It's always been like this. The phone company (ever since the dark days of the Bell/AT&T monopoly) has always charged extra to "have an unlisted number" in the phone book. Not only is this not "new" news..... it's 60-year-old news from the era of my great-grandparents.
MPEG4 royalties aren't perment either. >>> WebM is fully up to par with mpeg4 afaik.
To quote "the_other_chewy": It really isn't. VP8's quality is comparable to that of H.264's Main Profile but H.264 High Profile eats VP8 for breakfast in bitrate-limited scenarios, meaning about 800 kilobit/s for SD content. But even at around 1,5Mbit/s, it's really obvious to the trained and still visible to the untrained eye. Yes, I actually have done double-blind tests.
vpxenc is still very young, so improvement will happen, in both perfomance and quality. But the developers themselves have stated that it is unlikely to ever exceed H.264 MP by much. I've done extensive tests to try to coax better quality out of VP8, and have pretty much failed. I even had help from one of the guys at google working on VP8. And yes, it's part of what I do for a living. Have a look yourself:
VP8 falls completely apart on high-frequency picture content, where H.264 holds up quite well. As one of the x264 devolpers said when I showed this around (verbatim quote): "Holycrapbirds". For sites doing lots of streaming to clients behind 2 Mbit/s connections and aiming for noncrapbird quality, this is a real issue.
Same here. Firefox does "run" but it freezes randomly for 2-3 minutes while it does... whatever it does in the background. Same as Google Chrome does. It reminds me of my old G4 Mac trying to run OS 10.5 (slowly).
I wonder why it's so difficult for these programmers to make something run with minimal memory? I suspect they are not even trying to "optimize" anymore due to the rapid release schedule & that's causing the bloat. You shouldn't need a gig of RAM just to open two tabs. You shouldn't need to buy a new Phone or PC every 3 years just to run a stinkin' browser.
>>> Google - they've switched to stealth mode with WebM
Just like they went quiet and are trying to do stealth-passage of CISPA (law that would allow the U.S. to spy on website and ISP history about their users) (no warrant required). I've since added Google to my boycott list, right underneath Microsoft. I won't be buying anything from these companies.
BTW mozilla announced they are against CISPA. As far as I know the only major corporation that took that stance.
>>>Why are we not hearing from WebM and Google anymore? Is the industry going to fall in like with h.264 the same way they have with other royalty-encumbered standards?
MPEG4/h.264 is no more "encumbered" than MPEG4/AAC or MPEG2 video or MPEG2 Part 3 (MP3). I've never had any problems using these codecs and don't anticipate any problem with h.264. I'd rather have something that WORKS (like VHS, Bluray) than something that is barely-supported (like Betamax, HDdvd, SACD).
Besides WebM looks pretty bad. Its quality is better than MPEG2 but not as good as MPEG4. WebM is equivalent to MPEG3 (if such a standard existed) and I see no reason to embrace it.
And yeah I know I'll be modded -1 because people disagree with my viewpoint, but I'm not changing it just because of threats to my karma.
Nor will the latest Firefox run on my Pentium 4 PC. So much for the original goal: To split from Mozilla Application Suite/Communicater/Seamonkey and design a lightweight browser that uses minimal resources.
I'm currently on version 10. If things don't change by the next LTS/ESR release (17?) I will be leaving the browser behind and switching to a lightweight distribution backed by programmers that are not CPU/memory hogs.
So how do Android Phone users watch youtube w/o the Flash? What's the alternative? I would love to get rid of flash on my PC, but too many sites break without it.
Thomas Jefferson described the Supreme Court as "dangerous" because the justices "are not subject to the elective control of the people". I would say the UN-level bureaucrats are the same.
>>>I'm fine with getting rid of Social Security, just don't make me pay the 6% of my income then.
You pay for Welfare and Food Stamps and Housing Assistance even though you are not eligible for any of them. A Social security or medicare programs that excludes the rich/well off would be the same. (Of course you wouldn't need 6% tax if only, say 50%, of the population was eligible. You could lower it by half.)
