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MS Proposes JPEG Alternative
automatix writes "Microsoft's new competitor to the omnipresent JPEG format has been shown at WinHEC and is discussed on CNET. The Windows Media Photo format has many promises associated with it. The program manager is claiming 'We can do it in half the size of a JPEG file.'. While 'the philosophy has been that licensing should not be a restriction', it is interesting that the specification requires a click-through agreement to even read it."
So, my question is fundamentally..........WHY? Other than to simply start solidifying platform specific requirements for websites and other such nonsense, i see no compelling reason why we should even give this a second glance. Besides, Microsoft does know that compression algorithms already present in JPEG can go further than they typically do resulting in smaller, yet more distorted images just like their "Microsoft format" JPEG, although I will allow that some of their approach is a bit more flexible than the current JPEG standard.
But the fundamental issue is that if Microsoft was being truly open and supportive of commonly used standards, this compression format would not require any click through agreement whatsoever to implement and would not require Windows Media Photo.
Steven Wells, quoted in the article as saying "Licensing can kill this" is absolutely correct.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
No.
No No No No No.
No way. Make it stop. Make it stop!
So, my question is fundamentally..........WHY?
DRM.
(Oh, and expect PNG support in IE7 to be downgraded)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
All the exciting features apart, will Microsoft release the file format as an open standard ? That is the big question. Any new file format is most welcome as long as they are open and not controlled by propritery licences.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
And what kind of DRM are they goin to include with this? Maybe the Pr0n sites will be the early adopters of this technology ... hehehe
I pass ...
"We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." -- Linus
If they're offering it as an alternative, why? If they're offering it as a replacement, we already have JPEG2000 thanks. I guess they've given up all pretense of caring and now are going all out for a file-formats landgrab in an effort to shore up their userbase before the shit hits the fan.
Anyway, shouldn't they be concentrating on finishing Vista?
My first reaction is:
GIF, JPG, and PNG do everything I need -- why a new image format?
My second reaction is:
Ok, I'm innovative, so maybe there is a good reason for a new image format. Maybe I'll read more. But then I re-read it's from Microsoft and it's got called Windows in it's name, and I think I've got enough MS and Win in my life -- I really don't want more.
Conclusion: No thanks.
boxlight
Well, I clicked the "I do not agree" button, and it still takes you through to the details...
Since the above is about as likely as duck being joined by a flying pig...
Mr. Gates was seen at WinHEC selling jams and jellies in the lobby, incoherently mumbling something thought to be "must...innovate..."
But seriously, is anyone else smelling that special scent of Microsoft imperialism where their current markets aren't satiating their need to dominate? I mean, they used to make only operating systems (which took them a while to perfect) and then they made Office (which took them a while to perfect) and then they made the Xbox and now they want us to use a new photo format?
I don't mind my JPEGs taking up 2 ~ 3MB each, in fact I prefer PNG which are small and widely supported. Granted, they're not half the size of a JPEG but--you know what?--PNG doesn't have a lawsuit history like JPEG & GIF have.
PNG is only lossless compression so I suppose it's only natural to switch to a file format that can be either lossless or lossy & will adequately adjust performance of the 'decoding' of the file if you select lossy. After reading the articles linked in the story, it sounds like Microsoft did a good job in the algorithm for this one
My work here is dung.
A windows media image format? So does this mean people will have to log on to the internet to "validate" their pictures before they can look at them. Actually, this does sound like an interesting concept but I'd wait for it to be around a while before actually throwing any money at it. Wow... imagine the amount of pr0n people could fit on their cellphones now!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
PNG - No royalties (ever), no click thru, open source, available to all, proven, lossless and no pattent or copyright that will cause issues.
Isn't there already an alternative called PNG? And doesn't it have existing support? Who cares about 1/2 the file size w/ 4GB flash memory cards available all over the place? It definitely sounds like MS is pointing out false arguments to have an MS-licensed image format that they can control. It sounds very dangerous to me. If it was a RAW-like format at half the size, or something that addresses modern image issues, it would be different.
Despite your "trusted computing" crap.
Actually, because of your "trusted computing" crap, amongst a whole host of other pieces of your crap.
Like all of you, I see no need for this format.
However, JPG isn't an open standard, is it? Isn't it controlled by proprietary licenses as well?
-Daniel
We've been down similar roads before (ActiveX, WMV etc)
No thanks.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
If they can keep from killing it with DRM and licensing, I for one would love to have a photo format where the quality doesn't degrade as much as JPEG does at high compression.
Whatever happened to jpeg 2000? I remember hearing about this when 2000 would have been an appropriate suffix for its name... http://www.jpeg.org/jpeg2000/index.html
If you look at JPEG, the Wikipedia article states: And now you see that it only supports lossy. There are other lossless formats out there but I don't think there is another popular MIME file format that is widely used to support both lossy and lossless.
The big selling point here seems to be that you can have one file format to do all regardless of what kind of compression you prefer. I do agree that if it's not released open to the public, it will fail.
My work here is dung.
Ofcourse this is a biased comment but after reading stories like these one has to wonder if MS doesn't change its priorities and if so; for what reason. When it comes to doing "good for the masses" MS is at an absolute bottom of the list, all they're doing is for their own profit, thats also what made them into the company they are today. The only real innovation MS has done is IMO the userinterface. That's an absolute given, they know how to distribute a desktop environment which can also be used by computer newbies.
MS has become quite big by raping standards. They're basicly picking up a product, pay for it if they have to, and start to reverse-engineer it (or something like that) and eventually come up with an own variant, thus hoping to push the original competitor out of the market (and they succeeded with that quite a couple of times, just check the history). Naturally we don't have open standards, thus tieing even more people to their products.
So my biased conclusion? Vista is going to pieces right now, the development costs are becoming staggering and new money is needed. But with big competitors like Google and Sun (to name my 2 favorites) the market has become hard. What to do? Once again copy a famous (or widely common) standard, promise to make it "bigger, better and faster" and tie the copy to your own product line. Most of the media will call it better and smoother (but they again; they'd do that with anything new) and the circus can start all over again.
One has to wonder how long MS can manage to play this game.
Dude just do a subband contrast threshold analysis on the image and you can often find that you can compress using the DWT (discrete wavelet transform) (JPEG2000) with ratios like 4:1 or better while still having a visually lossless compression. As long as the conrasts in the distortions in the various subbands are below the contrasts in the image data itself (in those subbands), the image is pretty much visually lossless.
Like, duh.
The dominant image formats that we have are just fine: JPEG, GIF and PNG. Each one has its specific use (JPEG for photos, GIF for 8-bit or animated images, and PNG for alpha or lossless images.)
Currently, I can't think of anything new that this WMP (wimp?) format can do. Unless they can pack all this into ONE format:
1) Compression without introducing artifacts.
2) Accurate color, contrast and brightness.
3) Animation.
4) Alpha channel.
If they can squeeze that into one format, we wouldn't need 3 different formats anymore.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Reading all of 31 pages of the document makes me understand that it is just an attempt to hijack tiff an bend it with MS patented pixel codec to become incompatible with existing tiff technology. Salted with Adobe XMP metadata, ICC metadata and EXIF metadata. All of that registered as a Microsoft trademark. Did I missed something?
There you are, staring at me again.
Or I would do if I understood what it meant. Is somebody making allegations about me and ducks? Besides, nothing promoted by Microsoft is a dead duck, it is just resting while they spend enough money on it to achieve critical mass.
Pining for the fjords
Didn't Microsoft once try to require digital camera makers to license the FAT filesystem? Microsoft doesn't really expect anyone with a brain to believe that they give away a specification with no strings attached? Well, I guess that's what they do expect.
I must say that I really hate how the business works. (I'm inclined to say "these days", but I suspect it has always been this way.) It appears that, in order to make people believe a straight lie, you only need to disseminate 10 times more lies: one will be taken for real and the other nine are forgotten.
All images encoded with Windows Media Photo have a blue cast to them
--- What?
Bottom line is more and more people use Microsoft. Less and less people use Apple and Unix.
Are you being sarcastic or trolling?
MS got flamed for this on digg, and the few posts which are already here do the same, but I'm not so pessimistic about it.
;)
Jpeg sucks, this should be clear to anyone who tried to compare it to Jpeg2000, for example. Unfortunately, J2k seems to be stuck, and since most browsers don't support it by default (even the upcoming IE7 and Opera 9), using this format on web is suicide.
So, if this new format performs at about J2k level, and uses less resources to do so, I'm happy MS introduced it. Due to relative suckiness of jpeg, a lot of space and bandwidth is wasted in everything from cameras to online image galleries. If MS gets the licensing right, it could be a very welcome addition to the image compression methods.
Of course, a stupid/evil license can kill either the format, or whoever tries to use it
From Wikipedia :
Windows Media Photo processes images at 16x16 macroblocks.
Microsoft claims that Windows Media Photo offers a perceptible image quality comparable to JPEG 2000
If you use blocks, you will get block effects. While JPEG2000 don't use blocks. So I'm sceptical about that image quality claim... It might be true when you take speed rather than size into account, however.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
We have PNG, and not only that but the JPEG patent is about to expire, putting it in the public domain as well. There is no reason whatever to adopt a proprietary alternative to a perfectly good open standard.
Burning your house down in order to rent one is about as dumb.
Dumb dumb dumb. Are prople really stupid enough to let this happen? I for one don't welcome our old Microsoftian overlords!
-mcgrew (If you buy this nonsense, I have some oceanfront property for sale in Arizona)
4. You have no obligation to give Microsoft any suggestions, comments or other feedback ("Feedback") relating to these Materials [...] Microsoft may freely use, reproduce, license, distribute, and otherwise commercialize Your Feedback in any Microsoft Offering
Hi MS,
It's rubbish.
Cheers.
My first thought was that there was no way anybody would actually use this format but Micrsoft has enough power to blackmail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H convince enough web sites or application developers to use this format that eventually everyone would have to have this regardless if they wanted it or not.
And I don't beleive for one second that this is really "open". Microsoft would never do anything unless it benifited them somehow.
Thanks, but WMF already takes care of my vulnerability needs!
...the machine that goes PNG!
| (ceci n'est pas une pipe)
How many patents will it infringe?
It's hard to see how even MS's third-rate programmers could make the PNG support worse than it is in IE6.
TEE
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Mostly, what this tells you is that Microsoft is confused and doesn't know what they are doing in this area.
First of all, compression really isn't an issue with digital cameras or image storage. Among other things, the fact that most serious photographers store RAW images is a good indication of that.
Second, lumping together JPEG and JPEG 2000 as "JPEG" doesn't make sense; JPEG 2000 already has all the advantages that Windows Media Photo claims, but it's an open standard. Microsoft should implement it, as should electronics manufacturers.
Third, Microsoft is overestimating their market position and significance in the digital imaging market.
I suppose you can't fault them for trying, but this particular attempt at monopolizing the market looks pretty pathetic.
OPEN specifications only, please. it has to be supported on all platforms.
these two ideas, core to the net, means that Microsoft and its eely, oily ways should be barred from submitting the spec.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I think you're confusing JPEG with JPEG-LS. Yes, they are both "JPEG"s but I don't think many applications natively support JPEG-LS. In fact, I wanted to use it in Photoshop and had to go get a plug-in. Whether or not JPEG-LS is as efficient as the new proposed MS format, I do not know. I think that JPEG-LS was slow to catch on because people just didn't care about upgrading their software to use it. I would wager that Microsoft will force third party software to support their new filetype.
I'm not even sure if my browser supports JPEG-LS and I know that programming with JPEG-LS can be a pain if you're looking for libraries to read/write lossless compression image files.
My work here is dung.
You seem to be forgetting that you're able to read Slashdot (or any Internet site) because the Internet allows you to connect from your desktop machine/laptop/etc. to Slashdot's server(s). It's an *OPEN STANDARD* called TCP/IP that allows you to do that and it doesn't matter what operating systems are running on either of those two computers (or indeed any other network devices on the network between you and Slashdot).
Sure, the new Microsoft standard may well be completely open but their past history suggests it probably won't be. Thus, applying your logic to networking standards, if those too were closed then that would restrict you from accessing a lot of good stuff on any intranet or the Internet because not every operating would support those networking protocols - it might even result in you paying more for every byte you download because someone somewhere has to pay a license to use a closed standard.
Added to this, please be aware that the majority of large internet web & mail servers run a UNIX-type operating system - they always have done and they probably always will do.
