I wonder what part 'photogs' (why can't they call themselves photographers? weird.) played in this.
You know the ones, that - even as recent as 2 years ago - still claimed digital was crap, film was here to stay as a vastly superior medium, that no professional would ever adopt digital, etc. etc. etc. The very same people Kodak probably had intimate relationships with from marketing through research.
Not laying blame, just saying.. perhaps Kodak laid too much importance on their opinions, trusting them to be 'right' as they had been for decades earlier.
How come most phones released before looked so different? Just look at RAZR designs before Droid or even luxury phones like Aura. Why the sudden change to black rounded rectangles?
Because it turned out to be a popular design?
How much of that popularity is due to the iPhone is a matter of endless debate, of course - but would you suggest that manufacturers instead use something that's less or even plain unpopular?
You already point out that 'most' phones weren't black rounded rectangles, thus omitting the ones that aren't in that 'most' arena. Be that the LG KE850 or the HTX Galaxy or the HTC Prophet, or others from smaller brands.
Apple weren't first but, again, they may have popularized it - what manufacturer would be so stupid as to then release silver models, or bright pink ones? That said,my girlfriend has a crimson red MyTouch 3G Slide and I think it looks great. Personally I wouldn't have minded if my Android device was a navy blue. But I wouldn't say that other manufacturers -have- to choose non-black, or non-rectangular, or non-rounded corners just because Apple popularized that particular combination.
bottom line is Samsung tried to profit by selling Apple knock offs
Well I wouldn't say "knock offs" - they're not really cheap carbon copies sold as AppIe (if you don't see what I did there, change fonts) devices at stall markets across the world. I agree that there's too much similarity (not just in the design but in icons used, etc. ) and that other designs would be a perfectly valid option and also garner sales just fine. That said, I also don't see the huge problem if two devices did look exactly the same as long as there's no actual brand confusion (which actual knock-offs can cause).
But it's what Hollywood does - especially if they have contracts running to make a movie 'based on' X, and the license to do so will run out soon and not making that movie means they also don't get to block any other attempts at that movie by other studios.
"I, Robot" is another such example.
The point is that the studios are using the name and some pieces of the originals for financial and/or marketing reasons - not because they wish to deliver a movie that is as close to the originals as possible... and thus should be viewed as such.
Now, you were young ('a kid' - however young that might have been), so there's an element of naivety involved there and I can understand your disappointment at the time... but looking back on it, does it really still upset you that much?
Besides.. have you ever seen the direct-to-video/DVD sequels? If you haven't, you should.. it'll might make even you appreciate the first one;) ( That's not intended to be serious, by the way - stay away from them.. they're some of the worst I've ever bothered to play back at 2x speed with VLC. )
Wow. Would you have felt any better if the movie were titled "Bugs from Outer Space"? Because short of a few themes and obviously the title, yes, the movie doesn't share a whole lot with the book - so why not just enjoy (or hate) the movie as a work made on its own without comparing it to the book until it's trodden into the ground?
I love a good book, myself, but I just don't get this near frothing-at-the-mouth thing some book fans do when the book is made into movie form. More often than not they're already dishing out the hate even before the movie has been financed, suggesting that the movie will be nowhere near as good as the book, how they'll never go see it, and after they do so anyway just can't seem to shut up about exactly what the moviemakers 'got wrong'.
I just can't wait for one of my friends to start that when the One Second After movie inches closer to release. I, for one, am looking forward to a movie that explores the theme of an unknown attacker causing a shutdown of all electrical systems in the USA and how a small community and its neighbors deal with that right on down to the gritty realities and couldn't care less about whether or not it's a carbon copy of the book. But oh no, I'm sure that the movie will use the wrong kind of dogs, or that the Ford Edsel will be replaced with another brand because that brand paid more money for the product placement, or that the protagonist and the woman have a steamy sex scene that was never in the book, etc. etc. how horrible!
Transformers is about giant robots, how are you supposed to do that without CGI?
Well that's simple. How is one supposed to do a movie about a giant mutated lizard without CGI? You put a guy in a rubber suit.
Cue people readying their fingers to rant about how the 2008 movie with a CGI monster was horrible (and IMDB's score of 5 would agree) while the 1954 movie with guy-in-a-rubber-suit was apparently some masterpiece.
Correlation != causation applies but most people only seem to accept that in one direction, via the mantra: CGI does not magically make a bad movie better.
What I mean by 'one direction' is that you will rarely hear "that movie would have been better if they'd used rubber suits".
Similarly, Transformers would not have improved by sticking people in painted cardboard boxes and pieces of plastic. In fact, for most such movies, I will very much say that it would make the movie much, much worse.
There's plenty of good movies that make use of CGI, even ones that use lots of it. Similarly, there's plenty of absolutely piss poor movies with people in rubber suits.
