The ultimate source (not cause!) of this problem is of course users that get spam, and then go on to send money to the folks that spammed them. But next in line are those companies that use spam, spread through malware-infected PC's, to sell their products (or sell worthless/dangerous crap, for that matter). Such shady companies should be put out of business...
The majority of spam today does not conform to this model. A 419 scam leads to Nigeria, where anti-spam laws do not apply. Stock spam promotes a company, but the company being promoted is neither responsible for the spam nor profits from it. Even for the small minority of spam that does directly promote a company product, your proposal accomplishes nothing other than to open up a new way for enemies of a company to anonymously destroy said company: namely, simply send out forged spam to promote the company's products, and wait for the police to put the (innocent) company out of business.
Spam is a hard problem to solve. Almost anything you can think of will have been tried before, and won't work.
further investigation indicated that had the recounts been completed that it would've almost certainly given Gore the necessary votes to win the election.
No. Further investigation by a coalition of newspapers revealed that the only way Gore could have won would have been to cherry pick the districts to be recounted that were favorable to him while disallowing recounts in all the districts that weren't. The supreme court sniffed out the unfairness of this & rightly put a stop to it. This biased method of counting votes is no better than counting "Only whites" or "Only those with a communist party membership card".
Your main point is correct, but your details are wrong.
The only way Gore would have won is if the most liberal standards for ballot acceptance had been applied uniformly statewide. It has nothing to do with selective recounts of certain geographical areas at the expense of others. In fact, the selective recount that you proposed (recounting only districts favorable to Gore) was found in the media recounts to yield a Bush victory. The Wikipedia article has an extremely comprehensive and precise table of all the recount scenario outcomes.
The election was still incorrectly (albeit legally) stolen from Gore, because the butterfly ballot costed Gore several thousand votes in Palm Beach County which were mistakenly marked as votes for Buchanan.
I tell a lie though. The Apple iPad isn't really $499. Just adding a power cord to the iPad will cost you $29.00. No, I'm not making that up. Really, Apple, you couldn't throw in a power cord? Shame on you.
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about. According to the tech specs 10 watt USB power adapter is included in the box.
Are we reading the same page? The 10 watt USB power adapter is listed under "iPad Accessories". You have to pay extra for it.
Clearly you have *no* idea what is involved being a photographer of an event (wedding or not).
I don't even remotely understand your complaint.
The original poster found a photographer who was willing to perform the service being requested in exchange for the amount of money being offered. Nobody's work was stolen. Nobody's copyright was violated. Nobody was forced to work against his or her will. The poster didn't ask the photographer to perform 9 days of work in exchange for 2 days of pay, as you seem to imply. There was nothing illegal about the transaction. A basic requirement of a free market system is that such transactions between two willing parties must be allowed to proceed.
Why, exactly, are you upset by the notion of a willing customer and a willing vendor entering into a mutually agreeable business transaction?
I can only imagine one reason why you would be upset, and it reflects poorly on you. The only reason why you would oppose other photographers who freely offer these kinds of services would be if they are depriving you of business. However, since they are winning against you by fair competition rather than stealing or breaking the law, I would suggest you either adjust your business model or find another line of work. Whining about competitors because they offer a better service at a lower price, or even (as you argue) a worse service at a lower price, is pretty much the last thing that will gain you any sympathy around here.
The whole essence of free market capitalism is that suppliers must be free to offer varying levels and combinations of goods and services at varying levels of prices, and consumers must be free to choose among the suppliers.
This discussion is well past the point of being useful. It's clear that you only care about fonts from your own point of view as a print publisher. I am not going to prolong the discussion just because you accuse me of backing out.
I also find it curious that an anonymous coward would accuse me of backing out of a discussion. Only one of us is hiding his real name here.
I will, however, refute your accusation that I am a liar. Verdana for Linux is legally available at zero monetary cost from http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/.
if you are working primarily on a medium for purely digital use, you should select a typeface designed for that medium. Microsoft commissioned a family of fonts for exactly that purpose on Windows systems.
Yes, this is totally 100% true, and Verdana is one of those fonts that was designed for purely digital use.
Microsoft's font rendering system made screen-fonts worse, which is why they created Verdana.
Excuse me? Up above you said that in the context of digital use, you should select a typeface designed for that medium. But then you proceed to criticize Microsoft for doing exactly what you recommend, namely creating and using Verdana. Your argument contains no logical validity whatsoever. It is self-contradictory.
If you were to print out Microsoft's rendered fonts in a novel, people would demand a reprint by the publisher.
This is from a previous post of yours, but I couldn't resist pointing out the additional contradiction. Microsoft's font rendering is designed for purely digital use. It's ridiculous for you, or anyone, to even suggest printing out a novel in a Microsoft font that is rendered for digital use. I can't tell exactly what you're trying to say, since there are so many contradictions in your statements, but it should be clear that a font designed for computer displays is not appropriate for use in printed matter, and that a font designed for printed matter is not appropriate for use on a computer screen.
The on screen representation should always be true to the reference presentation, and print preview should always be accurate.
Print preview is one of the very few situations where font rendering accuracy is desirable, because you're trying to print something out. However, it is not true in general that you're always trying to print something out. For you to say otherwise is nothing more than a reflection of your bias as a publisher.
Font accuracy is what preserves legibility. Typefaces are painstakingly crafted.
A typeface which is painstakingly crafted for print media is not going to look good on a computer screen. If you think it is possible for any single font to be simultaneously appropriate for paper use and monitor use, then you are, for lack of a better word, blind.
