While I agree with most of your post, with these two points I do not....
No, Microsoft is pro-H.264 because H.264 is the standard for video compression.
Really, this one got me cracking up. Microsoft caring about standards is pretty hell-freezing-over-esque, as we have seen in the last 20 years. They want to kill off competiton, not much else.
If a Mac user wants WebM, he will simply install a Quicktime plugin.
Is this a reason for not supporting WebM by deafult? Wouldn't that be orthogonal to Apple's much lauded quest for the perfect user experience? There might be just a bit more to it (<hint>like killing off non-proprietary, uncontrollable formats</hint>).
The CPU usage seems to kick in randomly... it's down to ~15% after reloading the page. (btw I refer to one core of a Core2Duo) It's constantly between 15% and 60% when browsing around the site (each time waiting some seconds hoping things would "settle down", but they don't...). Checked in Firefox and Midori... such constant CPU burning is way too high in any case! (at least Dillo works perfectly =) )
The comment linking needs to be fixed as well. It's pretty cumbersome to find a comment again, even when clicking on it from your profile.
I too like the new uncluttered look... but the site has serious issues right now. - Having only this one tab open and doing nothing else, it uses 60% of a Core2Duo CPU. WTF? - Space bar / page down now requires scroling back up one or two lines, because the titlebar covers some text. - Too much padding. The body CSS seriously needs to change from "padding: 52px 1em 0"; to "padding: 52px 0 0;" (and the top accordingly) because that outer border is completely useless. - Likewise the comments could be padded tighter. - When selecting (just click into the text) a story on the front page, the rounded shadow looks really nice. Why not have that for all the articles instead of just the selected one? The text looks somewhat "free floating" right now.
That's what I found distracting within about the first three minutes...
The other posters have already done a good job of explaining. I'll add a graphical help.
Grab a sheet of paper and draw a horizontal line, on which you mark 0 at the left end and 2 at the right end. Now mark 1 in the middle with a dash. Then mark 0.5. Is it the same as 1? No, there's quite a bit of space in between. Now mark 0.666... (two thirds). It's an infinite decimal number, but it's clearly not at the same place as 1 because there is obviously some space between. Finally, mark 0.999.... As you have hopefullly understood by now, there is nothing between 0.999... and 1. Hence on your paper, these two are for all intents and purposes represented by the same dash.
0.999...(1000 times)...9 would not be the same as 1, but slightly to the left. Thus it's not 1. 0.999...(infinite times)...998 doesn't make sense. Theoretically it would be smaller than 0.999..., but how do you add some arbitrary number the end of an infinite 0.999... sequence?
Once you have a firm enough grasp of this, you may want to try learning the epsilon-delta formalisation. Fun stuff for a certain type of mind.
It's mainly produced by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH in Zürich) and built at the PSI (a research facility near Zürich). Ya, there are also some CalTech guys participating.
The problem is exactly that h264 was owned by some market actors. The solution is a codec that isn't owned by anyone.
What can Google do except maintain their version of VP8 and offer it to the world? They can't demand royalties (like MPEG LA with h264), they can't dictate who is allowed to implement it (like MPEG LA with h264), they can't threaten competition with pooled patents (like MPEG LA with h264) and they can't stop forks (like MPEG LA with h264) in case enough people think they do a bad job of stewarding VP8.
I think you may slightly misjudge IE's position. It's generally below 50%, and not first in Europe, Asia and South America.
Look around, everyone who has a clue and the ability has already switched away from IE... if you take away the "open The Internetz with dis button" folks, IE's market share probably barely makes it into the top 5.
Anyway, this is moot, since luckily Google supports even IE;)
Why do you think Google only plans for short-term gains? Them caring only about serving ads is quite an assumption I'd say... and not at all something we've come to expect from them.
Yet they will not open up the bread-and-butter of their business.
Name one single corporation that would. Just one. And how easy is it to switch away from Google's services? How simple is it to search with Bing from right now on? Do they use proprietary, incompatible formats to store your data? Do they forbid you to take your pictures or code elsewhere? Or can they even make it any simpler than it is now!? How's that for open?
