I get enough e-mails at work (in Outlook, so I can't actually override this) which use Comic Sans, 14 point, purple-on-yellow, without the web designers being able to force this on me as well!
I have a large collection of OGG files, all ripped from CDs or DVDs that I own. I don't share these with others, but I do want to use them myself in any way I see fit.
I suppose that I have DRM on the DVDs that I have bought, but that's not a big deal thanks to Jon Johanssen, so I too can watch my DVDs on my Linux box.
I'm not a big consumer of media, so avoiding DRM-enabled stuff isn't a big handicap for me. But avoid it I do.
By the way, does anyone know of a portable music player with the following specs: OGG compatible (don't care at all about other formats), 1GB flash storage, USB Connection with Mass Storage drivers (so no need to use any weird apps to trasfer files), cost less than about $100? Oh, and the Moon on a Stick too, please.
I can get something like this in the UK, but it's MP3 only.
I agree that there may be a copyright problem here. A translation is a translation, regardless of whether it's French to English or Patentese to English.
However, for ease of reading, it should be obvious that specific instances of things are easier to deal with for most readers. Granted, a "sequential archive media member" isn't always a tape, but that phrase has no immediate reference in people's minds - they have to laboriously unpick it and make a new mental symbol to represent it. "Tape" may not be completely representative, but it fits into the user's existing mental model better and so speeds understanding.
The way I have attacked this in the past is to go through it sentence by sentence and translate it back into English, keeping a glossary of things which seem to make sense in context.
From your example: "The archive format includes the transfer of data to an archive media member, which archive media member can alternatively be addressable or sequential memory and can be recordable in either a rewriteable or right [sic] once manner."
Glossary: Archive media member - a tape or disk. (This is backed up by the fact that these may be sequential or "addressable" (i.e. random access)).
So, in other words, "The archives are stored on tapes or disks, which may be rewritable or write-once."
This is, of course, a tedious and laborious process. (Just imagine, however, being a patent lawyer and having to actually write this stuff for a living.)
Note well that, if the CIID passes, us software developers in Europe are going to have to learn to do this much more often. Here's an obligatory link to the FFII for the benefit of anyone who's been on Mars for the last 6 months.
OK, here's an idea. How about an open directory of patent translations?
Once you've translated a patent into English, you would upload it to the directory for others to use. They would be available under something like a creative commons license, with a feedback/rating system, standard disclaimers that original legalese has priority over the translation (of course), and that translations are supplied for convenience only.
The web interface could optionally display the original and the translation side-by-side, aligned by paragraphs, so you can easily cross-check. There should be a simple way to post/suggest corrections.
NOTE: This posting consitutes prior art on this concept. You may not patent it!
ASIDE: The method described for translation is basically the same as that described by Richard Feynman for dealing with obtuse english. Here's a quote:
"There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read - something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn't make head nor tail or it! I figured it was because I hadn't read any of the books on that list. I had this uneasy feeling of "I'm not adequate," until I finally said to myself, "I'm gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.
So I stopped - at random - and read the next sentence very carefully. I can't remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: "The invidivual member of the social community often received his information via visual, symbolic channels." I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? "People Read."
(From "Is Electricity Fire?" in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman".)
Has anyone seen an application that has a UI that made you sit up and stare in amazement at the simplicity and effectiveness of it?
But that is most emphatically NOT the point. The interface I like best is the interface I don't notice. Hyperlinks are a good example - you just click on a word and you go. No wizzy effects. No colored buttons.
If you want an interface that brings real benefits, look what you can remove, not what you can add.
The fact that most artists suck these days (Rush? Tool? These are good??)
Well, never heard of Tool, but Rush are still only one of 2 or 3 artists that I will make a point of buying the latest release, or go to see live.
I think that the album is still a convenient package for music. I can't be bothered hunting around for single tracks to build my own playlist. I'll find a good artist I like (yes, Rush - mod me down for being too 1980s if you wish) and trust them to put together a set of music that hangs together and will keep me entertained for an hour at a time.
But then, that's just me and I'm way past the point where I don't understand young people's pop-and-roll music any more.
His description of the elegance of balanced-ternary as a compact method of representing numbers is a joy to read.
But I personally find MIX assembly language virtually impenetrable. The instruction mnemonics seem to be designed to impede understanding, not assist it, and the damn thing doesn't even have a "return from subroutine" instruction - you have to self-modify a jump! Recursive algorithms become instantly nasty.
I am glad he's changing this to a more modern, RISC-like architecture, which is likely to be around for a while.
After looking through 100 or so other posters who just "didn't get it", this is refreshing.