So whilst I would not argue that most desktops run Windows, this is not the case for the whole Internet.
And as to getting work done, the only time I run a Windows operating system these days is for gaming - every serious piece of work I do is on Linux in a company that uses a Windows-based infrastructure. Yes, it's taken me time to sometimes get stuff to work properly but it does - and I end up being more productive as a result because I can, for example, edit text files far quicker in Vi than I can in Notepad.
If Windows is your OS of choice then good luck to you & I hope you enjoy your computing as much as I do mine - but please don't make incorrect sweeping statements...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
We don't know what the ultimate (if any) licensing regime will be for this.
1) It looks like the algorithms won't be able to be patented in the European Union, so there'll be nothing to stop someone in the EU implementing their own software to do this and read/write from/to MS generated pictures.
2) Elsewhere, this could act as a differentiator for MS office. If the default image format in MS-Office is this new one, and applications that use ISO/IEC 26300-compliant (ODF-compliant) formats cannot use it due to patent restrictions, then this could act as a tool to prevent people from moving to applications that use ISO/IEC 26300-compliant methods of storing their files.
I cant wait to see what wmf like features this one has. If it doesnt have at least one vulnerability (buffer overflow, embeded executable code....) I refuse to use it.
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Not true. Look at the source of the page. You'll see that the "I accept" button is at actually a simple GET request to here. If you paste that into your location bar and then click the link on the right hand side of the page that comes up, you get the the spec.
I'm not sure of the legality of direct linking to their .doc file without agreeing to some nonsense EULA, but they put it on the web, so they have to expect a link here and there.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Once again, Slashdot parrots second-hand marketing hype.
If Microsoft has better compression methods, they should demonstrate them in a scholarly venue. Press releases and trade shows are not such a venue.
If Microsoft thinks that a better codec must be supported by a whole new standard, they'd better justify that -- technically, in the marketplace, and in the competition review processes throughout the world.
The spec seems overly complicated and, if judging by previous implementation work performed by Microsoft, will most likely introduce hundreds of new attack vectors by which 13-year old script kiddies can remotely exploit MS Windows systems. WMF all over again!
I want to see a low-rez jpg of of a jpg next to a low-rez jpg of a wdp to compare the qualities...
(kidding, kidding..)
I'll bet that all MS websites (microsoft.com, msn.com, msnbc.com, hotmail.com, ...) will start using this non-standard file format on their webpages within a year and IE will be the only browser to support it. It's an easy way to make a browser look broken to many people.
The future is obviously going to be media heavy, with tons of pics/videos all over the place. As such, better media formats are required. No doubt.
But when MS bundles decoders with the OS, it automatically gets a huge installed base. Now how will an open format compete with that, which the users will have to download? The MS format might get adopted even if it is proprietary. Which is very very bad.
jpeg2k has no adoption is for the same reason.
Interestingly, this is where a "platform" like Firefox becomes more important. As a delivery channel, of open formats. If Firefox ever becomes the dominant browser, that will solve a lot of the distribution problems. Of course, the Firefox team will decide what to bundle, but I am sure they are nice people.
Life is just a conviction.
Dude not quite you gotta know about the subband thresholds and the (subjective) reaction people have to an image! This ain't no copy paste shiat yo, you gotta get your wavelets to work for YOU. Just cause you ain't grasp'n doesn't mean my gears ain't spinning.
I clicked on both the agree and disagree buttons. They do in fact go to different pages. Clicking on the I agree button takes you to a very sparse page with a link to download a Word document containing the specifications. When you actually dig around on the page you're directed to when clicking "disagree" to download the specification, you end up back at the same license agreement page.
You must agree to their license to get the specification.
Microsoft... and 'the philosophy has been that licensing should not be a restriction'.
A HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
A HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
wipes tear from eye
WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
H
please stop.....
WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
H
HAH
*sound of side splitting....*
Seriously one of the funniest thing's I've heard resently...
Sheesh, where are my mod points when I need them? (I had them somewhere around here yesterday ...)
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
I, for one, welcome our 50% smaller, lossy overlords...
$ touch
If you click the 'I agree' it takes you to download some file that ends in ".DOC" - since I couldnt find any specifications for *that* file, I wasnt able to read them.
Just like saying "No" to installing Sony's DRM on CD stopped the rootkit from being installed.
Oh... wait...
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
"You may review these Materials only .. to interface with a Microsoft product"
.. ownership .. changes, Your right to use these Materials automatically terminates"
.. intellectual property claim"
.. of Your Feedback"
"MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND"
"If
"Microsoft may freely use, reproduce, license, distribute, and otherwise commercialize Your Feedback"
"You will not give Microsoft any Feedback (i) that You have reason to believe is subject to any
"Microsoft has no obligation to maintain the confidentiality
"You waive any defenses allowing the dispute to be litigated elsewhere"
"If any part of this Agreement is unenforceable, it will be considered modified to the extent necessary to make it enforceable"
from "Windows Media Photo Specification license agreement.
davecb5620@gmail.com
First of all, we are in the new, improved world of broadband. Bandwidth is hardly an issue as graphics are loaded and stored once and usually on a connection that is capable of some 50 KB/s or more.
I've been contracted to design high quality Vector(Flash)/Pixel(JPEG/GIF) graphics and animations for some of the largest and most exclusive hotels and restaurants in the world, and never have I had to think about limiting content because size is an important factor. As far as I can tell, news sites like CNN go for photographies for their news stories, but other than that, they go with GIF files to fast-loaded content for its 56K users. In other words, if you want to create a web site with smallish content, go for GIF. You can still do wonders with CSS and a piece of imagination.
I for one am confused here. Internet Explorer has been the worst of all large browsers when it comes to implementing new technology. It's still because of Internet Explorer that we can't use PNG as a standard, so good bye alpha channels. And despite this, they want to introduce something new? I don't get it. First, follow the standards thoroughly, THEN innovate.
I really don't think we need more pixel graphics standards that will take five years to become a standard. New vector graphics technology is fine, because that's where we're heading. And while we're at it, the problem when creating web sites is not visuals, but programming. It's amazing that you have to be an expert to make an IE/FF/SAF/OPE web site.
Full Tilt
Cool, because what the world need is yet another closed format ridden by bugs and problems.
-Woof woof woof!
hey microsoft, why don't you patch ie6 to work with alpha transparent pngs first (i know ie7 is supposed to work with them, but i don't have 4 years to wait until EveryMan(tm) has upgraded).
we have plenty of image formats that work for us, and most of us have broadband anyway.
-- lol pwned
So, my question is fundamentally..........WHY?
For consumers, because Microsoft actually makes high quality codecs. WMV has been highly competitive with MPEG4 AVC aka H.264, WMA has been highly competitve with AAC, I'm sure WMP will be highly competitve with JPEG2000 and the like. MPEG2, MP3 and JPEG are industry standards but behind the bleeding edge in compression technology. They'll all come preinstalled on the most popular OS and "just work".
For Microsofts part, because Microsoft wants to be the dominating standard of next-gen formats. Because if the three dominant formats are WMV (video), WMA (audio), WMP (photo) they can collect lots of licensing fees and Windows sales and so on. They control the features, they will always be first to release the implementation, everyone else is playing catch-up. Not to mention they will control WM*-DRM with a huge hold on all media.
Personally, I don't like WMP, I prefer Media Player Classic. But I also notice that some WMVs will not play properly using the standard DirectShow filters, ONLY in WMP. It's another one of those nice little hooks they pull. WM* formats work best not just on Windows, but WMP on Windows. But I must admit, that when I do play them the One Microsoft Way, they look and sound pretty damn good. In short, if you just take the very near-sighted approach and look at nothing but the quality, it's more of a "Why not?".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...no codec available for this image
Please Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, et al,
Please you with your hard earned 20-35% of share in the browser market,
Please BOYCOTT this format to make shure it will not be another way to for M$ to control the internet,
Please.
Cies Breijs.
Ok fine no one gets it. A banddand is a range of frequencies you will find in an image. As it turns out, we don't respond to error in an image by the image itself, but by the frequency that the error in the image disrupts. We're worse at seeing disruptions in the high and low range of frequencies, and better in the midrange. Somewhat ironically that means we can take advantage of the high and low and compress more inside those frequency ranges. A DWT or DCT wil give you component pieces for various frequencies which you can simply or delete to form the compression (DCT is JPEG, DWT is JPEG2000). Remember the square blocks in JPEG compression? That's from the DCT. The DWT is more circular so you'll never see square blocking with JPEG2000.
l er_5749_40.pdf
If anyone is interested and wants some not-so-light reading, check out http://foulard.ece.cornell.edu/publications/chand
It'd be awesome if someone made a compressor for regular images using this technique.
No, but your oh so awesome gangsta lingo certainly points out that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Your technique is working brilliantly! Now, both of your posts in the two first highly moderated comments are themselves being modded up. Won't be long before you have your +5, Insightful/Interesting now, Whiney!
Elsewhere, this could act as a differentiator for MS office. If the default image format in MS-Office is this new one, and applications that use ISO/IEC 26300-compliant (ODF-compliant) formats cannot use it due to patent restrictions, then this could act as a tool to prevent people from moving to applications that use ISO/IEC 26300-compliant methods of storing their files.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner. That is the reason. As others have pointed out, 'why why why?' - why reinvent the wheel? I think this makes perfect sense - create an obstacle to prevent the effective usage of ODF. Users will find themselves unable to save as ODF when 'MSJPEG's are included in the content - I mean, unless MS go to the trouble of converting to a real image format when someone saves as ODF. Which I am sceptical of. Patents and licensing restrictions will ensure documents containing such images will be unusable in OpenOffice. Evil, cynical genious as usual from the grand masters.
wmf, are you Signal 11?
...to JPEG# I know...bad joke.
Rumors are circling that the name for this new image format will be called "Better Microsoft Pictures". The debate continues regarding the file extention.
-tgpo
I only did one Google search, but easily came up with this old article from last October. I haven't really followed the case, but it's one reason why MS may have done this.
Are you daft, man? Have you not seen the throngs of cold, hungry, computer users out there begging for yet another incompatible digital format in addition the 17,619 picture, audio, text, word processing, spreadsheet, etc formats already in use? Sometimes it's hard to get out the door through the mobs of the underformatted unfortunates clogging the streets and crying toward Redmond to be saved from the curse of software that will actually work properly with material imported from someone else's computer.
This may not be the silliest idea since the Edsel, but it is close.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Isn't this just another MS attempt to "decommoditise the protocols" mentioned in the Halloween reports?
I thought PNG was supposed to be teh new hotness...so much for that. This is insanely stupid. I run a photoblog on an extremely low priced movable type hosting service and bandwidth isn't an issue for me. Bandwidth is such that we just don't need this at all. Yes, I understand that high traffic sites might benefit more from this than I would, but it hardly seems worth doing for all the chaos it will create. This is just another dumb Microsoft strategy to own the world.
Microsoft: Hey guys - we've invented this great new wheel - come try it out.
Joe Schmoe: errr.. what's wrong with my current wheel?
Microsoft: Are you kidding? If you'd tried our square wheel you wouldn't even be asking.
It's hard to see how even MS's third-rate programmers could make the PNG support worse than it is in IE6.
I meant downgrade the support that exists in IE7 beta (and at least supports alpha transparancy from what I read)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
WMP technically looks very good - same algorithm can do losless and lossy compression, does not use division (very important for tiny chips), supports any number of channels (including optional Alpha and CMYK), can store HDRI images and has little goodies like chunked container format and rotation flags.
If it was open and patent-free format I'd be drooling and starting war against JPEG already.
lets use that and sit back as the US army bombs the shit out of redmond. (and misses and hits apple instead)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
1.You may read the specs only if you use them to write software which work with Microsoft products, or
2. To provide feedback on the Specs to Microsoft.
Duh... where's the "I wanna know if it's any good" option? I did a google of "Windows Media Photo" to see if there was any more stuff to read, but I didn't get anything more informative than the linked cnet article.
And about 4 years after they've rolled it into their browser someone will have turned out to have had a patent on a key aspect of the format and sue their asses out from under them. Just like they did with browser plugins. In fact, knowing the USPTO you could probaly just take their specification without changing a single word, submit it as a patent and get a patent for it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Why not?
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with proposing another file format. The current formats we have now or in the future are never going to be good enough and there will always be room for improvement.
