It supports SIP and XMPP (Jabber) fully, including GTalk. Has built-in zero-config ZRTP. Also supports the proprietary IM networks like MSN and Yahoo to various extents, Skype being the only exception with no support (as expected).
Been using it for a few months and the nightlies are getting better and better. The 1.0 release could make a good splash on the internet.
Sounds more like "shared source" design to me, a collaboration between 50 companies. Nothing seems to be open to the public.
Unlike for example the Global Village Construction Set.
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set/
"Open Source - we freely publish our 3d designs, schematics, instructional videos, budgets, and product manuals on our open source wiki and we harness open collaboration with technical contributors."
The rapid release system was brought into effect to compete with Chrome's meteoric rise in usage share and stem the decline of FF. The stalling and loss of usage share of FF started way before this, especially during the long FF3 to FF4 transition, when Chrome was spitting out rapid updates. So no, FF is not losing users because of the new release system. The new release system is a response to the loss of users.
I especially find it hilarious when people complain about the rapid releases.. and then declare they will switch to.. Chrome!.. which has.. rapid releases !
Partisan? Ofcourse, it's a politicised issue! Do you cry "partisan!" if i link to Dawkins in a creationism vs. evolution debate? No? Obviously what matters is if the arguments are valid not that some people are "partisan" to the arguments.
Hammer and sickle and the proletariat? please grow up beyond the mind of a cold war victim. ("overthrowing of the proletariat" made me laugh though, next time try "the proletariat overthrowing capitalism" or similar to avoid embarassment)
If you had spent half the time writing this drivel to actually research this issue, you would know that fossil and nuclear have been subsidized through the roof for half a decade now, right from R&D to purchasing guarantees to insurance. Subsidized renewables? On an absolute scale sure (and we should have more of that), on a scale relative to non-renewable energy, renewable subsidies are a joke.
This is a groundbreaking turn from the country already leading the world in renewable energy. The question is now, what combination of sources will replace the nuclear piece of the energy pie. Currently nuclear stands at 22% and renewables at 17% in Germany. I reccomend the literature here for anyone who doubts renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, small hydro, biomass) are up to the task of displacing fossil and nuclear. Especially check out Hermann Scheer's "Energy Autonomy". As a bonus, this will be a chance to dispel illusions regarding the technical viability of thorium, fast breeder reactors, fusion and other nuclear chymeras.
What kind of calculation did you use to get at that 1000 miles of shoreline figure? Why quote 2MW turbines when we have 7.5MW turbines online and 10MW turbines in development? Furthermore, you assume turbines can only be lined up on the coast single file? Seriously?
Opposing solar on "desert habitat" or wind power on "the birds may die" arguments are indeed embarassingly idiotic. And there is indeed such foolishness displayed by some people who see themselves as environmentalists. However, the source of such bs can often be traced back to fossile-nuclear interests that are deliberately trying to derail renewables by ultra-environmentalist arguments like these. Many a naive environmentalist with no perspective simply buys into this stuff.
I recommend you read the book Energy Autonomy by recently deceased German MP and head of EuroSolar Hermann Scheer. It dispelled any doubts I held about the possibility that renewables -solar, wind, hydro and biomass- can deliver the world's energy needs.
It answers frequent misguided critiques of renewables, as well as laying out the dim prospect for any future for fossile and nuclear power.
Most revealingly, it argues that a decentralized renewables future, by coupling production sites with consumption sites, saves enormously on grid and fuel transportation costs. Such an economy would also break electricity network and fossil-nuclear monopolies (enjoying enormous subsidies in many, many forms) in favor of energy independence at the building, municipal and national levels. That is the most important political aspect one needs to grasp in the renewables issue.
Let me point out that the protest was against existing arbitrary censorship as much as it was about the new 4 "filter packages" (child, family,.tr only, standard - you have to pick 1) that are to be introduced in August.
Already there are estimates of 80000 websites censored - estimated because the list is not made public, nor the reason for censoring. Typically, the targetted sites are around : porn (ALL porn, though they like to wave around child porn as an excuse), atheism (dawkins banned), communism, homosexuality (gay dating sites banned), kurdish nationalism, streaming sites (especially if live streams of a large pay tv channel are infringed), gambling-betting (the state sanctioned sport betting service runs full force ofcourse) and many others. One offending blog or clip can get entire domains banned (wordpress, youtube, etc. were at some point banned too).
I think you equate "free market capitalism" with capitalism per se. Historically, the only immutable characteristic of capitalism has been not the free market but the fixation on the endless accumulation of capital.
