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My Dark Shikari is newer ;-)
Source

Q?: Is Theory still improving much? Is it possible to improve it a lot without breaking backward compatibility, or would that require breaking legacy support?
The encoder still has a good bit of room to improve; it still lacks proper pixel-domain RD optimization and could use some psychovisual improvements as well. It is primarily crippled by the ancient VP3 specification though. In theory it may eventually be able to eke ahead of Xvid, as while Xvid was a very good MPEG-4 ASP encoder, it never had any significant psy optimizations, so even though Theora as a video format is probably slightly worse, the encoder should be able to surpass Xvid with psy optimizations in some cases.
The primary problem for adoption (not for quality) is its lack of features. For many many use-cases, one needs fine-grained control over various parameters, such as the buffer size, the maximum bitrate, the latency, and so forth. The encoder is currently very inflexible, and with no alternative encoding libraries, this leaves very little choice for many applications. For practical purposes, it only has one speed mode: "slow as hell", which makes it basically impossible to stream anything above SD.

That's...an incredible under-statement on your part!

Well, yeah, and I also understand why you are disinclined to being diplomatic. I've been modded troll for posting the comparisons linked in my post here on slashdot and the "It's just as good. really!!!" crowd is getting on my nerves as well. I especially hate the "you don't need to trust that comparison, try encoding yourself" crowd, because they obviously never followed their own advice or they wouldn't make such statements.

x264 started being developed at about the same time the Theora bitstream was frozen and if you look at the progress both projects have made it looks pretty bad for Theora. x264 had at most one or two main developers (concurrently) and a couple of contributors, summer of code projects and a few corporate sponsored improvements and look what they managed to create. A new unique rate control (1; 2), low latency error resilient encoding(3), psy optimizations(4), speed optimizations(5) for multiple processing architectures(6) and it's widely used. Youtube, Facebook, other companies, the guys who post 720p encodes on bittorrent, you name it!
At the same time Theora still has problems doing encodes without losing frames if you want to hit a certain filesize. I like Theora, it's good to have a free alternative when you need one, but Xiph could have done a lot more with it in the time they had and the codec has a really annoying fanclub.

One of the problems Xiph has in my opinion is that they want to do everything. They have a bunch of good codecs (mainly audio) like Vorbis, FLAC, Speex and CELT, but then they develop their own container and subtitle formats instead of just using or adapting the ones that are all ready out there and better than what Xiph has to offer (MKV, ASS/SSA to name two). With Theora they went the adaption route but took a little too long to deliver. They don't even have to innovate. They should just look at x264 (especially mb-tree and the psy optimizations), see how they can adapt it for Theora and port it over and bam! you've got a halfway decent free video codec.

In the United States, x264 is considered warez because distribution thereof infringes a third party's right.

Really? You should tell Youtube, Facebook, Avail Media and all the other US companies currently using x264 that they are using warez. If you pay the licensing fees you can use x264 however you want. Companies are regularly sponsoring the development of features the want implemented, for instance low latency encoding or streaming improvements. Most private use is probably covered by the less than 100k = free clause in the MPEG licensing agreement and it's not like the MPEG-LA really cares what you use to rip your DVDs.

In the United States, x264 is considered warez because distribution thereof infringes a third party's right.

Really? You should tell Youtube, Facebook, Avail Media and all the other US companies currently using x264 that they are using warez. If you pay the licensing fees you can use x264 however you want. Companies are regularly sponsoring the development of features the want implemented, for instance low latency encoding or streaming improvements. Most private use is probably covered by the less than 100k = free clause in the MPEG licensing agreement and it's not like the MPEG-LA really cares what you use to rip your DVDs.

Don't fart around on slashdot, go ahead and see if your ideas really hold water.

So while Chinese govt has to hack their way in to fish for dissidents, US Govt can just waltz in and get any records they want (read: no warrant required).

Eric Schmidt: "If you have something [to hide], maybe you shouldn't be doing it"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=983717

This article reminds me of a Blog Post from last year where the Pretty-Well-Regarded Hosting Company rimuhosting.com, gained root access (broke in) to a customers Virtual Machine when the customer explicitly stated that he would not give them root access.

A long discussion ensued where people said such silly comments suggesting that you should not expect privacy for a $20 server. If you get no privacy for $20, what kind of privacy should you expect from Google's Free Cloud...?

You mean Hacker News, right?

