What this boils down to is that there is a law ("you may not watch DVDs from outside of your geographical region") which is not a US federal law; it's not a law set forth by international treaty; it's a law created by and for large international corporations, in order to control their profits. Where the US backs its laws up with police and military, the corporations back their laws up with technology (this is why, e.g., the DMCA exists: to back up corporate technology with US law, thus giving the power of lawmaking to corporations).
What I find interesting is that there are so many folks who jump right on this bandwagon and start accusing people who violate these laws as theives. So many people have already come to accept that there is a new government dawning that I don't think there's any way to stop it. Because of the trends of the last 20 years, within the next 50 years, I expect the following events:
The right to corporate profit (e.g. "you can't come out with a new, better widget, that would destroy our old widget market.") will become a globally backed right.
Patents will only be restricted on the basis of prior art, and the terms will be extended to at least 100 years.
Laws like DMCA/UCITA will become the subjects of international treaty.
If you think I'm wrong, please do me a favor: remember the exact date and time that you thought that....
Even if this was a fluke, it shows me the danger inherent in becoming too used to any service over which I don't have control. As far as possible I avoid that, and so, TiVo is still out for me.
But that doesn't make any sense. Like TiVo, don't like TiVo -- I could care less, but the whole concern is over TiVo updating your box so that standalone features broke.
It's like saying that your VCR manufacturer gave you a prom-update that broke the VCR for people who don't use the prom-updates.
You only care if you sign up for the service, and then drop it. Given that the way to go with TiVo is to sign up for the lifetime membership, why the heck is this a concern?!
The only possible concern would be that you use their service and then they drop their privacy policy on the floor AND remove the opt-out features on the box AND you care (which I would). If that's your concern I suggest you buy a TiVo+service and don't throw away your VCR. Works for me....
Oh, yeah. they want everyone to use this technology. But if you had 1000 Web companies using your smart tags, could you justify NOT adding in a MS-specific tag whenever you found one that seemed on-topic? Could you look your investors in the face if you failed to a take advantage of this? If someone's got an airline-related smart tag, why not add in an expedia link? If someone has a smart-link around an email address, why not add in a hotmail link?
Yeah, why is this suprising? I do file uploads all the time through HTML forms. It's just a matter of turning the file into a MIME attachment on the HTTP request and setting the right multipart headers.
I think it would have been better if the tools had been released earlier. The "hackers steal IP" story has been simmering too long now. Long enough that most people have been made to believe that IP can be stolen.
Let's face it. These are tools for doing what every consumer who purchases a TiVo wants to do: store exact copies of the shows they record to a long-term storage system.
I just wish this had been done through the TiVo software, so that I could select the "Save to HTML Form" option on my TiVo;-)
We'll see.... I expect Microsoft to be as willing to relinquish that control as they were to export the Windows/Explorer API so that other browsers could be integrated into Windows.
Nothing personal, but this is the one aspect of Slashdot that I truely hate: the negative rumormongering.
As someone else pointed out in this thread, the TiVo folks have acknowledged this one as a bug, and are turning the feature back on in an update. It's a result of the addition of one of the most asked for features: saving the live-TV buffer when recording a program on the fly.
Note timed recording still worked just fine for non-subscription TiVos....
so perhaps I don't understand what "guide data" is. If it's essentially just TV listings, well, free sites for that abound on the Net. yahooTV, for one.
Sure, you can use those. It will be hard to split out the detailed information like actors and directors, but you could hit IMDB for that. The only thing you don't get is the database of user feedback for each of those programs. This is not just a rating system, but a personalized rating system. Thus, the TiVo can look at what you like and say: aha! You're going to like "Slashdot: The Motion Picture" too. And, then it will record it for you, if you have free space.
I have absolutely no interest in paying a subscription fee for a directory service.
A "directory" is not sufficient. What TiVo provides is a database which combines show times, actors and directors involved (so you can record, e.g. "all Hitchcock movies"), user preferences and feedback and some interactive TV tie-ins (e.g. you can hit select during promotions for upcoming shows to select them for recordng).
