Whenever people study people using infringing copies of software on PC platforms, they report something like 90% of copies are infringing. Thus, with "an overall piracy rate of over 67%," we can conclude that Android copyright infringement is remarkably well controlled, and app publishers should be grateful. (Admittedly, it's worse than iOS apps, which might see a 50% infringement rate, but another way of putting it is: Apple put up far more aggressive barriers to copyright infringement costing the, in the process made iOS less useful to customers and more hostile to development, and still only lowered the rate from 67% to 50%.

And, of course, the old rule applies: Those infringing your copyright aren't your customers. If you've made good software, are selling it as a reasonable price, and it's conveniently available, it's unlikely that anything you can do will improve your profits. Sure, you might reduce the number of infringing copies in use, but you'll have spent money accomplishing that for minimal to no additional sales. Worry about your customers, not those violating your copyright.

Part of why I love GOG is that I don't need to trust them. There is no DRM. I'm free to make my own backups and never visit their site again after purchasing a game. It doesn't matter if they go crazy and pull stupid stunts like this. It doesn't matter if they get bought out. It doesn't matter if the game's copyright holder gets into a snit and pulls the title. I still have my backup. This is as it should be.

Yes, it was a stupid stunt. But a rational consumer has to assume that eventually every business is going to try and screw you. Take defensive measures. Prefer businesses that don't need your trust beyond a single transaction. I remain satisified with my purchases from GOG, and I hope they pick up more classic games I'd love to play.

There appear to be two types of people: people very concerned about Android's fragmentation and its inevitable demise and people who actually own Android based phones. Thank you for your concern, but we're doing fine, thanks. We're busy enjoying the ability to install software from third parties without going through the Android Market, the ability to choose easy to root phones, the ability to choose phones we can easily replace the core operating system on, and more.

On a related note, us Linux users are also somehow surviving in the face of dozens of distributions.

do you really think you can totally re-program a phone from open source code?

Erm, yes?

What Android is giving us is competition. Phones are locked to varying levels. Some are quite easy to root, some require a bit of work, some haven't been rooted yet. If you care, factor that into your purchasing decision.

Whining that Android is inherently bad because carriers and manufacturers can choose to be evil is like whining that Linux is inherently bad because Tivo and others choose to be evil with it.

a few weeks after you buy a 'smartphone' some other model makes yours a POS. well, almost. how can anyone buy in that kind of market and retain sanity?

The smartphone market is moving fast, but my phone is hardly a POS after a few weeks or even a few years. So I guess most of us retain our sanity by not obsessing over the latest technology.

google fucked this up. and I think its too late now, the market is SO fragmented its actually damaged

The market seems pretty healthy to me right now. I know more slightly people with Android based phones than iPhones at the moment. They own a variety of phones and are all quite happy with them. Some want a thinner phone, some want a physical keyboard, some value battery life, some want high speed, some want a given manufacturer or carriers modifications, some don't. There are phones for all of us. We look at the specs and reviews and identify the best fit. We suggest apps we like to each other, and they work fine.

fanboys won't agree but who cares what they think

Ah, a classic argument. "Everyone who matters agrees with me. If you don't agree with me, you obviously don't matter." If that doesn't work, will you move on to "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you, lalalalalala?"

We've been hearing these arguments since Android was announced, and somehow it hasn't collapsed in on itself. Instead Android-based phones are selling quite well and people are pretty happy with them. Competition is doing a reasonably good job limiting carrier meddling.

The author clearly thought that the the summary on the mahara.org site would clear things up: "Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework. Mahara, meaning 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Mori, is user centred environment with a permissions framework that enables different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed."

The author was clearly wrong.

You omitted the parenthetical, which is key. Perhaps I shouldn't have made it a parenthetical given its importance:

or a relationship that they badly need (or at least think they need)

Telling someone in an abusive relationship that they just need to "dump the guy" is like telling an alcoholic, "Just stop drinking," unhelpful. Yes, it's nice and rational, but if the person in the abusive relationship was being rational, they already would have already left.

So men are responsible for the emotional well-being of women now?

