There's no reason to bitch. Unlike most sites, AnandTech lets you see the whole thing on one page - the trick is to click on the "Print this article" link. It also gets rid of the sidebars and such.
Quality can vary widely - there are good ones and not so good ones.
The person doing the encoding has some choices as to the exact flavor of DiVX;-) codec (high motion or low motion) as well as the bitrate, as well as the audio format (usually mp3 but sometimes wma now) and bitrate (for mp3 at least - I've seen as low as 96kbps and high as 192kbps). Then there are decisions on how big it should be, one CD or two. Obviously when they decide to make it two CDs the quality can be cranked up, but conversely, soemtimes they decide to squeeze the quality a bit more than optimal to try to just get it on 1 CD. And the subject matter - South Park for example compresses very well while still looking quite sharp.
Also, I have noticed on my computer (300 mhz - towards the low end for mpeg4 video) that unless my fullscreen video resolution is an exact mutliple of the video size, there are lots of noticable artifacts from it having to resize the video. Checking the movie resolution before hand and setting screen res accordingly makes a big difference.
In the end, it's certainly not DVD, but it's much better than normal mpeg2 and even VHS (for a good one at least). When you're watching in motion (as opposed to a single frame) and sitting a foot or so away from the screen it looks quite sharp.
Not to say that programmers shouldn't comment the code when they write it, but don't forget, this is open source. There's nothing saying you can only contribute code. Next time you are poring over some non-documented code and figure out what it does, why not add some comments about it and send the diff back to the author?
I have to agree with the above post. It reminds me of a recent thread on linux-kernel as related in Kernel Traffic #80.
Basically, Andy Kleen made a patch he believed would slightly improve performance and posted some bechmarks he came up with. Linus asked for some real benchmarks in a user mode situation. Andy replied
Doing it completely from user space would probably add so many other variables and variances that the results would be hard to interpret,
to which Linus countered
The other way to say the same thing is
"Doing it from user space might show that it's not a performance optimization that can be noticed".
For better or for worse, the real world is the one we live in.
Am I the only one bothered by the tone of this article? That "growing up" means going commercial? Not that I necessarily oppose this but I don't like the inplication that Google as a company is "immature" just because they don't have banner ads or ambitions to be the Net's Best Portal...
"I know we normally buy our uranium for Universal Elements but I got a real good deal on this website, they have a 30 day money back gaurentee... plus I got frequent flyer miles"
Bundling a ATA/66 onboard controller along with the trusty ATA/33 controller of the Intel BX chipset has been a popular item for a while now. Another board that does it is my Soyo SY-6BA+IV.
You mean the events in which the US will have already won medals. Given the time differences between US and Austrailia, we're going to be seeing most everything on tape.
Perhaps what the IOC is scared of is the Internet news media "given away" the results before their licensees (NBC being assumedly one of (if not te) highest paying) can air them.
All that I can think is that this is the computer equivalent of drag-racing, and can't really serve any practical purpose.
You just answered your own question.
People drag race because they enjoy it.
People submerge their computers in liquid for massive overclocking because they enjoy it.
Slashdot Mirror
So what are the cons?
If they do want to do development it's a great convience. If they don't, it's just 40 megs or so on their HD that doesn't get used.
+1 Random yet distantly related
There's no reason to bitch. Unlike most sites, AnandTech lets you see the whole thing on one page - the trick is to click on the "Print this article" link. It also gets rid of the sidebars and such.
For this article, the 1 page link is http://www.anandtech.com/printart icle.html?i=1319.
Quality can vary widely - there are good ones and not so good ones.
;-) codec (high motion or low motion) as well as the bitrate, as well as the audio format (usually mp3 but sometimes wma now) and bitrate (for mp3 at least - I've seen as low as 96kbps and high as 192kbps). Then there are decisions on how big it should be, one CD or two. Obviously when they decide to make it two CDs the quality can be cranked up, but conversely, soemtimes they decide to squeeze the quality a bit more than optimal to try to just get it on 1 CD. And the subject matter - South Park for example compresses very well while still looking quite sharp.