There are some exceptions, however. Hollywood can try as they might, but they just can't seem to get big explosions done right in CG. Dozens of Siggraph papers on the matter, and while distant and brief shots are perfectly fine, any detailed big explosion looks pretty crappy in CG. It's no better in scale models, though... in fact, those are worse. What, the 10-story building that exploded produces flames that look suspiciously like the candle on my table? No, thanks. For those effects, and many others, full scale practical effects reign king. Unfortunately, blowing things up on a large scale tends to be frowned upon these days. The last movie I saw with a proper large scale explosion was Blown Away, the ocean liner explosion - the shockwaves ripping through the fireballs, the camera shaking when the shockwaves hit, a thing of beauty; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYwMgKmtgBU#t=1m35s ( Trivia: lots of windows in the neighborhood were shattered as a result as well. Oops. )
You can easily pick out the CG ones vs the practical effect ones, and the miniature vs full scale ones.
It's a disincentive because the very same blurb you read also mentioned that it reduces violent crime since the thieves know they won't be able to sell the stolen phone. Less theft, thus.
You are essentially saying that the judge may have been under personal pressure to bias her findings. Which, if true, would imply that she should have recused herself from her duty in this case based on the determination that she could not act impartially.
I would think it's wise that Apple's legal team did not make any such remarks.
Stupid you. Google for "sony tablet" or for "toshiba tablet" and you will find two nice tablet designs that are rectangular and look nothing like an iPad. If Sony and Toshiba can do it, then surely Samsung can do it.
I'll give you the SONY Tablet S - that's definitely quite different. At least, from the side. From the front it's just like most other tablets.
Looks pretty similar to me. Yes, it's a different aspect ratio - but Apple has already demonstrated in court that aspect ratio alone is not enough of a differentiation.
And both also have that 'silver outline' along the edge of the case that Apple has also argued to be too similar to their designs.
If the Toshiba Honeycomb tablet is nothing like an iPad, then, imho, the Galaxy Tab is nothing like an iPad. Conversely, if the Galaxy Tab looks too much like an iPad, then so does the Toshiba Honeycomb.
That said, that's only regarding the visual look of the device, front-facing - while Apple's cases involve far more than just the aforementioned and includes things like icons, etc. ( Though I find most of their arguments there weak as well, it does all stack up. )
Really? If "Europe's Largest IT Company" can't stop their internal email system from receiving 90% spam then they aren't very good at IT.
I don't know if you're trolling, bad at reading, or exceptionally bad at interpreting what you're actually writing.
Nowhere did it say that the 90% that wasn't useful was spam. Furthermore it did say that it was regarding internal e-mails, i.e. from one staff member to another, just as you wrote. If 90% of that were spam, you'd be right - but then the problem wouldn't be that they would be bad at filtering out spam, but the fact that on their internal network there's people and/or machines sending spam. And if they do have a solution for that, given that it's an internal problem, I'm sure they'd love to sell it to themselves - there's bound to be some manner of tax loophole they can take advantage of there.
Now yes, they are probably just trying to deal with an organizational problem (people sending e-mails in the first place, probably to the wrong recipient(s), such as the dreaded e-mails to ALL employees regarding who took their precious iPhone charger that was on their desk) by trying to butcher it altogether... but that's a different discussion entirely.
And really, I'd rather they do research it and find some manner of defense against it than that some actual 'asshats' figure it out and use it as a weapon first, or nature finds its own way to such a 'killer virus', without a defense in place.
The only particularly troubling time is when these findings are made public, because among the "ZOMG WE'RE DOOMED" people like you there's always the chance that there's one complete nutcase who goes to such a research facility to try and disrupt the work - and inadvertently releases things into the wild with far worse consequences.
That's not to say it shouldn't be made public - just that the designation of risk is often misplaced.
Besides, the world doesn't hate scientists - if they did, the world should be largely Amish (actually, they don't even hate scientists, but their lifestyle would come close to one in which a society does hate scientists).
- No need to download using "torrents" from a shady site with shady advertising - Avoids viruses/trojan from the less reliable file sharing sites ( not a big problem now, but that could be "arranged" by the power-that-be)
But then you're making assumptions about the pirate - just as I am making assumptions in that they wouldn't.
"torrents" is already in common language use in the general public, so I'm not sure why it's in quotes. I also don't know why e.g. The Pirate Bay would be considered shady - perhaps those using it know it operates in a legal grey area of sorts, but shady? Similarly, I haven't even seen an ad there. Alternatively, there's lots of people who actually pay ($10/month or whatever) for access to a news server, and they visit the so-called shady NZB-indexing type sites to figure out what to actually get from them. If they were truly so shady, I wouldn't think that a random chap would be doing so in order to get content onto their brand name mediaplayer they picked up in a big name electronics store using the very interface that player provides.