I would really like a stand-along digital recorder that would record the raw MPEG-2 video/audio stream from a DirecTV receiver. I am willing to pay $500 for such a device, but I'm not willing to pay $15 (or more) each month just to use it.
TiVo costs $600 for unit plus lifetime subscription (lifetime of that unit, that is). A friend of mine said, "buy a TiVo, it will change your life." I said he was being silly. It's only TV after all. I hate to sound like the SNL skit about the mentalist on broadway, but buy a TiVo. It will change your life.
The features just keep getting better too. You can now start watching something, decide half-way through that you want to record it, and because TiVo has a half-hour buffer, you get the WHOLE THING. You can set priorities on season passes so that if they conflict, the conflicts are resolved according to your tastes. It's just too cool.
As I tell my friends: I don't watch TV anymore. My TiVo does it for me.
You're missing the point. In your scenario, A puts up a SmartTag. B puts up a resource for that SmartTag. C (Microsoft, presumably) puts "support" for that SmartTag into their next update. Now, all of those "links" that used to point to provider B now point to provider C. Microsoft is the only one that has this level of control because they're the only one that can update the OS.
The problem is that TiVo's technology is only mildly interesting (though patented...)
What is really grabbing people about the TiVo is the combination of their technology with their centralized database of show times and preferences data. As digital VCRs go, the TiVo is only very cool. What makes it kick-ass is the ability to say "record everything directed by Hitchcock," or "record my favorite show whenever it happens to be on, but only the first-run showings."
In order to do this, you would have to have a quality source of guide data....
"Netscape Navigator" will likely never be a product again. This is no shock. It will almost certainly be given away (free debugging!), but AOL's primary interest is clearly in developing the next-generation of platform on which to build the AOL client.
They are trying to gain control over the browser platform for basically the same reasons that Microsoft did. Mozilla/Netscape helps them do this.
The interesting thing is that AOL needs Netscape more than ever. As MS begins to flex it muscles to see how far the Bush administration will let them go, AOL needs to be very aware of how easily a few key media deals could cripple their market, and having their own browser platform will help make them a little bit more independant.
I'm mad I didn't see this earlier, so that more folks could see this comment.
PPS is exactly what you're looking for, but it's still in the starting phases. Currently, I'm looking for the following folks to help out:
1. Anyone who has written RFCs in the past, and wants to help get this one into the process.
2. Folks familliar with OpenPGP who wish to touch up the spec to account for that standard.
3. Anyone who's good in C and wants to help with plug-ins for various mailers or the reference library.
4. Others who just want to comment on the existing specification....
Please feel free to send me any comments you might have, but be aware: my goal is creating an infrastructure that makes good crypto available to everyone. This means that I make some pretty harsh compromises in the general case, but then allow capable souls to undo all that on their own. That's by design and pointing it out to me is, well... pointless. Suggesting ways to compromise less is always welcome, of course.
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Color matching: Does it matter?
on
GIMP And OS X
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· Score: 2
There are three seperate issues here (at least), and I've only seen one article that came close to separating them. Here's the details of what Gimp does and does not do:
1. Color sep. In the Gimp, you can create n images from your base, color image. These n images are greyscale "color channels" which can then be saved, manipulated and/or re-combined into a color image. The "n" is the number of color channels in your target color model (e.g. CMY, CMYK, RGB, etc). This is very useful for some kinds of print handling, but almost always better handled, not by your image editor, but by your print shop.
2. Native color models. The Gimp has been working toward handling several color models internally for quite some time. I don't know the state of current development, so I can't comment, but it's not in the stable code. The idea here is that you want to be able to work directly in CMY or CMYK for some types of print-ready work. Right now RGB, RGBA, Greyscale and monochrome are the only available native color models.
3. Color matching. The Gimp has two forms of color matching: numeric/mixing and acquisition. For numeric selection, you select a color by it's absolute RGB or HSV value (note, see #2 for why this list is limited). This can also involve mixing existing colors. For acquisition, we're talking about the eyedropper concept where you select a color from an existing object.
Now for why it doesn't matter. What's that you say! Doesn't matter!?
My cousin works in the ready-for-print world, and has worked on many prestigeous accounts. He tells me that in reality there are two kinds of ready-for-print work that he sees. There's the logo sorts of problems and there's WYSIWYG concerns around mixed color.