And now comparing these issues with the other tech giants, is there anyone less hypocritical than Google? (OK, from those claiming to push "openness"... Microsoft is honestly trying to screw you)
I generally like Google but I am wary of them. I don't see them as some kind of angel the way the fanboys do. I make efforts to avoid their tracking and marketing devices. My best assurance that they will "do no evil" to me is to make sure they don't track me.
Spot on. NoScript and AdBlock is a must, and thus I don't worry that much when searching with Google (and I very rarely use their other stuff).
I have no reason to believe that they wouldn't become the next dominant, bullying, monopolistic Microsoft given half the chance. That's more or less what every corporation would love to do within its industry. It's an inherent part of the publically-traded corporate model that any good that is done is a veneer designed to put a positive spin on the interests of the shareholders.
Sad truth, but I think as long as Larry and Sergey stay around, their "do no evil" mantra will have some influence.
It is funny you mention that since I believe Microsoft managed to negotiate terms for their new WP7 phones so that the carriers couldn't block an update for more than one update cycle.
It doesn't work that way with FOSS. You offer the software with as much freedom as possible, and others take it if they want to. Microsoft can simply deny WP7 licenses to those not playing to their tune. Google can't, and thats the very beauty of it (benefits >> drawbacks).
The truth of the matter is that Google probably doesn't care. They just want a phone out their that's making Google searches and serving up Google ads through apps. They don't care if it's a 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, or 2.3 Android phone.
Why should a corporation not care about it's platform/product? Let's paraphrase: The truth of the matter is that Microsoft|Apple probably doesn't care. They just want a phone out their that's running Microsoft|Apple sanctioned code and serving up *|iAd ads through apps. They don't care if it's a WM6.5 or WP7 | iOS 3 or 4 phone.
Ironically, this version fits the truth way better given the respective companies' track record and ideological stance.
* whatever they come up with, I haven't checked
Google is only as open as serves their own interests.
Any corporation in a capitalistic environment exhibits behaviour that servers their own interests. Point is, Google is still way more open and responsible than the other tech giants.
[...] but it will be a cold day in hell before Google open sources their search algorithms.
Not meant as an insult, but am I the only one struck by this comment as startingly incoherent?
It may well still happen because all the iPhones and similar in the world suddenly couldn't play youtube content because they depended on efficient ASICs that can't be adapted to WebM and there isn't enough generic processing power to do it without such an ASIC.
What ASICs? Video decoding is usually implemented in DSPs, so even Apple has the theoretical ability to easily play back VP8 efficiently. The IP is just now being distributed, decoders are starting to get programmed and will be used by future Android handsets... While iPhones may be stuck on h264 if Apple really acts unreasonably, they don't pose a threat for WebM adoption, given their smaller market share (compared to future VP8-enabled devices).
Switzerland has a 46% gun ownership rate, ranking in third of the listed 34 (3/34). That's because every male (and female) can chose to enter milita service (it was "mandatory" for males until a few years ago, and now less people enter the military every year) and gets a rifle.
However, a gun isn't any good without ammo, and that is stored in "weaponaries". It's harder to obtain ammo than a rifle, whereas in the USA this goes hand in hand. Thus, reducing the ability of the gun owners to actually fire the weapons certainly plays a role in the statistics.
Then again, gun ownership does correlate with gun crime. While Switzerland has a good reputation for being "civilised" and relatively crime free, the relative gun crime rate is quite high. What else to expect when so many guns are in circulation? Anyway, the country is in the middle of a "gun ban" national vote.
1) agree 2) agree 3) http://www.battlefieldbadcompany2.com/globalstats [battlefiel...mpany2.com] Both consoles have over 90k combined playing hours each, while PC gamers only accumulated 55k so far and have been nearly doubly as "efficient" in total (regarding this challenge). Which of course makes one PC gamer 3-4 times "better" than a console gamer;) So your Microsoft analogy doesn't fit the case at all
I know you're replying to a rather trollish parent, but still I'd like to remind you not to let facts get in the way of your biased presentation.