Now obviously the argument can be made eliminating all piracy is wishful thinking, just as I'm not suggesting that nobody at all would make use of the legal service.
But all things being equal, the people who would go for the paid variant versus the free one would have very little reason to do so other than moral ones - and if they previously downloaded instead of purchasing DVDs, then their morals on that front are already fairly weak.
So let's say The Industry sets up a system where you can legally get, for a fee
any movie/TV show/piece of music ever made
including those currently in the theaters (delayed by, at most, 2 weeks - let's let them have that much, shall we?)
at high qualities, specifically targeting devices (why download the 9GB 1080p MKV with all the audio tracks, subtitles, etc. if your target is an iPhone, right?), including the originals
available at any time you want
both streaming (if applicable) and for download
without DRM
without in-content advertising
without watermarking
without piracy warnings
including any disc/box art, etc.
set up deals to interface it with e.g. IMDB, popular songtext sites, YouTube, etc.
allow unrestricted (except to the content) public access
set up an easy 'account' system, let people log in using facebook (I dunno, people seem to like it, I guess), Google, whatever. - but don't require it (one-off buyers)
don't track people's purchasing behavior other than for the purposes of recommending further content
allow unrestricted access to APIs to easily embed e.g. lists of favorite movies, etc.
allow previews
price it at, say, $0.99/song, $1.50/TV episode, $3/movie
allow payment by whatever form is in popular demand - Credit Cards, PayPal, Google Checkout, whatever.
Personally, I'd make use of such a service immediately.
However, an entrepreneuring Pirate will just duplicate the above (in no small part helped by it - why cam/rip/whatever if anybody can download, legally, and supply?) and offer an additional service: Free.
why? YOUR movement is of little value, the groups movement habits is of great value.
That depends on who you're asking, I suppose.
What if trends show that you, at let's say 4 out of 5 visits to the mall, end up going to the Burger King after you're done shopping at, say, GAP.
Wouldn't it be awfully nice, for Burger King that is, if you could be reminded about the new burger / free soda / two for one deal / whatever at Burger King when you exit GAP so that your 4 out of 5 statistic can be bumped up to, maybe, 9 out of 10?
Of course it could have the opposite effect.. you could be enraged that you just got spammed and you decide to stop going altogether.
Either way, it's interesting information to have on individuals. If all they wanted was e.g. traffic flow analysis they could already use the security cameras for the purpose (unless there's some legislation that says they can't).
While in the case of Google's geolocation services the common argument is that your SSID/MAC needn't be identifying and you're broadcasting it so one has no right to complain anyway......here it's almost the complete opposite. Here the broadcasted information is for one's own benefit (the ability to use a cell phone) and it doesn't matter that the information isn't necessarily identifying it's still evil to collect it.
This despite the SSID likely originating from a private (or business) residence, while your cellphone's signal is originating within another business' location.
Now obviously there are differences, and the people commenting may not be the same, but I wonder if what's really the difference isn't the fact that there's likely to be little benefit to somebody that cell phone signals are being tracked*, versus the major benefit of faster / less power-hungry geolocation from recording WiFi locations.
( * Supported by the notion that most people don't seem to take much issue with e.g. TomTom partnering with cell providers to detect traffic trends in order to warn users of their navigation devices/software of, among other, traffic jams - as obviously that's a major benefit to the user. )
Wat bothers me about the Android Market though is that some apps request access to some feature of the phone... but there's no explanation why.
Now usually that to me means I'll go look for an alternative first, look for an explanation from the developer second.
But it would be nice if the Android Market required these explanations per requested feature.
The down side of course is that people can lie or just not tell the whole truth, without careful review - which means it would instill a false sense of security with some people.
One possibility is to use an alternative market place that only hosts open source software (there's several).. but the in turn often miss the more shiny apps.
After all, we can pretty much say that any satnav is prior art. You tell it to give you a reminder when you're near your destination and lo and behold, when you're near it it does indeed inform you that you have arrived at the location.
The question is how, exactly, the patent applications are phrased and what, exactly, they cover. From the summary, for example, the Google one just covers a spoken voice and/or vibration.. in theory that would mean it doesn't cover a text and/or image reminder.. if that is the case it may even have been to specifically avoid a patent that covers the text or image implementation.
That to the common man they're practically the same thing, and even if they weren't, are all obvious.. doesn't matter to the patent office. I feel for the guy working at the U.S. one who answered questions on Slashdot a long time back.. I doubt any of his frustrations have been addressed.. it only got worse. Of course it's no better in Europe; http://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/09/0012208/peek-into-european-patent-examining-cancelled
I live in the US, and I've never lived anywhere you couldn't drink tap water
I've been all over the U.S. (well, almost all) and while you can drink the tap water pretty much anywhere, I wouldn't say it's necessarily refreshing.
