Life In 19x19

kirkmc wrote:

amnal wrote:Also, this stuff about 'sensitive eyes' is absurd. If you guys want a proper argument, get a dataset and analyse it, or find some research, nobody is impressed with 'well my eyes are fine, it must just be you'. I think, from my own vague research in the past, that the kindle is objectively easier on the eyes (without stating a difference magnitude ), but this would be easy enough to prove right or wrong if you bothered arguing the point, not the opponent.

Absurd? Shows you don't know much about eyes. There are many people who have trouble reading different types of devices. And as one ages, it gets harder, not only because vision degrades, but also because you need more light.

I found the Kindle to be very readable in the sun; in lower light, however, it gave me a headache. Many people felt the same way. This said, it was a version before the current one, which supposedly has better contrast. But it remains necessary to have sufficient light, unlike a backlit device. (To be fair, it's nearly impossible to read an iPad in sunlight...)

It was kind of my point that, whatever anyone says, someone (apparently you) can say 'I know someone for whom that is not the case!'. But I was speaking of a general trend or pattern, whose existence is not implausible and which might be easily measurable. Amongst all the anecdotal evidence either way, this has not been addressed, but it seems more relevant to me to try to do so.

amnal wrote:

imabuddha wrote:

Bantari wrote:
This is a common fallacy.
I was right once, now I am automatically right again.
You know better than that.

Whoa, that's not a fallacy. Many people, myself included, thought that not including a floppy drive in the first iMac was stupid. Time has proven Apple was correct.

The 'I was right once, now I am automatically right again' procedure is a fallacy.

OK, despite "being done with this thread" I must apologize for my quoted post. I thought Bantari's "This is a common fallacy" referred to people claiming Apple was stupid for omitting floppy drives, but as amnal points out it's obvious that's not correct.

kirkmc wrote:As for a camera on the iPad, I'm curious about why, all of a sudden, people want to use video chats. I know very few people who use them on their computers, and I'm not sure it's really needed for phones. I've only had a dozen or so video chats in all the years I've been able to do so.

Just to jump in with personal anecdote(s) here, I think that video chatting is one of the things that people haven't done because it hasn't been convenient or they haven't experienced it, and I think a front facing camera on tablets and phones is great for this purpose. I travel a lot for work, and for the last year or so the only only reason I've been able to "see" my close family more than once is due to video chat (I made the family thanksgiving via my brother's android tablet). Taking time to set up a video chat with a computer is cumbersome which I think contributes significantly its lack of use. The fact that if I am in Houston for business I can video call my relatives in St. Louis from my phone just as easily as a regular call means we are much more likely to do it. Instead of having to find somewhere to set up a computer, connect to wifi, let them know I'll be connecting, etc, I can just call and it's up. I think once more people get used to it, it will be a new everyday occurance, much like the shift to cell phone calls from landlines (Think back 15 years ago -- Is a cell phone really necessary, I could just call someone from home/office?).

My 2 cents, your mileage may vary

you can now return to your original discussion (=

Well, Google has just put a stake through HTML5 ubiquity by stopping support for H.264 video:


http://www.businessinsider.com/google-p ... oft-2011-1

Basically, by not having wide support for video standards in all HTML5-compliant browsers (Chrome is on the rise), it makes the case for Flash stronger. So, Google, in trying to bash Apple, has also aided Adobe. I'd just as soon Flash faded away, but Google just made that less likely, rather than more. So it goes. This is all about platform wars, not consumer choice.

Yes, this thread has gone off-topic, but I think WMS has adequately answered the original question. It's the same answer he's been giving for years, so you have to admire the man for his consistency, even if you disagree with him. Yes, it's a resource/control issue. There are middle roads that solve the problem, but I'm not going to argue with the guy.... he's providing us with a valuable service. Enjoy it for what it is, instead of what it isn't.

The sad part is that all of the new form-factor devices want you to have a "native" app (because it is more efficient, and because it gives them "lock-in" to their platform), and many smaller operations don't have the resources or desire to have a native app for every darn platform. So, on one side you have a rock, and on the other, a hard place. This will all work itself out, eventually. If support for iPhone/iPad someday becomes critical for various sites, those who fail to provide that support will fail to flourish. We aren't at that juncture just yet.

This could also go another way... the devices themselves could become powerful enough that they start to support the cross-platform development methods like Flash. Apple has already had to halfway relent about Flash on the iPhone, because of Android's support for it. A little competition is a wonderful thing.

Gohst wrote:Well, Google has just put a stake through HTML5 ubiquity by stopping support for H.264 video:


http://www.businessinsider.com/google-p ... oft-2011-1

Basically, by not having wide support for video standards in all HTML5-compliant browsers (Chrome is on the rise), it makes the case for Flash stronger. So, Google, in trying to bash Apple, has also aided Adobe. I'd just as soon Flash faded away, but Google just made that less likely, rather than more. So it goes. This is all about platform wars, not consumer choice.

Your desired result is for h.264 to challenge (and defeat) flash. This seems to be just a subset of the more general goal 'something better than flash, and as good as possible in and of itself, should challenge and defeat flash'. It isn't obvious to me that the second goal has been compromised.

