Slashdot Mirror
Vendetta: A Christmas Story
Mundane Barbie writes "This is the funniest and the coolest online independent movies that I've seen since the original South Park. It's definitely a geek classic, just in time for the holidays. It's got Santa, and it's got guns.
I've seen it posted at Newgrounds and also at their official site.
Happy holidays!
" Woh. This is /not/ for the easily offended - but if you thought the South Park movie was amusing, than you'll probably appreciate this.
Hemos does not use linux.
..
"We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom."
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
It was mad. I liked it. I couldn't stop laughing at the backgrounds (I lived in Boston for a while in 93-95). Memories!
Keep it running...
(Apologies for posting this way - no email to post direct to Localman).
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Movie previews are done in quicktime/sorensen because it is flat-out the absolute best, highest quality-high-compression video format available. If sorensen made their codec available for other formats (like avi) people wouldn't stick to quicktime as much. I believe apple and sorensen have a very exclusive deal at the moment, though.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
This is a direct quote (entire post) from our friend, let's listen in...
/. link? \
Hey everybody visit this page and lets see if we can crash this site. Hit it. My friend doesn't believe in the "slashdot affect". haha
Ok, so this is your
Man, first you were hard up to either A) prove your friend wrong and you right that the slashdot effect exists or B) drum up hits for a crappy little company.
Now, since your little scheme didn't work, you are dedicating you time on slashdot to belittle everyone and claim this site sucks since it didn't generate hits to a dumb site posted in a comment???!!!
Sounds like everything is working the way it should. Except you.
Finkployd
Is somebody trying to prime the pump for Yet Another Internet Indy Phenom?
P.S.: How much did you pay for the slashdot service? How much did you pay to download the movie? How much have you payed to Apple to develop software lately?
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"Insert witty quote here."
Movies like this make you realize the only reason Sorenson vision became standard is because the first Sorenson movie was a copy of a first rate Star Wars master. If Vendetta was used instead, Sorenson vision would never have gotten off the ground. By the way, if anyone's got a server:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 280613895 Dec 19 01:48 vendetta_flattened.mov
Since the main site is probably about to explode, I thought I'd point out some mirrors of at least the pages, if not the movies.
Main site
news.html
videos.html
about.html
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
MRJ ain't a Microsoft product. Sorry, try again.
They bundle IE because MS threatned to kill MacOffice if they didn't, a move that would've killed Apple. So Jobs is more pragmatism than principle, if he wasn't Apple would be gone by now.
I for one don't care, I use iCab and Communicator, and will probably move to Mozilla soon.
This is why proprietary codecs are bad - Apple has tried to corner the market on video and as a result the authors (probably blissfully unaware of this) cannot have the widest possible viewing audience. So, in a nutshell: due to market demand the codec will eventually be reverse-engineered and made available for linux, but in the meantime a good number of people are being denied access to media encoded on it simply because Apple wants to try to get a strangle-hold on the video market. Apple will fail because as the market grows, so too will the demand for an alternative to Apple's monopoly. Basic econ, my good man. But in the meantime, we are still stuck with not being able to view it... and I don't know about you.. but I'm an impatient guy!
Hey all.
I'm (one of) the idiot(s) responsible for Vendetta.
I'm currently visiting family, and my server is on the other side of the country. It is dead. There is another copy of the entire film at my machine at work - we'll see how long that one survives.
I am truly sorry about the sorenson thing - I had no idea anyone would watch it at all, let alone the entire slashdot community.
If anyone can convert it to another format, they are welcome to do so.
Peace, Happy holidays, and thanks.
If anything deserves to be moderated up in this godforsaken thread, it's this post--I've been looking for a functional mirror on and off all day. Not that I expect this movie'll be all that good, but I keep getting timed out from the mirror at Newgrounds and at this point I just want to see what I've been wasting all this time on. But, since I don't have any moderator points, I guess the least I can do is give it my +1 bonus.
--begin repost--
Alternate vendetta link - same codec (Score:1)
by localman on 01:03 AM December 19th, 1999 CST (#231)
(User Info) http://www.binadopta.com/
Hey all.
I'm (one of) the idiot(s) responsible for Vendetta.
