Actually, we are approaching some consolidation, H.264 seems to reign supreme for almost all video, I guess that's run by people with eyes. Audio, meh. If they did a double blind test between LPCM, FLAC, Apple Lossless, TrueHD and DTS-HD Master I swear they'd find a ton of differences. And apart from those that want the kitchen sink general programming environment, MKV is doing a pretty damn good job on video, audio, subtitles, chapters, multiple angles etc. BluRay for example is a whole JavaVM, there's a full OS running inside the machine just to play the damn disc. Now I'm just hoping that all the browser plugins will die and be replaced with HTML5 video elements.
Re:VLC media player and MPEG-2
on
VLC 1.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
VLC didn't pay them, so if you need a patent license then yes. But then the most popular MPEG2-encoded content is DVDs, and to play those you'll be a criminal as well so why bother.
So when God fucks up it's less of a problem than when I do? (...) I knew it all the time. If you have money and power, you won't get blamed for anything.
No no, you've missed the point - you have to build a cult of personality, doesn't matter if you're a sect leader or catholic priest, that's what lets you get away with things. That's probably why they choose the weakest, oldest guy for Pope - he'd probably get away with mass murder. If you're not the religious type, you might go for pop star as well - seemed to work out fine for some.
Well, if you're far enough north that you can seriously take CFL as space heating, most air based heat pumps are shit for large parts of the year. Too cold, condensing issues etc. so there's only ground based heat pumps. Expensive to build, I guess it works for those who have them but pretty much all places I know of with electric heating is using plain resistive.
(As an aside - holy shit is Google getting scary! To calculate that, I typed in "1.92 million * 3.5 megabytes" and it said "6.40869141 terabytes". Then I asked it "6.41 terabytes / 256kbps" and got 6.81574337 years. I'm starting to think we should be referring to Google as 'a logic called Joe'.:S )
You think that's impressive? Try calculating how much energy the sun has (E=mc^2): mass of sun * c^2. Want it in a different unit? Just say so: in kilowatt hours. It does currency conversions and plenty other useful things too. It's not just the search results keeping google on top...
Yes, but remember that statutory damages are supposed to be an approximation to actual damages. It's not supposed to be the way that actual damages is 100$ and statutory damages are 10000$ where 9900$ is a fine. Then of course everyone would opt for the statutory damages, less burden of proof and higher payback. Statutory damages should, in my opinion, be an educated guess of the damage done compared to the zero alternative. So let us assume Jammie Thomas did do everything she was charged with and compare that to her not file sharing at all, how much of an impact would that make? Meaning no offense, but she's a nobody. One little peer in a swarm who'd have as much affect as stomping an ant on the ant hill.
That's what is entirely missing here that makes this case insane. It can't possibly be the intent of the law that they should be able to say "Well, we can't prove any specific instance of infringement so we'll just pick the highest possible number we can". If so, they should just burn all evidence they have on actual infringement. In fact, that's very good grounds why statutory damages should be on the low end of the scale. Let's for example assume that you have a statutory damage estimated to 2000$-5000$. If you, as the plaintiff, know that the actual damage was 2500$ you'd only want to prove it if you'd otherwise get 2000$. If you'll get more in statutory damages then you'd rather suppress that evidence. And if you can't even estimate the statutory damages and get 150,000$ instead, then that too.
I think they're very afraid of just how far the Supreme Court could set them back. Any demand of plausibility for statutory damages is likely to kill their scare tactics. I mean, seriously compared to how many cases there's been and how many people's computers and networks are wide open, do you really think she's the only one that wanted to fight the lawsuit? But I bet far too many have investigated their risk/reward and found that yes, you might win or be a debt slave forever. There's no way the zero tactic will work though, I bet they'll find the damages unconstiutional and send it back to be redone once more with new guidelines. At least that's the way I'm used to, even if the supreme court finds stuff unconstitutional it doesn't have time to deal with fact-finding in actual cases.
Seriously though, the first DCTF was happy and upbeat (and for good reason, as many people simply didn't know that copying a floppy was piracy). What happened to that feel? Are we really at a point where we're so influenced by the RIAA/MPAA's ways of doing things that SIIA's first sequel in 17 years immediately jumps to scare tactics?
