Take a good look at your portable MP3 player, your DVD/SVCD player, etc. Figure out what are their manufacturers. Start e-mailing those manufacturers asking them to support those formats. If enough people start asking for support, it may just happen...
You won't imagine how much debate has been fought over these silly extensions. No matter which is the proposed solution, someone seems to believe it's not the most appropriate. sigh...
There's something related to what kind of math operations are used by the codec. If the codec uses mostly math operations that are implemented in typical CPUs for PDA-like things and for portable MP3 players, then the codec is "fit for implementation in hardware". I'm sorry, i don't remember though what are those operations...
He was speaking about the bug in RPM where the database gets locked and you have to manually erase some files to unlock it. It happens even with Red Hat "original" packages, heck it happened to me once even when using up2date. It's been reported in bugzilla a long time ago. Red Hat has failed so far to fix it.
Yes, the salesman is correct.:-) (isn't that something that almost never happens?) The Red Hat Advanced Server is indeed the best choice for the enterprise. The consumer-grade Red Hat is interesting indeed, has nice features, but sometimes is just a bit too much into the cutting edge. I've run several times into issues with various pieces of software when running them on the consumer grade Red Hat. No, it wasn't because "Red Hat is buggy":-) but because, for example, they backported some features from kernel-2.5 into the distribution kernel, thus triggering some weird stuff in the VM on systems with lotsa spawning processes from Perl, or they were early adopters of glibc-2.3, thus breaking some assumption some threading applications were making, etc. All that is fine on my home computer, it's not fine on the servers that pay my bills. If you're a small company and want to use the consumer grade Red Hat because it's cheaper, there are some tricks you can play. One of them and probably the most important, is to not start using it as soon as it gets out. Wait for a few months, i'll say at least three, then deploy it. This way, the most obvious bugs will get squashed out. Once i even deployed RH8.0 instead of RH9, because at the time SpamAssassin was not happy at all when running on 9. Now, Red Hat choose to shorten the support for older versions of their consumer grade distribution, therefore making it more difficult to apply my advice. So, use your best judgement.
Overall, i'll say Red Hat has a three-layered approach to stability: 1. They have the so-called the Rawhide distribution, which is their perpetual beta, from which a new consumer grade distribution emerges every 6 months. 2. The consumer grade distribution, from which RH Advanced Server emerges every 2 years or something like that. 3. Red Hat Advanced Server.
IMO, the consumer grade distribution is a beta for RHAS, only they don't call it that way.;-)
ReiserFS has got a large amount of features in a short time. Also, new features are added regularly, and new, massively changed releases were issued several times. There were concerns regarding how this could affect the reliability of your filesystem. What's your take on that?
Each tag carries a unique signature (strong crypto, blah, blah). When a cash dispenser gives you the money, the signature gets attached to your name. The information is not stored in the tag, it's in the database at the bank, at the government, etc.
If it's entirely passive, you could increase the range by simply pumping up the reader's field. If it's not 100% passive, you could fry a few tags while doing that.:-)
It will be difficult to counterfeit the RFID tags. They are supposed to carry a strong crypto signature, pretty much like the PGP stuff. OTOH, it's trivial to simply fry them, with a high-energy EM pulse, or perhaps by just sticking them into the microwave.
Apparently the author thinks only about 3D performance. That's the only explanation for the fact that he recommends the previous drivers over the latest ones. The latest drivers fix a lot of issues with 2D performance, which could affect every day usage a lot. Moreover, they fix compile issues on several kernel versions. If you're desperate after 3D performance and don't care about anything else period, then stay with the previous drivers. Otherwise everyone is encouraged to upgrade.
You can opt-out of sending the list of RPMs to the Red Hat Network, and it won't influence the update process. The option is big and clear, it's not hidden or anything. But of course, excuse me for stealing from you the pleasure of badmouthing Red Hat.
You'll be able to do that in one of these cases: 1. Microsoft, Apple, Real.com etc. make their formats truly open, so that an open source implementation becomes truly possible 2. The aforementioned companies release codecs that work on other platforms than x86 I don't see any of these happening too soon.:-(
"Unfortunately, most people seem more interested in demanding obscure playback modules in MPlayer, rather then looking at the problem from an abstracted view."