For logos and other "standardized images", you want to make sure that the business cards have the same hues as the ads have the same hues as the external signage. You do this by avoiding mixed color entirely and selecting absolute pantone colors. Interestingly, using a panton-capable image editor is exactly the wrong thing. What you want is to do your image in starkly differentiated greyscale colors and then create a color-key. This way no matter who is looking at the logo, and no matter what capabilities they have, they will know what the final image should look like. If I create a PNG of such an image, any print-shop in the world can create exactly the right printed image, no matter what version of what software they run (assuming it's post-'98 minimally PNG capable, save as BMP if you must...)
Now, to mixed color. Mixed color is like the colors you see on your average magazine printed page (say, in a photograph). You want to make sure that when you see such an image on the screen that it will look the same as when it's printed. This is something photoshop does well and the Gimp does not. When the patents on such color matching expire, or print hardware moves to open standards (yeah, right), the Gimp will do this right. For now, it has what support it can, and still be legal.
Patenting compression codecs protects the work and research of those who develop them.
That's nice, but has nothing to do with the reason that patents exist (or only a small amount).
Patents exist in the United States (where this patent is held) to promote the sciences and useful arts. Specifically, the promotion is not for the benefit of companies, but for the public good.
Early on, it was determined that mathematical laws and other aspects of nature should not be patentable because, unlike the safety pin, these are inescapable aspects of our world. If they are patented, the damage to the public good far outweighs the benefit that we derive by getting these laws to be public (again) in 20 years.
So, the bottom line is a) would compression research and development continue without patent protection (certainly, there are many benefits, and this research was very lucrative before it was patentable) and b) will the public be harmed by the lack of published results in such research? I think that the answer to the latter question is yes and no. Some compression will be done in embedded processors and marked as trade secrets, and this may be lost. On the other hand, we've seen that computer programs can be reverse engineered for their algorithms, so I don't think that anything ever implimented in software will remain secret more than 5 years.
What's more, most of the research in this area starts in the accademic circles, and that work is almost always public.
Math patents are bad for research, bad for business (even the ones that get some benefit from the patents that they hold) and bad for consumers. Please, can we move on as a culture to questions that make sense?
I dont want it being posted on the front page of slashdot and having my bandwidth sucked up by casual browsers.
So, you'd rather that the DOC file be downloaded? Why? It saves no space; in fact compared to your average HTML document + images, DOC files are usually much larger, which means more of your bandwidth.
Alternately, you may not intend to offer this over the Web. Well, then problem solved. If you send someone a zip (tgz, hqx, etc) file with the HTML + images + binary files, you are no worse off than if you sent them a DOC file, except more people can view it.
If you want to read my document, then get a DOC viewer. Elsewise, bugger off.
Then I (a sysadmin, presumably your target audience) choose the latter. I have no time for exploring proprietary data formats in order to get the information I need. I'll wait until someone produces a HOWTO in the standard format....
If your white paper requires binaries, I cannot imagine a case where giving a footnote to an FTP server would not be more useful than trying to embed the binary itself.
such as images
Ah, now you want to select the "HTML" option when you save. Much more portable, and images are rendered much more cleanly by most browsers.
configuration scripts
These are text to begin with. Again, though, I suggest putting these in an appendix of links to a Web or FTP server.
screen captures
Special case of images, see above
packet dumps
Text. See above
and the like?
See above
ASCII, was that it? Yeah, I'll jump right on that.
Good. Best papers I've ever read were all text. "Substance before form".
Plus, you dink,
Quite called for. I'll try to rise above my initial comments.
.DOC files are widely read by such great products like
Some, but not even most.DOC files can be read in a mostly readable way by those tools. Saving to text or HTML guarantees a much higher likelihood of readability. That was the goal, was it not?
Difference: no one is getting paid (either directly or by "perks") to say that Mozilla is great (and it is, which is why I'm posting this using Mozilla nightlies). When you see a glowing quotation attached to a movie, it's because someone was almost certainly paid to say it.