Assumingly you refer to ReadyBoost (which was introduced in Windows only around 2006): isn't that about the fastest way to trash your USB drive? Further assuming you are inclined to do so on a UNIX-like system, say Ubuntu:
- unmount the USB volume - sudo mkswap/dev/sdX1 - sudo swapon -p 32767/dev/sdX1 - increase swappiness to be on Windows levels so your disk gets aggressively cached (may need to tune the VFS caching too)
This has been available for decades, and it shows how ReadyBoost is mainly the marketing department "boosting" a simple technique. Why noone has bothered to automate the above steps (as done by ReadyBoost)? First there is usually no need to at least on Linux-based systems (compare memory requirements), secondly having a pen drive stick out of your laptop all the time just to make it a bit faster is both cumbersome and wasteful, thirdly there are much better techniques on RAM-constrained machines.
As for TRIM... well, the 2.6.32 kernel has been released in 2009, there were two major Ubuntu releases with that kernel resp. a newer one, and 'discard' (TRIM) support takes 5-10 minutes of additional setup (I installed Ubuntu on a SSD MBP a few weeks ago). Granted, it doesn't "just work out of the box" (point for Windows!), but it works well enough. Concerning file system support: the current standard ext4 and the future standard btrfs are discard-capable, as are number of the more obscure ones. Others don't support it, but we have the same situation on Windows... only 50% of the commonly used file systems know TRIM (NTFS does, FAT32 doesn't). See, just a matter of presentation;)
I'm a programmer and a tournament chess player. Your points just reflect the grossly skewed views laymen and players under maybe 2200 ELO (candidate degree) have of chess.
There is little sense in correlating piece delta with winning margin. Especially when sacrificing a piece in order to gain tactical advantage, this measurement would return a lot of false positives. Let's try one of those beloved car analogies: Car A and car B are both faster than car X, but Car B is lighter, so Car A must be better because it's heavier but still won against car X. No, I don't see the sense in that either.
Also the count of moves until one gives up*** might give some insight into the player strength difference, but still isn't a convincing way of measuring performance. My very last game some days ago was essentially over after 35 moves, but my opponent dragged it to the 62nd before giving up. During that time, he had almost no chance of not losing, but hoped for lack of concentration / a blunder on my part (which is not noble, but a valid strategy). On the other hand, in a game a few weeks ago, I've surrendered in the 21st move because the game turned hopeless for me. My opponent was nominally about the same strength as I am. Also note that this is a very fast game, and 10 moves usually only happen in quickdraw games. And ending a game by checkmate in 2 moves arguably requires more skill than ending it in 4.
One generally accepted method of measuring the margin is comparison with an AI. Look at Crafty's source for ideas on how to measure and quantify the position, but take into account that these methods have long been surpassed by much more powerful AIs (notably Rybka) whose source code isn't accessible. The main problem with this is: whose vendor's engine should one use? How to guarantee fairness?
*** The count to checkmate is completely unrealistic anyway.
Selective quoting doesn't get you far when I've addressed the issue in the same comment.
I might as well selectively quote since you're selectively reading.
I don't realise I've read anything selectively. Care to show a case in point?
But the point still stands: accessibility matters, artificial barriers are bad.
If there was an artificial barrier - you'd have a point. But there isn't, you've created the whole thing out of thin are. So all you have is confused flailing and ever more strained and bizarre analogies in order to create the impression that there is one.
The muslim analogy wasn't exactly serious, I hoped the leading sentence was enough to make that clear.
Apart from that... The "generic" way to solve this problem is to install Windows or OSX, and how is that not a barrier (both money and time-wise)? The alternative is to tweak the guts of your browser... and again, how is that not a barrier for the majority of users out there? Neither my mother, sister, girlfriend, my girlfriend's mother, father, brother, and two of my neighbours (among many others) could do it, and they're all running Ubuntu*. Works extremely well for them, but they're all excluded from viewing this image by poor choice of presentation technology.