For example, why do *I* have to add in silly "//" characters to show that this text is a comment? Why isn't it marked as a comment internally only, and displayed how I want?
Or what about definition/declaration browsing? Parsing source code is difficult. Editing and maintaining a non-text representation of the program is much better (whose serialized form just happens to be XML because it's easy and there are standard tools to do it).
If I hired a web designer, and he used only a text editor for HTML, and a hex editor for images, I'd suspect that he's not being as efficient as he could be. Why do we have this blinkered view that code == text and always will be?
I remember we used dongle protection on one of our old products at work. Well, it was a $5000 software package, so we thought it would be a good idea to discourage people from ripping it off.
Well, the protection scheme cost us money to set up and implement, the dongles were $50 a pop, the Warez Doodz had a cracked version out in under a month (well, it wasn't a big market product, so they didn't have a big incentive for 0-day kudos), and the biggest support problem we had was "My dongle's broken." Usually at a big trade show. Usually 4000 miles away. Usually 2 hours before Make-or-Break Presentation To Important Customers.
We still get the occasional call today, 12 years after release.
...and they will drop this like a hot potato. Any recorder that does not allow you to get round this will be dead in the water.
The same thing has happened with multi-region DVD players here in Europe. If it doesn't have a way to get round the illegal-restriction-of-trade technology, then people simply won't touch it.
Every player in every store now has a hastily applied sticker saying "Multi-Region!". Once the new recorders come out, word will get around about any models that can be bypassed, and sales will take off, leaving others face down in the dust.
And, of course, since US companies aren't allowed to do this, only overseas companies who deliver to several markets will have a legitimate excuse.
So, congratulations, once again US legislators are outsourcing American jobs and increasing the trade deficit.
Aggressive memory management of textures is an optimisation. If you don't absolutely need to do it, you shouldn't do it. And it seems from the nature of the patch that you don't absolutely need to do it.
Obviously, I'm not being 100% fair - perhaps it needed to be done and then the texture load went down because the assets were redesigned.
I worked on a prototype networked 3D environment for a TV game show called Cyberzone, which had the "spectator" feature.
There were 5 3D computers in the network, one each generating a first person view and a map view for each of two teams, and then a "virtual camera" in the vision gallery. This was used to get a view into the game zone for the tape, and could select any of the player's viewpoints and many others.
The pilot episode was filmed in late 1991 at Anglia TV in Norwich (England) and was a star network based on 9600 baud serial cables.
By the time the series was actually comissioned in 1993, we had a more robust thin Ethernet solution to the networking problem, and the BBC made one series of the program before it became a casualty of regime change in the organisation.
The program was critically panned, but there was one positive outcome - Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf fame) bought me a drink.
I agree. On Windows, to install something, I download it and run the installer. On Linux, I either have to use the RPM manager front end (which means telling it where to find the RPM repository, etc.), or I have to use "urpmi" or "apt-get" or some such.
I am a linux user, and I believe that it is superior to Windows in many respects and is getting better, but I do get frustrated finding out how to do stuff because I can never remember the name of the application I need.
On a related note, we need to make things rely less on editing configuration files. IMO, that's just dumb. (I had to do a load of this just to get my scanner working.)
Requiring a user to edit a configuration file with a free-form text editor is just asking for trouble. There's no verification of data values or even basic syntax, error outputs are cryptic, and so on.
- Someone else's religious beliefs get in the way of teaching my kids proper science. - Someone else's beliefs mean my taxes are spent on quack treatments such as homeopathy and therapeutic touch instead of stuff that actually works. - Someone else's beliefs prevent me from conceiving a child, or choosing not to conceive a child. - Someone else's beliefs are used to determine funding for the scientific and medical research that may one day save my life. - Someone else's beliefs are prominent in the election of the leader of the world's most powerful economic and military force.
At this point, someone else's beliefs very concretely become my concern, and I reserve my right to disagree with them and oppose them if necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
I get enough e-mails at work (in Outlook, so I can't actually override this) which use Comic Sans, 14 point, purple-on-yellow, without the web designers being able to force this on me as well!
(I know I can turn it off; I'm just ranting.)
...and I will actively avoid it.
I have a large collection of OGG files, all ripped from CDs or DVDs that I own. I don't share these with others, but I do want to use them myself in any way I see fit.
I suppose that I have DRM on the DVDs that I have bought, but that's not a big deal thanks to Jon Johanssen, so I too can watch my DVDs on my Linux box.
I'm not a big consumer of media, so avoiding DRM-enabled stuff isn't a big handicap for me. But avoid it I do.