Keep in mind that in most homes 'tap water' really means water that's already gone through Brita or other filters in the first place. Good thing, too, because without the filter the water in many states tastes very much of chlorine.
That said, the bottled water thing is still a scam and a major factor in street / park / water streams pollution - from the production of the bottles down to the people discarding of them inappropriately. Why so many Americans put up with this is beyond me.
I wouldn't call for a ban either, though. Having bottled water around can be a good thing (e.g. in case of emergencies or just not having any water come into the house due to burst mains pipe).. but for the average thirst quenching? ridiculous
Giving WebP support for HDR won't break out of the loop, so the answer is "make HDR displays".
Well the chicken&egg loop may not be broken, but...
Why make HDR displays (proper ones, not just "my monitor can do 10bits per channel - woo!") if there's little to make use of it? The hardware involved is fairly complex.
While on the other hand you have a bitmap format that could easily store, say, 32bit values which even when treated linearly gives plenty of range to work with, as well as metadata as to what the range actually represents.
Even though you might not have a display that could display it yet, you could at least feed the images through a tone mapping algorithm, or an interactive auto-exposure effect.
By making WebP at least support it, you at least present some methods of exiting HDR format vs HDR display loop and going down different paths.
CSS3 will soon eliminate the need for rounded corner images
If all you want is single-radius rounded corners on rectangles, yes. While this fits most design processes, it falls well short of the flexibility offered by an alpha channel. On the up side, it's independent of image resolution (in the case of bitmaps) so the rounded corners are nice and smooth no matter the zoom level.
and gradient backgrounds
Again, only for simple gradients - yes, you can stack multiple divs together to get something more complex - but at some point the code you generate, even if sent gzipped, is actually going to take more bandwidth than a 1-pixel wide/high gradient bitmap.
and even smartphone bandwidth is increasing to reasonable speeds
While on the flip side, providers are dropping FUP-style contracts and going with hard limits. Savings do matter.
Most ads these days are displayed with flash
But are likely to be increasingly exchanged for HTML - if only to target iDevices currently but certainly going forward for other devices as well.
and the quality of thumbnail images really isn't that important either
Perhaps not, but I'm sure Google wouldn't mind serving, say, 15% less bandwidth in google image results without appreciable loss in quality (or perhaps even an increase in quality) by simply serving WebP instead of JPG.
Personally I'm all for a format that performs better for a given task. Currently I'm archiving 2nd tier images as JPGs at 100% quality without chroma subsampling, etc. (primaries get the PNG treatment) because I'm confident that, should I care to see them again in say 20 years, JPG will still be well-supported. I could use JPEG2000 but support for that is currently low and I have seen no reason to think that will improve substantially in time.
If Google can actually market WebP to, say, camera makers, (their own) smartphone developers and major platforms like flickr, facebook, imgur, etc. so that it will actually get picked up.. it just might make me start saving new images in WebP instead. Given how slow its acceptance currently is, however.. as well as support for Adobe's DNG, I'm not getting my hopes up.
when I can just download, tar xvfz &&./runme , I don't see the point of this
I think you just demonstrated (one of) the point(s);
Desura is the first client to work on both Windows and Linux systems, enabling games to be installed with a click
Most people aren't amused with having to first find the download, then download it, unpack it, install it, etc. when there's a shinier option that has already found what you (presumably) want for you and lets you install it with a minimum number of polished UI interactions.
Doesn't detract from your question regarding other titles, though - I would have modded you up for that if I had disposable modpoints.
Well I pretty much gave the reason just slightly further down that paragraph; a microcontroller, be that PIC or AVR or whatever one prefers, will do the job much better. However, I should have added "in general".
Yes, the 4000 and 74xx series are still produced and actively used in design. However, check which ones, and why. A BCD-to-7-segment decoder, for example, makes sense to use simply because they are readily available, cheap, and driving a 7-segment from your microcontroller is a waste of pins and raises power ratings concerns... an alternative is getting a specialized microcontroller that has a 7-segment driver on board.. which of course is more expensive.
But if you look at, say, a serial in parallel out, or a counter, or.. etc. If your design already uses a microcontroller, then adding their functionality in code is much simpler and more flexible. Unless you're running out of memory space, it's the way to go.
I still do 4000 series designs (and specifically the 4000 series as it's more forgiving of mistakes), but only for the specific purpose of teaching kids the basic principles of their function, how to interface them with each other, etc. But in the end, we then go to how we can duplicate each component's functionality in code functions, how those functions can interface with each other, how to streamline them, and get the same result from, say, a 16-pin PIC that the larger board with 12 8-pin to 18-pin + side-components did.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what part 'photogs' (why can't they call themselves photographers? weird.) played in this.
