You know a hell of a lot more about this then I do. But I have played with BeOS, which as far as I know does do what your talking about. And at least I don't "notice" any lag. As a matter of fact the disk I/O appears better then in any other OS i've tried.
-Jon
Things I use my machine for that you wouldn't want to do on a P166
- Run Linux and Win2k at the same time in VMware
- Watch DVD's in software mode.
- Play MP3s while doing anything else (like browsing the web)
- Compile any project. While large projects do take longer, even small projects will get anoying if you have to wait longer then 5 seconds.
- Play 80% of the games that came out this year.
- Play 100% of the games that come out next year.
- Get kewl demos from Nvidia and "whip-it-out" in front of my geek friends
I used to work at MS, and let me tell you Exchange is probably the most useful app MS uses. It's used for freakin everything, mail (of course) scheduling, tasks, news group (type things, I'm not sure what there official moniker is), mailing lists.
Actually my favorite feature is being able to find out who my bosses boss is via the GAL (global address list). find out what discussion groups there part of and join those. etc... Find out when my boss has meetings, so I don't have to worry about here dropping in:P. I just got a new job, which also uses exchange. here, however - they use it for email.. just stupid old, could have used sendmail/pine email. no GLA, no one schedules anything on it. nothing. the only reason I even use it is because outlook at a built in spell checker. hell, aspell is a better spell checker and you can hook that into mutt/vi (or whatever).
funny thing, when MS Exchange 2000 (platinum or whatever) was in "dogfood" email was a joke, nothing worked. everyone's email was constantly down, we actually had to make eye contact with people (ack). meetings we're made by someone walking around the offices and saying "ok, meeting time", "huh?" "didn't you get the mail?", "no. exchange is down", "oh right". However, by the end of the beta, the exchange started working just fine.
When I was about 10 years old I ordered a "How to make a hovercraft" manual from the back of an old Donald Duck mag. The magazine was published in about 1950, somehow the company still had some lying around. So I tried to make it.
Bassicly you stick a vacume cleaner moter on a circular peice of wood. and put some lining underneth the disc of wood to hold the air.
guess what. it didn't work. by the time I was done (even at the age of 10) I could till the vacume cleaner moter wasn't going to cut it. The design, i think, could have worked (well maybe not). but with a much more powerfull moter. besides who wants to hover around and be plugged into the wall?
Sure, but then your back to just recording the audio output and making a OGG or MP3 file out of it. The reason watermarkers are cool is because they actually stay in the data through format conversions. They want this so they can track who bought what music, and who gave who what music.
But like the guy above said, it's not possible. the MPAA, RIAA, etc.. are all fucked.
-Jon
Re:This is nice - but what about other DRM systems
on
SDMI Cracked Too Soon
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· Score: 2
RealAudio - StreamBox Ripper, Now illegal due to law suits, but still lurking in warez sitz
Don't get me wrong, I live FreeBSD and run it on my own server, and couldn't be happier. However I would be interested to hear some good aguments on why Win2k couldn't handle this load.
From what I understand Win2k makes a really freakin good file serv. Other then the TCP/IP stack and the FTP server (prob Wu-FTP) shouldn't Win2k be able to handle the same load? From what I've seen Win2k TCP/IP stack is actually superiour to BSD's. It's supports far more sophisticed featurs like IO Completion Ports, 3 differnt types of Async IO, Thread Pooling and is fully SMP to at least 8 (DataServer can support something like 64) proccecors.
So other then "It's buggy, It'll crash" what other evedence is there?
I could be wrong, but wasn't the first system with VM was VMS?
Re:NP Non-deterministic Polynomial
on
Does P = NP?
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· Score: 2
interesting quote from the link..
We design an algorithm for an exact solution of the Minimum Clique Partition Problem. For an arbitrary undirected graph G, we use a technique for finite partially ordered sets, in particular, a partition of such sets into the minimum number of paths. The running time of the algorithm is equal to O(n^6), where n is the number of graph vertices.
Am I to understand that through this alrotithm can solve any NP problem in O(n^6)???? Doesn't that mean that schemes like RSA would be completly fucked. I wish I knew more on the subject.. well my dad does, he wrote me this about it..
Yes, very interesting, thank you. I didn't look at the actual paper because I'm sure it's beyond me. There are
over 2000 problems known to be equivalent -- an algorithm for one will lead to algorithms for all. O(n^6) isn't
very attractive, but if it really works it will be a huge breakthrough. A couple of months ago there was a
conference of top mathematicians at UCLA to decide what are the most important problems for the next century.
