Encoding should be trivial to paralellize, you just cut up a movie to a sequence of n clips and encode them independently.
Because the structure of modern codecs is based on Groups of Pictures (GOP), you'd have to run two passes on the video, with the first pass determining where the keyframes go. Although this is commonly done by people who don't have a good understanding of video encoding, the more efficient way is to just run a single pass using a constant quality (which is not the same as a constant quantizer). Then, on that single pass, you parallelize the operations on each frame. This also results in less disk thrashing and more hits on cached data.
From what I have found, though, most of the computation time in an encode is used up by either filters before the encode (grain removal, etc.) or by increasing the range and quality of motion search, which do parallelize well, but I don't think a GPU would help much.
This still means that an IP address is sufficient for them to seize and search your computer hard disks and such, so if you have corroborating evidence there you'd still be fucked.
For a criminal matter, an IP address might be enough by itself to issue a search warrant.
Luckily, the copyright infringement that is being done in file sharing doesn't fall under the "criminal" section of copyright law.
I suspect that the reason they're shipped on hard drives is that they find it easier to track a physical object
An optical disk that can hold 50GB is also a physical object, and would give excellent quality even at 4K resolutions using a lossy (but still high-quality) codec.
and they're worried about copyright infringement
If they are worried about infringement, then sending what amounts to a lossless copy of the original master of the movie to hundreds (or thousands) of theaters where the projector is likely run by a teenager with decent computer skills seems like the last thing they want to do.
"Digital distribution" from Hollywood to movie theaters isn't over the internet -- they're sent on hard drives. (Remember, the movies you see in theaters are much higher resolution than the ones you see at home.)
Not really. If the digital projector is only 2K, then it's basically the same as Blu-Ray (2048x1080 vs. 1920x1080). If the projector is 4K, then you can get more resolution on the screen. That said, the original (either film or digital) likely does have at least 4K resolution regardless of the projection system.
And, the reason the movies are shipped on hard drives is because they are just a series of JPEG 2000 images, one for each frame. This is essentially like using MPEG-4 and specifying that every frame is an I-frame, which bloats the file size for very little gain in quality.
Ogg Theora and WebM are no better in quality than MPEG3
You're comparing video codecs to an audio codec?
MPEG-3 was the brief name for high-bitrate video and audio that was eventually rolled into MPEG-2. It should not be confused with MP3, which is really MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, layer 3 audio.
So basically, both you and the GP are confused, although Theora isn't anywhere close to H.264, especially when implemented with a good encoder like x264. VP8 is used so little that it's hard to say what the quality is like over a wide variety of content.
Also, WebM is technically the name of the container for VP8 video with Orbis audio, but in theory, the container could hold any audio and video formats.
What is there to really say since Mozilla finally got off its lazy ass after some several years and worked on the problem rather than playing a perpetual round of the blame game with plugin developers?
Although there don't seem to be any memory leaks in Firefox 11, it still won't give up cached page and image memory until your system needs it. This wouldn't be an issue except that after about 1GB, the memory management and garbage collection takes up too much time, and Firefox becomes very sluggish.
So, although there aren't any real leaks, I still have to restart Firefox once a day because some idiot developer felt that holding on to images from web pages that were visited weeks ago was something that every user would want.
I'm also using ad-away and droid wall along with CM7's permission blocking.
Well, yeah, if you want to void the warranty on your phone and spend a lot of time keeping up with exactly which version of the third-party OS you run will work with your phone, I suppose that will work.
Unfortunately, it's not really an option for 99% of people.
About a minute into the movie we were both wondering how we ever go so lazy that it was worth giving up the quality of Blu-ray just so we didn't have to go get a disc.
The true/. way is to rip your Blu-Rays to a shared hard drive and stream them to your media players and have the best of both worlds.
And, I forgot to mention that I am writing this post while sitting at a desk that my dad and I designed and built together. My home-entertainment center is based on a design that my dad and I built for my college days, but I needed a larger one now, so my wife and I built this one about 9 years ago.
I own both, and the nearly 20-year-old IKEA stuff that I got in college (and thus survived numerous moves and lots of college stupidity) seems like it should last as long as any "real" furniture.
