Theora Codec Ported to Java

fons writes "These guys have ported the Theora codec to Java. This means that ANY Java-capable browser can now be used to watch video streams on the net (clients don't have to download a player!). You can watch a demo showing some boring guys sitting in the office. At least the music is ok :) On their site you can find a link to an interesting interview with the boss, and it looks like more cool stuff is coming soon."

Comments

Slashdotters will agree...

[bogaboga]

...that this time, this is a good development. Am I right? I hope so.

Cb..

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, unfortunately, Java was removed from Windows. So people can't use this with an out-of-the-box Windows installation. They have to manually go and download and install the Sun JVM. Not something the average home user knows how to do.

Thus it still seems that to reach the largest market, providing streaming video in WMV and QuickTime (and possibly Real) formats would be the best solution.

This would have been a great development five years ago, though.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[John_Allen_Mohammed]

I like to voice chat on yahoo's chat servers, it seems the only options for people anymore are using DHTML or Yahoo Messenger. Although the option for java chat is still available, hardly anybody uses it anymore because it requires an old build of the JVM (which cant be found anywhere except on kazaa..,) then a bunch of switches in Internet Explorer options need to be flipped.... It was difficult for me, I'd hate to see the average joe try that under 4 hours.

Java is dead in windows, Billy Boy Gates made sure of that.. this is just one example.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Elwood P Dowd]

I'm sure that doing the whole thing in ActiveX would be cake.

This can just be the web page embedded client for non-windows machines.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

Macromedia Flash is already installed for 98% of all web users. Flash supports streaming video quite well (even without the ridiculously expensive Flash Comm. Server).

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

astroturfing in the open sores world! this guy has very strong connections with them or works for them. i can't remember which is the case, but it amounts to astroturfing just like we get from the corporate world. :-(

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed XP and Java was there.

n4

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[mcrbids]

I do not agree. Having a java codec for browsers may as well be having no codec at all. Reasoning:

1) The only users that allow their browser to run java are those that either don't know how to disable it, or don't know what it is....<SNIP>

And I would put you squarely into the LATTER category. Or, were you not aware of what a JVM "sandbox" is?

2. Java is slow and gobbles up resources....

So is Windows. So is KDE. So is perl, PHP, Ruby, GLibc, and about a zillion others. Perhaps you should read up on the realities of so-called "BLOAT"?

The fact is that faster computers have not really resulted in us running the same programs faster. It's resulted in us running bigger, fancier programs at the same speed we always have.

It took about 3 minutes for my 20 Mhz 286 to boot up. It takes about that long for my 2 Ghz Athlon to do the same.

What's the difference? Go on back and USE that 80286 AT for a while, and tell me what that software "bloat" really got you...

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[mabinogi]

Ok, so where are the JVM exploits?

Javascript is NOT java, so saying "Javascript is vulnerable, so Java must be" is pointless.

I'm not necesarily saying that java isn't a security hole, I'm just asking that if you're making the claim, then make sure the evidence you provide is relevant.

as for 2, what you said there applies to all media players.
WMP, Quick Time, Real One, they all eat memory and processor cycles.
Have you actually tried it? I don't think that you can claim that it will bog down the machine and be worthless until you try it yourself.
I haven't tried it either, so I can't say that you're wrong, but there is nothing in your post that gives any real evidence as to why this codec is worthless. Speculation is not evidence.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[JVert]

plz dont feed teh trolls.
cause the more they eat the more they fling da pooh.
thx.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Marc_Hawke]

I tried it!!!

The sound isn't working for me, I just get a small 'burst' of noise at the beginning and then silence....but the image is remarkably clear and nice. For a while I couldn't figure out if it was working and I thoguht I was just looking at the 'loading' screen or something.

Then I realized what I was looking at was the camera pointed at his monitor.

Now was this supposed to be a live feed? If it is...that's the best I've ever seen, (over the internet)

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[evilviper]

So is Windows. So is KDE. So is perl, PHP, Ruby, GLibc, and about a zillion others.

None of which I use, but that's besides the point.

You aren't comparing similar items... eg. Even if you run slow, bloated KDE, it doesn't slow down how fast you can playback a video in MPlayer. However, how fast the programming languague is, poses a much more serious problem. Also, you mention Perl/PHP, which you will notice are NEVER used to process video, as is being done with Java... They are used only in environments where their performance isn't paramount.

The fact is that faster computers have not really resulted in us running the same programs faster. It's resulted in us running bigger, fancier programs at the same speed we always have.

Really? That's strange because I am having a hell of a time playing back video on my 286. Where is the lighening fast program that will play it at the same speed I do now?

Additionally, you can't even argue that a java video player is fancier than a native video player. The java player is really less fancy, and less feature-packed.

It took about 3 minutes for my 20 Mhz 286 to boot up. It takes about that long for my 2 Ghz Athlon to do the same.

Boot-times are a ridiculous comparison.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[werner75]

Sun did a good Job with Java 5 to improve it for the Desktop. Well. its still not perfect but a huge step compared to Java 1.4.x. I don't think Java is dead on Windows. Don't forget the increasing Mac OS and Linux Users. Many customers are very intrested in Platform independent technologies. I use Linux and its still evil to watch movies embed in Websites. I love the idea to watch movies with a Java Applet. Besides that, Theora is a nice futuristic Codec which has hopefully the same success that OGG someday.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[sxpert]

real player 10 supports playing theora/vorbis ogg streams out of the box

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Mornelithe]

Really? That's strange because I am having a hell of a time playing back video on my 286. Where is the lighening fast program that will play it at the same speed I do now?

So, in other words, you're not running the same programs faster; you're running bigger, fancier programs that do things you couldn't do before.

Just like he said.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[mcrbids]

1) You are using perl right now. How else could you post on slashdot? Who says it has to run on the computer in front of you? Also, are you will to state for the record that you aren't using Windows, X11, Apple's Quartz, or any similar widget-based GUI? What, are you posting in LYNX, with Linux 1.x kernel? I'm really curious to find out what you are REALLY USING...

2) I wish I had a link - somebody wrote a DVD decoder as a perl regular expression that could decompress a DVD in real-time on a >2 Ghz P4. Although a bit unrealistic today, in 3 short years a 2 Ghz P4 will cost $80 on EBay.

3) The quote: "That's strange because I am having a hell of a time playing back video on my 286. Where is the lighening fast program that will play it at the same speed I do now?" Doesn't make sense when compared against what I said. Please read what I wrote again. There were video options on the '286 - they just sucked, were proprietary, and very expensive. (but they weren't bloated!)

4)Additionally, you can't even argue that a java video player is fancier than a native video player. The java player is really less fancy, and less feature-packed. Gee - I thought that somebody as smart as you would be able to understand that being able to play video without installing *anything* special on multiple platforms without having a "Windows version, Mac version, Linux Glib X version, Linux Glib Y version...." would qualify as a "feature". Oh, well. I guess a "feature" to somebody with your mind-set only includes a fancy volume button....

4) Why are boot times a rediculous comparison? Thee fact is, it's about as fast to bring up a customer record using Access on WinXP on a multi-Ghz Athlon as it took to bring up similar records on the '286 using FoxPro and MSDOS 5.0. But, I'd choose the Access-based package over the FoxPRO/DOS one any day of the week...

The point is really this - what you call "BLOAT" I call "features". There is UN-NECESSARY BLOAT, and that we should fight with verve and energy. But, take a look at the damn article I quoted in my original post. Then, I'd like to see what your response actually is.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[FAT_VIRGIN]

OH GOD JOEL, TOUCH ME.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[evilviper]

You are using perl right now.

No, I'm not. If it's not consuming resources on my hardware, I'm not running it.

When you recieve SPAM from a bot network, are YOU using spamming software?

in 3 short years a 2 Ghz P4 will cost $80 on EBay.

By the time 2GHz systems are under $100 (which will be more than 3 years) we'll probably be on the next generation of video formats. And even if we aren't, why would anyone even consider using a Perl version, that eats up all their CPU power, generating massive ammounts of heat, wasting electricity, and making it impossible to run anything in the background? It's unnecessary bloat.

being able to play video without installing *anything* special on multiple platforms without having a "Windows version, Mac version, Linux Glib X version, Linux Glib Y version...." would qualify as a "feature".

Ahem... Since installing a native player is not difficult, no, I wouldn't consider that much of a feature. The use of this would be a downgrade, because there is a lot you can't do with the applet that you could with a native player embedded, plus it's using up more CPU power.

4) Why are boot times a rediculous comparison?

Because boot times have no meaning. They are set to whatever your hardware/software makers have decided is appropriate. POST could be made much faster if BIOS makers thought it was important to do so. OS boot-up times could be maded much faster if OS makers decided it was important.

But, take a look at the damn article I quoted in my original post. Then, I'd like to see what your response actually is

My reponse in that hard drive space means almost nothing to me, and I never have complained about a program with a lot of features taking up too much hard drive space. No. CPU power is my main concern, with RAM being a distant second. If you do the math, you'll see that it isn't a few cents to upgrade your CPU, and even if it were, the sale price won't account for HEAT, which requires more money for cooling inside your system, as well as a bigger investment in cooling in the building. Plus it doesn't account for the cost of electricity, which adds up.

Let's use the Microsoft Office example. It would be fine if it had different modules, and loaded them as needed, but it doesn't. It loads everything at startup, wastes all the CPU power and RAM for no reason, starving your background programs for resources, and more importantly, making itself very unresponsive after the simplest of tasks.

Shall we talk about Mozilla as well? Having CSS support does NOT mean it should take 10Xs longer to load a web-page than did Netscape 3... That's true if the page uses CSS, and even more's the case if the page doesn't use CSS at all.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[m50d]

But java is slow and gobbles up resources to no appreciable benefit. Yaggui has less features than apollon or giFTgui but takes longer to load than both put together. Azureus may have a few more features than most bittorrent clients, but not enough to justify having the menus take 2 seconds to pop up on my PC (800mhz, it's not high-end but kde is perfectly useable on it). Emacs, probably the most bloated text editor ever, loads and runs much faster than jEdit. I could go on.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[dutchgen1]

It's not about security holes. Refer to the gentleman above this and you will see it is BLOAT. The JVM uses massive resources each time is runs, and most people do not understand this. They play the little java games online and wonder why their internet is slow. Then they shut down the browser and the computer "speeds up" again. That's java for you! And it isn't limited to only one instance at a time, java can start as many times as it feels are needed, and each time more of the resources you have available are snatched.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to just deal with the fact that your sort moaned and moaned about how slow and bloated C was, when asm was sooooo much faster and elss bloated.. Then C++ was the most awful, slow, bloated thing for a while. Well now those things are being replaced by Virtual Machine solutions.

VMs are faster anyway, of course, so this whole thing is moot. There is a certain 133t kiddie type with little knowledge of Virtual machines that will moan about how slow they are, but everybody is ignoring them anyway.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[ttfkam]

I just restarted my browser, navigated to a few sites with a bunch of open windows and tabs, and checked memory usage. Firefox is sucking up some RAM, but I accept that since the alternative is browsing the web with a browser that doesn't render as quickly or as well.

Then I went to the site with the Theora stream. Memory went up, but not by much -- especially when compared to the total browser footprint. After all is said and done, I'm looking at a 160MB chunk of memory for the browser, all of the windows, the JVM, and the video stream. Considering that I have 512MB in the box and RAM is cheap enough that 512MB more isn't out of the question, I don't much care.

Bottom line: it doesn't matter so much how much RAM is used up with regard to "bloat." Just as with most engineering problems, what matters is that I am able to use the computer. If I am using less memory than I have available to me, it doesn't matter if it's a little less or a lot less. If I can't see an overall slowdown in the system (and I can't), then by definition it's not an issue.

I'll trade increased memory footprint for buffer overflows any day of the week and most sundays. As far as people playing "little java games online and wonder[ing] why their internet is slow," I can name more than a few games written in C, C++, Pascal, etc. (and assembly for that matter) that were slower than molasses -- and many of them weren't even network aware nor did the graphics look that good.

Surprise! Bad code runs slowly. The Theora streaming applet loads and runs quickly. Surprise! Good code runs quickly.

Don't paint all Java programs with the same brush.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[AstroDrabb]

Well, unfortunately, Java was removed from Windows. So people can't use this with an out-of-the-box Windows installation. They have to manually go and download and install the Sun JVM. Not something the average home user knows how to do.

Quicktime and Real are not out-of-the-box either, yet that did not stop millions of users from using them. It is a click to download the JRE. It can be automatically installed from a site just like other plugins.

Thus it still seems that to reach the largest market, providing streaming video in WMV and QuickTime (and possibly Real) formats would be the best solution.

Huh? You just said the Java solution is no good because it is not "out-of-the-box", yet Quicktime and Real are? Quicktime and Real are not "out-of-the-box" for the 95% market share, yet millions use them.

There is nothing "Informative" about this bunk.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[AstroDrabb]

What version of Java are you running? I am running 1.5 and Azureus is very fast same with JEdit. Menus pop up right away. I don't notice any speed difference between it and a native app. I have an XP 2800+ with 512MB on an NForce2 chipset. It could be your hard drive. I have pretty fast drives and get around 56 MB/s. Run

hdparm -t /dev/hda

and see what you get. Anything under 25MB/s and you should get faster drives.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[m50d]

I get 47 MB/s on /dev/hda which is where my swap is, and 36 MB/s on /dev/hdb where my root is. I'm running whatever gentoo thinks is the latest stable version of java. I think it's probably just the processor.

Re:Slashdotters will agree...

[smokestacklightning]

"Streaming audio is not worth burning up a CPU (not meant literally) or hardware nearby (this part is meant literally, as many a harddrive has died due to CPU heat)."
Yeah - I had to stop using my CPU to steam shrimp because it got in the way of using my hard drive to crack walnuts. If you risk hardware damage by running any software then you need to either quit duct taping your own machines together or stop mounting your harddrive to your heatsink - dude - apperently, you need to get a Dell.

Rating this dribble as flamebait is an insult to all the great flamebait out there.

"Those of you that have seen the CD-tray exploit or have been lastmeasured are familiar with the results of allowing javascript."
The simple fact that you do not grasp the difference between Java and Javascript hints at just how much of a jerk@ss you really are.

"My assertion is that this codec, ingenious as it may be, is worthless. Breaking security, risking hardware damage, and simply bogging down a machine are not acceptable just to be able to view streaming content."
Decoding compressed video regardless of whether or not it is streamed eats up more CPU time then most other types of operations on the majority of machines out there. The fact that it is streaming has little effect on your CPU load - it results in higher network traffic. Maybe your network card is the gremlin causing your alleged meltdowns ...

wtf are "long, live formats". Speak any english ?

Great!

[wheels4u]

Now I can watch porn everywhere!

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wank once, cum everywhere?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least they've got a target market. ;-)

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because watching porn on the internet was such a challenge before.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If this isn't just a joke, with a fake Java player, the quality is really quite good. Best video feed of a camera pointed at someeone's monitor showing a WinAmp clone that I've ever seen, anyways.

Re:Wow

[IoN_PuLse]

XMMS. http://www.xmms.org/

QuickTime

[network23]

Has anyone tried to do this with QuickTime?

Re:QuickTime

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You that you were in fact the first person to find that web page. :-) Now that it's been posted on Slashdot though, watch out. :-)

Re:QuickTime

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just an API that allows you to access and control a native QuickTime installation through Java. It's not a QuickTime player written in Java. Quite different.

Re:QuickTime

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? A url would be nice dude - not that I don't trust you but it kinda seems to defeat the point a bit - as well as the story - surely this isn't just Quicktime and IS actually Theora?

Re:QuickTime

[Wesley Felter]

No really, QuickTime for Java is just a JNI wrapper around regular QuickTime. Notice how QT4J is only for Mac and Windows. JMF can read some QuickTime files, though.

Re:QuickTime

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Its late here.... The Demo using a codec IS Java and IS Theora according tto the website - what are you talking about?

Re:QuickTime

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? A url would be nice dude - not that I don't trust you but it kinda seems to defeat the point a bit - as well as the story - surely this isn't just Quicktime and IS actually Theora?

Are you following the discussion? We're talking about a "Quicktime for Java" page now, not the Theora stuff in the article.

Re:QuickTime

[Molt]

The Theora Java thing is an implementation of Theora in Java, the Quicktime Java thing is simply a wrapper round the standard Quicktime stuff.

I think you were at cross-purposes there.

Its it just not working for me or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was linking to a video feed from slashdot's front page a mistake?

Re:Its it just not working for me or...

[Glenda Slagg]

It is working. They're playing Sonic Youth right now. No sign at all of Slashdot effect. Amazing really.

Re:Its it just not working for me or...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can get the stream it if I use RealPlayer 10 with the Ogg plugins installed. Mozilla/Linux just puts up a green box for me. No errors in the Java console, but no picture either.

Java console:
reading applet properties
reading from url http://mirror.fluendo.com:8800
trying to open http://mirror.fluendo.com:8800
opened http://mirror.fluendo.com:8800
creating video consumer
creating audio consumer
creating main thread
starting audio thread
entering audio thread
starting video thread
entering video thread
starting main thread
audio preroll wait
started ogg reader
started main thread
waiting for preroll...
new stream 892910656
found theora video
new stream 548962982
found vorbis audio
theora dimension: 384x272
theora offset: 0,2
theora frame: 384,268
theora aspect: 1/1
theora framerate: 25/2
frameperiod: 80.0
video preroll wait
consumers ready
preroll done, starting...
audio preroll go!
video preroll go!

Re:Its it just not working for me or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, though because it's a video stream the bandwidth/server requirements are far less than say serving a single video file for download. The same content gets delivered to everyone regardless of when they connected. In the same way that internet radio stations can broadcast to a whole lota people simultaneously.

Re:Its it just not working for me or...

[Bob Uhl]

Here's the link using Coral.

The editors should really start using Coral when linking. This applies especially to small personal sites, but also to the larger ones which probably don't much appreciate the spike in their bill.

The one bad thing about Coral is that it would tend to mislead Google--but certainly Google is smart enough to know how to interpret Coralised URLs.

Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Anonymous Coward]

Given all these reports that Java code can be made almost as quick as c/c++ (especially when number crunching), if not faster, why hasn't this happened before?

Is it just that bit hackers are more comfortable in c?

I would there would be a big benefit to having decoders/endcoders in java. On that note it would be nice if there were one defacto decoder/encode instead of ffmpg, jpegtools, transcode etc.

Sorry for the ramblings, I guess everyone likes to re-invent the wheel ;)

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[MyHair]

Um, was there a stable open source video codec before Theora? IIRC, XVid didn't stabilize until fairly recently. Plus aren't there worries about patents and XVid?

Anyway, I suspect the newness of an unencumbered open source codec has a lot to do with why this wasn't done before.

P.S. OW! Somebody turned up the volume on the video feed! (During Aerosmith's/Run DMC's Walk This Way) I'm shocked the feed is still up. (Watching on win2k, Firefox 0.8 (yeah, need to update) w/ Sun Java 1.4.2_04.)

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Anonymous Coward]

I was referring more to open source transcoding. Not an open source codec. Note that there are many open source implementations of non-open source codecs. I mess around with cinelerra and create dvds (mpg2) from dv footage, and it is quite a hassle right now.

I know Theora is opensource, but it would be nice to have a java lib that knows about dv, mpeg2, avi, mov, etc and can transcode between them ((avi|mov|mpeg2|dv)2((avi|mov|mpeg2|dv)), rather than having to use kino to capture from dv, cinelerra to edit (render to mov), put back in kino (render to mpg2 for dvd or svcd). And then for doing videos from my camera (Canon a70) having to use other tools that understand avi wrapped mjpegs.

And I'm still wondering if it is written in java if it will be faster than c versions??

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Anonymous Coward]

Java code can be made almost as quick as c/c++

I think you meant to say C/C++ has been mangled to the point where it's as slow as Java

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[timeOday]

I would say this is a dead-end unless Java has an API for accessing video hardware (ala XVideo). Without integration with video playback hardware to prevent buffer copying and hardware scaling, it will never be as good as native code.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[fred fleenblat]

Given all these reports that Java code can be made almost as quick as c/c++ (especially when number crunching), if not faster, why hasn't this happened before?

Java was very slow for several years. It still suffers from a large memory footprint, and if you are processing a stream or large data set you have to be somewhat intelligent about how you write your code so as to prevent copying lots of data unnecessarily.

In my view, it's probably more important that whatever reference algorithm is specified, that it be written so that people can read it. Then, if necessary, others can rewrite it in the same or different languages to improve it.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[NanoGator]

"Given all these reports that Java code can be made almost as quick as c/c++ (especially when number crunching), if not faster, why hasn't this happened before?"

Who wants yet another video codec on the web?

Don't worry, I agree with you that it should have happened sooner, but I can't ignore the former life I led where I worked at a company making web video technology. It was typically "make it work in WMP or Real Player or get it." Can't say I blame them, their audiences didn't demonstrate interest in installing plugins or viewers.

(I should mention that at the time, computers topped out at 400mhz. And that was their high end customers. Nobody would have thought Java would be capable of something like that. It may not have been at the time, but I wouldn't know.)

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[badriram]

Seems to load quick but it uses atleast 50% of processing power of my Athlon XP 2200. Most DIVX, WMV, MPEG files use maybe 15% processing power while showing a video.
So it performance stills lacks, but i am still impressed that class and decoder load that quick even under slashdot load....

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[gstamp]

I'm getting about 15% processor utilization on my P4 2.4Ghz. Loads really quickly and the video quality seems pretty good.

I'd bet that a lot of the CPU utilization comes from the fact that it wouldn't be using direct draw like most players would rather than any codec issues.

Wonder if jdk 1.5 would make a difference in CPU.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I bet that most of those other codecs you have on your machine are not straigth C/C++, but have inner loops optimized in assembly, using MMX, SSE and/or 3DNow instructions to their full extent. After all, video codecs are the main purpose why those special instructions were developed.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Guspaz]

Define stable. I've been using it for ages (Over a year) and it's been perfectly stable. So by stable do you mean if it IS stable, or if they CALL it stable (1.0)?

Besides, Theora isn't stable, it's still in alpha. And yes, while above I said that it counts what it IS not what they CALL it, but alphas are not even feature complete, let alone stable.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Directrix1]

Theora's bitstream is frozen (meaning its not going to change). The reference Theora library on their site is alpha. As this java version is an implementation which in no way requires the theora c library, you cannot say whether or not the java version is of alpha quality.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Guspaz]

We may not know if the java version is of alpha quality, but as it's extremely buggy and unstable (It even says as much on the site), it's not stable.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Wesley Felter]

IIRC JMF uses Xv if you have the performance pack installed. I don't think it's included in the JRE, though, which is a pain.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[evilviper]

I mess around with cinelerra and create dvds (mpg2) from dv footage, and it is quite a hassle right now.

Then you aren't using the right programs.

Something like MPlayer/ffmpeg can be rather easily scripted to do any encoding you want to, from practically any source video/audio.

it would be nice to have a java lib that knows about dv, mpeg2, avi, mov, etc and can transcode between them (avi|mov|mpeg2|dv)2((avi|mov|mpeg2|dv))

No, it wouldn't be nice, it would be completely stupid. Those that have something to gain may say Java is as fast as C, but that's playing fast and loose with the facts. C programs are much faster for these kinds of jobs.

Even if you don't want to believe that, well, asm is much faster than even C, and that's what a lot of multimedia code is written in.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[evilviper]

Um, was there a stable open source video codec before Theora?

Yes.

IIRC, XVid didn't stabilize until fairly recently.

Who cares about Xvid? Really now.

Take a look at ffmpeg/libavcodec, lots and lots of very fast, very high quality, very stable codecs for encoding/decoding. All lgpl'd.

Anyway, I suspect the newness of an unencumbered open source codec has a lot to do with why this wasn't done before.

I believe MPEG-1 is completely unencumbered, due to patents expiring, and has been for quite some time.

Other than that, there's always MJPEG, even if it's not terribly effecient (every frame is a keyframe).

And, more significantly, the VP3 codec was unencumbered as of Sept 2001, which means anyone could have implimented it anytime in the past 3 years. Yet, nobody did.

As a matter of fact, I've been trying to find any programs at all, that could encode to VP3 on Linux/BSD. Unfortunately, none exist, and encoding to VP3 needs to be done on Windows/Mac. Playback has been easy, but nobody bothered to work on encoding.

It seems strange, since AVIFILE does everything via DLLs, you'd think they would have put some real effort into getting it working. It would have been terribly slow, but I could live with that. FFMPEG recently got a native version VP3 in it's source, but it's so very early that it doesn't even properly decode VP3, let alone encode well.

It's a sad situation, really, because VP3 is not only 100% free, but it is a very good codec, that doesn't suffer much from the very typical digital video artifacts, like blockiness, aliasing, etc.

(Watching on win2k, Firefox 0.8 (yeah, need to update)

Why do you feel the need to update? I'm using Firebird 0.6.1, and I don't see any problem with that. Actually, I would upgrade if newer version were faster and more stable, but the opposite is true.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[Anonymous Coward]

That's strange, as firefox and the jvm (listed as a single process in the proc manager) are only* eating up a combined 35% (low at 15%, occasional brief spikes up to 50%) of the cycles of the 1.3Ghz Pentium M in my IBM T40.

*relatively speaking.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[LnxAddct]

Hmm.... what OS? On my Fedora core 2 system its barely using anything, I mean along with a Tomcat and Apache server running, and a few other things, my laptop isn't getting past 35.7% use in userland. Regardless, that is a damn clear stream, I've never seen a stream like that, especially while slashdot is pounding away. I mean something that clear with only a 35KB stream, its nuts. I am really impressed. Oh and as a side note, keep an eye out for the new Java VM to be released by Sun, I'm running the beta (although my applet plugin is still 1.4.2) and there are many significant improvments thus far. Its stable enough already that I'm using it to develop on.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[n.wegner]

>the VP3 codec was unencumbered as of Sept 2001, which means anyone could have implimented it anytime in the past 3 years.

They did, and they called it Ogg Theora.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[jilles]

People just assumed that it wouldn't work. This assumption has now been proven wrong. I just watched the stream and it is pretty impressive for 32 bit/s. I kept an eye on memory usage and cpu usage. Memory usage is very acceptable (65 MB for a firefox nightly build + jvm + applet). It consumes about 40% cpu on my amd 2200+. The same applet in a freshly started IE is 46 MB. The difference is probably due to the fact that I had firefox open for the whole morning already (it tends to accumulate some weight over time).

