT.
Schools are very upfront about what kind of classes they offer and require. If you are at all familiar with the schools in question, you hardly need the candidate to provide a comprehensive list on their resume.
You can simply look at where their degree is from.
The government shouldn't regulate things period.
You are confused. Perhaps you're European or perhaps you've spent too much time listening to journalists.
It is the GOVERNMENT that is supposed to have a limited role and few rights.
You are confusing the liberties that free men should have with the expectation that the government is free to interfere with yours.
It's the role of government as nanny that needs to be justified, not the other way around.
> This "solves" the major gun issue in the world: kids playing with guns and casual handling of guns.
Is that supposed to be sarcasm? Did you forget your sarcasm tag? That must be the case. Otherwise you're a big fat idiot that should watch less TV news.
An "assault rifle" is usually just a magazine fed hunting rifle. There's nothing particularly special about such weapons. They just look big and scary because they don't have any wood trim and they come with a pistol grip.
Although professional shooters are the best and most appropriate beta testers for this kind of new technology. This stuff should not be forced on the rest of us until cops are fine with it.