I've not found apartment/home prices to be significantly higher in the northeast than anywhere else. Unless of course I moved to someplace that has no engineering jobs (but that would be silly) or in the middle of the city (claustrophobic). My apartment rent has always hovered around $800 per month, regardless if I'm in OK City, Iowa City, Salt Lake City, Hartford, Baltimore, Washington DC, and so on. The only places that ever charged more was northern Jersey (because of closeness to New York City) and southern California (~$1000 per month).
>>>There are of course drawbacks in this system, but many people overlook the benefits - legislation cannot be challenged in court for constitutionality, resulting in a legislative program which can push changes through as long as the government has the mandate politically >>> Like rounding-up the Jews and exterminating (or exporting them) in the 1930s. A lot of Brits prior to WW2 were in favor of expelling Jews from the isles and sending them to Palestine..... it's just that the Germans enacted the idea first (exporting them in the 30s, killing them in the 40s). Under the British Parliament system there's nothing to stop that from happening. No higher law in the form of a Constitution to block a Parliamentary Pogrom from being enacted. In the U.S. such a law would be declared unconstitutional and nullified, but in the UK the law would still stand.
And of course BBC coverage was excellent..... it was in the same time zone. NBC coverage was excellent too when the Olympics were on the same continent as NBC's audience. They showed 1996 Atlanta, 2002 Salt Lake, and 2010 Vancouver olympics live (not tape delayed). How good did the BBC cover these events? I doubt they showed them live (6pm to 8am) since the British people would have been asleep for huge chunks of the events. The network would have aired some live sports, and some taped.
Modding me -1 because I said I don't like BBC is very French (i.e. rude) of whomever did it. Perhaps you're upset because I slogged-off on your British channel but I slog-off on American channels. History, Syfy, FX, Discover, TLC... shit, shit, and more shit. Each produces 1-2 good shows per year and the rest is junk. So you see this has nothing to do with nationality..... I just generally hate all television.
And when I said "dramas" I was being inclusive of the sitcoms and all the other primetime entertainment. BBC does produce some good shows. Like Doctor Who and..... well that's all I've got (that's currently airing). Let's so for example that the U.S. Congress was forcing me to pay $230 a year to support PBS. I would feel royally ripped-off about that. $230 just to get 13 new episodes of Doctor Who (plus some other stuff I don't care about). That was the only point I was making.
So what about the British people that DON'T like the BBC? For me if I don't want HBO or Showtime (both of which are good but severely overpriced), I simply don't buy them. That option doesn't exist for British people that don't like BBC. Does it?
>>>I tried driving in 2D once, but I got a sense that I wasn't actually going anywhere.
That would be 1D. I've flown model airplanes and it is not easy. I've crashed many of them too. I don't see that the average citizen could fly a car, unless it's completely automated (the computer flies the car).
NBC and NBColympics.com costs me $0.00 (as do all the other FreeToAir channels). - BBC costs about $300 a year. - You are correct that BBC was a good bargain THIS year for the two weeks of of the Olympics.
But would I really want to continue paying that fee year-after-year? That is $3000 over the whole last decade and from what I've seen of BBC dramas..... it isn't worth it. (Neither is HBO or Showtime which carry similar high pricetags for their content.) I buy or rent BBC, HBO, etc shows for less money on DVD, or through hulu.
In the U.S. NBC has carried the excluive contract from 1992 through 2020. Apparently the International Olympic Committee likes them. The company paid $1.18 billion for the exclusive U.S. television rights, and they sold $1.3 billion in advertising, so that's a profit (versus 2006/10 when they lost 0.2 billion each). Here are NBC's stats:
- 32 million viewers during Primetime broadcast/reruns (highest level since the 1976 Olympics) - 73% of Americans followed on television. 17% online. 12% on social media sites. - "London's 219.4 million total viewers (you were a viewer if you watched at least six minutes) made NBC's Games the most-watched TV event ever, breaking Beijing's record of 215 million viewers." - NBC's digital stats after Week 1 of the Olympics (so the total pull is probably double)
â34 Million Live Streams, Up 333% vs. Beijing â744 Million Page Views, Up 160 Million from Beijing â6.2 Million Devices Verified by Cable, Satellite and Telco Customers
They are covering the Olympics. The paralympics on their NBC Universal Channel (which was free over-the-air during the 2008 and 10 Olympics, but once Comcast bought NBC that ended).