Having said all that, I agree with the parent comment in the fact that licencing will make or break this format and the click-through agreement doesn't bode well.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
So they present an 'open' standard in a document formatted in the closed .doc format. Way to go MS! Your true colors shine beautifully.
-- Cheers!
A pro photographer who is worried about quality will shoot RAW (or even film). A pro photographer who is interested in getting the picture out fast will shoot JPEG, because that's what the agencies and newspapers expect. Most will shoot both and run a JPEG out in the camera before emailing it back to the editorial office.
Also having lossy and lossless in one format isn't as useful as you might think. Lossy compression saves space and transmits faster (obviously) - you lose all those benefits if you then bind a lossless file to it.
I can't see what problem they're trying to solve: the three things that better lossy compression is supposed to help: storage, bandwidth and CPU cycles improve exponentially over time. It's a very very long time since I had to wait for Photoshop to open a JPEG (although RAW files still take an age).
that tells you how to configure Apache so it refuses connections from IE?
The trend will continue to lean towards images that retain as much resolution and picture quality as possible, and away from the concept of compressing to save a few more kilobytes of space at the expense of the former.
The latest "big thing" is making products like Adobe's new "Lightroom" and Apple's "Aperture" that allow working with "RAW" format photo data, straight off of a digital camera.
The prices of storage keep plummeting, as well. You can spend $50 or so for a piece of flash media that holds 10 times as much as the "Zip 100" disks that were the "greatest thing since sliced bread" for storing "large amounts of data conveniently" just 5 or 6 years ago. 400GB hard drives with 5 year warranties go for well under $300 each. In this environment, people cease worrying about new graphics formats that specialize in "better compression". They want *no compression* so they don't lose any quality.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
...and it's JPEG2000, and this try from MS is nothing but a mimic (integer operations, lossy and lossless, partial decoding, block sizes, bw and color, int and floating point precision, image sizes, xml metadata, you name it).
We don't need cameras supporting an MS image format, no sir, we need cameras supporting state of the art standards in image formats, for which MS brings nothign new with this move.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
for everything precisely because Microsoft sucks.
If Redmond suffers an nucular attack and M$ gets wiped from earth I can't say that it would affect me. Linux has matured into a reliable desktop replacement for me I see no need for me to ever even consider M$ crapware.
The best part is, I'm IT director now at a sports publishing company and I'll make sure that decision is a company wide one. We already have a successful, M$ free company and we're perfectly happy.
Sorry M$, karma is a bitch. No thank you, may your proposed image format die a deservedly miserable death.
I don't mind seeing a new format, perhaps it's time. I just don't want to see it coming from microsoft. Next up, microsoft toilet paper.....
This beautiful fifth generation file format owns. Anybody with a half brain can open the header file and look at how the information is stored will see that this is the file format of the future. Can't get much more bang for the buck for this small footprint design.
The p0rn industry will not invest in another format! They prefer to invest in machinery, big machines, stuff that can penetrate the market, you know.
No sig for now.
Yo hangin wit da homeboys wen yooz write dem rhymes 'bout dem pics man?
From TFA: Licensing details for the technology are still being ironed out. These could be a concern, Crow [program manager for Windows Media Photo] acknowledged, but "the philosophy has been that licensing should not be a restriction" to adoption, he said.
Okay you heard it here first, Microsoft now offically has stated that licensing shouldn't be a restriction to adoption. Supercool! I'll bet next week they'll be dropping lawsuits around the worldd...
I think it is awesome that they have come up with a new file format that is far superior to the standard. I would like to ask this question though; FLAC & OGG are examples of newer file formats that are far superior to the standard however get little to no use in comparison. I think that this is a great idea, but it will be hard for people to want to change.
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no
It took me to the intro page for the XPS specification.
"A banddand is a range of frequencies you will find in an image"
Range of frequencies of what? Light? It can only go from
red to violet and if you've got any white in the image
that means (in theory) you'd have ALL the frequencies.
Unless you meant frequencies of dogs appearing or
something.. Or you're talking bollocks.
"We're worse at seeing disruptions in the high and low range of frequencies,"
Do you have a clue what you're on about?
Instead of using JPEG2000 for example, or adopting DNG for RAW images they're bringing us another proprietary format. And I'm afraid when people adopt this format, MS will somehow lock-up people using DRM.
Pixel image editor - http://www.kanzelsberger.com
Well, there is JPEG 2000 and its your loss if you don't use it http://www.jpeg.org/jpeg2000/
/ 12/0725217
The amazing, unbelievable thing made me "shrug" is they have the face to use "professional" word. I shouldn't RTFM really.
Professionals use RAW. RAW you hear me Microsoft? Also they use TIFF for transport. That is the established non lossy standard with some weird extensions, file variations. That is also why professional photographers will be the first Blu Ray recorder customers.
Nobody, nobody can dare to lose a PIXEL, single PIXEL. That is how you work in professional World.
Dear BillG if you are reading this: FIRE whoever came with that idea. Even Microsoft does not deserve to be robbed like that.
And people here (at geek sites) joked when Allume managed to come up with a lossless jpeg compressor. The camera manufacturer and memory manufacturer CARTEL insists on using JPEG , that is how you sell people 1 gigabyte memory cards but it is up to customer asking for jpeg 2000 format on equipment they buy.
So, there is still JPEG, one company (one of their interns I heard) managed to compress it by 30% levels and people joked about them. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01
Here is World's billions of dollars company coming up with a lossy format for PROFESSIONALS. I can only *shrug* sorry.
Please Microsoft, introduce your "format" to professionals who has nothing to do with your businesses and watch them laugh at you.
Even end users know RAW format.
Weapons of Mass Pixels?
New photo format from MS! Yay! I'm sure digicam makers will _gladly_ embrace it after Microsoft fucked them over with FAT patent royalties enforcement.
Ohhh, mercy!
You're not a math person, I take it.
Range of frequencies of the wavelets, or the discrete cosines - both of which are frequency spaces. One of the first things you do to store an image is to convert it into a frequency representation.
The most commonly known frequency space outside of E&M is the fourier space, which you reach by doing a fourier transform.
Ring a bell?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
For a JPEG alternative look at APT: http://www.intuac.com/userport/john/apt/index.html . Better compression and mostly patent-free.
'We can do it in half the size of a JPEG file.' The other half will be undoubtedly reserved for DRM
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
It's comforting to note that the world of graphic design is controlled by Mac users who distrust MS just as much as any self-respecting Linux geek (if not more).
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
From the downloaded document:
"Certain information relating to Windows Media(TM) Photo, including the details of the image compression algorithm, are available only to licensees of the technology."
The signal or the poster?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Pro photographers couldn't care less if Microshit comes with a new format. .raw's for the lossless part, tiff for stockage and the jpeg for when you are on very big shoots that require no tinkering.
We are already *very* happy with what we can do with
Duh, and 99% of the pro photographer world use the Macs. Windows can eat our poo.
Microsoft and many others rely on the truth of the situation, which is that most people happily chuck these values out the window for convenience. For example if the assorted Vista/Office 13 programs use this new image format as the standard and/or make it easier to email, blog, flickr them... it's going to start dominating.
Further: when someone like rms uses the "f" word a lot, MS can count of legions of people to call him impractical, an idealist, a zealot, a fanatic.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Spatial frequencies, fucknut.
What kind of a nerd ARE you?
They can try, but in the best case, I bet it would work about as well as when everyone tried it with GIF. Of course, that would require Microsoft's replacement to be an open standard, which it doesn't appear to be.
Since the use of compression is to compensate for lack of either 1) Storage or 2)Bandwidth I have to wonder how useful having a tighter compression format for pictures would be. Computers are faster, hard drives larger, broadband quicker. I'd like to see better LOSSLESS compression than lossy comrpession.
I *could* use this, or I could use PNG, if it really bothered me. No, lossless compression isn't as small as lossy, but we're living in the broadband era, and you shouldn't have so many pictures it would matter anyway.
The only reason to use this at all is Microsofts tendancy to release fairly reasonable tools with new releases of Windows to push their new file formats. Since that isn't an issue with pictures, I can only hope this fails like most things Microsoft tries.
It's been a long time.
If WMA is any indication, my hopes are not high. All the marketing on the subject says that WMA 64kbps sounds the same as MP3 128kbps, but the fact is that both formats sound like garbage at 64kbps. WMA @64 is certainly much worse than MP3 @128.
At my age I find coming up with a witty signature too exhausting.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this.
Microsoft's JPEG replacement leaves it with an option if the Forgent suit goes the wrong way. Acting as if it's happy to stop using JPEG gives Microsoft leverage in an out-of-court negotiation.
The patent in question expires in October 2006.
Just my two cents.
William vanRyper
GIF wasn't good enough because it was not free. WM* formats are Not Free. We should not even consider takeing into account formats that will ssteal our freedom. MP3 is not good enough, but we have Vorbis which is free and far better (about twice as quality as MP3, try 64kbps OGG and they sound good enough; try 64kbps MP3 and you'll agree with me).
So yes, a new format which is free? A good thing indeed. A new non-free format? No thanks. Nothing to see here. /moves along)
just to add to that - can't wait to see your next Apple post wmf - should be as funny as always
RAR is only better than ZIP because of their excellent command-line options for chunking into multiple files with parody. Before they added that, RAR was an abomination!
PNGs cool.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
>frequency representation
Oh for gods sake, frequencies representation of what? Contrast, colour,
toenails? I might just as well say "hey , I know , I'll make a frequency
representation of this ball!"
No , I don't understand the process , but it might help if someone
actually explained it. Guess I'll have to google.
>Ring a bell?
It would have to be a loud bell, I think I just fell asleep.
You seem to be forgetting that you're able to read Slashdot (or any Internet site) because the Internet allows you to connect from your desktop machine/laptop/etc.
To take this a bit further:
Open Standard: TCP/IP - free for anyone to impliment on any system. Allows the system to interact with millions of other systems.
Closed Standard: Historical Online Serivces (AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, etc..). Not free for anyone to impliment. Only accessible from systems which the company felt was in *their* best interest. Not cross-network compatible (ie before the Internet forced them, you couldn't send an email from your AOL account to a Prodigy account). Not available for end-user develop (what you see is what you get).
Sadly, a majority of computer users never had to deal with those closed systems and live in a "Windows" world where they don't quite understand the importance of open standards. I think the closest (for them) might be instant messaging compared to email. I can send an email to anyone -- doesn't matter what email client, operating system, etc they use. However, instant messaging requires me to be on the same network, have different IM clients (granted there are unofficial multi-client apps) and they app speak different, incompatible languages.
Yea, why? And why is no one using iw44?
(apt-get djvulibre-plugin)
:T:R:A:N:S:
I'd like to see how it handles textures, because none of the wavelet compressors have really shined at that, losing to the "inferior" jpeg format in those tests. I wonder if anyone has a link to some samples, or a free compressor to try out.
Your right. Also this would be excellent for the next generation of websites. Current websites are limited to how graphical they can be because of the sheer file sizes that the gif, jpeg, and png files pose. It truly is a challenge for webdevelopers to overcome this and having to decide whether to go all the way or just half way. If microsoft can release a new image format that can be compressed half the size of a jpeg then i am all for it! You wouldn't believe how wonderful that would be and how big of a change it would make.
jappleng.com - News best served with breakfast.
With the usage of JPEG2000-ish compression for the files used in new Digital Cinema Initiative; I would guess they could bump the price up; they will have people to pay the license anyway. With a bigger dependance on JPEG2000, we might see a new GIF-problem. The new MS-format might be worse though. We know their strategies, don't we? :-)
Egon, I'm a little bit fuzzy on this lossless thing
So, my question is fundamentally..........WHY?
Why not?
Maybe the question should be asked differently: What advantages does it offer over existing formats? Sure it provides Microsoft with their own lossy image format, making their data type portfolio complete, but what does it offer everyone else?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The main issue is that content formats (photo, video, audio, etc.) in commercial software, consumer electronics, etc. are geared towards patented technology. This is and has been shown to be a severly limiting factor for making new software and/or consumer electronics. The consumer electronics industry, video content and audio content industries are victims of their own actions since they insist on long drawn out futile patent hand-wringing (e.g., DVD-r vs DVD+r vs DVD-RAM, blu-ray vs other) that a) prevents new technology from being produced, b) raises the cost to all parties involved and c) reduces sales and profits for the manufacturers and content producers.
What is the opportunity cost of delaying HD-DVD for 4 years due to patent hand-wringing (Blu-ray vs ?)?
