MPEG2 and MPEG4 support. There's particularly no excuse not to have MPEG4, seeing as it's based off of QuickTime's file format for crying out loud.
Umm, MPEG-4 hasn't even been finalized yet. Yes I know Microsoft claims to have had an MPEG-4 codec for months, but its based on a preliminary draft spec, and is now not compatible with the actual MPEG-4 standard. Once MPEG-4 is finalized, then you could complain if QuickTime didn't support it...
RealMedia support. Real's servers use RTSP, which QuickTime already supports, so it's just a matter of licensing the codec.
Ummm... RealMedia and QuickTime are direct competitors. The chances of Real agreeing to licence their codec to Apple are somewhat less than zero. Out in the real world, competition exists and commercial organizations actually protect their intellectual property.
MPEG (and hopefully MPEG2/MPEG4) export. As it is, the only reason I can think of for it not being in there would be if Astarte and HEURIS are paying Apple not to put it in, so they can keep charging obscene prices for their own encoders ($400 for Astarte's M.PACK).
I can assure you that Apple are not being paid by Astarte and Heuris to protect their products. I suspect this would be an illegal cartel move anyway. MPEG playback in software has become possible with the hardware of the last six months or so. MPEG encode (to any decent quality) still really require dedicated hardware. I imagine this is one of the reasons Apple has not gone down this path yet.
There was once a time when Quicktime as well as MPEG were cross platform, now we only have MPEG without the advantages of the advances made in the newer CODECs.
Don't confuse "cross-platform" with "runs on Linux". QuickTime is cross-platform, it just happens that the platforms involved are classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Windows.
Now that Apple has embraced Open Source, could Quicktime be on its way... if they don't want the cost and headache of supporting an additional product for the last 15% of so of the market
In this context, Linux is very far from 15% of the market. This context is the market of desktop machines. The majority of machines running Linux are still servers. This is not the market for QuickTime (client). Has anyone seen reliable figures for the Linux desktop installed base? I'd guess its 1-2% Macintosh desktop installed base (not market share) is closer to 10%
For servers, the QuickTime Streaming Server is an open source project that has been ported to Linux.
They can release the Sorenson CODEC in binary form using that API and let the Open Source process go the rest of the way towards enabling Linux to play QuickTime 4.
QuickTime is much more than just a single codec. It is a complete architecture for playing back a wide variety of multimedia. It has feature like QuickTimeVR. It has the QuickTime sprites format that allows complex scripted interactivity. It has a complete MIDI-based music architecture. It has a full runtime visual effects architecture. It is a huge and powerful visual and temporal processing engine. A lot of web sites use QuickTime in the place of, for example, Flash. Porting QuickTime to Linux is very far from a trivial task.
There's a better solution, though: Darwin is based on BSD UNIX; Apple is now full of UNIX developers. You can't convince me that there isn't already a version of the QT player with an Xwindows GUI compiled and floating around inside Apple;
I may not be able to convince you, because you clearly have made up your mind already, but its true. Mac OS X does not have an X Windows component. It uses its own graphics/windowing layer called Quartz. Apple does not have an X-based QuickTime player.
Note as well, that the QuickTime Player is just one application that uses QuickTime. It is not QuickTime. QuickTime is an extensive system-level library that includes all the functionality described above. QT Player is just a small app. that Apple includes with the standard QuickTime install.
The absence of a UNIX player in that kind of development environment just doesn't make sense. So how close is it to release?
Apple have already shown a Mac OS X QuickTime Player. It is a Carbon app. Carbon is Apple's classic Mac OS 9 system libraries running on top of Quartz and Darwin. A carbonized application has no relationship to an X application. There really isn't any X-related development work happening on the QuickTime team.
The complete QuickTime architecture cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. There is a huge team of engineers at Apple working full time (and more) on this technology. It is way more than just video playback. Apple have already ported this once to another platform (Windows) and that was a task that took many hundreds of engineer-years to complete.
The chances of Apple spending similar efforts to port it to Linux, while Linux's share of the desktop market is so small, are very low. The chances of Apple open sourcing QuickTime are, in my opinion, even lower.
More like 5% of the market IIRC. On the other hand it now is close to or larger than the Apple market share.
And don't forget that a majority of machines that Linux is running on are servers. QuickTime Streaming Server does indeed run on servers. The percentage of machine that run Linux and are used as desktop is significantly smaller than 5%
QuickTime (client) is a desktop product. The relevant market is the desktop market. Linux still isn't big enough there for Apple to spend a lot of time and money porting QuickTime to Linux.
A license to use the codec patents in some form of Open Source software.