BTW we'll be able to watch the 2016 games in real-time. Brazil is on Atlantic time, just one hour ahead of the zone most Americans live.
Here are NBC's stats: - 32 million viewers during primetime broadcast (highest level since the 1976 Olympics) - The company paid $1.18 billion for the exclusive U.S. television rights - They sold $1.3 billion in advertising - They made a profit (versus 2006/10 when they 0.2 billion) - 73% watched television. 17% online. 12% followed on social media sites. - "London's 219.4 million total viewers â" you were a viewer if you watched at least six minutes â" made NBC's Games the most-watched TV event ever, breaking Beijing's record of 215 million viewers."
NBC's digital stats after Week 1 of the Olympics (so the total pull is probably double) â34 Million Live Streams, Up 333% vs. Beijing â744 Million Page Views, Up 160 Million from Beijing â6.2 Million Devices Verified by Cable, Satellite and Telco Customers
If freedom of speech is enshrined in the Viet Constitution, why isn't the Supreme Court (or equivalent) releasing these people and protecting the constitutional law?
I love my job. I love the internet & online teaching. Why spend money when you don't have to?:-) (I also love all the other free stuff online like magazines & audiobooks & music & news &.....)
The UK Parliament over the last 300 years has steadily-but-surely turned the Magna Carta into just a piece of paper. Out of the whole document there is only one sentence that is still active. All the other laws of the MC have been nullified (via simple majority vote).
Perhaps your ancestors should have made clear that the Carta was the supreme law of the land, and can not be nullified by lesser laws, as my ancestors did in 1786 with the Constitution. Anything our "parliament" passes has zero weight if it goes contrary to the constitutional law. Oh well.
>>>With articles like this, misrepresenting facts, twisting words, transparent agendas... That's as low and useless as the *AA tactics we oppose.
I see nothing wrong with adopting the tactics of the enemy. We didn't beat the Nazis and the Military Oligarchy of Japan by politely targeting factories & saying, "Please surrender. We'll give you tea and cookies." No. We adopted the enemy's tactics of blitzkrieg and dive-bombing. We converted explosive bombs to incendiary bombs and struck hard. We turned portions of Tokyo and Dresden into fiery infernos that were so hot, all the oxygen was sucked from the air and people died of asphyiation.
So if the MAFIAA is going to send us letters demanding $5000 or else be drug into court for million-dollar lawsuits, plus distort the record that people who download a song are akin to drug dealers (see the TV ads), then I see nothing wrong with using equal tactics against them. Those aren't people that work at the RIAA or MPAA? They are filty vermin that steal your money, rape your daughters, and eat imported dogs from China for supper. Death to the RIAA and MPAA. Restore freedom to our artists to earn a fair living again.
>>>While I'm a rather happy pirate and pirate supporter, I don't think you can quite count it as "merely linking" if you actively source pirated material to link to.
So what's next? I'll be arrested for "conspiracy to hate" because I link to KKK.com? Arrested for "conspiracy to aid & abet" because I link to iran.gov? Arrested for "conspiracy to demean the reputation of the U.S. Congress" because I link to alexjones.com?
Free speech means free speech in ALL things, even if we don't like what the idiot on the other end has to say. Linking is not a crime. It is simply speech saying, "Here's where those guys are located." No different than pointing on a map and saying Here's the KKK headquarters.
If piratebay, the KKK, or alexjones are committing crimes then THEY are the ones who should be arrested, not the people who simply point to an address. Fucking bastard politicians will soon take-away all right of expression, and leave us chained..... afraid to say or write anything.
Slashdot Mirror
It's always been like this. The phone company (ever since the dark days of the Bell/AT&T monopoly) has always charged extra to "have an unlisted number" in the phone book. Not only is this not "new" news..... it's 60-year-old news from the era of my great-grandparents.
MPEG4 royalties aren't perment either.