I'm currently visiting family, and my server is on the other side of the country. It is dead. There is another copy of the entire film at my machine at work - we'll see how long that one survives.
I am truly sorry about the sorenson thing - I had no idea anyone would watch it at all, let alone the entire slashdot community.
If anyone can convert it to another format, they are welcome to do so.
Peace, Happy holidays, and thanks.
--end repost--
http://lecb68.linkexchange.com:8002/vendetta.mov
All credit goes to localman, I'm just not sure anyone will see his post down there, but please moderate it up.
I find it sad how disingenuous and clue-free Apple continues to be. They lobby heavily to get QuickTime accepted as an Internet standard, then refuse to allow non-Mac/Win folks access. This is consistent with their recent history. Bundled browser: Microsoft. Bundled Java: Microsoft.
One would almost think Microsoft had given them a large quantity of money... Naww! ;-)
First, a stop sign at an intersection that also has lights? Please. The poor aim when running after him (not 3 whole metres, and they still can't hit him with a damned pistol). Not to mention the general weirdness.
:-)
Plot? What plot? It just seemed to be a bunch of running/shooting.
At least the whole Santa from trunk to garbage bin foul up + tossing stuff into cups was a nice tip of the hat to Short Circuit
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
However I'm thinking that maybe RedHat and VA Linux should team up to acquire Apple, taking one of the last great flag bearers of closed "standards" on the net out of the picture. I'm sure that between them the companies could scrounge up enough cash to purchase Apple. And it wouldn't be a bad move really -- We would all be using the Apple platform today had Apple decided to open up their standards and allow cloning. Even after the brutal beating they've taken over the past decade, they still don't get it. Take 'em over, kick the current management out on its ear, open up all the standards, welcome the cloners back with open arms, and sell support, and you'd be looking at a huge profit potential there. How much could Apple be worth these days? I wouldn't think it'd be a whole lot...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's the highest quality regardless of who is limited to seeing it.
That's like saying Imax isn't higher quality than regular movie films just because you have to go to an Imax theater to see it.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Sorensen opens its codecs: Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Open Source coders, etc., create new products utilizing the codecs. Cost incurred creating and maintaining the codecs by Sorenson: substantial. Money made by Sorensen: $0.00. (That's a successful business model??)
Sorensen keeps its codecs closed: Apple pays Sorensen licensing fees to use the codecs in their product. Cost incurred creating and maintaining the codecs by Sorensen: substantial. Money made by Sorensen: millions of dollars.
Signal_11 claims that Sorensen is doomed because someone will eventually get mad and reverse engineer the codecs. Let's leave aside the fact that this has been said for some time now, and still has never been done. Even if it happens, Sorensen will still have made millions of dollars that they would never have seen if they just gave away the code right off the bat. That's a lot of money that can be spent improving the product, or developing other ones.
Signal_11 presents it as some proven fact that this is a doomed business plan, but the real fact is that the Open Source business model still has never been proven as a substantial money-maker.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Why does everyone do Quicktime? Is the encoding format pushed heavily or something?
I would be happy if there was more media based on something I can watch. Even at work where there are NT4.0, 98, and 95 machines, I can't watch this stuff. At least xanim doesn't crash my Linux box while trying. Most of these movies go unwatched.
Premiere won't use multiple processors in any real sense. You can have it use 100% of one processor and set the OS to use the other, but that's as good as it gets.
Some plug-ins and extended versions will make use of the "other" processor than the one the main app is using, which can help a lot depending on what plug-ins/filters you're using, but just re-encoding from one format to another won't get any boost.
Does anyone know if Media Cleaner Pro uses multiple processors? I don't think so, but if it did that would make it immensely useful for this sort of thing...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Then how come at least half the hits that I get to my site from /. are Windows boxes? Plus, out of everyone I know personally that reads Slashdot, I'm the only one who uses Linux. Finally, I remember reading somewhere on this site, or in an interview, or something, that a majority of the hits at Slashdot are not from *nix boxes, but Windows machines. Face it, Linux users are the minority, maybe not on /., but everywhere else. Why should the Slashdot creators censor what could be a funny movie or something just because "half" of it's visitors can't view it? What about all the Windows users who can't compile the latest source code that was annonced on Slashdot? Should there be no stories that discriminate in the slightest way? You choose to use Linux (most of you anyway) and this is one of the consequences of that desicion. Get over it.