No. Human beings are responsible for not being abusive douchebags (emotionally or physically) to other human beings. Human beings are responsible for realizing that not everyone is as self-assured and rational as they are, and that they shouldn't take advantage of that. If you're bartering staying in a relationship for sex ("If you don't have sex with me, I'm leaving you"), that's a strong clue that maybe you're being an abusive douchebag.

(Yes, there is a fuzzy line here, as there always is in human relationships. But is getting laid so damn important that it's worth even getting close to the line?)

These hints are stored as a bytecode program in the font that modifies the outline; the patent covers this use of bytecode. (FreeType can be configured to use these hints or, especially in jurisdictions with software patents, to create its own hints purely from the outline shapes._

As of last month FreeType turns the bytecode hinting on by default, as the last patents expired in May.

Apparently it's so important to be pedantic about the definition of rape that we should brush off studies suggesting that 1 in 5 women is being coerced into sex. Maybe "true" rape, which I guess only includes coercion through physical threats or force, is worse than coercion through emotional blackmail or job threats or the like. But is it really so important to discriminate between them? They're both vile actions that can leave deep mental injuries on the victims. You're not just being a an unhelpful pendant, you're also supporting the idea that the victims don't matter as much. "Gee, it sucks that someone violated your trust and your body and put you into a position where you didn't feel you had the choice to say no. That was morally wrong. But sorry, you weren't truly raped. Heck, I have to support their right to abuse you so or else we won't have a free society!"

I'm not complaining because you don't have an approved view. I'm complaining because you're out here whining that "That's not really rape," "lots of women mean yes when they say no," and "coercing someone into unwanted sex is an essential freedom." Arguments like yours, repeated across the internet, repeated from one bro to another over beers, is all creating a general mindset that rape (and coercion) isn't a big deal, that women are frequently exaggerating things. Rapists (and people coercing people into unwanted sex) rely on that mindset to convince themselves and their peers that they're not bad guys. "She had a choice." "I didn't break the law." "It's not 'true' rape." "Her 'No' really meant 'Yes.'" "I'm exercising my freedoms."

And if you want a free society, you'll have to keep it legal too.

Compared to warrantless wiretaps, civil asset forfeiture, imprisoning people indefinitely, denying people access to US courts, free speech zones, assassinating American civilians, and attempts to disenfranchise voters, I'm just not too worried about people losing the "right" to coerce someone into having sex. But I guess you have a point, if our founding fathers stood for anything, it was the right to threaten our girlfriend's reputation unless they give us a blow job. To paraphrase the old line (typically misattributed to Voltaire), "I disapprove of your using coercion to get sex, but I will defend to the death your right to do it!"

You can call any sort of coercion, "rape", but as I see it, the coerced partner had a choice. True rape has no choice. That's my view on the matter.

Just to be perfectly clear, "You will have sex with me, or I will fire you," isn't rape, since the person has the choice to lose their job. Or teenager with poor self esteem being told, "You will have sex with me, or you'll be ostracized." Lovely. Hell, apparently "You will have sex with me, or I will beat you," isn't rape, since the victim has a choice.

This is exactly the problem. "Sure, I emotionally abuse my girlfriend and coerce her into have sex with me. But I'm not 'raping' her, so it's okay! My good friend khallow tells me it's even legal!"

. I don't mind that you chose to ostracize the "enablers". I just wish you'd do it somewhere else, perhaps after you think about your beliefs and human nature for a while.

I'm sure you do wish that. You simultaneously believe "it's okay to coerce people into unwanted sex" and "I'm against rape." My pointing must be causing you a great deal of distressing cognitive dissonance. That's why I'm not going to go away and let you return to your comfortable lies. Do you even read what you wrote? I genuinely believe that you are enabling rapists, to go somewhere else would be to let you continue to do so. Part of fighting the problem is speaking out, even if it makes people uncomfortable. Especially if it makes people uncomfortable.

"Right-thinking," huh? Do you mean like the "right-thinkers" who banded together to convince people that it was right to view black people are human beings, equal in dignity and rights to white people? Like the "right-thinkers" who banded together to convince people that women were equal in dignity and rights to men? Like the right-thinkers who are banding together today to argue that homosexuals are equal in dignity and rights to heterosexuals? Like the right-thinkers banding together to argue that everyone, American or not, is owed due process and a day in court. If that's what you mean, yeah, I'm a right-thinker, and damn proud of it. I'm arguing that coercing sex is rape and that arguing semantics gives cover to people who coerce sex. I'm arguing that telling a coerced sex victim that it's not "true rape," and that it's legal puts the blame on the victim and is sickening.