Getting back to the topic, this is why until recently, I've been a huge fan of Ain't It Cool News. But even Harry seems to be slipping into the machine. He recently wrote an entire series of articles based on his trip to the set of Lord of the Rings. It really smacked of the "we'll fly you to New Zealand and show you a good time, you just write whatever you want," sort of approach to tainting idealistic reviewers.
But AICN is still the best place to get movie news that's anywhere near honest and biased only by artistic concerns (which often include number of zombies;-)
Ohh, and if you really want, I am half-way through a white-paper on this exact topic and feel free to email me for a copy
The key here is "white paper". I saw three posts that summed up what to do in two paragraphs or less. But, our boy here is writing a white paper! Oooh, I get all tingly!
in.DOC format, of course
Ok, I know they don't teach this in the "Magic of Word Processing" VHS course, but you can click (using the mouse) on the "File" menu, and then select the "Save As" option. This allows you to save your documents in many of the formats that people use to communicate information such as "text" (an advanced format for which many WYSIWYG editors exist).
I'm sorry, I know I'm being sarcastic to a fault here, but such a condescending post that lacks any real information, and whose humor is solely based on stereotype was a little thick for me. I suppose in sinking to that level, yadda yadda, but at least I feel better now.
We have a big dream about what XML (a markup language for documents containing structured information, such as words and graphics) can do for the world.
So, now everyone should throw this quote back at every MS source they can find (forums, service reps, sales droids, etc) and ask one question: "so, when is MS Word going to save to XML?"
See? Microsoft can make the world a better place. They just choose not to.;-)
Actually, what Ballmer is saying (in an inflamatory, and overly-broad way) is that the US government should not modify or contract modifications to GPL (or other GPL-like) licensed work, and I agree.
Woah up there, folks. First off, I write a fair amount of GPLed code, so don't assume that I'm an anti-GPL person.
I do, however feel that the government should not be allowed copyright to its works (which has always been upheld in this country).
Since the basis of the GPL is the control that copyright law allows, I don't see how the government can be allowed to distribute their modifications to GPLed programs any more than they could distribute their modified version of Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter case, they are given no permission to do so. In the GPL case, they are, but only under a provision of law that does not extend to them.
Now, why is Ballmer WRONG? Because there's plenty of BSD-licensed and public domain code out there. BSD is clearly and open source license, and honestly I think Ballmer has chosen Linux as a target because he doesn't want BSD in his sights. There are several reasons for this: 1) he knows that the BSD camp is much more conservative and it would be harder to make wild half-truth claims about them 2) he is not technical and the word on the street (let's not fight over this, kids) is that BSD is faster and more stable than Linux; he likely believes this, right or wrong 3) if the debate is between Linux and Microsoft in government roles, BSD may never gain much more ground than it has now in that sector, and given the licensing, this is in MS' favor.
The only counter-argument I see to the government/GPL case is if the government can contract to an external company to make changes to copyrighted works, and have the original copyright hold. I'm not even remotely a lawyer, so someone else will have to speak to that one.
Either way, it's a cheap shot to just jam this into an interview as a sound-bite, and while I'm not losing any respect for him over it, that's only because there was none there to begin with.
In other words, original thinking requires copying Sci-fi...
You're not the first person to say this, and I'm still confused by it. Since when did "think outside of the box" mean "think only original thoughts"?
Whatever your local value of "the box" is, thinking outside of the box is getting a different perspective and thinking in ways that those who still have the provincial perspective cannot.
Granted, one of the benefits of this process is often original ideas, but another is the fusion of external ideas with your own. Clearly, this car is not an exact replica of a bond car, but something that seeks to apply modern military technology to the idea (ala Bond) of an offensive and defensive-capable super-car.
Vanity, vanity... all the world is vanity, and there is nothing new under the sun. But that doesn't mean that you can't blend the old in interesting ways!
In case you haven't read the article, this very first paragraph stopped me in my tracks:
It was a direct order from the high command: Before designers at the Army's National Automotive Center in Warren began creating their first-ever concept truck, they had to watch four James Bond movies.
Why would hosting on Sourceforge be a bad thing? I mean, you keep your code locally too, and you check to make sure that changes are what you expect once per release, right? So, why is hosting on Sourceforge a problem?
