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Comment Typefaces are not Copyrightable (Score 5, Insightful) 54

Typefaces are not copyrightable in the US. The font file is copyrightable, but unless the "clone font" is just literally the same files just renamed or something, it's perfectly legal. It is common for fonts to be "cloned" by re-creating the font outlines in font authoring software. I'm guessing this is the case here because they were able to tell it was specifically *that* clone font, so there must be some distinctive change they made when tracing the original font.

Comment It was for the Altair. (Score 2) 134

Altairs had a little as 1K memory and you entered the boot loader by hand using binary switches. I got a lot of practice with octal using that very Altair computer that bill gates gifted my high school.

Why octal you might ask and not hex. The importance of hex only emerged after we started trying programs. But when you had to enter machine code by hand using 16 dip switches in a row octal could be done using three fingers on each hand. Try to slap four switches at the same time is two spastic a movement for most people's hands. You could go wickedly fast in octal

With the Altair there was no overriding operating system at all so comparing it to Linux is weird. No hard or floppy drives. To write a program you keyed in the boot loader that had enough brains to read something off cassette tape which was a more sophisticated loader that then could read in the 2K basic. The basic could then accept input from a teletype.
If you wanted a file manager for your cassette tape then you write one in basic and ran it.

Comment No worries (Score 1) 132

For me the phone is an appliance. I don't seek crazy standout features if it an anyway degrades my legacy knowledge and expectations in operating my appliance. I don't like relearning how to use a different microwave oven. A toaster is simple and all that matters is that it's a good toaster that cooks evenly and reproducibly.
But I like new features so I don't just want to keep my old phone. I just want an ecosystem that has tamed new innovations and integrates those across my existing apps well.
Getting the cheapest phone is never of interest. Anything you touch more times per day than your wife should be a graceful pleasant experience and so paying a dollar or even two per day for the best experience phone is a no brainer.

You may note I did not say the word Apple. If that sounds like I just described the Apple experience that is your imputation. But you'd not be wrong that Apple serves that customer better than any other

Comment Apple ecosystem, privacy, seamless processor chang (Score 1) 117

The competition has had years to study Apple, and even hire away their engineers but no one has such a user centric experience as Apple,

I don't need to care what processor I have inside. My privacy is as protected as much as possible. Devices last years. Everything works together. Apple saves time rather worrying about flash.

Apple has been creating its own processor and bus architecture letting it make fan free high performance long battery life computers. It may not be a new product category per se but it sure is innovative as it has let them create awesome performance systems.

You may recall Microsoft spent years failing at moving its OS to arm. Abysmal failure. Surfaces are still playing catchup.

I also like the expansion of my privacy on sppple with things like private relay and on board AI task specific entiiies rather than external servers.

The Apple AR system was sure shell of a lot better than anything Zuckerberg produced. Just because AR isn't being adopted fast doesn't change that they smoked Zuckerbergs
passion project

And the Apple ecosystem still "just works" better than the competition. The creation of a secure privacy centered seamless integration of long lived products is very satisfying to any user that values their time

Comment Apple M1 (Score 2) 117

Apple has been creating its own processor and bus architecture letting it make fan free high performance long battery life computers. It may not be a new product category per se but it sure is innovative as it has let them create awesome performance systems.

You may recall Microsoft spent years failing at moving its OS to arm. Abysmal failure. Surfaces are still playing catchup.

I also like the expansion of my privacy on sppple with things like private relay and on board AI task specific entiiies rather than external servers.

The Apple AR system was sure shell of a lot better than anything Zuckerberg produced. Just because AR isn't being adopted fast doesn't change that they smoked Zuckerbergs
passion project

And the Apple ecosystem still "just works" better than the competition. The creation of a secure privacy centered seamless integration of long lived products is very satisfying to any user that values their time

Comment Massive value to price ratio (Score 1) 107

You literally touch your iPhone more times per day than your wife. You spend more time concentrating on it than your wife. These things are part of your life. Paying less than a dollar a day for a fondle slab you will have a few years is good value. You'd have to be nuts not to buy the top of the line when it's so cheap and such high interactivity in your life. I'd like to say that wasn't true but sadly(?) it is.

Comment The real Y2K scam... (Score 4, Insightful) 134

As someone who was working in I.T. well before Y2K (note the 4-digit Slashdot ID) and who worked on actual code and system remediation projects for Y2K, I can assure you that it was NOT a technical scam. We had old billing systems (think: AOS/VS II hosted COBOL, other dusty old crap like that), along with untold Oracle back-ended applications, which were both critical for a multi-million dollar company's billing cycle yet also poorly written enough that they absolutely 100% would have produced incorrect output starting in 2000. All of that had to be gone through with a fine tooth comb and fixed, which we did, and as a result my own Y2K on-call was as boring as hell....precisely because we'd done all that work. Other companies had similar Ancient Horrors lurking on their data center floors, and all those had to be fixed or replaced too. Never doubt the need, or underestimate the work required to get it all done.

Now, all that being said, there WAS an actual Y2K scam, but it wasn't a technical one: Rather, "Y2K Remediation" budgets became the dumping ground for all the bad ideas, lost projects, failed acquisitions, questionable purchases, mistress payments, and other C-level executive idiotic decision making. No shareholder would question the need to fix the actual Y2K problems, especially given the overwrought news cycle around that messaging. As such, C-types took the opportunity to bury all their mistakes in that budget, never to be seen again. I saw it happen with my own eyes, but nobody outside really grasped what all they were doing.

THAT was the real scam of Y2K, not the actual technical issues that needed to be fixed.

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