Note that most of the codecs that ship with QuickTime are not written or owned by Apple. Sorensen is a good example of this. Apple doesn't have it in their power to grant these rights to you, even if they wanted to.
Sufficient documentation to make our own codecs.
Ask and you shall receive. There are over 7500 pages of QuickTime Developer documentation available on Apple's web site at:
http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/
There are is also extensive sample code you can download that will start you off writing a QuickTime codec.
We do this sort of software well. What is holding us back here seems to be patent and trade-secret issues.
If you do do this sort of software well, just get out there and write it. Apple have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing QuickTime. Why would they give it to you for free? If you are really as good as you think, spend the time writing it yourself, and don't rely on someone else bankrolling your development effort.
It's hard to believe that however proprietary the Iridium sat network is, nobody is interested in taking it over and use it for something more viable. I bet you could push gigabits through the damn things....
Oh, more than likely there are plenty of people who would be interested in taking it over. I don't know about you, but the $10 million per month to keep the system aloft and operational is just a wee bit too rich for my blood.
That's what I love about the (spoof) Open Iridium site. Yeah, they're going to find enough geeks to fork over $10mil every month. Face it, this ain't going to happen:-)
Myself, I buy stock and influence things on the corporate level. Most people can influence the regulatory debates through online and in-person feedback and through media attention. This is the most effective method for the average/. denizen.
You know, this is good too. Just don't forget that the political system is there for you too. Even if it appears to be broken sometimes (what large system doesn't? Mozilla anyone?) it can still accomplish good things for you. Lobby your congressman/senator. They do listen, especially if they hear from a lot of/.-ers.
And the reality is that there will be governmental regulation. Too many corporations are spending way too much money for this not to happen.
I'm constantly amazed by this and similar thoughts that are expressed on/.. Assuming that you don't want the "corporations" taking over the net, then how exactly do you propose to stop them? Government regulation is an effective tool by which "we the people" can control corporate behavior. Lawsuits are an effective way for people who are abused by corporations to prevent future abuses. Neither of these are apparently acceptable to the rabid/.-er.
So how exactly are you going to change the corporations? By writing angry posts to/. discussion? Yeah, I can hear the mighty corporations quivering in their boots... The community will be more effective if it uses the mechanisms our society already has in place to achieve its end, rather than trying to ferment some sort of revolution that isn't going to happen and isn't supported by the majority of your fellow countrymen.
You are right to point out that other countries exist too, but they aren't as independent as you make out. What happens in the US often spreads to other countries. I suspect the EU will follow the US's lead in a lot of this, for example
And, don't forget, the Internet itself ties countries more closely together. Regulations in the US will in practice effect how US-based websites do business in all the countries they serve - i.e. everywhere. Imagine you are (say) Yahoo! and you decide to comply with one of these new laws. Its unlikely that you'll choose not to comply for customers outside the US. That's assuming you can tell which customers are from where. That's assuming that the US laws even allow websites to not comply when dealing with non-US users.
So yes, of course other countries exist on the net. But in practice, a lot of these new rules will de factor end up applying outside the US too, for better or worse.
That is indeed the context in which Pascal wrote the Pensees. What Pascal understood was that the ultimate reward of Christianity (eternal life, co-heirs with Christ) far outweighed any temporal (worldly) benefits or gains. In the framework of eternity, it's not even a comparison.
But you are, IMHO, skewing the argument. Your premise is that the Christian God exists and you have a true understanding of how that all works. Based on that, you follow Pascal's Wager. Based on that you believe God exists.
This is a circular argument, and therefore invalid. It doesn't even come up to the often low standards of religious argument. If that's meant to convince anyone, I wouldn't use it on the relatively educated and thoughtful/. audience, because I doubt it is going to fly...
Pascal's Wager is a really bad argument in itself. You theist guys have much better arguments. Grins
Actually, I think there's an even bigger problem with Pascal's wager. It doesn't even seem to pan out in its own terms.
If you assume the wager is about the mainstream Christian God (which I believe was the context Pascal was talking in), then there is a potentially huge cost to becoming a Christian. A lot of my everyday activities are profoundly unChristian. The pursuit of personal wealth and power (which is part of what I and most other Westerners get up to) seems at odds with a lot of Christian teaching
Pascal's wager is positied that there is no real cost to believing in God, and a potentially large reward in the AfterLife. I would argue that there is a real, known cost to a (true) belief in the Christian God, which is ofset against a possible though vague reward in an AfterLife for which there is no substantial evidence of either its existence or its nature
For me, at least, Pascal's wager somes down firmly on the side of irreligion...
Re:Is it so hard to accept the possibility?
on
The Mind of God
·
· Score: 2
> Science has the basics down. But scientists are far from knowing everything.