(There was a similar conference in 1900).
I think P=NP? was near the top of the list.
P is simply the problems that can be solved in polynomial time, and a polynomial is an expression that has fixed
powers.
t = n^10 + 5 is a polynomial, but t = 2^n + 5 isn't.
NP stands for nondeterministic polynomial, and it refers to a problem for which, if the computer guesses an answer
(that's the nondeterministic bit), it can check the answer in polynomial time. The NP-complete problems are those
which are all equivalent by Cook's Theorem (1970) to the Satisfiability Problem, which is a boolean problem. These
include the travelling salesman problem.
IMHO this is way more important (and maybe sexy) then the release of something like 2.4.pre9, or ever 2.4 release! This could really change everything, espically when it comes to encrytion.
We're going to have to change PGP to PBP (pretty bad privacy)
First off, I think the post this guy replied to was just as insightfull as the one I am repling too.
I think what he was trying to say is that what if we discover that 1+1 != 2, that there is really *something* else going on. With how math relates to physics I can definatly see that being true. Your right, it's not that "math" could be wronge, it's that maybe whatever we always concedered 1 of something tangably really isn't one. maybe it can't be discribed that way at all.
Also, I like that he is thinking differntly (no, I dont like Macs). People shouldn't be slammed for thinking something that contredes the common way of thought. He's not crazy, just injoys thinking "what if" thats all.
I think the reason people get the impression that AMD chips are not top of the line, is because of the poor compatability with other components. I've had a lot of problems getting AMD chips to play nice with my other cards. For a server, I don't see this being an issue, as you can always find *one* SCSI card, video card, to work just fine with the chipset.
Hopefully DELL, Compaq and and company will release "Interprise Level" servers featuring 8 way AMD chipsets. Doing so would add a lot to the credability in the mindset of the average buisnessman.
-Jon
-2147467259 means that COM is fucked. (more or less). I'm a Microsoft developer and don't really trust COM that much myself. I've seen really weird things happend to boxes that get to many CreateObjects().
There is a slight chance (in hell) that things could be better on a Win2k box, conpared to NT4, Win2k is a hell of a lot tighter. It's also COM+ based, vs. COM/DCOM, ya may want to check that out.
really good point about the COM object. It seems a little "hacky" just to hid the passwords. and even then It would be clear text in the.DLL, but a whole shitload better then just having it in the global.asa file.
anyone know that orginally ASP was going to be called Active Server Scripts? of course the.ASS exention made some PM's change there mind. but it's funny anyway.
But one of the new things about ASF is that there is no more limitation imposed by 32-bit file size values
ya know I really wasn't aware of this and don't really understand why that would be true. If it was a file size that would be the choice of the FS be it FAT/FAT32/NTFS whatever. If it's streaming how would it really know how big the "file" is anyway? doesn't cnn have like 24 real time streaming or something?
A question: What keeps MS from checking the FOURCC for DivX;-) and refusing to play the video?!
Cuz Microsoft isn't god. if you open a file in some "DivX" happy program it'll play. They could refuse it in Windows Media Player, but they arn't now.
more question: Do you know about an ASF reference manual online? Microsoft did something like that for AVI, but I can't seem to find it for ASF
hehe, ya nethier can I. What I do know is some guy wrote a program called "ASF Recorder", and judeging from the source code he figured it out pretty good. Id look at that before asking Microsoft to help you out.
It's definitely hacked. The rationale for DivX is that ever since AVIs have been disabled to use MS-MPEG4, DivX unlocks that hack (among other things), and renames it to a different FOURCC code, so the divx dll won't conflict with your Media Player codecs. That way, Microsoft can stealthy update your codecs all they want, but divx codecs will not be overwritten.
for those wondering what the FOURCC thing is It's "A Four-Character Code used to identify Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) chunks. A FOURCC is a 32-bit quantity represented as a sequence of one to four ASCII alphanumeric characters, padded on the right with blank characters. RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format) is a specification used to define standard formats for multimedia files and to prevent compatibility problems that often occur when file-format definitions change over time. Because each piece of data in the file is identified by a standard header, an application that does not recognize a given data element can skip over the unknown information."
