Good News On Two Open-Codec Fronts

davidu writes: "The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (makers of the mp3 codec) licensed the divx ;-) video codec for future use. This is good for users because the codec is open source and is now on its way to becoming a standard. For those who don't know, this is unrelated to the failed Circuit City program, hence the smiley. ;-)" On the audio side of things, Mike Hicks writes: "Saw this on LWN's Daily Updates. Kenwood has come up with a car audio playing system that understands the Ogg Vorbis compression format, the Music Keg. Me want.. Time to start digging for spare change in the couch ..." Update: 02/05 03:24 GMT by T : Two clarifications below put a slight damper on each of these, though the overall news is still good.

Vince Busam from Phatnoise writes: "The author of the mp3newswire article goofed big time! Nowhere does it state that the Keg plays Ogg files, only the desktop software. Ogg will be supported when free ARM libraries are available. The author is further incorrect when he mentions the Kenwood X959 plays MPEG video files on the tiny OLE display. I have no idea where he got that idea." And reader Guspaz points out: "OpenDivX is indeed opensourced, but it is not the same as DivX 4, which was what was liscenced (And is what people download to use)."

Comments

Slop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete and utter SLOP.

first post, heterosexuals

[Anonymous Coward]

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You want me.

Re:first post, heterosexuals

[Prisoner Of Gravity]

I want to suck it baby... mmm... cock. Hopefully you have a huge uncut slong. I love to roll foreskin back and forth in my mouth. Mmm.

Posting non-anonymously to destroy my precious karma.

Re:first post, heterosexuals

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me ASSHOLE, but I've looked at enough porn to know that I'm hetro.

Re:first post, heterosexuals

[Anonymous Coward]

YEAH YOU GO GIRLFRIEND. Way to tell that mean ole guy on the intarweb what you think of his mean comments about your sexuality.

What if you could make

[Anonymous Coward]

a beowulf cluster outta these!?!?!?!

What's big and blue and sits on my front porch?

[Anonymous Coward]

My nigger and I'll paint him any color I want.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @09:18PM
from the well-whaddya-know dept.
davidu writes: "The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (makers of the mp3 codec) licensed the divx ;-) video codec for future use. This is good for users because the codec is open source and is now on its way to becoming a standard. For those who don't know, this is unrelated to the failed Circuit City program, hence the smiley. ;-)" On the audio side of things, Mike Hicks writes: "Saw this on LWN's Daily Updates. Kenwood has come up with a car audio playing system that understands the Ogg Vorbis compression format, the Music Keg. Me want.. Time to start digging for spare change in the couch.."
( Read More... | 21 of 31 comments )

Ask Slashdot: Future Pocket P2P - Discreet Data Sharing?
Posted by jamie on Monday February 04, @06:45PM
from the EM-town-square dept.
zilym writes "Think about a class of portable devices that include storage space, wireless networking (ala 802.11b), and user loadable Software. For these devices, why not implement a protocol for adhoc, wireless data sharing (Pocket P2P)? This is what I'm imagining... Lots of people carry around Pocket P2P devices hidden in their car, backpack, purse, pocket, handglider, whatever. Normally these devices stay half dormant, listening to see if another Pocket P2P device is in range. When one or more Pocket P2P's get within range of each other, they automatically trade their data store with each other." This is a keen glance at the future with enormous consequences -- unless copyright law is drastically extended, a clever hardware hack a decade from now could be the Model A to Napster's Model T. Are we living in the ten-year bubble before the collapse of entertainment media copy prevention?
( Read More... | 2900 bytes in body | 135 of 189 comments | Ask Slashdot )

Byte Benchmarks Various Linux Trees
Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @04:32PM
from the root-and-branch dept.
urbanjunkie writes: "Moshe Bar has an interesting article, essentially benchmarking the standard kernel (with aa VM) against the -ac kernel (with Rik's VM)." He also raises some very interesting points about how patches (and entire development trees) interact.
( Read More... | 93 of 196 comments )

