misa

maestro64 said:

StrangeDays said:

So ZeniMax, which bought John Carmack's id Software, is saying Carmack performed work for Oculus while he was still with id, and that's what gives them an ownership stack in the technology that flowered. Wow. Talk about a bonehead move from Carmack if true...

Don't you know in the software world no one owns the software programmer are free to use what they like anywhere they like.

A company I worked for found they had programmer using code/library files from previous employers and open source code which had freeware licensing restriction like it could not used in a for fee product. The programs felt since the wrote the code it was theirs to use anywhere they worked and anything found on the internet was free to use as well. It was huge mess these people caused, luckily it was found out before anyone was sued and then removed from the code base.

I spend most of my career on hardware and never once thought I could take designs I worked on from one company to the next. Grant it, I have the knowledge in my head and used it elsewhere but never actually took the design files and such. I never understood the most programs view about who owns the software.

I work for two different places that produce similar content, but otherwise aren't in competition with each other.

Because of how one contract is written, I can write code for the other without worry, but I can't do the reverse. So most of the time I need to "recycle" something, I recycle code that is easily found online in samples of how the function is used, so any claim about infringement has to first examine if the code was public domain.

In the case of Carmack, it's likely the standard "we own everything you do" clause, that would allow the company to claim ownership over any software, hardware or patents invented while employed by the first company, even if the programmer had a separate pre-existing contract with another company and did it without any of Zenimax's resources. In this cause I would rather say ZeniMax is in the right. 

That said, this lawsuit likely never would have surfaced if it wasn't for Carmack. This guy is known for being something of a software engineering genius, so it was in Zenimax's best interest to actually make sure IP isn't walking out the door.

SpamSandwich said:

If Nintendo were to simply convert all of their early arcade and home video games to iOS they would have a continuous revenue stream from people wanting to relive those classics. Wake up, Nintendo!

They won't do this, because iOS on screen controls are joke. 

Mario Run was good because it made use of controls that are native to iOS, one tap. That's all you have.

What other games work well on iOS. Angry Birds (slingshot game), Bad Piggies (construction), Bust-a-Move aka Puzzle Bobble (a game that you move a targeting crosshair and tap to fire), and the endless rubbish farmville clones (tap to timesink.)

So if you take the logical direction, that means the best games that would work on iOS would be Mario vs Donkey Kong, Mario Maker (maybe some variation of "mario run maker") , Dr.Mario/Yoshi's cookie, Mario Paint, and maybe attempts at porting the zapper/superscope games (eg Duck Hunt, Yoshi's safari)

Now that I think about it, the game that should be on iOS is Animal Crossing, because that game has an inherent "visit your friends" mechanic. It could easily be adapted to use the location services to recognize that you're visiting a friend with your smartphone and can visit their town when you visit them. Or when kids go to school.

So in short, we're not going to see it in a 7s, or an 8, but maybe something beyond 8. Or preferably an entirely different product.

A flexible screen makes a little more sense in a tablet, but the underlying battery, pcb, and chasis is not flexible, so a lot of "flexible screens" are meaningless. Flexible screens are meant for literal "flexible" computers, like watchbands, cuffs, and tube/sphere/cone shaped surfaces that aren't necessarily information devices but decorative props.

Soli said:

1) Two-step or dual-biometric authentication? The former is a step down, unless there's evidence that Touch ID is currently to insecure to be good convenience feature.

2) No physical Home Button indentation makes this story rumour sounds fake to me.

The gist of it seems like Apple is trying to put in an actual two-factor authentication (eg finger+face) since the finger alone has a few weaknesses (I'm not sure if the "gummy finger" works on the iPhone, but that's how optical finger print readers are defeated.) The face alone is also weak since you can only use parts of the face that don't change with age which gives you two problems:
1) Glasses/Contacts - A "retina scan" has to actually look at the Retina, which means that a scan would have to be taken at very close range, an iris scan would be defeated by contact lenses, which leaves a face scan. Typically what you would have is a prompt like "make a smile" and the phone would check that the 60 or so points on a face that correspond to your smile match. That makes it more difficult to defeat than a simple "photo" based match. 

2) Makeup/complexion/tattoos/piercings, if someone breaks out with acne, or has applied makeup to cover moles, then the detection mechanism no longer has the right reference points, especially if the way the recognition works is looking for unique identifying marks.

To some extent people with long hair would also confuse face recognition since some people change their hair frequently.

As far as identifying characteristics go however, The Retina and the Iris are are the ones that can't be changed or fooled, but since they are biological markers, it is possible for those parts of an eye to be damaged through surgery or accident, thus locking one out of the device. There are several DNA markers that are responsible for the color and unique patterns in the Iris (would an identical twin be able to fool it?)

What I think is going to happen, assuming they remove a the physical home button (I wouldn't expect this to happen because it makes it harder to orient the phone from everything about taking pictures and movies to visually-impaired users being unable to use Siri because they no longer can find the the part of the screen to double-tap) there will still be a part of the screen that has a dedicated space for the fingerprint sensor, and perhaps the screen will "wrap" around this sensor and software that isn't aware about this wrap will just have the previous screen size and aspect ratio assumed, where as sensor-aware apps will be able to go "place finger here to pay"

linkman said:

Wow, it looks like the Android version is even less restricted. It can make and manage phone calls? Sure, Meitu will only use the information for good and never for nefarious purposes.

On the Android version apparently it sends the IMEI (the device serial number) and the IMSI (the carrier number), but not enough information to "clone" the phone (which it would need to copy the SIM card to do so, and that's not trivial.)  It's essentially lazy if it asks for more permission than it really needs, and this is one case where I would absolutely refuse to allow it to have access to anything but the camera. If I want to post it to twitter, I'll post it after it saves it to the camera roll.