I'd argue that the problem lies with manufacturers. Yes, cheap crap will perform like cheap crap... BUT, manufacturers with any integrity should not be selling cheap crap. I sympathize with the customers ("consumers" to such vendors) who get ripped off, but they're just looking for the best deal - it's the vendors who are at fault for setting the expectation that their cheap product will perform properly. My little company sells moderately priced product, and I for one, won't compromise on quality when I sell a product. That means not being the cheapest, but I know my customers are getting something that a) works, and b)won't bite me in the ass later.
Did you consider that the pay is low because they want people who a) don't *need* to work (eg, other sources of income or independently wealthy) and b) will do the work for reasons other than money?
I can't see a downside from a user perspective, and the only Govt/ISP/etc justifications not to do this are an invasion of privacy (packet headers could be used for QoS, etc). It's like, I dunno, posting all your mail in an sealed envelope instead of on a postcard - you can still put an economy or airmail sticker on it, it just means the postman can't (easily) read your message anymore.
I love it how in these news snippets there is never any explanation of the technology, but long descriptions about the wonderful changes it will do to the world.
Back in my day we didn't call it a "news snippet", we called it a "press release".
No mainstream/*nix operating system will render all these different font sizes as different sizes. I see no reason for this.
If that's true, something is broken... or maybe not, if you consider that a point (pt) is sometimes considered to be the smallest unit in typography.
Scaling applications to DPI is a separate problem, and one I believe HTML & SVG are very good at. I dont see how DPI is relevant to accurate sub-pixel font rendering, with the very specific exception of printing. If you can clarify how your post relate to sub pixel rendering I would be much obliged.
Perhaps you misunderstand the concept of font size, at least as it relates to DPI. A font size of 10 is most often 10 points rather than 10 pixels. A point is defined as 1/72 of an inch, so to display 10 point font correctly, it must be rendered 0.138 inches tall when viewed at 100% scaling. The DPI of the screen needs to be considered to render the font at the correct size, and the sub-pixel rendering is a factor when antialiasing the (often black/white) text on an LCD. Rendering pleasing and smooth fonts on an LCD is hard enough, and considering "non-standard" (eg, 96 DPI PC or the traditional 72 DPI Mac) scaling adds another layer of difficulty.
Subpixel rendering is not a factor in printing however, although the DPI of the printer itself most definitely is.
Seconded, regardless of whether the project is embedded ASM, JEE, Ada, or whatever. I've walked into a number of projects, either late-in-the-game when the project needs saved, or well afterwards when changes need made, and invariably the code is badly commented, buggy, and may or may not do what was intended. In situations like this, people go into ass-covering mode, so information is hard to get anyway... You just don't have time to sift through thousands of lines of code, figure the intent, find the bugs, quietly talk to each of the devs, compare notes with the architect(s), and finally get the work done. Accurate and comprehensive design docs can easily be the difference between project success or failure.
Maybe that's why so many software projects fail - people still don't treat it as a math and/or engineering discipline. Would you take someone seriously when they said they've written a proof that's mostly correct? Or someone who tries to build a two hundred thousand dollar span without blueprints and load analysis? Of course not, so why do guys who can string some computer code together persist in doing this in commercial projects?
Science is a hard mistress; she demands proof before making such claims. I prefer to think of her as a harsh mistress rather than a hard mistress, thanks.
For referene, see the civil rights movement, women's suffrage movement, India's break from British rule. Name one such success from the last two decades.
On a positive note though, I was also thinking if only someone could develop a car that runs on bullshit that Slashdot could save the planet. PV cells on the end of the fibre link that receives/. posts. Or maybe little nano-waterwheels that get spun by each photon of light as it passes (that's gotta be more effective than current PV tech:P).
I was more referring to the protection of entertainment media as a tool for much of the IP legislation that's come in over the last few years. As your post illustrates, patents, copyrights, and others, cannot be lumped together, nor is the impact of restricting the use of the knowledge contained in them equal on society. FWIW, the MP3 is a number argument is sketchy at best. What isn't so sketchy is MP3 as representation of the performance, or knowledge of the act: If you knew how to play it like that yourself, you (arguably) wouldn't have much use for the audio file. Indeed, legislation has been used to restrict this kind of knowledge through independently composed (eg copied by ear) lyrics and guitar tabs being DMCAed, not just audio files themselves.
