Mozilla can use the system codec on "some" systems. It can ship WebM codecs on all platforms.
Windows have DirectShow. Linux has GStreamer MAC OS has QuickTime.
What other platforms are there that do not have a system codec infrastructure?
It just so happens that about the time you start actually caring about WebM compatibility that Google will have a device to sell you that will decode WebM in hardware.
Well, it just so happens that when I pay a lot of money for a device I am not very happy when I need to pay money again to get another device just so some Linux user can have his freedom of modifying the source code of the decoder.
It seems for instance Mozilla would definitely have to pay a license.
Mozilla can avoid that by using system codecs and they know it. They do not do it because of political reasons. I hope that Microsoft (or someone else) makes a h264 plugin for Firefox.
Software is easy to update,
Sure
nd nearly all players are upgradeable as well
Well, as long as someone releases a pin-compatible WebM decoder that I can just solder in the place of the h264 decoder chip.
there the problem is much lesser because you're already paying for the player and the content.
I don't get this part. The fact that I paid for the player does not mean that I like doing so and am just waiting for the opportunity to pay for another player as well.
As for ad-supported video - you should ask MPEG LA whether it is considered "free to end users" or not, though it should be, since the end user does not pay money for the right to watch the video (neither subscription nor title-by-title), the advertiser pays.
A. Is currently used almost everywhere (broadcast TV, streaming sites, anime fansubs, hdtv rips etc), supported by a lot of stand-alone devices and free unless I make a lot of money using it (and live in a country that recognizes software patents). B. Supported only on PCs (and few other devices), not used anywhere else but would allow me to see the source code of the encoder/decoder.
Who would be crazy enough to go with B? Especially when A also has a encoder/decoder that is open source. Why would anyone want to transcode to a yet another codec that has no advantages (like smaller file size for the same quality)?
You do not need to understand the technology to know that if teenagers find new friends using "something" and then end up dead after actually meeting those friends, it's not very good and you should tell your kids not to use "something" to find new friends or at least not go to actually meet them.
The adult then tries to isolate the kid from their friends, then the adult tries to isolate the kid from their parents (are you alone, can we speak private etc.) then the talk turns sexual and a meet up IRL is attempted.
Parents should inform their kids about this danger (or rather - "do not meet anyone that you only met on the internet before"), since this is quite popular now (a girl in my country found a "boyfriend" on FB, went to his city and got murdered).
However, in China there is one other problem - MMO players killing each other in real life for virtual items.
In any case, I support parental controls - the parents have a right to to control what their kid does.
From quickly reading the relevant wikipedia article I see that China bans video games usually for political reasons (that is, if the game "smears the image of Chine" or something like that), which is not that strange, since they ban all media that does that.
Still, this new law is not a ban, it just requires the game to allow parental controls, so that the parents can decide what is good or not good for their kid. And if an adult plays the game, he can do whatever he wants.
However, I do not think that this law is bad. The parents are given power to control the gaming of their children, which seems appropriate, just like web content filters (installed by parents) or some program that limits how long the kid can be using the PC. Or video game ratings.
Unlike other countries, like Germany, where some video games are banned so even adults cannot get them.
While CDs greatly reduced the number of pre-recorded cassette tapes, blanks are still made and people (like me) are still using them. Even reel-to-reel tape is still made (and is extremely expensive, but people are buying it).
I do not hear much of a difference between a record and a regular CD, but I can find more music that I like on records (probably as something to do with the music being old enough to be released on records and not CDs), the records are usually cheaper (used record vs re-released music on CD) and in some cases the record sounds better (because the CD was remixed, redone or just compressed). Also, I like older technology and I still borrow records and copy them to tapes (open reel or cassettes).
I have a WM-D6C and WM-EX606 (cannot record but is much smaller than D6C and is autoreverse, more convenient for just listening to tapes while I am not at home).
Sony made pretty good portable cassette players, so I'll buy those (though as I already have two I probably won't buy another one for quite some time). However, as Sony does not make them anymore (and I am buying them used), Sony still sees none of my money.
And now Grandma says that the ISPs are lying because they promised x mbps and she got y (y < x) mbps. Also, the "up to" ad can mean (10 times less) because, well, 1mbps is "up to" 1gbps. And now there is no way to compare ISPs (let's say two ISPs offer "up to" 100mbps for a similar price, now, which one actually provides better connection?)
Advertise 3 numbers - minimum guaranteed, average (that is achievable over, say, a day) and peak bandwidth. That would reduce the confusion greatly.
For example, my connection is advertised as "up to" 80mbps (up/down), which is great. I manage to get about 32mbps average and the bandwidth sometimes (for a few hours every day) drops down to 10mbps (let's assume this is due to the ISP). I still think that my connection is great, especially for what I pay for it. However, the ad could have said 10/30/80 mbps (min/avg/max). The contract actually specifies a minimum guaranteed bandwidth, but I am too lazy to go now and look it up.