While writing this from the comfort of my great-grandfather's riveted leather couch, I can't help but think that my hardwood cupboard used to belong to my great-great-grandfather.
Neither of which has likely suffered any real abuse. Even fairly cheap furniture can last a very long time if it is treated kindly.
it is rather suspicious that a trailer application require access to your contact list.
When every app with a "social networking" component requires access to the contacts list, it's not really that suspicious.
If you didn't install any app that required access to your contacts, you pretty much won't install any games, multimedia manipulation apps, etc. The only real thing this malware did to get easily caught was to not supply some sort of lame "recommend" feature. Once an app needs access to your contacts and the Internet, it's basically malware waiting to happen.
If I hire a programmer at 60K per year, you can be certain that he's worth 75K to me, and I get to keep the 15K per year per programmer
If you hire a programmer at 60K per year when he's only worth 75K to the company, then you will be fired for losing the company money.
The general consensus in business seems to be that if you can't bill somebody for at least twice their base salary, you can't afford to hire them. This is because of benefits, rent, supplies, etc., which usually work out to be anywhere from 25-40% of the base salary. Once you figure in the taxes paid on the profit, and you end up with billing 200% of base salary netting you about 15-40% of that base. Although that's technically "net" and can be pocketed, some will have to be invested back into the business if you want to grow.
Add to the the fact that we live in a world where, if you do pull something like the above scam concept, people will know AND make sure everyone else they can tell knows. Information is too quickly spread all over the internet now to hide for long. This kind of Kickstarter scam idea is pretty much a one-shot for someone.
Only if it's a complete scam. If it's actually legitimate but fails for some really unexpected but believable reason, then the person could keep doing it. I know of people who have multiple real start-up businesses like this. They aren't rich, but they aren't hurting for money, either. One essentially came up with the same concept as Akamai about 3 years before anybody really needed it, so they couldn't keep funding long enough to become profitable.
The trick for a scammer would be to keep coming up with believable ideas along with the reason they will "fail" in advance. If they keep updates coming and stay moderately communicative, it would be pretty much risk-free money for them.
I'm backing one Kickstarter project right now, and it's going slower than expected, but the updates show that real progress is being made, and I expect to get about 5:1 return on my investment (based on current retail prices). But, if something really bad happens (for example, if this project had been using hard drives and got caught by the massive price increases), it might still fail, and I'll get nothing.
No, they do not. Your message even confirms that. The email is still sent, your mail server just doesn't accept it.
Read up on the SMTP protocol, and you'll see that if sending system never gets to the "DATA" command, then the e-mail hasn't been "sent". Everything that humans perceive as "e-mail" is sent as part of "DATA". This includes headers, too.
The spam is still internet traffic that gets routed from the spamming system to yours.
Since the actual content of the e-mail is never sent down the wire, the entire SMTP transaction is less than 10 TCP/IP packets. Once my system sends the "450" result code, it closes the TCP connection, and nothing more is sent. Now, it's possible that the spammer system keeps sending, but since most spam comes from bots on Windows using the Microsoft TCP/IP stack, that's unlikely.
Greylisting is still a filtering technique. You have to train your mail server to do it, and you have to update records (or refer to remote records) for which domains to accept, which to reject, and which to evaluate.
You really need to read up a bit on what you write about. Since I activated the greylist, I spend basically no time on configuration (the last change to the code was on Nov 3, 2008). I don't spend any time "training" anything, since the software does all the updating of the database that needs to be done. CPU time is negiligible (one indexed and cached database lookup per incoming SMTP connection, and about one database write per 15 connections.
443 is a fun one, few if any of the ssh bots even consider that one.
The other advantage to 443 is that pretty much no ISP/WiFi provider/whatever will block access to that port, and since they expect to see encrypted traffic, they probably won't mess with the connection at all.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that.
Yes, they do. Very often, spam to my domain never gets to the "DATA" stage of the SMTP transaction. The few bytes seen before that (sender and recipient addresses) aren't worth worrying about...there are probably more bytes in random probe packets on a daily basis.
The tool that does this is greylisting, despite the claims for the past 5 years that greylisting would cease being an effective tool against spam. The first e-mail from a legitimate server is delayed 5 minutes...from then on, there is no delay, so the impact on communications is negligible.
