Hey, that's pretty cool. Definitely one of the good things that has come about because of Windows compatibility research and work. Of course, I'll be a lot happier once the driver gets re-written in portable source code.
It works, although the framerate was quite slow for me (using the SDL output on XF86 3.3.6). I just compiled glx.so, so I'll have to try it again with the OpenGL output. Sound was way out of sync, but it may again be because of SDL. If not, I'll just blame my CPU speed (375 MHz) -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Of course, using the Windows driver should only be a stepping stone. Ideally, people will examine how the driver does what it does, and then re-implement it for Linux proper. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Of course, part of the reason Slashdot still uses gifs is because the corresponding pngs do not display correctly in many browsers (including Netscape..) -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Okay, I fixed your quotes and incorrect punctuation.. I hate question marks all over the place..
I highly doubt that MS owns the rights to DVD.
You're right. They don't.
I'm sure if Creative would/could make a DVD player for linux it would.
*cough*
But they haven't. How is that Microsoft's fault?
It isn't. However, Microsoft has behaved in much the same way as the MPAA/RIAA. They would like to control how/when/where people use their software just as much as the movie and music industries would like to control when people view their content. They want money. Lots and lots of money.
You have a TV card for Linux right?
No.
It has a video/audio in jack right? Buy a normal DVD player and plug the jacks in.. Easy DVD for linux.. That what I do when I want DVD on Linux..
You *might* be able to convice me to do that if the TV card had an S-Video input. No way in hell would I do that with RCA jacks or coaxial cable *shudder*
DVD for linux isn't Microsoft's fault... so but your blame somewhere else for that one..
Well, the new bit is the calculations that go into making sure that the `color' is distributed properly. If you select the wrong gamma for your display, you get all sorts of colored fringes on the letters. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Untrue. My Sony Trinitron monitor has the color cells aligned much as they would be on an LCD. I did see an improvement in readability when looking at the right images (gamma = 1.8 on my display) -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Maybe I'm being dumb here (is the poster just talking about playback?) but you clearly can serve Quicktime content without proprietary hardware and software solutions.
Yes, he's talking about playing back the video. Contrary to popular belief (at least in the media and in Public Relations departments), Linux is quite popular with tech-heads for a desktop operating system. This includes the fans of scifi-fantasy movies such as Star Wars, Titan A.E., The X-Men, and many others. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Okay, but I resent being force-fed with Quicktime files, especially when coming from a Linux/Unix server using the `open source' serving software.. Apple has played a certain amount of lip service to the open source/Free software movement, but largely with technologies that are probably more beneficial for Apple to have as open source, rather than being beneficial to the end users. (that's all IMHO, though)
I should also point out that it is especially important when media files to make sure that they can be read by as many people as possible. Not only do you reach a larger audience now, but you reach a larger audience 10, 100, or 1000 years from now when historians try to read these files again. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Well, one thing is that the compression ratio for Quicktime is significantly better than MPEG/MPEG2.. Of course, I do appreciate the fact that MPEG is a much more open standard than Quicktime/Real, but even MPEG/MPEG2 does not yet have consistently high-quality playback on open source players (at least not that I've seen) -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
I just bought a Hollywood Plus MPEG decoder card, and did a little hacking to get it to work with NTSC (just had to change a few register values, nothing fancy). Reading over the documentation for the NTSC/PAL encoder, I see that interlacing can be turned on and off. Doing a search on the 'net reveals that people are talking about progressive scan NTSC, but I can't seem to find any information about sets that actually understand it. I've twiddled the bits on my H+, but my TV still displays in interlaced mode (not that I really expected it to suddenly do progressive scan...)
Actually, MPEG looks pretty crummy whenever it has to deal with slight changes in color. I was watching a DVD and saw artifacts all over in one scene of Pulp Fiction where the main characters were standing in front of blank off-white walls. Slight variations are a challenge for video coders, as many of their algorithms are based upon fairly large changes. Small changes just don't get noticed.. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Well, OK, but I don't want what happened to OS/2 to happen to Linux. Companies justified not porting to OS/2 because some versions of OS/2 could run Windows 3.x binaries.. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Right.. Most people just don't question what they get when they pull their computer out of the box. They are happy to just use what comes with the system, and don't even question what else might have come with it. Computers are much different than cars, where you are stuck with many options from the time you buy the car until it is dead and buried (well, unless you are a skilled metal worker..) I imagine most people see computers the same way, which is very wrong.
