Over the last few years a lot of companies have sprang up using ffmpeg as a backend while shoving some putrid gui over the top which somehow justifies the pricetag (in this case "Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash" costs $600!).
They tend to fall into two camps, those who attempt to use the lgpl parts of ffmpeg and publish the license; and those who outright ignore the gpl or pretend they've followed it.
ffmpeg keeps a "Hall of shame" for these violaters but sothinkmedia have not yet been added.
I downloaded their videoconverter and ran it through wine. It gave me a eula with some non-gpl/lgpl terms which I duly said yes to
"You may not make or distribute copies of the Software, or
electronically transfer the Software from one computer to
another or over a network. You may not recompile, reverse
engineer, disassemble, or otherwise reduce the Software
to a human-perceivable form".
Program installed what's this, avcodec.dll oh dear. Compiled in with x264, xvid etc. so GPL rather than LGPL. For a token gesture it created a folder called xvid with the GPL placed in there even though they violate most of it.
Stealing code from flashgot is a minor issue compared to that of ffmpeg.
The importance is in the subtelty, "Information will get from anywhere to anywhere" should really be "Information can get from anywhere to anywhere". The internet's sophistication is such that any geek will be able to find a hole, but would some Iranian whose friend has just been shot and wants to tell the world?
The widescale filtering may do little to deter the geeks but it has had a profound effect on the average Iranian. By blocking simple messaging protocols they have achieved their goal for the majority of the population and so by finding other simplistic ways (such as through the xbox) for people to communicate the damage can be undone.
This is a pretty bad post even by slashdot standards.
You start out by proclaiming "As a PoliSci student, I've spent a ton of time looking at election data for many countries", which as an argument to authority is trying to show how your opinion counts more than other posters (it does not).
This is then followed up by a false analogy "I'm pretty sure some people protested after Kerry lost the 2004 US election". The vast differences between these elections renders the analogy meaningless. Never the less you decide to throw in an ad hominem "and yeah, I know I'll get some conspiracy nut reply to that with an essay" just to reinforce it.
Time for some red herrings:
"Quebec, in particular, has a history of some pretty wild swings from one party to another."
"I've seen countless "rules" made in politics, only to be broken"
"I saw similar analysis "prove" Kerry really won in 2004, and that didn't really amount to anything."
All divert attention towards other barely related topics.
You end by stating that you are "only suggesting that I've not seen any "smoking gun" ", which places an unfair burden of proof upon the opposition. The incumbent (Ahmadinejad) controlled every step of the elections, the smoking gun you are looking for is just not possible with this level of control.
I apologise for pointing out the logical fallicies because usually posts like this annoy me in that they don't address (and therefore dismiss) the arguments but the post had too many problems to ignore.
It's worse, Gazprom is state controlled and so Russia actually encourages its monopoly by helping to extort foreign companys.
I can understand the thinking though, the relevant analogy would be if there was a car company with 90% monopoly with the other 10% not being compatible with the petrol. The car company brings out a new more expensive model while refusing to sell the old model and stopping manufacture of old parts. Nobody has a choice since the other cars won't run on their fuel and so the company can keep forcing upgrades.
Why on earth don't they this on their website instead of the horrendous flash mess that gave me a headache just changing tabs, and a 'living room simulation' that simulates bugger all.
That video on the other is utterly cool and I had all but dismissed the device until I saw that. Cheers for the link
The better example from counterstrike is bunny hopping. The whole games balance was shifted by it with people becoming highly proficient. Servers and clans popped up around bunny hopping such that when it was finally removed tears were shed.
About two years ago we were trying to create an h264 streaming solution since flash had just implemented it. Things were going well encoding wise, but streaming h264 was a nightmare because the only protocol flash would let you stream it from was RTMP. And guess what, adobe wanted thousands for it's use (licensing was based on concurrent users IIRC). I had a look at a few attempts to create RTMP servers but they were all in the alpha stage, and would mostly just get stuck in a loop. We even went so far as to start writing a h264 java implementation, before we gave up and did an mpeg4 one.
In the interests of open standards and preventing total domination of flash in streaming, I congratulate the RTMP developers. If you didn't know BBC's iplayer uses RTMP and as of recently (svn) xbmc has a plugin to play even it's h264 streams. IPlayer on the xbox, now thats cool.
Oops I know it's bad practice to reply to yourself but I found a couple of choice quotes.
