If you don't have VLC/mplayer (Linux) or home media player classic (Windows) you don't deserve to get the benefits of Matroska. What happened to the days when people would distribute in deliberately obscure formats? We shouldn't encode to crappy formats just to please the people who download stuff, they should be happy that they're getting it for free.
No matter how bad it is, it's still better than AVI. I personally use Matroska, it has all of the ideological benefits (free, non-encumbered, open-source) over stuff like MP4.
I wonder whether this event might qualify for the largest documented quantity of artificially encoded information (as opposed to naturally encoded information like in DNA) ever ingested.
Yes, the "naturally encoded information" record is held by Michelle Monahan... 1.7 litres of it.
No, no, and no. ARM just can't scale up, and I really doubt that PCs will just disappear. Plus, would we want them to? Tiny netbooks and smartphones, with consoles for gaming? It's an ugly world, and the worst possible thing that could happen. It's also very unlikely; the tend we've seen over the past few decades is on computing power centralizing on the PC, a unified platform for everything.
I believe (prediction alert!) that, while most of the idiotic, regular populace will just buy smartphones and netbooks, everyone with technical knowledge will still use desktops, simply because of their usefulness as a platform. Desktops are also much easier to dig around in - if I have a dead computer that I want to recover the hard drive contents of, it's much easier to just open up my desktop case, disconnect one of my hard disks, and then connect it to the other disk. Most laptops don't have second drive bays, and I doubt there's a single netbook that does. When you give everyone smartphones and consoles, you end up with a powerless populace that can't do anything on their own.
Yes, open-source hardware is a concept most people find hard to grasp (since they don't realize the difference between someone having detailed information and someone having to take it apart to figure out how it works), but I think that, if it crosses over to more complex embedded devices and such, it would allow much more synergy between the designer of the hardware and the designer of the software.
I second this. It's also very possible that if you didn't take it and the existing software caused a crash, they might be able to claim that you can't sue them because you refused software updates.
You're missing my distinction. The fact that the story doesn't take place in a real-world setting means that it can be excused. Something that takes place in the modern day or in history is not.
Be reasonable. In a science fiction setting, it's assumed that things that don't exist (yet) exist. In a "real world" setting, it's assumed that you'll keep to reality.
There's a flaw in your logic. You're saying that "well, if we can develop tech on Earth that is highly advanced, we should wait and use this highly advanced tech in space." The problem is that a lot of stuff that's used in space has to do with aeronautics, which is a failing industry. Problems like the consumption of large amounts of expensive rocket fuel and the constant maintenance that space shuttles require would not be addressed in your model, since these are essentially rocketry and aeronautics problems, which is not an area many people are interested in.
The problem is that most tech to do with space has to be specially developed. It's an uphill battle. Our main barriers aren't miniaturization or computer technology, it's:
1: Life support (making humans able to survive for long periods of time in space), an almost entirely space-specific problem
2: Fast propulsion without requiring massive amounts of fuel (aerospace problem).
Indeed. The healthiest open-source model seems to be to have different programmers on the development team who differ a great deal; if one has to leave, the other could take over, so that the project could be sustained through introducing new developers. But a single programmer picking up old code and trying to work through it by himself, especially something that would be as tangled a mess as this probably is.
Ignoring whether or not it being free software makes a difference - every software company tried its hand at it in the 90s. Their main justification for dropping it was that "the technology isn't advanced enough". It all seems to be part of an attempt to copy Star Trek's tech and use voice commands for computers. In reality, voice commands are incredibly inefficient and imprecise, and it's virtually impossible for a piece of software to try and sort through accents, dialects, and mumbling to guess at the true intent.
Because when most people think of extraterrestrial life, they think of green men from Mars and E.T., and laugh uproariously. The fact that life really has been proven to exist on other planets/moons (very few regular people have heard of the Drake Equation) would be a revelation to most of them.
As well, we study life obsessively. Biology is a gigantic field. Life on Earth is (somewhat) easily accessible to us. If there was life that we had trouble accessing for the purpose of studying it, then there would be a drive for faster and cheaper space travel to study it. Right now, when most people think of space, they think of dead rocks. If life was proven to exist, there would be very few people who weren't interested.
Not really. It depends on what you're doing, but an activity being criminal doesn't necessarily make it bad. Most of the less mature and less dedicated ones tend to give up when they fail to achieve some ideal they imagined. The rest either use it as a means to an end or do it for the sake of finding things out.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't have VLC/mplayer (Linux) or home media player classic (Windows) you don't deserve to get the benefits of Matroska. What happened to the days when people would distribute in deliberately obscure formats? We shouldn't encode to crappy formats just to please the people who download stuff, they should be happy that they're getting it for free.
No matter how bad it is, it's still better than AVI. I personally use Matroska, it has all of the ideological benefits (free, non-encumbered, open-source) over stuff like MP4.