You know the ones, that - even as recent as 2 years ago - still claimed digital was crap, film was here to stay as a vastly superior medium, that no professional would ever adopt digital, etc. etc. etc. The very same people Kodak probably had intimate relationships with from marketing through research.
Not laying blame, just saying.. perhaps Kodak laid too much importance on their opinions, trusting them to be 'right' as they had been for decades earlier.
Because it turned out to be a popular design?
How much of that popularity is due to the iPhone is a matter of endless debate, of course - but would you suggest that manufacturers instead use something that's less or even plain unpopular?
You already point out that 'most' phones weren't black rounded rectangles, thus omitting the ones that aren't in that 'most' arena.
Be that the LG KE850 or the HTX Galaxy or the HTC Prophet, or others from smaller brands.
Apple weren't first but, again, they may have popularized it - what manufacturer would be so stupid as to then release silver models, or bright pink ones?
That said,my girlfriend has a crimson red MyTouch 3G Slide and I think it looks great. Personally I wouldn't have minded if my Android device was a navy blue. But I wouldn't say that other manufacturers -have- to choose non-black, or non-rectangular, or non-rounded corners just because Apple popularized that particular combination.
Well I wouldn't say "knock offs" - they're not really cheap carbon copies sold as AppIe (if you don't see what I did there, change fonts) devices at stall markets across the world.
I agree that there's too much similarity (not just in the design but in icons used, etc. ) and that other designs would be a perfectly valid option and also garner sales just fine.
That said, I also don't see the huge problem if two devices did look exactly the same as long as there's no actual brand confusion (which actual knock-offs can cause).
But it's what Hollywood does - especially if they have contracts running to make a movie 'based on' X, and the license to do so will run out soon and not making that movie means they also don't get to block any other attempts at that movie by other studios.
"I, Robot" is another such example.
The point is that the studios are using the name and some pieces of the originals for financial and/or marketing reasons - not because they wish to deliver a movie that is as close to the originals as possible... and thus should be viewed as such.
Now, you were young ('a kid' - however young that might have been), so there's an element of naivety involved there and I can understand your disappointment at the time... but looking back on it, does it really still upset you that much?
Besides.. have you ever seen the direct-to-video/DVD sequels? If you haven't, you should.. it'll might make even you appreciate the first one ;)
( That's not intended to be serious, by the way - stay away from them.. they're some of the worst I've ever bothered to play back at 2x speed with VLC. )
Wow. Would you have felt any better if the movie were titled "Bugs from Outer Space"? Because short of a few themes and obviously the title, yes, the movie doesn't share a whole lot with the book - so why not just enjoy (or hate) the movie as a work made on its own without comparing it to the book until it's trodden into the ground?
I love a good book, myself, but I just don't get this near frothing-at-the-mouth thing some book fans do when the book is made into movie form. More often than not they're already dishing out the hate even before the movie has been financed, suggesting that the movie will be nowhere near as good as the book, how they'll never go see it, and after they do so anyway just can't seem to shut up about exactly what the moviemakers 'got wrong'.
I just can't wait for one of my friends to start that when the One Second After movie inches closer to release.
I, for one, am looking forward to a movie that explores the theme of an unknown attacker causing a shutdown of all electrical systems in the USA and how a small community and its neighbors deal with that right on down to the gritty realities and couldn't care less about whether or not it's a carbon copy of the book.
But oh no, I'm sure that the movie will use the wrong kind of dogs, or that the Ford Edsel will be replaced with another brand because that brand paid more money for the product placement, or that the protagonist and the woman have a steamy sex scene that was never in the book, etc. etc. how horrible!
Well that's simple. How is one supposed to do a movie about a giant mutated lizard without CGI? You put a guy in a rubber suit.
Cue people readying their fingers to rant about how the 2008 movie with a CGI monster was horrible (and IMDB's score of 5 would agree) while the 1954 movie with guy-in-a-rubber-suit was apparently some masterpiece.
Correlation != causation applies but most people only seem to accept that in one direction, via the mantra: CGI does not magically make a bad movie better.
What I mean by 'one direction' is that you will rarely hear "that movie would have been better if they'd used rubber suits".
Similarly, Transformers would not have improved by sticking people in painted cardboard boxes and pieces of plastic.
In fact, for most such movies, I will very much say that it would make the movie much, much worse.
There's plenty of good movies that make use of CGI, even ones that use lots of it. Similarly, there's plenty of absolutely piss poor movies with people in rubber suits.
There are some exceptions, however. Hollywood can try as they might, but they just can't seem to get big explosions done right in CG. Dozens of Siggraph papers on the matter, and while distant and brief shots are perfectly fine, any detailed big explosion looks pretty crappy in CG.
