Let's see, I've got my video capture card working on v4l, I've got video capture to mjpeg (good balance of 'quality of original encoding' and 'file size taken up by original encoding') working through xawtv's(no, not a troll, that really is xawtv's URL) 'Streamer' utility, I've got framerate and format conversions of other file types working through mplayer's Mencoder, and I've got The MJPEG tools for generation of VCD and SVCD video from the original sources (the yuvdenoise filter is handy when transferring old VHS's to VCD), and when I want to get more complex with my conversions, I've got transcode (the '.ppml' format for subtitle rendering seems to support quite a lot of effects...) and now I've got Cinelerra (which I can never seem to spell properly the first time) for messing with the video itself, once I figure out how to use the program (which now runs on my Slackware box after seeing a previous poster's tip about finding the libgcc* libraries and such in OpenOffice - Thanks!).
Now if only I could get xawtv to recognize that I have libquicktime.so on my machine so that I could save my video to.mov's (so that I can get more than 2GB at a time) I'd be set...
Well, that and support for.ogg [XVid/VP3]/Vorbis video file encoding (MPlayer already supports playback at least, or so I'm told, and it sounds like support for this in ffmpeg may be coming Real Soon Now from what I've seen on the mailing list...)
So, there's quite a lot of work that seems to be going on with Linux multimedia (not even counting proprietary packages and audio-only tools) if you look long enough...
But I thought "God" was a title, rather than a name (like "Satan", which I'm told is a sort of "title" meaning "the Opposer" rather than an actual "name" - I have no idea if that's really true, though). "JHWH", I thought, was the "name" (as it is written)?....
They wouldn't want to see the creators of South Park begin marketing Mickey Mouse cartoons.
That's Not An Issue! "Mickey Mouse" is ALSO protected under Trademark law, which doesn't expire so long as it is "protected" by its owner. Someone trying to market "Mickey Mouse cartoons" (other than public-domain originals) without Disney's permission will find themselves in court on TRADEMARK violation, even if they aren't then infringing on "Copy"(Distribution)right any longer...
Oh, and this issue isn't COPYright...
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One other thing that I'd REALLY like to see codified into law is that copyright isn't really about copying...
Realistically, the fair use doctrine and "first sale" and so on, IN NO WAY are intended to restrict copying - what they are intended to restrict is distribution.
"Fair Use" says if I legally purchase a book, I can take the photocopier that's in my study and make 20 copies if I want. I can make enlarged copies. I can transcribe it in medieval calligraphy with gold leaf and illumination. I can translate it into Spanish, Latin, Esperanto, and "Elvish" if I want.
Where the law is SUPPOSED to step in is if I attempt to give away or sell those copies without permission. That's distribution, not copying.
This even applies to things like rental videos, I believe - if I rent Orgazmo from the local video place, for example, I've basically (as I understand it) "temporarily purchased" the video. If my big-screen TV only has a DVD/VCD player hooked up to it, I believe I can legally (theoretically) make VCD's out of the VHS tape I've rented to watch on the DVD player FOR THE DURATION OF THE LEGAL RENTAL - after which I must destroy the VCD's (at a whopping $0.80 or so for the two CD-R's, it doesn't add much to the cost of the rental). If I don't, I've effectively "distributed illegally to myself", as I no longer have "license" to use the material from the video tape (unless I purchase it).
I think a simple find-and-replace of "copy" with "distribution" in the laws would go a LONG way to fixing the mess that is "copyright"...I don't feel very "harmed" by not being allowed to sell or give away all the copies of "Steamboat Willy" I want, but I do feel harmed by the threat of going to jail if I transcode a legally purchased dvd of the cartoon to a DivX/Vorbis Ogg file to watch on my laptop computer. (That I am not allowed to create derivative works or make copies of "Steamboat Willy" after 80 years IS excessively restrictive still, but is less urgent to address, I think.)
NOT "Incentive to create"!
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The purpose of copyright and patents is NOT to provide "incentive to create" - it is to provide "incentive to keep creating" and "INCENTIVE TO MAKE AVAILABLE" (which, in turn, is also intended to foster continued creation). The idea being that if there was no "protection" from metaphorical poaching of concepts and expressions of ideas, that people would tend to keep them secret. This being the case, we ONLY need "enough" protection - beyond that, there is no additional incentive to make things available, and in fact, as we can see, it PREVENTS things from being available. Patents seem to be routinely used not to "protect" a product or process, but to HINDER someone else from investigating anything similar.