"The whippings will continue until the people love us". Then they take a five minute break and say "See, not whipping them doesn't help either but we see the cowering under the whip". And they wonder why people curse and spit at them and pirate like crazy when they turn their backs. Why they even try this approach is beyond me.
If I was them I'd try a completely different approach, try to focus on "What has this music/movie/whatever given you?" Maybe try to contrast it to a lot of the tedium and hard work that's actually been put into creating and producing it. Make people feel that even though it's money out of their pocket, it's being plowed back into rewarding those people and making more albums, more movies. Of course they'd have to try to conceal all the profit they take out of it, but then they'd at least stand a chance.
As long as they give the impression they're the sherrif of Nottingham, only out to squeeze more money out of the peasants because the noblemen aren't living extravagantly enough they stand no chance, no matter if there are servants paid by said noblemen. All they'll do is build an army of Merry Men that sooner or later will realize they are strong and come tear the castle down.
You know, I have a base level of altruism - like I don't think people should thirst or starve to death or die from easily curable illnesses and such. But past a certain point I don't have any altruism at all. If you make 100k$/year and I make 200k$/year (wish I did) I don't see any reason whatsoever why we should share it and get 150k$ each. I worked for it, I earned it, I enjoy the fruits of that labor. If you can't afford the same, well tough but you have really no reason to complain about your economy. I can go a long way towards social programs, but when that difference is being presented as a problem in and by itself I get mighty angry. Seriously, what kind of signal is it that every slacker should get the same pay and same benefits? If that was true, I'd find the laziest job possible and do even less.
If they wish to undermine copyright, if they are foolish enough to believe that, as the summary suggested, that sharing is somehow less damaging just because money isn't changing hands, then I suggest they give their party points some long hard thought.
I don't know about the canadian pirate party, but the swedish pirate party yes. You can find a brief summary in english but their swedish statement is better:
"All non-commercial acquirement, use, improvement and distribution of culture shall explicitly be encouraged. The law shall be changed so that it is perfectly clear that it only regulates use and copying of works in a commercial setting. To share copies, or in other ways spread or use someone else's work shall never be prohibited as long as it happens on an ideal basis without intention of commercial gain.
"Allt icke-kommersiellt inhämtande, nyttjande, förädlande och spridning av kultur skall uttryckligen uppmuntras. Lagstiftningen skall ändras så att det görs helt klart att den endast reglerar användning och kopiering av verk i kommersiella sammanhang. Att dela med sig av kopior, eller på annat sätt sprida eller använda annans verk, skall aldrig vara förbjudet så länge det sker på ideell basis utan vinstmotiv."
Now if the invention is non-obvious enough that you don't expect anyone to re-invent it until the end of the patent protection
Let's completely ignore that if you have a working example of something it's much, much easier to re-invent it. I guess it could be for a process patent, but for a product patent surely someone would pick it apart and figure out what you did in much less than 20 years.
I don't like it if it becomes narrating/lecturing either, with some exceptions like HHGTTG. But some authors are very good at introducing it through the plot by having someone in the story who needs an explanation, is cause for a discussion around it, or pre-introduce it in the passing at some earlier point. When they do it right, it makes up for very good books without feeling like you're treated like a 5yo but it's a rare talent.
Pretty much everything I've done with Qt tells me KDE should be a much better desktop than Gnome. But the truth is that most of the large desktop distributions use Gnome, Ubuntu is much bigger than Kubuntu and same goes for the others. None of the big three hitters Firefox, OpenOffice or GIMP are KDE applications - ok not all are Gnome apps either but there's not many "killer KDE apps" around. Don't get me wrong, they're all perfectly okay but nothing really rocks the boat.
Sometimes I just want to shoot the people that did usability studies for KDE, like for example making dolphin's file transfer dialogs into notifications that disappear whether they're done or not. When I'm moving a file it's very often a point to know when it's complete, and it irritates me to no end that every time I must click the notifications icon to know when it's really done. To be honest, I think I'd love to see Gnome/Qt. Maybe we'd see more head-to-head competition - or even more shared components? That's kind of hard today, both need to invent the wheel in C/C++ respectively.
My main issue is that Qt is pretty strongly tied to C++, and I *despise* that language.
