> However, mp3 is not free...yet. Some of these patents are set to expire on their 20 year time frame in a couple of years it would seem.
Yes, the next MP3 patent expires this Sunday. The longest patent seems to expire in 2018 but that appears to be MPEG-2 LSF and only required for low sample rate MP3s. So the next furthest date looks like April 2017 but it may be worth double checking the dates on those around 2014/2015.
Really , what is the point? Its not like every other video format on the planet is closed source with a fee required. MPEG2 and MPEG3 are the ISO standard and the de facto free standard for most high bandwidth video apps these days and MPEG 4 for low bandwidth, deal with it and stop re-inventing the fscking wheel just to play OSS one upmanship.
Since there appear to be a lot of misinformed people in this thread, this actually a merger of Vivendi Games and Activision. Blizzard has been a subsidiary of Vivendi Games (and it's predecessors) for a long time. The merges company is taking the name Activision Blizard instead of Activision Vivendi because Blizzard is a much for famous brand name and the Vivendi brand has been tarnished since the Vivendi Universal implosion while the Blizzard brand is known for quality. Blizzard has been known for it's ability to convince its owners that its formula works and it should be left alone for a long time now. âoeMike [Morhaime] has to train his new boss every time he gets a new boss.â
Blizzard was founded in 1991. It acquired by Davidson and Associates in 1994. Davidson was acquired by a a mail-order/conglomerate company CUC International in 1996 along with Sierra On-Line and Berkley Systems. Then in 1997 CUC merged with a hotel company HFS to form Cendant. After an accounting scandal in 1997 Cendant sold it's software arm to French publisher Havas. In 1999 French water conglomerate Vivendi acquired Havas and while working to acquire Universal (which it did in 2000) becoming Vivendi Universal. In 2002 Vevendi Universal began to enter financial trouble and began divesting many of it's properties. In 2004 it sold 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment to NBC keeping it's software properties. In 2006 it dropped Universal from it's name completely once again becoming Vivendi (with Vivendi Universal Games becoming Vivendi Games). In 2007 announced a merger of Vivendi Games with Activision which just became official, resulting in Vivendi owning a huge portion of Activision (now Activision Blizzard) stock (54% of shares outstanding).
ISO has been playing games like this with SC29/WG11 for years.
SC29/WG11 (More commonly known as MPEG) is notoriously closed off. All their proposed work for consideration is closed off from public scrutiny until after it has been accepted and published. Reference software updates are only made available to committee members while the rest of us have to wait for a version to be signed off as a Corrigendum/Addendum and then sit for a year as all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed in the general body (why can't non controversial reference software bugfixes get fast-tracked the same way OOXML was?). When people come to MPEG industry forum technical list (Mp4-tech) for clarification they are often referred secret documents and reference software that they have no way of getting. Furthermore their document interchange format is.doc not ODF or OOXML.
Where did this "credibility and proud history of ISO" meme come from?
I know the Slashdot crowd didn't start caring about ISO until OOXML hit SC34 but I have other issues with ISO. SC29/WG11 (More commonly known as MPEG) is notoriously closed off. All their proposed work for consideration is closed off from public scrutiny until after it has been accepted and published. Reference software updates are only made available to committee members while the rest of us have to wait for a version to be signed off as a Corrigendum/Addendum and then sit for a year as all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed in the general body (why can't non controversial reference software bugfixes get fast-tracked the same way OOXML was?). When people come to MPEG industry forum technical list (Mp4-tech) for clarification they are often referred secret documents and reference software that they have no way of getting. Furthermore their document interchange format is.doc not ODF or OOXML.
The problem with GNOME is that it is unmaintained. Sure modules have "maintainers." But it seems the maintainers can't be bothered to review patches on core (aka "boring") components; all they want to do is write "exciting" new code. Consider the following there are 3322 unreviewed patches on GNOME bugzilla. A significant fraction of them are over 100 days old and to gnome desktop or platform components (vs related software that uses Gnome bugzilla).
Gnome-panel has 67 unreviewed patches, 9 are over 100 days old. Where are the so-called maintainers???