Copyright and Patents are "bargains" made with the public, via the government. The basic "bargain" is "Okay, we'll let you have exclusive control, AND back you up with law enforcement, paid for by taxpayers, for a limited time, in return for which, after that "limited time", this work will become available for use, investigation, and modification by the public, which may then enter into this same bargain with the derivative works they then create."
"Progress of Science and the Useful arts" are NOT, in my opinion, "promoted" by the excessive power that the current extensions and additions to the body of "intellectual property" law provide. The concept, as *I* understood it, was a variant of the "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" - that is, "with enough people to examine ideas, any useful applications and variations will become obvious". This is obviously thwarted when nobody is allowed to legally attempt novel variations or applications until long after the "protected" work (invention or copyright-protected item) is obsolete or mostly-irrelevant...
No, seriously. As far as I can tell, Jar-jar's only REAL crime was being the only character in the first movie with a personality of any sort (the fact that the personality in question was that of an annoying muppet only made this fact more painful, as it meant HE was the only character a semi-sane human being could relate to...which of course, nobody wanted to do...).
His speech and voice aren't really much sillier than Yoda's (and Yoda didn't even have the gee-whiz CGI effects to to keep him from being such an obvious puppet). His slapstick antics weren't really any more annoying than R2D2/C3P0's (heck, the "how rude!" schtick just REEKS of C3P0) were in the original movies...but in the original movies, the main characters HAD personalities that outshone the 'droids, so they weren't so "glaring". In TPM, it just made Jar-jar stand out way more than he would have if the other characters weren't acting like emotionless drones most of the time...
From the brief blurb in the review, it sounds like Lucas is still keeping Jar-jar in the "annoying comic relief" category (though for only a very brief appearance this time)...but I'd much rather they actually let Jar-jar develop beyond that. Seriously - if they let him hang around the other characters long enough, they can have him lose the more outrageous aspects of his speech, get a grip on his tendency to comically panic everytime something happens, and accomplish something once in a while. Or, perhaps he'll just get fed up with the abuse he gets from the alleged "good guys" and give in to the Dark Side - perhaps Lucas' "Big Plans" involve Jar-jar coming back as a vengeful Sith to kick everyone's butts for tormenting him in the first two movies while letting R2D2 and C3P0 do their thing without comment (evidently, they're back in this movie as well).
(If Jar-jar using Magic Force Powers(tm) seems improbable to you, take a look at this article. It may just be that Lucas overdid Jar-jar's "fool" act as much as he overdid the Jedi's "calm and cool" act in the first movie...)
Now if only someone will found the Association for Prevention of Cruelty to Comedy Sidekicks, we'll be in business...
This story's now off of the main page, so I don't know if anyone will see it, but here goes:
I actually got a decent reply from the PR department at Sorenson in response to my question - I had asked them about what was preventing them from making even a binary-only decoder module available for something besides Windows/Mac...
The answer was interesting - as expected, the exclusivity agreements with Apple prevented them from making it available at all unless Apple wanted it done. Interestingly enough, though, the I was ALSO told that The exclusivity agreement in question expired last month (which may have something to do with the timing of Apple's lawsuit?) and that they are in negotiation with Apple about renewal, and if Apple doesn't renew, they'll be able to make the codec available, at least for licensing if nothing else.
I've got to give Sorenson this much credit, at least: their reply was prompt, polite, and informative, which gives me some hope for their future...
I sincerely hope you're correct about this - I'd LOVE to have some way of dealing with the one last codec that I ever find myself wishing I could use...
I actually, just a few minutes ago, sent a polite question to their (Sorenson's) public relations address asking for their side of the "why sorenson's not available on Linux" story, so hopefully at least a little more of the background will come out.
It DOES sound like the codec they licensed to Macromedia is different from the one used in QuickTime currently, though. And, there's also the question of if and when Macromedia will get around to releasing "FlashMX" playback for Linux.
Still...it'd be a step in the right direction. If nothing else, perhaps it'll warn off other companies considering "exclusive" agreements with Apple. (I almost get the impression from the stories that in essence, Apple feels the mere 4.5 million [a lot of money by MY standards, but for a major corporation? Chump-change.] they paid Sorenson legally paralyzes Sorenson's future development of income for the duration of the agreement...)
