But with DivX;-), isn't QuickTime dead? Sorenson or any other codec? OK, the AVI / DivX;-) combination is not streamable, but for Star Wars trailers, TV show episodes or movies you don't really need streaming anyway. I hope the promised 2nd generation will come up with something easy to use that is *free* and available on all platforms. No more closed codecs...
Sorry, but your link doesn't seem to work for me either. In fact, all my requests to lycos.com get me to lycos.de (it seems that German surfers are redirected to the German Lycos site). So stupid...
.home (ianbicking.home -- only registration by individuals of their own name or variation on their name... maybe a different TLD, though....person)
What about all those John Smiths? Peter Muellers? You'd have to append a number as 4th level domain, which will look ugly:
344.john.smith.home
Yuck! Lots of people want homepages with their nicks in the name:
1.cmdrtaco.home
Those names make a fine hierarchy, but they look butt-ugly... (IMHO) And if you want to visit a person's homepage, you would again have something that you cannot memorize: a number (given that you have no problems with the name itself).
But all the traffic has put a strain on Gnutella, and the program's weaknesses are starting to show. Mr. Kan, ever the upbeat evangelist for the technology, cheerfully admits that Gnutella has had its faults, but he also believes that Gnutella is ready for widespread use. "At first you focus on building the car, and once the car is built then you focus on refining the car," he enthuses. "We knew the refining was around the corner and it just takes some time. We wanted to accelerate the best we could by coördinating developer efforts and encouraging them to raise the bar on usability. And it happened."
No, engineers actually plan, build and test the car before it ever gets to the customer. Real software engineering (that deserves the name) is similar. Gnutella obviously wasn't thoroughly planned, which is okay, because you don't have to pay for it. But now that everyone knows that a file-sharing system can really work, the protocol should be redesigned by people who really know about what huge distributed file sharing systems need to be scalable. The 'official' Gnutella client should get all the features that the good third-party clones have, like limiatation for bandwidth and number of connections. Obviously unnecessary queries (like 'a.asf' or '*.mp3') should be dropped.
Isn't it obvious that the best benefit of using something like Gnutella is the possibility of setting up "private" Gnutella nets?
Not really, IMHO. The good thing about file sharing systems is that you can join and immediately start becoming a member, sharing and getting something back. Private networks involve a lot of 'manual' human interaction, getting to know people in chats, via email etc. to develop trust and (personal) connection. That time is something not everyone is willing to invest.
That's the problem: A bogus client can report back anything, and nobody can ever verify if it's true.
Actually, this is already happening. Some nodes in the network are reporting that they share 10 TB of data in about 10,000 files, which is hardly true. You can see it when the 'network status' in your client is updated and the reported data / number of files jumps within a very short time from nothing to very much.
The sad thing is that nobody really has an advantage from reporting wrong numbers AFAIK.
I'm not sure but I think the only reason MS uses extensions like.asf and.asx is A: marketing, newer extensions=new (better) tech. B: work into a more propietery arena, plenty of programs can play.AVI, but how many can play.asf? only one Microsoft (brand) Media Player. actually anyone could write a.asf player. the freakin program is just a big (fat) ActiveX object. it even has a low level COM API if you want to get more into it.
But one of the new things about ASF is that there is no more limitation imposed by 32-bit file size values (= no more 4 GB maximum size of a video file). And wasn't there some (pseudo) suggestion by MS to make ASF an open standard (back in '98)?
A question: What keeps MS from checking the FOURCC for DivX;-) and refusing to play the video?! They can't be really happy about the hack.
One more question: Do you know about an ASF reference manual online? Microsoft did something like that for AVI, but I can't seem to find it for ASF.
Doesn't seem to have an element to store the license the software is distributed under. Or a homepage. Or a download link. Or a file size.
I guess XML is a good idea, but how about trying to mirror everything one can enter for a freshmeat.net entry? And consider what.deb,.rpm etc. have to offer.
