Steve Gibson's rantings about Apple having invented sub-pixel rendering are obviously false.
He can make all the wild accusations and point all the fingers he wants, but at the end of the day, his claim fails the simplest and most important test:
If Apple invented the technology that ClearType uses, why didn't any of the LCD-based Apple products, none of the powerbooks, none of the OS versions that drove those gorgeous Cinema displays, why did none of them ever demonstrate really great looking on-screen sub-pixel text rendering?
Don't get me wrong: Apple's on-screen text has always been pretty damn good, but they've never shipped a sub-pixel solution.
There are two possibiiities:
1) They knew how to make their on-screen text look better for seventeen years but never bothered to put the code in a shipping system
2) They didn't know how.
Use Occam's Razor.
Where does this claim come from then? Basically, it comes from a deep misunderstanding of what Apple did (pixel sharing) and lots of people not bothering to understand the claim before repeating it themselves.
I don't know where you've been looking, but I never see any of that. Not even here. And really, if you are told to RTFM, perhaps you really should have.
The prosecution rests, your honor. You just told the guy to RTFM.
Yes. What you're doing is wrong. Not killing-trucks-full-of-puppies-wrong, more like swiping-your-bartender's-tips-wrong.
And as the great philosopher He-Man would say, "Skeletor, You KNOW Stealing is Wrong. And knowing is half the battle."
Full disclosure: I used to do the file sharing thing too. I woke up one day and realized what I was doing, and erased it all. I think that the way record companies treat their artists is horrid, and that the way they treat their customers is worse. Still doesn't make stealing right.
I hope you don't see this as a "tirade" as you call it; you asked if it's wrong. I'm calling it like I see it. I promise to keep the hysterical pulpit-pounding to a minimum.
It boils down to this: someone out there is trying to make a living by selling their music through a record label, and while that might not be the fairest arrangement, it was *their* decision to make within an unfair system in an imperfect world. By taking someone's music without paying for it, you make it harder for that person to make a living. Taking something that doesn't belong to you = stealing. Taking something for sale without paying for it = stealing. Stealing = wrong. Pretty simple.
I could go down your list of rationalizations that you use to make yourself feel better about it, but look them over. None of them really change the core problem: you shouldn't take stuff that doesn't belong to you.
Sign up for a throwaway Hotmail address. Never give the address out to anyone. Never use it for registration. Just let it sit there for a month or so. Then log into it and see the mountains of spam it contains. Since you never gave this address to anyone, the only possible way the spammers got the address is because Microsoft sold it to them.
Nonsense. Ever heard of "guessing"? -- Generate likely hotmail addresses by dictionary lookup (common words, common names and common integers). That and some concatenation and a sendmail script and you're off to the races without having to buy a single address.
There are two fairly interesting ten year old user interface techniques from (formerly Xerox) PARC: Toolglasses and Magic Lenses that make effective use of see-through windows. A hardware advance that makes it easy/economical to widely deploy this UI technique is a Very Good Thing.
As it is, only a few companies Alias|Wavefront comes to mind) actually uses this rarely seen interaction technique.
I'm sure part of the reason TG/ML is rare is due to Software Patent issues.
to which, I do a spit-take and cry out: Whha-a-a-a?
Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quicktime all use this architecture. Between them they have approximately 100% market share. There's a reality disconnect here.
The hardware-specific problem you talk about would go away if you had the proper hardware abstraction layer to write to.
It's a crying shame that we'll have to wait so long for the pollyanna-anastasia-plutzenbomer-krauzenmeier-hoff enfeffer-one-re-eerie-ickery-ann-fillsy-fallsy-nic hloas-john-queevy-quavey-dickery-davey-eenie-meeni e-miney-moe-my-momma-says-youre-are-the-very-last- one-to-be-it chipset.
I've seen the plans. The chip is round. You know. For kids.
WHA? - say what you want about Gates and his software company, but the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has a 23 *billion* dollar endowment and is doing more for world health than...well...just about anything.
Gripe if you want about his software, but he's not stingy with his charitable giving.