My advertising threshold dropped to zero pretty quickly in 2009, which is when I cut the Cable due to a negligible benefit/price ratio.
I just don't understand why a site devoted to geeks has complaints about commercials. Except for sporting events, I haven't watched commercials for nearly 20 years (VCR). Since the invention of the DVR, I don't watch commercials on sporting events, either.
The key is that you can't be so addicted to a show that you can't wait a day or two to watch it. The only exception to this for me was ST:TNG, but that was because everyone I knew came to my house to watch it two hours after it actually aired (so we still skipped commercials).
The checkout person hadn't marked it properly and they made me wait while they found him/her (who had just gone on break) to verify I had, actually, paid for this thing despite having a receipt.
I always just keep walking out of the store, especially if the "door guards" had seen my receipt If somebody chases me down and tackles me, I'll be set for life from the lawsuit.
Unless they have some actual proof that you stole something (like no receipt), they have no right to detain you...all they can do is call the police.
I buy BD when the price is right otherwise there's other means to get hold of the media.
I'm averaging around $7 per Blu-Ray movie, and the only movie I have paid more than $15 on Blu-Ray is The Frighteners. I can't believe that people actual pay $30 (or more) for a single Blu-Ray.
Given a choice between downloading or ripping myself I do it myself always.
I definitely agree that having the orginal source gives you a lot more control over the final quality. I'm picky about sound, so I consider DTS at 1536Kbps to be the lowest quality I'll have, but I don't have a receiver that can decode the lossless formats. I end up either extracting the DTS core or decoding Dolby TrueHD to PCM using libav and then re-encoding to DTS.
I also can do things like add soundtracks that weren't included on the Blu-Ray (commentaries, original mono, etc.) or fix video issues (like removing the green tint from The Fellowship of the Ring) in my rip.
Unfortunately all of that (the programs decrypting media, replication of content) is a violation of copyright laws and thus illegal.
In the US, there is nothing illegal about circumventing copy protection for personal use. The DMCA is pretty specific that you can't sell devices or software that circumvent copy protection, but owning and using them is not illegal.
After you decrypt the content, copyight laws still apply, so you can't distribute it, but you have always been able to make as many copies as you want for personal use.
I've been streaming Apples new 1080p content to my AppleTV over a 10Mb connection. It works great.
With no high-quality audio (and likely only one audio track) and aggressive video noise reduction, you can get 1080p down to less than 10Mbps. Even with that, there will be movies that will have noticable artifacts on a 50" display.
Besides, a 1080p movie is going to suck a lot of bandwidth, and I'm guessing most people won't want to pay for a connection fast enough when they can save a few bucks with a slower connection. Not to mention the whole throttling/bandwidth cap issue.
And, if you want Blu-Ray quality video and sound, and will stream a couple of movies at the same time, you would need a 50Mbps connection, and probably twice that to allow buffering.
It's hard to get a 1080p movie down to less than 10Mbps and still keep the quality good on a very large display.
AnyDVD-HD and VLC. Or AnyDVD-HD, eac3to, x.264, mkvmerge, and then VLC or my fave XBMC but not in a portable;-)
That's my method, too. I don't own any certified Blu-Ray player (i.e. nothing that will directly play encrypted Blu-Ray discs), but still own nearly 200 Blu-Ray movies. All of them have been ripped to hard drive and are available for viewing in any room in my house.
I know of no casino operated poker room where winners are expected to hand over a "cut of the winnings" when they leave a game. Which casinos do you play at where this happens?
Maybe he just means that because the rake comes out of the pot, and the pot goes to the winner, then the winner is giving a "cut" to the house.
Personally, I tend to think of the rake as money that pays for drinks, guaranteed honest play, and safety for a big winner.
A high-quality DVD rip will finish in less than 20 minutes per pass. Haven't tried BluRay yet, but I will soon.
If you keep the full resolution and want a decent compression ratio without sacrificing quality, expect to get about 8fps on the encode with that processor. There is no need to do multipass, as CRF results in better overall quality for the time spent, but this means the exact file size will be unknown until you finish (not a big deal for storing movies on a hard disk). You can probably get about 20fps if you are willing to live with file sizes around 150-200% of those from a slower encode with the same quality.