"Its going to suck trying to learn personalities of new people on a new forum. This is where I get my gaming/computer/popular media news. Where am I to go?
7+ years is a long time.
Right?"
"I've spent 10 years of my internet-life here, it's actually the only internet community I like (except my hl2-clan).
F*ck DNF for that matter, I don't want this forum to go. "
I came across the DNF forums a while back and was surprised to see how active it is, continuous posting everyday, constantly breathing in the hype and now it's all gone and they are in denial. oh dear
Well if we want to take this as a scientific argument then we look at the error value for the measurement.
For a value x with an error sigma, the probability of x being being between x-sigma --> x+sigma is 67%.
If he has said that its 1%+/-error and he's "wrong" ie. outside the error range 50% of the time, this just tells us that his error is an underestimate, but still quite close. With a correct error, the chance of being 2*sigma outside his value is 5%, so the chance that his result is out by ~50% is extremely unlikely unless he had some massive error estimate, which would make saying it pointless anyway.
Remember measurements are meaningless without an error estimate. My willy is 10m big means nothing till I say 10+/-1m
I wonder how it compares in resolution to a scanning tunneling microscope, where you use quantum tunneling of electrons to map individual atoms. The images (and the physics) for it are pretty cool.
"Even the most fertile science fiction imagination might not see a link between the behavior of ant colonies and the development of lifelike robotic limbs"
The author clearly hasn't read Jeff Noon's excellent book (although it's termites in it's case)
Slashdot Mirror
Over the last few years a lot of companies have sprang up using ffmpeg as a backend while shoving some putrid gui over the top which somehow justifies the pricetag (in this case "Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash" costs $600!).
They tend to fall into two camps, those who attempt to use the lgpl parts of ffmpeg and publish the license; and those who outright ignore the gpl or pretend they've followed it.
ffmpeg keeps a "Hall of shame" for these violaters but sothinkmedia have not yet been added.
I downloaded their videoconverter and ran it through wine. It gave me a eula with some non-gpl/lgpl terms which I duly said yes to "You may not make or distribute copies of the Software, or electronically transfer the Software from one computer to another or over a network. You may not recompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or otherwise reduce the Software to a human-perceivable form".
Program installed what's this, avcodec.dll oh dear. Compiled in with x264, xvid etc. so GPL rather than LGPL. For a token gesture it created a folder called xvid with the GPL placed in there even though they violate most of it.
Stealing code from flashgot is a minor issue compared to that of ffmpeg.
The importance is in the subtelty, "Information will get from anywhere to anywhere" should really be "Information can get from anywhere to anywhere". The internet's sophistication is such that any geek will be able to find a hole, but would some Iranian whose friend has just been shot and wants to tell the world?
The widescale filtering may do little to deter the geeks but it has had a profound effect on the average Iranian. By blocking simple messaging protocols they have achieved their goal for the majority of the population and so by finding other simplistic ways (such as through the xbox) for people to communicate the damage can be undone.
This is a pretty bad post even by slashdot standards.
You start out by proclaiming "As a PoliSci student, I've spent a ton of time looking at election data for many countries", which as an argument to authority is trying to show how your opinion counts more than other posters (it does not).
This is then followed up by a false analogy "I'm pretty sure some people protested after Kerry lost the 2004 US election". The vast differences between these elections renders the analogy meaningless. Never the less you decide to throw in an ad hominem "and yeah, I know I'll get some conspiracy nut reply to that with an essay" just to reinforce it.
Time for some red herrings:
"Quebec, in particular, has a history of some pretty wild swings from one party to another."
"I've seen countless "rules" made in politics, only to be broken"
"I saw similar analysis "prove" Kerry really won in 2004, and that didn't really amount to anything."
All divert attention towards other barely related topics.
You end by stating that you are "only suggesting that I've not seen any "smoking gun" ", which places an unfair burden of proof upon the opposition. The incumbent (Ahmadinejad) controlled every step of the elections, the smoking gun you are looking for is just not possible with this level of control.
I apologise for pointing out the logical fallicies because usually posts like this annoy me in that they don't address (and therefore dismiss) the arguments but the post had too many problems to ignore.
Ugh, so now geeks uptimes will be rivalled by their mums trying to host their latest ramblings 24x7 through Opera.
In a world where we are trying to lower power consumption I somehow get the feeling this won't help.