Intel's Big Chip
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday February 04, @02:45PM
from the not-so-micro-after-all dept.
DeadBugs writes "News.com has an article about the size of the upcoming revision for the Itanium. The "McKinley" chip will be 464 square millimeters which would make it one of the largest ever produced. Most of this is due to the 64 bit registers and 3MB of Level 3 Cache. There is also a link to an article about "Chivano" an Itanium which will include concepts from the Alpha architecture"
( Read More... | 145 of 234 comments )

The Napsterization of TV
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday February 04, @01:47PM
from the its-only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Lefty writes "This article in today's Boston Globe talks about the napsterization of TV shows and how the PC as a media server is going to make it happen. Burning TV shows to CD/DVD, e-mailing your friends TV shows, streaming TV over the Internet -- all things the dedicated set-top boxes can't do... The article talks about Snapstream, a PVR competitor to Moxi and ReplayTV, that runs on the PC and has media server capabilities. from the article: "Already you can find a great deal of pirated video material online. If SnapStream gets installed on millions of PCs, there'll be plenty more. And the TV moguls will find themselves knee deep in the digital acid bath.""
( Read More... | 211 of 326 comments )

Science: Modern Day Noah's Ark Dying
Posted by Hemos on Monday February 04, @01:09PM
from the down-into-the-great-blue-under dept.
hype7 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story about the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development's Gene Bank, which appears to be running out of funding. It seems a terrible shame, because the Bank has managed to accumulate thousands of Australian and foreign endangered species; a kind of modern day Noah's Ark. At the moment it's in limbo, using funds diverted from other projects to keep it in ER, but the prospects aren't looking good."
( Read More... | 67 of 108 comments | Science )

WinInformant Says Windows More Secure Than Linux
Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @11:35AM
from the ho-hum dept.
nihilist_1137 excerpts from this WinInformant article, which reads in part: "For at least the first 8 months of 2001, open-source poster child Linux was far less secure than Windows, according to the reputable NTBugTraq, which is hosted by SecurityFocus, the leading provider of security information about the Internet. ... A look at the previous 5 years--for which the data is more complete--also shows that each year, Win2K and Windows NT had far fewer security vulnerabilities than Linux, despite the fact that Windows is deployed on a far wider basis than any version of Linux." I wonder how many sysadmins (Windows or Linux) would agree with this conclusion. Update: 02/04 16:54 GMT by T: Looks like the WinInfo site has gone down since the story was submitted, so you may have to content yourself in the meantime with the Bugtraq numbers. Update: 02/04 19:30 GMT by T:Several readers have pointed out that the conclusions WinInformant makes based on the Bugtraq data are not those of SecurityFocus; the headline has been changed accordingly.
( Read More... | 574 of 811 comments )

Book Reviews: The Coldest March
Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @10:15AM
from the dress-thickly dept.
Stalwart reviewer Duncan Lawie contributed this review of Susan Solomon's The Coldest March, the epic tale of an early and tragic polar expedition, not long after returning from an Antarctic trip of his own. (Imagine spending New Year's en route to the southern ice.) Duncan's been cooking up some other things lately, too -- like an interview with Science Fiction writer Ken Macleod and a review of the LotR movie from a "bookist" perspective.
( Read More... | 23387 bytes in body | 43 of 70 comments | Book Reviews )

Running AmigaOS on a PC (The Proper Way)
Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @09:21AM
from the with-a-pinch-of-salt dept.
AmiLover writes: "OSNews is running a review of AmigaXL, a system that allows you to boot AmigaOS on your PC in a way that resembles a regular-booting x86 operating system. Screenshots accompany the article show the latest version of AmigaOS 3.9 running on a Compaq laptop. With AmigaOS 4.0 coming out in March with lots of new features (antialias fonts, better memory protection etc) is AmigaXL the one true future of Amiga, a future that AmigaDE, QNX and Gateway failed to materialize through their involvement with AmigaOS?"
( Read More... | 160 of 223 comments )

