Slashdot Mirror


User: CSMatt

CSMatt's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,063
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,063

  1. Re:General answer on Ask Matt Asay About Ubuntu and Canonical · · Score: 1

    The EeePC 700 series has a maximum resolution of 800x480, so yes the Display Properties window is a legitimate problem even in today's world (in this case, enabling and changing the resolution of the external monitor).

  2. Re:.h26x a stumbling point? on Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution · · Score: 1

    Your blu-ray player plays h.264

    What Blu-ray player?

    your ipod plays it

    Nope.

    your psp plays it

    No PSP.

    your game console plays it

    Try again.

    the graphics card in your PC plays it

    Sure. In software.

    your mobile phones play it

    I have one mobile phone, and it barely takes pictures.

  3. Re:Arrogance... on Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution · · Score: 1

    It is possible to argue that AAC is displacing MP3, albeit silently.

    For example, how many people who rip their CDs with iTunes actually go into the preferences and change the format from AAC to MP3?

    "MP3" is synonymous with "audio" for most people. Chances are that, especially with Windows' default hiding of extensions, they have no idea what the file is really encoded in. And as long as they can play it, they have no reason to care.

  4. Re:Wimax on Verizon CTO Says 4G Service Is On Track · · Score: 1

    Yes, because what the mobile business desperately needs is another standards war now that 3GPP2/CDMA has bit the dust.

  5. Re:4g forces IPV6? on Verizon CTO Says 4G Service Is On Track · · Score: 1

    Cellular telephone systems present a large deployment field for Internet Protocol devices as mobile telephone service is being transitioned from 3G systems to next generation (4G) technologies in which voice is provisioned as a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. This mandates the use of IPv6 for such networks due to the impending IPv4 address exhaustion. In the U.S., cellular operator Verizon has released technical specifications for devices operating on its future networks.[30] The specification mandates IPv6 operation according to the 3GPP Release 8 Specifications (March 2009) and deprecates IPv4 as an optional capability.

    Wikipedia. Print version of Wikipedia's source.

  6. Re:At least you can see the dangling sword on Oh, What a Lovely Standards War · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except for those of course who can claim to hold patents on AVC and aren't in the MPEG-LA.

    Paying off MPEG-LA only protects you from MPEG-LA. Submarine patents can still surface from anyone not in that organization.

  7. Re:H.264 is ISO/IEC 14496-10, not a de facto stand on Oh, What a Lovely Standards War · · Score: 1

    Ten years ago, Linux users complained that they could not view the video on the Web because it was in QuickTime containers with Sorenson video and Qdesign audio and that was all proprietary, not standardized.

    And the response then would have been something along the lines of "Windows/Internet Explorer is the standard."

  8. Re:Doublespeak on Oh, What a Lovely Standards War · · Score: 1

    Divx just slides in because most devices will play it hardware assisted even though you need to install the codecs on a desktop.

    Before MPEG 4 Part 2 (a.k.a. "DivX) became popular on the desktop, how many DivX-compatible devices did you see in the marketplace?

  9. Re:LaTex on Google Docs Replaces OpenOffice In Ubuntu Netbook Edition · · Score: 1

    Fine for you, but not everyone is willing or even able to deal with LaTeX's learning curve compared to WYSIWYG applications.

  10. Re:Who cares? on Google Docs Replaces OpenOffice In Ubuntu Netbook Edition · · Score: 1

    Yes, but people have to both know that it is there at all and how to install new software in Ubuntu.

    Free software may have a decent usage share overall on netbooks, but most people come from Windows and nonfree software land. Probably the only words in non-Windows marketing and demonstration that they will understand are "Linux" and "Firefox," and even then the former would instill the idea of a "hacker" OS. Overcoming this barrier is hard enough. By the time you get them to buy the thing, one of the first questions they will ask is "Where is Microsoft Office?" If you mention using Google Docs instead, the inevitable "Can't I just use that on Windows instead?" comes up.

  11. Re:Remember folks, it's a NETbook. on Google Docs Replaces OpenOffice In Ubuntu Netbook Edition · · Score: 1

    Except that some of us buy and use netbooks because of their portability, not just their Internet access.

    I use OpenOffice.org on my netbook to do work, because I do not want to use Google Docs and because carrying around my main laptop has become a hassle. While I'm certainly smart enough to just install the package back in through the repositories, I think it would be much better if Ubiquity asked the user whether he or she wanted to use an online office suite or a local one. Most newcomers to non-Windows platforms aren't going to know that OpenOffice.org is there if they aren't informed of its existence, and I doubt that I am alone in preferring a local suite to an online one, even on netbooks.

  12. Re:XLink Kai on Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down · · Score: 1

    Fine. except that the Xbox 360's system link drops connections with ping times longer than 33 ms (Warning, uncited Wikipedia reference). Sure, you can just get an old Xbox secondhand for actual Xbox games, but this doesn't help for anyone who downloaded them from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

    If Microsoft is interested in mitigating the damage caused by terminating the service for Xbox games and consoles, the least they could do is lift this restriction on system link connections, at the very least for these soon-to-be-unsupported titles.