Dead on Me-Too, for that. Shut the fack up, bitcher's and "this story//. sucks" crap.
*blows off steam*
+&x
photos.html
faq.html
guestbook.html
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Bah! Sorenson!
... ]
$ xanim +f 1_opening.mov
XAnim Rev 2.80.0 by Mark Podlipec Copyright (C) 1991-1999. All Rights Reserved
Audio Codec: QDesign Music Codec (QDMC) not yet supported.
Video Codec: Sorenson Video not yet supported.(E18)
Notice: Video and Audio are present, but not yet supported.
Usage:
XAnim [options] anim [ [options] anim
-h lists some common options, but may be out of date.
See xanim.readme or the man page for detailed help.
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Before I spend a week downloading the 37 meg .mov file, has anybody been able to play it with xanim?
Thanks!
Is it just that people can't tell the difference between political discourse and flaming? Is it just that criticism of any sort must be supressed? Surely we can't tolerate either. Someone, please have mercy upon this plebeian and undo this wretched moderation.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Does anyone know how to get Premiere to use both CPU's? Converting Sorenson video to JPEG takes hours on a dual 550 but it's only using 1 CPU.
First of all, Apple doesn't even own Sorenson, so stop bashing them without reason.
This is a very misleading statement, if not a bald lie. The reason Sorenson won't open up the codec is because Apple won't let them, it's written into their agreement. Apple are indeed attempting to corner the market in Internet video, which is directly against what most Slashdot readers stand for: open standards. you might not agree but I'm 100% certain you are in the minority at least amongst Slashdot readers.
Anyway, what's with the bad attitude? I mean, all the four-letter words - can't you disagree without being rude and offensive? I think it's fairly obvious to everybody that it's you that needs to grow up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
a far easier proposal would be that some company that makes an existing player could license the codec.
I believe Apple have an exclusive agreement so that just isn't possible at present.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
No, I do. I just happen to have my girlfriend's computer availible.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
I have the resources to recompress it into an xanim-compatible version within the next couple hours, but I'm wondering if I'll get into a legal tangle over it? Should I, shouldn't I?
Okay, so Sorenson isn't supported by Linux yet...boo-hoo...and Sorenson is a CSS project, so it must be bad, right? Give it up...when you all bought into Linux, you took the bad as well as the good...open-source software and a community of support is great, but you also bought into not always having the latest toys from every company in the industry, simply because not every vendor is interested and/or can support twelve different OSes. Want Sorenson? Start a campaign to let apple know that there's a market for it on Linux...or write your own codec, or converter, or something, anything...but don't do the /. bitch-and-moan because not every technology his handed to you on a silver frickin' platter...this is the price you pay for your OS...Windows users pay in stability and price, Mac pays for their OS in the fact that they deal with one company for all their hardware...every OS has its drawbacks, Linux included. Don't like it? Then change it, but don't complain here.
In the meantime, go to your local library or university and use one of their Windows or Mac machines to view the video.
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
How long do you think /. could go without being slapped by a lawsuit for copyright infringement if that was done?
I just detailed why I think that Apple should open source the driver: simply put, because if they don't somebody else will. It's a critical failing of their long-term business plan to keep it closed source. This is not the first time /. has posted something encoded with Sorensen. Remember the TPM movie trailer? That was Sorensen. Alot of people were seriously annoyed by that - and alot of people are also seriously annoyed about *this*.. and if there was one thing that motivates programmers to create an alternative it's being frustrated with something! In this case, there's probably quite a few frustrated people out there who want to access this video but cannot! End result - somebody, somewhere, will code up a sorensen decoder and make it available for linux. It's a logical inevitability.
Do it! Please! Email the authors and be like "hello, there are many unix users out there who would love to view your video. However, they are unable to because of the codec used. I am willing to convert it to a unix-friendly codec for you, so that you can spread its x-mas joy to more people... how about it?" or something along those lines.
This is probably the link you want (rather than a link to another web page):
http://www.newgrounds.com/vendetta/ vendetta.zip
(I'm getting a whopping 3.7k/s from my box with switched 100mbit to an OC-3.. actually, now it's 2.8k/s.. only 5 hrs to go!)