Slashdot Mirror
What I find interesting is that there are so many folks who jump right on this bandwagon and start accusing people who violate these laws as theives. So many people have already come to accept that there is a new government dawning that I don't think there's any way to stop it. Because of the trends of the last 20 years, within the next 50 years, I expect the following events:
- The right to corporate profit (e.g. "you can't come out with a new, better widget, that would destroy our old widget market.") will become a globally backed right.
- Patents will only be restricted on the basis of prior art, and the terms will be extended to at least 100 years.
- Laws like DMCA/UCITA will become the subjects of international treaty.
If you think I'm wrong, please do me a favor: remember the exact date and time that you thought that....--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Even if this was a fluke, it shows me the danger inherent in becoming too used to any service over which I don't have control. As far as possible I avoid that, and so, TiVo is still out for me.
But that doesn't make any sense. Like TiVo, don't like TiVo -- I could care less, but the whole concern is over TiVo updating your box so that standalone features broke.
It's like saying that your VCR manufacturer gave you a prom-update that broke the VCR for people who don't use the prom-updates.
You only care if you sign up for the service, and then drop it. Given that the way to go with TiVo is to sign up for the lifetime membership, why the heck is this a concern?!
The only possible concern would be that you use their service and then they drop their privacy policy on the floor AND remove the opt-out features on the box AND you care (which I would). If that's your concern I suggest you buy a TiVo+service and don't throw away your VCR. Works for me....
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Oh, yeah. they want everyone to use this technology. But if you had 1000 Web companies using your smart tags, could you justify NOT adding in a MS-specific tag whenever you found one that seemed on-topic? Could you look your investors in the face if you failed to a take advantage of this? If someone's got an airline-related smart tag, why not add in an expedia link? If someone has a smart-link around an email address, why not add in a hotmail link?
Like I say, we'll see....
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Yeah, why is this suprising? I do file uploads all the time through HTML forms. It's just a matter of turning the file into a MIME attachment on the HTTP request and setting the right multipart headers.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
I think it would have been better if the tools had been released earlier. The "hackers steal IP" story has been simmering too long now. Long enough that most people have been made to believe that IP can be stolen.
;-)
Let's face it. These are tools for doing what every consumer who purchases a TiVo wants to do: store exact copies of the shows they record to a long-term storage system.
I just wish this had been done through the TiVo software, so that I could select the "Save to HTML Form" option on my TiVo
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Any program can update smart tags.
We'll see.... I expect Microsoft to be as willing to relinquish that control as they were to export the Windows/Explorer API so that other browsers could be integrated into Windows.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
I don't have a TiVo (and now, never will)
Nothing personal, but this is the one aspect of Slashdot that I truely hate: the negative rumormongering.
As someone else pointed out in this thread, the TiVo folks have acknowledged this one as a bug, and are turning the feature back on in an update. It's a result of the addition of one of the most asked for features: saving the live-TV buffer when recording a program on the fly.
Note timed recording still worked just fine for non-subscription TiVos....
so perhaps I don't understand what "guide data" is. If it's essentially just TV listings, well, free sites for that abound on the Net. yahooTV, for one.
Sure, you can use those. It will be hard to split out the detailed information like actors and directors, but you could hit IMDB for that. The only thing you don't get is the database of user feedback for each of those programs. This is not just a rating system, but a personalized rating system. Thus, the TiVo can look at what you like and say: aha! You're going to like "Slashdot: The Motion Picture" too. And, then it will record it for you, if you have free space.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
I have absolutely no interest in paying a subscription fee for a directory service.
A "directory" is not sufficient. What TiVo provides is a database which combines show times, actors and directors involved (so you can record, e.g. "all Hitchcock movies"), user preferences and feedback and some interactive TV tie-ins (e.g. you can hit select during promotions for upcoming shows to select them for recordng).
I would really like a stand-along digital recorder that would record the raw MPEG-2 video/audio stream from a DirecTV receiver. I am willing to pay $500 for such a device, but I'm not willing to pay $15 (or more) each month just to use it.