I find it at once annoying and gratifying at the same time that Sorenson has no problem using Free Software - their website appears to be running Apache with PHP (can't tell what the OS is). Checking the IP addresses, it LOOKS to me like the server is actually physically part of their own network, rather than some outside ISP contracted to host the site for them...
I agree - I think the future will be with, if not "truly" open codecs, at least "openly available" ones (Sorenson seems to be the ONLY "major" video codec in use that isn't available in some form on Linux - even MPlayer can handle "windows media" files. I suspect if Sorenson would manage to find a loophole in their agreements with Apple (who I think probably considers the popularity of the extra-proprietary "QuickTime with Sorenson" media format to be the biggest thing that they have to fight against "open" systems) and released even a binary-only codec that could be plugged into MPlayer or xanim or whatever, that their popularity would take off, at least in the short term - from what I have heard, that would then give them indisputably the "best" overall video codec that's widely available.
From what I've seen and heard (which I must confess isn't very much), VP3's quality is about the same as Windows Media (i.e. not that great). I get the impression that there are fewer visible "artifacts" but that the image is somewhat "blurrier". Even so, it'd be nice to see VP3/Vorbis in.ogg files become popular, just so that there'd be a completely "open" standard available to build from for video "content"...
It seems to me that, really, the "problem" is that "Copyright" implies that "making copies" is the important part of the exclusive rights for "content owners", when really, the important part is "Distributionright" instead.
The "common sense" understanding of "Fair Use" seems to boil down to "if I paid for it, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, including make copies in different formats for interoperability, archiving, and so on", so every time some wealthy **AA Organization pressures the legislature to "protect COPYright", anything that results will necessarily trample all over "Fair Use".
If, instead, we can get the legislature to focus on DISTRIBUTIONright, Fair use should be protected - at least, more so than it would be if the efforts were to prevent "Copying" rather than "unauthorized Distribution".
(After all, If I 'rip' a DVD that I've purchased to a DivX 5/Vorbis.ogg file for my own use, I don't think any even-remotely-rational person would call that "piracy". It doesn't become "piracy" until I start giving out those files to people who don't have a legal right to the material encoded in it.)
I'm sure those numbers would be a lot higher if they could have reached those lost souls who have been abducted, but not returned.
Heh...never thought of it that way. That would explain why the stereotype is that only "rednecks" and "hicks" and other "stupid/ignorant" stereotypes ever report being abducted - evidently, all the SMART ones who were abducted passed the tests and were kept.
Of course, the test thresholds may not be too high. After all, we're talking about a group of space aliens who supposedly have the technology to travel interstellar distances and fly around mostly-undetected by modern Earthly technology (except, of course, for the occasional space-alien crash in the middle of nowhere), but yet end up resorting to anal probes and hacking up cattle as their research methods...
You'd think a super-high-tech group of beings would have thought of dragging out the Computerized Tomography equipment or something instead....
The cost results from the smaller base of people that will opt-out
Ah, I love "spin"...
As comes up in several other debates (e.g. Napster/etc.), this is NOT a "cost", despite the fact that corporate mouthpieces insist on calling it that in fits of melodramatic doomsaying. This is a "reduction of extra profits."
In other words, us not giving them our personal information to sell to the aforementioned whoremongers is not us "taking something from them", it is us "giving them less". I think this is an important, if subtle, distinction that needs to be made...
If a homeless person begging for money gets and average of $0.75 from every person who gives him any, and I give him $0.25, have I "cost" him $0.50?....
I don't know how far along they are yet, but it APPEARS, from lurking on the mailing list, that there is some support for.ogg format media files (i.e..ogg file with vorbis audio and, say, XVid video), and I BELIEVE they will be adding support for the format for mencoder as well, at some point. Depending on how soon this takes place, this may be an option for people wanting to archive their DVD collections...
(I wouldn't be surprised to see support for the vp3 codec soon as well, since according to a blurb on this weeks' Linux Weekly News, they (that is, the guys the made vp3) apparently posted to one of the ogg development lists about getting a 'vp3 in.ogg' project going. It'll be nice to see some more semi-official work on video in.ogg...)
Mencoder is easier, transcode is more versatile (I think).
