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Domain: dotat.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to dotat.org.

Stories · 3

  1. Online Copyright Round-up

    Yro · Themedia · · posted by michael · from the branding-and-ear-notching-to-follow dept. · 4 comments
    newt writes: "Australia's Radio National has published a background briefing on the topic of Digital Copyright. The subject matter serves as a pot-purri of slashdot topics, neatly summarizing them into one coherent whole: Scientists revolting against online journals, Adobe e-Books, Licenses to Read, you name it. Audio in RealMedia format, plus a HTML transcript. If you want to educate someone who doesn't know what all the digital copyright fuss is about, this is an excellent starting point."

  2. Why Hasn't Apple Released Quicktime For UNIX?

    Apple · Apple · · posted by Cliff · from the it-wants-to-be-free dept. · 253 comments
    newt asks a question that I'm sure a lot of you have been wondering about: "We've just seen news that Apple has Open-Sourced Darwin, which no doubt fills enthusiasts with a warm fuzzy feeling about the future of Open Source and the way that Apple has embraced it. However, there's a piece missing from the picture: QuickTime. How often have you visited a Web page only to find that all the streaming media on it is QuickTime, and you can't view it without the Sorenson CODEC?" There was once a time when Quicktime as well as MPEG were cross platform, now we only have MPEG without the advantages of the advances made in the newer CODECs. Now that Apple has embraced Open Source, could Quicktime be on its way?

    "There are a couple of solutions to this. The Open-Source xanim software already contains support for the QuickTime file format, and has an API for importing CODECs in binary format. If Apple doesn't want to release the source code to the Sorenson CODEC (which is understandable given the competitive market they're in at the moment), and if they don't want the cost and headache of supporting an additional product for the last 15% of so of the market, they can release the Sorenson CODEC in binary form using that API and let the Open Source process go the rest of the way towards enabling Linux to play QuickTime 4.

    There's a better solution, though: Darwin is based on BSD UNIX; Apple is now full of UNIX developers. You can't convince me that there isn't already a version of the QT player with an Xwindows GUI compiled and floating around inside Apple; The absence of a UNIX player in that kind of development environment just doesn't make sense. So how close is it to release?

    Let's find out: What pressure can we apply to Apple to let them know that there's sufficient demand for them to release the software?"

  3. Telcos lose- Net wins

    Internet · · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the bandwidth-ought-to-be-free dept. · 0 comments
    Mark Newton writes " Telcos lose Everyone else wins. Calls to ISPs are still local calls, and settlement be damned. " It seems like every year or 2 someone tries to do this. Nice to know they failed again.