> The problem here is that what TW is doing breaks DNS. By the RFCs, when I try to resolve a name that doesn't exist, I'm supposed to get an NX "record does not exist" result. What I get instead is an affirmative A record "name exists at this address" response. What happens at the browser level is irrelevant, TW's DNS system has already lied about the state of the DNS records associated with a given domain. This badly breaks a lot of things that aren't browsers that use HTTP and depend on correct NX responses to tell them when the server they're trying to talk to doesn't exist.
I'm still confused. But now a server does exist. How is this any different from a server that has all ports from 80 firewalled off. Can you give me a specific example of what this breaks?
>Sometimes I struggle understanding double standards on/. >So ripping off a stock photo is Bad and this guy did good by pushing for his rights and winning. > >But pirating copyright music via p2p etc is OK because nobody got hurt right. > >ENOCOMPUTE
I see a hug difference. Vilana Financial is using the infringed photo to further their commercial enterprises. If they had hung it up in their living room and shared a few copies on p2p without making money off it then I would be totally OK with their usage.
I think the real double standard is that to infringe something for personal use it's $50,000 but if you try to use it to make money it's only $20,000.
> 3) Discs will be more expensive to print because BR is not an open standard and royalties will have to be paid to Sony.
Stop making shit up just because you don't like Sony! BluRay is a standard of the Blu-ray Disc Association founded by nine members (including Sony), governed by 18 board members with 65 contributors, and 94 members http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association . Yes there are royalties just like HD DVD but it is not any more or less of an open standard.
> The only way out for HD-DVD is to concede defeat and open the specification in ways that Hollywood cannot handle. By removing the DRM, and removing any RAND licensing. Allowing anybody to produce HD-DVD devices and disks without obtaining license. Only act as a certification agency.
You are aware that Toshiba and Microsoft don't own the majority of the patents on HD-DVD?
Microsoft did the same this with VC-1, they sat on all the MPEG committees but then took their own similar but semantically different standard to a different body.
"Being English, and having to buy a TV licence*, I think what the BBC are doing with licence payers money borders on being illegal. You cannot take money from people then bar them from the purpose of that licence - this is definitely MS driven with the BBC in cahoots with them (remember, the BBC is a very similar monopoly like MS and allowed to be by the Politicians 'in hand')."
To me that seems more like complaining that the BBC doesn't work with your NTSC TV.
In Cleveland OH, I saw a cop (or at least what appeared to be a cop, not private security) checking IDs outside of a theatre (the actual theatre not the building) showing "Jackass Number 2"
I still don't really understand what the big objection to DIVX was. It works like a rental. If you want to watch the movie once buy the DIVX, if you want to watch it a lot buy the DVD. Do you think movie rentals are bad because if you want to watch the movie again you have to rent it again?
I realize there was some concern that movie studios might start releasing DIVX only but i think that seems kind of likely that would be like them releasing something as rental only.
I'm not a big DRM fan but I think DIVX was over vilified.
> I don't know what's happening with Firefox and Ubuntu, but I do know that if it does get replaced with IceWeasel... And to be honest I'd encourage everyone else to do the same. I'm really not trying to troll, I just don't want to one day find a vulnerability or incompatibility in IceWeasel that's not in Firefox.
You are essentially already running IceWeasel, the branding flag in./configure and the artwork are just different.
> And Mozilla.org has had a policy in place for years too. You ship X or you don't. The policy is now being more strictly enforced. You ship Firefox, or you dont. Trademark law being what is is, you go after the big targets first. RedHat and Novell have managed to comply with option #1, Debian has chosen to use option #2. And complain about it.
They haven't had that policy in place nearly as long as when Netscape was the official branding and Mozilla was the unofficial/freeuse branding.
Slashdot Mirror
> However, mp3 is not free...yet. Some of these patents are set to expire on their 20 year time frame in a couple of years it would seem.
Yes, the next MP3 patent expires this Sunday. The longest patent seems to expire in 2018 but that appears to be MPEG-2 LSF and only required for low sample rate MP3s. So the next furthest date looks like April 2017 but it may be worth double checking the dates on those around 2014/2015.
http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=MP3_Patents
Ubuntu doesn't seem to have a problem redistributing H.264 support in libavcodec.
As far as the Vista stories go, the network/copying/audio issues had to (or were believed to at the time) do with the DRM laden audio chain.