Linky:

http://news.ycombinator.com/

Anonymous tears are the most delicious.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1019162

If I had something like this, I would call up Paul Graham at Y Combinator... This is the sort of thing he (angel) invests in.

Disclaimer: I don't have a business relationship with those guys. I just find his articles really insightful and interesting. You might too. Start with this one The 18 mistakes that kill startups ... Being a "Single Founder", like yourself, is his first point.

Good luck! I hope you find a lot of success in this

"Using a version of Internet Explorer that is how old, and knows how little about modern web technologies?"

Actually I'd just use an older version of firefox with a few plugins. Oldversion.com - because newer isn't ALWAYS better.

"And how many features does your Outlook have? I know you can't use webmail because you're using a version of IE that can't do shit."

Gmail has a regular HTML display option for email - try again.

"The capabilities of Quake 3 are nowhere near those of modern games."

The Q3 engine is open-sourced and has been extensively and heavily modified. The engine itself is more efficient and actually handles more detail. In fact, iD software is the premier engine developer, and the Q3 engine is so customizable that with just some tweaking you can get much better looking graphics. Actually, the engine is so efficient that extremely high polygon count models would still render pretty easily even on older Geforce 6 hardware.

"Ah, but can you do 1080p video?"

Software 1080p only requires a 2GHz P4 and 256MB of RAM (That's my old system spec from early 2000, was watching 1080p fansubs) Get a video card that handles it natively on the board and you can get away with only a 1GHz processor.

"Calculators do simple math. I bet your calculator can't brute force an MD5 hash at 600 million attempts per second."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767419 - who needs speed? It can be done, it will be done. yea it'll take years on the TI-83's 8MHz cpu but it could still get it done.

"Sorry old man, but computers from 10 years ago just aren't capable of things that today's computers are."

Only games. Everything else can and has been done on older computers, pretty well might I add, maybe not REALTIME but it still gets done. All those super-awesome CGI scenes you saw in movies back in the late 90s? Yea, quite a few of those were done on machines that don't break the 300MHz barrier, and were lucky to even have 256MB of RAM in both video and system memory combined. Music tracks? Yep, been done a loooong time on old computers. 3D modeling/CAD? Yup, been done and is still done on old computers (go take a tour of the Carvin guitar factory, they're still using machines from the early 80's running some variant of UNIX.) Text processing? Been doing that since before the days of monochrome screens. Spreadsheets, graphs, plotting? Yep, those too.

Sorry, but computers even back then were capable of doing pretty much anything you wanted with them. Whether or not you got results back in realtime is an entirely different matter.

Also, I've never seen anybody in Academia or Business use wikipedia as a source

Well, this just proves that you work neither in Academia, nor in Business. I work in both (imagine that), and it is used all over the place. Not in publications of course, only for the actual research.

well, I'll bite your trolling, genius boy, despite your silly little ad hominem, I said specifically "as a source". If you will not cite it, then it's not a "source"; an *official* place to get info from. And this is what I'm pointing out above. EVERYBODY uses wikipedia (do I REALLY need to say that? Did you really understand it THAT backwards?), but there is a huge margin for improvement. If it were as respected as *official sources* are it would not be subject to being attacked as I pointed out above. I can conceive a wikipedia fork in which some articles are time-frozen and checked and commented on.

That is, you can cite the 2008 article on Douglas Hofstadter Computational Cognitive Architectures, and the article will be THE 2008's version, it will be checked by experts, while new advances are continuously going on on the real-time article. The 2008 article will have a DOI. There could be *comments* and *debates* from experts, also with their own DOI, concerning the frozen articles. (Take a look at the Behavioral and Brain Sciences journal).

In between this lack of trust in the quality of the information and the pre-web deletionist mentality which might have deleted paper cutters in Sept10th/01, there is space for a fork to attack wikipedia, just as there was space many years ago to attack Britannica. Entrepreneurs should look into this, because the VCs are.

Which brings up the next obvious question: Will the next milestone be 4 million articles, or 2 million articles!

Actually, you're pointing out a serious flaw in wikipedia. I believe it's possible that a fork of wikipedia might make to wikipedia what it did to Britannica. Think about this:

Deletionists have a mindset from those pre-web days; an article about paper cutters might very well have been deleted on Sept 10th 2001. If the article you're thinking is on another encyclopedia, then that's no good for your encyclopedia.

Also, I've never seen anybody in Academia or Business use wikipedia as a source (this of course is no surprise to anyone). But THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia is NOT a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia?

