Comment Re:People wo vote this troll just don't understand (Score 1) 299
citation needed?
People tend to gravitate towards problems that they think they can solve--and ignore the problems they don't understand or don't want to deal with.
I think that should have read
Engineers tend to gravitate towards problems that they think they can solve--and ignore the problems they don't understand or don't want to deal with.
The same general pool of artists is popular on Last.fm as is popular on radio.
So are you suggesting that because popular music is...popular that it is inherently "bad music" and that once anything becomes "popular" that it was due to the "uninformed masses"? Yes, there is horrible music being created and promoted that gets to the top, but do you have an inherent dislike for something just because it reaches a certain level of notoriety?
Arguably, bundling turn-by-turn navigation software in Android is similar bundling IE in Windows (enter the MS anti-trust suits) but it's a tough argument to make when the whole lot is open-source.
Could you please show me where the code (and subsequent api call documentation) to recreate turn-by-turn navigation on a non-android platform are publicly available/accessible? I'd love to port this to maemo, but you'll find that Android the OS is open-source, but many of the apps that make it valuable are still closed and controlled by Google. I don't necessarily have a problem with this, but I think many people (wrongly) assume that just because Android is open-source they can tinker with not only the core OS, but all of the applications as well. The Android Market is NOT like a traditional linux repository where you "install" your apps from.
But the people who want him to fight the case can't afford his fees
I think you underestimate the power of large groups. If someone can rally enough people around a (worthy) cause...enough to donate $5 here, $20 there and the occasional $100-$1000 then large sums are not as unreachable as you would think.
That however depends on someone actually taking the lead and being able to get people to rally around said cause...
You can tell I grew up in a country with universal healthcare.
No, but I can tell that you threw in a useless addendum to an otherwise insightful post.
Well I guess any piece of software has a "potential for abuse"...so you'll just have to make the decision of whether that potential is enough to justify the benefits it provides (just like any software/"feature"). I guess this may (and most likely should) end up like javascript. Your site shouldn't depend on it to function but it progressively enhances the browsing experience. The end user will have to decide whether they want to allow it or not. I would think that you could make an extension similar to no-script for fonts.
Good fonts are extremely valuable, far more so than any single image
What about an image of a good font? (I kid, I kid).
Here is one of my favorite site for fonts. Supposedly they are all freely available, so maybe this will be a good starting place. Also, maybe some of the large internet companies (think google) would offer up a cache of commonly used fonts, similar to how they host popular javascript libraries. Not only would that mitigate some of the "trust" issues, but I would think google would do their due diligence on the licensing front before they offered to host them.
You sure are being (irrationally) resilient in your reasoning for not wanting this.
Font licensing will have all of the same challenges as image licensing and by using your logic we should stop allowing images to be used on the web in fear that one may somehow be used illegally. I'm not saying that we should ignore this aspect/problem/challenge but to dismiss the entire concept simply because it could be abused is a little heavy handed.
Concerning security, you can't program for exploits that you aren't aware of. However, as many people have pointed out that this does have potential for abuse and as such I would think that it would be an area that will get much scrutiny and as exploits arise they will be dealt with accordingly. Again, to say that the entire concept should be scrapped due to "potential for abuse" is absurd.
There are tons of feature in the firefox core that I don't use/want. However there are enough people that felt they were worthwhile and added value to the browsing experience. Even though I may not use this feature I am open-minded enough to see how it can in fact make the browsing experience better and that it is most definitely a good feature to support. The simple fact that you do not agree with that opinion does not mean that it should just simply go away.
If all that you want a browser to do is display the text of a document (which it sounds like you do), then might I suggest you look into lynx as it will be blazingly fast, stable and you won't be annoyed by the rest of then web's definition of "progress"
Wow, somebody is grumpy...and ill informed.
Licensing? Resolvable. No different than "copyrighted" images and the licensing for them. Honest developers will use properly licensed material (fonts, images, etc), dishonest or uninformed developers won't care.
Bandwidth? At 50-100k they are not that much compared to swf files or large images previously used (also, you can cache them)
Security? Security patches will come as they arise. How is this different than any other "potential for abuse"?
Compatibility? Does degrade nicely, you can specify the web fonts but fall back to "traditional" fonts
Gains? Designers will have flexibility! They won't have to rely on images to produce "nice fonts" and the pages can be more semantic (text > images). This is just a few of the potential gains.
Do you really want to hold back progress because YOU think something is stupid and YOU would prefer no styling at all just standard html? Also, you do not have to "DOWNLOAD every font mentioned on a page", just the ones you want to specify, so get your facts straight before you jump to irrational conclusions. Get your morning coffee, relax and realize that this is progress even if you don't see the benefit in the implementation/execution.
There is a big difference between "On Hold" and "Scrapped".
Not when you want a catchy headline...
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky