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[jrumney]

JRE 1.4 onwards should be using DirectDraw for their graphics output, though perhaps not as optimally as a purpose built codec that talks directly to the DirectX API.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[toriver]

It has happened before: FAST (Fast Search And Transfer) had some Java technology for compressing and streaming video. For some reason they stopped the development; however, the demo I managed to see a couple of years ago was good, though small-scale.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[FooBarWidget]

Actually, I would upgrade if newer version were faster and more stable, but the opposite is true.

Opposite? When 0.9 came out, everybody praises how it's faster than previous releases.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[eyeye]

Yes it looks good but there is barely any movement in the stream so the data that needs to be sent is probably not that much.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[evilviper]

Yes, I'm well aware that Theora is based on VP3... However, it's a very different situation.

Theora requires a different container format, cannot be decoded with the VP3 codec that many platforms already have installed, and STILL isn't even in beta stage.

I certainly hope Theora becomes a good codec, but I've been following development, and it looks like 3 years wasted for nothing.

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[evilviper]

When 0.9 came out, everybody praises how it's faster than previous releases.

This minor comment needn't turn into a flame-war.

Maybe it's faster on Linux, and Mac, and Windows, but that's not what I'm using. I'm not talking about just a little speed difference either.

Yes, the Mozilla team dedicates their resources to making their programs as fast as possible on Windows, when they could have spent their resources making it small and fast in the first place...

Re:Wondering why this hasn't been done previously

[j3110]

I ran top, and all my CPU usage was XFree86 and kernel. That tells me that the bottleneck is most likely ALSA/X11 calls on my system. My CPU usage hits around 50% on an Athlon XP 2100+. I'm running JDK 1.5.0.

I bet if I used OSS, it might make a difference. It may even be sending the sound through the X11 Server for all I know.

I'm satisfied since my Java was using 10%. Java either does, or will, use OpenGL at some point (ldd doesn't seem to think so, but Java loads all platform libraries dynamically except for a few basics, and X11 if it is being used as a plugin). Also, I don't know if the codec even bothers to support Java2D. It may be that I get 50% CPU utilization because it keeps sending X11 calls to the X server using X11 Accel. that is really old to be compatible with remote X11 servers.

I hope this sheds a little more light into what's going on, and maybe someone that knows a bit more about Java2D and Linux/ALSA/X11 workings can make some more educated guess that I can.

I use the NVIDIA OpenGL under Debian with the latest Debs for everything in unstable (I even have it working with Neverwinter, and get more than adequate FPS) 2.7.8 Kernel, NVIDIA's AGP driver.

Audio

[aliens]

Anyone getting audio on Windows XP? Good video quality, but not hearing anything.

Re:Audio

[Glenda Slagg]

Yes I am.

Re:Audio

[sleepy_htk]

yep, the volume is pretty low thou

Re:Audio

[irokitt]

Sometimes we turn off the audio because we are discussing stuff we don't want you to hear.

Says this right there on the site. So I wouldn't worry.

Re:Audio

[aliens]

Yeah I saw that but figured it's way too late over there for them to be working. They even said they'd try and leave music on at night :)

Re:Audio

[macsuibhne]

I'm getting audio on XP home.

Re: open source with mpeg-4 in Java

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has been working on an mpeg-4 and mpeg-1 Java player for several years and has said that it will be released within the month. The demos on thsi site, although basic, look promising. His Mpeg-4 video can apparently go full screen given enough cpu. The good bit? it's going open source.

It's right the time

[Metteyya]

For Real and Apple to reimplement and promote their own codecs the same way. Well, if we really want it - because Theora really does well.

Re:It's right the time

[drinkypoo]

I really want a nice capable MPEG4, preferably one capable of handling what comes out of divx and xvid. I don't care if it does apple or real, and I definitely don't care if it does microsoft. I want the same player to do MPEG1 and MPEG2, of course, though it doesn't have to do DeCSS - it would be a nice feature but I don't need it. If I'm going to stream something I want it to be something standard for which I can use any of a number of encoding tools. There's an easy path to turn almost any kind of video into some kind of MPEG system stream.

Re:It's right the time

[Anonymous Coward]

It was mentioned earlier in the thread, but the precipice has an mpeg-4 and mpeg-1 capable Java player. There are demos on the site along with a promise of it going open source.

Cool ... but

[Combuchan]

The demo on Firefox w/ XP professional (i'm at work) keylocked the machine (eg, press caps lock, no light) and it appeared completely frozen until a couple three-finger-salutes woke the machine up enough to use the Back button to get out of the page.

I didn't hear any audio, but the video quality was wonderful. I'd love to dump Real et al. for this sort of thing--streaming media servers just tend to suck (anybody who's installed RealServer on a unix box will likely agree with me).

Moreover, if you have any sort of secure web application that has streaming video, you can just stick this in rather than trying to wrap the same security concept around two different application servers. That alone is Very Cool.

Re:Cool ... but

[Anonymous Coward]

The demo on Firefox w/ XP professional (i'm at work) keylocked the machine (eg, press caps lock, no light) and it appeared completely frozen until a couple three-finger-salutes woke the machine up enough to use the Back button to get out of the page.

Sounds like your computer is broken. Applications don't have that level of control over your system, even in Windows. Add more processors.

Re:Cool ... but

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahaha... insightful? jeeeez.

ever heard of software bugs? memory leaks? lockups?

if firefox AND all concurrently running applications AND windows were all perfectly bug-free, what you said would be true. too bad that will never be the case.

Re:Cool ... but

[IoN_PuLse]

You may want to check what version of Java you have running, and what other processing you have running.

Re:Cool ... but

[IoN_PuLse]

damnit....I mean processes....must...use...preview....instead....of ..posting...with....spelling...mistakes

Re: open source with mpeg-4 in Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used the technology; it first debuted three years ago. I can say that it is *very* good: fast, light and easy to encode for. Presuming that the software has avanced in since I last saw it, this should proove a fantasic bit of kit.

Compilable with GCJ?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Makes me curious - at this point, apparently, what Theora most needs is optimization of the code to make it work faster.

How optimized is this Java port of the codec, and will it be possible to compile it to 'native' code using GCJ for maximum performance?

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[ahmetaa]

Because Sun's java VM is faster than GCJ compiled native code in most cases.

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that jitted code would be able to run faster than native code since it could dynamically change. Or does the overhead of updating the code negate the benifits?

Someone with more experience please enlighten.

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[Teckla]

Makes me curious - at this point, apparently, what Theora most needs is optimization of the code to make it work faster.

How optimized is this Java port of the codec, and will it be possible to compile it to 'native' code using GCJ for maximum performance?

Most of the time, Java code is Just-in-Time (JIT) compiled. Even the old MS Java Virtual Machine that comes with IE will JIT compile Java bytecode.

That means the Java bytecode is compiled on-the-fly. You generally end up running native code.

The latest Sun JVMs (and it's been this way for quite a while) will interpret code that doesn't get called often, but will aggressively compile code that gets called a lot. The theory is that the end result can perform better than Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiled code.

In a nutshell, pre-compiling doesn't offer any performance advantages.

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[Per Bothner]

In a nutshell, pre-compiling doesn't offer any performance advantages.

That's a claim which is unproven. There are applications where gcj provides a significant speed-up, and there are others where Sun's JIT-VM runs faster. But it's not necessarily a fair comparison: Sun has spent a lot of resources on a smart and highly-tuned implementation, but there has been comparitively little work on Java-specific optimizations in GCJ. (Most of the effort has focused on functionality, especially the libraries.)

It is also worth noting that pre-compiled applications start up faster (and people are working on improving this further).

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[Anonymous Coward]

and will it be possible to compile it to 'native' code using GCJ for maximum performance?

It will be possible sooner or later. Depends on what things the applet uses and if they've been implemented yet. Not sure if it works right now, but you can try.

There is a project gcjwebplugin, which is a applet-client utilizing gcj. So far, they've gotten Slime Volleyball working.

And if that isn't an important applet, I don't konw what is. :-)

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[jrumney]

There are applications where gcj provides a significant speed-up, and there are others where Sun's JIT-VM runs faster.

I'd expect short lived applications where JVM startup time is significant, or ones with very few loops or other repeated code to be in the first category, while long lived processes that basically repeat the same sequence of instructions (eg video codecs) would be in the second category.

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[MarkoNo5]

gcj does not give you maximum performance. My QR-decomposition code runs a lot faster on IBM and Sun virtual machines than compiled with gcj with maximum optimisation flags.

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a nutshell, pre-compiling doesn't offer any performance advantages.

What about the eliminating the overhead of code compilation while your application is running?

Last time I checked, compiling code wasn't exactly a blazingly-fast process - so if you're doing it JIT - you still get that overhead.

Re:Compilable with GCJ?

[Per Bothner]

I'd expect short lived applications where JVM startup time is significant, or ones with very few loops or other repeated code to [run faster with precompilation], while long lived processes that basically repeat the same sequence of instructions (eg video codecs) would [run faster with a JIT].

That that seems likely in general. However, applications that are dominated by relatively small instruction sequences are likely to show higher variability in generated code for different compilers. Just like it's hard to predict which options of the same compiler will work best on a given application, one compiler may do better with one code sequence while another does better on a different code sequence. So then it's a question of which code sequence dominates the application.