I think at least these two obstacles prevent a major challenge for wikipedia to sustain itself in face of challengers. I don't know if wikipedia is sustainable as it is today. Oh, and google is craving to place ads in the web's encyclopedia, by the way.

"A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source."

"The BSD philosophy seems to hold that creating and giving away code, then seeing it used by others, is victory and reward enough. But most of the GPL supporters disapproved of allowing "others" to close off source code and hide enhancements."

"The BSD license allows someone to take the code, improve it, and not share the improvements"

I suppose you're going to say they are wrong too.

Falcon

And at Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=558365

ycombinator

Of course, Slashdot is a dime short and days late on the real news.

JavaScript 3-10x Faster On iPhone OS 3.0

Well, for a better, no BS news aggregator, try The Hacker News. Then after seeing it there for a few days, come to slashdot to see a regurgitated discussion.

Yesterday I saw this survey which says that entrepreneurs peak between 25-29.

Signal-To-Noise

If only there were a few million people out there willing to filter through this stuff and decide what was good and what wasn't.

Yeah, you're right, blogging will never take off.

I know my spelling / grammar aren't up to many peoples standards, but I had other people clean things up.

Good. I don't want to be an asshole about it. Bad spelling/grammar aren't moral failings; they have practical effects that can usually be eliminated with some decent proof reading. As I note, there's no obligation upon anyone to give that kind of attention to a Slashdot post. Nor do I claim complete perfection in this area on my own part.

I wish you could see your post through my eyes though - it's almost physically jarring.

I'm sorry but many really good engineers can't write.

I'm not sure about the "many". I've noticed a strong correlation between "good spelling/writing" and "good engineer" But certainly some good engineers really can't write and you're clearly a good engineer. I don't think that's in question.

But you're not trying to be just a good engineer. You're trying to be a good businessman too. You obviously have some talent for business - your successes even where partial show that - but I wonder if some of the problems you encounter actually arise from deficient soft-skills akin to writing?

This post in the meta-discussion on Hacker News might be insightful.

Good luck with your future endeavours; it certainly sounds like you've earned it!

In my view of the world, there are 5 key companies that completely redefine the way businesses are created using the web, aka "startup 2.0":

- http://ycombinator.com/: Paul Graham can take a bunch of smart college kids, feed them $15K for 3 months, bring them to Silicon Valley and watch them succeed - his success rate is amazing.

- http://fairsoftware.net/ (disclosure: I'm one of the founders): eliminate the need for any startup capital when you have a good idea for a software or a web site, just go ahead and create a virtual online corporation, hire friends or strangers, ship and share revenue. Never talk to a lawyer. Shopping and banking are online nowdays, why not the corporation itself?

- http://thefunded.com/: once your business is showing potential, maybe (just maybe) you want to raise money from VCs. Thanks to TheFunded, VCs are not the ruling masters of their universe anymore.

- http://vator.tv/: once you have a cool product, it's time to pitch it to the world. You don't need to have a friend at CNN anymore. Well, actually with vator, you do :-)

- http://partnerup.com/: you need to find co-founders to start your enterprise 2.0. Traditional job boards are for 9-5 jobs at Fortune 500 companies. PartnerUp is the only one I have seen that really focuses on early stage opportunities.

I believe innovation will come from all these new startups that can now be created online, with collaborators distributed potentially all over the world, just like Open Source. That's big enough that it may create an entirely new economy within 5 years.

The reason for the name 'Frank Shoemaker' is simply that it contains the letters for the 2nd code of 'employee number base sixteen' - ie the 'noise' helps to determine the subsitution cipher. The full decoding is over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192296

Indeed, some work has be done on the code here : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192426

Hell, I know billionaires and the ones who are open to funding new ideas are interested in hearing new ideas

A few moments elementary Googling, you're in Bellevue, Washington, so sure, you're in proximity to at least four of America's 372 billionaires.

But you post on YC's site, and comment about how it's bad that Bay Area women are "skinnier (but more expensive)", of those that "want to date geeks". Complaining about women with expensive tastes isn't really the mark of someone has really climbed the financial walls of success.

So I'm really kinda curious, how many billionaires do you know, and how well do you know them?

Funny you should mention NDAs. This is from the Y Combinator FAQ:

Will you sign an NDA? How do I know you won't steal my idea?