I know enough people running another OS than Win/OSX and have no problem tweaking their user agent or running Windows in a VM, but there's enough of those who do.
* And I've only ever touched three of those machines.
Selective quoting doesn't get you far when I've addressed the issue in the same comment. I repeat:
The same way it's not worth to me spending time and money just to view this image.
It's my choice (for whatever reason), and it's a nontrivial effort to get Windows. I'd venture the choice of operating environment is a tad more sovereign than the ability to view a fancy image.
Now... no desaster happened, they miss out on me as a viewer. In addition, as others have pointed out meanwhile, there are cheats to view it on other OSes than Windows and OSX. But the point still stands: accessibility matters, artificial barriers are bad.
Or, as an extreme example (taken ad absurdum, just to make some kind of maybe not exactly the same point;)): Just because you chose to be muslim but we chose to serve only pork here (even though we could do otherwise), it's your own fault if you starve. And it's therefore no discrimination against muslims to remove all non-pork dishes from the menu.
So you say I should wait until monday, go to a store, fork over some cash to buy a copy of Windows, spend some time setting it up and installing Silverlight... and then claim it's unreasonable to say that they should've chosen a format that is easily available to everyone?
Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari. Many people could if they really stretched out, got some credits, etc... but it's not worth to them. The same way it's not worth to me spending time and money just to view this image.
Did Apple introduce successfuly a significant user interface change to the market utilizing tablets and touchscreens? I would say yes.
I'm with you right up to this point. What you say is true if worded as carefully. But "introducing innovation to the world" != "making the large public want it". The one talks about technical merits, hard facts and "measurable" quality. The other emphasises marketing, sales tactics and soft skills.
People are confusing the two, and maybe I'm being too pedantic, but this leads to really strange statements... like that of an iPhone 4 buyer made yesterday in the reader's comments section of my local newspaper. I transcribe:
"[...] I mean, just compare the quality of the iPhone (material, components and the overall system) with all the other devices available. It's easy to see that Apple's products are superior in every way. That's why I don't mind standing in queue to get such a device."
Tell me, do people think this way because they read the facts or because of Apple's marketing and the admittedly nice looking exterior of their devices?
Anyway, this thread has run it's course, so you may have a last word if you wish:)
Just one more thing though...
Apple/Xerox(since there was cooperation) introduced the GUI.
Well... Xerox made the Alto before Apple was even founded, so I wouldn't exactly call that a cooperation;) It's true that Apple was one of the first to follow suit with the GUI, but no need for overattribution.
Why should I own a phrase I've coined in the same way I own a pencil I've bought. You know... in terms of borrowing, lending, having it stolen, etc.
I'm a software developer myself, but it's pretty clear to me that I don't "own" my code in the same way I own my property. I do projects of my own and work for hire. The latter is obvious: I offer a service and get paid for it. My money comes from my work, not unlimited copies of it. The first one is a bit tricky, but as I said, it's clear that there is little relation to actual owning of property. Mabe it helps that I release most of the stuff I do for myself as FOSS;)
Sorry but teams of hobbyists do not organize themselves on the weekends to create financial analysis software.
No, but teams of mathematicians with programming experience. They write financial analysis software because they get paid by financial institutions and government agencies to do so, and this has nothing to do with copyright whatsoever. While we're at it, this nicely illustrates the point that monetary compensation should be granted for actual work, not for offering you a copy (which costs me nothing to make) of something I made 5 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't own a slave.
Congratulations, you're not a free human being.
(OK, assuming you currently live in a jurisdiction where slavery is forbidden...)
While I agree with most of your post, with these two points I do not....
No, Microsoft is pro-H.264 because H.264 is the standard for video compression.
Really, this one got me cracking up. Microsoft caring about standards is pretty hell-freezing-over-esque, as we have seen in the last 20 years.