TiVo costs $600 for unit plus lifetime subscription (lifetime of that unit, that is). A friend of mine said, "buy a TiVo, it will change your life." I said he was being silly. It's only TV after all. I hate to sound like the SNL skit about the mentalist on broadway, but buy a TiVo. It will change your life.
The features just keep getting better too. You can now start watching something, decide half-way through that you want to record it, and because TiVo has a half-hour buffer, you get the WHOLE THING. You can set priorities on season passes so that if they conflict, the conflicts are resolved according to your tastes. It's just too cool.
As I tell my friends: I don't watch TV anymore. My TiVo does it for me.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
You're missing the point. In your scenario, A puts up a SmartTag. B puts up a resource for that SmartTag. C (Microsoft, presumably) puts "support" for that SmartTag into their next update. Now, all of those "links" that used to point to provider B now point to provider C. Microsoft is the only one that has this level of control because they're the only one that can update the OS.
Enjoy!
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
The problem is that TiVo's technology is only mildly interesting (though patented...)
What is really grabbing people about the TiVo is the combination of their technology with their centralized database of show times and preferences data. As digital VCRs go, the TiVo is only very cool. What makes it kick-ass is the ability to say "record everything directed by Hitchcock," or "record my favorite show whenever it happens to be on, but only the first-run showings."
In order to do this, you would have to have a quality source of guide data....
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
"Netscape Navigator" will likely never be a product again. This is no shock. It will almost certainly be given away (free debugging!), but AOL's primary interest is clearly in developing the next-generation of platform on which to build the AOL client.
They are trying to gain control over the browser platform for basically the same reasons that Microsoft did. Mozilla/Netscape helps them do this.
The interesting thing is that AOL needs Netscape more than ever. As MS begins to flex it muscles to see how far the Bush administration will let them go, AOL needs to be very aware of how easily a few key media deals could cripple their market, and having their own browser platform will help make them a little bit more independant.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
I'm mad I didn't see this earlier, so that more folks could see this comment.
PPS is exactly what you're looking for, but it's still in the starting phases. Currently, I'm looking for the following folks to help out:
1. Anyone who has written RFCs in the past, and wants to help get this one into the process.
2. Folks familliar with OpenPGP who wish to touch up the spec to account for that standard.
3. Anyone who's good in C and wants to help with plug-ins for various mailers or the reference library.
4. Others who just want to comment on the existing specification....
Please feel free to send me any comments you might have, but be aware: my goal is creating an infrastructure that makes good crypto available to everyone. This means that I make some pretty harsh compromises in the general case, but then allow capable souls to undo all that on their own. That's by design and pointing it out to me is, well... pointless. Suggesting ways to compromise less is always welcome, of course.
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
There are three seperate issues here (at least), and I've only seen one article that came close to separating them. Here's the details of what Gimp does and does not do:
1. Color sep. In the Gimp, you can create n images from your base, color image. These n images are greyscale "color channels" which can then be saved, manipulated and/or re-combined into a color image. The "n" is the number of color channels in your target color model (e.g. CMY, CMYK, RGB, etc). This is very useful for some kinds of print handling, but almost always better handled, not by your image editor, but by your print shop.
2. Native color models. The Gimp has been working toward handling several color models internally for quite some time. I don't know the state of current development, so I can't comment, but it's not in the stable code. The idea here is that you want to be able to work directly in CMY or CMYK for some types of print-ready work. Right now RGB, RGBA, Greyscale and monochrome are the only available native color models.
3. Color matching. The Gimp has two forms of color matching: numeric/mixing and acquisition. For numeric selection, you select a color by it's absolute RGB or HSV value (note, see #2 for why this list is limited). This can also involve mixing existing colors. For acquisition, we're talking about the eyedropper concept where you select a color from an existing object.
Now for why it doesn't matter. What's that you say! Doesn't matter!?
My cousin works in the ready-for-print world, and has worked on many prestigeous accounts. He tells me that in reality there are two kinds of ready-for-print work that he sees. There's the logo sorts of problems and there's WYSIWYG concerns around mixed color.