Otherwise, capitalism has taken many dominant forms in different stages:
1. The competitive free market : 19th century infancy,
2. State Monopoly Capitalism : Around WW1, precisely the outcome of previous competition, ie. some competitors won,
3. State Capitalism (aka actually existing socialism) and Fascism (Post-WW1 and 30's crisis),
4. Regulated-Keynesian-Welfare forms, (post-WW2 to 1970's),
5. Neoliberalism : post-80's
Your definitions and concepts are stuck in stage 1, which is why they function as pure ideology to justify capitalism in any subsequent stages, but especially stage 5, and has no other currency.
Copyrights may be "not capitalist" in your ideal sense but in the real historical sense of capitalism, they have been indispensable to capitalism for a century.
I was referring to 3D LCD monitors, not TV's. I'm not sure what the deal is with TV's. You need a dual-link-DVI or the latest HDMI 1.4a port on your graphics card for 120hz output.
Luckily, the LCD's are finally catching up. Look for models that advertise "3D", because these can do 120hz refresh rates in 2D mode. These are TN panels only so far. Samsung, Viewsonic, Acer (and some others) have such screens. I finally bought a Viewsonic 2265wm after holding on to a CRT all these years and I'm satisfied.
Yes, the *real* problems of Nuclear indeed. Which are practically unsolvable and are a curse on future generations. I'm referring ofcourse to the "spent fuel" waste. Before someone yells about them, your "breeder reactors" and such are non-viable chimeras - unless we miraculously achieve world peace and nuclear weapons are a sad memory.
Nuclear power in a nutshell: barely competitive in cost, constant low level yet harmful radiation put out into the environment, small risk of catastrophic failure, insolvable waste problem. Why oh why do we not dump all that money into wind and solar (thermal preferably) yesterday, phase out coal and nukes simultaneously, and work from there.. Oh, because then massive investors or governments will not have a monopoly on our energy production. Wind and solar? Nah, too democratic..
Sorenson h.264 is not the best h.264 encoder
on
H.264 and VP8 Compared
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The immediate problem with this article is that it uses the Sorenson encoder rather than the state-of-the-art x264 encoder for h.264. If x264 was used, the h.264 encodes would demonstrate higher quality and the quality conclusions would most likely be more in favor of h.264. Since x264 is both the best h.264 encoder, and FOSS, it is the ultimate benchmark for any new video codec implementations, and that should be used. The point of VP8 however is that it is now the best free video codec, replacing Theora in that category (which is still being improved and will probably remain relevant in some niche scenarios still). The quality of VP8 is likely not going to surpass h.264, even with open source tinkering, but it will still revolutionize the web through html5 video, it will achieve widespread software support in a matter of a few months, and your devices will pick up support in a year or so (the next generation hardware). VP8 is free, and good enough to be in the ballpark of h.264 even if it is not as good. And that is a huge win.
I agree that if Microsoft is Sauron, Adobe is Saruman. If the FOSS hobbits are going to take down Microsoft, we're gonna have to deal with Adobe first.
Whenever someone comes to me with questions about whether they can/should switch to Linux, I ask them if they make heavy use of Adobe stuff and games. If they do, I tell them to hold out.
In other news, VLMC (NLE from Videolan) will be released soon, shortly after VLC 1.1 makes it out the door, let's see if they can change the picture a little. Then later this year we're supposed to see GIMP with the new UI...
Forget super download rates. It's about upload rates today. An 10mbit ul rather than a 1mbit ul will allow you to become a producer of services on the internet too rather than only a consumer.
With my 5mbit upload on Fiber, I run a 24/7 box that provides these services:
1- A torrent seedbox (utorrent web interface) for me and close friends to use whenever behind connections that block torrents, like dorms, workplaces etc. It's not blazing speed but you can get a damn movie to watch in an hour rather than never.
2- A Filezilla FTP server to push out the torrents downloaded, and for my personal files like short films that I created and would like to share without handing it over to some Tube site.
3- A Mumble voice chat server.
All the while having enough ul bandwidth left over for the 4 PC's that share this line to surf comfortably and play online games.
But you not having to pay rent _is_ an essential part of commie no money ideology. Remember that surplus value is typically seized from those who produce it, i.e. workers, in the form of profit (industry), rent (land) and interest (money).
AFAIK The first game to introduce the Heroes of Might and Magic style turn based map control + combat. Sophisticated mana and xp system for each unit, and you have to chase down on the map and kill on the battlefield the one enemy Hero while keeping your Hero safe.
Majestic intro and great atmosphere throughout the game.
1991 - Ubisoft
http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php%3Fid%3D245
On2, which rapidly releases new spec generations, is currently at VP8 and this is supposed to compete with h.264. AFAIK no one has seen an actual VP8 encoder released to the public, so the comparativ quality is unknown.