> Oddly, I have Chrome 2.0.172.30, but no FFMPEG license in sight.
That's because <video> support was added in Chrome 3.x
Really , what is the point? Its not like every other video format on the planet is closed source with a fee required. MPEG2 and MPEG3 are the ISO standard and the de facto free standard for most high bandwidth video apps these days and MPEG 4 for low bandwidth, deal with it and stop re-inventing the fscking wheel just to play OSS one upmanship.
There is no such thing as MPEG3
Since there appear to be a lot of misinformed people in this thread, this actually a merger of Vivendi Games and Activision. Blizzard has been a subsidiary of Vivendi Games (and it's predecessors) for a long time. The merges company is taking the name Activision Blizard instead of Activision Vivendi because Blizzard is a much for famous brand name and the Vivendi brand has been tarnished since the Vivendi Universal implosion while the Blizzard brand is known for quality. Blizzard has been known for it's ability to convince its owners that its formula works and it should be left alone for a long time now. âoeMike [Morhaime] has to train his new boss every time he gets a new boss.â
Blizzard was founded in 1991. It acquired by Davidson and Associates in 1994. Davidson was acquired by a a mail-order/conglomerate company CUC International in 1996 along with Sierra On-Line and Berkley Systems. Then in 1997 CUC merged with a hotel company HFS to form Cendant. After an accounting scandal in 1997 Cendant sold it's software arm to French publisher Havas. In 1999 French water conglomerate Vivendi acquired Havas and while working to acquire Universal (which it did in 2000) becoming Vivendi Universal. In 2002 Vevendi Universal began to enter financial trouble and began divesting many of it's properties. In 2004 it sold 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment to NBC keeping it's software properties. In 2006 it dropped Universal from it's name completely once again becoming Vivendi (with Vivendi Universal Games becoming Vivendi Games). In 2007 announced a merger of Vivendi Games with Activision which just became official, resulting in Vivendi owning a huge portion of Activision (now Activision Blizzard) stock (54% of shares outstanding).
ISO has been playing games like this with SC29/WG11 for years.
.doc not ODF or OOXML.
SC29/WG11 (More commonly known as MPEG) is notoriously closed off. All their proposed work for consideration is closed off from public scrutiny until after it has been accepted and published. Reference software updates are only made available to committee members while the rest of us have to wait for a version to be signed off as a Corrigendum/Addendum and then sit for a year as all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed in the general body (why can't non controversial reference software bugfixes get fast-tracked the same way OOXML was?). When people come to MPEG industry forum technical list (Mp4-tech) for clarification they are often referred secret documents and reference software that they have no way of getting. Furthermore their document interchange format is
Where did this "credibility and proud history of ISO" meme come from?
I know the Slashdot crowd didn't start caring about ISO until OOXML hit SC34 but I have other issues with ISO. SC29/WG11 (More commonly known as MPEG) is notoriously closed off. All their proposed work for consideration is closed off from public scrutiny until after it has been accepted and published. Reference software updates are only made available to committee members while the rest of us have to wait for a version to be signed off as a Corrigendum/Addendum and then sit for a year as all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed in the general body (why can't non controversial reference software bugfixes get fast-tracked the same way OOXML was?). When people come to MPEG industry forum technical list (Mp4-tech) for clarification they are often referred secret documents and reference software that they have no way of getting. Furthermore their document interchange format is .doc not ODF or OOXML.
The problem with GNOME is that it is unmaintained. Sure modules have "maintainers." But it seems the maintainers can't be bothered to review patches on core (aka "boring") components; all they want to do is write "exciting" new code. Consider the following there are 3322 unreviewed patches on GNOME bugzilla. A significant fraction of them are over 100 days old and to gnome desktop or platform components (vs related software that uses Gnome bugzilla).
Gnome-panel has 67 unreviewed patches, 9 are over 100 days old. Where are the so-called maintainers???
Some of my favorites are:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384783 - 39 days
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504594 - 93 days
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499374 - 119 days
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=409262 - 398 days
Isn't the absence of a DNS record not considered authoritative proof that a domain is unowned/available?