    PS: the downloads page does not seem to have the source code for the engine, only the UI. Where is the source code for the rest of the software?

  13. Re:Deep Packet Inspection for URL Not Required... on FBI Pushing For 2-Year Retention of Web Traffic Logs · · Score: 1

    That may be how they'll rope websites, and other types of internet services for that matter, into complying with log retention.

    That is, until they move overseas.

  14. Re:there is not enough storage in America for this on FBI Pushing For 2-Year Retention of Web Traffic Logs · · Score: 1

    And pass on all that cost to the possibly-unwilling taxpayer? I think not.

  15. Re:From TFS on MPEG LA Extends H.264 Royalty-Free Period · · Score: 1

    I don't understand patentese or codecs, but could they not also be enforced against H.264/AVC as well?

  16. Where have I seen this before? on Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah. Now I remember.

  17. Re:HTML5 for the win? Sorry, that's not a codec. on YouTube Revamp Imminent? · · Score: 1

    If YouTube were to implement HTML5 support with, say, h.264 in an mp4 container, they'd have to do no transcoding, probably not even re-encapsulating. It would Just Work on Chrome and Safari, and there's no technological reason it couldn't work on Firefox -- only political assholes who refuse to implement such support, even in countries which don't respect software patents. If IE ever decides to support HTML5 at all, I very much doubt that Microsoft doesn't have h.264 licenses. Only Opera really has an excuse here.

    Really? What exactly is Opera's excuse? Not enough revenue? I doubt that. They probably aren't making much on their desktop browser, but their mobile browsers, combined with their deal with Nintendo to provide their technology for the DS and Wii, should make them more than enough to secure a license with MPEG-LA.

    Firefox, however, can not provide AVC support because of legal hurdles. I haven't read the MPL, but I know that the GPL and the LGPL have an all-or-nothing stance about patents. Either MPEG-LA needs to allow all instances of Firefox, including the downstream versions and forks, a license for AVC, or the project is not allowed to secure one at all. What happens if Mozilla gets MPEG-LA sanctioned AVC support for the upstream version only depends on whether they hold the copyright for all of their code. If they do, then anyone who distributes Mozilla's browser further must remove the codecs or risk a license violation (assuming the MPL has a similar patent clause), effectively making it proprietary for anyone who doesn't know how to, or doesn't want to, alter the browser code. If Mozilla doesn't hold all of the copyright to the browser, then they themselves are in violation of the license, and are ironically prohibited by copyright law from distributing their own browser.

    Google can take a rather unique approach to this problem. Chrome has AVC and Theora support, but Chrome is actually proprietary, licensed under the Google TOS. The free Chromium code on which it is based, however, does not contain any AVC support.

  18. Re:It's the expensive places that still charge for on US McDonald's Wi-Fi Going Free In January · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hiltons, in particular, often charge unbelievable rates: $15/night in some hotels.

    I had heard they were promiscuous socialites, but had no idea they were hookers.

  19. Re:Works Great on Leopard on Google Upgrades Chrome To Beta For OS X, Linux · · Score: 1

    Well you are probably not in the target audience then. Iron is most likely used by those who use as few Google services as they can, or at least use them without Google accounts.

  20. Re:I'll take accurate first, please on Devices To Take Textbooks Beyond Text · · Score: 1

    Well, that is, if the textbook industry wasn't super greedy and would want to charge as much for a patch as for the original textbook.

    They already do this, only they call the patches "editions."

  21. Not True on What Do You Do When Printers Cost Less Than Ink? · · Score: 1

    You also need an audio system of some sort and a copy of "Still" by the Ghetto Boys.

  22. Re:Copy Apple & Google on DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I would not call the iPhone platform "open" in any sense of the word. The software is proprietary, you have to use Apple's tools, and you can only distribute your application* if Apple gives you the go-ahead.

    *I'm not counting jailbreaking and alternative locations here. Apple disables this kind of thing by default, so your users will be required to take extra steps that complicate things for them both now and in the future.

  23. Re:Linux 20% market share on Windows 7 Share Grows At XP's Expense · · Score: 1

    That's 7.48% "non-MS share" on these numbers (and really only non-Windows--it's not apparent whether they count Windows Mobile as "Windows" or as "Other"). Linux, therefore has 13.37% of the "non-MS market".

    Interesting percentage there.

  24. Lost in translation on After 35 Years, Another Message Sent From Arecibo · · Score: 1

    Given that we didn't beam out the Wikipedia article for the first message, I'm going to try and anticipate what the alien civilization will see it as by deciphering it myself without reading the article first:

    "From top to bottom, the word 'aliens' in white English letters, a purple rock, some Space Invaders, a man with a giant blue head and a staff to his right, some white noise, and a bunch of stars over Planet GMail."

  25. Re:Define killer app on Try Out Chrome OS In a Virtual Machine · · Score: 1

    I think that the standard six hours or less shows a peculiar lack of any progress. Sure, I can go to a coffee shop with my laptop. But I can't relax at a coffee shop with my laptop.

    Somehow I don't think that has anything to do with how long your laptop lasts.