Yes, that's the point! xine for KDE, and GStreamer for Gnome are trying to implement precisely the same idea: have a generic multimedia infrastructure, and let any arbitrary application to make calls to it if it wants to play an A/V file. I agree, this is a far better approach than the monolithic player offered by other applications.
Apparently KDE decided to do with xine what Gnome wants to do with GStreamer: a multimedia player infrastructure. Want your foo-bar KDE/Gnome application to play DivX? Just make the appropriate calls to the xine/GStreamer API on your system. GStreamer seems to be more ambitious towards video broadcast and stream video. But it's not quite ready yet for prime time (still feeling kinda alpha version). OTOH, xine is already production quality, has a working player and started to develop a video editing infrastructure.
It will be interesting to watch how these projects evolve in the future. Both have interesting features, and have a promising look.
Xine already has a Mozilla plugin, if you use the gxine interface. And it's 100% Linux/Unix, no emulation required. Not to mention that it plays any multimedia format, including DVD, SVCD, DivX...
It depends on who makes them. A 90-100 minutes movie can be transcoded to DivX, can still fit into 700Mb and have an image quality reasonably close to the original. But you have to know the tricks.;-)
xinehq.de You need the latest beta, and you have to also get the Win32 codecs (Quicktime included). If not sure where to get the Win32 codecs from, ask on the mailing list. It works fine, it can play streaming material. It even has a Mozilla plugin. And it's not just Quicktime, you can play basically any multimedia format: DivX, DVD, SVCD...
xinehq.de Install the latest beta, grab the Win32 codecs (ask on the mailing list if you're not sure where to get them from) and you're done. It can even do streaming, it has a Mozilla plugin...
Do some research, and you'll find out who's behind PCI-SIG. Like, bing names from Microsoft, and stuff like that. Now it makes more sense, isn't it?;-)
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Take a good look at your portable MP3 player, your DVD/SVCD player, etc. Figure out what are their manufacturers. Start e-mailing those manufacturers asking them to support those formats.
If enough people start asking for support, it may just happen...
You won't imagine how much debate has been fought over these silly extensions. No matter which is the proposed solution, someone seems to believe it's not the most appropriate.
sigh...
There's something related to what kind of math operations are used by the codec. If the codec uses mostly math operations that are implemented in typical CPUs for PDA-like things and for portable MP3 players, then the codec is "fit for implementation in hardware".
I'm sorry, i don't remember though what are those operations...
He was speaking about the bug in RPM where the database gets locked and you have to manually erase some files to unlock it. It happens even with Red Hat "original" packages, heck it happened to me once even when using up2date.
It's been reported in bugzilla a long time ago. Red Hat has failed so far to fix it.
Yes, the salesman is correct. :-) (isn't that something that almost never happens?) :-) but because, for example, they backported some features from kernel-2.5 into the distribution kernel, thus triggering some weird stuff in the VM on systems with lotsa spawning processes from Perl, or they were early adopters of glibc-2.3, thus breaking some assumption some threading applications were making, etc. All that is fine on my home computer, it's not fine on the servers that pay my bills.
;-)
The Red Hat Advanced Server is indeed the best choice for the enterprise. The consumer-grade Red Hat is interesting indeed, has nice features, but sometimes is just a bit too much into the cutting edge.
I've run several times into issues with various pieces of software when running them on the consumer grade Red Hat. No, it wasn't because "Red Hat is buggy"
If you're a small company and want to use the consumer grade Red Hat because it's cheaper, there are some tricks you can play. One of them and probably the most important, is to not start using it as soon as it gets out. Wait for a few months, i'll say at least three, then deploy it. This way, the most obvious bugs will get squashed out. Once i even deployed RH8.0 instead of RH9, because at the time SpamAssassin was not happy at all when running on 9.
Now, Red Hat choose to shorten the support for older versions of their consumer grade distribution, therefore making it more difficult to apply my advice. So, use your best judgement.
Overall, i'll say Red Hat has a three-layered approach to stability:
1. They have the so-called the Rawhide distribution, which is their perpetual beta, from which a new consumer grade distribution emerges every 6 months.