Typefaces such as Verdana, which are crafted specifically for digital displays, are an exception. In such cases, I completely agree that font accuracy on a computer screen is important, because the font was designed for monitors. But then, I find it perplexing beyond belief that you would criticize Microsoft for creating a font specifically designed for computer displays, or that you would complain about such a font on the grounds that a novel printed in it wouldn't look good.
Because you have no idea what goes into typeface design.
If your idea of what goes into typeface design is that fonts in print must match fonts on computer displays as accurately as possible, then I don't want to have anything to do with your notion of typeface design.
Do you get it yet? I am not like you. When I read a block of text on a computer screen, with very rare exceptions (such as print preview), it is not important to me whether the fonts have the same shape as what the printer produces. What is important to me is whether the text is clear. The clearest shape for computer displays is not the same as the clearest shape for paper printouts. Therefore, I don't mind using different shapes for the two situations. This is the correct tradeoff in my situation. It is less correct, but more usable. As one of many possible valid tradeoffs, it cannot be described as better or worse than any other choice, and there's certainly no objective measuring stick in such a situation.
To go even further, I don't even care if my computer mo
I find claims of eyestrain on Mac displays to be rather far-fetched. Between work and home, I spend 12-16 hours a day in front of Mac monitors and have zero eyestrain.
Sure, eyestrain is a very subjective topic. What I'm disputing is the GP's assertion that font rendering should be measured according to objective standards. Unless you're in a (worthless) industry like advertising where the medium is more important than the message, the "correct" or "best" rendering technique for text is very subjective. For a given person, the best font rendering may even vary from one monitor to another.
I wouldn't mind a system that lets you choose between Mac-style or Windows-style font rendering. What I do mind is other people telling me that Mac fonts are better, when my own eyes disagree. If you think that Mac fonts are better to you, I'm not going to try to correct you. I would appreciate the same courtesy in return. And I certainly disagree vehemently with the GP's claim that there is one "objective" standard against which all rendering systems should be measured.
Similarly, fonts which have been warped to fit the pixels throw reading stride off, and also create artifacts that are distracting. Fonts have been developed over centuries and reflect many human factors that affect your reading experience more than some abstract "font accuracy" criterion.
These two statements are virtually contradictory. Coarse resolution backlit monitor displays certainly have not existed for centuries, so the centuries-long history of font development is completely irrelevant in this context. The fact is, computer screens are extremely new by historical standards (even more so in the case of LCD monitors), and they may well require dramatically different display strategies and font rendering compared to traditional media. To me, the "warped" fonts and display artifacts that you dislike are something that I find extremely positive. They are a necessary and worthwhile tradeoff on low-resolution backlit displays in exchange for the benefit of having super-sharp text. Indeed, since computer monitors are so astoundingly different from any other historical display technology, adhering to centuries-old ideas about font rendering, ideas which were developed and optimized for a completely different display medium, makes absolutely zero sense, and more likely than not is actually counterproductive.
I simply do not sit so close to the screen (or use a low-enough-rez screen) that I can see individual pixels, so I cannot see any "blurring" in Mac fonts.
That's your opinion, and I respect it. Please return the favor and respect mine. In my opinion, any screen less than 300 dpi (the bare minimum resolution considered tolerable for print) is low resolution and benefits from pixel re-alignment. I would be extremely surprised if you had a computer monitor with 300 or more dpi.
Talk about changing the goalposts! This whole Slashdot story is about fidelity.
Woah there. First of all, as a neutral party, I dislike both Apple and Microsoft (I use Linux), and I have no agenda here. However, I do think that your viewpoint (as a self-admitted print publisher) is highly biased and useless to the majority of slashdot readers. This slashdot story is about image editing, but this thread is about on-screen font rendering. The two topics are different, and they need different goalposts.
The technical ins and outs of photo editing and display are all about fidelity; why would that not be the case with typeface rendering and display?
Viewing a photo is very very different from reading text. In fact, I find it completely preposterous that anyone would regard the two things as having anything in common.
When I am reading text, I care about text fidelity, not image fidelity. I want to know what the letters and words are. I want to be able to read and re-read the text with minimal eyestrain. Unless you work in advertising or marketing (two industries which I loathe), the purpose of displaying or printing text is to accurately convey which letter is which and which word is which. Anything else (such as font accuracy) is only a means to this end. Anyone (such as you) who thinks font accuracy is worthy as an end in itself is clearly living in a different world from someone (such as me) who reads scientific papers (the vast majority of them on-screen, simply because carrying around 1GB worth of printed papers is impossible) and writes code for a living.
I'm no great lover of Apple products, but as someone in print and publishing, this is one thing Apple does right and everyone else refuses to.
There is a huge difference between printed text and text on a computer screen. The physical differences between the two are so vast, they can never be made to display exactly the same. I understand that, for someone like you who works in the publishing industry, it is important for computer screens to maintain fidelity to printed paper, since the printed paper is your end result. However, just because your profession depends crucially on font fidelity, does not mean that the same holds for other people.
You need to understand that text on a computer screen is not always intended for publication on a printed page. Computer programming, in particular, involves writing large amounts of textual code, code which is almost never printed. Many slashdot readers are computer programmers, and couldn't give a flying f*ck about printing out their source code on paper. In such a situation, it is counterproductive to insist on image-level fidelity between text displayed on a computer monitor and text printed on a paper page. In fact, the optimal display strategy for computer programmers is almost completely the opposite of what you are saying, namely: render the font on the computer monitor so that it is as readable as possible on a computer screen, with absolutely zero regard for fidelity to printed output.