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Encoding should be trivial to paralellize, you just cut up a movie to a sequence of n clips and encode them independently.
Because the structure of modern codecs is based on Groups of Pictures (GOP), you'd have to run two passes on the video, with the first pass determining where the keyframes go. Although this is commonly done by people who don't have a good understanding of video encoding, the more efficient way is to just run a single pass using a constant quality (which is not the same as a constant quantizer). Then, on that single pass, you parallelize the operations on each frame. This also results in less disk thrashing and more hits on cached data.
From what I have found, though, most of the computation time in an encode is used up by either filters before the encode (grain removal, etc.) or by increasing the range and quality of motion search, which do parallelize well, but I don't think a GPU would help much.
This still means that an IP address is sufficient for them to seize and search your computer hard disks and such, so if you have corroborating evidence there you'd still be fucked.
For a criminal matter, an IP address might be enough by itself to issue a search warrant.
Luckily, the copyright infringement that is being done in file sharing doesn't fall under the "criminal" section of copyright law.
I suspect that the reason they're shipped on hard drives is that they find it easier to track a physical object
An optical disk that can hold 50GB is also a physical object, and would give excellent quality even at 4K resolutions using a lossy (but still high-quality) codec.
and they're worried about copyright infringement
If they are worried about infringement, then sending what amounts to a lossless copy of the original master of the movie to hundreds (or thousands) of theaters where the projector is likely run by a teenager with decent computer skills seems like the last thing they want to do.
"Digital distribution" from Hollywood to movie theaters isn't over the internet -- they're sent on hard drives. (Remember, the movies you see in theaters are much higher resolution than the ones you see at home.)
Not really. If the digital projector is only 2K, then it's basically the same as Blu-Ray (2048x1080 vs. 1920x1080). If the projector is 4K, then you can get more resolution on the screen. That said, the original (either film or digital) likely does have at least 4K resolution regardless of the projection system.
And, the reason the movies are shipped on hard drives is because they are just a series of JPEG 2000 images, one for each frame. This is essentially like using MPEG-4 and specifying that every frame is an I-frame, which bloats the file size for very little gain in quality.
Ogg Theora and WebM are no better in quality than MPEG3
You're comparing video codecs to an audio codec?
MPEG-3 was the brief name for high-bitrate video and audio that was eventually rolled into MPEG-2. It should not be confused with MP3, which is really MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, layer 3 audio.
So basically, both you and the GP are confused, although Theora isn't anywhere close to H.264, especially when implemented with a good encoder like x264. VP8 is used so little that it's hard to say what the quality is like over a wide variety of content.
Also, WebM is technically the name of the container for VP8 video with Orbis audio, but in theory, the container could hold any audio and video formats.
What is there to really say since Mozilla finally got off its lazy ass after some several years and worked on the problem rather than playing a perpetual round of the blame game with plugin developers?
Although there don't seem to be any memory leaks in Firefox 11, it still won't give up cached page and image memory until your system needs it. This wouldn't be an issue except that after about 1GB, the memory management and garbage collection takes up too much time, and Firefox becomes very sluggish.
So, although there aren't any real leaks, I still have to restart Firefox once a day because some idiot developer felt that holding on to images from web pages that were visited weeks ago was something that every user would want.
I'm also using ad-away and droid wall along with CM7's permission blocking.
Well, yeah, if you want to void the warranty on your phone and spend a lot of time keeping up with exactly which version of the third-party OS you run will work with your phone, I suppose that will work.
Unfortunately, it's not really an option for 99% of people.
About a minute into the movie we were both wondering how we ever go so lazy that it was worth giving up the quality of Blu-ray just so we didn't have to go get a disc.
The true /. way is to rip your Blu-Rays to a shared hard drive and stream them to your media players and have the best of both worlds.
And, I forgot to mention that I am writing this post while sitting at a desk that my dad and I designed and built together. My home-entertainment center is based on a design that my dad and I built for my college days, but I needed a larger one now, so my wife and I built this one about 9 years ago.
Have you actually owned REAL furniture?
I own both, and the nearly 20-year-old IKEA stuff that I got in college (and thus survived numerous moves and lots of college stupidity) seems like it should last as long as any "real" furniture.