Google are supporting Ogg Theora and WebM in place of h.264, I think. It isn't obvious to me that these are better or worse than h.264, especially given the vague patent issues that seem to surround it. This also brings google in line with some other browsers - there is not yet a dominating codec, and it seems false to say that google switching from h.264 is breaking any kind of common agreement.

They're not breaking any kind of agreement. They're deleting support for a fairly ubiquitous codec, and replacing it with some that are, at the present time, completely marginal. To the extent that any freely available video formats are going to rise up to challenge Flash, they are going to have to have wide support. Google, unfortunately, is moving in just the opposite direction, for mostly self-interested reasons. We should not be surprised when large corporations act in their own interest.... it is to be expected. But we can safely conclude that Big G doesn't want H.264 to become a Flash challenger. Too bad.... so far it looks like the best shot.

Things are still shaking out, so who knows that the ultimate outcome will be. I think Google is really betting on Flash. There is that little site called YouTube that they have as a side interest....

h.264 is royalty-free for playback, so it's not really a patent or royalty issue. It looks more like Google is just taking a battle and trying to prove they can win, even though h.264 has massive support.

amnal wrote:Your desired result is for h.264 to challenge (and defeat) flash. This seems to be just a subset of the more general goal 'something better than flash, and as good as possible in and of itself, should challenge and defeat flash'. It isn't obvious to me that the second goal has been compromised.

Of course it has been compromised. Before, everyone encodes in .h264, if websites want to, they serve h.264 to viewers in a <video> tag, with Flash as fallback. Opera and Firefox get Flash, (and note that <video> adoption is heaviest for mobile, since Flash is rare and especially slow in that area). But now you've just increased the number of people who need Flash to serve h.264. And you can't serve WebM video to an even wider range of people. So you're stuck dual-encoding to get close to a good number of people.

You can argue about blame. There's an open source or anti-patent perspective that says Apple and Microsoft should budge and support WebM. There's an open standards or ubiquity based argument that Chrome should budge (I think Firefox just can't because of their approach towards patents--is that right?). But you don't have to answer that question to know that <video> just suffered a serious setback. Whether it'll stagnate or just slow down is an open question. But it can't be good for the adoption.

The closest I can see to an argument that doesn't matter is that Firefox is a big browser, so it doesn't matter that Chrome is in the same boat. But Chrome really is showing remarkable growth.

Bantari wrote:Just consider: IGS opened its protocol to allow exactly what you are suggesting KGS should do. And even though IGS is much older, it still does not have a decent client, and when it does - it gets broken and not-supported within a year, and the server is still bound to the ancient telnet protocol, and the whole thing seems to be just going downhill. What makes you think KGS will fare any better if it opens its protocol?

Don't you think that Tetsuki is a pretty decent client? If not could you please specify what you call "decent" in a client?

After twenty minutes or so, Tetsuki crashes for me every time I try to watch a pro game. So my experience has not been decent. YMMV

hyperpape wrote:After twenty minutes or so, Tetsuki crashes for me every time I try to watch a pro game. So my experience has not been decent. YMMV

I use Testsuki on a regular basis with iOs 3 and got no troubles at all playing or watching

By the way... There is an alternative (unauthorised) Java client actually out there. I've seen it in action. I believe it was called "KGS Hacked". From what I saw, it's just the existing client, but then someone reverse-engineered it and added some fancy colours and extra doodles to the chat functionality. Since it is quite doable to reverse-engineer the protocol, it should be also possible for an amateur to develop a simple (unsupported) iPad client, right?

Reason why it will never happen: you'd need someone who does not only have a lot of spare time, likes go and computers, and is good with programming; but who also uses unnecessary expensive low-quality gadgets such as the iPad and is insane enough to comply to Apple-verse. Dream on

gaius wrote:By the way... There is an alternative (unauthorised) Java client actually out there. I've seen it in action. I believe it was called "KGS Hacked". From what I saw, it's just the existing client, but then someone reverse-engineered it and added some fancy colours and extra doodles to the chat functionality. Since it is quite doable to reverse-engineer the protocol, it should be also possible for an amateur to develop a simple (unsupported) iPad client, right?

Actually, no. In the hacked client pasky didn't reverse engineer anything; java binaries can easily be turned back into raw java code, although it ends up kind of garbled. Pasky turned the java binaries into (garbled) java code, then figured out how to make the modifications he wanted, then compiled it back. It would certainly be possible for somebody to reverse engineer the whole protocol from the garbled java code and thus come up with an ipad client, but that isn't what pasky did as far as I know.

Did you see the changes in the hacked client?
You can scroll the moves of the game with the mousewheel, more readable color-coded games lists, and auto-joining of high-rank games.
These are all trivial to implement but provide a huge usability bonus. What is annoying, is that merging this stuff into the main client would take me like 1 hour, and Java is not even my main programming language. Of course, the current version is so outdated, it doesn't support tagged games, but for me that is a favorable trade-off. I hope the mentioned protocol changes don't break this peaceful coexistance

I've seen them. And yes, none of them are huge things to do. The mousewheel is the one thing I'd be most likely to do, that's pretty neat. Most of the others, they just aren't what I would want myself.