That does not look like any hinting change, rather it is some kind of change to the subpixel filtering. As far as I can tell it is just switching from a more blurry version to a sharper (and lighter) version in the "old" one. I don't think either picture is showing correct subpixel filtering.
Re:More corporate BS
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have always thought this statement "information wants to be free" is intended to be read just like "water wants to flow downhill". That "water wants to flow downhill" does NOT mean "you should not build dams", in fact it conversely means "if you don't want the water to flow downhill, you HAVE to build a dam, and it will be difficult because you are going against what the water naturally wants to do".
The fact that "information wants to be free" means that if some amazing DRM scheme is conconcted so that it is not possible for information to be copied in one direction without money flowing in the opposite direction, then that system will be extremely complex and huge, much like a dam.
Of course the morons in the media and the public will never figure out what the statement is supposed to mean. Pretty sad.
Clicking on these I find a lot of.h files implementing POSIX and BSD standards (here is a choice one that is such an absurd claim of copyright violation that I can't believe they did it: http://www.mcbride-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Tab-2421.pdf) Most of the others are not quite that bad.
Here we see that they both used the name "elf" to name a pointer to the ELF structure! Why the chances of two programmers deciding to do that must be astronomical!
I stared at this thing for quite awhile trying to match up the code as it certainly is different. Finally figured it out: the Unix code goes to the i'th field in the structure and returns it if and only if the "index" field in it is equal to i. The Linux code instead searches and returns the first field with the index field equal to i, whether or not it is at i. Umm, this seems to be a pretty significant difference!
This is such a load of bullshit that mr Mc Bride should be ashamed.
I was thinking more along the lines of proving that your already-released device or software uses the patented method, perhaps by showing that the source code that matches the patent compiles into the already-released program.
Although it would no longer be a trade secret, can't you reveal in-house documentation that proves that you were using the patented method already? Or show that your already-distributed program is using the patented method?
I think you can still fight the patent even if you had a trade secret.
Showing my ancient history, I remember an early presentation inside DEC for what became the DEC 1M pixel terminal that became the basis for most of X11's design, from perhaps 1982. The pixels were only 1 bit each (ie black or white). They were debating a design where the scan lines were.717 as far apart vertically as the pixels were horizontally and each odd numbered line was shifted horizontally (by the CRT scanning circuitry) by 1/2 pixel. The result was a hexagonal layout that also nicely filled the 4x3 screen while the source was a 1024x1024 array of bits.
Inability to nicely draw vertical lines is what killed this idea. In the end it was more practical to lose 256 lines of there expensive display memory off the bottom and make square pixels. This extra display memory ended up being used for off-screen images, it's availability but limited size also greatly affected the design of X11.
They also had ethernet cables that were the really thick yellow things with the vampire tap that you screwed onto them to add a new machine to the network. All of this was in a the Dec research department showing the future of computers...
Climb on the left and stand on the right is true even in US escalators, at least busy ones in transit places such as train and subway stations. All I can guess is your only US experience is suburban mall escalators, where I agree everybody just stands still.
It is also very common that you swing far left/right to get the primary then come back towards the middle to win the regular election. Look at Obama's campaign. Look at McCain's campaign.
These both seem very poor examples. Obama was certainly a moderate compared to Clinton and that is why he was elected, also just look at the attacks on him now that say that he has swung far left/socialist compared to what he promised! I also feel that McCain was a moderate (take a look at what some far-right like Coulter said about him!), and it is pretty obvious that his new campaign has swung extremely right (seriously a disappointment, I liked him and feel I was quite misled about his honesty).
Something (mostly the tea party) has happened to drive things far from center. Now the Democrat candidates have swung far left as well (since they won't lose votes because the opponent is such a right-wing loony, you will just have to put up with a left-wing loony if you don't want that!).
Battery-to-battery will still work but then the user has to get those two batteries to point in the same direction, thus negating some of the advantage of this by making it not work with all possible battery directions.
However it may be easier to get a row of batteries to all point in the same direction, if they are all by the same manufacturer.
It would help a lot if the battery manufacturers all agreed to make their labels have a clear "light" end and "dark" end (just like the majority of alkaline ones are printed now), then the devices could have a really obvious sticker so that half the compartment is black and half white.