From MSDN. Bassicly multimedia formats are typically "layered" files, the RIFF format has each sublayer identified with a FOURCC, all this mean is that each sub part of the the file has a label that uses four charaters.. in the case of WAV it's actually WAV(space) or for your C guys,
char *four_cc = {'W', 'A', 'V', ' '};
Actually these days MS wants you to use a GUID for identifing the approiote codec (spelling.. bla!!). anyway, just a technical rant. In the past i've had to deal with AVI's. AVI's are just like video versions of WAV's. as in that they are codec independant media formats. WAV's are PCM RIFF files, they start with WAVE, but can tell the client what codec to use, thats why you've seen MP3 files with.wav extensions. and MPEG-4 videos in.AVI's, or really any codec.
I'm not sure but I think the only reason MS uses extensions like.asf and.asx is A: marketing, newer extensions=new (better) tech. B: work into a more propietery arena, plenty of programs can play.AVI, but how many can play.asf? only one Microsoft (brand) Media Player. actually anyone could write a.asf player. the freakin program is just a big (fat) ActiveX object. it even has a low level COM API if you want to get more into it.
The funny thing is that the old sk00l.AVI API is a LOT easyer to work with then the new sk00l.ASF (WMP4) API,.AVI actually has functions like GetFrame(), while the.ASF is more like PleaseAskForFrame(a, y, x, s,w,er,) CanIPLEASEGetFrame(fuck, me, up, the goat, ass), FuckOffAndDie(arg), anyway, that's how I remember it, i think the actualy functions names are a little different.
btw: I'm a contracter at Microsoft Research, here we have something called a "Vitrual Kichen" it's a big 4 way live video confernce projected on the wall next to all the free pop. I spoke to the fellow who developed it, I was asking him about using ACM (Audio Compression Manager SDK) for MPEG compression, he told me that ya, it's a bitch, and that to "really" use it you need some magic (licence) key. he mailed me later with some code for a class that makes it easyer to work with, and the key... maybe I shouldn't have told yall that... oh well.
Microsoft released the software last year, intending it only for software developers. But Jerome Rota, a 27-year-old French film buff and video engineer who goes by the Internet nickname of "Gej," worked with a German hacker named "Max Morice" to rewrite the software so that anyone can use it to create compact DivX movies
So ya bassicly it's Microsoft's MPEG4 codec.
from the projectmayo website..
DivX;-) Deux will maintain the high quality of DivX;-) while adding some kick ass features that are optimized to the way you use the technology. In other words, it will be wicked fast at doing the things you want it to do. Let us leave it at that.
More importantly, we are building some awesome technologies on top of DivX;-) Deux that will flat out rock. We will announce our plans in due time. (muhahahAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!)
these new "awesome technologies" I imagine will be performance related, and maybe a little quality related. But as you mentianed, they most likely don't even get deal with the actualy video compression side of it. judging from the muhahahaha part, i would think they are really trying to be the "cool" pirate video guys..
the Microsoft MPEG4 codec is about a year old now, they are now pushing Microsoft Video 7, which to my untrained eye does look smother and crisper. It's also comparable to Real Video 8, which is really pretty amazing. it's hard to belive MPEG4 ISO is actually outdated.
disclaimer: i think your a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
Sounds to me like MS has put the techniques used by the ILOVEYOU virus to use in 'protecting consumers' from having bad (read: non-MS controlled) email services...
First of ILOVEYOU was technicaly Worm, not a virus, It used Outlooks Macro support to *AUTOMATICALY* email everyone in your address book. Secondly, this "feature" of Microsoft's new software doesn't proprogate. the trail ends with the email being sent. definatly NOT a virus, or a worm.
Hmm... freaky. What I want to know, is *how* did they do this, technically? Can other spammers use this same technique as well, or is it a Microsoft-only hidden technique? Because if it is, thats monopolistic
Um.. read in the outlook address book and send mail to all of them with a letter regarding the change of email address. Nothing hidden about it, it's standard MAPI API's. If you had a clue you could write a VB program to do with in about 60 seconds.
I've been with Speakeasy of Seattle for over a year now. I'd guesstimate 99% uptime. Last night it went down for maybe 5 minutes, a few weeks ago maybe 4 hours. But as a whole it's been very reliable. I run 3 shoutcast/mp3 streams, a quake3 server, ftp server, website and a DNS server off a 768k (both ways) ADSL line. It costs my roommate and I about 130 a month. This also comes with 8 static IP's offers unlimeted up and down
I've been very happy with it. I'm moving down to Austin soon and hope to find such good service. Anyone have any tips on DSL in Austin? Id like to have at least one static IP, I don't think I'll *need* 768k, at least not up and down.