Did you try C++ with or without Qt? I must admit, I don't like C++ outside of Qt, it brings the whole platform to another level. QStrings and QByteArrays are a godsend compared to std::string and char *. Using the QObject system I easily write applications with no memory leaks because it will delete any child QObjects when it goes, making it easy even without amy garbage collector. Finally, using signals and slots makes your application more robust - screw something up and nothing will happen because the signal never reaches its destination but it won't crash hard on an invalid pointer. Granted, I've heard you can do the same with STL and boost and duct tape, but I never managed to do it.
I do remember the first game that went from water was a blue surface w/static animations to water being a T&L surface with actual waves where you can go splashing in the water and it was just like WOW. People don't like limitations that just seem arbitrary compared to the real world, if it's a 3D world you're simulating why can't you see it in 3D? Why can you only move in n fixed directions when in real world you can go in whatever direction you like. Why isn't there more detail when you walk up close to something? If it's a windy day why doesn't the trees and grass bend in the wind, flags and capes and hair flutter? If light falls upon something, why doesn't it reflect and spread like a light should? If I hack at something with an axe, why shouldn't it break and deform? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about realism in a human sense. But even if I'm sneaking up on some trolls that have camped up in a cave with a fire going, I expect the basic laws of physics to not be entirely unlike the real world.
Take for example the Wii Remote - is that "fun" or "technology"? It takes you away from the button-pushing technology and into swinging a racket not entirely unlike real life. You get a whole different level of immersion on the Wii than you ever did before and that makes it fun. At the same time, it's a very impressive piece of technology itself and once you have the technology, it's not exactly revolutionary figuring out how to use it for tennis. Of course, there are other ways than immersion to get you interested - humor, logic puzzles and strategy are three big ones. But IMHO they too get better with immersion, it's one thing seeing a joke on screen in a 1980s computer game and have it delivered in a clever way by a 3D CGI character with a voicetrack.
Of course, you can still create a lousy game with tons of technology. But technology acts more like an upper bound, where you can't get any closer to your goals. I'd love for us to get virtual reality propely going, not just swinging that Wii rack but actually being at Wimbeldon looking up at the sides to see the fans cheering you on. For everything you could make that would still suck, there's much more you could create that just wasn't possible before.
Exactly, they'd say exactly the same even if Microsoft's solution was wonderful and Symantec was left selling rocks to keep tigers away. I think it's a smart move by Microsoft in crunch times, it's lowering the cost of using the platform without lowering the income of Microsoft. Also, analyzing viruses gives them lots of information on bugs they ought to sort out and patch in the source software anyway. By baking it into the cost of Windows they're basicly giving themselves free market share, and there's no real teeth to antitrust.
True enough, but there's huge network effects in play here and H.264 is settling in as the format of choice. There's a ton of graphics cards, standalones, portable video players, media center devices and whatnot shipping right now that has hardware H.264 acceleration and not Theora acceleration. So when content producers ask "Hmm, what format can the most people play?" the answer ends up being H.264 and not Theora, and the circle continues. If it ends up the way that you must support H.264, that shipping without it is like shipping a music player without MP3 support then Theora has basically lost already. It'll just become another wierd format noone outside slashdot is using until the H.264 patents expire. Maybe with a huge splash of Theora with Firefox 3.6 and YouTube there's still time to turn around, but not much.
1) 1996 called, they want their arguments back. For example, most RDBMS have ranking functions now. 2) Even in 1996, he doesn't know SQL worth shit
SELECT (prev.sales+now.sales+next.sales)/3 three_day_average FROM sales prev,
sales now,
sales next WHERE prev.day_number = now.day_number-1 AND next.day_number = now.day_number+1
Easy as pie making most of the calculations he wants. Maybe he should ask someone knowledgable in SQL?
No, that was just showing 17 million suns as a lower bound with as few conditions as possible. - Unless 8.5 million of those suns are antimatter suns, you have to collect it differently say fusion. That's about 5% efficient - Let's assume you'll build Dyson spheres around all the suns covered in solar collectors with 50% efficiency. - Checking one AES key is more than 1 bit flip, at least 128 bits * 10 bit flips
Already you're up to 17*10^6/0.05/0.5*128*10 = 870 billion suns - that's about 8-9 Milky Way galaxies. And there's still a lot of extremely unlikely conditions in there, by the time you've reached "realistic" conditions you're probably talking about burning through most of the known universe.
Theora is unpatented as far as anyone knows, and is supported by Firefox 3.5, Chrome 3, and experimental Opera versions. Apple has said they refuse to support it at present because of fears about unknown patents surfacing when someone with deep pockets starts shipping it (this was before Google shipped Theora support).
