Posts by ThomH

Re: What is MPEG-LA's take-away?

It's always possible that Google paid for a simple perpetual licence, especially if the patents the MPEG LA found didn't add up to a particularly strong collection. VP8 was bought and open sourced so it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think Google might just say 'okay, so it'll have cost us slightly more than we thought' .

Alternatively, maybe Google's counter-attack patent collection twisted the MPEG LA's arm? They've got a commercial interest in keeping their H.264 patent pool customers happy.

Re: Disagreed

There's a Nyquist element to it; the lower the resolution the lower the frequency of signal an image can contain — in layman's terms, lower density = less contrast. You can antialias so that the pixels aren't obvious but there's a physical limit to the amount of information you can present. When you step up to a display that includes all that extra information you probably still can't see the individual pixels but you can tell that edges are sharper and more lifelike, on text, on images and everywhere else, and you can then perceive a certain lack of sharp focus when you go back to the old display.

So it's really nothing to do with whether you can see the individual pixels or not, it's about how much information (in the digital signal processing sense) can be packed into an area and therefore how close an approximation a screen can be to actual printed text.

Re: Still with the tincy-wincy liddle screen? (re: JDX)

In terms of points-per-inch* Apple currently supports exactly two sizes — 163 and 132. The iPad Mini is the old iPad resolution at the iPod/iPhone density. So I guess it'd be within the established parameters for a larger iPhone to go the other way; take the current 163 and turn it into a 132 for an almost 25% increase in size, going from a 4" screen to a 5".

There's an argument that'd be no further fragmentation as Apple already mostly recommends the same point size of widgets for both devices.

* given that Apple maintain a distinction between points and pixels, so that retina and non-retina code looks identical.

Re: 2p

You're talking voodoo [economics].

Re: If Mobes and fondleslabs (@David Cantrell, mutatedwombat )

If your phone is locked then you can't join another network, though plenty exist. If your console is locked then you can't buy games from another source, of which none exist. It's cause and effect but a real difference, at least when it comes to temporary purposive exceptions to existing laws.

Re: the PC model; I don't think the 3DO was the same thing at all. It was custom developed hardware with a single stationary target. So lack of subsidies was a real issue — compare and contrast with other consoles that typically cost quite a bit less than the hardware cost at launch, and with the PC that slowly gained steam as a gaming device over more than a decade.

I think that the problem with the PC now is simply that you can buy a very expensive one so some people do buy a very expensive one so that moves the centre of gravity for games. PC gaming is likely to remain more expensive than console gaming because nobody can put a foot down and say 'there is no choice for anybody; all must stick with the older technology in order to reduce cost for new owners and to keep things simple'. For people that game on PCs, that's probably a good thing as they retain the freedom to spend more on a better box if they want to.

Re: Oh FFS

Based on the spec at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec the objective is to have Mir sitting underneath QT. So at least KDE should be in.

Re: Can anyone explain why ...

I can explain the theory. By reducing what the connector does to 'a serial bidirectional stream of data' you turn all possible external connectors into mere software extensions. Whatever you want to output must already be data within the device, so you export that data over the connector and let the cable worry about reformatting it.

In this case that appears likely to have put some sort of video codec into the loop between device and cable and leaves the cable having to decompress video and run a framebuffer.

So what Apple has done, in contrast to the single-port Android phones, is made no concessions whatsoever to the two or three cables it's pretty obvious most people are going to use in real life right now. I guess the calculation was that the chips that have to go into the cables are going to be very cheap very soon and they need a connector that they can stick with for ten or more years in order to ensure accessory lock-in. There's probably also an argument that they've overreacted to the old connector having long disused pins for Firewire, still having what will very soon be obsolete pins for analogue video, etc, etc.

Are you sure you're not being a bit vague about the difference between civil and criminal law? And possibly about the difference between disclosure (ie, when a party becomes aware that evidence exists) and inspection (ie, when you deliver that evidence that is already known to exist)?

Re: Questions (@David Hicks)

Surely it depends how that SD card slot is wired up internally? It's normal for them to reside on the USB bus (just like the keyboard and trackpad, usually) so if a system is USB 2.0 only then the SD card slot is likely limited to that bandwidth.

Re: @Flawless (@Sisk)

In this case Sim City 2000 remains on sale, via gog.com, for a grand total of $6. So regardless of the illegality of abandonware, ripping this game off has no moral justification either.

@AC

More likely Samsung see the value in the idea and therefore think it's a useful* thing to add to their handsets. Because all it does is reproduce the well-established historical look of tickets on a digital screen they don't see any IP hurdle to including it.