It's no better in scale models, though... in fact, those are worse. What, the 10-story building that exploded produces flames that look suspiciously like the candle on my table? No, thanks.
For those effects, and many others, full scale practical effects reign king.
Unfortunately, blowing things up on a large scale tends to be frowned upon these days. The last movie I saw with a proper large scale explosion was Blown Away, the ocean liner explosion - the shockwaves ripping through the fireballs, the camera shaking when the shockwaves hit, a thing of beauty;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYwMgKmtgBU#t=1m35s
( Trivia: lots of windows in the neighborhood were shattered as a result as well. Oops. )
You can easily pick out the CG ones vs the practical effect ones, and the miniature vs full scale ones.
It's a disincentive because the very same blurb you read also mentioned that it reduces violent crime since the thieves know they won't be able to sell the stolen phone. Less theft, thus.
Those are words with strong implications.
You are essentially saying that the judge may have been under personal pressure to bias her findings. Which, if true, would imply that she should have recused herself from her duty in this case based on the determination that she could not act impartially.
I would think it's wise that Apple's legal team did not make any such remarks.
I'll give you the SONY Tablet S - that's definitely quite different. At least, from the side. From the front it's just like most other tablets.
Which brings me to the "Toshiba Tablet". You're saying it looks "nothing like an iPad".
http://cdn.cbsi.com.au/story_media/339308309/toshiba-tablet-10-inch_12.jpg
Looks pretty similar to me. Yes, it's a different aspect ratio - but Apple has already demonstrated in court that aspect ratio alone is not enough of a differentiation.
You could say it's the sensors in the top right, or the buttons in the bottom... but the Galaxy S has much the same;
http://www.2-soft.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/iPad-vs-Galaxy-tab.jpg
And both also have that 'silver outline' along the edge of the case that Apple has also argued to be too similar to their designs.
If the Toshiba Honeycomb tablet is nothing like an iPad, then, imho, the Galaxy Tab is nothing like an iPad. Conversely, if the Galaxy Tab looks too much like an iPad, then so does the Toshiba Honeycomb.
That said, that's only regarding the visual look of the device, front-facing - while Apple's cases involve far more than just the aforementioned and includes things like icons, etc.
( Though I find most of their arguments there weak as well, it does all stack up. )
I don't know if you're trolling, bad at reading, or exceptionally bad at interpreting what you're actually writing.
Nowhere did it say that the 90% that wasn't useful was spam.
Furthermore it did say that it was regarding internal e-mails, i.e. from one staff member to another, just as you wrote. If 90% of that were spam, you'd be right - but then the problem wouldn't be that they would be bad at filtering out spam, but the fact that on their internal network there's people and/or machines sending spam.
And if they do have a solution for that, given that it's an internal problem, I'm sure they'd love to sell it to themselves - there's bound to be some manner of tax loophole they can take advantage of there.
Now yes, they are probably just trying to deal with an organizational problem (people sending e-mails in the first place, probably to the wrong recipient(s), such as the dreaded e-mails to ALL employees regarding who took their precious iPhone charger that was on their desk) by trying to butcher it altogether... but that's a different discussion entirely.
Actually, that would be the NIH ( http://www.nih.gov/ ), who requested that this research be done, funded it, etc.;
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/scientists-brace-for-media-storm.html
And really, I'd rather they do research it and find some manner of defense against it than that some actual 'asshats' figure it out and use it as a weapon first, or nature finds its own way to such a 'killer virus', without a defense in place.
The only particularly troubling time is when these findings are made public, because among the "ZOMG WE'RE DOOMED" people like you there's always the chance that there's one complete nutcase who goes to such a research facility to try and disrupt the work - and inadvertently releases things into the wild with far worse consequences.
That's not to say it shouldn't be made public - just that the designation of risk is often misplaced.
Besides, the world doesn't hate scientists - if they did, the world should be largely Amish (actually, they don't even hate scientists, but their lifestyle would come close to one in which a society does hate scientists).
But then you're making assumptions about the pirate - just as I am making assumptions in that they wouldn't.
"torrents" is already in common language use in the general public, so I'm not sure why it's in quotes. I also don't know why e.g. The Pirate Bay would be considered shady - perhaps those using it know it operates in a legal grey area of sorts, but shady? Similarly, I haven't even seen an ad there.
Alternatively, there's lots of people who actually pay ($10/month or whatever) for access to a news server, and they visit the so-called shady NZB-indexing type sites to figure out what to actually get from them. If they were truly so shady, I wouldn't think that a random chap would be doing so in order to get content onto their brand name mediaplayer they picked up in a big name electronics store using the very interface that player provides.
Now obviously the argument can be made eliminating all piracy is wishful thinking, just as I'm not suggesting that nobody at all would make use of the legal service.