No, it requires exactly the same number of wires between batteries as before, plus, if you want, 2 wires per battery to connect the + on one end to the other.
My personal feeling is that although the idea is obvious, I figure (hope?) that Microsoft invested a good deal of time fiddling with the exact dimensions and springiness, etc, to make this foolproof. I could see big problems if you short those two connectors together. If they got it to work reliably then this effort certainly is worth a design patent.
Originally batteries had the entire can be a conductor so the whole bottom, all the sides, and a ring around the top were a conductor, which might have made this 2-ended design obvious long ago (though if the central pin did not extend enough it also might have made this design impossible).
Can't you just update to a new edition each year for education needs? This is the usual method to avoid losing income due to students reselling their books to the next year's students.
But 10-20 years sounds quite reasonable. Suggestions for 5 years sounds awfully short. The source code for Linux from 5 years ago could be used to make a closed-source system that would be pretty competitive with current Linux. Microsoft would also have trouble if OEM's could just copy 5-year old XP to each new machine rather than buy the newest version of Windows. Neither of these would be true of the versions from 10 or 15 years ago.
Wasn't original copyright something like 17 years? Might as well use that again.
I would also allow copyright to be renewed for a price (a few thousand dollars), so Disney can keep re-copyrighting Mickey Mouse as long as it wants, which would be a lot less damaging then altering copyright for everybody.
Perhaps you meant seven years after first publication.
DUH! Of course that is what he meant. Or you could just change a few words and recopyright the result. But then your rant would be a strawman argument.
That might be acceptable, again, for large publishing houses, but for anyone considering self-publication, seven years doesn't cut it. Your income is down in the long tail from the very first day.
You have to be kidding. Can you come up with an example of self-publishing where the income is not almost 100% concentrated in the first year?
As I understand it, Microsoft is not calling *their own video library* in IE, on purpose, to prevent HTML5 from understanding any video codec other than H264.
Firefox is doing the same thing (on Windows it is ignoring the same video library, on Linux it is ignoring the ffmpeg library). Again the reason is to prevent it from understanding any video codec other than Ogg.
Both will come up with some bullshit excuse for why they are doing this but the reason is to prevent the codec they don't like from being run in their program. Both Microsoft and Firefox are equally guilty of this.
I didn't say they have to do it, just that I thought it was annoying and really not in line with their principles.
I fully expect a patch for Firefox quite soon after this is implemented. They may pull that logo stuff to keep Ubuntu/etc from distributing it without renaming it to iceweasel or whatever.
Both IE and Firefox are pulling asshole arrogant moves by not making their HTML5 video playback call a library where codecs can be added. In both cases it is an attempt to promote their codec of choice by making alternatives impossible.
Although we are used to Microsoft doing this crap, it is annoying to see the supposedly "open" Firefox do it too.
Jokes about making patents that control patents is a patented idea, and you are no longer allowed to make them without a license! So please stop before you are sued.
Two more employees, especially ones with some skill such as being able to hit a target with a gun, are probably a lot more expensive than some added machinery that will probably work for decades.
I am wondering more if this is in fact an attempt to get the term "Copy Left" redefined in public perception to mean "The Pirate Party". One of the letter writers in this page:
Seems to be actively trying to redefine the two sides in the argument as the terms "Copy Right" and "Copy Left" to be what I think most people would call "The RIAA,etc" and "The Pirate Party". This is despite many responses from musicians that they never heard the term "Copy Left" used in this way, she repeatedly states that she thinks these are the correct terms.
The letter is incredibly stupid, but I suspect they are not actually trying to make the Creative Commons license or GPL illegal. I think instead the writer thinks the term "copyleft" means "ignoring copyrights".
Of course they may want to make copyleft illegal: they would certainly love it if you could not copyright protect your work without having the means and infrastructure to sell it. But I think the chances of that are very slim because even the general public will understand that it is unfair.
Or they are actively trying to get the term "copyleft" redefined in public perception so that these organizations can no longer use it, similar to "hacker".