If you look up H.264 it's many, I didn't take a count but it's somewhere around 2-300 patents. Then there's all other patents that aren't part of the AVC patent portfolio. The chances are pretty damn good it's covered by something, the question is just if anyone wants to take a swing at it. Usually they'd rather spread FUD like Microsoft's 200+ patents were possibly violating. Still haven't seen anything but smoke and mirrors from that and don't expect to.
I'm not familiar with the term "complexity" being used in this context and with these specific numbers.
Because it's not a problem that scales with n, it's an attack on one particular value of n. Ideally brute forcing an n-bit cipher has complexity O(2^n). For 256 bit AES, they've found an attack that instead of the ideal 2^256 attempts takes 2^119 attempts. But you can't say O(2^119) because that is equal to O(1), and any function with n would be false since it doesn't apply to other n. I guess you could say an attack with "complexity O(2^(n*119/256) for n=256" but you're likely to confuse a hundred times as many as are enlightened.
I think that's the only kind of number that makes sense without using the 2^x notation - 137 bits broken, 119 bits of strength left. It's lost over half the bitstrength. If it'd been the same for 128 bit keys, it'd be well into crackable ranges. That's really the big issueeasily here, why would this NOT affect 128 bit AES? Did they do something really, really smart in that version that leaves them immune? Or is it rather we don't want to set of every alarm bell there is?
So you're saying that 256 bits should be enough for anyone?
Unless you discover reversible computing, yes. Otherwise you could have an infinitely fast computer, but even the Sun at E=mc^2 and 100% efficiency couldn't do it. It's not a speed limitation, it's an energy limitation. Take the Landauer limit at background radiation temperature. Plug that into a calculator and you get joules required:
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, nope, that's Janet. Ms. Jackson if you're nasty.
How about Ms. Superbowl Wardrobe Malfunction? I'm sure she'll love to be remembered as that...
Actually, we are approaching some consolidation, H.264 seems to reign supreme for almost all video, I guess that's run by people with eyes. Audio, meh. If they did a double blind test between LPCM, FLAC, Apple Lossless, TrueHD and DTS-HD Master I swear they'd find a ton of differences. And apart from those that want the kitchen sink general programming environment, MKV is doing a pretty damn good job on video, audio, subtitles, chapters, multiple angles etc. BluRay for example is a whole JavaVM, there's a full OS running inside the machine just to play the damn disc. Now I'm just hoping that all the browser plugins will die and be replaced with HTML5 video elements.
VLC didn't pay them, so if you need a patent license then yes. But then the most popular MPEG2-encoded content is DVDs, and to play those you'll be a criminal as well so why bother.
So when God fucks up it's less of a problem than when I do? (...) I knew it all the time. If you have money and power, you won't get blamed for anything.
No no, you've missed the point - you have to build a cult of personality, doesn't matter if you're a sect leader or catholic priest, that's what lets you get away with things. That's probably why they choose the weakest, oldest guy for Pope - he'd probably get away with mass murder. If you're not the religious type, you might go for pop star as well - seemed to work out fine for some.
Well, if you're far enough north that you can seriously take CFL as space heating, most air based heat pumps are shit for large parts of the year. Too cold, condensing issues etc. so there's only ground based heat pumps. Expensive to build, I guess it works for those who have them but pretty much all places I know of with electric heating is using plain resistive.
(As an aside - holy shit is Google getting scary! To calculate that, I typed in "1.92 million * 3.5 megabytes" and it said "6.40869141 terabytes". Then I asked it "6.41 terabytes / 256kbps" and got 6.81574337 years. I'm starting to think we should be referring to Google as 'a logic called Joe'. :S )
You think that's impressive? Try calculating how much energy the sun has (E=mc^2): mass of sun * c^2. Want it in a different unit? Just say so: in kilowatt hours. It does currency conversions and plenty other useful things too. It's not just the search results keeping google on top...
Yes, but remember that statutory damages are supposed to be an approximation to actual damages. It's not supposed to be the way that actual damages is 100$ and statutory damages are 10000$ where 9900$ is a fine. Then of course everyone would opt for the statutory damages, less burden of proof and higher payback. Statutory damages should, in my opinion, be an educated guess of the damage done compared to the zero alternative. So let us assume Jammie Thomas did do everything she was charged with and compare that to her not file sharing at all, how much of an impact would that make? Meaning no offense, but she's a nobody. One little peer in a swarm who'd have as much affect as stomping an ant on the ant hill.