If i had my mod points right now I would mod down all the other posts above this one so the first thing people would see is that this story probably shouldn't have been posted.
I've noticed that slashdot tends to post similar stories around the same time. so this is riding off the tailcoats of the SDMI Contest. Just don't be so Freakin eggar to post a story that is not fit!
This is most likely due to the first MP3 frame not being at the begining of the file. I've seen difference decoders handle this differently. I've seen Winamp mess up, and mpg123. It's a shame most don't really search for the valid MP3 header.
This doesn't have anything to do with decodeing though, just finding the MP3 frame segments. mpg123 will do this correctly. Nullsoft's engine does not.
This is not true, the lawsuit was from Justin Frankel using his modified 'amp' engine without licencing. That is actually why he sold Nullsoft to AOL - to bail him out.
Winamp 3.0 however will use the fronhoffer's engine.
If you remember a while back it was exposed that winamp has a bug in it's "nitrone" engine that f*cks up mp3 decompression. Well from a link (i can't find offhand) Sonique has the similare problem; it doesn't decode the audio correctly.
It's supprising that the two most popular mp3 players in the world can't do this correctly. XMMS which uses mpg123 works flawlessly, a dozen or so players based of the Xing Decoder or Xaudio decoder work fine. Why they use there own faulty mpeg decompression is beyond me.
Another interesting thing about Sonique is it's visulazation SDK, it's being used or memiced is Real Jukebox and Windows Media Player 7. From what i understand you create a function that formats an array based of PCM data. that way it's platform, and format independet (if not a little slower). also the client app can host it in it's own window. Winamp by contrast simply gives you the PCM data and expects you to make a window and draw stuff on the screen. Personally i like winamps approch better, sience it opens up optinos for the plug-in writer like using directX or fullscreen mode, with Sonique and the like you don't have that control.
On the other hand, porting a Sonique plugin to Linux may just mean recompiling it. so we'll see.
I don't think Sonique will be better then XMMS, it's MP3 decompression is flawed, and is less open, (from a plug-in point of view, as well as OpenSource(tm)). XMMS is bassicly a winamp clone, it just needs more people to develop for it, make more DSP and visulation plugins. otherwise Sonique may be the one to use.
Black holes can be detected (in theory of course) by looking for the emissions they give off. The theory goes (extremely roughly) that as individual particles reach the "edge" (event horizon?) of the black hole (crossing this line means you never come back), some of them are torn apart, half of the particle going in, half going out, and some energy is released during this fission. It is these fissions at the edge that make a black hole appear to give off energy, and make it detectable. That type of radiation is called Hawking Radiation (after Stephen Hawking, naturally). However, this isn't what lets us detect black holes,
eh?
as Hawking Radiation is ridiculously faint
doh.
Black holes can be detected by the X-Rays that they "inadvertantly" produce
huh.
When matter is falling into a black hole it is accelerated, heated, and compressed to such a degree that it gives off large amounts of X-Rays. I believe the first black hole we detected (again, assuming black holes exist), was Cygnus X-1 (or cygnus something), and we detected it by the x-rays it gave off.
so why bother with the Hawking Radiation stuff?
Another method of detecting black holes is to look for graviational lensing effects. Because black holes are so massive, they bend the fabric of space time. (Imagine a sheet suspended in the air. Place marbles on the sheet. The marbles make depressions on the sheet, like stars make "depressions" in space-time. A black hole is so heavy, it's like dropping something that is the size of a marble but with the weight of a bowling ball onto the sheet. The sheet bends A LOT, and it actually will have a hole where the singularity is.) Light travels in a straight line, so if space-time curves, light also curves with space-time. Gravitational lensing was proved during a solar eclipse. Astronomers observing the eclipse noted that they were able to see stars that should have been blocked by the eclipsed sun. The sun's gravitational field caused enough "lensing" so that stars directly behind the star could be seen to either side of the star. So, if we find something out in space that is causing a LARGE amount of gravitational lensing, but we can't see anything, there's a chance it's a black hole. At that point we normally observe it more to determine if it is or isn't a black hole.
huh, cool. Why which one do they use, or do they try to sort of "use all of them" and see what the sum of the results are?
Windows Update suck, and are pathetic, kludgy interfaces
Bullshit, Windows update is a very clean. The only client side install is a small activex control it's a transparent install of of a tiny WMI program that quickly scans your computer for what updates the webpage should bother to tell you about. It couldn't be simpler.