Certainly, and one of the wonders of science is that the more you know, the more you realise you don't know. Scientists are usually the first to admit that they know very little, in terms of all that could be known. I am astounded and frightened by the number of theists who profess to know the absolute truth.
> Just be careful not to go down the same road that you are busy condemning.
Here I have to disagree with you. Science and Religion are profoundly different things. Fundamentally, a religion is a particular belief system (e.g. I believe in one God, whose only begotten son, etc. etc.)
In contrast, Science is a methodology for obtaining particular beliefs. Its a sort of meta belief system. In other words, science tells you how to go about obtaining beliefs, but it doesn't actually have a specific set of beliefs it demands you believe in.
In particular, the beliefs generated by following the scientific methodology are theories that can be changed or even completely thrown away. A fundamental tenet of Science is that you must constantly test, refine and change the particular things you believe in. Hypothesis and the gathering of counter-evidence is the heart of science.
This seems a much more robust approach to gathering (useful) knowledge about the world, than hewing to some particular dogma. The ability to refine your beliefs in the face of new and challenging data is a huge strength and has enabled science to hugely improve the lot of people everywhere in the face of often murderous religions who would drag us back into the dark ages of witchcraft and spirit realms.
All IMHO, of course
Re:you make the same mistake!
on
The Mind of God
·
· Score: 1
I think you missed the point of the unicorns post. If we could both agree that the unicorn definitively does not exist, then look at the statement:
"You can believe in unicorns because there's no proof that unicorns don't exist"
It doesn't say anything really useful. If we know that unicorns don't exist, then it is obvious that the above argument is at best a very weak justification for a belief in unicorns.
This is very different from your question about whether aliens (or coelocanths) exist. This is an empirical question.
A useful way of attempting an answer to this question is to start with the assumption that they don't exist, then examine the evidence that they do. From this one can draw strong or weak conclusions about the existence of aliens.
The question about unicorns is really a way of illustrating a weakness of a certain type of "argument" and isn't really about methods of establishing the existence of unicorns from the evidence.
The reason this relates to the God question, is that the weak "unicorns" argument is often used by theists to argue that one should believe in God (often combined with Pascal's argument, of course). I suspect the original posters' intention was to point out the weakness of that position.
Slashdot Mirror
MPEG2 and MPEG4 support. There's particularly no excuse not to have MPEG4, seeing as it's based off of QuickTime's file format for crying out loud.
Umm, MPEG-4 hasn't even been finalized yet. Yes I know Microsoft claims to have had an MPEG-4 codec for months, but its based on a preliminary draft spec, and is now not compatible with the actual MPEG-4 standard. Once MPEG-4 is finalized, then you could complain if QuickTime didn't support it...
RealMedia support. Real's servers use RTSP, which QuickTime already supports, so it's just a matter of licensing the codec.
Ummm... RealMedia and QuickTime are direct competitors. The chances of Real agreeing to licence their codec to Apple are somewhat less than zero. Out in the real world, competition exists and commercial organizations actually protect their intellectual property.
MPEG (and hopefully MPEG2/MPEG4) export. As it is, the only reason I can think of for it not being in there would be if Astarte and HEURIS are paying Apple not to put it in, so they can keep charging obscene prices for their own encoders ($400 for Astarte's M.PACK).
I can assure you that Apple are not being paid by Astarte and Heuris to protect their products. I suspect this would be an illegal cartel move anyway. MPEG playback in software has become possible with the hardware of the last six months or so. MPEG encode (to any decent quality) still really require dedicated hardware. I imagine this is one of the reasons Apple has not gone down this path yet.
There was once a time when Quicktime as well as MPEG were cross platform, now we only have MPEG without the advantages of the advances made in the newer CODECs.
Don't confuse "cross-platform" with "runs on Linux". QuickTime is cross-platform, it just happens that the platforms involved are classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Windows.
Now that Apple has embraced Open Source, could Quicktime be on its way... if they don't want the cost and headache of supporting an additional product for the last 15% of so of the market
In this context, Linux is very far from 15% of the market. This context is the market of desktop machines. The majority of machines running Linux are still servers. This is not the market for QuickTime (client). Has anyone seen reliable figures for the Linux desktop installed base? I'd guess its 1-2% Macintosh desktop installed base (not market share) is closer to 10%
For servers, the QuickTime Streaming Server is an open source project that has been ported to Linux.
They can release the Sorenson CODEC in binary form using that API and let the Open Source process go the rest of the way towards enabling Linux to play QuickTime 4.