For logos and other "standardized images", you want to make sure that the business cards have the same hues as the ads have the same hues as the external signage. You do this by avoiding mixed color entirely and selecting absolute pantone colors. Interestingly, using a panton-capable image editor is exactly the wrong thing. What you want is to do your image in starkly differentiated greyscale colors and then create a color-key. This way no matter who is looking at the logo, and no matter what capabilities they have, they will know what the final image should look like. If I create a PNG of such an image, any print-shop in the world can create exactly the right printed image, no matter what version of what software they run (assuming it's post-'98 minimally PNG capable, save as BMP if you must...)
Now, to mixed color. Mixed color is like the colors you see on your average magazine printed page (say, in a photograph). You want to make sure that when you see such an image on the screen that it will look the same as when it's printed. This is something photoshop does well and the Gimp does not. When the patents on such color matching expire, or print hardware moves to open standards (yeah, right), the Gimp will do this right. For now, it has what support it can, and still be legal.
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Patenting compression codecs protects the work and research of those who develop them.
That's nice, but has nothing to do with the reason that patents exist (or only a small amount).
Patents exist in the United States (where this patent is held) to promote the sciences and useful arts. Specifically, the promotion is not for the benefit of companies, but for the public good.
Early on, it was determined that mathematical laws and other aspects of nature should not be patentable because, unlike the safety pin, these are inescapable aspects of our world. If they are patented, the damage to the public good far outweighs the benefit that we derive by getting these laws to be public (again) in 20 years.
So, the bottom line is a) would compression research and development continue without patent protection (certainly, there are many benefits, and this research was very lucrative before it was patentable) and b) will the public be harmed by the lack of published results in such research? I think that the answer to the latter question is yes and no. Some compression will be done in embedded processors and marked as trade secrets, and this may be lost. On the other hand, we've seen that computer programs can be reverse engineered for their algorithms, so I don't think that anything ever implimented in software will remain secret more than 5 years.
What's more, most of the research in this area starts in the accademic circles, and that work is almost always public.
Math patents are bad for research, bad for business (even the ones that get some benefit from the patents that they hold) and bad for consumers. Please, can we move on as a culture to questions that make sense?
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Yahoo: Always use it for tracking stock info. Much more useful than my etrade account.
;-)
MS: Always visit it after I first get a new Mozilla installation set up, and use their search thingy for "Linux". I like skewing statistics
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
I dont want it being posted on the front page of slashdot and having my bandwidth sucked up by casual browsers.
So, you'd rather that the DOC file be downloaded? Why? It saves no space; in fact compared to your average HTML document + images, DOC files are usually much larger, which means more of your bandwidth.
Alternately, you may not intend to offer this over the Web. Well, then problem solved. If you send someone a zip (tgz, hqx, etc) file with the HTML + images + binary files, you are no worse off than if you sent them a DOC file, except more people can view it.
If you want to read my document, then get a DOC viewer. Elsewise, bugger off.
Then I (a sysadmin, presumably your target audience) choose the latter. I have no time for exploring proprietary data formats in order to get the information I need. I'll wait until someone produces a HOWTO in the standard format....
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
If your white paper requires binaries, I cannot imagine a case where giving a footnote to an FTP server would not be more useful than trying to embed the binary itself.
Ah, now you want to select the "HTML" option when you save. Much more portable, and images are rendered much more cleanly by most browsers.
These are text to begin with. Again, though, I suggest putting these in an appendix of links to a Web or FTP server.
Special case of images, see above
Text. See above
See above
ASCII, was that it? Yeah, I'll jump right on that.
Good. Best papers I've ever read were all text. "Substance before form".
Plus, you dink,
Quite called for. I'll try to rise above my initial comments.
Some, but not even most
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Difference: no one is getting paid (either directly or by "perks") to say that Mozilla is great (and it is, which is why I'm posting this using Mozilla nightlies). When you see a glowing quotation attached to a movie, it's because someone was almost certainly paid to say it.
;-)
Getting back to the topic, this is why until recently, I've been a huge fan of Ain't It Cool News. But even Harry seems to be slipping into the machine. He recently wrote an entire series of articles based on his trip to the set of Lord of the Rings. It really smacked of the "we'll fly you to New Zealand and show you a good time, you just write whatever you want," sort of approach to tainting idealistic reviewers.