Mencoder is the "encoding" project that goes along with Mplayer, which in my opinion is probably the best-performing media player with the widest support for files and codecs (including Windows Media codecs, using the 'native' Windows DLL's) for linux at the moment, though not necessarily the easiest to use (not difficult, in my opinion, either, just not "clicky-pointy" simple like, say, Xine).
Trans code, on the other hand, has a bewildering variety of options to work through, but has a ton of functionality to go with it.
In both cases, the software handles reading DVD's, and can convert them to other formats. Transcode handles a bunch of different formats and codecs. Mencoder is limited to.avi file format at the moment, but can put a variety of codecs into this avi (including vorbis audio, as I recall). I've also found that you can even use mencoder to "capture" mms:// files for offline perusing or conversion, which is nice, since otherwise I wouldn't get anything but the Microsoft "Download Media Player for Mac or Windows" page whenever I tried to view such things...
For MPlayer/Mencoder, I strongly recommend reading the documentation (the software is great, but the impatience of the people on the mplayer mailing lists with people asking questions that are answered in the documentation are well known) and using a recent set of CVS sources.
I've been wondering about this myself, for some time. Not for any "serious" reason, but I'd love to play with web-cartoons. Problem is, I doubt that I've got $500 worth of talent to justify buying Macromedia FlashMaker(or whatever it's called) and installing Windows to use it...
There appear to be three ways of approaching this from a free/open perspective that I know of:
Ming and other 'flash-making' libraries. Drawback here is that they supply the raw functionality, but no "authoring environment" seems to exist for them.
SVG. Don't know much about this. I know there are some authoring tools being developed for it (Seems to me I've seen, among others, a KDE application for it). On the other hand - does it do sound?
MNG over Ogg. I'd love to see this. Apparently, in the Ogg CVS there is a crude tool for messing with this. This has the drawback that it's not currently in use anywhere, and like Flash, there don't seem to be any free/open (or otherwise Linux-accessible) MNG-authoring programs that I can find. If this goes anywhere, though, it'd give the ability to both download or "stream" it, with MNG graphics and effects and Vorbis audio.
Can anyone further enlighten me on these three options?
Believe it or not, this would actually be very useful to me - the people at work are hopelessly addicted to "PowerPoint", and have had me convert various "powerpoint" presentations to static slideshows for web presentation before. It's a pain.
Export to flash from Impress would not only make that a lot easier, but would give me yet another excuse to push alternatives to MS Office...
(Looks like the message you're linking to was from several months ago, too...wonder how soon an implementation will be available to test with?...
Solar activity also indicates global warming on Mars
See what the irresponsible US Government did!?!? They went and sent that damned "Viking" SUV to Mars back in the 70's, and now it's got global warming too!:-)
Clampett's work on the project happened a LONG time ago. I'm sure a Google search would turn something up[...]
Looking at what came up on MY google search ("Edgar Rice Burroughs" "Bob Clampett"), it appears that some images related to this project might actually be in the "extras" section of a Beany and Cecil DVD that has evidently been released...
complete with radium-powered propulsion-ray personal hovercraft[...]
As I recall, around the time this story was written, Radium with the Spiffy New Thing. As I recall from my readings of the "Blahblahblah of Mars" series many, many years ago, I seem to recall that science-fictiony stuff throughout was "Radium powered", from guns that shot radium bullets to Radium-powered lights. In the "Real World", at the same time, Radium turned into a health(!) fad. The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices has bits and pieces related to this, including a box from the time labelled as containing Radium Suppositories (No joke!)
The website above has a couple of pictures of other Radium related "health" things, as well as a bunch of other rather mind-boggling things...
I hope the filmmakers KEEP the absurd "Radium" stuff in the movie, frankly (as well as any other "early-1900's sci-fi" elements of style) rather than doing something screwy to make it more "modern"...
I was certain these books were in the public domain.
Well, the writings themselves pretty much HAVE to be (the first book was written in 1912, according to the article).
The article mentions: Danton Burroughs, grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a director of the rights holding company[...]
I wonder exactly what "rights" the "holding company" has? Perhaps they've Trademarked the characters? That would (as I understand it) mean that verbatim copies of the original stories are public domain, but "derivative works" using any of the trademarked characters or settings would need to license them (which, to me, emphasizes the bogosity of Disney's "Mickey Mouse Must Be Protected By Eternal Copyright Or The World Will End(tm)" arguments - since I'm pretty sure they maintain Trademark rights to Mickey and co., the only thing really at issue is free distribution of some of their really old works...)