Does anyone know what TV card has a TV tuner and MPEG-2 decoding acceleration? The ATI Rage seems to be a candidate, but I had no luck finding any alternatives...
I fully agree. Besides, if you take a look at this list of AVI codecs, you'll have to agree that it's nonsense to give a new file extension to each of them. It would confuse the user much more than the fact that AVI might encapsulate different quality video material...
The codec should utilize MPEG-4v.2 video motion compressors or something of equal quality, source code available on this site. If it's not only something similar in quality to MPEG-4 but uses MPEG-4 itself, what about all the patents? From earlier/. discussions I remember that there are quite a few... I think it's not in the interest of those who want to create an open codec that this codec will be 'illegal' like DivX;-).
On a similar note, can anybody say what the guys at Project Mayo are doing? Sounds very mysterious, but the line Our members include the creators of DivX;-) seems to make it a promising project.
It would be great to have a codec that is cross-platform, free, open-source, and performs well. And please don't put it into QuickTime -- I know that it's only a 'wrapper format' for all kinds of content, but I don't want to be forced to use that stupid QuickTime player anymore. Design the codec as a library in a way that you can make a QuickTime plugin from it if you want to. Give it a file extension of its own, so that all.xyz files will always play, everywhere! Create a small cross-platform player (maybe based on GTK) for people to download.
But GNOME is here, and is not going to disappear. GNOME and KDE will remain two rival desktops, unless some day they can be merged in some way. Until then, the GNU Project is going to support its own team vigorously. Go get 'em, gnomes!
That's supposed to be the spirit of free software? Our (== FSF) project must win? What about freedom of choice? Or 'may the best product win'? Yes, he didn't say that KDE has no right to live. But KDE is a very high quality piece of free software, and once two competing products are released under 'his' GPL, Stallman should really talk about them on the basis of their technical merits. Or not talk about them at all, given his position in the world of free software and the fact that the political issues around KDE are now resolved.
Bruce simply has given up on the idea of perfect security. I don't think that he (or anyone) will be accepting some black box that promises magic. Why? Having to fight (in public) against all kinds of agencies wanting to restrict our personal freedoms is another matter. This will not change with or without Bruce's book.
what a given version of a given software package does without the user confirming it (e.g. transferring GUID's like it is the case in some versions of the Windows Media Player)?
what is stored in documents what you wouldn't want to be there (e.g. Word DOC files and its fast-save feature that has multiple versions of the same document stored)?
what is auto-executed after have been transferred to one's computer (e.g. Outlook macro features)?
One could then simply compare the list of installed software at home or work, best with hints on how exactly to turn things off or what replacement version to install. Previewing my comment I see that I only gave MS software examples, I'm aware that they're not the only ones screwing things up;-)
In addition to the other response (image == web counter), 1 x 1 pixel images are also used for web page layout. It is (or was, at least) the only way to get certain things (like precise alignment) done in HTML. IIRC, CSS solves at least some of the problems.
The website of VitalBook hasn't got a lot of technical details -- or at least I didn't find them. I'd ask the typical questions:
What should prevent people from cracking the encryption system like it has been done with other systems?
How do they make sure that the time they check against to see if the user is still allowed to read isn't faked?
What about the well-known problem of people not liking to read from the screen?
If I have a printing privilege (as is mentioned on the website), can't I simply print into a PostScript file and read that file as long as I wish (and distribute it)?
He's talking about the 3D model for the image. I'm still not sure if this is several GB large, but it has nothing to do with the resulting pixel image.
Having the same directory for downloads and sharing typically leads to a lot of unfinished, broken files to be shared and redistributed. This leads to quite a bit of frustration... So this is not a good idea. Unfortunately, Gnutella (the Win32 client) allows for the download directory to be shared. There are even some of the typical zero-length message files distributed in Gnutella that ask everyone not to share their download directory. FURI, one of the good Gnutella clients, appends.dl to files while they are being downloaded so that everybody will see something is wrong with the file.