I don't like the copying debate because it sort of endorses the idea that there's necessarily always something wrong in copying — that if any feature of your product has any close antecedent then you've no right to claim creativity. In this case it's clear that the Apple feature has inspired the Samsung but I don't see that there's anything wrong with that, especially if Samsung end up doing it better. On a technical level, Apple's implementation is very lacking as every app that wants to put something into the passbook has to push it there, which in most apps means making your booking then digging through submenus to find the 'put into Passbook' option. If I've booked something in a compatible app, the pass should just be there in the Passbook; I shouldn't have to think about whether it's pushed or pulled and I definitely shouldn't have to do anything manually.

* Freudian typo: sueful.

Re: Optional

That wasn't a vote, it was a write-in campaign, and I think it was pretty harmless considering the first USS Enterprise dates from 1775 and took part in the War of Independence.

Re: The best mobile OS in my view...

AmigaOS didn't even get a standard widget set until 1990 and never had protected memory. One therefore has to question the designation of 'best in class' when e.g. OS/2 supplied both in 1988.

Android, iOS and other handset OSes are designed so that the user never explicitly closes programs. That's why it isn't particularly intuitive on either of them — whether it's iOS's long press or Android's digging through the system settings. Thinking that you need to close programs is akin to a superstitious belief.

It is sad that people didn't want WebOS but it was pushed very heavily, with TV commercials featuring U2 and deliberate public spats with Apple (ending up in the USB Implementers Forum if memory serves) to get the bloggers on side. People simply didn't want it, because 'proper multitasking' actually isn't a feature they care about. The availability of Angry Birds, Temple Run, etc, is more interesting. Consumers are more interested in the total sum of what they can do with a device than with the technical way in which it is done.

Re: There are lots of cross-platform solutions

I think you're being seriously paranoid — proprietary toolkits are no more "designed to lock you into a particular platform" than cars are designed to pollute the air or houses are designed to reduce the amount of public space.

I think it's the combination of having $137bn in reserves and shares that are about a third down from their 52-week high that is probably bring people out of the woodwork. They probably feel either like they're owed a payout for loyalty or that it's worth chancing it anyway.

SimCity 3000 wouldn't have been so bad but for the forced parades — any time you're doing reasonably well the citizens decide to hold a parade in your honour. In a move of fantastic wisdom the user can't skip the parades; you're forced to sit around at the slowest time scale until they stop. That just kills the whole experience as suddenly you're incentivised not to do too well.

Re: I've been trying it. (@JDX)

The boring historical version is that PostScript was the standard for high end printers so several vendors built desktop platforms around PostScript as the description language for drawing on-screen rather than rolling their own versions of QuickDraw or GDI or whatever — Sun was one (with NeWS), Next Computer was another. PostScript is a full programming language* and when adapting NextStep into OS X Apple looked at the licensing fees for the implementation NextStep had used and decided instead to keep the same primitive drawing semantics but do away with the language.

Separately, over at Adobe they designed PDF as a record of the output of a PostScript program (so, to spend storage in order to save on complexity, at least initially). So PDF also inherits the same primitive drawing semantics as PostScript.

That made it easy for Apple to add PDF rendering and print to PDF to its operating system and all applications just work. There's no translation layer whatsoever, the drawing operations are just serialised and stored or deserialised and performed. As iOS is a close relative of OS X, with exactly the same graphics operations and frameworks, the same stuff just naturally carried over.

The same is not true of Windows because even once they were looking to do something beyond the GDI Microsoft insisted on inventing its own document format in XPS and tied WPF, its modern drawing framework, around that.

(*) trivia: the original LaserWriter — a key component in the early desktop publishing revolution — had a CPU 50% faster than the Mac it was meant to be attached to because it had to do all that high resolution rasterising.

I can believe they still sell iPod Shuffles but that's about it. It's cheap, it's barely bigger than a button and there's no moving parts or screen to scratch so you can take it jogging or to the gym without it being much of a disaster if you drop it or lose it. It's more expensive than the competition but that doesn't negate the market segment it's aimed at. And the iPod Touch is good for the kids, letting them have all the latest apps without a mobile contract.

The Nano and the Classic doesn't seem to have much purpose though.

Microsoft has raised the price of Office for the Mac to be the same as Office for Windows. Mac users aren't paying a premium.

Re: Not who they are, who they want to be

Either the iPhone was revolutionary or augmented reality glasses aren't as e.g. Vuzix will be on the market earlier and practical augmented reality itself is at least a decade old. Similarly either the Mac was revolutionary or self-driving cars aren't as e.g. Mercedes-Benz demonstrated one in the 1980s and even had one drive the normal autobahn from Bavaria to Copenhagen and back in the mid-90s.

I don't see Google attempting to imitate Apple in any sense beyond being in some of the same markets. I consider either both to be revolutionary and transformative or neither. You don't have to pick just one.

Re: >Having to physically bonk phones into stuff seems so outdated in 2013. (Re: MikeS)

That's an advantage; I think the greater advantage if you asked most non-technical people is the user interface. To use an Oyster card or pay by an NFC-enabled debit card I just touch the thing against the sensor. In one fell swoop that identifies that I'm the person making the transaction and that I explicitly wish to proceed.