The big advantage of a JIT is that it can generate code optimistically in some cases, such as assuming that a method is not overridden. If later a class is loaded such that the method is overridden, it can just recompile the code. This advantage is much reduced if one does whole-program optimization, where the compiler has access to all the classes that may be loaded.

The big advantage of precompilation is that one can afford to do more extensive time-consuming analysis and optimization.

Strategy...

[bogaboga]

The strategy will be to have DELL, IBM, HP and others install that java onto all desktops they sell. Then "all" mankind will be able to watch those videos. I should mention that I do not know what agreements M$ has with OEMs in relation to additions/subtractions to Windows. With that done, M$ will feel kicked in the stomach ouch...!! And the streams work. Very soon they will be slashdotted.

BTW, I did not realize that mine was the usual FP!!

Cb..

Re:Strategy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I just recently bought a new IBM thinkpad running WinXP Pro and it has Java installed on it.

.

Re:Strategy...

[w3weasel]

Careful what you wish for... With ubiquitous video watching ability will come actual full motion t.v. style commercials.
Think those Flash ads are annoying?? Just you wait!

Seriously works!

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason it seems to load faster than realplayer, quicktime or windows media player.

I am using Java 5 RC which for me GUI program feel faster than .Net apps like RSS Bandit! Its actually a real option for anyone wanting to stream video.

Also, please note I do feel dirty calling it Java 5...

And nice work putting a video stream on the front page! Thats nice and considerate /.

Re:Seriously works!

[Lisandro]

My first thought exactly. "Holy shit, it looks better and loads faster than a Realplayer stream!". This is on my work's terminal (a PIII 800mhz with 512mb) on Opera 7, and the stream is flawless.

Makes you notice how far Java has came peformance-wise lately. Ah, and kudos to the programmers. This is great work.

Re:Seriously works!

[Anonymous Coward]

the potential for embedded, streaming ads everywhere has improved... Who would have thought that advertising might be the biggest pusher of Ogg and Java?

Re: open source with mpeg-4 in Java

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see an mpeg4 video demo here. The in-page JavaScripting seems broken, but the video and audio is good.

Its not futile!

[Ars-Fartsica]

Ogg Vorbis hasn't taken over the world, but people are using it and some vendors are supporting it. Theora will likely never slay Quicktime et al but that doens't mean a meaningful community of users can't emerge.

Don't discount the business value of these open formats - for a hardware or tools vendor it is one less license to pay.

Re:Its not futile!

[Jardine]

Don't discount the business value of these open formats - for a hardware or tools vendor it is one less license to pay.

Same with games. Why compress your audio with mp3 and have to pay a fee when you can use ogg vorbis for free?

Re:Its not futile!

[DMUTPeregrine]

Vorbis hasn't taken over the world, but it does seem to be taking over the filesharing networks.

clients still have to download a player

[Speare]

Clients still have to download the player, it's just that the player is now in a form which is downloaded with less effort.

Re:clients still have to download a player

[timeOday]

Not an entire player, but a codec.

Now, you could argue any codec implementation could be downloaded automatically. But that is not practical or desirable unless 2 concerns are resolved:

1) A reliable way to make the client download the right binary version of the codec (mac? win? linux - and if so what libc? and so on).
2) Security - I don't particularly want to run "InstallJoeBloggsCodec.exe." It could install spyware, put junk in my registry, open a back door server, who knows what.

Java is made for resolving just those issues.

Re:clients still have to download a player

[Tobias Luetke]

No, Huge difference, The player runs in a sandbox. That means everyone can be 100% certain that it won't install spyware of any sorts in the system.

This is very very good.

Re:clients still have to download a player

[Anonymous Coward]

99% certain. There's always the possibility of security errors in the JVM.

Re:clients still have to download a player

[jlp2097]

But Joe Average won't know that.

Re:clients still have to download a player

[Tim C]

Unless, of course, someone develops an applet and signs it with full privileges - then it can do anything it wants, as long as you click the "ok" button to let it.

(Unless that's changed since I last did applet stuff, which is a few years now)

Re:clients still have to download a player

[iamatlas]

The player runs in a sandbox

• 1. It's very difficult to run in sand, even if the sand is in a box. It's slow going.
  2. Oh, and I pee-ed in this sandbox.
  3. oooh, karma burn

Re:clients still have to download a player

[ttfkam]

This I think was one of the worst aspects of ActiveX. All of the ActiveX widgets on the web ended up popping up so many security confirmation dialog boxes that a malicious (spyware most likely) widget slipped through because "it looked like all the others." If on the other hand most web pages used Java applets instead, the dialog box becomes sufficiently rare as to illicit a closer look.

It's kind of like bulk email. Back when spam was only one message in fifty, picking it out was easy. After a majority of email became spam, distiguishing between the useful and the junk among the hundreds/thousands of emails became much more difficult and error prone.

Re: there are lots of technologies out there for t

[Anonymous Coward]

This site (playerless-streaming.org), reviews all fo the different options for this sort of technology.

Re: open source with mpeg-4 in Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure, but I think that the author of the site that this is on is the head tech honcho at Airlock, a company who specialise in this sort of thing.

Reminds of of Hello Network

[ElForesto]

I used to work at that place during the dot com explosion, and they had some pretty neat Java-based video stuff that ran very nicely even on modems. They even ended up making the broadcast software Java-based so that they didn't need to install software anywhere. Of course, the downturn took it's toll and I think it's run out of some person's house now or something.

Re:Reminds of of Hello Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello networks is still going, but the technology sucks ass. Worth checking this out though - bigger, better video and it's open source...

Firefox crashed! :(

[iso]

It seems to crash Firefox every time I try to play this. Firefox 0.9.3, Debian Sarge (testing). about:plugins shows Java(TM) Plug-in 1.4.2_04-b05 (from Sun).

It's really frustrating that Java is so touchy on Linux, and so poorly supported on Debian. I would like to see this demo! I know this is OT, but does anybody have any hints on how I might make Firefox play this without crashing?

Re:Firefox crashed! :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using the same configuration, with the exception of java; I'm running the release candicate of Java 1.5. All works here.

Re:Firefox crashed! :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using firefox on Debian Sarge no problems. To get Java to play nice, just:

o get sun j2sdk

o get java-package from unstable

o use java-package to create and install a debianized package of Sun java

o get appropriate Debian extras from z42.de; I have this in my apt.sources:

deb http://z42.de debian/

Java works no problems, Firefox is fine.

Of course, this may not fix your problem, but it makes Java work well on debian.

Re:Firefox crashed! :(

[janoc]

Just by chance, did you change your USER_AGENT string somehow ? If it is set to MSIE or something else than Mozilla/Gecko, Java will crash. This is a know bug of SUNs JDK :((

Re:Firefox crashed! :(

[iso]

This is what I did to install Java actually. Oh well, I installed the 1.5 (rc) as suggested by another poster, and it's working now. Thanks for the help!

Re:Firefox crashed! :(

[Anonymous Coward]

works for me just fine.
I have 1.4.2 Linux self uncompressable.

The only problem with that installer is that it doesn't make symlinks to /usr/bin/ for java binaries and /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ for the java plugin.

Re:Firefox crashed! :(

[rasz]

just feel lucky you have java in debian, I dont :/ just the way I dont have KDE 3.3 and the newest X.org .. so much for cutting edge testing sarge :/

Re: there are lots of technologies out there for t

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap reviews

Port to .NET/Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there's a port to Java, is there anybody willing to port to .NET or Mono?

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[ahmetaa]

And why is that ? Java is good and fast enough, and you do not need a client software, browser is enough. When will mono monkeys understand ...

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

why?

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

No reason, just astroturfing.

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

People have their preferences.

Some prefer LISP over PERL, and Python over Ruby...

I use .NET/Mono. I rarely use Java. Don't get me wrong, I think Java is great too. It's just .NET is my bread and butter.

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[RPoet]

Because Mono is Free Software, for one thing.

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[alext]

That's the trouble with the word "free".

Here it means "free" as in "dictated by Microsoft".

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

Porting an unencumbered video codec to the .NET platform with it's patented CLR and framework APIs. A port to .IRONY in other words!

Re:Port to .NET/Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you could write in Java with .NET or is that bullshit.

Download it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's free software, you can get the C or C++ source code right from their website.
http://www.theora.org/

Re:Download it!

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Yes, I know (I have it, in fact) - what I meant was THAT code is, apparently, in need of being optimized (from a source-code perspective, not from a "compiler options" perspective).

What I was wondering is whether in the process of porting the code to Java, they'd done any optimization there which might make it run faster/more efficiently than the as-yet-minimally-optimized C code at the theora.org site...

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[ahmetaa]

So you think with Flash you will be able to develop new codecs like this without updating flash plugin in your computer? You are confusing things badly dude..