They want to kill off competiton, not much else.
If a Mac user wants WebM, he will simply install a Quicktime plugin.
Is this a reason for not supporting WebM by deafult? Wouldn't that be orthogonal to Apple's much lauded quest for the perfect user experience? There might be just a bit more to it (<hint>like killing off non-proprietary, uncontrollable formats</hint>).
The CPU usage seems to kick in randomly... it's down to ~15% after reloading the page. (btw I refer to one core of a Core2Duo)
It's constantly between 15% and 60% when browsing around the site (each time waiting some seconds hoping things would "settle down", but they don't...).
Checked in Firefox and Midori... such constant CPU burning is way too high in any case! (at least Dillo works perfectly =) )
The comment linking needs to be fixed as well. It's pretty cumbersome to find a comment again, even when clicking on it from your profile.
I too like the new uncluttered look... but the site has serious issues right now.
- Having only this one tab open and doing nothing else, it uses 60% of a Core2Duo CPU. WTF?
- Space bar / page down now requires scroling back up one or two lines, because the titlebar covers some text.
- Too much padding. The body CSS seriously needs to change from "padding: 52px 1em 0"; to "padding: 52px 0 0;" (and the top accordingly) because that outer border is completely useless.
- Likewise the comments could be padded tighter.
- When selecting (just click into the text) a story on the front page, the rounded shadow looks really nice. Why not have that for all the articles instead of just the selected one? The text looks somewhat "free floating" right now.
That's what I found distracting within about the first three minutes...
The other posters have already done a good job of explaining. I'll add a graphical help.
Grab a sheet of paper and draw a horizontal line, on which you mark 0 at the left end and 2 at the right end.
Now mark 1 in the middle with a dash. Then mark 0.5. Is it the same as 1? No, there's quite a bit of space in between.
Now mark 0.666... (two thirds). It's an infinite decimal number, but it's clearly not at the same place as 1 because there is obviously some space between.
Finally, mark 0.999....
As you have hopefullly understood by now, there is nothing between 0.999... and 1. Hence on your paper, these two are for all intents and purposes represented by the same dash.
0.999...(1000 times)...9 would not be the same as 1, but slightly to the left. Thus it's not 1.
0.999...(infinite times)...998 doesn't make sense. Theoretically it would be smaller than 0.999..., but how do you add some arbitrary number the end of an infinite 0.999... sequence?
Once you have a firm enough grasp of this, you may want to try learning the epsilon-delta formalisation. Fun stuff for a certain type of mind.
It's mainly produced by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH in Zürich) and built at the PSI (a research facility near Zürich).
Ya, there are also some CalTech guys participating.
The problem is exactly that h264 was owned by some market actors. The solution is a codec that isn't owned by anyone.
What can Google do except maintain their version of VP8 and offer it to the world? They can't demand royalties (like MPEG LA with h264), they can't dictate who is allowed to implement it (like MPEG LA with h264), they can't threaten competition with pooled patents (like MPEG LA with h264) and they can't stop forks (like MPEG LA with h264) in case enough people think they do a bad job of stewarding VP8.
I think you may slightly misjudge IE's position. It's generally below 50%, and not first in Europe, Asia and South America.
Look around, everyone who has a clue and the ability has already switched away from IE... if you take away the "open The Internetz with dis button" folks, IE's market share probably barely makes it into the top 5.
Anyway, this is moot, since luckily Google supports even IE ;)
Why do you think Google only plans for short-term gains? Them caring only about serving ads is quite an assumption I'd say... and not at all something we've come to expect from them.
Yet they will not open up the bread-and-butter of their business.
Name one single corporation that would. Just one.
And how easy is it to switch away from Google's services? How simple is it to search with Bing from right now on? Do they use proprietary, incompatible formats to store your data? Do they forbid you to take your pictures or code elsewhere? Or can they even make it any simpler than it is now!?
How's that for open?
