I'd imagine there are already stereoscopic patents for normal, single, left & right eye angles to create the 3D appearance. With what the article suggests, these angles have only been widened by a couple meters. Wouldn't this basically be the same patent at a different angle?

Dyslexic typing is not trollish, and maybe you should be mindful of those of us with such disabilities.

Notice that Slashdot has never added the "edit" feature to a comment, so that those of us with such disability can come back later and fix the comment. We just have to let live with trollish comments like yours when disabilities have taken over when we try to share the same abilities to post like you.

Mod parent very insightful.

Some used to pre-render a larger bitmap full of commonly used letters. For example, a 2kx2k bitmap cut into squares for each letter. As letters are needed, an empty square is found and filled with the pre-rendered letter with all anti-aliasing and such applied. Then the program just tells X11 to copy and blend that square to the destination. The bitmap acts like a cache that doesn't have to constantly take up bandwidth to fully send.

That has worked well except when you get into letters combination that shape differently due to different letters in the combination. For example, the tail of the y may extend further under some scripted letters than others. In others languages besides English, this occurs more often.

The enable technology the article speaks about could help in this area if the X11 server was optimized to handle such bytecode interpretation internally. Then there is no need to fill the bitmap cache with every combination of shaped letters.

What some of these anonymous cowards don't realize is the size of the cache needed to store all possible unicode characters combination with all shapes and styles applied, and then you should realize the cache method has become useless.

The article talks about a patent expiration which would enable technology, just like the article mentioned how FreeType having code enabled from what was disabled because of that patent expiration. What is so hard to understand about that? That's all I'm saying besides a possible trend.

How is not clear I'm talking about possible optimization and possible trends? Don't expect a complete posted dissertation with all technical details embedded into a Slashdot comment.

I wondered how a 'bytecode interpreter" based on static arrays would work as embedded into X11. It seems with this patent expiration, it would allow progress to continue actual deployment of any previous experiments. If we used some code from Wine and add it to a X11 backend, then think how much this could benefit bandwidth wise. It wouldn't be an easy first step except for this bytecode interpreter. A more extreme viewport on X11 would be a fully embedded Cairo surface, yet by that time we probably find exactly what can stay in the X11 process and what needs to stay in apps that use such a richer X11 display.

This isn't just an idea on a whim. There are already designs to add i7s right behind the pixel plane of monitors. With the 3D interconnect design of intel chips, you know what they are planning to do next (possible hint: Asetek prototype).

[They probably wouldn't call it X11 anymore.. maybe DirectX11. Not.]

Future of Real-Time Strategy table top games... but I don't think Twister has been ranked as RTS, yet...

Only if it doesn't have Android.

Not all inmates are criminals. Not all criminals are inmates.

One thing overlooked above, being mainly about skills, is what the effect this will have on hardware. Prisons are known to have people who are upset about being in jail and surely the hardware needs to be durable enough to handle the risk of being handled very rough. There have been devices designed to project a screen onto any surface with smart optical devices to read touches against the image, so I'd imagine such a system boxed into protective transparent window to project and get feedback from any surface inside a cell could be a means to salvation for inmates. There isn't enough options in jail, as people probably think only bad criminals are in jail, which is not true when we include the mass amount of civil jurisdictions and those held merely due to court proceedings and both possibly have never done anything criminal. This could lead to more communication with inmates, which would lead to greater justice. If you ever witnessed how all inmates in the jail process get treated nearly the same, being criminal or non-criminal, I'm sure you agree that my use of "would" is not merely a made-up prediction. Durable hardware is needed in a cell that contains either criminal or non-criminal inmates. It's bad enough there is non-criminal inmates and a better system doesn't exist to give them swift and appropriate justice due to lack of technology and communication available inmates.

> "'It's time for drivers to act responsibly, put their hands on the wheel and focus on the road,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who last year called distracted driving an 'epidemic.'"

What about cars that drive themselves?

Maybe auto makers should be more responsible!

Mathematics is generally limited to Physics, or at least it's resources. Computations, and computation models, can go beyond physics, and thus advanced arithmetics are more useful the mathematics itself. I agree math knowledge is quite helpful, yet it is arithmetic skills that are essential.

Computers are more based on symbolic functions and their rearrangement rather than on knowledge of methods to balance the numbers in equations.

> What you can't do is connect to their servers with a client that doesn't conform to their policies.

This is no different to say you can't have software run on hardware that doesn't conform.

Which is DRM, and what the GPL was meant to prevent.

It's also a way to create DRM.

I wonder how long it will take for people to realize that no matter the media, hardware or software, that they'll notice that this is what the GPL is suppose to prevent.