The secret about vido codecs is that the implementation and ongoing optimization is more important than the spec itself anyway. Just look at how far XVID has come despite being based on a 10 year old standard. Similarly, Theora was based on VP3, but it is extremely tuned and updated to this day. So Theora is already closer to h.264 (although not on par) than anything from On2 up to VP7 at the moment. VP7 was comparable to h.264 when the h.264 implementations sucked (circa 2005), but so was XVID! since then h.264 implementations, especially x264 has made strides, eclipsing VP7 (and XVID etc).
The moral of the story is that even if VP7 is made open source, it is only comparable to Theora quality anyway, I doubt there is enough room for improvement in that spec to compete with h.264. VP8 probably has more potential, but all we have ar On2's claims and (biased) demonstrations so far. VP8 open sourced + Google pouring in development effort could produce the breakthrough in 1-2 years, who knows.. But nothing from On2 is the holy grail ATM.
The 30-fps-is-all-you-can-see myth was probably born of the notion that the illusion of continuous movement starts to set in around 25-30fps (in film for example). Therefore actually 30fps is the minimum you need rather than the maximum you can perceive.
I could tell in a glance the difference between 72fps and 100fps (both common refresh rates that translate to the max fps when v-sync is on) in Counter-Strike just by briefly moving the mouse to pan the scene.
This site has had the definitive explanation on this issue for a long time, along with many other useful faqs:
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
What they do is merely an up-to-date trick of the tradeless. Beggars, hobos, petty thieves with an internet connection. A criminal enterprise ofcourse, but reverse-baiting them in vigilante fashion just reeks of classism and racism. I don't find it not much funnier than putting monopoly bills in a beggar's can.
I suggest anyone seriously interested in our energy future to take the time to go through this report called "Technofixes" by CorporateWatch UK
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3126
According to this report, only wind and solar come out as having the potential to be both socially desirable and effective in combatting climate change. Hypothetical 4th generation nuclear reactors, even if decided upon, would be too little too late because it takes long to deploy at great up-front cost, and the waste problems remain unsolved (despite what you may hear about the magic of breeder reactors etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
I think the best FOSS candidate for the task of replacing Skype is Jitsi (ex- SIP Communicator).
http://jitsi.org/index.php/Main/HomePage
It supports SIP and XMPP (Jabber) fully, including GTalk. Has built-in zero-config ZRTP. Also supports the proprietary IM networks like MSN and Yahoo to various extents, Skype being the only exception with no support (as expected). Been using it for a few months and the nightlies are getting better and better. The 1.0 release could make a good splash on the internet.
Sounds more like "shared source" design to me, a collaboration between 50 companies. Nothing seems to be open to the public.
Unlike for example the Global Village Construction Set. http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set/
"Open Source - we freely publish our 3d designs, schematics, instructional videos, budgets, and product manuals on our open source wiki and we harness open collaboration with technical contributors."
The rapid release system was brought into effect to compete with Chrome's meteoric rise in usage share and stem the decline of FF. The stalling and loss of usage share of FF started way before this, especially during the long FF3 to FF4 transition, when Chrome was spitting out rapid updates. So no, FF is not losing users because of the new release system. The new release system is a response to the loss of users.
I especially find it hilarious when people complain about the rapid releases.. and then declare they will switch to.. Chrome!.. which has.. rapid releases !
Partisan? Ofcourse, it's a politicised issue! Do you cry "partisan!" if i link to Dawkins in a creationism vs. evolution debate? No? Obviously what matters is if the arguments are valid not that some people are "partisan" to the arguments.
Hammer and sickle and the proletariat? please grow up beyond the mind of a cold war victim. ("overthrowing of the proletariat" made me laugh though, next time try "the proletariat overthrowing capitalism" or similar to avoid embarassment)
If you had spent half the time writing this drivel to actually research this issue, you would know that fossil and nuclear have been subsidized through the roof for half a decade now, right from R&D to purchasing guarantees to insurance. Subsidized renewables? On an absolute scale sure (and we should have more of that), on a scale relative to non-renewable energy, renewable subsidies are a joke.
This is a groundbreaking turn from the country already leading the world in renewable energy.
The question is now, what combination of sources will replace the nuclear piece of the energy pie.
Currently nuclear stands at 22% and renewables at 17% in Germany. I reccomend the literature here for anyone who doubts renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, small hydro, biomass) are up to the task of displacing fossil and nuclear. Especially check out Hermann Scheer's "Energy Autonomy".
As a bonus, this will be a chance to dispel illusions regarding the technical viability of thorium, fast breeder reactors, fusion and other nuclear chymeras.