And the tired whine that he doesnt give as much as philanthropist xyz misses the point. Charity isn't a contest.
Yes : movies don't portray any field very accurately - maybe movies don't depict our field accurately (in part) because what we do isn't very cinematic. Not that it isn't exciting (to us, at the best of times), but that it tends to be pretty cerebral/ invisible/ internal dialog stuff.
Until we launch the missiles, of course. Then it gets pretty dramatic. Ahem.
This works for the Smithsonian because they're selling music with some staying power.
The archival value of a random track of Brittany Spears's is zero. In general, her discography's value goes to zero as her age approaches 50. See also Tiffany.
Generalizations of this Law Of Bulging Middles to other pop stars is left as an exercise to the/. reader. (hint: analysis of Madonna or Michael Jackson requires taking into account of relativistic effects.)
I read this one back to back with Rhodes's -- Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bombhere - a great examination of why Germany didn't get the bomb even though they had one of the Quantum Greats (tm) working for them.
Do your homework please, before repeating these old wive's tales. Woz never invented anything like this. What he invented was a way of getting more apparent colors out of a TV-based display technology. Simple thought experiment: if Woz invented subpixel rendering, why has it never shipped on *any* Apple platform until now?
I disagree. Repair prices are already nearly, or slightly higher than, replacement costs for many things. Have you ever tried to get a $90US VCR repaired? The repair guy will, if he's honest (*cough*) just laugh at you.
Am I the only one who remembers the HP Omnibook 300 (and 425?...) where the operating system was Windows 3.1 on a PCMCIA card? Say what you will about the quality of the OS: = booting this machine was blazing fast = completely silent = extended battery life. my two cents.
Maybe the "predator/prey" experiments being held were nothing more than a well-planned diversion pulled off by the other robots, meant to distract the guards so that one of them could run for help.
I'm not a thief. I don't use Napster. I dont steal songs.
I work hard for my money. Why would congress would make it illegal for me to protect my library of music, books (yes, ebooks), and videos?
What if TV makers demanded that congress pass a law requiring TV sets to weigh at least 500 pounds, making it harder to steal TV's? People who don't steal sets shouldn't care -- only theives would complain? And if a few consumers are inconvenienced and need to buy several more sets for home, well that's just the price of protecting a vital industry.
Obvious nonsense.
It is NOT the responsibilty of technology companies to protect how media companies make money. It is the responsibility of media companies to be nimble and innovative and to react to changing market conditions.
Let history be your guide. This is NOT the first time that businesses have faced challenges from technology.
- Monsatic scribes did it in
the face of the printing presss.
- Buggy-whip makers did it in
the face of the automobile.
- Movie companies did it in the
face of of VCRs (and should be
glad they lost the fight - they make
a lot more money from cassettes than
from theater presentation).
The list goes on and on and on...change is inevitable. No industry, no matter how successful, should be immune to change.
Besides, change is *GOOD* - it is the engine of economic growth. Protecting the powers that be from change is dangerous and frankly, not in the best American Tradition.
In these uncertain and dangerous times, we must be especially aware of what our values are, and to protect them with even more care and vigor.
When in doubt, I implore you to err on the side of the free flow, transmission and sharing of ideas.
Keep piracy illegal, but don't gut the free flow of ideas as you swing the sword of justice.
-------
I agree with the boilerplate that DigitalConsumer has drafted, so I've included it below.
--------------- As a constituent and an ardent consumer of digital media, I write today to urge you to support a Consumer Technology Bill of Rights, and to express my concerns about the recent trend toward allowing one-sided copyright laws to eliminate my Fair Use rights.
Historically, our country has enjoyed a balance between the rights of copyright holders and the rights of citizens who legally acquire copyrighted works. Generally speaking, rights holders have the exclusive right to distribute and profit from artistic works. Consumers like me who legally acquire these works are free to use them in most noncommercial ways. Unfortunately, this balance has shifted dramatically in recent years, much to the detriment of consumers.