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[rokzy]

the people using activex are either:
1. microsoft
2. retarded
3. all of the above

the people using flash are either:
1. 14 years old
2. incredibly annoying
3. advertisers

Looks great and loads quick

[spludge]

I just tried it in both Firefox and IE. It looks great (sounds good too) and it loads really quickly! I hope sites start switching to this rather than using real media or WMV streams for windows media player.

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[Anonymous Coward]

Great for those with a "Flash-Capable" browser - not so great for those of us who run our x86-64 Linux boxen in - surprise, surprice - 64bit mode. (No, I refuse to install a 32bit mozilla just to get Flash - my other plugins (including java) works in 64bit).

Mac OS X

[sailgreg]

Seems to work pretty well on OS X 10.3.5 and Safari. This is a good idea and could really help Theora gain acceptance.

That stat is way wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

That stat from Macromedia is way off, the wording is quite twisted. What it really means is 98% of users can view flash if they jump through the hoops. NOT that they already have the ability, and certainly not MX.

I develop a lot of flash applications and theres no where close to 98% saturation of Flast let alone MX which does video.

Think more like 70% for MX and 80% for Flash5+

Re:That stat is way wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash 5 can certainly play video, too.

Hoops? It installs in seconds in every major browser in the world.

Website changes

[2forshow]

Pretty soon websites will have two options. 1 without video and 1 with. People with highspeeds will have a whole new world of websites to view. I'm sure there will be a lot of websites with video greaters, like Walmart.

Re:gmail invites

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! :)

What kind

[TCaM]

of cpu/cpu usage do you have? It chokes pretty badly on my B/W G3-400.

Re:What kind

[andreyw]

Gee... why don't you try it on your ten-year-old Quadra 840AV, running Mac OS 8.1, just to better gauge it.

I guess I shouldn't talk... with my UMAX dual 604e clone, GNU/Linux...

Re:What kind

[TCaM]

I was mostly interested in what configuration he had to get good performance. This same java app takes around 40% or so on my athlon xp 2500. That it ran as well as it did on th old g3 was actually surprising.

Re:What kind

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering most toasters have more horsepower than a G3 that's not suprising (kidding :)! On my Intel 3.0Ghz with about 10 other things open in Firefox it never got over 9%. Perfectly smooth here.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Open-source gets it done once again!

[Progman3K]

Others were able to access the source and port it. Beautiful.

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure the java plugin is a symlink, NOT an actual file. Whenever I have the java plugin as a file (i.e. I use cp and instead of copying the symlink, it translates the symlink and puts the actual file in there), every java applet in firefox will crash firefox. I have to recreate the symlink (or use the cp switch so it doesn't translate the symlink, I forget what the switch is). Try it out. I'm on mandrake 10 and on my system the location to symlink to is: /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_04/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/lib javaplugin_oji.so so, just use ln -s to do your work for ya, hopefully you can find libjavaplugin_oji.so :)

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[gl4ss]

soo.. you've been able to watch theora streams with some player that has the decoder written in flash? yeaah.. sure.

I wish this would have been around and in use around the spaceshipone flight, wouldn't have had to jump around through hoops getting new mediaplayer and new new realplayers.. could just have pointed at some page and it would have *just worked*, no messing around with players or codecs.

besides, this isn't a java 'feature', a feature of java is that you can actually write something like this - just try to get even near in actionscript!

Same Idea but with BitTorrent

[KrackHouse]

The guys at BannedMusic.org are using a similar system to make it simple to use BitTorrent. This combination of technologies could be the kick in the butt that Open Source needs to reach the mainstream.

A quote:
The best solution seemed to be a simple modification of BitTorrent: an installer that runs BitTorrent and begins download of an included torrent file. Windows users can click on the "Easy Download" button on an album's download page to get a 3mb executable. When they launch this executable it installs BitTorrent (which happens very quickly in the background) and immediately begins downloading the album they were seeking. After they've used the "easy download" once, they can simply click on the .torrent files to begin downloading. And they'll be able to use other sites that require BitTorrent.

Nothing new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that ANY Java-capable browser can now be used to watch video streams on the net (clients don't have to download a player!)

GEO Emblaze came out in '98. I remember specifically looking for subscription sites that offered Emblaze streams so I didn't have to boot out of Linux.

out of memory

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran this for a couple of minutes and then got java.lang.OutOfMemoryError in my java console. I've got 512mb so I doubt I really ran out of ram, although I know the default for a Java VM is not to use the whole memory.

queues: [id: 0 0 4] [id: 1 0 20]
queues: [id: 0 0 4] [id: 1 0 20]
queues: [id: 0 0 4] [id: 1 0 20]
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError
java.security.Acc essControlException: access denied (java.lang.RuntimePermission modifyThread)
at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission (AccessControlContext.java:270)
at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Acc essController.java:401)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Security Manager.java:542)
at sun.applet.AppletSecurity.checkAccess(AppletSecuri ty.java:139)
at java.lang.Thread.checkAccess(Thread.java:1131)
at java.lang.Thread.interrupt(Thread.java:738)
at com.fluendo.player.Cortado.stop(Cortado.java:215)
at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(AppletPanel.java:389)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)
java.lang.I nterruptedException
at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)
at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:426)
at com.fluendo.player.QueueManager.dequeue(QueueManag er.java:82)
at com.fluendo.player.VideoConsumer.run(VideoConsumer .java:146)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)
java.lang.I nterruptedException
at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)
at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:426)
at com.fluendo.player.QueueManager.dequeue(QueueManag er.java:82)
at com.fluendo.player.AudioConsumer$MyIS.read(AudioCo nsumer.java:88)
at java.io.InputStream.read(InputStream.java:171)
at com.fluendo.player.AudioConsumer$MyIS.read(AudioCo nsumer.java:149)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(BufferedInputStr eam.java:220)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(BufferedInputStre am.java:277)
at java.io.DataInputStream.read(DataInputStream.java: 167)
at java.io.FilterInputStream.read(FilterInputStream.j ava:111)
at java.io.PushbackInputStream.read(PushbackInputStre am.java:161)
at javax.sound.sampled.AudioInputStream.read(AudioInp utStream.java:288)
at java.io.FilterInputStream.read(FilterInputStream.j ava:111)
at java.io.PushbackInputStream.read(PushbackInputStre am.java:161)
at javax.sound.sampled.AudioInputStream.read(AudioInp utStream.java:288)
at com.sun.media.sound.UlawCodec$UlawCodecStream.read (UlawCodec.java:560)
at com.sun.media.sound.UlawCodec$UlawCodecStream.read (UlawCodec.java:489)
at sun.audio.AudioDevice$DataPusher.run(AudioDevice.j ava:506)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)
java.lang.N ullPointerException
at com.fluendo.player.AudioConsumer$MyIS.read(AudioCo nsumer.java:91)
at java.io.InputStream.read(InputStream.java:171)
at com.fluendo.player.AudioConsumer$MyIS.read(AudioCo nsumer.java:149)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(BufferedInputStr eam.java:220)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(BufferedInputStre am.java:277)
at java.io.DataInputStream.read(DataInputStream.java: 167)
at java.io.FilterInputStream.read(FilterInputStream.j ava:111)
at java.io.PushbackInputStream.read(PushbackInputStre am.java:161)
at javax.sound.sample

Re:out of memory

[toriver]

What VM version? The Java console should say; I recommend either the latest 1.4.2 release, or the 1.5.0 beta (RC2).

Amazing!

[ccalvert]

I wish I could think of something interesting to say, but I'm just too blown away to say anything. Absolutely amazing.

You don't have to download...

[Anonymous Coward]

a plugin... OTHER THAN JAVA!

please don't say you use MS impementation....

Re:You don't have to download...

[Decaff]

a plugin... OTHER THAN JAVA!

Most new PCs ship with Sun's VM pre-installed (Dell do this), so no need to install anything.

It Just Works!

[shutdown -p now]

Now we only need an ActiveX plugin which will automatically download and install JRE on one's computer, and it will Just Work!

Re:gmail invites

[wtay]

we've put up another mirror at http://194.78.112.13:8080/cortado/index.html The main site is pulling about 55Mbit/sec and is saturating at 2403 peak clients, it's still alive and kicking though :) enjoy! the fluendo team.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

oh my god

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

what is that dude doing to the giant penguin doll... that's just wrong...

and there he went and knocked the camera off its mount. sweet!

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[EodLabs]

Flash has video with a wider range of support browser wise (java disabled...) then java. So thats a viable arguement.

old news

[Anonymous Coward]

This is way old news about the interview with the CEO over at osnews.com. The Java port was the minor story. The real story was about their work with Theora in streaming projects.

Careful with the Cigar

[Anonymous Coward]

lol..
I love the big cigar the guy is smoking! Be careful not to burn tux!

DON'T OPEN AWFUL HORRIBLE LINK! ----TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

subject says it all....

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[Surye]

Yea, I wrote my OS in action script. It's pretty much the best programming language out there. And I mastered it in like a week, it's pretty awesome. My middle school teacher is prolly the only person who knows more, but he is the one that taught me.

Hey These guys just invented the player we created

[John Sokol]

Reinvented really.