I think I'm going to try and contact Best Buy and some other `consumer' computer vendors. I'd like to induce them to question whether they should only be selling boxes with Windows on them, or if it would be an option for them to pre-load anything else. My opinion is that Microsoft has taken actions that are not in the best interest of consumers, and that Best Buy (a conduit for many different computer products, including boxed versions of Linux) has an important role to take in helping consumers make the best choice when they buy computers and computer products. *shrug* it's a fairly complicated issue, and I hope they can come to a good decision.. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
I think Jon brought up an important point about the need for secure communications. I know that many ISPs, schools, and businesses log network traffic like crazy. Some will watch the actual web pages that you are browsing. Others just log every single packet that goes through their big routers. That's a tremendous amount of information about where people are going and when.
That is why this isn't just a Napster issue. That is why people need to get involved. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
LILO is a two-stage bootloader like most of the bootloaders for x86 systems. The first stage is approximately 500 bytes that sit in the MBR or the boot block of the partition you put it on. The second stage is in the file/boot/boot.b
One big problem with LILO is that it won't boot your system if you've moved the kernel to a different set of blocks on the hard drive. GRUB and other more intelligent boot loaders actually understand the filesystem and can be told to blindly load a previously specified filename, and many have a command line interface that allows the user to find a different kernel to load at boot time.
The best solution would be to rebuild the underlying methods by which PCs are created. A 512 byte MBR is an artifact of the original IBM PC, which is nearing it's 20th anniversary. BIOSes of today are built upon legacy after legacy, even though we have a few more modern operating systems out there today (like Linux, HURD, and the *BSDs. Ok, NT too..) that would much rather have a fully contiguous block of memory rather than the chunkified model that evolved along with the PC.
Anyway, I'd be really happy if someone decided to make MBR's be 100kB in size or at least something a *little* larger than 512 bytes. Or heck, the BIOS itself could be redesigned to understand filesystems and kernels.. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Yep. There have even been certain situations where museums have re-organized bones in their displays to account for this (to show that dinosaurs were much more `active').
Too bad the site's videos are in Sorenson.. I think a lot of people interested in this discovery are on Unix systems.. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Right now, I don't care too much about this. Besides, it's his movie -- he can do whatever he wants with it (well, within the confines of the law..) Besides, it can be argued that DVD isn't quite stable yet (there are plenty of old players that can't play new movies). Also, DVDs will be obsolete as soon as HDTV becomes common. There's also the very small possibility that he doesn't want to get involved in any way with the problems relating to CSS..
Anyway, I'm sure that Mr. Lucas has plenty of reasons to wait on this. I'm patient;-) -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Oh yeah, before I forget: Gargoyles was also a great show! Of course, that's from Disney, so you can't like Gargoyles if you don't like Disney...:-p -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Yeah, my uncle used to watch Batman all of the time -- the first time that I remember seeing someone older than 15 be interested in a `cartoon'.. That show also had coolest opening animation and music that I can remember.
Of course, I have to say that I also thoroughly enjoyed some of the other WB stuff -- Tiny Toons was a favorite of mine as a kid, and Animaniacs was even better (some of the extra characters were especially enjoyable -- Pinky and the Brain is definitely on the top of the heap). Freakazoid was a short-lived show, but the few episodes I saw were very funny.
These days, the Simpsons is probably the king of the hill, but Family Guy is a great show that loves to play on the short attention spans of audiences these days. Futurama is pretty good, but it will probably take a while for that show to distance itself enough from the Simpsons to stand entirely on its own (although I thought the most recent episode was very good).
Of course, those are all comedies -- but I like to laugh, what can I say?;-)
I have been pretty impressed with Batman Beyond, and Superman does have some pretty good stuff too. However, I don't like it when shows of any kind play too much to the ``moral of the story'' crowd..
Okay.. I'm rambling.. sorry;-) -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Well, then, where does code stop being speech? Assembler code is source code, as companies have written code in assembler for ages. The next step down is microcode -- certainly, it's very difficult for most people to read, but it is not indecipherable (get a book with the instruction set or get a disassembler). -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that's pretty cool. Definitely one of the good things that has come about because of Windows compatibility research and work. Of course, I'll be a lot happier once the driver gets re-written in portable source code.