Gasoline is just a liquid until it is ignited (Mythbusters found out that a dropped cigarette is not enough to ignite gasoline), so in a crash you need a source of a lot of heat for the gasoline to ignite. OTOH, Li-Ion batteries ignite if they are punctured. A high pressure tank can explode if punctured. Again, no need for a flame (though if you heat the high pressure tank it explodes more violently, since the internal pressure depends on the temperature).
Yes, that question was for a license in Lithuania, since I live there.
Capacitors and resistors are 10th grade physics, so if someone wasn't asleep in school he should be able, in theory, to, say, calculate the total resistance of two resistors in parallel. Of course someone who has no interest in electronics will forget it soon after the test in school.
Capacitors and resistors are not difficult. What is diffucult (for me) is memorizing stuff, for example, "Which CEPT document has the requirements for the license? CEPT recommendation T/R 61-01; CEPT recommendation T/R 61-02, CEPT recommendation T/R 61-03" Now, this would be very easy to forget, and if I needed the document, I would just look at all 3 of them and see which one is relevant. These are the hard parts.
I'm sure it's fun, but the requirement to get a license (and to take an exam to get one, meaning studying a lot of things) and the price of the equipment can put people off. Unlike, say, computers, where you can get a PC for cheap (not a very powerful one, but still) and can learn on your own by trying.
Well, My HD2900XT can produce normal picture with the same DVI-VGA adapter and VGA cable up to 1920x1440@85Hz where it gets a bit blurry. OTOH, GTX260 made a blurry picture at 1600x1200@85Hz and even at 1600x1200@60Hz. At low resolutions it was OK. XFX probably saved some money on the quality of the analog circuitry.
My HD2900XT works quite well on Windows. I do not know how it would work on Linux, but I do not use it on this PC.
But now yes, I'd buy a nVidia card because of CUDA and PhysX. I would just need to get one that manages to produce non-blurry analog video (had GTX260, the video was blurry on higher resolutions, returned the card).
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Mozilla can use the system codec on "some" systems. It can ship WebM codecs on all platforms.
Windows have DirectShow.
Linux has GStreamer
MAC OS has QuickTime.
What other platforms are there that do not have a system codec infrastructure?
It just so happens that about the time you start actually caring about WebM compatibility that Google will have a device to sell you that will decode WebM in hardware.
Well, it just so happens that when I pay a lot of money for a device I am not very happy when I need to pay money again to get another device just so some Linux user can have his freedom of modifying the source code of the decoder.
It seems for instance Mozilla would definitely have to pay a license.
Mozilla can avoid that by using system codecs and they know it. They do not do it because of political reasons. I hope that Microsoft (or someone else) makes a h264 plugin for Firefox.
Software is easy to update,
Sure
nd nearly all players are upgradeable as well
Well, as long as someone releases a pin-compatible WebM decoder that I can just solder in the place of the h264 decoder chip.
there the problem is much lesser because you're already paying for the player and the content.
I don't get this part. The fact that I paid for the player does not mean that I like doing so and am just waiting for the opportunity to pay for another player as well.
As for ad-supported video - you should ask MPEG LA whether it is considered "free to end users" or not, though it should be, since the end user does not pay money for the right to watch the video (neither subscription nor title-by-title), the advertiser pays.
Faced with a choice
A. Is currently used almost everywhere (broadcast TV, streaming sites, anime fansubs, hdtv rips etc), supported by a lot of stand-alone devices and free unless I make a lot of money using it (and live in a country that recognizes software patents).
B. Supported only on PCs (and few other devices), not used anywhere else but would allow me to see the source code of the encoder/decoder.
Who would be crazy enough to go with B? Especially when A also has a encoder/decoder that is open source. Why would anyone want to transcode to a yet another codec that has no advantages (like smaller file size for the same quality)?
You do not need to understand the technology to know that if teenagers find new friends using "something" and then end up dead after actually meeting those friends, it's not very good and you should tell your kids not to use "something" to find new friends or at least not go to actually meet them.
The adult then tries to isolate the kid from their friends, then the adult tries to isolate the kid from their parents (are you alone, can we speak private etc.) then the talk turns sexual and a meet up IRL is attempted.
Parents should inform their kids about this danger (or rather - "do not meet anyone that you only met on the internet before"), since this is quite popular now (a girl in my country found a "boyfriend" on FB, went to his city and got murdered).
However, in China there is one other problem - MMO players killing each other in real life for virtual items.
In any case, I support parental controls - the parents have a right to to control what their kid does.
From quickly reading the relevant wikipedia article I see that China bans video games usually for political reasons (that is, if the game "smears the image of Chine" or something like that), which is not that strange, since they ban all media that does that.