To prevent further erosion of my rights, I would like to add my voice to DigitalConsumer.org in calling for a "consumer technology bill of rights". It is simply an attempt to assert positively the public's personal use rights. These rights are not new; they are historic rights granted in previous legislation and court rulings that have over the last four years been whittled away.
Under the guise of "preventing illegal copying" I believe Hollywood is vilifying their customers - people like me - and using the legislative process to create new lines of business at my expense. Their goal is to create a legal system that takes away my long-cherished personal use rights and then to charge me an additional fee to regain those rights!
Copy protection, especially to prevent overseas piracy for illicit sale, is an important issue. But before Congress considers yet another change in the law at the behest of the copyright holders, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to protect my Fair Use rights.
Thank you very much for your attention to this important matter.
Let's see...brainstorm with me here...suppose, just suppose that there's a form of expression that isn't like nonfiction at all...we could call it non-nonfiction, or just "fiction" if you want to be informal.
Under this hypothetical genre, you could do something nutty like relax the constraints of historical accuracy and current scientific understanding in order to optimize for other, non-engineering attributes like drama, tension, and the progression of a storyline even though fundamental carrying particles for these forces are yet to be generated at Fermilab.
There might be value in presenting "stories" in this new "fictional" way, so long as people are made to understand that they're "just movies" and that they shouldn't take them so "seriously" and that nobody but nobody confuse a movie theatre with a library. (*)
Just a thought.
(*) hint: both theatres and libraries are louder places than they used to be, but in general, the theater is the one with the sticky floor and the THX sound system.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen -- go check with Vince, see if he's OK with posting his contact information, and if he is, POST IT!
Like others have said, I'm sure he'll love you for it.
Apple invented it?
Bullshit.
Steve Gibson's rantings about Apple having invented sub-pixel rendering are obviously false.
He can make all the wild accusations and point all the fingers he wants, but at the end of the day, his claim fails the simplest and most important test:
If Apple invented the technology that ClearType uses, why didn't any of the LCD-based Apple products, none of the powerbooks, none of the OS versions that drove those gorgeous Cinema displays, why did none of them ever demonstrate really great looking on-screen sub-pixel text rendering?
Don't get me wrong: Apple's on-screen text has always been pretty damn good, but they've never shipped a sub-pixel solution.
There are two possibiiities:
1) They knew how to make their on-screen text look better for seventeen years but never bothered to put the code in a shipping system
2) They didn't know how.
Use Occam's Razor.
Where does this claim come from then? Basically, it comes from a deep misunderstanding of what Apple did (pixel sharing) and lots of people not bothering to understand the claim before repeating it themselves.
Don't overstate the power of the Internet.
John Aristotle Phillips designed an A-Bomb on a lark without the Internet.
His story is outlined here.
Mushroom: Story of the A-Bomb Kid A fun read.
Oh my God, my eyes!
MY EYES!
Make the BURNING Stop please!
I don't know where you've been looking, but I never see any of that. Not even here. And really, if you are told to RTFM, perhaps you really should have.
The prosecution rests, your honor. You just told the guy to RTFM.
Yes. What you're doing is wrong. Not killing-trucks-full-of-puppies-wrong, more like swiping-your-bartender's-tips-wrong.
And as the great philosopher He-Man would say, "Skeletor, You KNOW Stealing is Wrong. And knowing is half the battle."
Full disclosure: I used to do the file sharing thing too. I woke up one day and realized what I was doing, and erased it all. I think that the way record companies treat their artists is horrid, and that the way they treat their customers is worse. Still doesn't make stealing right.
I hope you don't see this as a "tirade" as you call it; you asked if it's wrong. I'm calling it like I see it. I promise to keep the hysterical pulpit-pounding to a minimum.
It boils down to this: someone out there is trying to make a living by selling their music through a record label, and while that might not be the fairest arrangement, it was *their* decision to make within an unfair system in an imperfect world. By taking someone's music without paying for it, you make it harder for that person to make a living. Taking something that doesn't belong to you = stealing. Taking something for sale without paying for it = stealing. Stealing = wrong. Pretty simple.