Scenes intentionally filmed with judder that people go to great lengths to smooth out; proper calibration that is blown away by dynamic settings; sound mix and dynamic range that is hopelessly trampled by bass-loading equalizer fiends; photos being displayed in some other color space are all the same issue.
Ironically, text rendering is the one issue that is different from all of the above. Text is a discrete medium: a letter is either an a, b, or c, or so on. Photos, sound, and video are analog media, perceived along a continuum by the human brain. Text fidelity means only one thing: being able to tell letters apart.
If you were to print out Microsoft's rendered fonts in a novel, people would demand a reprint by the publisher. The objective reference is the superior reference.
This statement was true in the mid 90's. It is no longer universally true.
Using techniques such as opportunistic SMTP over TLS, a.k.a. SMTPS, it is possible to provide link-level encryption of email without requiring any special configuration on the part of the end user. This setup is more common than you think, especially in universities. I would estimate that about half of all US universities already deploy SMTPS. Email traveling over SSL/TLS is not that bad from a security point of view -- the only way to intercept it is to compromise a mail server or one of the end users' machines, and if a hacker has that level of access, you have much bigger problems than email.
SMTPS will not encrypt the link between the MUA and the MTA. For that, the end user needs to explicitly configure IMAPS or POP3S. However, this link is one of the easiest links in the chain to secure, even without cryptography. Ethernet switches (not hubs) and physical access control will prevent the vast majority of local sniffing attacks, and WPA2 is good enough for WiFi links.
You don't send private data over the Internet. Period.
I disagree with this statement. At the very least, it is almost impossible to function in modern society without sending private data over the Internet in some form. For example, if you never send your credit card number over the internet, then e-commerce is almost impossible, and if a merchant subscribed to this philosophy, he would not remain in business. As another example, you almost certainly had to send your slashdot password over the internet in order to log in, and you probably consider it to be private (if not, feel free to tell me what it is).
I agree that you should never send unencrypted private data over the Internet, but I would stop well short of recommending a complete ban on sending even encrypted private data, which is what you seem to be saying.
There is logic behind the inconsistency. The below information is (by now) all public knowledge. I may be wrong about some details since I'm spouting off the top of my head, but the general idea is right, and it's useful information to know.
I installed XP, crossed my fingers and toes, and activated. It worked! I'd been worried that activating my old key on a totally new configuration would fail.
On retail copies of XP, which can legally be reassigned between machines, if you wait long enough between activations (something like 90 days), Microsoft assumes you're moving the OS to an entirely new machine, and treats it as a fresh installation.
So I shut down, installed the rest of my hard drives, and rebooted. Deactivated for making significant changes to my hardware configuration.
If you change your hardware profile within the 90 day limit, Microsoft uses a point scoring system to determine whether you need to reactivate, with each new hardware component worth a certain number of points depending on what component it is. The hard drive is worth quite a lot of points, since it's the thing that stores your copy of Windows.
Since then, I've swapped out the CPU, changed video cards, added a second video card, and doubled the RAM all without any activation problems.
Microsoft is just so incredibly inconsistent.
A successful reactivation sets a flag in your machine that says "this person changes hardware often -- don't bug them about reactivation again."
Why are self-signed certificates viewed with such relative suspicion?
Because the communications channel that carries the self-signed certificate is exactly the same as the one that has potentially been compromised.
This is far from being true, especially in modern times with the proliferation of wireless access technologies.
In this day and age, it is extremely common for even average non-technical users to access a web site at different times using different and entirely independent communications channels. You might use a wired connection at home, a wireless hotspot in a coffee shop, 3G mobile broadband when on the road, and so on. Web browsers have always had the capability (rarely used) to cache a self-signed certificate and warn if there are any changes in the certificate when you visit the site later.
The present-day certificate system is badly outdated because it was designed in response to a threat model which is virtually irrelevant today. The system needs to be thoroughly overhauled, and encouraging self-signed certificates would be a good start.
But I did. Let X be the statement "netbooks were a factor in Apple's decision to introduce the iPad." Then exactly one of "X" or "not X" is true. No matter which one is true, you made a statement that contradicts the one of these two which is true.
I didn't make a mathematical statement. If you are having problems with my statements in a mathematical sense, the problem is your translation from English to logic.
Even in plain English, the statements "X" or "not X" cannot both hold, no matter what X is. Indeed, exactly one of the two is always true.
If your argument is that your English is incapable of being translated into logic, then I am done with this discussion. I require logic as a condition of participating in a debate.
Look, you're contradicting yourself. Either netbooks were a factor in Apple's decision to introduce the iPad, or they were not a factor. It is mathematically impossible for neither statement to hold.
If netbooks were a factor in iPad development, then this statement of yours:
That means, it's not netbooks themselves. They are just a placeholder that could have been anything. There could have been no netbooks at all and even no middle-ground computers at all. All that was needed is for Apple to see that there's an actual market for the product.
is false, since the content of your statement is that events would have transpired in the same fashion even had there been no netbooks at all.
On the other hand, if netbooks had zero impact on the development of the iPad, then this statement of yours:
Apple likes to be sure there's a market for something before releasing it. Netbooks have shown there's a market for cheap and small.
is false, since the content of your statement is precisely that netbooks played a role in Apple's release.