Look at how quickly they absorb american music, food, literature and movies.
Not to mention LANGUAGE. Buy or rent some Anime' sometime with the original Japanese language track...and listen for how many English words and phrases pop up in the speech...
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Let's see, I've got my video capture card working on v4l, I've got video capture to mjpeg (good balance of 'quality of original encoding' and 'file size taken up by original encoding') working through xawtv's(no, not a troll, that really is xawtv's URL) 'Streamer' utility, I've got framerate and format conversions of other file types working through mplayer's Mencoder, and I've got The MJPEG tools for generation of VCD and SVCD video from the original sources (the yuvdenoise filter is handy when transferring old VHS's to VCD), and when I want to get more complex with my conversions, I've got transcode (the '.ppml' format for subtitle rendering seems to support quite a lot of effects...) and now I've got Cinelerra (which I can never seem to spell properly the first time) for messing with the video itself, once I figure out how to use the program (which now runs on my Slackware box after seeing a previous poster's tip about finding the libgcc* libraries and such in OpenOffice - Thanks!).
Now if only I could get xawtv to recognize that I have libquicktime.so on my machine so that I could save my video to .mov's (so that I can get more than 2GB at a time) I'd be set...
Well, that and support for .ogg [XVid/VP3]/Vorbis video file encoding (MPlayer already supports playback at least, or so I'm told, and it sounds like support for this in ffmpeg may be coming Real Soon Now from what I've seen on the mailing list...)
So, there's quite a lot of work that seems to be going on with Linux multimedia (not even counting proprietary packages and audio-only tools) if you look long enough...
But I thought "God" was a title, rather than a name (like "Satan", which I'm told is a sort of "title" meaning "the Opposer" rather than an actual "name" - I have no idea if that's really true, though). "JHWH", I thought, was the "name" (as it is written)?....
That's Not An Issue! "Mickey Mouse" is ALSO protected under Trademark law, which doesn't expire so long as it is "protected" by its owner. Someone trying to market "Mickey Mouse cartoons" (other than public-domain originals) without Disney's permission will find themselves in court on TRADEMARK violation, even if they aren't then infringing on "Copy"(Distribution)right any longer...
One other thing that I'd REALLY like to see codified into law is that copyright isn't really about copying...
Realistically, the fair use doctrine and "first sale" and so on, IN NO WAY are intended to restrict copying - what they are intended to restrict is distribution .
"Fair Use" says if I legally purchase a book, I can take the photocopier that's in my study and make 20 copies if I want. I can make enlarged copies. I can transcribe it in medieval calligraphy with gold leaf and illumination. I can translate it into Spanish, Latin, Esperanto, and "Elvish" if I want.
Where the law is SUPPOSED to step in is if I attempt to give away or sell those copies without permission. That's distribution , not copying.
This even applies to things like rental videos, I believe - if I rent Orgazmo from the local video place, for example, I've basically (as I understand it) "temporarily purchased" the video. If my big-screen TV only has a DVD/VCD player hooked up to it, I believe I can legally (theoretically) make VCD's out of the VHS tape I've rented to watch on the DVD player FOR THE DURATION OF THE LEGAL RENTAL - after which I must destroy the VCD's (at a whopping $0.80 or so for the two CD-R's, it doesn't add much to the cost of the rental). If I don't, I've effectively " distributed illegally to myself ", as I no longer have "license" to use the material from the video tape (unless I purchase it).
I think a simple find-and-replace of "copy" with "distribution" in the laws would go a LONG way to fixing the mess that is "copyright"...I don't feel very "harmed" by not being allowed to sell or give away all the copies of "Steamboat Willy" I want, but I do feel harmed by the threat of going to jail if I transcode a legally purchased dvd of the cartoon to a DivX/Vorbis Ogg file to watch on my laptop computer. (That I am not allowed to create derivative works or make copies of "Steamboat Willy" after 80 years IS excessively restrictive still, but is less urgent to address, I think.)
The purpose of copyright and patents is NOT to provide "incentive to create" - it is to provide "incentive to keep creating" and "INCENTIVE TO MAKE AVAILABLE" (which, in turn, is also intended to foster continued creation). The idea being that if there was no "protection" from metaphorical poaching of concepts and expressions of ideas, that people would tend to keep them secret. This being the case, we ONLY need "enough" protection - beyond that, there is no additional incentive to make things available, and in fact, as we can see, it PREVENTS things from being available. Patents seem to be routinely used not to "protect" a product or process, but to HINDER someone else from investigating anything similar.