No, we won't sign an NDA. No venture firm would at this stage. The informal commitment to secrecy on our application form is more than any VC would make.

...I've been paying a bit of attention to Loopt, as well as several other tech startups, not because of their products per se, but rather how they've been helped in getting started.

Y Combinator http://ycombinator.com/lib.html is an interesting little VC group that helped fund the likes of Loopt and several other tiny operations with big ideas. While obviously expecting a return on their modest investments, Y Combinator seem to be as much about philanthropy and helping out the little guy, as their extremely interesting and informative articles seem to attest.

From their articles, I've learned a lot about stuff that I didn't think I was even interested in. Folks might want to rummage around their site for some refreshing ideas on when to run (or not) with new ideas, how to get your little operation off the ground, and why the hell no one can seem to make a halfway decent online dating site.

And no, I have absolutely no affiliation with these guys. Just thought they were a refreshing voice in a sea of noise. And they're a big reason why we're reading about Loopt today on /.

It sounds like they're placing themselves squarely as the 800-pound-gorilla against TextPayMe -- one of the Y Combinator-funded startups. This may be interesting for both parties.

What about asking to Y Combinator?
http://ycombinator.com/

I know they usually go with fresh graduated students but it never hurts to ask. I think they are better than a normal VC.

Have a read of his essay "A Unified Theory of VC Suckage"

http://www.paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html

He hates them even more than most.

2) Low barriers to entry also means there is going to be hundreds of other "undergrads" trying to sell the same idea. This means your chances of eventual payback are much smaller!

Who cares if a company has the same idea as you? You just have to do it better. That's competition.

3) Why should bigger companies buy startups when they can just partner with them or outsource company services to them?

Because they can. Because they get control. Because it's potentially cheaper. Because they get quality people.

Yeah, starting a web based startup doesn't cost significantly more than just being a slacker. But if you haven't noticed, 99% of us can't afford to just set around and be a slacker either!

The point is that you don't need to raise millions of dollars. $10,000 is a trivial amount of money in the grand scheme of things -- it is not impossible to come by if you think your ideas and your people are worth it. If you don't think they're worth it, then why bother?

Apparently Mr. Graham thinks most students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in the bank and can afford to not have any income for several years.

Actually, he did recently help start a venture firm that funds undergraduate startups.

So, it seems that he thinks 1) they don't need to graduate first, 2) tens of thousands of dollars is plenty, and 3) three months is a good enough bootstrapping period.

2) Low barriers to entry also means there is going to be hundreds of other "undergrads" trying to sell the same idea. This means your chances of eventual payback are much smaller!

Who cares if a company has the same idea as you? You just have to do it better. That's competition.

3) Why should bigger companies buy startups when they can just partner with them or outsource company services to them?

Because they can. Because they get control. Because it's potentially cheaper. Because they get quality people.

Yeah, starting a web based startup doesn't cost significantly more than just being a slacker. But if you haven't noticed, 99% of us can't afford to just set around and be a slacker either!

The point is that you don't need to raise millions of dollars. $10,000 is a trivial amount of money in the grand scheme of things -- it is not impossible to come by if you think your ideas and your people are worth it. If you don't think they're worth it, then why bother?

Apparently Mr. Graham thinks most students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in the bank and can afford to not have any income for several years.

Actually, he did recently help start a venture firm that funds undergraduate startups.

So, it seems that he thinks 1) they don't need to graduate first, 2) tens of thousands of dollars is plenty, and 3) three months is a good enough bootstrapping period.

The costs are very low when you can just round up a bunch of high school students, tell them they're mega superstars, get their parents to pay the rent for a few months, and take 20%+ of whatever they happen to squirt out on the off chance that some of it might be worth more than the $6,000 of found money you speculated on it.

Oh, and be sure to tell the press about the newly minted batch of wunderkinder.

Ever heard of Viaweb? It's the startup founded by Robert Tappan Morris and Paul Graham. It was sold to Yahoo! for (according to Wikipedia) $49,000,000. I don't know how much of that actually went Graham, but he got enough of it to form his own VC company (Y Combinator).

He's got the experience to back up what he says.

So, why do you think he wrote an essay about PR at all?

Possible answers:
- as a lesson for the startups he's funding
- to help convince more people to start startups, which he things "would probably be a good thing"
- as a vehicle to help discredit the "suits are back" meme
- >your own here<

Did anyone else notice that Robert Morris is a principal with Y Combinator ?

Interesting, to say the least.