I could go down your list of rationalizations that you use to make yourself feel better about it, but look them over. None of them really change the core problem: you shouldn't take stuff that doesn't belong to you.
thus endeth today's lesson.
Sign up for a throwaway Hotmail address. Never give the address out to anyone. Never use it for registration. Just let it sit there for a month or so. Then log into it and see the mountains of spam it contains. Since you never gave this address to anyone, the only possible way the spammers got the address is because Microsoft sold it to them.
Nonsense. Ever heard of "guessing"? -- Generate likely hotmail addresses by dictionary lookup (common words, common names and common integers). That and some concatenation and a sendmail script and you're off to the races without having to buy a single address.
Keep in mind that patents are granted for all manner of technology, not just software. I'm not worried.
There are two fairly interesting ten year old user interface techniques from (formerly Xerox) PARC: Toolglasses and Magic Lenses that make effective use of see-through windows. A hardware advance that makes it easy/economical to widely deploy this UI technique is a Very Good Thing.
As it is, only a few companies Alias|Wavefront comes to mind) actually uses this rarely seen interaction technique.
I'm sure part of the reason TG/ML is rare is due to Software Patent issues.
...wouldn't gain much approval from users...
to which, I do a spit-take and cry out:
Whha-a-a-a?
Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quicktime all use this architecture. Between them they have approximately 100% market share. There's a reality disconnect here.
The hardware-specific problem you talk about would go away if you had the proper hardware abstraction layer to write to.
It's a crying shame that we'll have to wait so long for the pollyanna-anastasia-plutzenbomer-krauzenmeier-hoff enfeffer-one-re-eerie-ickery-ann-fillsy-fallsy-nic hloas-john-queevy-quavey-dickery-davey-eenie-meeni e-miney-moe-my-momma-says-youre-are-the-very-last- one-to-be-it chipset.
I've seen the plans. The chip is round. You know. For kids.
WHA? - say what you want about Gates and his software company, but the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has a 23 *billion* dollar endowment and is doing more for world health than ...well...just about anything.
Gripe if you want about his software, but he's not stingy with his charitable giving.
And the tired whine that he doesnt give as much as philanthropist xyz misses the point. Charity isn't a contest.
Yes : movies don't portray any field very accurately - maybe movies don't depict our field accurately (in part) because what we do isn't very cinematic. Not that it isn't exciting (to us, at the best of times), but that it tends to be pretty cerebral/ invisible/ internal dialog stuff.
Until we launch the missiles, of course. Then it gets pretty dramatic. Ahem.
This works for the Smithsonian because they're selling music with some staying power.
/. reader.
The archival value of a random track of Brittany Spears's is zero.
In general, her discography's value goes to zero as her age approaches 50. See also Tiffany.
Generalizations of this Law Of Bulging Middles to other pop stars is left as an exercise to the
(hint: analysis of Madonna or Michael Jackson requires taking into account of relativistic effects.)
I read this one back to back with Rhodes's -- Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb here - a great examination of why Germany didn't get the bomb even though they had one of the Quantum Greats (tm) working for them.
Do your homework please, before repeating these old wive's tales. Woz never invented anything like this. What he invented was a way of getting more apparent colors out of a TV-based display technology. Simple thought experiment: if Woz invented subpixel rendering, why has it never shipped on *any* Apple platform until now?
I disagree. Repair prices are already nearly, or slightly higher than, replacement costs for many things. Have you ever tried to get a $90US VCR repaired? The repair guy will, if he's honest (*cough*) just laugh at you.
they're thinking they're a Television Network. ;)
No. He's right. You're wrong.
Innocent until proven guilty. Being proven guilty of *other* crimes is irrelevent.
Am I the only one who remembers the HP Omnibook 300 (and 425?...) where the operating system was Windows 3.1 on a PCMCIA card? Say what you will about the quality of the OS:
= booting this machine was blazing fast
= completely silent
= extended battery life.
my two cents.
...is if they came across DownloadCard's idea out there on Kaaza and just helped themselves...