Apple likes to be sure there's a market for something before releasing it. Netbooks have shown there's a market for cheap and small.
In that case, thank god for netbooks. Otherwise Apple never would have acknowledged the market for cheap small computers. And if every company behaved like Apple, no new market niches would ever be supplied.
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
pudge, I'm disappointed that you think the DRM issue is about choice. In a free market, yes, customers do have choice, and economic incentives will solve the problem. But that is not what we are facing here.
The DMCA already prohibits the creation and distribution of software that removes DRM. The corporations will pass new laws prohibiting the unauthorized modification of DRM devices. They will pass laws mandating the inclusion and honoring of DRM in broadcast and content streams. Eventually, they will pass laws requiring all devices to include and support DRM. They already tried all of these things with the CBDTPA. That effort failed, but it takes extraordinary naivete to think that they will never try again.
Right now, the iPad represents a choice. But Apple's goal is to provide this choice and then remove other choices through legal restrictions. The whole reason why this is a trap is because the first step looks positive and seductive. And the reason why the FSF is making noise is because many people, including you, don't realize the dangers of this trap.
And there's no chance whatsoever that this will ever happen to Mac OS X, so don't lose sleep over it.
It doesn't take much creativity to come up with ways to deprive customers of the OS X platform, even without changing OS X. For example, Apple could restrict the sale and support of OS X to professional or enterprise level machines. That would have functionally the same effect as depriving mainstream customers of choice, since most people can't afford the high end machines. Right now, the only thing preventing Apple from doing this is profits. Once the appropriate laws are in place, however, Apple would get enough profit from their App store to more than replace their OS sales, and no fear of competition because of legal prohibitions. Then we'll start to see the hammer come down.
You might argue, why not just oppose the laws when they arise, instead of worrying about this now? The reason is that preemptive opposition has a greater chance of succeeding. I strongly object to the premise that we should wait until the last possible moment before resisting loss of choice. By then, it could be too late.
No, but you stopped reading my post early on purpose.
If you finish the paragraph you quoted you will see that he has already answered your question:
"What they want is low cost and portable. Until now, netbooks were pretty much the only product to fit that bill."
He has an excellent point.
Yes, and if you had finished reading my post you would have seen that I quoted that "answer" too. But this quote doesn't answer the question of why netbooks sell. If low-cost portable devices are in such obvious demand, then why did everyone (including Apple) ignore this market segment until netbooks came out?
People haven't had a choice before if they wanted something portable and cheap.
Why are manufacturers not providing that choice? As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't provide that choice (or didn't prior to the iPad) because "people don't want them", which is circular reasoning.
Terry Tao was born in Australia, has an Australian accent, and probably holds only an Australian passport.
Looks like I'm going to have to explain this one several times. The phrase I used was "overseas Chinese" which has a very specific meaning. Terence Tao counts as overseas Chinese, but he is not Chinese. Being overseas Chinese has nothing to do with where you were born, how you speak, or where your passport is from. For example, I was born in the US, have an American accent, and hold only a US passport, but nevertheless I am overseas Chinese.
I raised the issue of overseas Chinese specifically because I would like to know how the study authors treated such cases, given that they actually represent a sizable proportion of Chinese-derived research output.
Also, I am pretty sure neither Terry nor the Chinese mathematical community considers Terence Tao himself as Chinese (in the restricted sense). While ethnically Chinese, he was born and raised in Australia, and thus is not an ex-pat. To tout Terry as an example of Chinese science is like, well, picking an extreme example, calling Budweiser (American) a representative Czech lager.
Chinese culture does not treat ethnicity as a melting pot in the way that Americans do. So your analogy to American beer is inappropriate. In any case, my comment was about how the study authors handled such cases, not about how Terence Tao or the Chinese community view the matter.
Counting the number of papers is a rather dubious way to measure research output. The article acknowledges this at the very end, pointing out that the quality of the research generated by Chinese researchers is rather mixed.
My own experience as a researcher is that Asian countries in general (with the possible exception of Japan) have a long way to go before they match the impact of Western researchers. There are exceptions, such as the MD5 collision found by Wang et al., but in general most of the major breakthroughs occur in the West.
It's also not clear whether research produced by overseas Chinese is included in the total. Some of the verybestmathematicians in the world are Chinese, but almost all of them are based at Western institutions. In any case, as good as they are, the number of overseas Chinese is so small that they don't represent anything close to a majority.
Does Apple have a "philosophy of information sharing" and if so, what is it?
The company is secretive about upcoming, not-yet-available products. Which is not information that customers require in their day-to-day work anyways. As a user or as a developer, it is information about the current, existing products that you need most. And as both I've always found that to be readily available whenever I needed it.
To add to your comments, I would like to point out that Apple is not even particularly secretive about unreleased products. The Apple tablet hasn't even been released yet, and already there is saturation coverage in the media. The same pattern has held for all their product releases in recent memory.
The whole article should be marked -1: Troll. Linux can compete just fine on technical merits, and the last thing we need is another uncompetitive OS monopoly using non-technical methods to enforce market dominance, which is what we'll get if Apple "wins".
Slashdot Mirror
The ultimate source (not cause!) of this problem is of course users that get spam, and then go on to send money to the folks that spammed them. But next in line are those companies that use spam, spread through malware-infected PC's, to sell their products (or sell worthless/dangerous crap, for that matter). Such shady companies should be put out of business ...