That's what is entirely missing here that makes this case insane. It can't possibly be the intent of the law that they should be able to say "Well, we can't prove any specific instance of infringement so we'll just pick the highest possible number we can". If so, they should just burn all evidence they have on actual infringement. In fact, that's very good grounds why statutory damages should be on the low end of the scale. Let's for example assume that you have a statutory damage estimated to 2000$-5000$. If you, as the plaintiff, know that the actual damage was 2500$ you'd only want to prove it if you'd otherwise get 2000$. If you'll get more in statutory damages then you'd rather suppress that evidence. And if you can't even estimate the statutory damages and get 150,000$ instead, then that too.
I think they're very afraid of just how far the Supreme Court could set them back. Any demand of plausibility for statutory damages is likely to kill their scare tactics. I mean, seriously compared to how many cases there's been and how many people's computers and networks are wide open, do you really think she's the only one that wanted to fight the lawsuit? But I bet far too many have investigated their risk/reward and found that yes, you might win or be a debt slave forever. There's no way the zero tactic will work though, I bet they'll find the damages unconstiutional and send it back to be redone once more with new guidelines. At least that's the way I'm used to, even if the supreme court finds stuff unconstitutional it doesn't have time to deal with fact-finding in actual cases.
Seriously though, the first DCTF was happy and upbeat (and for good reason, as many people simply didn't know that copying a floppy was piracy). What happened to that feel? Are we really at a point where we're so influenced by the RIAA/MPAA's ways of doing things that SIIA's first sequel in 17 years immediately jumps to scare tactics?
"The whippings will continue until the people love us". Then they take a five minute break and say "See, not whipping them doesn't help either but we see the cowering under the whip". And they wonder why people curse and spit at them and pirate like crazy when they turn their backs. Why they even try this approach is beyond me.
If I was them I'd try a completely different approach, try to focus on "What has this music/movie/whatever given you?" Maybe try to contrast it to a lot of the tedium and hard work that's actually been put into creating and producing it. Make people feel that even though it's money out of their pocket, it's being plowed back into rewarding those people and making more albums, more movies. Of course they'd have to try to conceal all the profit they take out of it, but then they'd at least stand a chance.
As long as they give the impression they're the sherrif of Nottingham, only out to squeeze more money out of the peasants because the noblemen aren't living extravagantly enough they stand no chance, no matter if there are servants paid by said noblemen. All they'll do is build an army of Merry Men that sooner or later will realize they are strong and come tear the castle down.
You know, I have a base level of altruism - like I don't think people should thirst or starve to death or die from easily curable illnesses and such. But past a certain point I don't have any altruism at all. If you make 100k$/year and I make 200k$/year (wish I did) I don't see any reason whatsoever why we should share it and get 150k$ each. I worked for it, I earned it, I enjoy the fruits of that labor. If you can't afford the same, well tough but you have really no reason to complain about your economy. I can go a long way towards social programs, but when that difference is being presented as a problem in and by itself I get mighty angry. Seriously, what kind of signal is it that every slacker should get the same pay and same benefits? If that was true, I'd find the laziest job possible and do even less.
Wanna swap?
If they wish to undermine copyright, if they are foolish enough to believe that, as the summary suggested, that sharing is somehow less damaging just because money isn't changing hands, then I suggest they give their party points some long hard thought.
I don't know about the canadian pirate party, but the swedish pirate party yes. You can find a brief summary in english but their swedish statement is better:
"All non-commercial acquirement, use, improvement and distribution of culture shall explicitly be encouraged. The law shall be changed so that it is perfectly clear that it only regulates use and copying of works in a commercial setting. To share copies, or in other ways spread or use someone else's work shall never be prohibited as long as it happens on an ideal basis without intention of commercial gain.
"Allt icke-kommersiellt inhämtande, nyttjande, förädlande och spridning av kultur skall uttryckligen uppmuntras. Lagstiftningen skall ändras så att det görs helt klart att den endast reglerar användning och kopiering av verk i kommersiella sammanhang. Att dela med sig av kopior, eller på annat sätt sprida eller använda annans verk, skall aldrig vara förbjudet så länge det sker på ideell basis utan vinstmotiv."