But all things being equal, the people who would go for the paid variant versus the free one would have very little reason to do so other than moral ones - and if they previously downloaded instead of purchasing DVDs, then their morals on that front are already fairly weak.
So let's say The Industry sets up a system where you can legally get, for a fee
Personally, I'd make use of such a service immediately.
However, an entrepreneuring Pirate will just duplicate the above (in no small part helped by it - why cam/rip/whatever if anybody can download, legally, and supply?) and offer an additional service: Free.
Yup. Sounds like a service problem to me.
That depends on who you're asking, I suppose.
What if trends show that you, at let's say 4 out of 5 visits to the mall, end up going to the Burger King after you're done shopping at, say, GAP.
Wouldn't it be awfully nice, for Burger King that is, if you could be reminded about the new burger / free soda / two for one deal / whatever at Burger King when you exit GAP so that your 4 out of 5 statistic can be bumped up to, maybe, 9 out of 10?
Of course it could have the opposite effect.. you could be enraged that you just got spammed and you decide to stop going altogether.
Either way, it's interesting information to have on individuals. If all they wanted was e.g. traffic flow analysis they could already use the security cameras for the purpose (unless there's some legislation that says they can't).
It's interesting to see the contrast in comments between this story, and the recent Google WiFi Geolocation Opt-Out story:
http://search.slashdot.org/story/11/11/15/1459208/google-to-allow-location-service-opt-out
While in the case of Google's geolocation services the common argument is that your SSID/MAC needn't be identifying and you're broadcasting it so one has no right to complain anyway... ...here it's almost the complete opposite. Here the broadcasted information is for one's own benefit (the ability to use a cell phone) and it doesn't matter that the information isn't necessarily identifying it's still evil to collect it.
This despite the SSID likely originating from a private (or business) residence, while your cellphone's signal is originating within another business' location.
Now obviously there are differences, and the people commenting may not be the same, but I wonder if what's really the difference isn't the fact that there's likely to be little benefit to somebody that cell phone signals are being tracked*, versus the major benefit of faster / less power-hungry geolocation from recording WiFi locations.
( * Supported by the notion that most people don't seem to take much issue with e.g. TomTom partnering with cell providers to detect traffic trends in order to warn users of their navigation devices/software of, among other, traffic jams - as obviously that's a major benefit to the user. )
I've always been partial to the Death and Taxes poster for people who just want a curious at-a-glance type overview:
http://deathandtaxesposter.com/
The wiki article of course has far more in-depth information.
The Dancing Pigs thing is very true.
Wat bothers me about the Android Market though is that some apps request access to some feature of the phone... but there's no explanation why.
Now usually that to me means I'll go look for an alternative first, look for an explanation from the developer second.
But it would be nice if the Android Market required these explanations per requested feature.
The down side of course is that people can lie or just not tell the whole truth, without careful review - which means it would instill a false sense of security with some people.
One possibility is to use an alternative market place that only hosts open source software (there's several).. but the in turn often miss the more shiny apps.
Ah if only there were a magic bullet.
500%? Man, that's nothing... why, at the beginning of the year Apple still claimed zero malware in the App Store, then this happened:
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/11/07/2029219/charlie-miller-circumvents-code-signing-for-ios-apps
Briefly, malware in the Apple App Store increased by one divided by zer-OH SHI
...be the guy invited to the boldly-claimed energy revolution ...actually attend ...then don't report on it ...tell people to 'stay tuned' ...all while the conspiracy blogs suggest that you're probably being pressured from up on high to remain quiet ...even though reality is that you probably signed an NDA and were never allowed to report a damn thing anyway (positive or negative), thus making you a pawn in the "look at how legitimate we are - we even have an official from the press, the AP no less, present" game in the days leading up to the much-hyped test.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/28/030244/1-mw-cold-fusion-plant-supposedly-to-come-online
http://www.cobraf.com/forum/immagini/thumbs/R_319825_1.jpg
http://twitter.com/#!/petersvensson/status/131019897244368896
http://twitter.com/#!/petersvensson/status/131754686226247681
http://freeenergytruth.blogspot.com/2011/10/ecat-censorship-ap-news-report-killed.htmlz
( Not that I'm suggesting anybody pay particular attention to conspiracy blogs, just setting up the pieces... )
Best practice is to just go on vacation :)
http://twitter.com/#!/petersvensson/status/137641776751185920
Yeah, but the devil is usually in the details.
After all, we can pretty much say that any satnav is prior art. You tell it to give you a reminder when you're near your destination and lo and behold, when you're near it it does indeed inform you that you have arrived at the location.
The question is how, exactly, the patent applications are phrased and what, exactly, they cover. From the summary, for example, the Google one just covers a spoken voice and/or vibration.. in theory that would mean it doesn't cover a text and/or image reminder.. if that is the case it may even have been to specifically avoid a patent that covers the text or image implementation.