PSION Resurrected By Linux
Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @08:19AM
from the compact-beauty dept.
razzer writes: "The PsiLinux.org team have worked magic with getting Linux to squeeze into its new home of portable computers. Thanks to the falling prices in hardware the PSION 5mx is the most powerful, cheapest and smallest way to carry your best friend Tux in your pocket. Something no geek should leave home without. But now its gone one step further, check out http://thomas.de-ruiter.cx/projects/psion which is Tader's site. You really need to see these PicoGUI ( http://www.picogui.org/ ) screenshots. The best one has got to be this one which shows the oustandingly attractive aqua theme."
( Read More... | 60 of 87 comments )

Looking Closely at the Restrictions of Linux on the PS2
Posted by timothy on Monday February 04, @07:27AM
from the gpl-trumps-doesn't-it dept.
Hal-kun writes: "I wrote an interesting article about Sony's upcoming Linux distro for the PS2 and some intellectual property concerns I have with it. It's an intresting look at how Sony limits the ability to have full access to the system, yet being able to keep it under GPL."
( Read More... | 134 of 200 comments )

read my journal assheads!

[MetaTroll]

Sites just as bad as Slashdot Unfortunately, Slashdot is not an isolated phenomenon; there are many sites out there that, in attempting to be alternatives to Slashdot, have become mere imitators, as bad as (or even worse than) the original. I'm still trying to figure out what factors lead a site down that path (a population of vocal libertarians appears to be a major factor) Adequacy.org Purporting to be "news for grown-ups", this site's banner calls it "the most controversial site on the web". In fact, this purely a troll site, started by ex-Slashdot and ex-Kuro5hin trolls who wanted more time and space to scream at each other like idiots (and draw people into screaming like idiots at them). I came across this site as a referrer in my weblogs; apparently there's a fanatical Microsoft devotee who links to this page religiously as a rejoinder to Linux advocates. I wonder if he's got any clue that I use Linux (and other Unix flavors) almost exclusively whenever I need to get work done The University of Washington lives in Microsoft's backyard, and our computer science department has strong ties to Microsoft Research. Yet we run most of our important systems (this web server, for example) on Unix. Let me be quite clear: I do not hate Slashdot because I hate Linux. I hate Slashdot because I hate inanity. Adequacy.org manages the remarkable feat of beating Slashdot's record on that count. Alternatives to Slashdot You may be wondering, "Where will I get the links and news that I've been getting from Slashdot?" I'll admit that Slashdot does post some nice links once in a while---however poorly edited and poorly moderated the site as a whole is. However, I've found that for all useful content on Slashdot, there exists another source that will point me to it. Reading other sites decreases your need for a Slashdot fix, and also makes the quality deficit at Slashdot all the more obvious. Here are my suggestions: (Note: the following list is a work in progress. For example, the Register used to be on this list; now, after further investigation, I've moved it to the "just as bad" list.) Science/Technology news This depends on what kind of news you're interested in, of course. Here's a sampling of sites that will give you more targeted, more carefully selected news: Ars Technica An amateur (in the best sense of the word) PC user news site. The editors have a broad grasp of technical issues that is rare to find in an enthusiast site; as a result, their takes on tech tend to be uncannily on the money. bottomquark When Quit Slashdot! got posted to memepool, somebody (whose name I omit, to protect him from Slashdot groupthink flames) suggested bottomquark for science news. A brief skim suggests that bottomquark provides decent links for lay science enthusiasts, with no screaming 14-year-old boys. Science Now Daily news edited by the people who bring you Science, the premier all-sciences academic journal. Requires a (non-free) subscription, but your institution may already have one. Wired News Wired has its own annoying preoccupations, such as its obsession with tech stocks and Napster, but it tends to get the stories off the wires promptly and give a more clueful interpretation than, say, CNN. On the other hand, you should definitely not trust Wired News's reportage of political issues. The entire Wired organization is deeply steeped in libertarian groupthink and feels no qualms about distorting stories and quotes to advance their right-wing agenda. Caveat lector. NewsForge All open source news, all the time. http://bbspot.com/toys/slashtitle/index.html Yes, even "Slashdot" is better than Slashdot.