But my main guess is that the letter writer has no idea what the term "copyleft" means and they have instead made themselves look either evil or stupid or both.
I agree. A non-flawed test would be to ask if they trust Google's answers more than they trust the NY TImes to accurately say that an article is continued on page 21. I think you would find the trust to be about equal in that case!
Absolutely agree, this poll seems really bogus. I might ask Google to show me a map of where somebody's address is, or ask it if the NY Times (or WSJ) has an article about a certain subject. And I certainly trust those answers much more than I trust the contents of that NY Times or WSJ article.
But conversely, if the NY Times decided to print maps showing where things are, I would trust that just as much as Google. A more obvious example, the NY Times has a listing of all it's previous articles, and I would trust this just as much as Google's list of NY Times articles, perhaps even more as it seems there are fewer chances for mistakes. Conversely if Google hired a reporter and they started writing articles that directly appeared in Google's news results, I would not trust that more than the NY Times.
Consumers choose the lowest cost for things they perceive of as equal value. However a higher cost could be charged for something that they perceive as having a higher value. The studios could get higher prices, though probably not a lot, because of the following extras that a download from them would have over one from some Russian site:
1. It is a legal copy and they are not paying criminals 2. Much more likely to actually get the file they expect 3. Much less likely to get some nasty computer virus 4. Legit site could let you download and view the instant something is released
The problem is that the pinheads at the studios just cannot imagine making the files available without DRM. This means that the illegal site has a greater perceived value because the files do not have DRM. So not only are they lower in cost, they are also greater perceived value!
Remove the DRM and there will be a level playing field, and the studios could then try to leverage some of the other perceived value of using their site into higher prices than the pirates are charging.
This is great! Everybody will now know that Obama was born to a prostitute in Kenya, and that Bush personally parachuted from the planes just before they crashed into the towers!
Slashdot Mirror
That does not look like any hinting change, rather it is some kind of change to the subpixel filtering. As far as I can tell it is just switching from a more blurry version to a sharper (and lighter) version in the "old" one. I don't think either picture is showing correct subpixel filtering.
I have always thought this statement "information wants to be free" is intended to be read just like "water wants to flow downhill". That "water wants to flow downhill" does NOT mean "you should not build dams", in fact it conversely means "if you don't want the water to flow downhill, you HAVE to build a dam, and it will be difficult because you are going against what the water naturally wants to do".
The fact that "information wants to be free" means that if some amazing DRM scheme is conconcted so that it is not possible for information to be copied in one direction without money flowing in the opposite direction, then that system will be extremely complex and huge, much like a dam.
Of course the morons in the media and the public will never figure out what the statement is supposed to mean. Pretty sad.
Clicking on these I find a lot of .h files implementing POSIX and BSD standards (here is a choice one that is such an absurd claim of copyright violation that I can't believe they did it: http://www.mcbride-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Tab-2421.pdf) Most of the others are not quite that bad.
So you don't waste your time, after quite a lot of clicking I finally found some actual code: http://www.mcbride-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Tab-415.pdf
Here we see that they both used the name "elf" to name a pointer to the ELF structure! Why the chances of two programmers deciding to do that must be astronomical!
I stared at this thing for quite awhile trying to match up the code as it certainly is different. Finally figured it out: the Unix code goes to the i'th field in the structure and returns it if and only if the "index" field in it is equal to i. The Linux code instead searches and returns the first field with the index field equal to i, whether or not it is at i. Umm, this seems to be a pretty significant difference!
This is such a load of bullshit that mr Mc Bride should be ashamed.
I was thinking more along the lines of proving that your already-released device or software uses the patented method, perhaps by showing that the source code that matches the patent compiles into the already-released program.
Although it would no longer be a trade secret, can't you reveal in-house documentation that proves that you were using the patented method already? Or show that your already-distributed program is using the patented method?
I think you can still fight the patent even if you had a trade secret.
Showing my ancient history, I remember an early presentation inside DEC for what became the DEC 1M pixel terminal that became the basis for most of X11's design, from perhaps 1982. The pixels were only 1 bit each (ie black or white). They were debating a design where the scan lines were .717 as far apart vertically as the pixels were horizontally and each odd numbered line was shifted horizontally (by the CRT scanning circuitry) by 1/2 pixel. The result was a hexagonal layout that also nicely filled the 4x3 screen while the source was a 1024x1024 array of bits.
