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Comment Monitors != Lighting (Score 1) 328

Yes, you can't tell the difference in the spectrum of the light when you are staring at the light, so when looking at objects whose color is purely emisive, like TVs and monitors then you can represent the entire gamut of color that the human eye can see by combining three primary colors.

But this breaks down when you are looking at objects that are reflecting that light, because the way those materials reflect light absolutely is wavelength specific. In that case if you have two lights that appear to be the exact same color when staring at them (or when shining them against a white wall), but have different spectra, then objects illuminated with those two lights can look very different because they absorb and reflect those spectra differently. A normal person won't be able to quantify why they look different, but they will know that something is "off" and may get an impression of the lighting in vague terms like mood or character.

So no, you can't fake a lighting spectrum with just 3 primaries, which is why producing good LED lighting has been much harder than producing good LED monitors.

Comment Not necessiarly (Score 1) 169

It is still a crime to flee bail, regardless of the merit of the original charges. So the UK may still want to prosecute, particularly since he has flaunted it for years staying in an embassy. They can decide to drop it, of course, but they may not. They don't want to encourage the idea that it is ok to skip bail and run if you think you are innocent. You still need to obey the police.

Comment Re:This is a bug not a feature (Score 4, Insightful) 328

For the entire history of the human race nearly all the lighting we have encountered has been block-body radiation, and a black body spectrum will always look better and more natural to us than other light spectrum. So florescent and sodium vapor will finally die off as LEDs become less expensive, but variations in color temperature will never go away. Warm lights will always feel more cozy and intimate just like campfires and candles have always been. Cool light will always feel a bit dreary, like an overcast day. And Daylight spectrum will always feel bright and cheerful. Opinions on whether a living room should be bright and cheerful or warm and comforting may vary. But unless we somehow stop experiencing natural lighting whatsoever, and evolve into Morlocks, variants of black body light will retain their historical associations.

Comment Layers of imitation. (Score 3, Insightful) 328

These are really cool. But it did make me chuckle when the article talked about how current LED candelabra bulb in particular are quite ugly. The candelabra bulbs were made to (poorly) mimic the shape of candle flame, and now we are attempting to mimic that imitation because we have gotten used to the way it looks :)

Comment Oh no! Please don't encrypt my WoW files! (Score 2) 73

I mean it isn't like it is an online game where Blizzard stores all your character data, key settings, macros and other stuff on the server! Oh, wait, yes it is.

Seriously, why would they do WoW? You just run a repair in the Blizzard client, redownload any mods, and you are up and running. They do it so you can easily play on multiple computers.

Comment Also with regards to state schools (Score 3, Informative) 606

Clubs are held to a higher standard. The general student body can get away with a whole lot. You can go and have a racist rant out in public every day and so long as you aren't disruptive, threatening, etc then they can't do anything, they have to let you stay and if a teacher were to retaliate grade wise they could get in trouble. However clubs, like frats, have additional rules imposed on them if they wish to remain school recognized clubs. The school doesn't have to allow them, so they can choose what additional restrictions they face.

Now you are free to have a club not recognized by the campus, but then you won't be able to use campus facilities, participate in official campus events, and so on.

Comment These stories are always non-sensical (Score 4, Insightful) 161

Yes, laptops, even smartphones, are always "approaching desktop performance"... for some older definition of desktop performance. Same shit is true even of super computers. The original super computer, the Cray 1, pulled about 80 Mflops of performance. Most high end smartphones these days pull in the realm of 500+ Mflops. So they are more powerful than a supercomputer!!!! ... well than a super computer from the 70s.

Same deal with this laptop and desktops. Yes even small laptops compete with desktops of a few years ago. However that isn't what desktops of today are like. Those are moving targets as well and they've gotten much faster. How useful that is you can argue and can vary person to person, but trying to act like these small laptops are anywhere near them is silly. You can get desktops today with 8 cores, 64GB of RAM, and multiple large video cards if you wish. No ultralight is coming anywhere near that. Now in 5-10 years? They may well be there... and desktops will be somewhere else.

Desktops will always be more powerful simply because they have a higher electrical and thermal budget. Sticking a 90-150 watt CPU and 200+ watt GPU in a desktop is no big deal. Trying to stick that in a laptop is a recipe for disaster.

Comment Pity it is done in iD Tech 5 (Score 1) 61

But other than that, wonderful. New Order was a fantastic game. Such a strong showing for a first game from a studio. It isn't often you can have a game that is good, silly fun where you do crazy shit like dual wield assault rifles, and yet still have a solid story that makes you care. Good mechanics, good levels, good story, good visuals, good setting, just well done all around.

Only thing I would ding it on is the engine choice. iD Tech 5 just isn't very good compared to Unreal Engine, Cryengine or Frostbite. Even on my system with a XP941 SSD I can get some texture pop-in when I move the camera fast and while the visuals are good from a distance, they break down close up. I understand the choice, Bethesda owns the engine so it makes sense to use it, but I can't help but think it would look more impressive in a better engine.