While writing this from the comfort of my great-grandfather's riveted leather couch, I can't help but think that my hardwood cupboard used to belong to my great-great-grandfather.
Neither of which has likely suffered any real abuse. Even fairly cheap furniture can last a very long time if it is treated kindly.
it is rather suspicious that a trailer application require access to your contact list.
When every app with a "social networking" component requires access to the contacts list, it's not really that suspicious.
If you didn't install any app that required access to your contacts, you pretty much won't install any games, multimedia manipulation apps, etc. The only real thing this malware did to get easily caught was to not supply some sort of lame "recommend" feature. Once an app needs access to your contacts and the Internet, it's basically malware waiting to happen.
If I hire a programmer at 60K per year, you can be certain that he's worth 75K to me, and I get to keep the 15K per year per programmer
If you hire a programmer at 60K per year when he's only worth 75K to the company, then you will be fired for losing the company money.
The general consensus in business seems to be that if you can't bill somebody for at least twice their base salary, you can't afford to hire them. This is because of benefits, rent, supplies, etc., which usually work out to be anywhere from 25-40% of the base salary. Once you figure in the taxes paid on the profit, and you end up with billing 200% of base salary netting you about 15-40% of that base. Although that's technically "net" and can be pocketed, some will have to be invested back into the business if you want to grow.
Add to the the fact that we live in a world where, if you do pull something like the above scam concept, people will know AND make sure everyone else they can tell knows. Information is too quickly spread all over the internet now to hide for long. This kind of Kickstarter scam idea is pretty much a one-shot for someone.
Only if it's a complete scam. If it's actually legitimate but fails for some really unexpected but believable reason, then the person could keep doing it. I know of people who have multiple real start-up businesses like this. They aren't rich, but they aren't hurting for money, either. One essentially came up with the same concept as Akamai about 3 years before anybody really needed it, so they couldn't keep funding long enough to become profitable.
The trick for a scammer would be to keep coming up with believable ideas along with the reason they will "fail" in advance. If they keep updates coming and stay moderately communicative, it would be pretty much risk-free money for them.
I'm backing one Kickstarter project right now, and it's going slower than expected, but the updates show that real progress is being made, and I expect to get about 5:1 return on my investment (based on current retail prices). But, if something really bad happens (for example, if this project had been using hard drives and got caught by the massive price increases), it might still fail, and I'll get nothing.
No, they do not. Your message even confirms that. The email is still sent, your mail server just doesn't accept it.
Read up on the SMTP protocol, and you'll see that if sending system never gets to the "DATA" command, then the e-mail hasn't been "sent". Everything that humans perceive as "e-mail" is sent as part of "DATA". This includes headers, too.
The spam is still internet traffic that gets routed from the spamming system to yours.
Since the actual content of the e-mail is never sent down the wire, the entire SMTP transaction is less than 10 TCP/IP packets. Once my system sends the "450" result code, it closes the TCP connection, and nothing more is sent. Now, it's possible that the spammer system keeps sending, but since most spam comes from bots on Windows using the Microsoft TCP/IP stack, that's unlikely.
Greylisting is still a filtering technique. You have to train your mail server to do it, and you have to update records (or refer to remote records) for which domains to accept, which to reject, and which to evaluate.
You really need to read up a bit on what you write about. Since I activated the greylist, I spend basically no time on configuration (the last change to the code was on Nov 3, 2008). I don't spend any time "training" anything, since the software does all the updating of the database that needs to be done. CPU time is negiligible (one indexed and cached database lookup per incoming SMTP connection, and about one database write per 15 connections.
443 is a fun one, few if any of the ssh bots even consider that one.
The other advantage to 443 is that pretty much no ISP/WiFi provider/whatever will block access to that port, and since they expect to see encrypted traffic, they probably won't mess with the connection at all.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that.
Yes, they do. Very often, spam to my domain never gets to the "DATA" stage of the SMTP transaction. The few bytes seen before that (sender and recipient addresses) aren't worth worrying about...there are probably more bytes in random probe packets on a daily basis.
The tool that does this is greylisting, despite the claims for the past 5 years that greylisting would cease being an effective tool against spam. The first e-mail from a legitimate server is delayed 5 minutes...from then on, there is no delay, so the impact on communications is negligible.