Now if the invention is non-obvious enough that you don't expect anyone to re-invent it until the end of the patent protection
Let's completely ignore that if you have a working example of something it's much, much easier to re-invent it. I guess it could be for a process patent, but for a product patent surely someone would pick it apart and figure out what you did in much less than 20 years.
I don't like it if it becomes narrating/lecturing either, with some exceptions like HHGTTG. But some authors are very good at introducing it through the plot by having someone in the story who needs an explanation, is cause for a discussion around it, or pre-introduce it in the passing at some earlier point. When they do it right, it makes up for very good books without feeling like you're treated like a 5yo but it's a rare talent.
Pretty much everything I've done with Qt tells me KDE should be a much better desktop than Gnome. But the truth is that most of the large desktop distributions use Gnome, Ubuntu is much bigger than Kubuntu and same goes for the others. None of the big three hitters Firefox, OpenOffice or GIMP are KDE applications - ok not all are Gnome apps either but there's not many "killer KDE apps" around. Don't get me wrong, they're all perfectly okay but nothing really rocks the boat.
Sometimes I just want to shoot the people that did usability studies for KDE, like for example making dolphin's file transfer dialogs into notifications that disappear whether they're done or not. When I'm moving a file it's very often a point to know when it's complete, and it irritates me to no end that every time I must click the notifications icon to know when it's really done. To be honest, I think I'd love to see Gnome/Qt. Maybe we'd see more head-to-head competition - or even more shared components? That's kind of hard today, both need to invent the wheel in C/C++ respectively.
My main issue is that Qt is pretty strongly tied to C++, and I *despise* that language.
Did you try C++ with or without Qt? I must admit, I don't like C++ outside of Qt, it brings the whole platform to another level. QStrings and QByteArrays are a godsend compared to std::string and char *. Using the QObject system I easily write applications with no memory leaks because it will delete any child QObjects when it goes, making it easy even without amy garbage collector. Finally, using signals and slots makes your application more robust - screw something up and nothing will happen because the signal never reaches its destination but it won't crash hard on an invalid pointer. Granted, I've heard you can do the same with STL and boost and duct tape, but I never managed to do it.
I know why.. Because QT was released under the LGPL, sorta recently.
Uh, maybe because Qt was bought by Nokia? They're the ones who decided to LGPL it, but they can do anything they want with it.
Not saying this is the only thing but:
Fun ~= Immersion
Immersion ~= Technology
I do remember the first game that went from water was a blue surface w/static animations to water being a T&L surface with actual waves where you can go splashing in the water and it was just like WOW. People don't like limitations that just seem arbitrary compared to the real world, if it's a 3D world you're simulating why can't you see it in 3D? Why can you only move in n fixed directions when in real world you can go in whatever direction you like. Why isn't there more detail when you walk up close to something? If it's a windy day why doesn't the trees and grass bend in the wind, flags and capes and hair flutter? If light falls upon something, why doesn't it reflect and spread like a light should? If I hack at something with an axe, why shouldn't it break and deform? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about realism in a human sense. But even if I'm sneaking up on some trolls that have camped up in a cave with a fire going, I expect the basic laws of physics to not be entirely unlike the real world.
Take for example the Wii Remote - is that "fun" or "technology"? It takes you away from the button-pushing technology and into swinging a racket not entirely unlike real life. You get a whole different level of immersion on the Wii than you ever did before and that makes it fun. At the same time, it's a very impressive piece of technology itself and once you have the technology, it's not exactly revolutionary figuring out how to use it for tennis. Of course, there are other ways than immersion to get you interested - humor, logic puzzles and strategy are three big ones. But IMHO they too get better with immersion, it's one thing seeing a joke on screen in a 1980s computer game and have it delivered in a clever way by a 3D CGI character with a voicetrack.
Of course, you can still create a lousy game with tons of technology. But technology acts more like an upper bound, where you can't get any closer to your goals. I'd love for us to get virtual reality propely going, not just swinging that Wii rack but actually being at Wimbeldon looking up at the sides to see the fans cheering you on. For everything you could make that would still suck, there's much more you could create that just wasn't possible before.