I honestly think that you haven't used windows update, or are just another stupid linux zealot blindly bashing anything with the microsoft name
Slashdot Mirror
You know a hell of a lot more about this then I do. But I have played with BeOS, which as far as I know does do what your talking about. And at least I don't "notice" any lag. As a matter of fact the disk I/O appears better then in any other OS i've tried. -Jon
Things I use my machine for that you wouldn't want to do on a P166
- Run Linux and Win2k at the same time in VMware
- Watch DVD's in software mode.
- Play MP3s while doing anything else (like browsing the web)
- Compile any project. While large projects do take longer, even small projects will get anoying if you have to wait longer then 5 seconds.
- Play 80% of the games that came out this year.
- Play 100% of the games that come out next year.
- Get kewl demos from Nvidia and "whip-it-out" in front of my geek friends
And I'm sure i'm missing something else.
I used to work at MS, and let me tell you Exchange is probably the most useful app MS uses. It's used for freakin everything, mail (of course) scheduling, tasks, news group (type things, I'm not sure what there official moniker is), mailing lists.
:P. I just got a new job, which also uses exchange. here, however - they use it for email.. just stupid old, could have used sendmail/pine email. no GLA, no one schedules anything on it. nothing. the only reason I even use it is because outlook at a built in spell checker. hell, aspell is a better spell checker and you can hook that into mutt/vi (or whatever).
Actually my favorite feature is being able to find out who my bosses boss is via the GAL (global address list). find out what discussion groups there part of and join those. etc... Find out when my boss has meetings, so I don't have to worry about here dropping in
funny thing, when MS Exchange 2000 (platinum or whatever) was in "dogfood" email was a joke, nothing worked. everyone's email was constantly down, we actually had to make eye contact with people (ack). meetings we're made by someone walking around the offices and saying "ok, meeting time", "huh?" "didn't you get the mail?", "no. exchange is down", "oh right". However, by the end of the beta, the exchange started working just fine.
hmm. I guess that was a ramble..
I haven't posted in a while, so what the heck.
When I was about 10 years old I ordered a "How to make a hovercraft" manual from the back of an old Donald Duck mag. The magazine was published in about 1950, somehow the company still had some lying around. So I tried to make it.
Bassicly you stick a vacume cleaner moter on a circular peice of wood. and put some lining underneth the disc of wood to hold the air.
guess what. it didn't work. by the time I was done (even at the age of 10) I could till the vacume cleaner moter wasn't going to cut it. The design, i think, could have worked (well maybe not). but with a much more powerfull moter. besides who wants to hover around and be plugged into the wall?
-Jon
Sure, but then your back to just recording the audio output and making a OGG or MP3 file out of it. The reason watermarkers are cool is because they actually stay in the data through format conversions. They want this so they can track who bought what music, and who gave who what music.
But like the guy above said, it's not possible. the MPAA, RIAA, etc.. are all fucked.
-Jon
RealAudio - StreamBox Ripper, Now illegal due to law suits, but still lurking in warez sitz
Windows Media - ASFRecorder (google it)
Shoutcast/Icecast MP3 - Streamripper
-Jon
Don't get me wrong, I live FreeBSD and run it on my own server, and couldn't be happier. However I would be interested to hear some good aguments on why Win2k couldn't handle this load.
From what I understand Win2k makes a really freakin good file serv. Other then the TCP/IP stack and the FTP server (prob Wu-FTP) shouldn't Win2k be able to handle the same load? From what I've seen Win2k TCP/IP stack is actually superiour to BSD's. It's supports far more sophisticed featurs like IO Completion Ports, 3 differnt types of Async IO, Thread Pooling and is fully SMP to at least 8 (DataServer can support something like 64) proccecors.
So other then "It's buggy, It'll crash" what other evedence is there?
-Jon
I could be wrong, but wasn't the first system with VM was VMS?
We design an algorithm for an exact solution of the Minimum Clique Partition Problem. For an arbitrary undirected graph G, we use a technique for finite partially ordered sets, in particular, a partition of such sets into the minimum number of paths. The running time of the algorithm is equal to O(n^6), where n is the number of graph vertices.
Am I to understand that through this alrotithm can solve any NP problem in O(n^6)???? Doesn't that mean that schemes like RSA would be completly fucked. I wish I knew more on the subject.. well my dad does, he wrote me this about it..