I wonder whether this event might qualify for the largest documented quantity of artificially encoded information (as opposed to naturally encoded information like in DNA) ever ingested.
Yes, the "naturally encoded information" record is held by Michelle Monahan... 1.7 litres of it.
... or warez...
If the editors are juvenile, then you're naive to think that Slashdot even pretends to be impartial.
Most distros leave the kernel alone, it's Redhat that does a lot of stuff that is ported upstream.
Yes, it is. It's the very definition of not caring about your customers: allowing them to potentially come to harm for your own profit.
No, no, and no. ARM just can't scale up, and I really doubt that PCs will just disappear. Plus, would we want them to? Tiny netbooks and smartphones, with consoles for gaming? It's an ugly world, and the worst possible thing that could happen. It's also very unlikely; the tend we've seen over the past few decades is on computing power centralizing on the PC, a unified platform for everything.
I believe (prediction alert!) that, while most of the idiotic, regular populace will just buy smartphones and netbooks, everyone with technical knowledge will still use desktops, simply because of their usefulness as a platform. Desktops are also much easier to dig around in - if I have a dead computer that I want to recover the hard drive contents of, it's much easier to just open up my desktop case, disconnect one of my hard disks, and then connect it to the other disk. Most laptops don't have second drive bays, and I doubt there's a single netbook that does. When you give everyone smartphones and consoles, you end up with a powerless populace that can't do anything on their own.
Yes, open-source hardware is a concept most people find hard to grasp (since they don't realize the difference between someone having detailed information and someone having to take it apart to figure out how it works), but I think that, if it crosses over to more complex embedded devices and such, it would allow much more synergy between the designer of the hardware and the designer of the software.
Time to roll in that 16,384-bit RSA!
I second this. It's also very possible that if you didn't take it and the existing software caused a crash, they might be able to claim that you can't sue them because you refused software updates.
You're missing my distinction. The fact that the story doesn't take place in a real-world setting means that it can be excused. Something that takes place in the modern day or in history is not.
Actually, most of the time the best tool for the job is open-source. They care about price, you know.
Also, people need to proselytize, or else OSS gets nowhere.
Be reasonable. In a science fiction setting, it's assumed that things that don't exist (yet) exist. In a "real world" setting, it's assumed that you'll keep to reality.
Eh. At some point, you essentially have to say "fuck it" and ignore copyright law.
There's a flaw in your logic. You're saying that "well, if we can develop tech on Earth that is highly advanced, we should wait and use this highly advanced tech in space." The problem is that a lot of stuff that's used in space has to do with aeronautics, which is a failing industry. Problems like the consumption of large amounts of expensive rocket fuel and the constant maintenance that space shuttles require would not be addressed in your model, since these are essentially rocketry and aeronautics problems, which is not an area many people are interested in.
The problem is that most tech to do with space has to be specially developed. It's an uphill battle. Our main barriers aren't miniaturization or computer technology, it's:
1: Life support (making humans able to survive for long periods of time in space), an almost entirely space-specific problem
2: Fast propulsion without requiring massive amounts of fuel (aerospace problem).
My apologies. The summary lead me to believe that this was voice recognition. I guess I should RTFA more often.
Indeed. The healthiest open-source model seems to be to have different programmers on the development team who differ a great deal; if one has to leave, the other could take over, so that the project could be sustained through introducing new developers. But a single programmer picking up old code and trying to work through it by himself, especially something that would be as tangled a mess as this probably is.
Ignoring whether or not it being free software makes a difference - every software company tried its hand at it in the 90s. Their main justification for dropping it was that "the technology isn't advanced enough". It all seems to be part of an attempt to copy Star Trek's tech and use voice commands for computers. In reality, voice commands are incredibly inefficient and imprecise, and it's virtually impossible for a piece of software to try and sort through accents, dialects, and mumbling to guess at the true intent.
Suspension of disbelief only applies to unlikely things, not impossible things.
Because when most people think of extraterrestrial life, they think of green men from Mars and E.T., and laugh uproariously. The fact that life really has been proven to exist on other planets/moons (very few regular people have heard of the Drake Equation) would be a revelation to most of them.
As well, we study life obsessively. Biology is a gigantic field. Life on Earth is (somewhat) easily accessible to us. If there was life that we had trouble accessing for the purpose of studying it, then there would be a drive for faster and cheaper space travel to study it. Right now, when most people think of space, they think of dead rocks. If life was proven to exist, there would be very few people who weren't interested.
Not really. It depends on what you're doing, but an activity being criminal doesn't necessarily make it bad. Most of the less mature and less dedicated ones tend to give up when they fail to achieve some ideal they imagined. The rest either use it as a means to an end or do it for the sake of finding things out.
It's an acceptable addition - despite recent changes and additions, most copyright law is still from a century ago or more.
Free culture, not free software. Lessig's focus is more on general media, RMS is specifically aimed towards software.
Yeah, that's the TSA approach: use your own biases to determine whether or not someone looks "suspicious".