The Livecam server we developed in 1995 and dominated the adult industry already did all this and supported more viewers with better quality.
We supported Motion JPEG or H.236 in 1999 with GSM audio, with 20Kbps to 70 Kbps streams.

I just love it when someone else come out with it all over again and everyone thinks it's new.

----Original Message-----
From: James S
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 5:18 PM
To: sokol@videotechnology.com
Cc: Jesse Monroy
Subject: Hey These guys just invented the Java player we created in 1999

Check this out. It's our player.

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04 /0 9/10/2053245&tid=108&tid=97&tid=95&tid =1

James

Re:Ahhhhh

[rmayes100]

Yeh I was still hearing the sound too, I had to close all Java applications and Firefox to get it too stop. By any chance are you using Java 5 RC1? It has the semi VM sharing in it (on windows at least you can open up a bunch of Java applications and you'll only see one java.exe in the task manager ), I wonder if that has something to do with the sound not stopping?

Re:Hey These guys just invented the player we crea

[Wesley Felter]

Lots of people have built Java applet video players. Fluendo isn't claiming to be the first; they're claiming to have the first Theora Java player.

Re:Hey These guys just invented the player we crea

[kagaku]

Do you have the source to your software available for all to use, free of charge? No? Didn't think so.

These guys aren't claiming to have invented a java media player, they simply ported an open source codec to a different platform. And they're doing it for free, for anyone to benefit.

JOrbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this work use JCraft's JOrbis?

Fat pipes and little VMs

[fm6]

Which shouldn't come as a big suprise. It isn't that hard to deal with the Slashdot effect. It's just that most webmasters haven't a clue and/or can't afford the bandwidth.

What's really interesting is to see such serious DSPing work so well in Java. Which doesn't have a very good reputation for this sort of thing. I wish I knew how much improvement comes from improved Java VM, and how much is just because everybody's running 1 ghz systems.

Re:Fat pipes and little VMs

[Jonner]

Well, my little Duron 800 can't keep up.

Re:Fat pipes and little VMs

[Enucite]

An 800MHz cpu is too slow for (native) Windows Media Player 9 on OS X to play anything fast enough to measure in frames per second instead of seconds per frame. While I'd imagine they haven't spent near as much time optimizing for OS X as they did on Windows, even quicktime can get pretty choppy with some files on an 800MHz system.

I don't think Java is to blame.

You'll find you need a faster CPU soon if you want to keep up with modern codecs.

Re:Fat pipes and little VMs

[Jonner]

I didn't mean to imply anything about Java or a particular implementation, but only to provide a data point. I won't challenge any of your points, though it might not make much sense to compare a PowerPC's clock rate to a Duron's. I've also been disappointed with my machine's inability to play some sample Theora movies using the reference implementation.

Re:Fat pipes and little VMs

[dosius]

With MPlayer on Linux I can play VOBs pretty close to real time; still can play MPEG-4 720x480 quite well on Windows 98SE, same program. I have a 700 MHz Celeron

Moll.

Java Media Framework

[Mitchua]

Can't one just use the Java Media Framework API to stream movies over Java applets? http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jmf/index. jsp

Ugh. Something Like Antitrust

[Doug Dante]

In the movie Antitrust, the protagonist's best friend develops an innovative video codec. Because of all of the potential endpoints from which the codec could be run (cell phones, PCs, video game systems), he embeds the code for decoding the code in the stream itself. This is somewhat similar to downloading an applet containing the codec and all of the data.

The villian, his boss, rips off the codec and has him killed.

This technical detail was probably the most interesting part of an otherwise thoroughly mediocre movie.

BTW, I kind of had the impression that his codec generated some sort of code. That code is then transmitted to the client and executed, and is ouput is the set of pixels seen on the screen.

Not a new technique

[ReKleSS]

Just for interests' sake, that technique (code that creates the pixels) does exist, but isn't in common use any more. Back in the days of dos games, when performance was critical, self-drawing sprites were used - the code would output some executable code that would drop the sprite into video memory. Since it was moving direct values into memory, instead of reading memory and writing back, it was faster. However, as I said, the technique isn't used any more, because it's just too troublesome for what is now a minimal performance gain.
-ReK

And it's already happening

[Sycraft-fu]

UT 2004 and Doom 3 both use OGG Vorbis to do their music. Well between these two engines, you are talking a lot of games. A very large number of games start by licensing either the current Epic or iD engine since they are so solid.

These two alone will provide a big boost for Vorbis in the gaming world.

Re:Ugh. Something Like Antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like PostScript - a program the printer (or other output device) executes in a virtual machine to render the output.

Why upgrade?

[warrax_666]

I'm using Firebird 0.6.1, and I don't see any problem with that.

I belive there are quite a few security issues with older versions of Fire*.

Re:Why upgrade?

[evilviper]

I belive there are quite a few security issues with older versions of Fire*.

Well, I could manually apply the patches to my older version if I was worried, but who's woried?

It's running on a platform with W^X, Propolice, stack protection, etc. Plus, I have it running under systrace.

Ummmm, not so much

[Sycraft-fu]

Precompiling does offer advantages, at least at this point:

1) More efficient binary code. Seriously, if you think you can make Java generate more efficient code than the Intel C compiler in a general purpose situation, you be my guest but you are going to lose. Intel has an extremely efficient compiler for the precompiled world and in general precompiled stuff, even on just an ok compiler, is faster than JIT.

2) Access to native resources. Java abstracts everything by necessity to pull cross platform compatibility. Fine, but there is a reason for things like DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc to exist. For video, using DirectDraw is a major performance boost. You can do it C++, you can't do it in Java.

Now neither of these are things that are necessiary perminant truths. It is, in theory, possible to make a JIT compiler generate as or more efficient code to a precomiler. It is also possible, in theory, to modify Java such that it can directly access accelerated OS features.

However the theoritical future has nothing to do with now. At this point, precomiled code is more efficient (in some cases quite a lot) and Java does not provide access to accelerated features. There is a REASON that Doom 3, UT 2004, etc are written in a language that precomiles to native code. Both seek to be cross platform (and UT 2004 is to an amazing extent) however Java is NOT the right tool for them at this time.

So while I certianly think something like this is cool and valuable, and am glad to see it implemented, don't think that it'll be as fast or efficient as a native player compiled with ICC.

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[jrumney]

For video, using DirectDraw is a major performance boost. You can do it C++, you can't do it in Java.

So why do I see recommendations in Sun's bug database to use the command-line option -Dsun.java2d.noddraw to work around certain display bugs?

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[sploxx]

However the theoritical future has nothing to do with now. At this point, precomiled code is more efficient (in some cases quite a lot) and Java does not provide access to accelerated features. There is a REASON that Doom 3, UT 2004, etc are written in a language that precomiles to native code. Both seek to be cross platform (and UT 2004 is to an amazing extent) however Java is NOT the right tool for them at this time.
Thanks ALOT!
This is what I try to say here all the time, problem is that /. is overrun by java nuts.

I would also like to add:

1. JVM != Java. See gcj. Or mips2java. Of course, because the JVM architecture is optimized for Java code, C/C++ code doesn't get as efficiently compiled into JVM code. This is no advantage of Java, it is a poor design of the JVM.
2. Check out LLVM. These people are essentially trying to do (they are not yet there but it is one of their essential goals and no marketing blurb) what Java promised for years. Front-end language independent.

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[moonbender]

There's a difference between you (the programmer) using DirectDraw and the JVM using DirectDraw to realize some of your instructions. I don't know if the former is possible, and I doubt the latter is anywhere near as efficient. Although it's still a good thing, of course.

On a sidenote, it would seem that OpenGL is extremely well suited as a 3D API for J2SE, doesn't it? Unlike DirectDraw, it's platform independent and a fairly open standard, and it should be available on most of the target systems for the standard edition of Java, and perhabs be emulated on those who haven't got a native OpenGL interface. I'm sure I'm not the first one to think this, so either there are a lot of reasons why this is not a good idea, or it's already being done, or both. :)

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[jrumney]

I don't know if ... and I doubt ...

There seems to be a lot of that in any slashdot posts to do with Java. At least you're man enough to admit it.

A quick google search is all it takes. There are several OpenGL API libraries for Java, and Java3D (an official extension) is a thin abstraction layer over either OpenGL or DirectX (on Windows).

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[Anonymous Coward]

1. JVM != Java. See gcj. Or mips2java. Of course, because the JVM architecture is optimized for Java code, C/C++ code doesn't get as efficiently compiled into JVM code. This is no advantage of Java, it is a poor design of the JVM.

You should write "VM" in that case. Virtual Machine. Not JAVA Virtual Machine.

And gcj does have a java virtual machine as well. You don't have to compile to native.

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[Teckla]

Precompiling does offer advantages, at least at this point:

While there are almost always "exceptions to the rule", it's been proven out in the real world that precompiled Java generally doesn't offer performance advantages over non-precompiled Java using modern JVMs such as Sun's and IBM's, with some exceptions such as startup time.

