Disqus - Latest Comments for Snorre

Re: The DRM Train Wreck on National TV

Snorre — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:55:05 -0000

Could it not be the case that THE LACK OF compatibility between players and file formats actually encourages MORE innovation and competition in some ways? I fully know, for example, that it is impossible for me to play my Xbox games on my PlayStation console or a Nintendo console.

Because it's not like the incompatability means that gaming companies have to spend more time and money if they want to port their games to more consoles in order to reach more users, right? And then if they don't think it's worth it, then screw me if I didn't buy the "right" console. How on earth is that supposed to benefit users?

Re: Broken Windows and Copyrights

Snorre — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:22:24 -0000

Noel, I think most customers of the ipod either are unaware of the drm, or don't care because they don't have any drm'd media. The reason it is successful is more likely because it is seen as cool, hip, and well-designed (apart from the drm issue, obviously). I'd be truthfully surprised if you could drag out as many as one ipod customer that bought it because it disallows said customer to play files from some other provider.

Also, completely unrelated, would you please start using question marks? witout tehm yuo coulds as wells be writeining lieks dys

Re: Software Patent of the Week: Hash Functions Are Not Novel

Snorre — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:44:32 -0000

I'd guess that the USPTO bureaucrats think of novelty and obviousness like this: "WOW IT'S THE INTARWEBS THEY ARE FAST ZOOOM POW WOW A ROCKET IN SPACE HOW DO THEY THINK THIS UP!"

Maybe some of them have some kids who use bittorrent or pretty much any other p2p file sharing method, and could enlighten them about hashing? Or, you know, computers in general?

Re: Intellectual Blackmail

Snorre — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:01:54 -0000

Hahahah. I think it's pretty funny either way. I can see Noel Le and the other guys chiming in on how this is a totally appropriate application of IP, how it will foster innovation and profits for everybody.

Re: Obsessive Fan Mindset

Snorre — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:58:43 -0000

It's clipped off in opera as well. It's probably because the strip is wider than the text column.

As for such Ron Paul supporters like that, I took it that xkcd wossname creator was that RP supporter. ;)

Re: The OOXML Standard Brouhaha

Snorre — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:40:06 -0000

Morgan> ``But in IBM's case the ONLY compelling part of their product is that it 'works exactly like the Microsoft product'.''

Which is false. ODF---like HTML and PDF---work on open standards so that in the future, when today's documents will be ancient and the applications forgotten, people can still access them. In order to do that with OOXML you need to pore through over 8000 pages of documentation, get your hands on word97, lotus 1-2-3 and so on to find out how they work and other fun stuff to get the implementation right.

Finally, like Carlos said, you're confusing applications and formats. Microsoft's Office can open ODF documents. Right now you have to use a plugin (just like you'd have to use a plugin to get OOXML support), but if MS gets off its arse it can probably add in ODF support (and OOXML support) pretty fast. Apart from Office and Openoffice, there are lots of applications that support ODF:
http://opendocumentfellowship.com/applications

Where's the list of applications that support OOXML? (Office-type applications, not writing the XML by hand and zipping it up ... )

(Yeah, there aren't any users of OOXML. There are some people who use docx and such MS-XML, which is *almost* OOXML, but no actual OOXML users. So to use an editable open specification document with a few users, there's not much choice except ODF. (There's HTML, RTF and such, but they're kind of not up to the task, or at least that seems the mood.) Of course the *optimal* solution would be not have to give a rat's arse about government documents ...)

Re: The OOXML Standard Brouhaha

Snorre — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:04:58 -0000

Point. I just tend to use html, pdf and odf as examples now, since my government (the Norwegian) specified those three. (And then after a bit of bickering back and forth I think they might use word97 or some other version of word with good screen reader support. It might not be word97, but it was some old word format. Similar version for non-word office documents I guess.)

Re: The OOXML Standard Brouhaha

Snorre — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:57:16 -0000

Eh, I guess I meant it works / is used with open standards. Kanskje burde jeg bare holde meg til norsk siden jeg bommer på ordlyden på engelsk. Er det greit for deg?

As for legislation, I don't know what's proposed or the deal in your part of the world, but here it's only open standards that are mandated---when the government is putting something out in the public. They can use ms-office internally as much as they like, and nobody else has to use the same format as them, it's just that when they're going to make something available, they want to make it available to everybody. AFAIK it doesn't ban the usage of closed standords either, so they can publish in klingon-doc for all they care, as long as they also publish in bokmål/nynorsk and one of the open standards they've said they're going to use.

"And guess what, I bet a high percentage of those don't do the implementation exactly the same way; just as it is with HTML, and just as it is with pdf. And this is EXACTLY why I don't want governments mandating a standard."

Though most people are trying to do things right and be compliant[1]. The major exception to compliance and general tendency to invent stuff as they go along comes from MSIE, which is why people[2] are wary of *them*, not standards.

Finally, laws can be changed. Why you're getting so worked up about which formats the government will be using for some period of time apart from calling the decision a "law" in stead of "policy" or "decision those eggheads down in IT made" or "decision the bosses up on top made".

If the goverment started making decisions about what sort of formats everybody else has to use, then I'd be creeped out.

[1] At least in the browser area, I have no idea what's going on in PDF land.
[2] Ok, nerds.