The majority of spam today does not conform to this model. A 419 scam leads to Nigeria, where anti-spam laws do not apply. Stock spam promotes a company, but the company being promoted is neither responsible for the spam nor profits from it. Even for the small minority of spam that does directly promote a company product, your proposal accomplishes nothing other than to open up a new way for enemies of a company to anonymously destroy said company: namely, simply send out forged spam to promote the company's products, and wait for the police to put the (innocent) company out of business.
Spam is a hard problem to solve. Almost anything you can think of will have been tried before, and won't work.
No. Further investigation by a coalition of newspapers revealed that the only way Gore could have won would have been to cherry pick the districts to be recounted that were favorable to him while disallowing recounts in all the districts that weren't. The supreme court sniffed out the unfairness of this & rightly put a stop to it. This biased method of counting votes is no better than counting "Only whites" or "Only those with a communist party membership card".
Your main point is correct, but your details are wrong.
The only way Gore would have won is if the most liberal standards for ballot acceptance had been applied uniformly statewide. It has nothing to do with selective recounts of certain geographical areas at the expense of others. In fact, the selective recount that you proposed (recounting only districts favorable to Gore) was found in the media recounts to yield a Bush victory. The Wikipedia article has an extremely comprehensive and precise table of all the recount scenario outcomes.
The election was still incorrectly (albeit legally) stolen from Gore, because the butterfly ballot costed Gore several thousand votes in Palm Beach County which were mistakenly marked as votes for Buchanan.
From the Article:
I tell a lie though. The Apple iPad isn't really $499. Just adding a power cord to the iPad will cost you $29.00. No, I'm not making that up. Really, Apple, you couldn't throw in a power cord? Shame on you.
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about. According to the tech specs 10 watt USB power adapter is included in the box.
Are we reading the same page? The 10 watt USB power adapter is listed under "iPad Accessories". You have to pay extra for it.
Clearly you have *no* idea what is involved being a photographer of an event (wedding or not).
I don't even remotely understand your complaint.
The original poster found a photographer who was willing to perform the service being requested in exchange for the amount of money being offered. Nobody's work was stolen. Nobody's copyright was violated. Nobody was forced to work against his or her will. The poster didn't ask the photographer to perform 9 days of work in exchange for 2 days of pay, as you seem to imply. There was nothing illegal about the transaction. A basic requirement of a free market system is that such transactions between two willing parties must be allowed to proceed.
Why, exactly, are you upset by the notion of a willing customer and a willing vendor entering into a mutually agreeable business transaction?
I can only imagine one reason why you would be upset, and it reflects poorly on you. The only reason why you would oppose other photographers who freely offer these kinds of services would be if they are depriving you of business. However, since they are winning against you by fair competition rather than stealing or breaking the law, I would suggest you either adjust your business model or find another line of work. Whining about competitors because they offer a better service at a lower price, or even (as you argue) a worse service at a lower price, is pretty much the last thing that will gain you any sympathy around here.
The whole essence of free market capitalism is that suppliers must be free to offer varying levels and combinations of goods and services at varying levels of prices, and consumers must be free to choose among the suppliers.
I also find it curious that an anonymous coward would accuse me of backing out of a discussion. Only one of us is hiding his real name here.
I will, however, refute your accusation that I am a liar. Verdana for Linux is legally available at zero monetary cost from http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/.
No, the criticism is that Verdana is a face designed for use on Windows. It is designed around ClearType
Check your facts. Verdana was released in 1996. ClearType was announced in 1998 and released in 2000. The earliest patent issued for ClearType was filed in October 1998. There is no way Verdana could have been designed for ClearType.
The rest of your post is complete nonsense since your facts are wrong.
if you are working primarily on a medium for purely digital use, you should select a typeface designed for that medium. Microsoft commissioned a family of fonts for exactly that purpose on Windows systems.
Yes, this is totally 100% true, and Verdana is one of those fonts that was designed for purely digital use.
Microsoft's font rendering system made screen-fonts worse, which is why they created Verdana.
Excuse me? Up above you said that in the context of digital use, you should select a typeface designed for that medium. But then you proceed to criticize Microsoft for doing exactly what you recommend, namely creating and using Verdana. Your argument contains no logical validity whatsoever. It is self-contradictory.
If you were to print out Microsoft's rendered fonts in a novel, people would demand a reprint by the publisher.
This is from a previous post of yours, but I couldn't resist pointing out the additional contradiction. Microsoft's font rendering is designed for purely digital use. It's ridiculous for you, or anyone, to even suggest printing out a novel in a Microsoft font that is rendered for digital use. I can't tell exactly what you're trying to say, since there are so many contradictions in your statements, but it should be clear that a font designed for computer displays is not appropriate for use in printed matter, and that a font designed for printed matter is not appropriate for use on a computer screen.
The on screen representation should always be true to the reference presentation, and print preview should always be accurate.
Print preview is one of the very few situations where font rendering accuracy is desirable, because you're trying to print something out. However, it is not true in general that you're always trying to print something out. For you to say otherwise is nothing more than a reflection of your bias as a publisher.
Font accuracy is what preserves legibility. Typefaces are painstakingly crafted.
A typeface which is painstakingly crafted for print media is not going to look good on a computer screen. If you think it is possible for any single font to be simultaneously appropriate for paper use and monitor use, then you are, for lack of a better word, blind.