Slashdot Mirror
But with DivX ;-), isn't QuickTime dead? Sorenson or any other codec? OK, the AVI / DivX ;-) combination is not streamable, but for Star Wars trailers, TV show episodes or movies you don't really need streaming anyway. I hope the promised 2nd generation will come up with something easy to use that is *free* and available on all platforms. No more closed codecs...
RealNetworks sucks anyway. See this article.
What else?
;-)
Know your audience
Sorry, but your link doesn't seem to work for me either. In fact, all my requests to lycos.com get me to lycos.de (it seems that German surfers are redirected to the German Lycos site). So stupid...
Can someone full-quote the thing for me, please?!
...to the article: here.
.home (ianbicking.home -- only registration by individuals of their own name or variation on their name... maybe a different TLD, though... .person)
What about all those John Smiths? Peter Muellers? You'd have to append a number as 4th level domain, which will look ugly:
344.john.smith.home
Yuck! Lots of people want homepages with their nicks in the name:
1.cmdrtaco.home
Those names make a fine hierarchy, but they look butt-ugly... (IMHO) And if you want to visit a person's homepage, you would again have something that you cannot memorize: a number (given that you have no problems with the name itself).
But all the traffic has put a strain on Gnutella, and the program's weaknesses are starting to show. Mr. Kan, ever the upbeat evangelist for the technology, cheerfully admits that Gnutella has had its faults, but he also believes that Gnutella is ready for widespread use. "At first you focus on building the car, and once the car is built then you focus on refining the car," he enthuses. "We knew the refining was around the corner and it just takes some time. We wanted to accelerate the best we could by coördinating developer efforts and encouraging them to raise the bar on usability. And it happened."
No, engineers actually plan, build and test the car before it ever gets to the customer. Real software engineering (that deserves the name) is similar. Gnutella obviously wasn't thoroughly planned, which is okay, because you don't have to pay for it. But now that everyone knows that a file-sharing system can really work, the protocol should be redesigned by people who really know about what huge distributed file sharing systems need to be scalable. The 'official' Gnutella client should get all the features that the good third-party clones have, like limiatation for bandwidth and number of connections. Obviously unnecessary queries (like 'a.asf' or '*.mp3') should be dropped.
Isn't it obvious that the best benefit of using something like Gnutella is the possibility of setting up "private" Gnutella nets?
Not really, IMHO. The good thing about file sharing systems is that you can join and immediately start becoming a member, sharing and getting something back. Private networks involve a lot of 'manual' human interaction, getting to know people in chats, via email etc. to develop trust and (personal) connection. That time is something not everyone is willing to invest.
The files the computer is sharing are checked, ...
That's the problem: A bogus client can report back anything, and nobody can ever verify if it's true.
Actually, this is already happening. Some nodes in the network are reporting that they share 10 TB of data in about 10,000 files, which is hardly true. You can see it when the 'network status' in your client is updated and the reported data / number of files jumps within a very short time from nothing to very much.
The sad thing is that nobody really has an advantage from reporting wrong numbers AFAIK.
Thanks, ASFRecorder was a very good hint! It comes with C source code that runs under Win32 and various Unices. I found its homepage to be here.
I'm not sure but I think the only reason MS uses extensions like .asf and .asx is A: marketing, newer extensions=new (better) tech. B: work into a more propietery arena, plenty of programs can play .AVI, but how many can play .asf? only one Microsoft (brand) Media Player. actually anyone could write a .asf player. the freakin program is just a big (fat) ActiveX object. it even has a low level COM API if you want to get more into it.
;-) and refusing to play the video?! They can't be really happy about the hack.
But one of the new things about ASF is that there is no more limitation imposed by 32-bit file size values (= no more 4 GB maximum size of a video file). And wasn't there some (pseudo) suggestion by MS to make ASF an open standard (back in '98)?