And now comparing these issues with the other tech giants, is there anyone less hypocritical than Google? (OK, from those claiming to push "openness"... Microsoft is honestly trying to screw you)
I generally like Google but I am wary of them. I don't see them as some kind of angel the way the fanboys do. I make efforts to avoid their tracking and marketing devices. My best assurance that they will "do no evil" to me is to make sure they don't track me.
Spot on. NoScript and AdBlock is a must, and thus I don't worry that much when searching with Google (and I very rarely use their other stuff).
I have no reason to believe that they wouldn't become the next dominant, bullying, monopolistic Microsoft given half the chance. That's more or less what every corporation would love to do within its industry. It's an inherent part of the publically-traded corporate model that any good that is done is a veneer designed to put a positive spin on the interests of the shareholders.
Sad truth, but I think as long as Larry and Sergey stay around, their "do no evil" mantra will have some influence.
It is funny you mention that since I believe Microsoft managed to negotiate terms for their new WP7 phones so that the carriers couldn't block an update for more than one update cycle.
It doesn't work that way with FOSS. You offer the software with as much freedom as possible, and others take it if they want to.
Microsoft can simply deny WP7 licenses to those not playing to their tune.
Google can't, and thats the very beauty of it (benefits >> drawbacks).
The truth of the matter is that Google probably doesn't care. They just want a phone out their that's making Google searches and serving up Google ads through apps. They don't care if it's a 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, or 2.3 Android phone.
Why should a corporation not care about it's platform/product? Let's paraphrase:
The truth of the matter is that Microsoft|Apple probably doesn't care. They just want a phone out their that's running Microsoft|Apple sanctioned code and serving up *|iAd ads through apps. They don't care if it's a WM6.5 or WP7 | iOS 3 or 4 phone.
Ironically, this version fits the truth way better given the respective companies' track record and ideological stance.
* whatever they come up with, I haven't checked
Google is only as open as serves their own interests.
Any corporation in a capitalistic environment exhibits behaviour that servers their own interests. Point is, Google is still way more open and responsible than the other tech giants.
[...] but it will be a cold day in hell before Google open sources their search algorithms.
Not meant as an insult, but am I the only one struck by this comment as startingly incoherent?
It may well still happen because all the iPhones and similar in the world suddenly couldn't play youtube content because they depended on efficient ASICs that can't be adapted to WebM and there isn't enough generic processing power to do it without such an ASIC.
What ASICs?
Video decoding is usually implemented in DSPs, so even Apple has the theoretical ability to easily play back VP8 efficiently. The IP is just now being distributed, decoders are starting to get programmed and will be used by future Android handsets...
While iPhones may be stuck on h264 if Apple really acts unreasonably, they don't pose a threat for WebM adoption, given their smaller market share (compared to future VP8-enabled devices).
Switzerland has a 46% gun ownership rate, ranking in third of the listed 34 (3/34). That's because every male (and female) can chose to enter milita service (it was "mandatory" for males until a few years ago, and now less people enter the military every year) and gets a rifle.
However, a gun isn't any good without ammo, and that is stored in "weaponaries". It's harder to obtain ammo than a rifle, whereas in the USA this goes hand in hand. Thus, reducing the ability of the gun owners to actually fire the weapons certainly plays a role in the statistics.
Then again, gun ownership does correlate with gun crime.
While Switzerland has a good reputation for being "civilised" and relatively crime free, the relative gun crime rate is quite high.
What else to expect when so many guns are in circulation?
Anyway, the country is in the middle of a "gun ban" national vote.
1) agree ;)
2) agree
3) http://www.battlefieldbadcompany2.com/globalstats [battlefiel...mpany2.com]
Both consoles have over 90k combined playing hours each, while PC gamers only accumulated 55k so far and have been nearly doubly as "efficient" in total (regarding this challenge).
Which of course makes one PC gamer 3-4 times "better" than a console gamer
So your Microsoft analogy doesn't fit the case at all
I know you're replying to a rather trollish parent, but still I'd like to remind you not to let facts get in the way of your biased presentation.