What kind of calculation did you use to get at that 1000 miles of shoreline figure? Why quote 2MW turbines when we have 7.5MW turbines online and 10MW turbines in development? Furthermore, you assume turbines can only be lined up on the coast single file? Seriously?
Opposing solar on "desert habitat" or wind power on "the birds may die" arguments are indeed embarassingly idiotic. And there is indeed such foolishness displayed by some people who see themselves as environmentalists. However, the source of such bs can often be traced back to fossile-nuclear interests that are deliberately trying to derail renewables by ultra-environmentalist arguments like these. Many a naive environmentalist with no perspective simply buys into this stuff.
I recommend you read the book Energy Autonomy by recently deceased German MP and head of EuroSolar Hermann Scheer. It dispelled any doubts I held about the possibility that renewables -solar, wind, hydro and biomass- can deliver the world's energy needs.
It answers frequent misguided critiques of renewables, as well as laying out the dim prospect for any future for fossile and nuclear power.
Most revealingly, it argues that a decentralized renewables future, by coupling production sites with consumption sites, saves enormously on grid and fuel transportation costs. Such an economy would also break electricity network and fossil-nuclear monopolies (enjoying enormous subsidies in many, many forms) in favor of energy independence at the building, municipal and national levels. That is the most important political aspect one needs to grasp in the renewables issue.
Let me point out that the protest was against existing arbitrary censorship as much as it was about the new 4 "filter packages" (child, family, .tr only, standard - you have to pick 1) that are to be introduced in August.
Already there are estimates of 80000 websites censored - estimated because the list is not made public, nor the reason for censoring. Typically, the targetted sites are around : porn (ALL porn, though they like to wave around child porn as an excuse), atheism (dawkins banned), communism, homosexuality (gay dating sites banned), kurdish nationalism, streaming sites (especially if live streams of a large pay tv channel are infringed), gambling-betting (the state sanctioned sport betting service runs full force ofcourse) and many others. One offending blog or clip can get entire domains banned (wordpress, youtube, etc. were at some point banned too).
I think you equate "free market capitalism" with capitalism per se. Historically, the only immutable characteristic of capitalism has been not the free market but the fixation on the endless accumulation of capital.
Otherwise, capitalism has taken many dominant forms in different stages:
1. The competitive free market : 19th century infancy,
2. State Monopoly Capitalism : Around WW1, precisely the outcome of previous competition, ie. some competitors won,
3. State Capitalism (aka actually existing socialism) and Fascism (Post-WW1 and 30's crisis),
4. Regulated-Keynesian-Welfare forms, (post-WW2 to 1970's),
5. Neoliberalism : post-80's
Your definitions and concepts are stuck in stage 1, which is why they function as pure ideology to justify capitalism in any subsequent stages, but especially stage 5, and has no other currency. Copyrights may be "not capitalist" in your ideal sense but in the real historical sense of capitalism, they have been indispensable to capitalism for a century.
I was referring to 3D LCD monitors, not TV's. I'm not sure what the deal is with TV's. You need a dual-link-DVI or the latest HDMI 1.4a port on your graphics card for 120hz output.
Luckily, the LCD's are finally catching up. Look for models that advertise "3D", because these can do 120hz refresh rates in 2D mode. These are TN panels only so far. Samsung, Viewsonic, Acer (and some others) have such screens. I finally bought a Viewsonic 2265wm after holding on to a CRT all these years and I'm satisfied.
Yes, the *real* problems of Nuclear indeed. Which are practically unsolvable and are a curse on future generations. I'm referring ofcourse to the "spent fuel" waste. Before someone yells about them, your "breeder reactors" and such are non-viable chimeras - unless we miraculously achieve world peace and nuclear weapons are a sad memory. Nuclear power in a nutshell: barely competitive in cost, constant low level yet harmful radiation put out into the environment, small risk of catastrophic failure, insolvable waste problem. Why oh why do we not dump all that money into wind and solar (thermal preferably) yesterday, phase out coal and nukes simultaneously, and work from there.. Oh, because then massive investors or governments will not have a monopoly on our energy production. Wind and solar? Nah, too democratic..
Perhaps this is close to what you want:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Sync
The immediate problem with this article is that it uses the Sorenson encoder rather than the state-of-the-art x264 encoder for h.264. If x264 was used, the h.264 encodes would demonstrate higher quality and the quality conclusions would most likely be more in favor of h.264. Since x264 is both the best h.264 encoder, and FOSS, it is the ultimate benchmark for any new video codec implementations, and that should be used. The point of VP8 however is that it is now the best free video codec, replacing Theora in that category (which is still being improved and will probably remain relevant in some niche scenarios still). The quality of VP8 is likely not going to surpass h.264, even with open source tinkering, but it will still revolutionize the web through html5 video, it will achieve widespread software support in a matter of a few months, and your devices will pick up support in a year or so (the next generation hardware). VP8 is free, and good enough to be in the ballpark of h.264 even if it is not as good. And that is a huge win.