By the way, does anyone know of a portable music player with the following specs: OGG compatible (don't care at all about other formats), 1GB flash storage, USB Connection with Mass Storage drivers (so no need to use any weird apps to trasfer files), cost less than about $100? Oh, and the Moon on a Stick too, please.
I can get something like this in the UK, but it's MP3 only.
I agree that there may be a copyright problem here. A translation is a translation, regardless of whether it's French to English or Patentese to English.
However, for ease of reading, it should be obvious that specific instances of things are easier to deal with for most readers. Granted, a "sequential archive media member" isn't always a tape, but that phrase has no immediate reference in people's minds - they have to laboriously unpick it and make a new mental symbol to represent it. "Tape" may not be completely representative, but it fits into the user's existing mental model better and so speeds understanding.
The way I have attacked this in the past is to go through it sentence by sentence and translate it back into English, keeping a glossary of things which seem to make sense in context.
From your example: "The archive format includes the transfer of data to an archive media member, which archive media member can alternatively be addressable or sequential memory and can be recordable in either a rewriteable or right [sic] once manner."
Glossary: Archive media member - a tape or disk. (This is backed up by the fact that these may be sequential or "addressable" (i.e. random access)).
So, in other words, "The archives are stored on tapes or disks, which may be rewritable or write-once."
This is, of course, a tedious and laborious process. (Just imagine, however, being a patent lawyer and having to actually write this stuff for a living.)
Note well that, if the CIID passes, us software developers in Europe are going to have to learn to do this much more often. Here's an obligatory link to the FFII for the benefit of anyone who's been on Mars for the last 6 months.
OK, here's an idea. How about an open directory of patent translations?
Once you've translated a patent into English, you would upload it to the directory for others to use. They would be available under something like a creative commons license, with a feedback/rating system, standard disclaimers that original legalese has priority over the translation (of course), and that translations are supplied for convenience only.
The web interface could optionally display the original and the translation side-by-side, aligned by paragraphs, so you can easily cross-check. There should be a simple way to post/suggest corrections.
NOTE: This posting consitutes prior art on this concept. You may not patent it!
ASIDE: The method described for translation is basically the same as that described by Richard Feynman for dealing with obtuse english. Here's a quote:
"There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read - something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn't make head nor tail or it! I figured it was because I hadn't read any of the books on that list. I had this uneasy feeling of "I'm not adequate," until I finally said to myself, "I'm gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.
So I stopped - at random - and read the next sentence very carefully. I can't remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: "The invidivual member of the social community often received his information via visual, symbolic channels." I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? "People Read."
(From "Is Electricity Fire?" in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman".)
(who you can see here).
This allowed me to get my machine connected back onto WiFi after switching to Linux. Thanks, guys.
Has anyone seen an application that has a UI that made you sit up and stare in amazement at the simplicity and effectiveness of it?
But that is most emphatically NOT the point. The interface I like best is the interface I don't notice. Hyperlinks are a good example - you just click on a word and you go. No wizzy effects. No colored buttons.
If you want an interface that brings real benefits, look what you can remove, not what you can add.
The fact that most artists suck these days (Rush? Tool? These are good??)
Well, never heard of Tool, but Rush are still only one of 2 or 3 artists that I will make a point of buying the latest release, or go to see live.
I think that the album is still a convenient package for music. I can't be bothered hunting around for single tracks to build my own playlist. I'll find a good artist I like (yes, Rush - mod me down for being too 1980s if you wish) and trust them to put together a set of music that hangs together and will keep me entertained for an hour at a time.
But then, that's just me and I'm way past the point where I don't understand young people's pop-and-roll music any more.
Oh, I thought you were going to say "Start a war with a smaller company, then skim your IT budget off the inevitable funding increase."
Note to FBI: Joke! Joke!
His description of the elegance of balanced-ternary as a compact method of representing numbers is a joy to read.
But I personally find MIX assembly language virtually impenetrable. The instruction mnemonics seem to be designed to impede understanding, not assist it, and the damn thing doesn't even have a "return from subroutine" instruction - you have to self-modify a jump! Recursive algorithms become instantly nasty.
I am glad he's changing this to a more modern, RISC-like architecture, which is likely to be around for a while.
... that is one of the most impressive pieces of lateral thinking that I have ever seen. I am thoroughly impressed.
After looking through 100 or so other posters who just "didn't get it", this is refreshing.
For example, why do *I* have to add in silly "//" characters to show that this text is a comment? Why isn't it marked as a comment internally only, and displayed how I want?