It's worse, Gazprom is state controlled and so Russia actually encourages its monopoly by helping to extort foreign companys.
I can understand the thinking though, the relevant analogy would be if there was a car company with 90% monopoly with the other 10% not being compatible with the petrol. The car company brings out a new more expensive model while refusing to sell the old model and stopping manufacture of old parts. Nobody has a choice since the other cars won't run on their fuel and so the company can keep forcing upgrades.
No not linear, in the case of flash its more like an exponential decay.
Exactly, it's not like technology advances or anything.
Why on earth don't they this on their website instead of the horrendous flash mess that gave me a headache just changing tabs, and a 'living room simulation' that simulates bugger all.
That video on the other is utterly cool and I had all but dismissed the device until I saw that. Cheers for the link
Good god, I think I just read the featured article for the first time in my life.
Well considering 'novocaine' contains procaine not cocaine, and that Codis has aspirin and codeine in it he can continue to stand by his statement.
The better example from counterstrike is bunny hopping. The whole games balance was shifted by it with people becoming highly proficient. Servers and clans popped up around bunny hopping such that when it was finally removed tears were shed.
From Wikipedia:
"May 1, 1962 - Sahara desert, French Algeria - Accidental venting of underground nuclear test * The second French underground nuclear test, codenamed Béryl, took place in a shaft under mount Taourirt, near In Ecker, 150 km (100 mi) north of Tamanrasset, Algerian Sahara. Due to improper sealing of the shaft, a spectacular flame burst through the concrete cap and radioactive gases and dust were vented into the atmosphere. The plume climbed up to 2600m (8500ft) high and radiation was detected hundreds of km away. About a hundred soldiers and officials, including two ministers, were irradiated. The number of contaminated Algerians is unknown."
How much would you stake on North Korea implementing proper safety methods?
...exterminate?
About two years ago we were trying to create an h264 streaming solution since flash had just implemented it. Things were going well encoding wise, but streaming h264 was a nightmare because the only protocol flash would let you stream it from was RTMP. And guess what, adobe wanted thousands for it's use (licensing was based on concurrent users IIRC).
I had a look at a few attempts to create RTMP servers but they were all in the alpha stage, and would mostly just get stuck in a loop. We even went so far as to start writing a h264 java implementation, before we gave up and did an mpeg4 one.
In the interests of open standards and preventing total domination of flash in streaming, I congratulate the RTMP developers. If you didn't know BBC's iplayer uses RTMP and as of recently (svn) xbmc has a plugin to play even it's h264 streams. IPlayer on the xbox, now thats cool.
The pre-watershed version goes "This man has no twinkie" always made me chuckle. Strange considering I don't know what a twinkie is.
Oops I know it's bad practice to reply to yourself but I found a couple of choice quotes.
"Its going to suck trying to learn personalities of new people on a new forum. This is where I get my gaming/computer/popular media news. Where am I to go? 7+ years is a long time. Right?"
"I've spent 10 years of my internet-life here, it's actually the only internet community I like (except my hl2-clan). F*ck DNF for that matter, I don't want this forum to go. "
I came across the DNF forums a while back and was surprised to see how active it is, continuous posting everyday, constantly breathing in the hype and now it's all gone and they are in denial. oh dear
Well if we want to take this as a scientific argument then we look at the error value for the measurement.
For a value x with an error sigma, the probability of x being being between x-sigma --> x+sigma is 67%.
If he has said that its 1%+/-error and he's "wrong" ie. outside the error range 50% of the time, this just tells us that his error is an underestimate, but still quite close. With a correct error, the chance of being 2*sigma outside his value is 5%, so the chance that his result is out by ~50% is extremely unlikely unless he had some massive error estimate, which would make saying it pointless anyway.
Remember measurements are meaningless without an error estimate. My willy is 10m big means nothing till I say 10+/-1m
Well if we want to find out who's right, we can just keep an eye on their webcam for anything suspicious.
"Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a Twat"
He's a particle physicist from my physics department (Manchester), and hence let it be known Oxford physicists are twats!
I wonder how it compares in resolution to a scanning tunneling microscope, where you use quantum tunneling of electrons to map individual atoms. The images (and the physics) for it are pretty cool.
"Even the most fertile science fiction imagination might not see a link between the behavior of ant colonies and the development of lifelike robotic limbs" The author clearly hasn't read Jeff Noon's excellent book (although it's termites in it's case)