Well, according to NE asia's may edition, the USPTO is going reexamine forgent's patent (at the behest of The public patent foundation. But that's really kind of besides the point 'cause all of MS's products are going to come under patent attacks.
There's just too many software patents out there (and too many broad ones) for MS to work their way around all of them, forgent will just buy up some company with a patent on entropy encoding & turn around & sue MS.
If jpeg patents are MS's fear, a new image format is only going to buy them a little time, but if DRM is their goal, it makes perfect sense.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Sounds like another Windows Meta file scenario....
Ironically, the parent is doubly wrong. Not only is frequency space used for a lot of image manipulation (except edge detection, sharpening and colour/brightness/contrast operations) but the human eye really only detects detail in the green part of the spectrum.
Try taking an RGB image and blurring the red and blue channels - it will still have the same apparent sharpness.
It's because they have to innovate. Sure - if you've used Gimp or Photoshop you can save jpegs with tons of compression but jpeg is known as a lossy format to begin with.
How does Microsoft change a lightbulb?
They just redefine darkness as the industry standard.
That from a company that wants to charge license fees for FAT? Yeah, right. They might not charge licensing fees now, but if this graphics standard ever gets to be twenty years old, not under active development, and ubiquitous, watch out.
Penny - plain text accounting
Just so you know, their are a _lot_ of reasons for the altering standards... although I dont quite see the point of this one, especially if its the same formula for compression that jpeg is, but if it's using Wavelet compression, it could be a good idea. I often use TIF, JPEG2000, ECW, and others in my regular work, many of those formats most people have never heard of ;)
B.S. The docs were available on MSDN for years, and are now available elsewhere as well. How'd you think that OOo, AbiWord, KWord, and the like (largely) got their DOC support to where it is today?
http://wvware.sourceforge.net/wvInfo.html
http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=text
Don't spread FUD. You don't know what you're talking about enough to do an effective job of it.
Dear Sir: I might actually find your post funny, even if it's making fun of me, if only it were not too vague for me to comprehend. :)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Forget about what we said earlier, let's keep the borg icon for anything Microsoft-related.
MS is working hard to dominate the mobile market. Why else would MS care about better compression, while not necessarily worrying about better quality?
I downloaded the spec just so I could delete it. Take that, Micro$oft!!!!!11one ;-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Back on topic, there are dozens of posters who strongly believe jpeg is lossy only. Thank you for straigntening this out.
Man, you really need that seminar!
First of all, forget color. A color image is just three channels of black and white.
Imagine you have a back and white image which is pure white noise. Consider what a single horizontal line of that image would look like if you drew it as you would a sound wave, with the bright pixels being high, and the dark pixels being low.
As you step from one pixel to the next, you could have a change of up to 255. There's no predictable pattern. The "frequency" of this noise is high, because the potential difference from one pixel to the next is great.
Now imagine that you apply a smoothing filter to this line of noise, and bring the changes from one pixel down. That is what you get if you blur an image. Now the max differences from one pixel to the next is much lower. The frequencies in a blurry image are low.
There's other ways to consider the frequencies of an image as well. In Wavelets, you would scale the image down to 2x2, and this would be one layer of the image. Then you'd scale it down to 4x4, and scale up the 2x2 image with bilinear filtering and subtract it from the 4x4 image. The 4x4 difference image now represents a different set of frequencies than the 2x2 image did. You store the difference because what you're interested in is the frequency of the 4x4 layer. You want to add that frequency on top of the 2x2 layer when you reconstruct the image, and if you have that "frequency" seperated out, you can compress the data better.
Another way of looking for frequencies in an image is to seperate the image into bitplanes. I think TIFF does this, because it comrpessed the image about the same as seperating the image into bitplanes then compressing with zip. Anyway the idea here is to take all the first bits of each pixel and stick them one after another, and then stick the second bits of all the pixels one after the other... You'll end up with 8 images this way, and you'll find that the image with the highest bits is easily recognizeable and has clear sharp edges, but when you get to the image with the lowest bits, all you have is noise. If you discard that noise when reconstructing the image then you will get banding in the image, but you could in theory interpolate the values of the band above to fill in the noise. You'll lose noise in the image though so stuff will look smoother than it did. Wavelet does somethign similar when it discards the differences and smooths the portions of the image that are in between sharp edges.
# If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, PNG wouldn't have happened.
# If we'd all said that ZIP was good enough, RAR and 7z wouldn't have happened.
# If we'd all said that WAV was good enough, MP3 wouldn't have happened.
# If we'd all said that MP3 was good enough, AAC wouldn't have happened.
GIF was good enough. PNG exists because the world is full of geeks who think that they are lawyers.
ZIP is good enough. RAR and 7z (and bz2 and
WAV is not a compressed format. Apples and oranges.
MP3 is good enough. AAC is evil. (hint - the difference isn't quality, it is control)
hahahahahaha!
:-x
I've never seen a clearer case of jealously in my life
(waaah, waaah) are you sad 'cause noone replies to your comments?
(I'm sure AC will just have to reply to this, even tho' noone will read it)
In the olden days you'd only get 24-36 shots per roll of film, and changing a memory card is way less work. Plus, you can do some in-camera deleting.
Man, you really need that seminar!
If i wasn't incredibly tired, I'd go hunting for a rant I once saw from an AbiWord developer, who said that the specifications that microsoft makes available for the .DOC format are incomplete and inaccurate, and that the format was designed with one intention in mind: to make it as hard as possible for competitors to implement.
It exists. If I remember tomorrow I might go searching for it
Someone should change that to: "By accessing, using or providing feedback on these materials, or attempting to sue anyone over these materials you agree to the to give the person who altered this document $37,000,000,000 in US currency." And then promptly distribute it widely.
By the way, anyone replying to, reading, commenting about, or in any way accessing the material in this post; including but not limited to moderating, meta-moterating, storing in a database, retrieving from a database, viewing in a web browser, including it in or making a reference to it in a legal document, or accidentially glancing at this post agrees to send $100 to me for each occurance.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
I was right there with you up until your final example. When I read, "...I can, for example, edit text files far quicker in Vi than I can in Notepad." I thought to myself, "What?" Obviously a user can download vi, or VIM or some such variant or even a completely different text editor for Windows that will give them the same functionality, of the text editor, that you have. Now there are real benefits to running Linux over Windows. You could have said, "when editing text, I'm edit text more quickly using Vi, cat, |, regexps, and the other CLI tools available than I can with Windows. The integration of the command line and the GUI environment allows me to script and integrate my workflows. "
I agree with pretty much every principal you stated, but I do take exception to your example.
Thanks for pointing that out. I really was baffled. Hahaha, silly me.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You need to replace your funny bone - It was a joke (granted a tounge-in-cheek one, but a joke nonetheless)
go screw yerselves
1. You may review these Materials only (a) as a reference to assist You in planning and designing Your product, service or technology ("Product") to interface with a Microsoft product, specification, service or technology ("Microsoft Product") as described in these Materials; and (b) to provide feedback on these Materials to Microsoft. All other rights are retained by Microsoft; this Agreement does not give You rights under any Microsoft patents. You may not (i) duplicate any part of these Materials, (ii) remove this Agreement or any notices from these Materials, or (iii) give any part of these Materials, or assign or otherwise provide Your rights under this Agreement, to anyone else.
they're indicating that they already might have patents on this.
he he he
try clicking on the "I do not accept this agreement".. ha ha ha!! their web version of BSOD!
.doc should be served as text/obfuscated
It's so silly. The only one who should be able to file suit is Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier. After all, the JPEG standard is a DCT is a DFT.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
This is a topic that can be very difficult to grasp. There are multiple semester courses in Fourier analysis in college. I'll try to make this as simple as possible.
/\/\/\/ ) we can see that it almost looks like a sine wave. We can, in fact, convert the triangle wave into a summation of cosine waves. The main cosine wave has a frequency equal to the frequency of the triangle wave. We can then add a second, higher frequency cosine wave to the first, and this helps our waveform fit the triangle waveform better. We can continue with higher and higher frequencies until we have an almost exact representation. Corners in sound waves are very high frequency transitions, because the wave direction is changing very fast. This is why a 44.1kHz waveform sounds much better than an 8kHz waveform. Higher frequencies can be represented when the samples are converted into cosine waves to be played back. Thus, the frequency is like the detail of the sound.
It is easier to explain with sound first.
Imagine how a recording of your voice looks, when converted to an image of a sound wave.
This waveform has peaks and valleys. If we take a triangle wave (
Frequency, when related to an image, is like the detail in an image.
The frequency, in this case, is the frequency of the cosines used to represent this image.
The cosines in a 2-d image can be imagined as taking the height of the cosine as the brightness value. The lowest value is black, and the brightest value is white. Imagine we have vertical bars of gradients from black to white. Higher frequency cosines will result in more bars in the image. These bars can be in the X (horizontal) or Y (vertical) direction.
We can add these bars together and create an image.
The basis of the fourier transform is to take an image, and convert it into this cosine representation. If we do this, we then have a list of the frequency of the cosines in the X and Y directions.
Going back to the detail in an image:
If we remove the higher frequency cosine waves, and convert the remaining data back into an image, we get a blurred version of the original image. This is the basis for many of the image filters in programs like Photoshop.
This has nothing to do with websites. It's all about cameras. They want their format to be adopted by digital camera makers. If that happens, they get fat off the licensing fees while solidifying their Windows user base even further.
Do RAR and 7z have some benefit other than making it a hassle to find one good free unzip program that handles everything right? I've never seen anything that got more than a 1% compression benefit, and not seen any convenience or feature benefit.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
More immediately useful, there are optimizers for jpeg and png that can make the image take less space, with no loss of quality. There's jpegtran -opt for jpeg images. Most digital cameras create jpegs that are around 3% larger than what jpegtran's optimizing can achieve. For png, there's PNGOUT, OptiPNG, and pngrewrite and PNGcrush. Most web sites do not use optimized images.
There's also compression programs such as StuffIt that claim they can losslessly compress jpeg images up to 30%. So there's plenty of room to wring more out of the existing formats.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Well, we're talking about images, so what do you think? It follows logically that it's whatever represents an image before it's converted to frequency space is what it is when it's been converted to frequency space.
/. isn't really the place to learn it.
Images are represented by intensity values - one for each color band. There are three color bands. They might be red, green, blue, or hue, saturation, value, or something else.
Usually each band is converted separately into a band in frequency space.
All of this is hand-holding, high level explainations. Its a very complicated process starting from not even knowing how uncompressed images are stored, and
Google is indeed your friend.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Well, apparently just by reading it, you agree to the license:
Microsoft Confidential (c) 2005-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. By accessing, using, or providing feedback on these materials, you agree to the attached license agreement.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
The poster.
If you click on the "I accept this agreement and want to download the Windows Media Photo Specification" button, it submits "I accept this agreement and want to download the Windows Media Photo Specification", and should take you to http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphotodwn.mspx? . However, I didn't verify that.
Instead, I chose to look at the HTML, and manually submitted my own prefered value via manually entering the URL: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphotodwn.mspx? I_Reject_The_Agreement_Terms_and_Suspect_Bill_Gate s_Blows_Goats. I also got taken to the download page. This page contains the notice "By installing, copying, or otherwise using the software, you agree to be bound by the terms of the license agreement.", and a download link to the actual specification document at http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/a/16acc 601-1b7a-42ad-8d4e-4f0aa156ec3e/WMPhotoSpec_v09.do c....
Oops.
Now, while I Am Not A Lawyer, I submitted my rejection of their license terms, so I'd argue in court I shouldn't be bound by them; and since this is a specification, and not itself software, I would also argue that the notice on the page I reached is moot. I suppose the case could be made that since Word macros are a turing-complete programming language, the word document is software, so I thought I'd look through using "less" to be on the safe side. Lo and behold, there is another license embedded:
Of course, if someone at a unix command prompt incanted something clever (say, curl -o Bill_Blows_Goats.txt -C 8261 http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/a/16acc 601-1b7a-42ad-8d4e-4f0aa156ec3e/WMPhotoSpec_v09.do c — and don't forget to remove the Slashdot inserted spaces) the Microsoft server would only give them the meaty parts (albeit in a form even OpenOffice would probably gag on), and omit the license. I'd be amused to hear the opinion of a Real Lawyer as to how binding the agreement co
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Licensing issues aside, PNG supports alpha transparency and is better for that reason alone.