2. The consumer grade distribution, from which RH Advanced Server emerges every 2 years or something like that.
3. Red Hat Advanced Server.
IMO, the consumer grade distribution is a beta for RHAS, only they don't call it that way.
ReiserFS has got a large amount of features in a short time. Also, new features are added regularly, and new, massively changed releases were issued several times. There were concerns regarding how this could affect the reliability of your filesystem. What's your take on that?
Each tag carries a unique signature (strong crypto, blah, blah). When a cash dispenser gives you the money, the signature gets attached to your name.
The information is not stored in the tag, it's in the database at the bank, at the government, etc.
If it's entirely passive, you could increase the range by simply pumping up the reader's field. :-)
If it's not 100% passive, you could fry a few tags while doing that.
It will be difficult to counterfeit the RFID tags. They are supposed to carry a strong crypto signature, pretty much like the PGP stuff.
OTOH, it's trivial to simply fry them, with a high-energy EM pulse, or perhaps by just sticking them into the microwave.
Sounds to me like this could be used to DoS pretty much any company. Unless the law gets revised somehow.
TCP over TCP is a fundamentally bad idea
It is true on not-so-reliable networks.
It is false on the modern, low-loss Internet.
It's called QCL and you can get an emulator for it that runs on Linux.
It's called QCL and you can get an emulator for it that runs on Linux.
Apparently the author thinks only about 3D performance. That's the only explanation for the fact that he recommends the previous drivers over the latest ones.
The latest drivers fix a lot of issues with 2D performance, which could affect every day usage a lot.
Moreover, they fix compile issues on several kernel versions.
If you're desperate after 3D performance and don't care about anything else period, then stay with the previous drivers. Otherwise everyone is encouraged to upgrade.
In April.
You can opt-out of sending the list of RPMs to the Red Hat Network, and it won't influence the update process. The option is big and clear, it's not hidden or anything.
But of course, excuse me for stealing from you the pleasure of badmouthing Red Hat.
You'll be able to do that in one of these cases: :-(
1. Microsoft, Apple, Real.com etc. make their formats truly open, so that an open source implementation becomes truly possible
2. The aforementioned companies release codecs that work on other platforms than x86
I don't see any of these happening too soon.
Yes, that's the point! xine for KDE, and GStreamer for Gnome are trying to implement precisely the same idea: have a generic multimedia infrastructure, and let any arbitrary application to make calls to it if it wants to play an A/V file.
I agree, this is a far better approach than the monolithic player offered by other applications.
Apparently KDE decided to do with xine what Gnome wants to do with GStreamer: a multimedia player infrastructure. Want your foo-bar KDE/Gnome application to play DivX? Just make the appropriate calls to the xine/GStreamer API on your system.
GStreamer seems to be more ambitious towards video broadcast and stream video. But it's not quite ready yet for prime time (still feeling kinda alpha version).
OTOH, xine is already production quality, has a working player and started to develop a video editing infrastructure.
It will be interesting to watch how these projects evolve in the future. Both have interesting features, and have a promising look.
Xine already has a Mozilla plugin, if you use the gxine interface. And it's 100% Linux/Unix, no emulation required.
Not to mention that it plays any multimedia format, including DVD, SVCD, DivX...
It depends on who makes them. A 90-100 minutes movie can be transcoded to DivX, can still fit into 700Mb and have an image quality reasonably close to the original. But you have to know the tricks. ;-)
xinehq.de
You need the latest beta, and you have to also get the Win32 codecs (Quicktime included). If not sure where to get the Win32 codecs from, ask on the mailing list.
It works fine, it can play streaming material. It even has a Mozilla plugin.
And it's not just Quicktime, you can play basically any multimedia format: DivX, DVD, SVCD...
xinehq.de
Install the latest beta, grab the Win32 codecs (ask on the mailing list if you're not sure where to get them from) and you're done. It can even do streaming, it has a Mozilla plugin...
(the subject says it all)
Do some research, and you'll find out who's behind PCI-SIG. Like, bing names from Microsoft, and stuff like that. ;-)
Now it makes more sense, isn't it?