Or what about definition/declaration browsing? Parsing source code is difficult. Editing and maintaining a non-text representation of the program is much better (whose serialized form just happens to be XML because it's easy and there are standard tools to do it).
If I hired a web designer, and he used only a text editor for HTML, and a hex editor for images, I'd suspect that he's not being as efficient as he could be. Why do we have this blinkered view that code == text and always will be?
This system goes some way towards changing that.
I remember we used dongle protection on one of our old products at work. Well, it was a $5000 software package, so we thought it would be a good idea to discourage people from ripping it off.
Well, the protection scheme cost us money to set up and implement, the dongles were $50 a pop, the Warez Doodz had a cracked version out in under a month (well, it wasn't a big market product, so they didn't have a big incentive for 0-day kudos), and the biggest support problem we had was "My dongle's broken." Usually at a big trade show. Usually 4000 miles away. Usually 2 hours before Make-or-Break Presentation To Important Customers.
We still get the occasional call today, 12 years after release.
Subsequent products were not dongle-protected.
...and they will drop this like a hot potato. Any recorder that does not allow you to get round this will be dead in the water.
The same thing has happened with multi-region DVD players here in Europe. If it doesn't have a way to get round the illegal-restriction-of-trade technology, then people simply won't touch it.
Every player in every store now has a hastily applied sticker saying "Multi-Region!". Once the new recorders come out, word will get around about any models that can be bypassed, and sales will take off, leaving others face down in the dust.
And, of course, since US companies aren't allowed to do this, only overseas companies who deliver to several markets will have a legitimate excuse.
So, congratulations, once again US legislators are outsourcing American jobs and increasing the trade deficit.
Well done!
Simple, lightweight organization, mostly locally run and administered.
James Randi (link) has been looking at the utter tripe coming out of several audio manufacturers recently. Their responses are enlightening.
Yet.
Aggressive memory management of textures is an optimisation. If you don't absolutely need to do it, you shouldn't do it. And it seems from the nature of the patch that you don't absolutely need to do it.
Obviously, I'm not being 100% fair - perhaps it needed to be done and then the texture load went down because the assets were redesigned.
My robot, scratch build. Total cost about $100, if you bought everything new. I scavenged most of the bits from my "box-o-bits", though.
...to uncover those in breach of the GPL.
GrokCheat, anyone?
I had that book when I was about 9, and was fascinated by it.
I'm glad it's up on the web; I lost my copy at some point.
In Europe, of course, the plural of Lego is Lego. Like sheep.
:-)
But they are, I agree, an absolute must for kids of all ages, in order to instil a properly reductionist mindset
I worked on a prototype networked 3D environment for a TV game show called Cyberzone, which had the "spectator" feature.
There were 5 3D computers in the network, one each generating a first person view and a map view for each of two teams, and then a "virtual camera" in the vision gallery. This was used to get a view into the game zone for the tape, and could select any of the player's viewpoints and many others.
The pilot episode was filmed in late 1991 at Anglia TV in Norwich (England) and was a star network based on 9600 baud serial cables.
By the time the series was actually comissioned in 1993, we had a more robust thin Ethernet solution to the networking problem, and the BBC made one series of the program before it became a casualty of regime change in the organisation.
The program was critically panned, but there was one positive outcome - Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf fame) bought me a drink.
"mozilla firefox" download
google
I agree. On Windows, to install something, I download it and run the installer. On Linux, I either have to use the RPM manager front end (which means telling it where to find the RPM repository, etc.), or I have to use "urpmi" or "apt-get" or some such.
I am a linux user, and I believe that it is superior to Windows in many respects and is getting better, but I do get frustrated finding out how to do stuff because I can never remember the name of the application I need.
On a related note, we need to make things rely less on editing configuration files. IMO, that's just dumb. (I had to do a load of this just to get my scanner working.)
Requiring a user to edit a configuration file with a free-form text editor is just asking for trouble. There's no verification of data values or even basic syntax, error outputs are cryptic, and so on.
It's all OK until:
- Someone else's religious beliefs get in the way of teaching my kids proper science.
- Someone else's beliefs mean my taxes are spent on quack treatments such as homeopathy and therapeutic touch instead of stuff that actually works.
- Someone else's beliefs prevent me from conceiving a child, or choosing not to conceive a child.
- Someone else's beliefs are used to determine funding for the scientific and medical research that may one day save my life.
- Someone else's beliefs are prominent in the election of the leader of the world's most powerful economic and military force.
At this point, someone else's beliefs very concretely become my concern, and I reserve my right to disagree with them and oppose them if necessary.