I guess ZIP is probably good enough, but I was under the impression that others got better compression, which can never be bad.
Comparing WAV and MP3 is apples and oranges, but how about WAV and FLAC - half the space for the same data is excellent in my book.
AAC may be evil, but it's just a wrapper for MP4 audio, which does achieve better compression in my experience.
All in all these new formats really are beneficial; what we should be asking is how this one is beneficial to Microsoft? They wouldn't (and neither would any business) waste their money on it for the good of mankind, and if it's truly open then they can't gain any control. They wouldn't do it for PR because they don't really need it and most users don't understand the details of graphical compression enough to appreciate it anyway. They can't do it in order to drop JPEG, it's just used in too many places. I'd be intrigued to know why they are doing this.
Windows Media Photo? Ah.. ha. Ha Ha. Ahahahaa. ha aha ahahaha hahahaha. HAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Thats even funnier than linux as a desktop!
I've been upgraded to "bad"!
No I'm not. I actually hadn't heard of sig 11 before you mentioned him - I started reading /. probably in late '98, so I was lurking while he was posting, but I don't recall him.
I read his farewell thingie over at everything2... mildly interesting, but I actually think the moderation system works quite well.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Nothing in TFA or the Wikipedia article or the specification itself says anything about DRM or any kind of copy protection. The only "unknown" so far is licensing mentioned in TFA. Other than Microsoft is Evil(TM) or Slashdot Group Think(TM), where did this DRM business come from?
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
No wonder it took Unisys so long to dig it up.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I do! I do!
No. But it won't be possible for you to make a discretionary payment because you like it. It will increase Windows lock-in or Office lock-in. Only at the enterprise level will people be required to write a check with the name of this turd on it. Costs will be passed on to you, but it's not Microsoft's style to do it in a way that you can accept it if you like it and reject it if you don't. Their style is to bypass you, to disempower you. Apparently you don't mind that.
Because they can. Period.
.WMP -- Because Microsoft thought it would be cool to have a file format named after Bill.
As long as IE doesn't provide proper PNG support, IE users get downgraded versions of my websites with 1-bit transparency where users of other browsers see smooth, unpixelated gradients and dropshadows. I cater to users of technologically challenged browsers because I have to, but I do so by making my websites degrade gracefully. I don't go the proprietary route for them.
OGG would probably be a better example than AAC in this discussion.
.tar.bz2 is pretty good compression compared to the rest. I never understood what was so cool about RAR compared to ZIP (I also remember a lot of formats that more or less died, such as ARC/ARK and LHA/LZH, ACE, etc. - ACE in particular was an improvement over RAR, but never really caught on). I use ZIP when I just want to compress/decompress something quickly and get a decent reduction in file size, and .tar.bz2 when I'm really archiving something.
Also, on general lossless compression file archive formats:
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
More people are forced to use windows than any other operating system.
WAVE also came late, and was a pretty much pointless format, it's basically raw PCM data with a header, just like the AIFF format which predated it considerably, and the VOICE format which included rudimentary silence compression...
GIF was not good enough, transparency was an all or nothing (no translucency) and GIF didn't support more than 256 colours (8 bit)
AAC also has no reason to exist, your right about the control... The same can be said of the realaudio and windows media audio formats.
RAR is pointless, bzip2 serves a different purpose to zip and is more of a pointless replacement for gzip. Zip was also quite a latecomer, and things like lha, arj, zoo and lzh predate it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
GIF was good enough. PNG exists because the world is full of geeks who think that they are lawyers.
...) are stupid.
Or they wanted alpha channels and greater bit depths and better compression options.
ZIP is good enough. RAR and 7z (and bz2 and
WAV is not a compressed format. Apples and oranges.
Damn straight
MP3 is good enough. AAC is evil. (hint - the difference isn't quality, it is control)
AAC is MP4, a patented but open standard - just like MP3. Apples use of AAC in ITMS wraps the Fairplay DRM around that you are so coyly referring to, but really has nothing to do with AAC itself.
The original comparison stands in two cases.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
M$ gives digital camera makers a free license.
M$ builds it into their OS.
M$ declines to license it to other OS's.
Result:
Monopoly.
I read somewhere a while ago, that the windows audio format was a pretty poor effort, took considerably longer to encode than other formats, while offering noticeably inferior quality to ogg, mp3pro, aac and some others... Infact, it only seemed to beat realaudio on quality, and was just behind the original MP3 spec.
As for video, their files tend to be smaller than other formats but massively inferior in quality, that's why windows video files are popular for small clips on websites, but are unpopular among movie/tvshow pirates, who usually use the superior divx or xvid formats.
Also, any format which is not an open standard is unusable for me on principle, i want choice as to where i get my media and/or players from, this is the same reason VHS prospered over the technically superior betamax.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Hey... I think I'll have to change my .sig...
Ignore this signature. By order.
Objectives for Introducing a New Still Image Format
Today's file formats for continuous tone images present many limitations in maintaining the highest image quality or delivering the most optimal system performance. Windows Media(TM) Photo was designed to remove these limitations. The design objectives include:
Windows Media(TM) Photo is the only format that offers high dynamic range image encoding, lossless or lossy compression, multiple color formats, and performance that enables practical in-device implementation.
hahahahahahaha!
You spent an awful lot of time writing that for someone non jealous!
# "And why don't you respond as yourself instead of as AC, you stupid fag?"
hahahaahahahaha!
1) Nothing funnier then being told to log by someone to cowardly to log in themselves!
2) You've betrayed yourself - a real mac guy would never call someone a 'stupid fag'. Windows boy!
It would also not require and licensing.
Imagine what a boost it would be for MS is they could say "but Linux/Macs/whatever" can't even display most of the pictures on the web!
Some down sides from the same source:
In an effort to remain compatible with software designed to decode IFD-table based TIFF files, the largest possible Windows Media(TM) Photo file is 2**32 bytes in length. This limit will be addressed in a future update.
The technical details of the Windows Media(TM) Photo compression algorithm are documented in the Windows Media(TM) Photo Device Porting Kit (see Preface.)
Licensing of the porting kit is unknown to me, buy my guess would be that this is an expensive add-on.
Because Windows Media(TM) Photo uses an advanced compression scheme, there is no simple way for applications to directly access specific portions the stored photo data other than through the appropriate codec interfaces.
Smells like lock-in.
That's a trap. Did you notice that the document is in the proprietary doc format? If you open it, your soul belongs to Bill Gates even before you read a single word of the content.
not agreeing to the license terms on Microsofts site for this results in a web page on something called Microsofts XPS Document format which they claim is an open and cross-platform specification. We all know that MS Cross-Platform means it works across all supported versions of Microsoft Windows but this MS Open xxxxx convention is getting alot of air time these days.
It would be an interesting list to see just how often Microsoft claims one if its products are "open" or names a product/feature with the "open" name...
Microsoft Open Packaging
Microsoft Office Open XML Formats
Microsoft Open License Program
Microsoft Open Volume Licenses
Microsoft Open Academic MS Open License 6.0 Academic Edition
Microsoft Open Database Connectivity ( might be ODBC related and might not count )
Microsoft Open License Value
MICROSOFT OPEN SQL SERVER 2005 ENTERPRISE EDITION
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Open Text ( included since they seem to be VERY close to MS )
Microsoft Open Source Software Lab ( explains why MS Marketing Corp is using 'open' so much )
There's probably much more but wow, I really didn't think it had gone THIS far.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Yes and it will be in the RFC-IE section.
WiMP? Who was asleep at the switch in the marketing department?
Vista service pack 1 will not support JPEG out of the box - lawsuits - M$ complain they can't DRM personal photoes - Qualcomm/Verizon to support WMP only - Qualcomm sues camera user - M$ latest OS "Belzebub" qualifies your photoes before you can view them - Etc....
The DWT effectively uses a window that is tuned to each frequency, as opposed to the DCT's constant size window, thus no blocking (that you can see). The DCT is probably more circular than the DWT.
Could you post a screenshot of that? Preferaably in .PNG format....
No. MP3 is MPEG-1 audio layer 3. It was part of the initial MPEG specification. It was about as good as could be done with the processing power available at the time, but used a fairly primitive psycho-acoustic model and had noticeable artefacts. The MPEG-2 specification introduced an additional way of encoding audio, the Advanced Audio CODEC (AAC), which gave significantly better compression. This was refined (new profiles were added) in MPEG-4. All of these provided significant improvement over the original.
bzip2 serves a different purpose to zip and is more of a pointless replacement for gzip
No. Gzip is a stream compressor. Bzip2 is a block compressor. You can add gzip to a stream with minimal latency. Bzip2 requires blocks of 100-900KB to work with. If you sent an IM session through bzip2, then it would add huge delays. Gzip would not. This is why gzip is used for things like HTTP - you can just add it into the output stream and decompress it at the browser's end. Bzip2, however, gives significantly better compression ratios on files, for precisely the same reason. They do not serve the same purpose (although some people do seem to persist in using gzip as if it were a block compressor).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I voted for cowboy neal
duh!
because they want to own the format, and don't want us using something like JPEG which is provided by the government without a license fee.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The reason is that microsoft doesn't want to pay the fees to those that hold the rights to that IP.
What they want is to control the standard.
I don't want any more Microsoft standards. In the long run they hurt innovation and competition.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Actually being adopted by anything in 6 years. I don't know what the hang up it, but nothing seems to implement JPEG2000. I actually work with the guy who wrote the book on it. Literally. If you buy the reference book, his is one of two names on it. However even around here no use of it is made. He does tons of research on compression, so I'm wondering if perhaps there's still no real good JPEG2000 encoding algorithms out there. Like with MP3 or anything else lossy, what you get out of the format is heavily dependant on the encoder.
Either way the problem with JPEG2000 is that it's 6 years old and in that time has moved not at all. There are plenty of people that'd like to see a better lossy image format, but thus far it's a non-starter. While I don't think the MS format will be it, I can't fault them for trying.
Uhh... .WMP is for wimps. This whole WM thing is getting old.
If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, PNG wouldn't have happened.
Wrong. If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, not only would PNG still have happened, but it might actually have been implemented properly in Internet Explorer, although no one would ever have noticed.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
That would be horrible for the next generation of web sites. There is absolutely no reason for most pages to be filled with that kind of cruft, since most of us communicate via text, and not with pictograms or something. A few header graphics and lots of body text is all that most sites need. The last thing we need is any easy way for web designers to spiral [even more] out of control.
According to a Wired article referenced further down this thread, the Forgent patent expires this coming October. It certainly isn't going to interfere with Vista (snerk!)
jpegs formatted for the web are quite small anyway. With the size of hard drives today, is file size REALLY an issue?
1) UNISYS : Microsoft
A) Pitbull : Beelezebub
B) 9mm : Howizter
C) Dog shit : Milwaukee Sewage System
D) All of the above.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Wow. That's one of the most overreaching claims I've ever seen.
I mean, why don't they take it one step further and just say "By existing on the same planet as these materials, you agree to the license agreement filed away in sub-basement C of Microsoft HQ."
How do they imagine that there footer is enforceable?
I'd be fine with a gzipped JPEG instead of the RLE they use in JPEG today. it gains about 20% doing it; unfortunately, stuffit owns the idea and uses its compression which is on par with rar/7z and they compress JPEG to about 30%.
sure wavelets are nice and all, but i'm happy with how jpeg works. Besides, its faster on weaker devices. Mac OS X has Jpeg 2000 support, and having tried it, its slower and doesn't appear to me to be much better that old jpeg--- not worth the hassle.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
These days you can buy MiniDV camcorders, which use the standard DV format, and are supported by just about everything you can shake a stick at, including set top boxes, OR....
You can buy SD card camcorders, which use a variety of MPEG-4 formats, the majority of which are either some proprietary Sony shit which requires you to use the Sony video editing software, or WMV Mpeg-4 formats, which can be shoehorned into Final Cut and applications which take advantage of Windows Media framework. These rarely, if ever, work correctly with set top boxes.
Oh, and there are those MPEG-2 mini-DVD camcorders. The ones that use AVI MPEG-4, with some MS encoding, and drive me absolutely bonkers.
I just KNOW I'm going to end up buying one of these Windows Media Photo digital cameras that ONLY record in this crap-ass format. This is not a format targetted at consumers; this is a format targted at hardware manufacturers, so they ship a Windows Photo editing software on the CD with the camera. And Microsoft will provide whatever financial incentives are _necessary_ to support the format on the hardware.