Rape culture is the idea that our culture minimizes the damage of rape, marginalizes rape victims, blames the victims for being raped, and gives rapists the idea that they can safely get away with rape. The phrase, regrettably, is frequently wielded as a blunt weapon to silence criticism and stifle critical thinking. One might even end up with the idea that it's an inherently wrong idea, that we in no way have a rape culture. I'll admit, it's easy to think that when you see the phrase abused.

From now on, whenever I think we don't really have a rape culture, and people are making a big deal deal about it, I'll re-read your post. Only someone deeply subsumed by rape culture could conclude that "forced to have sexual intercourse" somehow didn't necessarily mean rape. Do you also also think that many mugging "victims" weren't actually mugged, since they "chose" to hand over their possessions even though they didn't want to? Apparently someone who "choses" to have sex because they fear for of losing a job, a grade, a recommendation, a "friendship," or a relationship that they badly need (or at least think they need) hasn't been raped.

All too many rapists will justify their rapes to themselves and their friends with comfortable lies like, "She chose to have sex with me," happily ignoring that the "choice" was coerced. It's an easy lie to tell themselves when enablers like you are eager to leap to their defense. They'll tell themselves that "Her no really meant yes,"since you're so eager to tell them that it happens frequently. Of course, this means ignoring that if no really means yes, it means they're screwing someone playing mind-games with them, which is pretty much guaranteed to end badly.

Thank you, I guess, for reminding me that rape culture is a very real problem.

This isn't just a "different beliefs" situation. ASCAP's Paul Williams is stating outright falsehoods about the EFF and Creative Commons. (I hear he's also stating falsehoods about Public Knowledge, but I don't know enough to judge.) Their statements border on the insane. (EFF: "If an artist wants to share their music more widely, we offer tools to make it easy to share some, but not all of the rights." Williams: "The EFF wants to force you to give away your music for free!") I do agree that ASCAP is unlikely to change their public stance as a result of a debate or other discussion. They're either willfully ignorant or they are liars.

Switch to Mac, where you can get an entire operating system with the speed, stability, unnecessary bundling, and usable interface of iTunes for Windows!

iTunes for Windows has the opportunity to be an ambassador for Apple's so-called superior engineering. Are they just so arrogant that they assume we'll put up with it? (I got tired of that crapfest and switched to Android. Being able to uninstall iTunes was worth the cost by itself.)

Obxkcd

"...large screen displaying near-SEM resolutions..."? You're working with screens with resolutions on the order of nanometers? On a "large" display, you'd be looking at a resolution like 2,813,538 by 1,524,000, about 127,000 DPI. It's as impressive as it is implausible! Of course, humans can't see such small details. Do you use a microscope to look at your screen?

I've worked in and remain in touch with the medical imaging field, and radiologists manage to do just fine with relatively stock consumer displays. They make use of zooming and level adjustments to compensate for the limitations of the monitor, but also to see details that would be invisible to the naked eye on a traditional slide. Sure, they love getting larger, higher resolution, and more color accurate monitors, it speeds things up for a variety of reasons, but they do pretty well without.

I have no idea what the "tiny pad" comment has to do with anything, since the article was about resolution on a tiny pad.

I also missed this gem:

...even using a 32" 1080p LCD (with a native resolution 3x that) and sitting more than 6 feet away, I can still see the pixels....

So, you're talking about a 33.75 DPI display at 6 feet. 300 DPI at about 1 foot is a reasonable estimate for where most people no longer observe jaggies in printout. That's about 0.000138888888 radians per pixel. 33.75 at 6 feet is about 0.000205761314 radians per pixel, which is a larger apparent pixel. To roughly match the apparent resolution of that 300 DPI printout held a foot from your face, you'll need to be a bit less than 9 feet away from that monitor. Congrats, you have perfectly normal vision. 1080p isn't actually all that high of a resolution, and it's decidedly mediocre for a modern computer display.