>>> WebM is fully up to par with mpeg4 afaik.
To quote "the_other_chewy": It really isn't. VP8's quality is comparable to that of H.264's Main Profile but H.264 High Profile eats VP8 for breakfast in bitrate-limited scenarios, meaning about 800 kilobit/s for SD content. But even at around 1,5Mbit/s, it's really obvious to the trained and still visible to the untrained eye. Yes, I actually have done double-blind tests.
vpxenc is still very young, so improvement will happen, in both perfomance and quality. But the developers themselves have stated that it is unlikely to ever exceed H.264 MP by much. I've done extensive tests to try to coax better quality out of VP8, and have pretty much failed. I even had help from one of the guys at google working on VP8. And yes, it's part of what I do for a living. Have a look yourself:
http://chewey.org/temp/testenc_x264.mp4 x264 High Profile, 790Kb/s, 4.3MiB
http://chewey.org/temp/testenc_vp8.webm VP8, best effort, 770Kb/s, 4.2MiB
(the encoder was given the same constraints as x264)
VP8 falls completely apart on high-frequency picture content, where H.264 holds up quite well. As one of the x264 devolpers said when I showed this around (verbatim quote): "Holycrapbirds". For sites doing lots of streaming to clients behind 2 Mbit/s connections and aiming
for noncrapbird quality, this is a real issue.
>>> It runs slowly, but it definitely runs.
Same here. Firefox does "run" but it freezes randomly for 2-3 minutes while it does... whatever it does in the background. Same as Google Chrome does. It reminds me of my old G4 Mac trying to run OS 10.5 (slowly).
I wonder why it's so difficult for these programmers to make something run with minimal memory? I suspect they are not even trying to "optimize" anymore due to the rapid release schedule & that's causing the bloat. You shouldn't need a gig of RAM just to open two tabs. You shouldn't need to buy a new Phone or PC every 3 years just to run a stinkin' browser.
>>> Google - they've switched to stealth mode with WebM
Just like they went quiet and are trying to do stealth-passage of CISPA (law that would allow the U.S. to spy on website and ISP history about their users) (no warrant required). I've since added Google to my boycott list, right underneath Microsoft. I won't be buying anything from these companies.
BTW mozilla announced they are against CISPA. As far as I know the only major corporation that took that stance.
>>>Why are we not hearing from WebM and Google anymore? Is the industry going to fall in like with h.264 the same way they have with other royalty-encumbered standards?
MPEG4/h.264 is no more "encumbered" than MPEG4/AAC or MPEG2 video or MPEG2 Part 3 (MP3). I've never had any problems using these codecs and don't anticipate any problem with h.264. I'd rather have something that WORKS (like VHS, Bluray) than something that is barely-supported (like Betamax, HDdvd, SACD).
Besides WebM looks pretty bad. Its quality is better than MPEG2 but not as good as MPEG4. WebM is equivalent to MPEG3 (if such a standard existed) and I see no reason to embrace it.
And yeah I know I'll be modded -1 because people disagree with my viewpoint, but I'm not changing it just because of threats to my karma.
Nor will the latest Firefox run on my Pentium 4 PC. So much for the original goal: To split from Mozilla Application Suite/Communicater/Seamonkey and design a lightweight browser that uses minimal resources.
I'm currently on version 10. If things don't change by the next LTS/ESR release (17?) I will be leaving the browser behind and switching to a lightweight distribution backed by programmers that are not CPU/memory hogs.
So how do Android Phone users watch youtube w/o the Flash? What's the alternative? I would love to get rid of flash on my PC, but too many sites break without it.
Thomas Jefferson described the Supreme Court as "dangerous" because the justices "are not subject to the elective control of the people". I would say the UN-level bureaucrats are the same.
A bunch of state governments and a central federal government? Interesting.
Only half the time when I'm documenting. The other half the job title is called "programmer"
>>>I'm fine with getting rid of Social Security, just don't make me pay the 6% of my income then.
You pay for Welfare and Food Stamps and Housing Assistance even though you are not eligible for any of them. A Social security or medicare programs that excludes the rich/well off would be the same. (Of course you wouldn't need 6% tax if only, say 50%, of the population was eligible. You could lower it by half.)