Keep in mind that licensing the format for use in software will be prohibitively expensive. Adobe, and maybe a few other large companies will be able to afford it. What is MS licensing FAT for these days? $150,000, plus a per user royalty?
This is exactly the kind of shit that makes me hate MS. Thank GOD this will most likely fail as badly as Sony's attempts to introduce proprietary formats; at best, they'll acheive Apple like success with AAC; meaning the majority of sales might go towards it, but the market leader will continue to be MP3 (or JPEG/JPEG2000, in this case.)
I wonder how these things render in IE. I bet that their transparency will function from day 1.
God I hate MS.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
run, don't walk, as quickly as you can away from this idea. no! MS has trouble getting open formats like PNG right (or maybe the excuse is that they're working on their own format and have intentionally screwed up PNG).
WMA 9 pro is actually a pretty good codec, but it isn't supported by any portable devices AFAIK. WMA 9 standard has relatively good hardware support, but can't reach transparency at any bitrate (according to hydrogen audio listening tests). At sub-100 kbit/s bitrates, it does outperform MP3.
For higher bitrates, I would use it over the FhG or Xing MP3 encoders, but not Lame. For lower bitrates, I'd recommend HE-AAC instead.
Jeremy
"Windows" Media Photo. What's "Windows" about it? What does it have to do with "Windows"? Nothing ! Absolutely nothing !
Ok, so I'm going to create a new portable open source language that runs everywhere, and I'm going to call it "The Atari ST Programming Language".
Could Mr Bill Gates just grow up and start picking some cooler names? I mean, come on, get on board, become more fashionable already. Sometimes, even if you come up with the coolest new technology, a good snazzy name alone could cause it to pick up more steam than the technology itself.
"JPEG2006"? Naah.
"Snazzy". Maybe. I'm trademarking this right now - sorry world, it's mine now, I own this now. Hands off everyone, or I will sue you and take your house away.
"Windows Media Photo". Sooo pethetic...
This is stupid -- or, rather, dishonest -- on a number of levels. First, no open-source license requires you to make the rest of your software open-source. Second "the license" pretends there is one open source license -- which is laughable. The GPL is the closest license I know of to what Ballmer describes, and while it is a little sticky, plenty of "commercial companies" have done just fine, using GPL software and still producing software under traditional licenses as well.
But plenty of open-source licenses are far less sticky than the GPL, anyway -- including the LGPL.
Yeah, I mean, since I set up a dual-boot on my formerly windows-only box, Linux has been touching my Windows partitions, and last time I booted to Windows, the "About..." screen for XP noted that Windows was now under the GPL.
If there were Academy Awards for spreading FUD, Ballmer would get a Lifetime Achievement Award.
(Oh, and expect PNG support in IE7 to be downgraded)
Actually, this explains why PNG has been crippled for so very long in IE. They didn't want PNG to gain a foothold before they could introduce their unwanted Microsoft version.
I don't know what Microsoft is thinking. Their own image format? That's the last thing they should be introducing right now. This company is full of lunatics.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I downloaded it from the direct link another poster gave and converted it to .odf. I'm fairly sure their "license agreement" isn't valid, since it didn't even prompt me to agree in any way; they just stuck it on the document.
I'm sorry, but MS Open Hello World 2007 requires MS Windows Vista to run
[installing vista]
I'm sorry, but your MS Open Hello World 2007 trial period has expired. please enter registration code
[entering registration code]
I'm sorry, but your MS Open Hello World 2007 key has expired. Please buy another one
[buying another key]
Hello World
Please note that you may look into the source code of MS Open Hello World 2007, but if you change it or give it to anyone else, we'll sue your pants off!
Also we have the patent on the "Hello World"-System so if you write a "Hello World" Program of your own, we have to sue your pants off, to protect the interests of our stockholders.
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
"This site best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.5"
"Download XmigaloFunkyBrowserPlugin Now!"
"We're sorry but this site requires your browser to support ActiveX"
Woohoo! The good old days are BACK! I, for one, am going to party like it's 1999.
Then you go to the politicians and explain that the information is so marvelous that literally every human being needs it for survival and since you didn't receive a single dollar yet, you assume quintillions of dollars in losses due to "piracy".
$1000 in monopoly money are on the way...
More monopoly
I don't think it would be fair to ask Adobe to open source Photoshop so they can put someone's new file format in.
If you use the BSD license for your format, then Adobe can put it in Photoshop Microsoft can support it in Word, and others can put it in open source formats.
Of course you won't get a dime for it, but if you want wide adaptation, that's what you need to do.
D
Actually, this explains why PNG has been crippled for so very long in IE. They didn't want PNG to gain a foothold before they could introduce their unwanted Microsoft version.
Interesting - I hadn't thought of that, but you're probably right.
I don't know what Microsoft is thinking. Their own image format? That's the last thing they should be introducing right now. This company is full of lunatics.
Hmmmmn, I dunno, wma (to a minor extent) and wmv (quite a lot) have been pretty successful for their intended purpose methinks - driving consumers & software/hardware companies away from other operatins systems or server / hardware solutions.
Let's pray that none of the major camera manufacturors are suckered into partnering with MS on this picture format...
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I read the internet for the articles.
RAR isn't pointless. It probably is now, but way back in the DOS days, around 1992, RAR was an important replacement for ZIP. Not only did it get much better compression for large groups of files (because it compressed across files, instead of treating each separately like PKZIP), it worked far better with multiple volumes, which were extremely important at the time because we were stupidly limited to 1.44MB floppy disks for most storage. PKZIP had multiple volume support, but it really sucked.
These days, with floppies completely obsolete (except for stupid Windows which persists in using them for device drivers), 100-500GB hard drives, and 4+MB/s broadband speeds, RAR really isn't that useful anymore.
This stuff never goes well. JPEG is way too big of a standard, and to top it off, it doesn't really get too serious about the file format. There are options that are rarely used.
JPEG2000, same mess. I honestly don't ever expect it to become widely excepted, not because of patents but because of the standard itself and the lack of implementations. Mozilla won't incorporate it until there is a free by their standard implementation that supports progressive display. At this point, that may never happen. Even if it does, I'm not running in to many jp2 files on the web.
Djvu? Same difference. License problems.
There is definitely room for improvement. At the other end, what does it mean to support it? Browser support? GIMP support? All of that? GNOME and KDE support?
Even disregarding the old quote that says a "picture is worth a thousand words", the web is a visual medium. We don't just read it, we see it. In fact, research has shown that most of us simply scan pages first, looking for items of interest, and only reading deeper once something has attracted our attention.
As such, you do realize that color and graphics, style and presentation, choice of images, all contribute to the tone and meaning and emotion of what you're trying to say? Choosen wisely, they can dramatically increase your probability of successfully communicating your message. Design can give back the shades of nuance and subtlety lost in the translation to another medium.
Choose them poorly, and they, like bad spelling and grammar, can sabotage your efforts. In fact, flame wars on Slashdot illustrate precisely why words alone fail to communicate, as they lack the visual and audio cues we reply upon to discern meaning and intent.
In fact, such choices gage not only the professionalism of a given site, but also tend to reflect the professionalism of its owners. What can one gather from a site that's scattered and disorganized and amateurish and filled with errors? Do such traits carry over into their other work, as well?
Like it or not, fair or not, presentation is important, and you will be judged on your ability to execute it successfully.
"No reason?" Sorry, but it's obvious that you're the one who doesn't understand how the rest of the world communicates.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Yes.
The rar and 7z formats also steal marketshare from ace.
It is to be hoped that they would all dilute each other enough to fall out of use, but they still tend to be compression-of-choice for l33t-wannabes. FWIW, Tugzip is a decent though sometimes crashy utility that handles a large number of compression/container formats.
I'd like to see better LOSSLESS compression than lossy comrpession.
But, Dr Evil, we already have PNG...
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
This gives me an interesting idea. What about setting up firefox to provide it's own terms of use as part of the HTTP request header. Something to the effect of "By providing content in response to this HTTP request, you agree to not impose any bullshit terms of use on me."
But /. still uses gifs.
VA Linux/OSDN runs MS ads. A LOT of MS ads. If MS suggested they start using some other format for their images, VA would drop trou and grab ankle. (they have in the past, they will in the future).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Holy smokes that was awesome.
Wow... that's a lot of text in response to your question.
The answer is, spatial frequencies.
Start with a one dimensional signal. Imagine that signal is a wave. That wave has a frequency right? It might represent a recording of an actual physical wave, like sound or light, or it might not. Any signal can be represented as a sum of sine waves of different frequencies and phases.
Now extend that to two dimensions. Instead of 1D signals you have images. Again, any image can be represented as a sum of sine waves, but 2D ones now. The frequencies of those waves are what they're talking about.
As a simple example, imagine an image that is just a set of vertical white stripes, where every stripe is one pixel wide and separated by one pixel of black space. in the horizontal direction that corresponds to a frequency of 0.5 cycles / pixel (it takes two full pixels to go from white through black and back to white). Now, make the bars two pixels wide and separate them by two black pixels. That's a frequency of 0.25 cycles/pixel (four pixels to go from white back to white).
All in all these new formats really are beneficial; what we should be asking is how this one is beneficial to Microsoft? They wouldn't (and neither would any business) waste their money on it for the good of mankind, and if it's truly open then they can't gain any control. They wouldn't do it for PR because they don't really need it and most users don't understand the details of graphical compression enough to appreciate it anyway. They can't do it in order to drop JPEG, it's just used in too many places. I'd be intrigued to know why they are doing this.
Let's take a look at WMA. Microsoft saw that there was a popular standard for lossily compressing audio... MP3. Microsoft sees Fraunhofer making a small fortune in patent royalties. More importantly, though, Microsoft saw that people could encode an MP3 and reasonably expect that it work on any platform--including non-Microsoft platforms.
Microsoft gets jealous. They don't want people being able to play their music collection without paying the Microsoft tax. So Microsoft says, "Let's develop a better lossy audio compression format... and make it only work on Windows." They develop the aptly-named Windows Media Audio format.
WMA only plays in Windows Media Player. Furthermore, Microsoft makes WMA the default format for ripping CD's. So when Joe User pops a CD into his PC, Windows Media Player rips it to the WMA format (and maybe even applies DRM to the ripped file). Now Joe user has music that will only play on another Windows PC (or, in the case of the DRM'd file, only on that particular PC). The music only plays on Joe User's MP3 player if his player supports WMA (and Janus).
Joe user is now locked into using Microsoft's platforms (or non-FOSS platforms that licensed the Microsoft technology). Joe user doesn't want to move to Linux, since he would lose his music collection. (Yes, I know mplayer, VLC, xine, etc can play WMA--if they use pirated Microsoft DLLs.) Joe is now locked into using Microsoft products, and paying the Microsoft tax like a good zombie. Effectively, Microsoft is now in control.
Obviously, the amount of vender lock in will depend on how Microsoft licenses this technology. Judging from past Microsoft formats (WMA, WMV, MS Office, etc.) , and from the ominous click-through licensing, I'm willing to bet that Microsoft uses this as yet another vender lock-in to trap Joe User.
How bad do you think MS's programmers are? I think some of the top programmers in the world work at Microsoft. But how much can top programmers do with bad designs, existing legacy software/architecture, and intense working conditions?
In Wavelets, you would scale the image down to 2x2, and this would be one layer of the image. Then you'd scale it down to 4x4, and scale up the 2x2 image with bilinear filtering and subtract it from the 4x4 image. The 4x4 difference image now represents a different set of frequencies than the 2x2 image did. You store the difference because what you're interested in is the frequency of the 4x4 layer. You want to add that frequency on top of the 2x2 layer when you reconstruct the image, and if you have that "frequency" seperated out, you can compress the data better.
No you don't. Maybe you're thinking of the Laplacian pyramid.
This might be the most insightful comment I've ever read on Slashdot. Thank you.
Presentation is important, but there's such a thing as overkill. If you feel the need to display so many graphics that today's image formats don't cut it, then a web page may not be your medium. Even porn, which you might call graphically intensive, seems to do all right. If glitz is your thing then Flash might be a good option, but there's a reason that so many people hate flash pages. Flash does flashy well, but flashy isn't always (or even usually) best.