Because the US economy is a now a service economy (the manufacturing base having long since migrated to places like China), intellectual property is our sole asset. Ergo, the protection of intellectual property rights deserves not only the highest priority, but also is key to the economic growth. When I read that, I mentally replace "intellectual property" with knowledge, or information if I'm feeling generous. Really, that's all it is. Which raises the question of the right to know things, the right to apply those things we know, perhaps things figured out independently of any "IP owner". Calling it property masks the real issue, which is putting arbitrary restrictions and repercussions on what people can do with what they know. That's the reason it's so offensive to/. regulars who's worlds revolve around knowledge, not because we want to download Britney's latest MP3. More "IP" protection (or restriction) won't help, just like more protection for physical trade didn't help a couple of decades ago.
While I agree with most of your post, I don't think it's a fair to call it a programmer issue. Maybe a creative person issue... where a painter would like to sell each print at full price, to reflect the sweat that went into the first one... but mostly I think it's a small business person issue.
Often, they think they have something special to sell - after all, they wrote - so they can charge like it's gold. I think that many of the tool vendors spend so much energy on their own products... often focusing narrowly on their clever feature Y... that they really forget there's a ton of competitive alternatives out there. In many instances it would make more sense to try to sell an Eclipse plugin that does clever feature Y and call it done (yes, I'm looking at you, embedded-C toolchain developers).
You see this in many small markets, indeed, even in small countries where company X thinks they have a monopoly of sorts, the price goes up, the service goes down, and customers start looking elsewhere. In hard-goods, that elsewhere became parallel and direct imports, while in this software scenario, we're looking at importing open source into our shops instead. Folks who don't know any better may still buy off-the-shelf, but those of us who need to be competitive to earn our own money will find the better options... be they compilers, office suites, or whatever.
One thing to remember is that there is various iterations of the cell processor. The Xbox is a 3 core version The Playstation. I believe the Playstation is a 6 core processor. The roadrunner will use a 8 core processor. IBM originally discussed having a 16 core processor. There was not much talk about it afterwards. My guess is that there was significant bus contention issues. The original Power4's shut down one of their cores while running at full speed to avoid contention. The Power6 was designed to overcome these issues. No, the XBox 360 has a three core PowerPC processor, not a Cell BE processor. The Cell BE in the PS3 has 1 PPE (Power core) and 7 SPEs (that "other" CPU core), while IBM apparently gets to use the fully functional Cells (PPE + 8 SPE) in their more expensive hardware. Those Cells with even fewer functioning SPEs might end up in HDTV TVs or similar.
It's still very cool considering the small time and cost involved. Even if not mm-perfect, it's still invaluable for travellers making plans and virtual tourists alike.
Should I be billed the same as someone streaming gigs to Tokyo? Of course not, but that's probably not technically possible to accurately track without massive hardware upgrades, and even then it sets a bad precedent of charging extra depending on destination. I think the precedent has already been set. Telcos have been doing this forever, with both landline and cellular calls, and some ISPs offer free/unlimited access to their FTP servers, for example. I don't think it's a stretch to say that traffic that stays on their network gets charged at a lower rate than traffic leaving their network (on the reasonable assumption that they buy their upstream bandwidth). It might be tricky to track it to the switch level, but tracking to the network gateway level should be no problem. In my country, it's win-win too, because free local traffic means less traffic over the few pipes out of the country, and that benefits everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but there's a reason why your company is "little" but D-link, Linksys, Airnet101, etc... are large.
"Sorry"? You say it like it's a bad thing. BTW, if you must, take Toyota as a counter example.
I'd argue that the problem lies with manufacturers. Yes, cheap crap will perform like cheap crap... BUT, manufacturers with any integrity should not be selling cheap crap. I sympathize with the customers ("consumers" to such vendors) who get ripped off, but they're just looking for the best deal - it's the vendors who are at fault for setting the expectation that their cheap product will perform properly. My little company sells moderately priced product, and I for one, won't compromise on quality when I sell a product. That means not being the cheapest, but I know my customers are getting something that a) works, and b)won't bite me in the ass later.
Did you consider that the pay is low because they want people who a) don't *need* to work (eg, other sources of income or independently wealthy) and b) will do the work for reasons other than money?
I can't see a downside from a user perspective, and the only Govt/ISP/etc justifications not to do this are an invasion of privacy (packet headers could be used for QoS, etc). It's like, I dunno, posting all your mail in an sealed envelope instead of on a postcard - you can still put an economy or airmail sticker on it, it just means the postman can't (easily) read your message anymore.
I love it how in these news snippets there is never any explanation of the technology, but long descriptions about the wonderful changes it will do to the world.