I've not found apartment/home prices to be significantly higher in the northeast than anywhere else. Unless of course I moved to someplace that has no engineering jobs (but that would be silly) or in the middle of the city (claustrophobic). My apartment rent has always hovered around $800 per month, regardless if I'm in OK City, Iowa City, Salt Lake City, Hartford, Baltimore, Washington DC, and so on. The only places that ever charged more was northern Jersey (because of closeness to New York City) and southern California (~$1000 per month).
>>>There are of course drawbacks in this system, but many people overlook the benefits - legislation cannot be challenged in court for constitutionality, resulting in a legislative program which can push changes through as long as the government has the mandate politically
>>>
Like rounding-up the Jews and exterminating (or exporting them) in the 1930s. A lot of Brits prior to WW2 were in favor of expelling Jews from the isles and sending them to Palestine..... it's just that the Germans enacted the idea first (exporting them in the 30s, killing them in the 40s). Under the British Parliament system there's nothing to stop that from happening. No higher law in the form of a Constitution to block a Parliamentary Pogrom from being enacted. In the U.S. such a law would be declared unconstitutional and nullified, but in the UK the law would still stand.
P.S.
And of course BBC coverage was excellent..... it was in the same time zone. NBC coverage was excellent too when the Olympics were on the same continent as NBC's audience. They showed 1996 Atlanta, 2002 Salt Lake, and 2010 Vancouver olympics live (not tape delayed). How good did the BBC cover these events? I doubt they showed them live (6pm to 8am) since the British people would have been asleep for huge chunks of the events. The network would have aired some live sports, and some taped.
Modding me -1 because I said I don't like BBC is very French (i.e. rude) of whomever did it. Perhaps you're upset because I slogged-off on your British channel but I slog-off on American channels. History, Syfy, FX, Discover, TLC... shit, shit, and more shit. Each produces 1-2 good shows per year and the rest is junk. So you see this has nothing to do with nationality..... I just generally hate all television.
And when I said "dramas" I was being inclusive of the sitcoms and all the other primetime entertainment. BBC does produce some good shows. Like Doctor Who and..... well that's all I've got (that's currently airing). Let's so for example that the U.S. Congress was forcing me to pay $230 a year to support PBS. I would feel royally ripped-off about that. $230 just to get 13 new episodes of Doctor Who (plus some other stuff I don't care about). That was the only point I was making.
So what about the British people that DON'T like the BBC? For me if I don't want HBO or Showtime (both of which are good but severely overpriced), I simply don't buy them. That option doesn't exist for British people that don't like BBC. Does it?
>>>I tried driving in 2D once, but I got a sense that I wasn't actually going anywhere.
That would be 1D.
I've flown model airplanes and it is not easy. I've crashed many of them too. I don't see that the average citizen could fly a car, unless it's completely automated (the computer flies the car).
Revoke corporate licenses and no company will ever grow to Be too big to fail.
>>>Really feel for those that had to endure NBC.
NBC and NBColympics.com costs me $0.00 (as do all the other FreeToAir channels). - BBC costs about $300 a year. - You are correct that BBC was a good bargain THIS year for the two weeks of of the Olympics.
But would I really want to continue paying that fee year-after-year? That is $3000 over the whole last decade and from what I've seen of BBC dramas..... it isn't worth it. (Neither is HBO or Showtime which carry similar high pricetags for their content.) I buy or rent BBC, HBO, etc shows for less money on DVD, or through hulu.
In the U.S. NBC has carried the excluive contract from 1992 through 2020. Apparently the International Olympic Committee likes them. The company paid $1.18 billion for the exclusive U.S. television rights, and they sold $1.3 billion in advertising, so that's a profit (versus 2006/10 when they lost 0.2 billion each). Here are NBC's stats:
- 32 million viewers during Primetime broadcast/reruns (highest level since the 1976 Olympics)
- 73% of Americans followed on television. 17% online. 12% on social media sites.
- "London's 219.4 million total viewers (you were a viewer if you watched at least six minutes) made NBC's Games the most-watched TV event ever, breaking Beijing's record of 215 million viewers."