Typefaces such as Verdana, which are crafted specifically for digital displays, are an exception. In such cases, I completely agree that font accuracy on a computer screen is important, because the font was designed for monitors. But then, I find it perplexing beyond belief that you would criticize Microsoft for creating a font specifically designed for computer displays, or that you would complain about such a font on the grounds that a novel printed in it wouldn't look good.
Because you have no idea what goes into typeface design.
If your idea of what goes into typeface design is that fonts in print must match fonts on computer displays as accurately as possible, then I don't want to have anything to do with your notion of typeface design.
Do you get it yet? I am not like you. When I read a block of text on a computer screen, with very rare exceptions (such as print preview), it is not important to me whether the fonts have the same shape as what the printer produces. What is important to me is whether the text is clear. The clearest shape for computer displays is not the same as the clearest shape for paper printouts. Therefore, I don't mind using different shapes for the two situations. This is the correct tradeoff in my situation. It is less correct, but more usable. As one of many possible valid tradeoffs, it cannot be described as better or worse than any other choice, and there's certainly no objective measuring stick in such a situation.
To go even further, I don't even care if my computer mo
I find claims of eyestrain on Mac displays to be rather far-fetched. Between work and home, I spend 12-16 hours a day in front of Mac monitors and have zero eyestrain.
Sure, eyestrain is a very subjective topic. What I'm disputing is the GP's assertion that font rendering should be measured according to objective standards. Unless you're in a (worthless) industry like advertising where the medium is more important than the message, the "correct" or "best" rendering technique for text is very subjective. For a given person, the best font rendering may even vary from one monitor to another.
I wouldn't mind a system that lets you choose between Mac-style or Windows-style font rendering. What I do mind is other people telling me that Mac fonts are better, when my own eyes disagree. If you think that Mac fonts are better to you, I'm not going to try to correct you. I would appreciate the same courtesy in return. And I certainly disagree vehemently with the GP's claim that there is one "objective" standard against which all rendering systems should be measured.
Similarly, fonts which have been warped to fit the pixels throw reading stride off, and also create artifacts that are distracting. Fonts have been developed over centuries and reflect many human factors that affect your reading experience more than some abstract "font accuracy" criterion.
These two statements are virtually contradictory. Coarse resolution backlit monitor displays certainly have not existed for centuries, so the centuries-long history of font development is completely irrelevant in this context. The fact is, computer screens are extremely new by historical standards (even more so in the case of LCD monitors), and they may well require dramatically different display strategies and font rendering compared to traditional media. To me, the "warped" fonts and display artifacts that you dislike are something that I find extremely positive. They are a necessary and worthwhile tradeoff on low-resolution backlit displays in exchange for the benefit of having super-sharp text. Indeed, since computer monitors are so astoundingly different from any other historical display technology, adhering to centuries-old ideas about font rendering, ideas which were developed and optimized for a completely different display medium, makes absolutely zero sense, and more likely than not is actually counterproductive.
I simply do not sit so close to the screen (or use a low-enough-rez screen) that I can see individual pixels, so I cannot see any "blurring" in Mac fonts.
That's your opinion, and I respect it. Please return the favor and respect mine. In my opinion, any screen less than 300 dpi (the bare minimum resolution considered tolerable for print) is low resolution and benefits from pixel re-alignment. I would be extremely surprised if you had a computer monitor with 300 or more dpi.
Talk about changing the goalposts! This whole Slashdot story is about fidelity.
Woah there. First of all, as a neutral party, I dislike both Apple and Microsoft (I use Linux), and I have no agenda here. However, I do think that your viewpoint (as a self-admitted print publisher) is highly biased and useless to the majority of slashdot readers. This slashdot story is about image editing, but this thread is about on-screen font rendering. The two topics are different, and they need different goalposts.
The technical ins and outs of photo editing and display are all about fidelity; why would that not be the case with typeface rendering and display?
Viewing a photo is very very different from reading text. In fact, I find it completely preposterous that anyone would regard the two things as having anything in common.
When I am reading text, I care about text fidelity, not image fidelity. I want to know what the letters and words are. I want to be able to read and re-read the text with minimal eyestrain. Unless you work in advertising or marketing (two industries which I loathe), the purpose of displaying or printing text is to accurately convey which letter is which and which word is which. Anything else (such as font accuracy) is only a means to this end. Anyone (such as you) who thinks font accuracy is worthy as an end in itself is clearly living in a different world from someone (such as me) who reads scientific papers (the vast majority of them on-screen, simply because carrying around 1GB worth of printed papers is impossible) and writes code for a living.
I'm no great lover of Apple products, but as someone in print and publishing, this is one thing Apple does right and everyone else refuses to.
There is a huge difference between printed text and text on a computer screen. The physical differences between the two are so vast, they can never be made to display exactly the same. I understand that, for someone like you who works in the publishing industry, it is important for computer screens to maintain fidelity to printed paper, since the printed paper is your end result. However, just because your profession depends crucially on font fidelity, does not mean that the same holds for other people.
You need to understand that text on a computer screen is not always intended for publication on a printed page. Computer programming, in particular, involves writing large amounts of textual code, code which is almost never printed. Many slashdot readers are computer programmers, and couldn't give a flying f*ck about printing out their source code on paper. In such a situation, it is counterproductive to insist on image-level fidelity between text displayed on a computer monitor and text printed on a paper page. In fact, the optimal display strategy for computer programmers is almost completely the opposite of what you are saying, namely: render the font on the computer monitor so that it is as readable as possible on a computer screen, with absolutely zero regard for fidelity to printed output.