Maybe the "predator/prey" experiments being held were nothing more than a well-planned diversion pulled off by the other robots, meant to distract the guards so that one of them could run for help.
Retard?...
Dumb?...
Have you condsidered decaf?
This is a perfect example of the best AND the worst that Slashdot has to offer:
Does the put-down make you feel better? It shouldn't. Slashdot isn't the only source of good Karma.
----
MODERATORS: Oddly, I seem to be the only one reacting to this posting. Go ahead, mod me up. Make the world (or at least Slashdot) a more civil place.
I did the same thing.
I'm not a thief.
I don't use Napster.
I dont steal songs.
I work hard for my money. Why would congress would make it illegal for me to protect my library of music, books (yes, ebooks), and videos?
What if TV makers demanded that congress pass a law requiring TV sets to weigh at least 500 pounds, making it harder to steal TV's? People who don't steal sets shouldn't care -- only theives would complain? And if a few consumers are inconvenienced and need to buy several more sets for home, well that's just the price of protecting a vital industry.
Obvious nonsense.
It is NOT the responsibilty of technology companies to protect how media companies make money. It is the responsibility of media companies to be nimble and innovative and to react to changing market conditions.
Let history be your guide. This is NOT the first time that businesses have faced challenges from technology.
- Monsatic scribes did it in
the face of the printing presss.
- Buggy-whip makers did it in
the face of the automobile.
- Movie companies did it in the
face of of VCRs (and should be
glad they lost the fight - they make
a lot more money from cassettes than
from theater presentation).
The list goes on and on and on...change is inevitable. No industry, no matter how successful, should be immune to change.
Besides, change is *GOOD* - it is the engine of economic growth. Protecting the powers that be from change is dangerous and frankly, not in the best American Tradition.
In these uncertain and dangerous times, we must be especially aware of what our values are, and to protect them with even more care and vigor.
When in doubt, I implore you to err on the side of the free flow, transmission and sharing of ideas.
Keep piracy illegal, but don't gut the free flow of ideas as you swing the sword of justice.
-------
I agree with the boilerplate that DigitalConsumer has drafted, so I've included it below.
---------------
As a constituent and an ardent consumer of digital media, I write today to urge you to support a Consumer Technology Bill of Rights, and to express my concerns about the recent trend toward allowing one-sided copyright laws to eliminate my Fair Use rights.
Historically, our country has enjoyed a balance between the rights of copyright holders and the rights of citizens who legally acquire copyrighted works. Generally speaking, rights holders have the exclusive right to distribute and profit from artistic works. Consumers like me who legally acquire these works are free to use them in most noncommercial ways. Unfortunately, this balance has shifted dramatically in recent years, much to the detriment of consumers.
To prevent further erosion of my rights, I would like to add my voice to DigitalConsumer.org in calling for a "consumer technology bill of rights". It is simply an attempt to assert positively the public's personal use rights. These rights are not new; they are historic rights granted in previous legislation and court rulings that have over the last four years been whittled away.
Under the guise of "preventing illegal copying" I believe Hollywood is vilifying their customers - people like me - and using the legislative process to create new lines of business at my expense. Their goal is to create a legal system that takes away my long-cherished personal use rights and then to charge me an additional fee to regain those rights!
Copy protection, especially to prevent overseas piracy for illicit sale, is an important issue. But before Congress considers yet another change in the law at the behest of the copyright holders, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to protect my Fair Use rights.
Thank you very much for your attention to this important matter.
Under this hypothetical genre, you could do something nutty like relax the constraints of historical accuracy and current scientific understanding in order to optimize for other, non-engineering attributes like drama, tension, and the progression of a storyline even though fundamental carrying particles for these forces are yet to be generated at Fermilab.
There might be value in presenting "stories" in this new "fictional" way, so long as people are made to understand that they're "just movies" and that they shouldn't take them so "seriously" and that nobody but nobody confuse a movie theatre with a library. (*)
Just a thought.
(*) hint: both theatres and libraries are louder places than they used to be, but in general, the theater is the one with the sticky floor and the THX sound system.