Assumingly you refer to ReadyBoost (which was introduced in Windows only around 2006): isn't that about the fastest way to trash your USB drive? Further assuming you are inclined to do so on a UNIX-like system, say Ubuntu:
- unmount the USB volume /dev/sdX1 /dev/sdX1
- sudo mkswap
- sudo swapon -p 32767
- increase swappiness to be on Windows levels so your disk gets aggressively cached (may need to tune the VFS caching too)
This has been available for decades, and it shows how ReadyBoost is mainly the marketing department "boosting" a simple technique.
Why noone has bothered to automate the above steps (as done by ReadyBoost)? First there is usually no need to at least on Linux-based systems (compare memory requirements), secondly having a pen drive stick out of your laptop all the time just to make it a bit faster is both cumbersome and wasteful, thirdly there are much better techniques on RAM-constrained machines.
As for TRIM... well, the 2.6.32 kernel has been released in 2009, there were two major Ubuntu releases with that kernel resp. a newer one, and 'discard' (TRIM) support takes 5-10 minutes of additional setup (I installed Ubuntu on a SSD MBP a few weeks ago). Granted, it doesn't "just work out of the box" (point for Windows!), but it works well enough. ;)
Concerning file system support: the current standard ext4 and the future standard btrfs are discard-capable, as are number of the more obscure ones.
Others don't support it, but we have the same situation on Windows... only 50% of the commonly used file systems know TRIM (NTFS does, FAT32 doesn't). See, just a matter of presentation
Not sure if he's really solved it or "merely" on the edge of solving it as well. ;)
In any case, he obviously had to publish it now: he's around 39
Of course I'm hoping for him and the larger maths/crypto community that this holds.
1. Enforce strong patent system
2. Spread patented genetic material all over domestic agriculture
3. Sue farmers
4. Profit!!!
I'm a programmer and a tournament chess player.
Your points just reflect the grossly skewed views laymen and players under maybe 2200 ELO (candidate degree) have of chess.
There is little sense in correlating piece delta with winning margin.
Especially when sacrificing a piece in order to gain tactical advantage, this measurement would return a lot of false positives.
Let's try one of those beloved car analogies:
Car A and car B are both faster than car X, but Car B is lighter, so Car A must be better because it's heavier but still won against car X. No, I don't see the sense in that either.
Also the count of moves until one gives up*** might give some insight into the player strength difference, but still isn't a convincing way of measuring performance.
My very last game some days ago was essentially over after 35 moves, but my opponent dragged it to the 62nd before giving up. During that time, he had almost no chance of not losing, but hoped for lack of concentration / a blunder on my part (which is not noble, but a valid strategy).
On the other hand, in a game a few weeks ago, I've surrendered in the 21st move because the game turned hopeless for me. My opponent was nominally about the same strength as I am.
Also note that this is a very fast game, and 10 moves usually only happen in quickdraw games. And ending a game by checkmate in 2 moves arguably requires more skill than ending it in 4.
One generally accepted method of measuring the margin is comparison with an AI. Look at Crafty's source for ideas on how to measure and quantify the position, but take into account that these methods have long been surpassed by much more powerful AIs (notably Rybka) whose source code isn't accessible.
The main problem with this is: whose vendor's engine should one use? How to guarantee fairness?
*** The count to checkmate is completely unrealistic anyway.
Oh well...
I might as well selectively quote since you're selectively reading.
I don't realise I've read anything selectively. Care to show a case in point?
If there was an artificial barrier - you'd have a point. But there isn't, you've created the whole thing out of thin are. So all you have is confused flailing and ever more strained and bizarre analogies in order to create the impression that there is one.
The muslim analogy wasn't exactly serious, I hoped the leading sentence was enough to make that clear.
Apart from that...
The "generic" way to solve this problem is to install Windows or OSX, and how is that not a barrier (both money and time-wise)?
The alternative is to tweak the guts of your browser... and again, how is that not a barrier for the majority of users out there?