With anything that deliberately cuts out that need to put the one thing next to the other you have to start layering on apps and menus and so on. Then it stops being something that 90% of consumers would use themselves, let along something they're happy about when the rush hour becomes even more congested as people stand around launching their applications to get into the tube.

And that's quite apart from the fact that a properly-implemented NFC solution could work regardless of whether the phone is charged.

Re: tut tut (@AC)

You don't think "Actually I'm really good with numbers so I'm forced to assume that you're lying to me. Put Steve on the line." is the normal way to go?

If Samsung suddenly switched its devices to Bada then:

(i) developers would abandon them because a weird variant of C++ (Bada-custom collections, two-stage constructors, etc) is hardly attractive;

(ii) subsequently users would abandon them for the lack of Temple Run or whatever it is next month.

People aren't buying Samsung phones just because they like the word 'Samsung', they're buying them because they like Android — they just don't know what Android is and, as long as the phones continue being high quality, probably don't care.

Re: Poor Apple.

Intel's been working on EFI since 1998 if we really want to get into it.

It's Forth based, right? So we're probably talking about a stack overflow?

Re: Can you cite a source? (@Mic)

I think the poster may be confusing refresh times and touch response times — the iPhone display has run with hardware acceleration and a 60Hz response rate since day one whereas the Android OS didn't mandate a GPU at first and versions prior to 3.0 did all drawing and updating, including scrolling, on the CPU.

There's definitely some response lag on iOS devices; I couldn't tell you exactly what it is but it's easy enough to discern if you try dragging or scrolling. Just watch exactly what you put your finger down on, then move it quickly and watch whatever is trying to track your finger always be a few milliseconds behind. It subjectively feels like a lot less than 100ms but is definitely more than a frame, and clearly more than the 1ms Microsoft has demonstrated in the lab. I guess 12ms likely buys you a single frame of lag, which it definitely feels like iOS is doing worse than.

Re: Company behind the video looks unlikely to actually be working with Google

Then I guess the question is: is it a hoax in the same way that leaked government initiatives are sometimes hoaxes — i.e. the most cost effective way of floating an idea before investing any money in it?

Re: Nah.

But isn't the reason the current one is being withdrawn from the EU that some aspect of it needs to be redesigned for compliance? Though I'll wager it'll be just to seal off the fans, especially as G5-style liquid cooling probably isn't something they'd want to attempt again.

I'll go a step farther and say I honestly don't see that Swartz would have approved of this move — what does a list of bankers have to do with JSTOR's remuneration to publishers rather than authors, to arbitrary and ridiculous sentencing limits or to the failure of the law to differentiate hacking penalties based on motive?

Anonymous continue to act as a group of attention-hungry children with no philosophy or ideology beyond enjoying a bit of bullying. Sometimes they may pick targets you personally don't like but that hardly absolves them.

Re: I will watch it

Here in the US at least, the original, To Play the King and The Final Cut are all carried; at twelve episodes in total they're a very entertaining way to spend a weekend.

I haven't watched the Spacey version yet but I guess there'll be some severe adjustments as if you wanted to ascend to President without winning a national election then you'd need Ford-style to be Speaker of the House and for President and Vice President to resign or die. It's happened exactly once under exceptional circumstances — it's not at all like in the UK where the PM only needs the support of the majority of his peers, giving us relatively frequent 'unelected' leaders like Callaghan, Major (at first) and Brown.

Re: Apple, ooh Apple!

Apple hasn't said anything on the record, it's merely blocked some software with known security issues. You seem to be implying that to do so is criticism and that Apple should be allowed to criticise only if its own software is perfect but if that's the standard then surely none of can criticise Apple unless we've written only flawless software?

Re: Yet more overreaching EU regulations (@Rawr)

As noted above, and in its name, the relevant standard is international, emanating from an industry-recognised body based in Illinois. So the alternative position would have been "everyone in the industry uses this standard, but we know better because we're politicians". I suspect that position is more in disagreement with most people's political leanings than whatever you're accusing.

Re: Name just ONE feature introduced ... in the 21st century ... regularly uses,

That shouldn't really be an application-level feature anyway — it should most naturally reside in the GDI (or whatever has supplanted it) according to my understanding of the Windows API as PDF documents are just another abstract canvas to paint to.

Re: Tablets are serious computing devices... @AC

It's cheap to criticise; how would you define your anointed 'serious computing'? I can think of no distinction that doesn't either bar all computers more than about five years old (ie, based on processing capacity) or deign that only about 2% of the world takes part.

My feeling is that — even if you exclude leisure browsing — as tablets can do at least 90% of what people use computers for, they are computers. Just like an oven without a hob is still a kind of oven, a two-seater car is still a kind of car, a light aircraft is still a kind of aircraft, Heat is still a kind of magazine and Vin Diesel is still a kind-of actor.