Scenes intentionally filmed with judder that people go to great lengths to smooth out; proper calibration that is blown away by dynamic settings; sound mix and dynamic range that is hopelessly trampled by bass-loading equalizer fiends; photos being displayed in some other color space are all the same issue.
Ironically, text rendering is the one issue that is different from all of the above. Text is a discrete medium: a letter is either an a, b, or c, or so on. Photos, sound, and video are analog media, perceived along a continuum by the human brain. Text fidelity means only one thing: being able to tell letters apart.
If you were to print out Microsoft's rendered fonts in a novel, people would demand a reprint by the publisher. The objective reference is the superior reference.
Email is an inherently insecure transport method.
This statement was true in the mid 90's. It is no longer universally true.
Using techniques such as opportunistic SMTP over TLS, a.k.a. SMTPS, it is possible to provide link-level encryption of email without requiring any special configuration on the part of the end user. This setup is more common than you think, especially in universities. I would estimate that about half of all US universities already deploy SMTPS. Email traveling over SSL/TLS is not that bad from a security point of view -- the only way to intercept it is to compromise a mail server or one of the end users' machines, and if a hacker has that level of access, you have much bigger problems than email.
SMTPS will not encrypt the link between the MUA and the MTA. For that, the end user needs to explicitly configure IMAPS or POP3S. However, this link is one of the easiest links in the chain to secure, even without cryptography. Ethernet switches (not hubs) and physical access control will prevent the vast majority of local sniffing attacks, and WPA2 is good enough for WiFi links.
You don't send private data over the Internet. Period.
I disagree with this statement. At the very least, it is almost impossible to function in modern society without sending private data over the Internet in some form. For example, if you never send your credit card number over the internet, then e-commerce is almost impossible, and if a merchant subscribed to this philosophy, he would not remain in business. As another example, you almost certainly had to send your slashdot password over the internet in order to log in, and you probably consider it to be private (if not, feel free to tell me what it is).
I agree that you should never send unencrypted private data over the Internet, but I would stop well short of recommending a complete ban on sending even encrypted private data, which is what you seem to be saying.
Microsoft is just so incredibly inconsistent.
There is logic behind the inconsistency. The below information is (by now) all public knowledge. I may be wrong about some details since I'm spouting off the top of my head, but the general idea is right, and it's useful information to know.
I installed XP, crossed my fingers and toes, and activated. It worked! I'd been worried that activating my old key on a totally new configuration would fail.
On retail copies of XP, which can legally be reassigned between machines, if you wait long enough between activations (something like 90 days), Microsoft assumes you're moving the OS to an entirely new machine, and treats it as a fresh installation.
So I shut down, installed the rest of my hard drives, and rebooted. Deactivated for making significant changes to my hardware configuration.
If you change your hardware profile within the 90 day limit, Microsoft uses a point scoring system to determine whether you need to reactivate, with each new hardware component worth a certain number of points depending on what component it is. The hard drive is worth quite a lot of points, since it's the thing that stores your copy of Windows.
Since then, I've swapped out the CPU, changed video cards, added a second video card, and doubled the RAM all without any activation problems.
Microsoft is just so incredibly inconsistent.
A successful reactivation sets a flag in your machine that says "this person changes hardware often -- don't bug them about reactivation again."
Because the communications channel that carries the self-signed certificate is exactly the same as the one that has potentially been compromised.
This is far from being true, especially in modern times with the proliferation of wireless access technologies.
In this day and age, it is extremely common for even average non-technical users to access a web site at different times using different and entirely independent communications channels. You might use a wired connection at home, a wireless hotspot in a coffee shop, 3G mobile broadband when on the road, and so on. Web browsers have always had the capability (rarely used) to cache a self-signed certificate and warn if there are any changes in the certificate when you visit the site later.
The present-day certificate system is badly outdated because it was designed in response to a threat model which is virtually irrelevant today. The system needs to be thoroughly overhauled, and encouraging self-signed certificates would be a good start.
Just so I'm clear, I said X. I later said Y. Then you come along and say "Not X" and demand I defend why *I* contradicted X?
Your reading skills are poor. You asserted Y and Z. "X" implies "not Y". "not X" implies "not Z". Therefore you can't be right.
I didn't say "X" and then later, "Not X".
But I did. Let X be the statement "netbooks were a factor in Apple's decision to introduce the iPad." Then exactly one of "X" or "not X" is true. No matter which one is true, you made a statement that contradicts the one of these two which is true.
I didn't make a mathematical statement. If you are having problems with my statements in a mathematical sense, the problem is your translation from English to logic.
Even in plain English, the statements "X" or "not X" cannot both hold, no matter what X is. Indeed, exactly one of the two is always true.
If your argument is that your English is incapable of being translated into logic, then I am done with this discussion. I require logic as a condition of participating in a debate.
If netbooks were a factor in iPad development, then this statement of yours:
That means, it's not netbooks themselves. They are just a placeholder that could have been anything. There could have been no netbooks at all and even no middle-ground computers at all. All that was needed is for Apple to see that there's an actual market for the product.
is false, since the content of your statement is that events would have transpired in the same fashion even had there been no netbooks at all.
On the other hand, if netbooks had zero impact on the development of the iPad, then this statement of yours:
Apple likes to be sure there's a market for something before releasing it. Netbooks have shown there's a market for cheap and small.
is false, since the content of your statement is precisely that netbooks played a role in Apple's release.
Which is it?