But AICN is still the best place to get movie news that's anywhere near honest and biased only by artistic concerns (which often include number of zombies
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Ohh, and if you really want, I am half-way through a white-paper on this exact topic and feel free to email me for a copy
.DOC format, of course
The key here is "white paper". I saw three posts that summed up what to do in two paragraphs or less. But, our boy here is writing a white paper! Oooh, I get all tingly!
in
Ok, I know they don't teach this in the "Magic of Word Processing" VHS course, but you can click (using the mouse) on the "File" menu, and then select the "Save As" option. This allows you to save your documents in many of the formats that people use to communicate information such as "text" (an advanced format for which many WYSIWYG editors exist).
I'm sorry, I know I'm being sarcastic to a fault here, but such a condescending post that lacks any real information, and whose humor is solely based on stereotype was a little thick for me. I suppose in sinking to that level, yadda yadda, but at least I feel better now.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
We have a big dream about what XML (a markup language for documents containing structured information, such as words and graphics) can do for the world.
;-)
So, now everyone should throw this quote back at every MS source they can find (forums, service reps, sales droids, etc) and ask one question: "so, when is MS Word going to save to XML?"
See? Microsoft can make the world a better place. They just choose not to.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Actually, what Ballmer is saying (in an inflamatory, and overly-broad way) is that the US government should not modify or contract modifications to GPL (or other GPL-like) licensed work, and I agree.
Woah up there, folks. First off, I write a fair amount of GPLed code, so don't assume that I'm an anti-GPL person.
I do, however feel that the government should not be allowed copyright to its works (which has always been upheld in this country).
Since the basis of the GPL is the control that copyright law allows, I don't see how the government can be allowed to distribute their modifications to GPLed programs any more than they could distribute their modified version of Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter case, they are given no permission to do so. In the GPL case, they are, but only under a provision of law that does not extend to them.
Now, why is Ballmer WRONG? Because there's plenty of BSD-licensed and public domain code out there. BSD is clearly and open source license, and honestly I think Ballmer has chosen Linux as a target because he doesn't want BSD in his sights. There are several reasons for this: 1) he knows that the BSD camp is much more conservative and it would be harder to make wild half-truth claims about them 2) he is not technical and the word on the street (let's not fight over this, kids) is that BSD is faster and more stable than Linux; he likely believes this, right or wrong 3) if the debate is between Linux and Microsoft in government roles, BSD may never gain much more ground than it has now in that sector, and given the licensing, this is in MS' favor.
The only counter-argument I see to the government/GPL case is if the government can contract to an external company to make changes to copyrighted works, and have the original copyright hold. I'm not even remotely a lawyer, so someone else will have to speak to that one.
Either way, it's a cheap shot to just jam this into an interview as a sound-bite, and while I'm not losing any respect for him over it, that's only because there was none there to begin with.
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
"We've got to think out of the box"
In other words, original thinking requires copying Sci-fi...
You're not the first person to say this, and I'm still confused by it. Since when did "think outside of the box" mean "think only original thoughts"?
Whatever your local value of "the box" is, thinking outside of the box is getting a different perspective and thinking in ways that those who still have the provincial perspective cannot.
Granted, one of the benefits of this process is often original ideas, but another is the fusion of external ideas with your own. Clearly, this car is not an exact replica of a bond car, but something that seeks to apply modern military technology to the idea (ala Bond) of an offensive and defensive-capable super-car.
Vanity, vanity... all the world is vanity, and there is nothing new under the sun. But that doesn't mean that you can't blend the old in interesting ways!
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
No, I think the idea of sicking military contractors on creating a bond car counts, though... ;-)
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
In case you haven't read the article, this very first paragraph stopped me in my tracks:
;-)
It was a direct order from the high command: Before designers at the Army's National Automotive Center in Warren began creating their first-ever concept truck, they had to watch four James Bond movies.
Wow. Generals *can* be geeks!
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Why would hosting on Sourceforge be a bad thing? I mean, you keep your code locally too, and you check to make sure that changes are what you expect once per release, right? So, why is hosting on Sourceforge a problem?