- NBC's digital stats after Week 1 of the Olympics (so the total pull is probably double)
â34 Million Live Streams, Up 333% vs. Beijing
â744 Million Page Views, Up 160 Million from Beijing
â6.2 Million Devices Verified by Cable, Satellite and Telco Customers
They are covering the Olympics. The paralympics on their NBC Universal Channel (which was free over-the-air during the 2008 and 10 Olympics, but once Comcast bought NBC that ended).
BTW we'll be able to watch the 2016 games in real-time. Brazil is on Atlantic time, just one hour ahead of the zone most Americans live.
Here are NBC's stats:
- 32 million viewers during primetime broadcast (highest level since the 1976 Olympics)
- The company paid $1.18 billion for the exclusive U.S. television rights
- They sold $1.3 billion in advertising
- They made a profit (versus 2006/10 when they 0.2 billion)
- 73% watched television. 17% online. 12% followed on social media sites.
- "London's 219.4 million total viewers â" you were a viewer if you watched at least six minutes â" made NBC's Games the most-watched TV event ever, breaking Beijing's record of 215 million viewers."
NBC's digital stats after Week 1 of the Olympics (so the total pull is probably double)
â34 Million Live Streams, Up 333% vs. Beijing
â744 Million Page Views, Up 160 Million from Beijing
â6.2 Million Devices Verified by Cable, Satellite and Telco Customers
If freedom of speech is enshrined in the Viet Constitution, why isn't the Supreme Court (or equivalent) releasing these people and protecting the constitutional law?
I love my job. I love the internet & online teaching. Why spend money when you don't have to? :-) (I also love all the other free stuff online like magazines & audiobooks & music & news & .....)
The UK Parliament over the last 300 years has steadily-but-surely turned the Magna Carta into just a piece of paper. Out of the whole document there is only one sentence that is still active. All the other laws of the MC have been nullified (via simple majority vote).
Perhaps your ancestors should have made clear that the Carta was the supreme law of the land, and can not be nullified by lesser laws, as my ancestors did in 1786 with the Constitution. Anything our "parliament" passes has zero weight if it goes contrary to the constitutional law. Oh well.
>>>With articles like this, misrepresenting facts, twisting words, transparent agendas... That's as low and useless as the *AA tactics we oppose.
I see nothing wrong with adopting the tactics of the enemy. We didn't beat the Nazis and the Military Oligarchy of Japan by politely targeting factories & saying, "Please surrender. We'll give you tea and cookies." No. We adopted the enemy's tactics of blitzkrieg and dive-bombing. We converted explosive bombs to incendiary bombs and struck hard. We turned portions of Tokyo and Dresden into fiery infernos that were so hot, all the oxygen was sucked from the air and people died of asphyiation.
So if the MAFIAA is going to send us letters demanding $5000 or else be drug into court for million-dollar lawsuits, plus distort the record that people who download a song are akin to drug dealers (see the TV ads), then I see nothing wrong with using equal tactics against them. Those aren't people that work at the RIAA or MPAA? They are filty vermin that steal your money, rape your daughters, and eat imported dogs from China for supper. Death to the RIAA and MPAA. Restore freedom to our artists to earn a fair living again.
>>>While I'm a rather happy pirate and pirate supporter, I don't think you can quite count it as "merely linking" if you actively source pirated material to link to.
So what's next?
I'll be arrested for "conspiracy to hate" because I link to KKK.com? Arrested for "conspiracy to aid & abet" because I link to iran.gov? Arrested for "conspiracy to demean the reputation of the U.S. Congress" because I link to alexjones.com?
Free speech means free speech in ALL things, even if we don't like what the idiot on the other end has to say. Linking is not a crime. It is simply speech saying, "Here's where those guys are located." No different than pointing on a map and saying Here's the KKK headquarters.
If piratebay, the KKK, or alexjones are committing crimes then THEY are the ones who should be arrested, not the people who simply point to an address. Fucking bastard politicians will soon take-away all right of expression, and leave us chained..... afraid to say or write anything.