I agree that if Microsoft is Sauron, Adobe is Saruman. If the FOSS hobbits are going to take down Microsoft, we're gonna have to deal with Adobe first. Whenever someone comes to me with questions about whether they can/should switch to Linux, I ask them if they make heavy use of Adobe stuff and games. If they do, I tell them to hold out. In other news, VLMC (NLE from Videolan) will be released soon, shortly after VLC 1.1 makes it out the door, let's see if they can change the picture a little. Then later this year we're supposed to see GIMP with the new UI...
Forget super download rates. It's about upload rates today. An 10mbit ul rather than a 1mbit ul will allow you to become a producer of services on the internet too rather than only a consumer.
With my 5mbit upload on Fiber, I run a 24/7 box that provides these services:
1- A torrent seedbox (utorrent web interface) for me and close friends to use whenever behind connections that block torrents, like dorms, workplaces etc. It's not blazing speed but you can get a damn movie to watch in an hour rather than never.
2- A Filezilla FTP server to push out the torrents downloaded, and for my personal files like short films that I created and would like to share without handing it over to some Tube site.
3- A Mumble voice chat server.
All the while having enough ul bandwidth left over for the 4 PC's that share this line to surf comfortably and play online games.
This is not possible with 1mbit ul.
But you not having to pay rent _is_ an essential part of commie no money ideology. Remember that surplus value is typically seized from those who produce it, i.e. workers, in the form of profit (industry), rent (land) and interest (money).
AFAIK The first game to introduce the Heroes of Might and Magic style turn based map control + combat. Sophisticated mana and xp system for each unit, and you have to chase down on the map and kill on the battlefield the one enemy Hero while keeping your Hero safe. Majestic intro and great atmosphere throughout the game. 1991 - Ubisoft http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php%3Fid%3D245
On2, which rapidly releases new spec generations, is currently at VP8 and this is supposed to compete with h.264. AFAIK no one has seen an actual VP8 encoder released to the public, so the comparativ quality is unknown.
The secret about vido codecs is that the implementation and ongoing optimization is more important than the spec itself anyway. Just look at how far XVID has come despite being based on a 10 year old standard. Similarly, Theora was based on VP3, but it is extremely tuned and updated to this day. So Theora is already closer to h.264 (although not on par) than anything from On2 up to VP7 at the moment. VP7 was comparable to h.264 when the h.264 implementations sucked (circa 2005), but so was XVID! since then h.264 implementations, especially x264 has made strides, eclipsing VP7 (and XVID etc).
The moral of the story is that even if VP7 is made open source, it is only comparable to Theora quality anyway, I doubt there is enough room for improvement in that spec to compete with h.264. VP8 probably has more potential, but all we have ar On2's claims and (biased) demonstrations so far. VP8 open sourced + Google pouring in development effort could produce the breakthrough in 1-2 years, who knows.. But nothing from On2 is the holy grail ATM.
..and yet no one can ABX it. unless you have Monster Cables (TM) ofcourse ;)
The 30-fps-is-all-you-can-see myth was probably born of the notion that the illusion of continuous movement starts to set in around 25-30fps (in film for example). Therefore actually 30fps is the minimum you need rather than the maximum you can perceive.
I could tell in a glance the difference between 72fps and 100fps (both common refresh rates that translate to the max fps when v-sync is on) in Counter-Strike just by briefly moving the mouse to pan the scene.
This site has had the definitive explanation on this issue for a long time, along with many other useful faqs: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
Newcomers.. ofcourse GSpot exists. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
It's just discontinued and we all use this now instead: http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en
What they do is merely an up-to-date trick of the tradeless. Beggars, hobos, petty thieves with an internet connection. A criminal enterprise ofcourse, but reverse-baiting them in vigilante fashion just reeks of classism and racism. I don't find it not much funnier than putting monopoly bills in a beggar's can.
I suggest anyone seriously interested in our energy future to take the time to go through this report called "Technofixes" by CorporateWatch UK
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3126
According to this report, only wind and solar come out as having the potential to be both socially desirable and effective in combatting climate change. Hypothetical 4th generation nuclear reactors, even if decided upon, would be too little too late because it takes long to deploy at great up-front cost, and the waste problems remain unsolved (despite what you may hear about the magic of breeder reactors etc.)