"...color and graphics, style and presentation, choice of images, all contribute to the tone and meaning and emotion...." Yes, but quantity != quality. A few well chosen graphics will probably go a lot farther than an extravaganza of flashing lights and 24 frame per second animations. One could argue that the blink tag and marquees provide a similar kind of flexibility of expression, but good old italics seem to be a bit more popular than either of those.
Better image compression is always good, but if your prime reason for wanting it is to add more! more! more! then your priorities may need to be reevaluated.
Nice, we Linuxers will use Lynx instead of firefox soon because we refuse to pay for viewing that crap.
But think how much smaller we could make the textgifs!
Some huge claims are made of Windows Media Photo: the article implies that the format outperforms even the new JPEG2000 wavelet-based image format. But what is the compelling evidence of such performance? To my disappointment, the specifications do not even include an example visual comparison between Windows Media Photo/JPEG2000/JPEG. Furthermore, the only hint to how it actually works is this in the "Compression Algorithm Overview":
"Windows Media(TM) Photo uses a very high performance reversible color space conversion, a reversible lapped biorthogonal transform and an advanced non-arithmentic entropy coding scheme."
So what is the biorthogonal transform? Any invertible linear transform can be called "biorthogonal." And I have never heard of "arithmentic" encoding, though I have heard of "arithmetic" encoding. This is just jargon. I am not persuaded that Windows Media Photo is of interest.
One of the problems with JPEG is that DCT-based compression only operates in the spatial frequency domain. So the DCT compressed image may look fairly good at a particular size but if you try to zoom/scale/resize it, the artifacting will quickly become apparent.
DWT allows good localization both in time and spatial frequency domains. So doing transforms / scaling on such an image result in consistent quality.
Licensing of the porting kit is unknown to me, buy my guess would be that this is an expensive add-on.
Why guess when you can research? From the Microsoft site:
Windows Media Photo Licenses
There are no fees or costs to license Windows Media Photo for implementation as a component of the XML Paper Specification (XPS). For more information about XPS implementation and specifications, see Printing - Architecture and Driver Support. At present, Microsoft is only offering a license for Windows Media Photo as a component of XPS. Information on licensing Windows Media Photo for other applications will be provided in the future.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
this look to me more like a protection against lame lawyers than anything else the 1 stuff protects microsoft from the old "copy and modify a bit" evil tricks(mostly for sony) and the "pass to someone to do the above" too ,but also protects you when using the stuff to implement the format on your code
the 2 stuff protect microsoft from any idiot implementing the stuff wrong just to wreck his own computer and suing microsoft later
the 3 stuff is a extension of the 1,basically impeding the merging enterprises to do the same shit when merging
the 4 stuff allows microsoft to freely implement your suggestions and make you obligated to give then to everyone else using the document
the 5 stuff allows microsoft to tell anyone who did the suggestion about the modifications(this way allowing then to tell when CIA secretly implements a spybot on the specifications :3)
and finally the 6 stuff makes you need to go to washington to sue then if you found a way to go around the other 5 stuffs so they can shoot you when you arrive XD
basically,there no evil "you will belong to us" stuff
its just "okay,use as you will,even on your linux stuff,but do not try court shit on us"
> If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, PNG wouldn't have happened.
Moving from GIF to PNG, there are some *very solid* answers to the "why" question. Among other things, PNG supports much nicer colour depth and an alpha channel. The former means you can have photo-quality images. The latter means that you can have images that look good against different background colors. These are useful things.
> If we'd all said that ZIP was good enough, RAR and 7z wouldn't have happened.
I don't consider RAR or 7z to be enough of an improvement over ZIP to warrant switching, when ZIP is so widely supported. Nonetheless, the answer to the "why" question would still be pretty obvious: better compression. I just don't think it's *enough* better to be worth the hassle of dealing with poorly supported not-widely-deployed formats.
> If we'd all said that WAV was good enough, MP3 wouldn't have happened.
> If we'd all said that MP3 was good enough, AAC wouldn't have happened.
Now you're just babblying. WAV is more than just "good enough": it's better -- MUCH better. WAV sounds so much better than MP3 that there is no comparison. I can barely *make* myself listen to MP3, just to get a vague idea what a song sounds like, approximately. OTOH, I quite enjoy listening to a properly ripped WAV; it sounds just as good as (I would say the same as) listening to the CD. The only *conceivable* reason to use MP3 is for internet distribution, if the bandwidth requirements of WAV are absolutely prohibitive, e.g., if you need to be able to distribute to dialup users. For personal use (e.g., if you own the CD and rip it for more convenient listening), choosing WAV over MP3 is a no-brainer. Frankly, even for internet distribution, a broadband user might well choose WAV over MP3. Yeah, it uses more bandwidth, but it's *worth* it, because you can actually hear the music the way it was intended to sound.
AAC I don't know much about, so I won't comment on that, except to say that if I was going to replace MP3 with something it would probably be WAV, or _maybe_ FLAC.
All of this is neither here nor there. You claim that this new format is "better" than existing image formats, but you don't explain why. The question "why" is a very valid one. The GIF format is worth keeping because it works well for images with a very small number of colors (mainly logos and pictographs), and the filesize is quite small. For a general-purpose image format, I don't know of anything better than PNG, and that's what I'd say this new format needs to be "better than" in order to be worth implementing. Saying a new image format is better than JPEG is a bit like saying a new car is better than an old Ford Pinto. JPEG ompression is lossy and the result looks terrible, so whenever I'm forced to use JPEG for any reason I invariably end up setting the compression to 0%, resulting in *much* larger filesizes than the equivalent PNG. "Better than JPEG" is *not* a selling point, as far as I'm concerned. I want to know how this new format is better than PNG, or else I'm not interested.
I'm with the other poster: I want to know why this is worth my time. Feel free to enlighten me on exactly why this new format is better than PNG, and *enough* better to warrant implementing, when PNG is already so widely supported and deployed. I don't know of any reasons why that would be the case.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
it's saying you have have an 8 bit depth for a true color PNG with alpha?
That's 8 bits for each of red, green, blue, and alpha in the common "32-bit" RGBA mode. The PNG specification also provides for a mode with 16 bits per channel, for 48 bits per pixel without alpha or 64 bits per pixel with alpha. This page has some 64-bit test images.
Why would top programmers want to stay in a job like that? It seems like top programmers can get a job anywhere and get more money.
evil is as evil does
You just pasted a block of text that says there's no information on the porting kit, which we knew.
GPL and BSD are software licenses. They would both be inappropriate for file formats.
File formats merely need to be fully and completely documented, and free from patent restrictions, and free for *anyone* to fully implement in software regardless of how they choose to license it.
In fact, I'd support requiring there to be a public domain 'reference' implementation (in a non-proprietary language) of any format that was going to get 'official standard' status, which could then be used as the basis for implementing it in any other software.
IE6 supports transparency in 8 bit PNGs but not in 24 bit PNGs.
Do you mean T1, T2, G5, and G6 of this page? Bon Echo displays them correctly, but Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000 displays all not completely opaque pixels of T1 and T2 as completely transparent and all pixels of G5 and G6 as opaque. The only 8-bit images on that page that IE displays conforming to the PNG spec are M1 and M2, which use GIF style transparency.
Ugh. Yes, the textgifs popped right into my head.
In addition, I believe Microsoft owns Corbis, which has been quietly buying up most great photos. They are primed to be the leading supplier of photos to print and web industry. Granted, there are other players, but as Microsoft rises into professional desktop publishing, with professional software (they'll probably buy Quark or something), they are going to want their standards with DRM in place so they can charge for fonts, photos, media, everything. It's all part of the pay per use model. Imagine, rather than buying Quark for $2K, stock art for hundreds of dollars, a computer system, etc. you can just rent it for a set price, based on the number of copies you want to distribute. Or pay based on web impressions. That way you only have to invest based on the success you actually get and you're not limited by investment capital (bootstrapping). It's pretty brilliant, and I have always said that Microsoft is not just the largest software company; they are the largest publishing company in the world.
By controlling media from top to bottom, from the creation (input) to the viewer (output), nipping pennies off each time, they stand to make a shitload of money while at the same time making it easier and cheaper for providers to create, and lower the risk and initial investment dollars in return for taking some of the inevitable rewards.
Interesting concept, I hope it goes somewhere. Too bad the emphasis will not initially be on quality--I'm sure like everything microsoft does it will be a basic model that evolves with patches over time.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
"banddand"? WTF?
a "license" inside the content is irrelevant.
Unless the document (or a subsequent revision) specifies terms under which Microsoft offers to license essential patents. In that case, it's the first stage of a contract.
I can confirm that PNG and MNG both work properly in IE7 Beta.
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*snort*
What a little bitch. How about you stop policing other people's comments and waste a mod point or two instead?
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Not too many people here actually have something intelligent to say, and you went and said it.
No, no arguing. You're getting friended.
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Zip is good enough.
I wouldn't go so far as to say bzip is stupid, but I never use it. I was more agreeing that there was not often a really compelling reason to go with bz2 because zip/gzip work well enough for almost everything I do.
Also, what compression setting was used with gzip for that compressed tar?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You just pasted a block of text that says there's no information on the porting kit, which we knew.
No, that block of text said that it didn't cost you anything.
On the same page that said that, there was this:
Steps to Obtain the Windows Media Photo XPS Component License
To obtain the Windows Media Photo XPS Component License, follow these steps:
To request the license application, send an e-mail message to wmla@microsoft.com with the following subject line: XPS WMPhoto License.
Complete and return the application electronically.
WMLA will draft the requested license agreement and send you an e-mail message that contains the draft agreement in PDF format for your review.
Review and approve the draft license that you received from WMLA.
Submit the draft license for approval using the instructions sent to you in the e-mail message with the draft agreement.
WMLA will send you an e-mail message that contains the approved license for your signature.
Print 2 copies of the license, and then complete, sign, and return the original to DMD Licensing via mail courier.
WMLA will review and countersign the agreement, and send you an e-mail message that confirms the executed agreement and provides instructions for downloading deliverables. WMLA will also mail you one original license agreement for your records.
After you receive confirmation of the executed agreement, follow the instructions provided by WMLA to download the deliverables, including the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit.
Note WMLA will send a separate e-mail message with the passwords you will need to access the deliverables.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
For day to day use I simply do not care, even over a 20% (or larger) difference in compression. So again I note that for most uses Zip is good enough. If you are distributing something to a lot of people then the bandwidth savings from a better compression will of course be more useful, but I don't make tar files that go out over the internet - even interally to a company I would simply use gzip because it's a little simpler (default for tar -zcvf).
Again I don't know why you're so rabid about this point because I'm only half disagreeing with you, I was more agreeing with the bits about RAR and such, bz2 has it's place. Calm down.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
wow thanks for that explanation, as much stuff as I've read I was never able to understand the core idea of wavelets etc as it related to image compression
I could go for that, just tell me how :P
Windows Media(TM) Photo is the only format that offers high dynamic range image encoding, lossless or lossy compression, multiple color formats, and performance that enables practical in-device implementation.
Except for, well, TIFF (and probably others). It has the annoying bug of being open though.
Sure it is. It's great for posting huge archives in reasonable sized chunks on Usenet. Which is pretty much the only thing it's used for anymore.
I quite enjoy listening to a properly ripped WAV; it sounds just as good as (I would say the same as) listening to the CD.
Um, that's because it is the same as listening to the CD. Exactly the same, actually. Music is stored on CDs in WAV format with the header stripped off so ripping them means copying the headless WAV off the CD and slapping the boilerplate header back onto it.
I havent read the details yet but I dont think this is intended to be a competitor to PNG at all.
For photos (and in fact anything that is captured via a camera, scanner or other device like that), PNG is NOT the right format to use. JPEG is.
It appears as though this is an attempt by Microsoft to replace the use of JPEG in photographic applications (those where people arent using camera RAW data files anyway) with a new "Windows Media Photo" format.
I fail to see what makes this format any better that JPEG.
Now you have to write an essay about Microsoft.
Wow. And I could make "Hello World" show up faster on my screen if I wrote it in assembly. The question remains, at what point to get to the point of diminishing returns? With bandwidth increasing (along with processing power), why change the entire infrastructure of the net?
.JPG from Internet Explorer in 2010 and try to 0wn the net.
Oh, I bet I know why. So they can remove support for
No thanks. I'll stick with tried and true, standards based formats.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
If the kind souls have modded my speculation about the patent up to 5, surely they should mod up the response that the patent litigation is over!
tar -jcvf will bzip2 as easily. But I too never use it.