Copyright and Patents are "bargains" made with the public, via the government. The basic "bargain" is "Okay, we'll let you have exclusive control, AND back you up with law enforcement, paid for by taxpayers, for a limited time, in return for which, after that "limited time", this work will become available for use, investigation, and modification by the public, which may then enter into this same bargain with the derivative works they then create."
"Progress of Science and the Useful arts" are NOT, in my opinion, "promoted" by the excessive power that the current extensions and additions to the body of "intellectual property" law provide. The concept, as *I* understood it, was a variant of the "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" - that is, "with enough people to examine ideas, any useful applications and variations will become obvious". This is obviously thwarted when nobody is allowed to legally attempt novel variations or applications until long after the "protected" work (invention or copyright-protected item) is obsolete or mostly-irrelevant...
No, seriously. As far as I can tell, Jar-jar's only REAL crime was being the only character in the first movie with a personality of any sort (the fact that the personality in question was that of an annoying muppet only made this fact more painful, as it meant HE was the only character a semi-sane human being could relate to...which of course, nobody wanted to do...).
His speech and voice aren't really much sillier than Yoda's (and Yoda didn't even have the gee-whiz CGI effects to to keep him from being such an obvious puppet). His slapstick antics weren't really any more annoying than R2D2/C3P0's (heck, the "how rude!" schtick just REEKS of C3P0) were in the original movies...but in the original movies, the main characters HAD personalities that outshone the 'droids, so they weren't so "glaring". In TPM, it just made Jar-jar stand out way more than he would have if the other characters weren't acting like emotionless drones most of the time...
From the brief blurb in the review, it sounds like Lucas is still keeping Jar-jar in the "annoying comic relief" category (though for only a very brief appearance this time)...but I'd much rather they actually let Jar-jar develop beyond that. Seriously - if they let him hang around the other characters long enough, they can have him lose the more outrageous aspects of his speech, get a grip on his tendency to comically panic everytime something happens, and accomplish something once in a while. Or, perhaps he'll just get fed up with the abuse he gets from the alleged "good guys" and give in to the Dark Side - perhaps Lucas' "Big Plans" involve Jar-jar coming back as a vengeful Sith to kick everyone's butts for tormenting him in the first two movies while letting R2D2 and C3P0 do their thing without comment (evidently, they're back in this movie as well).
(If Jar-jar using Magic Force Powers(tm) seems improbable to you, take a look at this article. It may just be that Lucas overdid Jar-jar's "fool" act as much as he overdid the Jedi's "calm and cool" act in the first movie...)
Now if only someone will found the Association for Prevention of Cruelty to Comedy Sidekicks, we'll be in business...
This story's now off of the main page, so I don't know if anyone will see it, but here goes:
I actually got a decent reply from the PR department at Sorenson in response to my question - I had asked them about what was preventing them from making even a binary-only decoder module available for something besides Windows/Mac...
The answer was interesting - as expected, the exclusivity agreements with Apple prevented them from making it available at all unless Apple wanted it done. Interestingly enough, though, the I was ALSO told that The exclusivity agreement in question expired last month (which may have something to do with the timing of Apple's lawsuit?) and that they are in negotiation with Apple about renewal, and if Apple doesn't renew, they'll be able to make the codec available, at least for licensing if nothing else.
I've got to give Sorenson this much credit, at least: their reply was prompt, polite, and informative, which gives me some hope for their future...
I sincerely hope you're correct about this - I'd LOVE to have some way of dealing with the one last codec that I ever find myself wishing I could use...
I actually, just a few minutes ago, sent a polite question to their (Sorenson's) public relations address asking for their side of the "why sorenson's not available on Linux" story, so hopefully at least a little more of the background will come out.
It DOES sound like the codec they licensed to Macromedia is different from the one used in QuickTime currently, though. And, there's also the question of if and when Macromedia will get around to releasing "FlashMX" playback for Linux.
Still...it'd be a step in the right direction. If nothing else, perhaps it'll warn off other companies considering "exclusive" agreements with Apple. (I almost get the impression from the stories that in essence, Apple feels the mere 4.5 million [a lot of money by MY standards, but for a major corporation? Chump-change.] they paid Sorenson legally paralyzes Sorenson's future development of income for the duration of the agreement...)