It works, although the framerate was quite slow for me (using the SDL output on XF86 3.3.6). I just compiled glx.so, so I'll have to try it again with the OpenGL output. Sound was way out of sync, but it may again be because of SDL. If not, I'll just blame my CPU speed (375 MHz)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Of course, using the Windows driver should only be a stepping stone. Ideally, people will examine how the driver does what it does, and then re-implement it for Linux proper.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Of course, part of the reason Slashdot still uses gifs is because the corresponding pngs do not display correctly in many browsers (including Netscape..)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Okay, I fixed your quotes and incorrect punctuation.. I hate question marks all over the place..
I highly doubt that MS owns the rights to DVD.
You're right. They don't.
I'm sure if Creative would/could make a DVD player for linux it would.
*cough*
But they haven't. How is that Microsoft's fault?
It isn't. However, Microsoft has behaved in much the same way as the MPAA/RIAA. They would like to control how/when/where people use their software just as much as the movie and music industries would like to control when people view their content. They want money. Lots and lots of money.
You have a TV card for Linux right?
No.
It has a video/audio in jack right? Buy a normal DVD player and plug the jacks in.. Easy DVD for linux.. That what I do when I want DVD on Linux..
You *might* be able to convice me to do that if the TV card had an S-Video input. No way in hell would I do that with RCA jacks or coaxial cable *shudder*
DVD for linux isn't Microsoft's fault... so but your blame somewhere else for that one..
Very true..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
It's possible that your display has a different ordering of the color cells, or perhaps you selected the wrong gamma..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Well, the new bit is the calculations that go into making sure that the `color' is distributed properly. If you select the wrong gamma for your display, you get all sorts of colored fringes on the letters.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Untrue. My Sony Trinitron monitor has the color cells aligned much as they would be on an LCD. I did see an improvement in readability when looking at the right images (gamma = 1.8 on my display)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
> What does that all mean? It means QT on linux almost guarenteed
LOL
> (why wouldnt apple want that market?)
I wish I knew, but all indications thus far seem to show that they are working to distance themselves from Linux...
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Maybe I'm being dumb here (is the poster just talking about playback?) but you clearly can serve Quicktime content without proprietary hardware and software solutions.
Yes, he's talking about playing back the video. Contrary to popular belief (at least in the media and in Public Relations departments), Linux is quite popular with tech-heads for a desktop operating system. This includes the fans of scifi-fantasy movies such as Star Wars, Titan A.E., The X-Men, and many others.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Okay, but I resent being force-fed with Quicktime files, especially when coming from a Linux/Unix server using the `open source' serving software.. Apple has played a certain amount of lip service to the open source/Free software movement, but largely with technologies that are probably more beneficial for Apple to have as open source, rather than being beneficial to the end users. (that's all IMHO, though)
I should also point out that it is especially important when media files to make sure that they can be read by as many people as possible. Not only do you reach a larger audience now, but you reach a larger audience 10, 100, or 1000 years from now when historians try to read these files again.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Well, one thing is that the compression ratio for Quicktime is significantly better than MPEG/MPEG2.. Of course, I do appreciate the fact that MPEG is a much more open standard than Quicktime/Real, but even MPEG/MPEG2 does not yet have consistently high-quality playback on open source players (at least not that I've seen)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Okay this is a bit offtopic..
I just bought a Hollywood Plus MPEG decoder card, and did a little hacking to get it to work with NTSC (just had to change a few register values, nothing fancy). Reading over the documentation for the NTSC/PAL encoder, I see that interlacing can be turned on and off. Doing a search on the 'net reveals that people are talking about progressive scan NTSC, but I can't seem to find any information about sets that actually understand it. I've twiddled the bits on my H+, but my TV still displays in interlaced mode (not that I really expected it to suddenly do progressive scan...)
Anyone have more info?
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Actually, MPEG looks pretty crummy whenever it has to deal with slight changes in color. I was watching a DVD and saw artifacts all over in one scene of Pulp Fiction where the main characters were standing in front of blank off-white walls. Slight variations are a challenge for video coders, as many of their algorithms are based upon fairly large changes. Small changes just don't get noticed..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Well, OK, but I don't want what happened to OS/2 to happen to Linux. Companies justified not porting to OS/2 because some versions of OS/2 could run Windows 3.x binaries..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Right.. Most people just don't question what they get when they pull their computer out of the box. They are happy to just use what comes with the system, and don't even question what else might have come with it. Computers are much different than cars, where you are stuck with many options from the time you buy the car until it is dead and buried (well, unless you are a skilled metal worker..) I imagine most people see computers the same way, which is very wrong.