Back in my day we didn't call it a "news snippet", we called it a "press release".
well, the proof is in the pudding.
You're calling a dead woman "pudding"?
No mainstream/*nix operating system will render all these different font sizes as different sizes. I see no reason for this.
If that's true, something is broken... or maybe not, if you consider that a point (pt) is sometimes considered to be the smallest unit in typography.
Scaling applications to DPI is a separate problem, and one I believe HTML & SVG are very good at. I dont see how DPI is relevant to accurate sub-pixel font rendering, with the very specific exception of printing. If you can clarify how your post relate to sub pixel rendering I would be much obliged.
Perhaps you misunderstand the concept of font size, at least as it relates to DPI. A font size of 10 is most often 10 points rather than 10 pixels. A point is defined as 1/72 of an inch, so to display 10 point font correctly, it must be rendered 0.138 inches tall when viewed at 100% scaling. The DPI of the screen needs to be considered to render the font at the correct size, and the sub-pixel rendering is a factor when antialiasing the (often black/white) text on an LCD. Rendering pleasing and smooth fonts on an LCD is hard enough, and considering "non-standard" (eg, 96 DPI PC or the traditional 72 DPI Mac) scaling adds another layer of difficulty.
Subpixel rendering is not a factor in printing however, although the DPI of the printer itself most definitely is.
The first rule of Usenet is, you do not talk about usenet.
The second rule of Usenet it, YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET.
Fscking n00bs.
Seconded, regardless of whether the project is embedded ASM, JEE, Ada, or whatever. I've walked into a number of projects, either late-in-the-game when the project needs saved, or well afterwards when changes need made, and invariably the code is badly commented, buggy, and may or may not do what was intended. In situations like this, people go into ass-covering mode, so information is hard to get anyway... You just don't have time to sift through thousands of lines of code, figure the intent, find the bugs, quietly talk to each of the devs, compare notes with the architect(s), and finally get the work done. Accurate and comprehensive design docs can easily be the difference between project success or failure.
Maybe that's why so many software projects fail - people still don't treat it as a math and/or engineering discipline. Would you take someone seriously when they said they've written a proof that's mostly correct? Or someone who tries to build a two hundred thousand dollar span without blueprints and load analysis? Of course not, so why do guys who can string some computer code together persist in doing this in commercial projects?
Anyone want to buy a $485 wooden volume knob to go with it?
Here's a counter example, but I now conceded the issue is not AP and similar, but my local media removing those details.
Not good enough. University researchers get paid for their work too, but if the paper doesn't have their name on it, it's got no credibility.
Interesting that AP also doesn't credit the reporter/marketer/PR-dude who actually writes the articles.
Because it'll be enforced by law, probably for reasons of safety, or by some company policy that effects you.
I was more referring to the protection of entertainment media as a tool for much of the IP legislation that's come in over the last few years. As your post illustrates, patents, copyrights, and others, cannot be lumped together, nor is the impact of restricting the use of the knowledge contained in them equal on society. FWIW, the MP3 is a number argument is sketchy at best. What isn't so sketchy is MP3 as representation of the performance, or knowledge of the act: If you knew how to play it like that yourself, you (arguably) wouldn't have much use for the audio file. Indeed, legislation has been used to restrict this kind of knowledge through independently composed (eg copied by ear) lyrics and guitar tabs being DMCAed, not just audio files themselves.
While I agree with most of your post, I don't think it's a fair to call it a programmer issue. Maybe a creative person issue... where a painter would like to sell each print at full price, to reflect the sweat that went into the first one... but mostly I think it's a small business person issue.
Often, they think they have something special to sell - after all, they wrote - so they can charge like it's gold. I think that many of the tool vendors spend so much energy on their own products... often focusing narrowly on their clever feature Y... that they really forget there's a ton of competitive alternatives out there. In many instances it would make more sense to try to sell an Eclipse plugin that does clever feature Y and call it done (yes, I'm looking at you, embedded-C toolchain developers).
You see this in many small markets, indeed, even in small countries where company X thinks they have a monopoly of sorts, the price goes up, the service goes down, and customers start looking elsewhere. In hard-goods, that elsewhere became parallel and direct imports, while in this software scenario, we're looking at importing open source into our shops instead. Folks who don't know any better may still buy off-the-shelf, but those of us who need to be competitive to earn our own money will find the better options... be they compilers, office suites, or whatever.
It's still very cool considering the small time and cost involved. Even if not mm-perfect, it's still invaluable for travellers making plans and virtual tourists alike.