My advertising threshold dropped to zero pretty quickly in 2009, which is when I cut the Cable due to a negligible benefit/price ratio.
I just don't understand why a site devoted to geeks has complaints about commercials. Except for sporting events, I haven't watched commercials for nearly 20 years (VCR). Since the invention of the DVR, I don't watch commercials on sporting events, either.
The key is that you can't be so addicted to a show that you can't wait a day or two to watch it. The only exception to this for me was ST:TNG, but that was because everyone I knew came to my house to watch it two hours after it actually aired (so we still skipped commercials).
The checkout person hadn't marked it properly and they made me wait while they found him/her (who had just gone on break) to verify I had, actually, paid for this thing despite having a receipt.
I always just keep walking out of the store, especially if the "door guards" had seen my receipt If somebody chases me down and tackles me, I'll be set for life from the lawsuit.
Unless they have some actual proof that you stole something (like no receipt), they have no right to detain you...all they can do is call the police.
I buy BD when the price is right otherwise there's other means to get hold of the media.
I'm averaging around $7 per Blu-Ray movie, and the only movie I have paid more than $15 on Blu-Ray is The Frighteners. I can't believe that people actual pay $30 (or more) for a single Blu-Ray.
Given a choice between downloading or ripping myself I do it myself always.
I definitely agree that having the orginal source gives you a lot more control over the final quality. I'm picky about sound, so I consider DTS at 1536Kbps to be the lowest quality I'll have, but I don't have a receiver that can decode the lossless formats. I end up either extracting the DTS core or decoding Dolby TrueHD to PCM using libav and then re-encoding to DTS.
I also can do things like add soundtracks that weren't included on the Blu-Ray (commentaries, original mono, etc.) or fix video issues (like removing the green tint from The Fellowship of the Ring) in my rip.
Unfortunately all of that (the programs decrypting media, replication of content) is a violation of copyright laws and thus illegal.
In the US, there is nothing illegal about circumventing copy protection for personal use. The DMCA is pretty specific that you can't sell devices or software that circumvent copy protection, but owning and using them is not illegal.
After you decrypt the content, copyight laws still apply, so you can't distribute it, but you have always been able to make as many copies as you want for personal use.
I've been streaming Apples new 1080p content to my AppleTV over a 10Mb connection. It works great.
With no high-quality audio (and likely only one audio track) and aggressive video noise reduction, you can get 1080p down to less than 10Mbps. Even with that, there will be movies that will have noticable artifacts on a 50" display.
Besides, a 1080p movie is going to suck a lot of bandwidth, and I'm guessing most people won't want to pay for a connection fast enough when they can save a few bucks with a slower connection. Not to mention the whole throttling/bandwidth cap issue.
And, if you want Blu-Ray quality video and sound, and will stream a couple of movies at the same time, you would need a 50Mbps connection, and probably twice that to allow buffering.
It's hard to get a 1080p movie down to less than 10Mbps and still keep the quality good on a very large display.
AnyDVD-HD and VLC. Or AnyDVD-HD, eac3to, x.264, mkvmerge, and then VLC or my fave XBMC but not in a portable ;-)
That's my method, too. I don't own any certified Blu-Ray player (i.e. nothing that will directly play encrypted Blu-Ray discs), but still own nearly 200 Blu-Ray movies. All of them have been ripped to hard drive and are available for viewing in any room in my house.
I know of no casino operated poker room where winners are expected to hand over a "cut of the winnings" when they leave a game. Which casinos do you play at where this happens?
Maybe he just means that because the rake comes out of the pot, and the pot goes to the winner, then the winner is giving a "cut" to the house.
Personally, I tend to think of the rake as money that pays for drinks, guaranteed honest play, and safety for a big winner.
A high-quality DVD rip will finish in less than 20 minutes per pass. Haven't tried BluRay yet, but I will soon.
If you keep the full resolution and want a decent compression ratio without sacrificing quality, expect to get about 8fps on the encode with that processor. There is no need to do multipass, as CRF results in better overall quality for the time spent, but this means the exact file size will be unknown until you finish (not a big deal for storing movies on a hard disk). You can probably get about 20fps if you are willing to live with file sizes around 150-200% of those from a slower encode with the same quality.