Neither my mother, sister, girlfriend, my girlfriend's mother, father, brother, and two of my neighbours (among many others) could do it, and they're all running Ubuntu*. Works extremely well for them, but they're all excluded from viewing this image by poor choice of presentation technology.
I know enough people running another OS than Win/OSX and have no problem tweaking their user agent or running Windows in a VM, but there's enough of those who do.
* And I've only ever touched three of those machines.
True, I didn't know you could cheat the page in order to view the image. Thankfully others have pointed out how.
Selective quoting doesn't get you far when I've addressed the issue in the same comment. I repeat:
The same way it's not worth to me spending time and money just to view this image.
It's my choice (for whatever reason), and it's a nontrivial effort to get Windows.
I'd venture the choice of operating environment is a tad more sovereign than the ability to view a fancy image.
Now... no desaster happened, they miss out on me as a viewer. In addition, as others have pointed out meanwhile, there are cheats to view it on other OSes than Windows and OSX.
But the point still stands: accessibility matters, artificial barriers are bad.
Or, as an extreme example (taken ad absurdum, just to make some kind of maybe not exactly the same point ;)):
Just because you chose to be muslim but we chose to serve only pork here (even though we could do otherwise), it's your own fault if you starve. And it's therefore no discrimination against muslims to remove all non-pork dishes from the menu.
So you say I should wait until monday, go to a store, fork over some cash to buy a copy of Windows, spend some time setting it up and installing Silverlight... and then claim it's unreasonable to say that they should've chosen a format that is easily available to everyone?
Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari.
Many people could if they really stretched out, got some credits, etc... but it's not worth to them.
The same way it's not worth to me spending time and money just to view this image.
I have to agree.
I'd really like to see that image, but I'm not going to waste hours and money for this.
Did Apple introduce successfuly a significant user interface change to the market utilizing tablets and touchscreens? I would say yes.
I'm with you right up to this point.
What you say is true if worded as carefully.
But "introducing innovation to the world" != "making the large public want it". The one talks about technical merits, hard facts and "measurable" quality. The other emphasises marketing, sales tactics and soft skills.
People are confusing the two, and maybe I'm being too pedantic, but this leads to really strange statements... like that of an iPhone 4 buyer made yesterday in the reader's comments section of my local newspaper.
I transcribe:
"[...] I mean, just compare the quality of the iPhone (material, components and the overall system) with all the other devices available. It's easy to see that Apple's products are superior in every way. That's why I don't mind standing in queue to get such a device."
Tell me, do people think this way because they read the facts or because of Apple's marketing and the admittedly nice looking exterior of their devices?
Anyway, this thread has run it's course, so you may have a last word if you wish :)
Just one more thing though...
Apple/Xerox(since there was cooperation) introduced the GUI.
Well... Xerox made the Alto before Apple was even founded, so I wouldn't exactly call that a cooperation ;)
It's true that Apple was one of the first to follow suit with the GUI, but no need for overattribution.
We might have a culture clash here...
Why should I own a phrase I've coined in the same way I own a pencil I've bought. You know... in terms of borrowing, lending, having it stolen, etc.
I'm a software developer myself, but it's pretty clear to me that I don't "own" my code in the same way I own my property. ;)
I do projects of my own and work for hire. The latter is obvious: I offer a service and get paid for it. My money comes from my work, not unlimited copies of it. The first one is a bit tricky, but as I said, it's clear that there is little relation to actual owning of property.
Mabe it helps that I release most of the stuff I do for myself as FOSS
Sorry but teams of hobbyists do not organize themselves on the weekends to create financial analysis software.
No, but teams of mathematicians with programming experience.
They write financial analysis software because they get paid by financial institutions and government agencies to do so, and this has nothing to do with copyright whatsoever.
While we're at it, this nicely illustrates the point that monetary compensation should be granted for actual work, not for offering you a copy (which costs me nothing to make) of something I made 5 years ago.