Yes, very interesting, thank you. I didn't look at the actual paper because I'm sure it's beyond me. There are
over 2000 problems known to be equivalent -- an algorithm for one will lead to algorithms for all. O(n^6) isn't
very attractive, but if it really works it will be a huge breakthrough. A couple of months ago there was a
conference of top mathematicians at UCLA to decide what are the most important problems for the next century.
(There was a similar conference in 1900).
I think P=NP? was near the top of the list.
P is simply the problems that can be solved in polynomial time, and a polynomial is an expression that has fixed
powers.
t = n^10 + 5 is a polynomial, but t = 2^n + 5 isn't.
NP stands for nondeterministic polynomial, and it refers to a problem for which, if the computer guesses an answer
(that's the nondeterministic bit), it can check the answer in polynomial time. The NP-complete problems are those
which are all equivalent by Cook's Theorem (1970) to the Satisfiability Problem, which is a boolean problem. These
include the travelling salesman problem.
IMHO this is way more important (and maybe sexy) then the release of something like 2.4.pre9, or ever 2.4 release! This could really change everything, espically when it comes to encrytion.
We're going to have to change PGP to PBP (pretty bad privacy)
-Jon
First off, I think the post this guy replied to was just as insightfull as the one I am repling too.
I think what he was trying to say is that what if we discover that 1+1 != 2, that there is really *something* else going on. With how math relates to physics I can definatly see that being true. Your right, it's not that "math" could be wronge, it's that maybe whatever we always concedered 1 of something tangably really isn't one. maybe it can't be discribed that way at all.
Also, I like that he is thinking differntly (no, I dont like Macs). People shouldn't be slammed for thinking something that contredes the common way of thought. He's not crazy, just injoys thinking "what if" thats all.
-Jon
I think the reason people get the impression that AMD chips are not top of the line, is because of the poor compatability with other components. I've had a lot of problems getting AMD chips to play nice with my other cards. For a server, I don't see this being an issue, as you can always find *one* SCSI card, video card, to work just fine with the chipset. Hopefully DELL, Compaq and and company will release "Interprise Level" servers featuring 8 way AMD chipsets. Doing so would add a lot to the credability in the mindset of the average buisnessman. -Jon
-2147467259 means that COM is fucked. (more or less). I'm a Microsoft developer and don't really trust COM that much myself. I've seen really weird things happend to boxes that get to many CreateObjects().
There is a slight chance (in hell) that things could be better on a Win2k box, conpared to NT4, Win2k is a hell of a lot tighter. It's also COM+ based, vs. COM/DCOM, ya may want to check that out.
it's NT4 right?
doh, no points left.
.DLL, but a whole shitload better then just having it in the global.asa file.
.ASS exention made some PM's change there mind. but it's funny anyway.
really good point about the COM object. It seems a little "hacky" just to hid the passwords. and even then It would be clear text in the
anyone know that orginally ASP was going to be called Active Server Scripts? of course the
-Jon
I usully get it when something funky happens with my ATA-100 driver. Maybe its trying to make a swap file and finds that it can't write to the disk..
does that sound plausible?
-Jon
But one of the new things about ASF is that there is no more limitation imposed by 32-bit file size values
;-) and refusing to play the video?!
ya know I really wasn't aware of this and don't really understand why that would be true. If it was a file size that would be the choice of the FS be it FAT/FAT32/NTFS whatever. If it's streaming how would it really know how big the "file" is anyway? doesn't cnn have like 24 real time streaming or something?
A question: What keeps MS from checking the FOURCC for DivX
Cuz Microsoft isn't god. if you open a file in some "DivX" happy program it'll play. They could refuse it in Windows Media Player, but they arn't now.
more question: Do you know about an ASF reference manual online? Microsoft did something like that for AVI, but I can't seem to find it for ASF
hehe, ya nethier can I. What I do know is some guy wrote a program called "ASF Recorder", and judeging from the source code he figured it out pretty good. Id look at that before asking Microsoft to help you out.
-Jon
It's definitely hacked. The rationale for DivX is that ever since AVIs have been disabled to use MS-MPEG4, DivX unlocks that hack (among other things), and renames it to a different FOURCC code, so the divx dll won't conflict with your Media Player codecs. That way, Microsoft can stealthy update your codecs all they want, but divx codecs will not be overwritten.
for those wondering what the FOURCC thing is It's "A Four-Character Code used to identify Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) chunks. A FOURCC is a 32-bit quantity represented as a sequence of one to four ASCII alphanumeric characters, padded on the right with blank characters. RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format) is a specification used to define standard formats for multimedia files and to prevent compatibility problems that often occur when file-format definitions change over time. Because each piece of data in the file is identified by a standard header, an application that does not recognize a given data element can skip over the unknown information."