Comment Re:Necissary, not sufficient. (Score 1) 99

I think you're misguided. The criteria for patentability has never been bad, and has actually gotten worse since the recent change to "first to file".

Yes it has been, and your following paragraphs demonstrate clearly why this is so

The problem is it's impossible for anyone to know what can or cannot be patented without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring an entire team of lawyers to search through the back catalogue of patents and inventions and court precedents.
The patent office does not have enough staff to do proper research while a patent is being filed. If they did proper research, they would only be able to approve a handful of patents per year with the number of employees currently working at the PTO.

The problem with the current system is that the PTO has taken the approach of only rejecting patents if they can find documented evidence that someone has done the exact same thing before. If there is a single independent claim for which they can't find exact prior art in a timely manner, then they approve the patent, regardless of how similar it is to other prior art. They deliberately ignore the obviousness of the patent because they don't want to have to defend subjective decisions against appeal.

The recent Supreme Court rulings have forcefully asserted that this is not acceptable. The law clearly states that obviousness is one of the criteria for patentability and therefore the USPTO and courts must take that into consideration when deciding patentability. Furthermore, they have stated that if the improvement that an invention makes on prior art is not patentable by itself, then the invention is not patentable. This is a huge decision because it rules out a ton of "on a computer" and business model patents that combined things that weren't patentable on their own into something that was patentable in aggregate. This second issue is likely to have an even bigger impact as it can be applied more objectively than the first which increases the chances that the USPTO will embrace it. Furthermore, if anything these changes decrease the amount of research the PTO has to perform for an average application.

It simply isn't possible for a small company to defend themselves at all, their only viable option is to settle out of court which inevitably means nobody actually knows whether or not the patent is valid. After years of watching this issue closely I have never seen a small company defend themselves in court. Some have tried, but every single one gives up and settles out of court half way through the process.

Agreed which is why we need these reforms. They proposed two important changes. First is to strictly limit how much information the plaintiff can subpoena during discover. This prevents fishing expeditions and prevents discovery from turning into a war of attrition, which will make defending oneself against patent claims faster and less expensive. Secondly it allows defendant to challenge the validity of the patent before discovery has taken place, potentially avoiding the vast majority of the expense of defending oneself, if the patent is determined to be invalid by the new post-Alice standards.

Personally I don't see how any reform could possibly fix the problem. There are certainly ways to improve the situation but I don't think anything can truly fix it. I've never seen anybody suggest a viable solution.

I have no disillusions that these changes will magically make the patent system perfect. In fact I expect the USPTO and the lower courts to continue to be slow to adopt them, but they address the two biggest issues with the patent system today - the low standards for patents and the cost of defending against them - which is more than I can say about any other proposed changes to the patent system in the last 50 years.

Comment Re: Is there any way to block the use of old ciphe (Score 1) 89

I was thinking server side, for the web server. But yes, you need to ensure every service you provide that uses TLS is properly configured.

I'm not sure how much this would impact something like SMTP-S or IMAPS, since the connection duration on those types of service is so short.

The big target is going to be web servers.

Comment Re:Also can be some of one and some of the other (Score 1) 671

Just saying that is an issue that would have to be overcome. It is a case where the trial could be fair, and the jury could believe he acted in good faith and the best interests of the public and still find him guilty, and have that upheld. Just further emphasizing how tricky the situation is. It isn't a case of "If they give him a fair trial he'll walk." No, in fact in a fair trial he could be convicted if the jury decided not to nullify.

Comment Necissary, not sufficient. (Score 4, Interesting) 99

Granted, the biggest problem with the patent system has been that the criteria for patentability has been so loose, and the recent Supreme Court rulings will certainly do more to fix that root cause than the recent patent reform bills. Hopefully going forward these new rulings will improve the quality of patents approved and upheld in court, which is by far the single most important reform needed in the long run.

But in the meanwhile there are more than 20 years of bad patents that have been granted, and the costs of defending against a patent lawsuit is still far greater than the cost of settling. We need to make it less expensive to challenge existing patents if we don't want them to continue to be a burden for the next 20+ years. That is exactly what the reform bills were about. They were designed to be complementary to the Supreme Court rulings, addressing a different parts of the problem.

Comment Re:Also can be some of one and some of the other (Score 1) 671

Well in the case of civilians, you are in a special situation when you have access to classified data. You agree not to release it on penalty of criminal charges and you do so explicitly to be granted access. If you aren't ok with the restrictions, then you don't agree, and don't get clearance. Normal people like us aren't under any such restrictions, which is why the press doesn't get in trouble publishing it. They never agreed to shit.

As such it could be a situation where even if they agree it was just, it was still illegal.

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