Still, this new law is not a ban, it just requires the game to allow parental controls, so that the parents can decide what is good or not good for their kid. And if an adult plays the game, he can do whatever he wants.
However, I do not think that this law is bad. The parents are given power to control the gaming of their children, which seems appropriate, just like web content filters (installed by parents) or some program that limits how long the kid can be using the PC. Or video game ratings.
Unlike other countries, like Germany, where some video games are banned so even adults cannot get them.
But they are still used as numerical displays, even though the only new devices that use them are clocks.
Also, a lot of old devices use them, and if the device works well enough it can be used (say, a frequency counter) as well as a new one.
Ok, where can I get a 8" floppy drive (and preferably at least one floppy disk too)?
While CDs greatly reduced the number of pre-recorded cassette tapes, blanks are still made and people (like me) are still using them. Even reel-to-reel tape is still made (and is extremely expensive, but people are buying it).
I do not hear much of a difference between a record and a regular CD, but I can find more music that I like on records (probably as something to do with the music being old enough to be released on records and not CDs), the records are usually cheaper (used record vs re-released music on CD) and in some cases the record sounds better (because the CD was remixed, redone or just compressed). Also, I like older technology and I still borrow records and copy them to tapes (open reel or cassettes).
I have a WM-D6C and WM-EX606 (cannot record but is much smaller than D6C and is autoreverse, more convenient for just listening to tapes while I am not at home).
Sony made pretty good portable cassette players, so I'll buy those (though as I already have two I probably won't buy another one for quite some time). However, as Sony does not make them anymore (and I am buying them used), Sony still sees none of my money.
And now Grandma says that the ISPs are lying because they promised x mbps and she got y (y < x) mbps. Also, the "up to" ad can mean (10 times less) because, well, 1mbps is "up to" 1gbps. And now there is no way to compare ISPs (let's say two ISPs offer "up to" 100mbps for a similar price, now, which one actually provides better connection?)
Advertise 3 numbers - minimum guaranteed, average (that is achievable over, say, a day) and peak bandwidth. That would reduce the confusion greatly.
For example, my connection is advertised as "up to" 80mbps (up/down), which is great. I manage to get about 32mbps average and the bandwidth sometimes (for a few hours every day) drops down to 10mbps (let's assume this is due to the ISP). I still think that my connection is great, especially for what I pay for it. However, the ad could have said 10/30/80 mbps (min/avg/max). The contract actually specifies a minimum guaranteed bandwidth, but I am too lazy to go now and look it up.
|| (there are characters between the pipes)
First four letters in Cyrillic alphabet (between pipe characters): ||
Let's see how this comes out :)
Let's try.
Also, send it to virustotal.com. If it comes back clean, great, if not, find out the the detections are real or just "virus, I mean, keygen".
Gasoline is just a liquid until it is ignited (Mythbusters found out that a dropped cigarette is not enough to ignite gasoline), so in a crash you need a source of a lot of heat for the gasoline to ignite. OTOH, Li-Ion batteries ignite if they are punctured. A high pressure tank can explode if punctured. Again, no need for a flame (though if you heat the high pressure tank it explodes more violently, since the internal pressure depends on the temperature).
Internet connection on my cellphone is faster and cheaper. Do you not have internet connections on your cell phones in the US?
Yes, that question was for a license in Lithuania, since I live there.
Capacitors and resistors are 10th grade physics, so if someone wasn't asleep in school he should be able, in theory, to, say, calculate the total resistance of two resistors in parallel. Of course someone who has no interest in electronics will forget it soon after the test in school.
Capacitors and resistors are not difficult. What is diffucult (for me) is memorizing stuff, for example, "Which CEPT document has the requirements for the license? CEPT recommendation T/R 61-01; CEPT recommendation T/R 61-02, CEPT recommendation T/R 61-03" Now, this would be very easy to forget, and if I needed the document, I would just look at all 3 of them and see which one is relevant. These are the hard parts.
I'm sure it's fun, but the requirement to get a license (and to take an exam to get one, meaning studying a lot of things) and the price of the equipment can put people off. Unlike, say, computers, where you can get a PC for cheap (not a very powerful one, but still) and can learn on your own by trying.
Well, My HD2900XT can produce normal picture with the same DVI-VGA adapter and VGA cable up to 1920x1440@85Hz where it gets a bit blurry. OTOH, GTX260 made a blurry picture at 1600x1200@85Hz and even at 1600x1200@60Hz. At low resolutions it was OK. XFX probably saved some money on the quality of the analog circuitry.
My HD2900XT works quite well on Windows. I do not know how it would work on Linux, but I do not use it on this PC.
But now yes, I'd buy a nVidia card because of CUDA and PhysX. I would just need to get one that manages to produce non-blurry analog video (had GTX260, the video was blurry on higher resolutions, returned the card).