From MSDN. Bassicly multimedia formats are typically "layered" files, the RIFF format has each sublayer identified with a FOURCC, all this mean is that each sub part of the the file has a label that uses four charaters.. in the case of WAV it's actually WAV(space) or for your C guys,
char *four_cc = {'W', 'A', 'V', ' '};
Actually these days MS wants you to use a GUID for identifing the approiote codec (spelling.. bla!!). anyway, just a technical rant. In the past i've had to deal with AVI's. AVI's are just like video versions of WAV's. as in that they are codec independant media formats. WAV's are PCM RIFF files, they start with WAVE, but can tell the client what codec to use, thats why you've seen MP3 files with
I'm not sure but I think the only reason MS uses extensions like
The funny thing is that the old sk00l
btw: I'm a contracter at Microsoft Research, here we have something called a "Vitrual Kichen" it's a big 4 way live video confernce projected on the wall next to all the free pop. I spoke to the fellow who developed it, I was asking him about using ACM (Audio Compression Manager SDK) for MPEG compression, he told me that ya, it's a bitch, and that to "really" use it you need some magic (licence) key. he mailed me later with some code for a class that makes it easyer to work with, and the key... maybe I shouldn't have told yall that... oh well.
I better stop before i get modded down to OT..
late,
-Jon
quoting from the WSJ...
;-) Deux will maintain the high quality of DivX ;-) while adding some kick ass features that are optimized to the way you use the technology. In other words, it will be wicked fast at doing the things you want it to do. Let us leave it at that.
;-) Deux that will flat out rock. We will announce our plans in due time. (muhahahAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!)
Microsoft released the software last year, intending it only for software developers. But Jerome Rota, a 27-year-old French film buff and video engineer who goes by the Internet nickname of "Gej," worked with a German hacker named "Max Morice" to rewrite the software so that anyone can use it to create compact DivX movies
So ya bassicly it's Microsoft's MPEG4 codec.
from the projectmayo website..
DivX
More importantly, we are building some awesome technologies on top of DivX
these new "awesome technologies" I imagine will be performance related, and maybe a little quality related. But as you mentianed, they most likely don't even get deal with the actualy video compression side of it. judging from the muhahahaha part, i would think they are really trying to be the "cool" pirate video guys..
the Microsoft MPEG4 codec is about a year old now, they are now pushing Microsoft Video 7, which to my untrained eye does look smother and crisper. It's also comparable to Real Video 8, which is really pretty amazing. it's hard to belive MPEG4 ISO is actually outdated.
-Jon
disclaimer: i think your a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
Sounds to me like MS has put the techniques used by the ILOVEYOU virus to use in 'protecting consumers' from having bad (read: non-MS controlled) email services...
First of ILOVEYOU was technicaly Worm, not a virus, It used Outlooks Macro support to *AUTOMATICALY* email everyone in your address book. Secondly, this "feature" of Microsoft's new software doesn't proprogate. the trail ends with the email being sent. definatly NOT a virus, or a worm.
Hmm... freaky. What I want to know, is *how* did they do this, technically? Can other spammers use this same technique as well, or is it a Microsoft-only hidden technique? Because if it is, thats monopolistic
Um.. read in the outlook address book and send mail to all of them with a letter regarding the change of email address. Nothing hidden about it, it's standard MAPI API's. If you had a clue you could write a VB program to do with in about 60 seconds.
-Jon
I've been with Speakeasy of Seattle for over a year now. I'd guesstimate 99% uptime. Last night it went down for maybe 5 minutes, a few weeks ago maybe 4 hours. But as a whole it's been very reliable. I run 3 shoutcast/mp3 streams, a quake3 server, ftp server, website and a DNS server off a 768k (both ways) ADSL line. It costs my roommate and I about 130 a month. This also comes with 8 static IP's offers unlimeted up and down
I've been very happy with it. I'm moving down to Austin soon and hope to find such good service. Anyone have any tips on DSL in Austin? Id like to have at least one static IP, I don't think I'll *need* 768k, at least not up and down.
-Jon
If i had my mod points right now I would mod down all the other posts above this one so the first thing people would see is that this story probably shouldn't have been posted.