Inability to nicely draw vertical lines is what killed this idea. In the end it was more practical to lose 256 lines of there expensive display memory off the bottom and make square pixels. This extra display memory ended up being used for off-screen images, it's availability but limited size also greatly affected the design of X11.
They also had ethernet cables that were the really thick yellow things with the vampire tap that you screwed onto them to add a new machine to the network. All of this was in a the Dec research department showing the future of computers...
Climb on the left and stand on the right is true even in US escalators, at least busy ones in transit places such as train and subway stations. All I can guess is your only US experience is suburban mall escalators, where I agree everybody just stands still.
It is also very common that you swing far left/right to get the primary then come back towards the middle to win the regular election. Look at Obama's campaign. Look at McCain's campaign.
These both seem very poor examples. Obama was certainly a moderate compared to Clinton and that is why he was elected, also just look at the attacks on him now that say that he has swung far left/socialist compared to what he promised! I also feel that McCain was a moderate (take a look at what some far-right like Coulter said about him!), and it is pretty obvious that his new campaign has swung extremely right (seriously a disappointment, I liked him and feel I was quite misled about his honesty).
Something (mostly the tea party) has happened to drive things far from center. Now the Democrat candidates have swung far left as well (since they won't lose votes because the opponent is such a right-wing loony, you will just have to put up with a left-wing loony if you don't want that!).
Battery-to-battery will still work but then the user has to get those two batteries to point in the same direction, thus negating some of the advantage of this by making it not work with all possible battery directions.
However it may be easier to get a row of batteries to all point in the same direction, if they are all by the same manufacturer.
It would help a lot if the battery manufacturers all agreed to make their labels have a clear "light" end and "dark" end (just like the majority of alkaline ones are printed now), then the devices could have a really obvious sticker so that half the compartment is black and half white.
No, it requires exactly the same number of wires between batteries as before, plus, if you want, 2 wires per battery to connect the + on one end to the other.
My personal feeling is that although the idea is obvious, I figure (hope?) that Microsoft invested a good deal of time fiddling with the exact dimensions and springiness, etc, to make this foolproof. I could see big problems if you short those two connectors together. If they got it to work reliably then this effort certainly is worth a design patent.
Originally batteries had the entire can be a conductor so the whole bottom, all the sides, and a ring around the top were a conductor, which might have made this 2-ended design obvious long ago (though if the central pin did not extend enough it also might have made this design impossible).
Can't you just update to a new edition each year for education needs? This is the usual method to avoid losing income due to students reselling their books to the next year's students.
But 10-20 years sounds quite reasonable. Suggestions for 5 years sounds awfully short. The source code for Linux from 5 years ago could be used to make a closed-source system that would be pretty competitive with current Linux. Microsoft would also have trouble if OEM's could just copy 5-year old XP to each new machine rather than buy the newest version of Windows. Neither of these would be true of the versions from 10 or 15 years ago.
Wasn't original copyright something like 17 years? Might as well use that again.
I would also allow copyright to be renewed for a price (a few thousand dollars), so Disney can keep re-copyrighting Mickey Mouse as long as it wants, which would be a lot less damaging then altering copyright for everybody.
Perhaps you meant seven years after first publication.
DUH! Of course that is what he meant. Or you could just change a few words and recopyright the result. But then your rant would be a strawman argument.
That might be acceptable, again, for large publishing houses, but for anyone considering self-publication, seven years doesn't cut it. Your income is down in the long tail from the very first day.
You have to be kidding. Can you come up with an example of self-publishing where the income is not almost 100% concentrated in the first year?
As I understand it, Microsoft is not calling *their own video library* in IE, on purpose, to prevent HTML5 from understanding any video codec other than H264.
Firefox is doing the same thing (on Windows it is ignoring the same video library, on Linux it is ignoring the ffmpeg library). Again the reason is to prevent it from understanding any video codec other than Ogg.