> The problem here is that what TW is doing breaks DNS. By the RFCs, when I try to resolve a name that doesn't exist, I'm supposed to get an NX "record does not exist" result. What I get instead is an affirmative A record "name exists at this address" response. What happens at the browser level is irrelevant, TW's DNS system has already lied about the state of the DNS records associated with a given domain. This badly breaks a lot of things that aren't browsers that use HTTP and depend on correct NX responses to tell them when the server they're trying to talk to doesn't exist.
I'm still confused. But now a server does exist. How is this any different from a server that has all ports from 80 firewalled off. Can you give me a specific example of what this breaks?
>Sometimes I struggle understanding double standards on /.
>So ripping off a stock photo is Bad and this guy did good by pushing for his rights and winning.
>
>But pirating copyright music via p2p etc is OK because nobody got hurt right.
>
>ENOCOMPUTE
I see a hug difference. Vilana Financial is using the infringed photo to further their commercial enterprises. If they had hung it up in their living room and shared a few copies on p2p without making money off it then I would be totally OK with their usage.
I think the real double standard is that to infringe something for personal use it's $50,000 but if you try to use it to make money it's only $20,000.
> 3) Discs will be more expensive to print because BR is not an open standard and royalties will have to be paid to Sony.
Stop making shit up just because you don't like Sony! BluRay is a standard of the Blu-ray Disc Association founded by nine members (including Sony), governed by 18 board members with 65 contributors, and 94 members http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association . Yes there are royalties just like HD DVD but it is not any more or less of an open standard.
> The only way out for HD-DVD is to concede defeat and open the specification in ways that Hollywood cannot handle. By removing the DRM, and removing any RAND licensing. Allowing anybody to produce HD-DVD devices and disks without obtaining license. Only act as a certification agency.
You are aware that Toshiba and Microsoft don't own the majority of the patents on HD-DVD?
Casting pointers to integers is frowned upon. You should be using void* (or possibly some fancy macroed type form the new standard.)
//frowned upon //better
int* p = some_array;
long c1 = (long)p;
void* c2 = (void*)p;
Microsoft did the same this with VC-1, they sat on all the MPEG committees but then took their own similar but semantically different standard to a different body.
"Being English, and having to buy a TV licence*, I think what the BBC are doing with licence payers money borders on being illegal. You cannot take money from people then bar them from the purpose of that licence - this is definitely MS driven with the BBC in cahoots with them (remember, the BBC is a very similar monopoly like MS and allowed to be by the Politicians 'in hand')."
To me that seems more like complaining that the BBC doesn't work with your NTSC TV.
In Cleveland OH, I saw a cop (or at least what appeared to be a cop, not private security) checking IDs outside of a theatre (the actual theatre not the building) showing "Jackass Number 2"
Umm.... divx and xvid are MPEG-4 implementations
I still don't really understand what the big objection to DIVX was. It works like a rental. If you want to watch the movie once buy the DIVX, if you want to watch it a lot buy the DVD. Do you think movie rentals are bad because if you want to watch the movie again you have to rent it again?
I realize there was some concern that movie studios might start releasing DIVX only but i think that seems kind of likely that would be like them releasing something as rental only.
I'm not a big DRM fan but I think DIVX was over vilified.
> mp3 has patent parasites
aac has patent parasites and mp3's expire sooner
WinAMP uses it's own codecs for most formats, not complicated frameworks like DirectShow/QuickTime/GStreamer.
> I don't know what's happening with Firefox and Ubuntu, but I do know that if it does get replaced with IceWeasel... And to be honest I'd encourage everyone else to do the same. I'm really not trying to troll, I just don't want to one day find a vulnerability or incompatibility in IceWeasel that's not in Firefox.
./configure and the artwork are just different.
You are essentially already running IceWeasel, the branding flag in
> And Mozilla.org has had a policy in place for years too. You ship X or you don't. The policy is now being more strictly enforced. You ship Firefox, or you dont. Trademark law being what is is, you go after the big targets first. RedHat and Novell have managed to comply with option #1, Debian has chosen to use option #2. And complain about it.
They haven't had that policy in place nearly as long as when Netscape was the official branding and Mozilla was the unofficial/freeuse branding.
> "Iceweasel" is a name chosen out of pure spite.
And Linus's source control program (git) isn't? No one seems to have a problem with that.