Exactly, they'd say exactly the same even if Microsoft's solution was wonderful and Symantec was left selling rocks to keep tigers away. I think it's a smart move by Microsoft in crunch times, it's lowering the cost of using the platform without lowering the income of Microsoft. Also, analyzing viruses gives them lots of information on bugs they ought to sort out and patch in the source software anyway. By baking it into the cost of Windows they're basicly giving themselves free market share, and there's no real teeth to antitrust.
True enough, but there's huge network effects in play here and H.264 is settling in as the format of choice. There's a ton of graphics cards, standalones, portable video players, media center devices and whatnot shipping right now that has hardware H.264 acceleration and not Theora acceleration. So when content producers ask "Hmm, what format can the most people play?" the answer ends up being H.264 and not Theora, and the circle continues. If it ends up the way that you must support H.264, that shipping without it is like shipping a music player without MP3 support then Theora has basically lost already. It'll just become another wierd format noone outside slashdot is using until the H.264 patents expire. Maybe with a huge splash of Theora with Firefox 3.6 and YouTube there's still time to turn around, but not much.
1) 1996 called, they want their arguments back. For example, most RDBMS have ranking functions now.
2) Even in 1996, he doesn't know SQL worth shit
SELECT (prev.sales+now.sales+next.sales)/3 three_day_average
FROM sales prev,
sales now,
sales next
WHERE prev.day_number = now.day_number-1
AND next.day_number = now.day_number+1
Easy as pie making most of the calculations he wants. Maybe he should ask someone knowledgable in SQL?
So you're saying I only need 17 million suns?
No, that was just showing 17 million suns as a lower bound with as few conditions as possible.
- Unless 8.5 million of those suns are antimatter suns, you have to collect it differently say fusion. That's about 5% efficient
- Let's assume you'll build Dyson spheres around all the suns covered in solar collectors with 50% efficiency.
- Checking one AES key is more than 1 bit flip, at least 128 bits * 10 bit flips
Already you're up to 17*10^6/0.05/0.5*128*10 = 870 billion suns - that's about 8-9 Milky Way galaxies. And there's still a lot of extremely unlikely conditions in there, by the time you've reached "realistic" conditions you're probably talking about burning through most of the known universe.
Theora is unpatented as far as anyone knows, and is supported by Firefox 3.5, Chrome 3, and experimental Opera versions. Apple has said they refuse to support it at present because of fears about unknown patents surfacing when someone with deep pockets starts shipping it (this was before Google shipped Theora support).
If you look up H.264 it's many, I didn't take a count but it's somewhere around 2-300 patents. Then there's all other patents that aren't part of the AVC patent portfolio. The chances are pretty damn good it's covered by something, the question is just if anyone wants to take a swing at it. Usually they'd rather spread FUD like Microsoft's 200+ patents were possibly violating. Still haven't seen anything but smoke and mirrors from that and don't expect to.
I'm not familiar with the term "complexity" being used in this context and with these specific numbers.
Because it's not a problem that scales with n, it's an attack on one particular value of n. Ideally brute forcing an n-bit cipher has complexity O(2^n). For 256 bit AES, they've found an attack that instead of the ideal 2^256 attempts takes 2^119 attempts. But you can't say O(2^119) because that is equal to O(1), and any function with n would be false since it doesn't apply to other n. I guess you could say an attack with "complexity O(2^(n*119/256) for n=256" but you're likely to confuse a hundred times as many as are enlightened.
I think that's the only kind of number that makes sense without using the 2^x notation - 137 bits broken, 119 bits of strength left. It's lost over half the bitstrength. If it'd been the same for 128 bit keys, it'd be well into crackable ranges. That's really the big issueeasily here, why would this NOT affect 128 bit AES? Did they do something really, really smart in that version that leaves them immune? Or is it rather we don't want to set of every alarm bell there is?
So you're saying that 256 bits should be enough for anyone?
Unless you discover reversible computing, yes. Otherwise you could have an infinitely fast computer, but even the Sun at E=mc^2 and 100% efficiency couldn't do it. It's not a speed limitation, it's an energy limitation. Take the Landauer limit at background radiation temperature. Plug that into a calculator and you get joules required:
(2^256) * 1.3806504 * (10^(-23)) * 2.72500 * ln(2) = 3.0196359 * 10^54
Energy of sun:
1.98892 * (10^30) * (299 792 458^2) = 1.78755215 * 10^47