I find it at once annoying and gratifying at the same time that Sorenson has no problem using Free Software - their website appears to be running Apache with PHP (can't tell what the OS is). Checking the IP addresses, it LOOKS to me like the server is actually physically part of their own network, rather than some outside ISP contracted to host the site for them...
I agree - I think the future will be with, if not "truly" open codecs, at least "openly available" ones (Sorenson seems to be the ONLY "major" video codec in use that isn't available in some form on Linux - even MPlayer can handle "windows media" files. I suspect if Sorenson would manage to find a loophole in their agreements with Apple (who I think probably considers the popularity of the extra-proprietary "QuickTime with Sorenson" media format to be the biggest thing that they have to fight against "open" systems) and released even a binary-only codec that could be plugged into MPlayer or xanim or whatever, that their popularity would take off, at least in the short term - from what I have heard, that would then give them indisputably the "best" overall video codec that's widely available.
From what I've seen and heard (which I must confess isn't very much), VP3's quality is about the same as Windows Media (i.e. not that great). I get the impression that there are fewer visible "artifacts" but that the image is somewhat "blurrier". Even so, it'd be nice to see VP3/Vorbis in .ogg files become popular, just so that there'd be a completely "open" standard available to build from for video "content"...
It seems to me that, really, the "problem" is that "Copyright" implies that "making copies" is the important part of the exclusive rights for "content owners", when really, the important part is "Distributionright" instead.
The "common sense" understanding of "Fair Use" seems to boil down to "if I paid for it, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, including make copies in different formats for interoperability, archiving, and so on", so every time some wealthy **AA Organization pressures the legislature to "protect COPYright", anything that results will necessarily trample all over "Fair Use".
If, instead, we can get the legislature to focus on DISTRIBUTIONright, Fair use should be protected - at least, more so than it would be if the efforts were to prevent "Copying" rather than "unauthorized Distribution".
(After all, If I 'rip' a DVD that I've purchased to a DivX 5/Vorbis .ogg file for my own use, I don't think any even-remotely-rational person would call that "piracy". It doesn't become "piracy" until I start giving out those files to people who don't have a legal right to the material encoded in it.)
Heh...never thought of it that way. That would explain why the stereotype is that only "rednecks" and "hicks" and other "stupid/ignorant" stereotypes ever report being abducted - evidently, all the SMART ones who were abducted passed the tests and were kept.
Of course, the test thresholds may not be too high. After all, we're talking about a group of space aliens who supposedly have the technology to travel interstellar distances and fly around mostly-undetected by modern Earthly technology (except, of course, for the occasional space-alien crash in the middle of nowhere), but yet end up resorting to anal probes and hacking up cattle as their research methods...
You'd think a super-high-tech group of beings would have thought of dragging out the Computerized Tomography equipment or something instead....
This just conjures up some unsavory images that I'd rather not think about....Those poor, poor muppets... :-)
I said it before, and I'll say it again - we need some new moderation categories:
Because if it was green, you'd never know when to stop mowing.
what is the sound of one hand clapping?"Cl-" (other acceptable answers include "(whoosh)" and "Mu.")
What rhymes with orange?"Door Hinge".
Glad to be of service :-)
Ah, I love "spin"...
As comes up in several other debates (e.g. Napster/etc.), this is NOT a "cost", despite the fact that corporate mouthpieces insist on calling it that in fits of melodramatic doomsaying. This is a "reduction of extra profits."
In other words, us not giving them our personal information to sell to the aforementioned whoremongers is not us "taking something from them", it is us "giving them less". I think this is an important, if subtle, distinction that needs to be made...
If a homeless person begging for money gets and average of $0.75 from every person who gives him any, and I give him $0.25, have I "cost" him $0.50?....
I don't know how far along they are yet, but it APPEARS, from lurking on the mailing list, that there is some support for .ogg format media files (i.e. .ogg file with vorbis audio and, say, XVid video), and I BELIEVE they will be adding support for the format for mencoder as well, at some point. Depending on how soon this takes place, this may be an option for people wanting to archive their DVD collections...
(I wouldn't be surprised to see support for the vp3 codec soon as well, since according to a blurb on this weeks' Linux Weekly News, they (that is, the guys the made vp3) apparently posted to one of the ogg development lists about getting a 'vp3 in .ogg' project going. It'll be nice to see some more semi-official work on video in .ogg...)