The person doing the encoding has some choices as to the exact flavor of DiVX
Also, I have noticed on my computer (300 mhz - towards the low end for mpeg4 video) that unless my fullscreen video resolution is an exact mutliple of the video size, there are lots of noticable artifacts from it having to resize the video. Checking the movie resolution before hand and setting screen res accordingly makes a big difference.
In the end, it's certainly not DVD, but it's much better than normal mpeg2 and even VHS (for a good one at least). When you're watching in motion (as opposed to a single frame) and sitting a foot or so away from the screen it looks quite sharp.
Call me a stupid American if you will, but I've never heard of Magic & Mayhem or Creatures 1, 2 & 3 (and I didn't care much for X-COM, personally).
But I did appeciate Syndicate and Grand Theft Auto. Who says only US companies make violent games?
Where have you been? Screen savers have been unnecessarily on modern monitors for years now. People just like having them.
Regarding the first point, you don't need to tie your PayPal account to a credit card, you can tie it directly to your bank account.
Not to say that programmers shouldn't comment the code when they write it, but don't forget, this is open source. There's nothing saying you can only contribute code. Next time you are poring over some non-documented code and figure out what it does, why not add some comments about it and send the diff back to the author?
You need to read the shit on this one, as if you had looked at the patents you would see that the applicant on all of them actually is
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY
Yes, but the X-Windows may be important because perhaps the patent calls for a _graphical_ client.
Great, you've found a bug then. Go tell them about it and the next version will be better.
The problem with your CSS is the "#664433". Get rid of those quotes and it renders fine for me in Mozilla.
Always a good idea to check your pages for standards compliance.
Not sure why the JavaScript doesn't work (although DOM layer support is rather dicey and browser specific).
How the hell does this guy write on anything?
With the stylus that clips onto the side of the screen of course.
Hmm, so far the longest thread I can find is it NET.movies.
The topic? The rumor that Spock dies in the new Star Trek movie!
Long live geekdom
Basically, Andy Kleen made a patch he believed would slightly improve performance and posted some bechmarks he came up with. Linus asked for some real benchmarks in a user mode situation. Andy replied
to which Linus countered
For better or for worse, the real world is the one we live in.
That should be
Mmm, that looks nice... thanks for the link. Not like I would be able to afford it anyway...
Am I the only one bothered by the tone of this article? That "growing up" means going commercial? Not that I necessarily oppose this but I don't like the inplication that Google as a company is "immature" just because they don't have banner ads or ambitions to be the Net's Best Portal...
Oh come on, it's not that hard to not buy a Sony product. Not all of us are raging consumers.
It's not like Sony is selling milk and bread here, these are luxury items and if you still want them it's easy as hell to buy other brands.
"I know we normally buy our uranium for Universal Elements but I got a real good deal on this website, they have a 30 day money back gaurentee... plus I got frequent flyer miles"
Bundling a ATA/66 onboard controller along with the trusty ATA/33 controller of the Intel BX chipset has been a popular item for a while now. Another board that does it is my Soyo SY-6BA+IV.
You mean the events in which the US will have already won medals. Given the time differences between US and Austrailia, we're going to be seeing most everything on tape.
Perhaps what the IOC is scared of is the Internet news media "given away" the results before their licensees (NBC being assumedly one of (if not te) highest paying) can air them.
If you're going to go wish for all that stuff why settle for DSL? OC12 at a minimum, I'd say.
All that I can think is that this is the computer equivalent of drag-racing, and can't really serve any practical purpose.
You just answered your own question.
People drag race because they enjoy it.
People submerge their computers in liquid for massive overclocking because they enjoy it.
I mean, c'mon, we are geeks here...
Um... that's part of the point of the GPL. GPL authors don't think people should be able to take their code and pack it into a proprietary program.
It's one of the primary ideological differences between BSD and GPL license.
That's like saying "Let's see red paint be blue"