Apple likes to be sure there's a market for something before releasing it. Netbooks have shown there's a market for cheap and small.
In that case, thank god for netbooks. Otherwise Apple never would have acknowledged the market for cheap small computers. And if every company behaved like Apple, no new market niches would ever be supplied.
Would you like some cheese with your whine?
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
pudge, I'm disappointed that you think the DRM issue is about choice. In a free market, yes, customers do have choice, and economic incentives will solve the problem. But that is not what we are facing here.
The DMCA already prohibits the creation and distribution of software that removes DRM. The corporations will pass new laws prohibiting the unauthorized modification of DRM devices. They will pass laws mandating the inclusion and honoring of DRM in broadcast and content streams. Eventually, they will pass laws requiring all devices to include and support DRM. They already tried all of these things with the CBDTPA. That effort failed, but it takes extraordinary naivete to think that they will never try again.
Right now, the iPad represents a choice. But Apple's goal is to provide this choice and then remove other choices through legal restrictions. The whole reason why this is a trap is because the first step looks positive and seductive. And the reason why the FSF is making noise is because many people, including you, don't realize the dangers of this trap.
And there's no chance whatsoever that this will ever happen to Mac OS X, so don't lose sleep over it.
It doesn't take much creativity to come up with ways to deprive customers of the OS X platform, even without changing OS X. For example, Apple could restrict the sale and support of OS X to professional or enterprise level machines. That would have functionally the same effect as depriving mainstream customers of choice, since most people can't afford the high end machines. Right now, the only thing preventing Apple from doing this is profits. Once the appropriate laws are in place, however, Apple would get enough profit from their App store to more than replace their OS sales, and no fear of competition because of legal prohibitions. Then we'll start to see the hammer come down.
You might argue, why not just oppose the laws when they arise, instead of worrying about this now? The reason is that preemptive opposition has a greater chance of succeeding. I strongly object to the premise that we should wait until the last possible moment before resisting loss of choice. By then, it could be too late.
Did you stop reading his post early on purpose?
No, but you stopped reading my post early on purpose.
If you finish the paragraph you quoted you will see that he has already answered your question:
"What they want is low cost and portable. Until now, netbooks were pretty much the only product to fit that bill."
He has an excellent point.
Yes, and if you had finished reading my post you would have seen that I quoted that "answer" too. But this quote doesn't answer the question of why netbooks sell. If low-cost portable devices are in such obvious demand, then why did everyone (including Apple) ignore this market segment until netbooks came out?
People haven't had a choice before if they wanted something portable and cheap.
Why are manufacturers not providing that choice? As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't provide that choice (or didn't prior to the iPad) because "people don't want them", which is circular reasoning.
Apple's very aware of netbooks. They're also very aware that people don't want them.
If people don't want netbooks, then why do they buy netbooks? Are you suggesting that people are somehow buying netbooks against their will?
What they want is low cost and portable. Until now, netbooks were pretty much the only product to fit that bill.
Is there some reason why Apple waited until now to make low-cost portables?
Terry Tao was born in Australia, has an Australian accent, and probably holds only an Australian passport.
Looks like I'm going to have to explain this one several times. The phrase I used was "overseas Chinese" which has a very specific meaning. Terence Tao counts as overseas Chinese, but he is not Chinese. Being overseas Chinese has nothing to do with where you were born, how you speak, or where your passport is from. For example, I was born in the US, have an American accent, and hold only a US passport, but nevertheless I am overseas Chinese.
I raised the issue of overseas Chinese specifically because I would like to know how the study authors treated such cases, given that they actually represent a sizable proportion of Chinese-derived research output.
Also, I am pretty sure neither Terry nor the Chinese mathematical community considers Terence Tao himself as Chinese (in the restricted sense). While ethnically Chinese, he was born and raised in Australia, and thus is not an ex-pat. To tout Terry as an example of Chinese science is like, well, picking an extreme example, calling Budweiser (American) a representative Czech lager.
Chinese culture does not treat ethnicity as a melting pot in the way that Americans do. So your analogy to American beer is inappropriate. In any case, my comment was about how the study authors handled such cases, not about how Terence Tao or the Chinese community view the matter.
Terence Tao is Australian.
The phrase I used was "overseas Chinese". This term has a very specific meaning, and Terence Tao satisfies the definition.
My own experience as a researcher is that Asian countries in general (with the possible exception of Japan) have a long way to go before they match the impact of Western researchers. There are exceptions, such as the MD5 collision found by Wang et al., but in general most of the major breakthroughs occur in the West.
It's also not clear whether research produced by overseas Chinese is included in the total. Some of the very best mathematicians in the world are Chinese, but almost all of them are based at Western institutions. In any case, as good as they are, the number of overseas Chinese is so small that they don't represent anything close to a majority.
Does Apple have a "philosophy of information sharing" and if so, what is it?
The company is secretive about upcoming, not-yet-available products. Which is not information that customers require in their day-to-day work anyways. As a user or as a developer, it is information about the current, existing products that you need most. And as both I've always found that to be readily available whenever I needed it.
To add to your comments, I would like to point out that Apple is not even particularly secretive about unreleased products. The Apple tablet hasn't even been released yet, and already there is saturation coverage in the media. The same pattern has held for all their product releases in recent memory.
The whole article should be marked -1: Troll. Linux can compete just fine on technical merits, and the last thing we need is another uncompetitive OS monopoly using non-technical methods to enforce market dominance, which is what we'll get if Apple "wins".