Mencoder is easier, transcode is more versatile (I think).
Mencoder is the "encoding" project that goes along with Mplayer, which in my opinion is probably the best-performing media player with the widest support for files and codecs (including Windows Media codecs, using the 'native' Windows DLL's) for linux at the moment, though not necessarily the easiest to use (not difficult, in my opinion, either, just not "clicky-pointy" simple like, say, Xine).
Trans code, on the other hand, has a bewildering variety of options to work through, but has a ton of functionality to go with it.
In both cases, the software handles reading DVD's, and can convert them to other formats. Transcode handles a bunch of different formats and codecs. Mencoder is limited to .avi file format at the moment, but can put a variety of codecs into this avi (including vorbis audio, as I recall). I've also found that you can even use mencoder to "capture" mms:// files for offline perusing or conversion, which is nice, since otherwise I wouldn't get anything but the Microsoft "Download Media Player for Mac or Windows" page whenever I tried to view such things...
For MPlayer/Mencoder, I strongly recommend reading the documentation (the software is great, but the impatience of the people on the mplayer mailing lists with people asking questions that are answered in the documentation are well known) and using a recent set of CVS sources.
I've been wondering about this myself, for some time. Not for any "serious" reason, but I'd love to play with web-cartoons. Problem is, I doubt that I've got $500 worth of talent to justify buying Macromedia FlashMaker(or whatever it's called) and installing Windows to use it...
There appear to be three ways of approaching this from a free/open perspective that I know of:
Drawback here is that they supply the raw functionality, but no "authoring environment" seems to exist for them.
Can anyone further enlighten me on these three options?
Holy (insert your favorite exclamation here)!
Believe it or not, this would actually be very useful to me - the people at work are hopelessly addicted to "PowerPoint", and have had me convert various "powerpoint" presentations to static slideshows for web presentation before. It's a pain.
Export to flash from Impress would not only make that a lot easier, but would give me yet another excuse to push alternatives to MS Office...
(Looks like the message you're linking to was from several months ago, too...wonder how soon an implementation will be available to test with?...
See what the irresponsible US Government did!?!? They went and sent that damned "Viking" SUV to Mars back in the 70's, and now it's got global warming too! :-)
Looking at what came up on MY google search ("Edgar Rice Burroughs" "Bob Clampett"), it appears that some images related to this project might actually be in the "extras" section of a Beany and Cecil DVD that has evidently been released...
As I recall, around the time this story was written, Radium with the Spiffy New Thing. As I recall from my readings of the "Blahblahblah of Mars" series many, many years ago, I seem to recall that science-fictiony stuff throughout was "Radium powered", from guns that shot radium bullets to Radium-powered lights. In the "Real World", at the same time, Radium turned into a health(!) fad. The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices has bits and pieces related to this, including a box from the time labelled as containing Radium Suppositories (No joke!)
The website above has a couple of pictures of other Radium related "health" things, as well as a bunch of other rather mind-boggling things...
I hope the filmmakers KEEP the absurd "Radium" stuff in the movie, frankly (as well as any other "early-1900's sci-fi" elements of style) rather than doing something screwy to make it more "modern"...
Well, the writings themselves pretty much HAVE to be (the first book was written in 1912, according to the article).
The article mentions:
Danton Burroughs, grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a director of the rights holding company[...]
I wonder exactly what "rights" the "holding company" has? Perhaps they've Trademarked the characters? That would (as I understand it) mean that verbatim copies of the original stories are public domain, but "derivative works" using any of the trademarked characters or settings would need to license them (which, to me, emphasizes the bogosity of Disney's "Mickey Mouse Must Be Protected By Eternal Copyright Or The World Will End(tm)" arguments - since I'm pretty sure they maintain Trademark rights to Mickey and co., the only thing really at issue is free distribution of some of their really old works...)
Not to mention LANGUAGE. Buy or rent some Anime' sometime with the original Japanese language track...and listen for how many English words and phrases pop up in the speech...
actually, nah, those are probably akin to neutrinos.
No, they're described as "tiny life forms", and are presumably intelligent. Hardly elemental!
I figured it was just that spelling and biology aren't taught in Jedi School, so they never learned how to spell and pronounce "Mitochondria"...