A question: What keeps MS from checking the FOURCC for DivX
One more question: Do you know about an ASF reference manual online? Microsoft did something like that for AVI, but I can't seem to find it for ASF.
Do it! Use Java3D, it even gets hardware-accelerated on some platforms...
Doesn't seem to have an element to store the license the software is distributed under. Or a homepage. Or a download link. Or a file size.
.deb, .rpm etc. have to offer.
I guess XML is a good idea, but how about trying to mirror everything one can enter for a freshmeat.net entry? And consider what
Does anyone know what TV card has a TV tuner and MPEG-2 decoding acceleration? The ATI Rage seems to be a candidate, but I had no luck finding any alternatives...
I fully agree. Besides, if you take a look at this list of AVI codecs, you'll have to agree that it's nonsense to give a new file extension to each of them. It would confuse the user much more than the fact that AVI might encapsulate different quality video material...
Which runtime library version will be supported, 1.2, 1.3 or even the upcoming Merlin (1.4)?
The codec should utilize MPEG-4v.2 video motion compressors or something of equal quality, source code available on this site. /. discussions I remember that there are quite a few... I think it's not in the interest of those who want to create an open codec that this codec will be 'illegal' like DivX ;-).
;-) seems to make it a promising project.
.xyz files will always play, everywhere! Create a small cross-platform player (maybe based on GTK) for people to download.
If it's not only something similar in quality to MPEG-4 but uses MPEG-4 itself, what about all the patents? From earlier
On a similar note, can anybody say what the guys at Project Mayo are doing? Sounds very mysterious, but the line Our members include the creators of DivX
It would be great to have a codec that is cross-platform, free, open-source, and performs well. And please don't put it into QuickTime -- I know that it's only a 'wrapper format' for all kinds of content, but I don't want to be forced to use that stupid QuickTime player anymore. Design the codec as a library in a way that you can make a QuickTime plugin from it if you want to. Give it a file extension of its own, so that all
But GNOME is here, and is not going to disappear. GNOME and KDE will remain two rival desktops, unless some day they can be merged in some way. Until then, the GNU Project is going to support its own team vigorously. Go get 'em, gnomes!
That's supposed to be the spirit of free software? Our (== FSF) project must win? What about freedom of choice? Or 'may the best product win'? Yes, he didn't say that KDE has no right to live. But KDE is a very high quality piece of free software, and once two competing products are released under 'his' GPL, Stallman should really talk about them on the basis of their technical merits. Or not talk about them at all, given his position in the world of free software and the fact that the political issues around KDE are now resolved.
K-Meleon is a nice, free browser for Win32 that uses the Gecko rendering engine. Worth a try...
Bruce simply has given up on the idea of perfect security. I don't think that he (or anyone) will be accepting some black box that promises magic. Why? Having to fight (in public) against all kinds of agencies wanting to restrict our personal freedoms is another matter. This will not change with or without Bruce's book.
One could then simply compare the list of installed software at home or work, best with hints on how exactly to turn things off or what replacement version to install. Previewing my comment I see that I only gave MS software examples, I'm aware that they're not the only ones screwing things up
In addition to the other response (image == web counter), 1 x 1 pixel images are also used for web page layout. It is (or was, at least) the only way to get certain things (like precise alignment) done in HTML. IIRC, CSS solves at least some of the problems.
He's talking about the 3D model for the image. I'm still not sure if this is several GB large, but it has nothing to do with the resulting pixel image.
Having the same directory for downloads and sharing typically leads to a lot of unfinished, broken files to be shared and redistributed. This leads to quite a bit of frustration... So this is not a good idea. Unfortunately, Gnutella (the Win32 client) allows for the download directory to be shared. There are even some of the typical zero-length message files distributed in Gnutella that ask everyone not to share their download directory. FURI, one of the good Gnutella clients, appends .dl to files while they are being downloaded so that everybody will see something is wrong with the file.