Rethinking email
Easy to remember: "Your sister is loose" "You lose this round".
Bill Gates owns Corbis, not Microsoft. this is moot point and Microsoft could decide to buy them but its still a completely different company with a board of its own.
I have no option but to agree with you.
Rethinking email
It seems I say this time and time again, but the idea that GIF is better supported by IE than PNG is completely and utterly incorrect. Every feature of GIF that IE supports, IE also supports with PNG. There is no reason whatsoever to prefer GIF over PNG, and in fact there are lots of reasons not to (PNG is nearly always smaller, for example, and is W3C standard, if you care).
"But wait," I hear you say! "The slashbots are always saying that IE support of PNG is bad! Why are you disagreeing?" And the answer, my friend, is that I'm not disagreeing. GIF is very primitive format compared to PNG. There are many advanced features of PNG that GIF does not support that IE does not always support.
For example, GIF is limited to 8-bit color and optional 1-bit transparency. This means that a GIF image can only display 256 colors, with one color optionally labled as "transparent". GIF cannot do true color, it cannot do alpha transparency. If you are willing to use GIF instead of PNG, you are by definition not using these features of PNG, because GIF does not support them in the first place.
Guess what? 8-bit PNGs with 1-bit transparency work just fine in IE, and are smaller than GIF! Exactly the same features, which work just as well! I'll take a moment to note that some versions of the GIMP that I've used will not produce 8-bit PNGs with 1-bit transparency and require some command-line post processing to produce them, but that's a problem with the GIMP, not a limitation of the PNG specification or a flaw in IE's rendering of 8-bit PNGs with 1-bit transparency.
PNG can also do 16-bit, 24-bit and I believe 32-bit color, and guess what? IE supports it! So you can produce richer, more colorful graphics with PNGs than you can with GIFs.
Then, there's alpha transparency, the holy grail of PNG. With alpha transparency, you can produce anti-aliased text that will display properly on any background, along with a host of other effects that anyone who has tried web-design for more than about two hours will tell you is sorely needed. This feature -- which GIF doesn't support either -- is not supported properly by IE (although there is a hack that can make it work, apparently).
So let's recap: everything you can do with GIF (with the exception of animation) can be done with PNG with better compression to boot, and without creating any problems with IE. There are some things that PNG can do that GIF can't do anyway (like alpha transparency) that IE chokes on. If you're using GIF in your websites because IE doesn't handle PNG's alpha transparency features properly, then you're stupid, because GIF doesn't either.
Capiche?
This is just a semantic spat :-).
I should have said "for the reference implementation", as I actually meant, and then I'd be in complete agreement with what you said.
D
Because Windows Media(TM) Photo uses an advanced compression scheme, there is no simple way for applications to directly access specific portions the stored photo data other than through the appropriate codec interfaces.
Smells like lock-in.
No, they're referring to the fact that you can't just grab the bits like you can with a BMP or TIFF. TIFF was designed around 1984 when it would be rare that any particular image could fit in a computer's memory, so they designed it to be easy to process the files in chunks (like tiles or strips).
Nowadays computers are fast and RAM is large, but photos are far more prevelant and need better compression. In order to read a part of an uncompressed TIFF, you just read the header to figure out where to seek within the file. In order to read part of a WMP file, you have to read in the whole thing. JPEG and interleaved GIF are the same way.
dom
Actually that is pretty good to know, though "z" is so conveniently located...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually it does create a circular pattern of distortion (in each frequency). Wavelets of course have the quality of being of finite energy and of a location. It's not terribly visibly circular, but given the right image and compression, it'll be pretty plainly visible. I'm not saying it's intrinsically circular, it will just appear this way on a 2nd image. If you had a 3d image, it'd appear spherical, although I can't begin to guess how to show that. I'm also a little drunk right now but that makes math more meaningful, if not clear.
I'm not sure how you're using the word circular.
Generally when you're talking about signal processing and you mention a circular transform it means that the transform assumes your last sample and first sample are adjacent... like the old video games where if you flew off the right side of the screen you'd appear back on the left side.
Fourier (and DC) transforms are circular (they're basically circular convolutions). That can obviously lead to artefacts on the edges of the patch you're transforming because the transform is treating that edge as if it were connected to the other edge of the patch when ACTUALLY it's connected to the edge of the next patch over. Because a wavelet uses the equivalent of a window that changes sizes, each frequency has the edge in a different place so there isn't such a break.
Hah, thanks, but I can't get too excited about that. If I did, it would be acknowledging that there was something novel about my comment. But there isn't. Admitedly, when I first saw Fourier series, I thought it was the most interesting math I had yet encountered. Now, that was in no small part due to this guy and his excellent teaching and explanation of Fourier Series. This is really no different than when it was proved by Fourier that any function (for some reasonable definition of any) could be represented as a sum of trig polynomials. It was a *cool* idea. Once you learn that, the DFT is cool, but not as earth shaking. To me, second only to Fourier series in terms of the "wow" factor when learning were wavelets and the associated Discrete Wavelet Transform and Filterbanks. But, one fact remains. Once you learn the DFT or the DCT or the mDCT or the DCT-II or furthermore the DWT, the first most *obvious* question is "Hey, what happens when we start removing frequency components?" And that's what all the lossy algorithms amount to; take a transform, set entries to zero, do some entropy encoding. How this is patentable is beyond me. In fact, this compression scheme is built in to learning Fourier series. Even though the sum in a Fourier series is to infinity, you obviously can't calculate or graph that with infinite precision. But you quickly realize that you only need a few terms. Aside from Gibbs' effect, a few Fourier terms represent a function really well.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
While you can say that the difference between pixels is great, I find it innacurate to say that the frequency of the noise is high, because it's frequencies are uniformly spread from DC to the Nyquist frequency.
The frequencies in a blurry image are low.
I find it inacurrate as well, the high frequencies are diminished, that's all. To put it another way, it's like a graphical equalizer where there sliders would go down as you would go up in frequencies. Unless you blur your image by convolving with a windowed-sinc function, your high frequencies are still there.
scale up the 2x2 image with bilinear filtering
ummm... correct me if i'm wrong, but i think it's a bad idea to use bilinear filtering, because of the high frequencies it would bring up. windowed-sinc interpolation seems better to me since it wouldn't bring such problems.
Anyways I find your wavelet transform method weird and inefficient. You're better off using filter banks, much simpler and straightforward.
I think TIFF does this
TIFF has many compressions, along with PCM. You should say which compression you're talking about, for the sake of clarity :-)
Anyway the idea here is to take all the first bits of each pixel and stick them one after another, and then stick the second bits of all the pixels one after the other... You'll end up with 8 images this way, and you'll find that the image with the highest bits is easily recognizeable and has clear sharp edges, but when you get to the image with the lowest bits, all you have is noise.
If you discard let's say the 8th image, it all comes down to coding your image on 7 bits. You can interpolate, but you still only have 7 bits, therefore 128 levels instead of 256.
You just got troll'd!
PNG and jpeg aren't really best for the same images, so unless this new spec of MS's is supposed to be for both photgraphic and art type images how did png get drawn into this at all?
(not specifically directed at parent poster, but alot of people keep mentioning PNG as if it was potential succesor to jpeg, when they're designed for entirely different type of images)
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I care because I'm a software developer and I distribute software over the Internet and I have to keep the downloads as small as possible for the convenience of my users.
Exactly, top programmers can find better jobs.
Plus, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Tar and gzip does the same job of compressing all the files in one chunk instead of individually.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So then your users think "what a crummy looking website this is!" rather than "what a crummy web browser I'm using!"?
Last I checked, broadband was getting MORE popular, NOT less. Please, do correct me if I'm wrong (and I refer you to the earlier article about an attempt to get a nationwide free internet service which would be fast enough to be called "broadband" in this particular context.)
PNG is larger than JPEG, but, then again, on my low-end DSL (not DSL-lite, I don't even consider that real DSL) I really find that PNGs load quickly enough that I don't really notice any difference online.
BTW: 'We can do it in half the size of a JPEG file.'
Does this sound familiar? Oh yeah, I believe they said something roughly along the lines of a WMA of half the same bitrate is equal quality to MP3!!1!11oneone!
Why do they prey on ignorance like this? It only serves to tick people off. If they keep this crap up much longer eventually the ignorant might finally learn to read and realize that they can do better without having to bend over.
Why not support the PNG file format (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ - Portable Network Graphics? Note that PNG is never mentioned anywhere in the Windows Media Photo specification document. PNG is patent free, widely supported, uses lossless compression and supports most all of the features of the proposed WMPhoto format. I see no benefit of the WMPhoto format over PNG. The only benefit I see is for Microsoft to control the specification and sell software that supports it. It is yet another way that Microsoft is trying to monopolize the desktop and make everything be about Windows. They even put Windows in the format specification name. If they wanted it to be open, they would not have included that in the name. This pisses me off.
Have not had a device driver shipped on floppy in many years now. I don't need it for device drivers. I need it even less for BIOS updates, but sometimes it's used there too. Floppies ARE usesless to me now.
Gorkman
Maybe they need new code for those neat buffer overflows thay had to fix for JPEG in GDI+
Well I am a software developer who distributes things to internal users where we don't care about small savings in bandwith, but I do care about my time and processor load on boxes - tar -zcvf takes a much shorted amount of time and processor to use than tar -jcvf.
You see, here in the real world there is a balance to all things. Sometimes space saved is more valuable. Sometimes time and processor are more valuable. If I am tarring a file to transfer between two boxes that are connected via gigbit ethernet, that 20% savings on a 200MB tar file is not really going to matter.
So if I were you I'd get off the high horse about your pious use of bz2 for all occasions. I'll let you have the last word as you obviosuly want it quite badly; though I'll pass on reading it thanks since you ceased offering anything insightful a few posts ago.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tar and gzip weren't really available for DOS back in the 1991-1992 timeframe. At the time, RAR's competition was PKZIP, ARC, LHA, ZOO, ARJ, etc.
And MNG?! Why haven't I heard about this? That is pretty big news. The lack of MNG support is about the only good reason left for using GIF. Maybe Firefox will add MNG support back in now. It's about time MNG had its day.
Look, I realize all that. I'm just saying it's rare and appreciated to see a comment posted by someone with somewhat more than Calc I under their belt (though, to be honest, I moved kinda directly into crypto, and only touched on fourier transforms in college).
Meanwhile, as a tit-for-tat, my first introduction to an actual fourier transform algorithm was when I was investigating how spectrum analysis is done (I do some sound tech work and some programming, and I was learning to combine the two). The conclusion that any signal can be built from sine waves of disparate frequencies seemed obvious from the perspective of someone who has been looking at spectrum analyses all day, but the transformation from ineffable signal to recognizable spectrum seemed a magical process.
I'm still not sure how it's done. I went through and assembly-optimized a base-2 DFT from 'Numerical Recipes in C', but I still don't exactly understand how the math works (though I will read through the link). Still, the output is invaluable for everything from computer-assisted music transcription to guitar tuning to my little stock-market paper experiments.
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Even though I was taught the DFT, I would not have understand the explanation without first the introduction to Fourier series. The basic idea is that if you have an inner product space, or what we can simply call a bunch of functions that we can compute inner products with... take some f(x) and take its inner product with every sin(nx) and cos(nx). Normalize these values and use them as coefficients for each sin(nx) and cos(nx). The neat thing is that if my f(x) = sin(x) and I take its inner product with every sin and cos, the only one that has a non zero is sin(1x), the function itself. So the Fourier series of sin(x) is sin(x). Basicaly, you're projecting f(x) onto a bunch of trig polynomials. It works because the set of sin(nx) and cos(nx) are orthogonal with the exception of each one not be orthogonal to itself. You can do the same with any orthonormal basis.
Next, look up the Number Theoretic Transform. It's a Fourier transform but instead of using the field of complex numbers, you're using integers, so its significance to someone who's studied crypto would probably be high.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
# If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, PNG wouldn't have happened.
PNG happened for legal reasons, not technical reasons.
# If we'd all said that ZIP was good enough, RAR and 7z wouldn't have happened.
Isn't RAR older than ZIP? 7z: never heard of it, zip ig good enough for me.
# If we'd all said that WAV was good enough, MP3 wouldn't have happened.
MP3 was part of the MPEG2 spec, and not really related to WAV.
# If we'd all said that MP3 was good enough, AAC wouldn't have happened.
What's AAC? And why isn't MP3 good enough?