Both will come up with some bullshit excuse for why they are doing this but the reason is to prevent the codec they don't like from being run in their program. Both Microsoft and Firefox are equally guilty of this.
I didn't say they have to do it, just that I thought it was annoying and really not in line with their principles.
I fully expect a patch for Firefox quite soon after this is implemented. They may pull that logo stuff to keep Ubuntu/etc from distributing it without renaming it to iceweasel or whatever.
Both IE and Firefox are pulling asshole arrogant moves by not making their HTML5 video playback call a library where codecs can be added. In both cases it is an attempt to promote their codec of choice by making alternatives impossible.
Although we are used to Microsoft doing this crap, it is annoying to see the supposedly "open" Firefox do it too.
Jokes about making patents that control patents is a patented idea, and you are no longer allowed to make them without a license! So please stop before you are sued.
Two more employees, especially ones with some skill such as being able to hit a target with a gun, are probably a lot more expensive than some added machinery that will probably work for decades.
I am wondering more if this is in fact an attempt to get the term "Copy Left" redefined in public perception to mean "The Pirate Party". One of the letter writers in this page:
http://www.artsjournal.com/gap/2010/06/the-right-balance-on-copying.html#
(search for Sarah Baird Knight)
Seems to be actively trying to redefine the two sides in the argument as the terms "Copy Right" and "Copy Left" to be what I think most people would call "The RIAA,etc" and "The Pirate Party". This is despite many responses from musicians that they never heard the term "Copy Left" used in this way, she repeatedly states that she thinks these are the correct terms.
The letter is incredibly stupid, but I suspect they are not actually trying to make the Creative Commons license or GPL illegal. I think instead the writer thinks the term "copyleft" means "ignoring copyrights".
Of course they may want to make copyleft illegal: they would certainly love it if you could not copyright protect your work without having the means and infrastructure to sell it. But I think the chances of that are very slim because even the general public will understand that it is unfair.
Or they are actively trying to get the term "copyleft" redefined in public perception so that these organizations can no longer use it, similar to "hacker".
But my main guess is that the letter writer has no idea what the term "copyleft" means and they have instead made themselves look either evil or stupid or both.
I agree. A non-flawed test would be to ask if they trust Google's answers more than they trust the NY TImes to accurately say that an article is continued on page 21. I think you would find the trust to be about equal in that case!
Absolutely agree, this poll seems really bogus. I might ask Google to show me a map of where somebody's address is, or ask it if the NY Times (or WSJ) has an article about a certain subject. And I certainly trust those answers much more than I trust the contents of that NY Times or WSJ article.
But conversely, if the NY Times decided to print maps showing where things are, I would trust that just as much as Google. A more obvious example, the NY Times has a listing of all it's previous articles, and I would trust this just as much as Google's list of NY Times articles, perhaps even more as it seems there are fewer chances for mistakes. Conversely if Google hired a reporter and they started writing articles that directly appeared in Google's news results, I would not trust that more than the NY Times.
Consumers choose the lowest cost for things they perceive of as equal value. However a higher cost could be charged for something that they perceive as having a higher value. The studios could get higher prices, though probably not a lot, because of the following extras that a download from them would have over one from some Russian site:
1. It is a legal copy and they are not paying criminals
2. Much more likely to actually get the file they expect
3. Much less likely to get some nasty computer virus
4. Legit site could let you download and view the instant something is released
The problem is that the pinheads at the studios just cannot imagine making the files available without DRM. This means that the illegal site has a greater perceived value because the files do not have DRM. So not only are they lower in cost, they are also greater perceived value!
Remove the DRM and there will be a level playing field, and the studios could then try to leverage some of the other perceived value of using their site into higher prices than the pirates are charging.
If I don't use the services (not sick, no snow, etc), then I'm not getting any benefit am I?
Yea, dammit! And I wasted all that money on home insurance, and my house did not burn down even once! I think I will sue the insurance company!
This is great! Everybody will now know that Obama was born to a prostitute in Kenya, and that Bush personally parachuted from the planes just before they crashed into the towers!
One could say the same thing about Java
And in fact the grandparent DID say the same thing about Java, right in the second paragraph! Yay for reading comprehension!