QuickTime is much more than just a single codec. It is a complete architecture for playing back a wide variety of multimedia. It has feature like QuickTimeVR. It has the QuickTime sprites format that allows complex scripted interactivity. It has a complete MIDI-based music architecture. It has a full runtime visual effects architecture. It is a huge and powerful visual and temporal processing engine. A lot of web sites use QuickTime in the place of, for example, Flash. Porting QuickTime to Linux is very far from a trivial task.
There's a better solution, though: Darwin is based on BSD UNIX; Apple is now full of UNIX developers. You can't convince me that there isn't already a version of the QT player with an Xwindows GUI compiled and floating around inside Apple;
I may not be able to convince you, because you clearly have made up your mind already, but its true. Mac OS X does not have an X Windows component. It uses its own graphics/windowing layer called Quartz. Apple does not have an X-based QuickTime player.
Note as well, that the QuickTime Player is just one application that uses QuickTime. It is not QuickTime. QuickTime is an extensive system-level library that includes all the functionality described above. QT Player is just a small app. that Apple includes with the standard QuickTime install.
The absence of a UNIX player in that kind of development environment just doesn't make sense. So how close is it to release?
Apple have already shown a Mac OS X QuickTime Player. It is a Carbon app. Carbon is Apple's classic Mac OS 9 system libraries running on top of Quartz and Darwin. A carbonized application has no relationship to an X application. There really isn't any X-related development work happening on the QuickTime team.
The complete QuickTime architecture cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. There is a huge team of engineers at Apple working full time (and more) on this technology. It is way more than just video playback. Apple have already ported this once to another platform (Windows) and that was a task that took many hundreds of engineer-years to complete.
The chances of Apple spending similar efforts to port it to Linux, while Linux's share of the desktop market is so small, are very low. The chances of Apple open sourcing QuickTime are, in my opinion, even lower.
More like 5% of the market IIRC. On the other hand it now is close to or larger than the Apple market share.
And don't forget that a majority of machines that Linux is running on are servers. QuickTime Streaming Server does indeed run on servers. The percentage of machine that run Linux and are used as desktop is significantly smaller than 5%
QuickTime (client) is a desktop product. The relevant market is the desktop market. Linux still isn't big enough there for Apple to spend a lot of time and money porting QuickTime to Linux.
What we really need from Apple is:
A license to use the codec patents in some form of Open Source software.
Note that most of the codecs that ship with QuickTime are not written or owned by Apple. Sorensen is a good example of this. Apple doesn't have it in their power to grant these rights to you, even if they wanted to.
Sufficient documentation to make our own codecs.
Ask and you shall receive. There are over 7500 pages of QuickTime Developer documentation available on Apple's web site at:
http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/There are is also extensive sample code you can download that will start you off writing a QuickTime codec.
We do this sort of software well. What is holding us back here seems to be patent and trade-secret issues.
If you do do this sort of software well, just get out there and write it. Apple have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing QuickTime. Why would they give it to you for free? If you are really as good as you think, spend the time writing it yourself, and don't rely on someone else bankrolling your development effort.
Have YOU accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Savior?
I saw a great bumper sticker recently:
"Jesus doesn't even like you"
Yeah
It's hard to believe that however proprietary the Iridium sat network is, nobody is interested in taking it over and use it for something more viable. I bet you could push gigabits through the damn things....
Oh, more than likely there are plenty of people who would be interested in taking it over. I don't know about you, but the $10 million per month to keep the system aloft and operational is just a wee bit too rich for my blood.
That's what I love about the (spoof) Open Iridium site. Yeah, they're going to find enough geeks to fork over $10mil every month. Face it, this ain't going to happen :-)
Myself, I buy stock and influence things on the corporate level. Most people can influence the regulatory debates through online and in-person feedback and through media attention. This is the most effective method for the average /. denizen.
You know, this is good too. Just don't forget that the political system is there for you too. Even if it appears to be broken sometimes (what large system doesn't? Mozilla anyone?) it can still accomplish good things for you. Lobby your congressman/senator. They do listen, especially if they hear from a lot of /.-ers.
And the reality is that there will be governmental regulation. Too many corporations are spending way too much money for this not to happen.
I'm constantly amazed by this and similar thoughts that are expressed on /.. Assuming that you don't want the "corporations" taking over the net, then how exactly do you propose to stop them? Government regulation is an effective tool by which "we the people" can control corporate behavior. Lawsuits are an effective way for people who are abused by corporations to prevent future abuses. Neither of these are apparently acceptable to the rabid /.-er.