I've noticed that slashdot tends to post similar stories around the same time. so this is riding off the tailcoats of the SDMI Contest. Just don't be so Freakin eggar to post a story that is not fit!
-Jon
This is most likely due to the first MP3 frame not being at the begining of the file. I've seen difference decoders handle this differently. I've seen Winamp mess up, and mpg123. It's a shame most don't really search for the valid MP3 header.
This doesn't have anything to do with decodeing though, just finding the MP3 frame segments. mpg123 will do this correctly. Nullsoft's engine does not.
-Jon
This is not true, the lawsuit was from Justin Frankel using his modified 'amp' engine without licencing. That is actually why he sold Nullsoft to AOL - to bail him out.
Winamp 3.0 however will use the fronhoffer's engine.
-Jon
If you remember a while back it was exposed that winamp has a bug in it's "nitrone" engine that f*cks up mp3 decompression. Well from a link (i can't find offhand) Sonique has the similare problem; it doesn't decode the audio correctly.
It's supprising that the two most popular mp3 players in the world can't do this correctly. XMMS which uses mpg123 works flawlessly, a dozen or so players based of the Xing Decoder or Xaudio decoder work fine. Why they use there own faulty mpeg decompression is beyond me.
Another interesting thing about Sonique is it's visulazation SDK, it's being used or memiced is Real Jukebox and Windows Media Player 7. From what i understand you create a function that formats an array based of PCM data. that way it's platform, and format independet (if not a little slower). also the client app can host it in it's own window. Winamp by contrast simply gives you the PCM data and expects you to make a window and draw stuff on the screen. Personally i like winamps approch better, sience it opens up optinos for the plug-in writer like using directX or fullscreen mode, with Sonique and the like you don't have that control.
On the other hand, porting a Sonique plugin to Linux may just mean recompiling it. so we'll see.
I don't think Sonique will be better then XMMS, it's MP3 decompression is flawed, and is less open, (from a plug-in point of view, as well as OpenSource(tm)). XMMS is bassicly a winamp clone, it just needs more people to develop for it, make more DSP and visulation plugins. otherwise Sonique may be the one to use.
-Jon
Black holes can be detected (in theory of course) by looking for the emissions they give off. The theory goes (extremely roughly) that as individual particles reach the "edge" (event horizon?) of the black hole (crossing this line means you never come back), some of them are torn apart, half of the particle going in, half going out, and some energy is released during this fission. It is these fissions at the edge that make a black hole appear to give off energy, and make it detectable. That type of radiation is called Hawking Radiation (after Stephen Hawking, naturally). However, this isn't what lets us detect black holes,
eh?
as Hawking Radiation is ridiculously faint
doh.
Black holes can be detected by the X-Rays that they "inadvertantly" produce
huh.
When matter is falling into a black hole it is accelerated, heated, and compressed to such a degree that it gives off large amounts of X-Rays. I believe the first black hole we detected (again, assuming black holes exist), was Cygnus X-1 (or cygnus something), and we detected it by the x-rays it gave off.
so why bother with the Hawking Radiation stuff?
Another method of detecting black holes is to look for graviational lensing effects. Because black holes are so massive, they bend the fabric of space time. (Imagine a sheet suspended in the air. Place marbles on the sheet. The marbles make depressions on the sheet, like stars make "depressions" in space-time. A black hole is so heavy, it's like dropping something that is the size of a marble but with the weight of a bowling ball onto the sheet. The sheet bends A LOT, and it actually will have a hole where the singularity is.) Light travels in a straight line, so if space-time curves, light also curves with space-time. Gravitational lensing was proved during a solar eclipse. Astronomers observing the eclipse noted that they were able to see stars that should have been blocked by the eclipsed sun. The sun's gravitational field caused enough "lensing" so that stars directly behind the star could be seen to either side of the star. So, if we find something out in space that is causing a LARGE amount of gravitational lensing, but we can't see anything, there's a chance it's a black hole. At that point we normally observe it more to determine if it is or isn't a black hole.
huh, cool. Why which one do they use, or do they try to sort of "use all of them" and see what the sum of the results are?
-Jon
Windows Update suck, and are pathetic, kludgy interfaces
Bullshit, Windows update is a very clean. The only client side install is a small activex control it's a transparent install of of a tiny WMI program that quickly scans your computer for what updates the webpage should bother to tell you about. It couldn't be simpler.
I honestly think that you haven't used windows update, or are just another stupid linux zealot blindly bashing anything with the microsoft name
-Jon