I think I'm going to try and contact Best Buy and some other `consumer' computer vendors. I'd like to induce them to question whether they should only be selling boxes with Windows on them, or if it would be an option for them to pre-load anything else. My opinion is that Microsoft has taken actions that are not in the best interest of consumers, and that Best Buy (a conduit for many different computer products, including boxed versions of Linux) has an important role to take in helping consumers make the best choice when they buy computers and computer products. *shrug* it's a fairly complicated issue, and I hope they can come to a good decision..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Heh, I can't reach the site -- the IP range owned by Napster is blocked by my University's big-ass router..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Actually, it appears that the name of the codec is "DivX ;-)"
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
I think Jon brought up an important point about the need for secure communications. I know that many ISPs, schools, and businesses log network traffic like crazy. Some will watch the actual web pages that you are browsing. Others just log every single packet that goes through their big routers. That's a tremendous amount of information about where people are going and when.
That is why this isn't just a Napster issue. That is why people need to get involved.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
LILO is a two-stage bootloader like most of the bootloaders for x86 systems. The first stage is approximately 500 bytes that sit in the MBR or the boot block of the partition you put it on. The second stage is in the file /boot/boot.b
One big problem with LILO is that it won't boot your system if you've moved the kernel to a different set of blocks on the hard drive. GRUB and other more intelligent boot loaders actually understand the filesystem and can be told to blindly load a previously specified filename, and many have a command line interface that allows the user to find a different kernel to load at boot time.
The best solution would be to rebuild the underlying methods by which PCs are created. A 512 byte MBR is an artifact of the original IBM PC, which is nearing it's 20th anniversary. BIOSes of today are built upon legacy after legacy, even though we have a few more modern operating systems out there today (like Linux, HURD, and the *BSDs. Ok, NT too..) that would much rather have a fully contiguous block of memory rather than the chunkified model that evolved along with the PC.
Anyway, I'd be really happy if someone decided to make MBR's be 100kB in size or at least something a *little* larger than 512 bytes. Or heck, the BIOS itself could be redesigned to understand filesystems and kernels..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Yep. There have even been certain situations where museums have re-organized bones in their displays to account for this (to show that dinosaurs were much more `active').
Too bad the site's videos are in Sorenson.. I think a lot of people interested in this discovery are on Unix systems..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Right now, I don't care too much about this. Besides, it's his movie -- he can do whatever he wants with it (well, within the confines of the law..) Besides, it can be argued that DVD isn't quite stable yet (there are plenty of old players that can't play new movies). Also, DVDs will be obsolete as soon as HDTV becomes common. There's also the very small possibility that he doesn't want to get involved in any way with the problems relating to CSS..
;-)
Anyway, I'm sure that Mr. Lucas has plenty of reasons to wait on this. I'm patient
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Oh yeah, before I forget: Gargoyles was also a great show! Of course, that's from Disney, so you can't like Gargoyles if you don't like Disney... :-p
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Yeah, my uncle used to watch Batman all of the time -- the first time that I remember seeing someone older than 15 be interested in a `cartoon'.. That show also had coolest opening animation and music that I can remember.
;-)
;-)
Of course, I have to say that I also thoroughly enjoyed some of the other WB stuff -- Tiny Toons was a favorite of mine as a kid, and Animaniacs was even better (some of the extra characters were especially enjoyable -- Pinky and the Brain is definitely on the top of the heap). Freakazoid was a short-lived show, but the few episodes I saw were very funny.
These days, the Simpsons is probably the king of the hill, but Family Guy is a great show that loves to play on the short attention spans of audiences these days. Futurama is pretty good, but it will probably take a while for that show to distance itself enough from the Simpsons to stand entirely on its own (although I thought the most recent episode was very good).
Of course, those are all comedies -- but I like to laugh, what can I say?
I have been pretty impressed with Batman Beyond, and Superman does have some pretty good stuff too. However, I don't like it when shows of any kind play too much to the ``moral of the story'' crowd..
Okay.. I'm rambling.. sorry
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Well, then, where does code stop being speech? Assembler code is source code, as companies have written code in assembler for ages. The next step down is microcode -- certainly, it's very difficult for most people to read, but it is not indecipherable (get a book with the instruction set or get a disassembler).
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Welp, I guess this is officially big news -- CNN's main webpage is in overload mode..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA