buffer overflow

Every year there are more and more patents granted in the United States. Only 9 of the 45 years from 1963 to 2007 showed a decreased in granted patents from the year before (1966, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1983, and 1996). (Click image for larger view)

Patent statistics from http://www.uspto.gov/go/taf/us_stat.htm

Every year, patents are granted on similar but sufficiently different products. Situations like that result in product wars. The first and best product war that I can recall off the top of my head, was Betamax vs VHS in the 1970’s. Shooting from the hip, with no research behind this other than my dad’s words, Sony wouldn’t license Betamax nicely, so JVC created VHS and practically gave it away. VHS prospered, despite Betamax’s superior technology. Should I look into this case further, more research will have to happen.

A nice throwback to those days, has been the HD-DVD vs BluRay war, which recently ended with Sony trumping Toshiba with it’s BluRay format. This time, Sony was smart, and the superior product persevered.

Another product war which didn’t really seem like a product war was the flash memory war. This is a much wider war including SecureDigital (SD),  Compact Flash, Memory Stick, MMC, xD, Smart Media, and the ever popular USB stick. This product war has been waged for some time, probably due to the fact that SanDisk has their hand in 4 of the formats. What’s worse is for each format, there seems to be 2-6 variations/improved versions of the format, not all of which are backwards or forwards compatable. Luckily this war is fading out, with SecureDigital taking the lead, and certain other formats falling behind clinging to their inventors (xD to Olympus and FujiFilm, Memory Stick to Sony).

Other ‘wars’ can be looked at such as AM vs FM, records vs 8-Track, 8-Track vs cassette tapes, cassette tapes vs CD’s, VHS vs DVD, DVD vs BluRay, CRT vs LCD, Xbox vs Playstation, Gameboy vs Gamegear, etc, etc, etc, etc. Many of these weren’t really ‘wars’ in the same sense as Betamax and VHS. In cassette tapes vs CD’s for instance, there was a clear benefit to consumers with CD”s. They sounded better (even to the average consumer), they were not susceptible to magnetic destruction, they were lighter and more compact, and they were a nice kickback to vinyl records with their shape and operation. With Betamax and VHS though, the average consumer didn’t care. Only the techies really knew the Betamax format was better (again this is based on what I know, which has not been backed by research at this point in time, so VHS might have actually been a better quality format). All the consumer knew was that more option was available in the VHS world: “oh look more movies and more companies making VHS players.” This made VHS the win in the war, where CD’s were simply an advancement in the playing of recorded music. Betamax and VHS were the same advancement.

I hope to expand on this topic and explore the effects on culture that such patent and product wars have. Stay tuned.

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Posted by darkhelmet under Philosophy | 1 Comment »

Now I can use git on Windows. There is much rejoicing.

msysgit

Getting Started with Git and GitHub on Windows - Kyle Cordes

Posted by darkhelmet under Computers & Programming & Windows | No Comments »

I found this on ripten and found it ammusing.

I don’t think he was taking a jab at anything. But then again, Mass Effect isn’t really known for quality. It had a lot of problems with framerates, long loading times and all of that good stuff.

What? Did you actually say that? Have you played the game? I don’t notice any framerate problems, and while some might consider the loading times long, I’ve played many a game where I would’ve killed to have loading times as long as in ME.

Also, has this person not played any other Unreal Engine 3 based games? The load times are comparable to every other game that uses the engine, so I don’t know what this person’s problem is.

What makes me feel good at though, is at least this person isn’t in the game industry.

Posted by darkhelmet under Gaming & Intraweb | No Comments »

This is pure gold. From 365 days of free games | GamesRadar

Rose and Camellia

“This is the elegant art of feminine conflict,” according to the site. In other words, it’s a third-person Victorian slap-fighting game made in Japan.

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Posted by darkhelmet under Gaming & Intraweb & Random | 1 Comment »

A thought occurred to me as I was leaving class today. The topic had been brought up that in today’s culture we are in a state of making small, incremental improvements to things, but nobody ever comes up with strange new ideas, that shake the fabric our culture. This contrasts ‘the olden days’ of the industrial revolution when people were pumping out crazy shit left, right and center to benefit everybody. So why is it we are stuck this way? Why doesn’t somebody pull something from their sleeve and blow us away?

Nobody (except large corporations with lots of money and lawyers) want to deal with copyright and patent bullshit.

Seriously. Odds are, even if you invent something ‘new’, it’s still going to replace or make obsolete something else. That something else though, is probably some popular product produced by a large corporation. They have the resources (read: money) to stomp you out. They can simply buy you out. They can buy marketing share and make your product inferior in the eyes of the consumer. They can run you into debt in so many ways, the favorite is court and other legal battles. They can have you fucking killed. I’m not joking. If you don’t think money can buy murder in this world you’re naive.

All of these new things people come out with are simple expansions on proven ideas. Little things that don’t step on anybody’s feet with regard to copyrights or patents, and then are copywritten or patented again, or simply released into world with a low restriction license or evern just full public domain status. Less problems for everybody.

If you disagree, comment away.

Posted by darkhelmet under Philosophy | 1 Comment »

Nelson, Theodor H. “A File Structure for the Complex.” “The New Media Reader.” 2003. 134-145

While reading this article I kept having to remind myself that Nelson is not talking about the Executable and Linkable Format but his own format. About half way through the article I decided his Evolutionary List File should really be called the Extremely Limited File, or the Enigmatic Laborious File.Correct me if I’m wrong, but I got the impression that Nelson didn’t see too much farther than the immediate future and was all excited about giving historians something to pine over.

To me, it seems as though the file structure is quite limited to text, and that Nelson didn’t see into the future possibilities and potential the computer offers, and therefore ELF is ‘extremely limited’ as I put it. This is not to say it’s completely useless for other things, but it doesn’t take a genius to see it was designed with text and the sort in mind.

It also seems enigmatic and laborious as I put it. The historian isn’t going to care how the data is stored, only that it is. The supposedly easy to use structure of ELF is probably not going to be easy to use for most other people. Have you tried learning Lisp? I haven’t wrapped my head around it completely due to lack of time, but it’s definitely a programmer’s language. ELF seems like a low level Lisp, and unless things are explicitly identified as “manuscript” and “footnote”, historians and the like aren’t going to find it very easy.

I could be wrong however, but a few simple searches on Google and Wikipedia turn up nothing on “evolutionary list file”, so I gather nobody cares.

Nelson probably should have titled his essay “A Complex File Structure for Historians”

Posted by darkhelmet under Philosophy | 2 Comments »