So how exactly are you going to change the corporations? By writing angry posts to /. discussion? Yeah, I can hear the mighty corporations quivering in their boots... The community will be more effective if it uses the mechanisms our society already has in place to achieve its end, rather than trying to ferment some sort of revolution that isn't going to happen and isn't supported by the majority of your fellow countrymen.
The usual IMHO disclaimers apply, of course ;-)
You are right to point out that other countries exist too, but they aren't as independent as you make out. What happens in the US often spreads to other countries. I suspect the EU will follow the US's lead in a lot of this, for example
And, don't forget, the Internet itself ties countries more closely together. Regulations in the US will in practice effect how US-based websites do business in all the countries they serve - i.e. everywhere. Imagine you are (say) Yahoo! and you decide to comply with one of these new laws. Its unlikely that you'll choose not to comply for customers outside the US. That's assuming you can tell which customers are from where. That's assuming that the US laws even allow websites to not comply when dealing with non-US users.
So yes, of course other countries exist on the net. But in practice, a lot of these new rules will de factor end up applying outside the US too, for better or worse.
That is indeed the context in which Pascal wrote the Pensees. What Pascal understood was that the ultimate reward of Christianity (eternal life, co-heirs with Christ) far outweighed any temporal (worldly) benefits or gains. In the framework of eternity, it's not even a comparison.
But you are, IMHO, skewing the argument. Your premise is that the Christian God exists and you have a true understanding of how that all works. Based on that, you follow Pascal's Wager. Based on that you believe God exists.
This is a circular argument, and therefore invalid. It doesn't even come up to the often low standards of religious argument. If that's meant to convince anyone, I wouldn't use it on the relatively educated and thoughtful /. audience, because I doubt it is going to fly...
Pascal's Wager is a really bad argument in itself. You theist guys have much better arguments. Grins
Actually, I think there's an even bigger problem with Pascal's wager. It doesn't even seem to pan out in its own terms.
If you assume the wager is about the mainstream Christian God (which I believe was the context Pascal was talking in), then there is a potentially huge cost to becoming a Christian. A lot of my everyday activities are profoundly unChristian. The pursuit of personal wealth and power (which is part of what I and most other Westerners get up to) seems at odds with a lot of Christian teaching
Pascal's wager is positied that there is no real cost to believing in God, and a potentially large reward in the AfterLife. I would argue that there is a real, known cost to a (true) belief in the Christian God, which is ofset against a possible though vague reward in an AfterLife for which there is no substantial evidence of either its existence or its nature
For me, at least, Pascal's wager somes down firmly on the side of irreligion...
> Science has the basics down. But scientists are far from knowing everything.
Certainly, and one of the wonders of science is that the more you know, the more you realise you don't know. Scientists are usually the first to admit that they know very little, in terms of all that could be known. I am astounded and frightened by the number of theists who profess to know the absolute truth.
> Just be careful not to go down the same road that you are busy condemning.
Here I have to disagree with you. Science and Religion are profoundly different things. Fundamentally, a religion is a particular belief system (e.g. I believe in one God, whose only begotten son, etc. etc.)
In contrast, Science is a methodology for obtaining particular beliefs. Its a sort of meta belief system. In other words, science tells you how to go about obtaining beliefs, but it doesn't actually have a specific set of beliefs it demands you believe in.
In particular, the beliefs generated by following the scientific methodology are theories that can be changed or even completely thrown away. A fundamental tenet of Science is that you must constantly test, refine and change the particular things you believe in. Hypothesis and the gathering of counter-evidence is the heart of science.
This seems a much more robust approach to gathering (useful) knowledge about the world, than hewing to some particular dogma. The ability to refine your beliefs in the face of new and challenging data is a huge strength and has enabled science to hugely improve the lot of people everywhere in the face of often murderous religions who would drag us back into the dark ages of witchcraft and spirit realms.
All IMHO, of course
I think you missed the point of the unicorns post. If we could both agree that the unicorn definitively does not exist, then look at the statement:
"You can believe in unicorns because there's no proof that unicorns don't exist"
It doesn't say anything really useful. If we know that unicorns don't exist, then it is obvious that the above argument is at best a very weak justification for a belief in unicorns.
This is very different from your question about whether aliens (or coelocanths) exist. This is an empirical question.
A useful way of attempting an answer to this question is to start with the assumption that they don't exist, then examine the evidence that they do. From this one can draw strong or weak conclusions about the existence of aliens.
The question about unicorns is really a way of illustrating a weakness of a certain type of "argument" and isn't really about methods of establishing the existence of unicorns from the evidence.
The reason this relates to the God question, is that the weak "unicorns" argument is often used by theists to argue that one should believe in God (often combined with Pascal's argument, of course). I suspect the original posters' intention was to point out the weakness of that position.