That to the common man they're practically the same thing, and even if they weren't, are all obvious.. doesn't matter to the patent office.
I feel for the guy working at the U.S. one who answered questions on Slashdot a long time back.. I doubt any of his frustrations have been addressed.. it only got worse.
Of course it's no better in Europe; http://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/09/0012208/peek-into-european-patent-examining-cancelled
I've been all over the U.S. (well, almost all) and while you can drink the tap water pretty much anywhere, I wouldn't say it's necessarily refreshing.
Keep in mind that in most homes 'tap water' really means water that's already gone through Brita or other filters in the first place.
Good thing, too, because without the filter the water in many states tastes very much of chlorine.
That said, the bottled water thing is still a scam and a major factor in street / park / water streams pollution - from the production of the bottles down to the people discarding of them inappropriately. Why so many Americans put up with this is beyond me.
I wouldn't call for a ban either, though. Having bottled water around can be a good thing (e.g. in case of emergencies or just not having any water come into the house due to burst mains pipe).. but for the average thirst quenching? ridiculous
Well the chicken&egg loop may not be broken, but...
Why make HDR displays (proper ones, not just "my monitor can do 10bits per channel - woo!") if there's little to make use of it? The hardware involved is fairly complex.
While on the other hand you have a bitmap format that could easily store, say, 32bit values which even when treated linearly gives plenty of range to work with, as well as metadata as to what the range actually represents.
Even though you might not have a display that could display it yet, you could at least feed the images through a tone mapping algorithm, or an interactive auto-exposure effect.
By making WebP at least support it, you at least present some methods of exiting HDR format vs HDR display loop and going down different paths.
If all you want is single-radius rounded corners on rectangles, yes. While this fits most design processes, it falls well short of the flexibility offered by an alpha channel. On the up side, it's independent of image resolution (in the case of bitmaps) so the rounded corners are nice and smooth no matter the zoom level.
Again, only for simple gradients - yes, you can stack multiple divs together to get something more complex - but at some point the code you generate, even if sent gzipped, is actually going to take more bandwidth than a 1-pixel wide/high gradient bitmap.
While on the flip side, providers are dropping FUP-style contracts and going with hard limits. Savings do matter.
But are likely to be increasingly exchanged for HTML - if only to target iDevices currently but certainly going forward for other devices as well.
Perhaps not, but I'm sure Google wouldn't mind serving, say, 15% less bandwidth in google image results without appreciable loss in quality (or perhaps even an increase in quality) by simply serving WebP instead of JPG.
Personally I'm all for a format that performs better for a given task. Currently I'm archiving 2nd tier images as JPGs at 100% quality without chroma subsampling, etc. (primaries get the PNG treatment) because I'm confident that, should I care to see them again in say 20 years, JPG will still be well-supported. I could use JPEG2000 but support for that is currently low and I have seen no reason to think that will improve substantially in time.
If Google can actually market WebP to, say, camera makers, (their own) smartphone developers and major platforms like flickr, facebook, imgur, etc. so that it will actually get picked up.. it just might make me start saving new images in WebP instead.
Given how slow its acceptance currently is, however.. as well as support for Adobe's DNG, I'm not getting my hopes up.
I think you just demonstrated (one of) the point(s);
Most people aren't amused with having to first find the download, then download it, unpack it, install it, etc. when there's a shinier option that has already found what you (presumably) want for you and lets you install it with a minimum number of polished UI interactions.
Doesn't detract from your question regarding other titles, though - I would have modded you up for that if I had disposable modpoints.
Well I pretty much gave the reason just slightly further down that paragraph; a microcontroller, be that PIC or AVR or whatever one prefers, will do the job much better. However, I should have added "in general".
Yes, the 4000 and 74xx series are still produced and actively used in design. However, check which ones, and why.
A BCD-to-7-segment decoder, for example, makes sense to use simply because they are readily available, cheap, and driving a 7-segment from your microcontroller is a waste of pins and raises power ratings concerns... an alternative is getting a specialized microcontroller that has a 7-segment driver on board.. which of course is more expensive.
But if you look at, say, a serial in parallel out, or a counter, or.. etc. If your design already uses a microcontroller, then adding their functionality in code is much simpler and more flexible. Unless you're running out of memory space, it's the way to go.
I still do 4000 series designs (and specifically the 4000 series as it's more forgiving of mistakes), but only for the specific purpose of teaching kids the basic principles of their function, how to interface them with each other, etc. But in the end, we then go to how we can duplicate each component's functionality in code functions, how those functions can interface with each other, how to streamline them, and get the same result from, say, a 16-pin PIC that the larger board with 12 8-pin to 18-pin + side-components did.
What? What's wrong with having sex with the geological survey people? :)