1) More efficient binary code. Seriously, if you think you can make Java generate more efficient code than the Intel C compiler in a general purpose situation, you be my guest but you are going to lose. Intel has an extremely efficient compiler for the precompiled world and in general precompiled stuff, even on just an ok compiler, is faster than JIT.

Except we're not talking about C, we're talking about Java.

2) Access to native resources. Java abstracts everything by necessity to pull cross platform compatibility. Fine, but there is a reason for things like DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc to exist. For video, using DirectDraw is a major performance boost. You can do it C++, you can't do it in Java.

Except we're not talking about DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc. We're talking about Java.

Now neither of these are things that are necessiary perminant truths. It is, in theory, possible to make a JIT compiler generate as or more efficient code to a precomiler. It is also possible, in theory, to modify Java such that it can directly access accelerated OS features.

However the theoritical future has nothing to do with now. At this point, precomiled code is more efficient (in some cases quite a lot) and Java does not provide access to accelerated features. There is a REASON that Doom 3, UT 2004, etc are written in a language that precomiles to native code. Both seek to be cross platform (and UT 2004 is to an amazing extent) however Java is NOT the right tool for them at this time.

So while I certianly think something like this is cool and valuable, and am glad to see it implemented, don't think that it'll be as fast or efficient as a native player compiled with ICC.

The OP was theorizing about precompiling Java to achieve better performance. Not about using the Intel C compiler, or Java's ability (or lack thereof) to call APIs such as DirectDraw, etc.

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[Teckla]

Thanks ALOT!
This is what I try to say here all the time, problem is that /. is overrun by java nuts.

Considering the discussion was not "JIT'd Java vs. precompiled C or C++", I fail to see what point you're trying to make. As an experienced C developer, as well as a Java developer, I'm well aware of the strengths of precompiled C over JIT'd Java.

Precompiled Java vs. JIT'd Java, however, is what we were discussing, at least I thought so...

Re:Ummmm, not so much

[junkgui]

Java 3d supports DirectX and OpenGL... Isn't abstraction great!

Re:Hey These guys just invented the player we crea

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing insightful about the parents post, he isn't making a wise comment, he is presenting interesting information. Hence he should be modded interesting, not insightful.

Insightful would "got" the distinction between someone creating a java player closed source and tanking and someone who is not claiming to make the "first" but is making it OSS, and with an OSS codec. That's the wow factor here, the geeky coolness is the fact these guys have done it all OSS not *just* that it works better than the shitful quicktime, wmv or real.

And on another note, I don't care who came up with it "first" - there are many cases of people comming up with stuff totally independantly of each other with the same end result. This is why patents are stupid. These guys deserve massive kudos here for releasing it OSS.

some boring guys sitting in the office

[SpaghettiPattern]

some boring guys sitting in the office
Like, whaddaya expect from Java programmers? Jeez!

(I do Java programming so I know.)

JVM exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a JVM exploit at least a while back, don't know if it still exists. It was experienced in a controlled environment. The other side got a connect-back shell and convinced my side of having it (through uname -a and other such things). All this because of a buffer overflow in the JVM. Sandbox had little of help with it.

There might be JVM exploits out there even now, but they're most likely non public.

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[arose]

14 year old incredibly annoying advertisers. That explains a lot about the web.

kak

[fons]

kak

My mistake

[fons]

don't ask, I have a split personality

Re:My mistake

[heliocentric]

Just what might I have asked?

JOrbis!

[QS6dot2]

Yes, the applet does use JOrbis.

Re:Ugh. Something Like Antitrust

[FrostedWheat]

I kind of had the impression that his codec generated some sort of code. That code is then transmitted to the client and executed, and is ouput is the set of pixels seen on the screen

I seem to remember the creator of Vorbis (Monty) writing once that he wanted to make an audio codec exactly like that but that there wasn't enough time. The priority was to get a working codec out there, which later became Vorbis.

I can't seem to find anything about it on Google so it's possible I imagined it :)

Re: open source with mpeg-4 in Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a warning, but the video is of a woman walking around in see thru lingerie.

Oh no!

IBM has a closed-source MPEG-4 java player...

[Anonymous Coward]

But they won't sell it! We could REALLY use a pure java MPEG-4 decoder in a project I'm working on. I checked out the IBM decoder, and it seemed ok, then I tried to find out how to licence it.

Arrg, two weeks of e-mails and phone calls to find out "we're really not set up to provide this as a product".

This ticked me off.

-- ac at home

Re:IBM has a closed-source MPEG-4 java player...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should drop this chap a line, see if you can get the source early. copyright@theprecipice.org seems to be the only address on the site though...

Re:Uhmmm Yea....so whats new???

[nicolas.e]

the people using flash are either:
1. 14 years old
2. incredibly annoying
3. advertisers

The only site I know that uses flash properly.

example

I feel like a Woman?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok this development is really cool. I was impressed to see the applet load quickly and play quite nicely. But for teh love of god, they are coding to "I Feel Like a Woman"!!!!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not so great on the P3/566!

[ZosX]

Keep in mind I'm only using Intel Celery flavored PIII coppermine], with an average load of ~5% CPU utilization for the GUI.

My impressions? It couldn't keep audio, yet alone video going smoothly at 100% CPU utilization. This is with JRE 1.4, as another poster said, perhaps (hopefully) this would be better with version 1.5.

I would hope that they can get this to work on much lesser hardware, because IMO the embedded market is what Java is slowly headed towards. Remeber, Java was originally designed to run on embedded hardware, when Sun realized the embedded market just wasn't there yet, the decided to unleash Java on the internet. This is a very cool technology indeed. No codecs to worry about, no media player to install...just an OS with JRE installed.

As another poster said it seemed to use pretty low CPU utilization under Linux. 30% on a 1.2ghz processor and my lowly 566mhz Coppermine Celeron can't keep up at all? Is the 1.2ghz processor that much faster? It shouldn't be even 200% faster than the PIII (well, better FSB helps I guess)

Just some thoughts from the sidelines...

zosX

Shrek 2

[j_sp_r]

Now they are watching Shrek 2, but I only hear the sound, no video. Quality is quite good. It must be an illigal download btw...

Re:Shrek 2

[j_sp_r]

Forget it, it was playing in MY Background the movie, strange that I didn't noticed ...

More like 99.999%

[ttfkam]

Java applets have been around for some time now. The number of remote system exploits has been *extremely* low in the last few years. (Not that the total number of exploits has been very high.) In fact the vast majority of Java expolits through an applet has been social engineering (a Java window popped up that looked like a system dialog) rather than technical exploitation.

Basically in order to install spyware with Java, you have to set up a web page (accountability), get people to come to your page, find a bug in a particular browser/VM combination that allows remote access to the file system AND allows native code to be executed.

As it stands today, I have never heard of an actual case of a web site installing spyware on a system via a Java applet. Of course this isn't to say that it could never happen. Anything could happen. But the fact that I have never yet heard of it happening in the ten years that Java has been released versus the number of spyware installs via ActiveX speaks volumes to me.

2x2GHz G5 Numbers...

[WiseWeasel]

I'm getting about 30-40% CPU usage (of 200% for this dual proc Mac), with stuttering performance (though that may be due to bandwidth limitations on their mirror). Safari, 10.3.5, 1GB RAM, 2x2GHz G5. Plus there are no video controls for pause, whatever, but this is a live stream, so I'm not sure there are supposed to be in this mode. A big meh from me...

IIRC...

[Phil John]

...there has been some cases where it's been possible, but that was using the horribly out-of-date MS JVM and even that's now been patched.

Not all vulnerabilites

[warrax_666]

are overflows. I believe a XUL vulnerability was recently discovered (Revealed? I seem to recall something about it having been known about for ages, just not publicly) which would leave you vulnerable regardless of W^X, stack prot., whatever else you have. Welcome to the wonderful world of a turing complete UI language.

Re:Not all vulnerabilites

[evilviper]

which would leave you vulnerable regardless of W^X, stack prot., whatever else you have.

Well, if you think so, you must not know what systrace is/does...

Welcome to the wonderful world of a turing complete UI language.

My distain for the "Mozilla way" is already quite solid.

Re:Ugh. Something Like Antitrust

[Jonboy X]

Well, if you want to get technical...

All data on a computer is a "program" of one sort or another. I mean, an HTML document is a "program" that a web browser runs. It's just that the web browser limits the instruction set that the HTML document can use. Same can be said for a JPEG or a Word doc. At the other end of the scale, even direct "executable" files tend to run on some idealized virtual machine that looks like x86 CISC, but is really more like a RISC machine under the hood. OpenGL itself is a virtual machine that hides the specifics of graphics card implementations. You get the idea.

All data formats fall somewhere on the continuum between passive data and active programs. The way we decide what to call it is usually based on the scope of the instruction set used by the program, and what virtual machine is required to run it. It all depends on your perspective.

Re:Hey These guys just invented the player we crea

[John Sokol]

Hey Publishing in JAVA is practicaly Open Source since the code decompiles back to very clean source with original variable names and everything so most JAVA players are derivative works. See Mocha or JAD for decompilers.

BTW I am assembling a list of all Java streams systems