I'm currently developing subtitling software for Linux and other Unix-alikes called BakaSub. You can find more info here on the main site. I know that's not video production at large, but it is a sizable segment of video editing.
What's difficult about leaving the hard disk blank is that the manufacturers have to test the hardware one way or another. This generally involves some kind of "burn in" test where a program is used to test the hardware for long periods of time under stressful conditions. This software is probably for Windows only, and they figure that reformatting the disk could somehow invalid the tests.. or perhaps you could recover Windows and get a free copy.
To preinstall another OS would require them to port their testing program to the new OS, and they can't be sure that it's as effective as the original. The beuracracy will prevent anything ad-hoc from being used.
But my point is that there ARE technical reasons for it. (Not that I like it any better.. =)
"The wise man keeps some of his skills in reserve," they say.;-) I've learned this one the hard way too, as most jobs I've been at started out as simpler tech jobs, and turned into me running the network, being a primary programmer, and also the major knowledge base for the company in question. Play normal and slip in a good one now and then that makes people wonder about your superhuman powers =)
Something that most people seem to have skimmed over or forgotten completely in this discussion is packages with multiple authors. Now that the Linux kernel has a bazillion contributors, each one "owns" a small piece of the code in the kernel. Each and every person would have to change their licensing terms to let the kernel as a whole change its licensing terms. So no, you can't just change the terms whenever you want if your product becomes popular enough to have multiple contributors.
On the other hand, I am an author who uses the GPL on my software because most of my stuff is small potatoes in a niche market (subtitling =), and I have no extra contributors right now. It would be way easy for someone to take my hard work and turn it into their own proprietary product. I am making my work for fellow fansubbers (and any commercial houses who want to use it) and I would be very irritated indeed if someone repackaged my software (credit or not) and sold it for $1000 a pop.
>Sami Tammilehto wins the second prize. Some large connectionless packets can cause crashes.
So! Who else recognizes that name? Does the name 'Future Crew' ring a bell? ^_^/
Hehe. It's nice to see that those guys are still hanging in there.
Those funny letters from The Matrix
on
May Ten Quickies
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I wonder how many people noticed that those were actually about half numbers/letters and half backwards katakana (Japanese phonetic characters usually used for foreign words, like italics in English).
Thanks to the lovely connectedness here in town, everyone and their dog are buying up broadband for residences now. The apartments I'm living in are managed by a company (Archstone) who are planning to install broadband as a standard part of all new compleces. However, I got disgusted with the cable modem's lack of a decent ISP for the incredibly cool technology, and I've reluctantly turned in the cable modem when I moved. Instead we're going to try out something called Nobell (http://www.nobell.com/ - sorry I'm tired and it's too late to bother with html tags) which is an encrypted, packet-based wireless broadband service. 3MBs symmetric, 6" dish outside the apartment, $40 a month. Pretty sweet =). Oh yeah, and NAT Ok and IXC upstream. Screw C&W.
> Since OSS doesn't offer any method of synchronizing multiple soundcards or transparently rolling multiple soundcards into one, the only way to do it is a very platform and soundcard dependant DMA routine at the application level. Only a couple soundcards work with DMA methods and anyone using it has to rewrite their program everytime a new kernel comes out so it hasn't really worked.
Sorry, you are wrong:-p =). I wrote a program that does real-time sample / separate / output for Dolby decoding with two soundcards, one full-duplex and one half-duplex. I watched the first of the third Star Wars episode with it.. it sounded pretty bad ass =).
You can setup DMA buffers with OSS and then use select() to synchronize output. This only works right if you have two soundcards of the same kind (or they are willing to share a DMA buffer size) but it is NOT kernel or card dependent.
Over the past few weeks I've really been reevaluating what I think is wrong with society. This isn't something that was brought on by the Colorado incident neccessarily, but it made me think about it a bit more. And what I came up with...
I think people these days are brought up far too much to think only of themselves. You can see a very big difference between those who are thinking about others and those who are out for ME ME ME! If you know what I mean =).
I am in college now, in about my sixth year. I don't know, I lost count =). I started watching for this behavior among people at college and I was amazed at what I saw. People were mean and selfish to eachother all the time with a few exceptions. The people who were the exceptions were the ones actually enjoying life. In fact, even the mean people couldn't truly feel mean towards them because here was someone else who is simply refusing to play their game. I started actively trying to live this way and it has helped me like you wouldn't imagine. It enhances a feel-good "can do" attitude. As bad of a cliche as that is, it really is nice compared to angst.
And of course, this starts back with the parents again. Why is it that we keep training our children to grow up looking out only for themselves? This is producing a psychopathic society!!
A good book on this matter is "The Celestine Prophecy" -- not because I believe in all the new-ager stuff in it, but because it details a new way, a new paradigm, of looking at psychological interactions between people. It also has some suggestions on how parents can help this matter.
It all boils down to one thing though: think about something besides your own skin, and pay attention. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. Five minutes of saying "Hi Son, what are you up to tonight?" could be worth years of saved jail time later on.
BTW, I went to TAMS too (@ UNT in Texas) and graduated in '96. I had a pretty easy time of it in high school as those things go, as they didn't manage to do much physical damage to me and I found good friends in the faculty at each "normal" school. I also was lucky enough to get into a magnet school with loads of geek friends, and escape to TAMS later on from the normal school I still had to attend. It's sad to see that TAMS too is heading towards the "normal conformity" that everyone else is eschewing. It used to be a haven for smart kids. It's becoming a private school for preps in a lot of ways. =(
Oh well, everyone in school, hang in there. It's bad for now but once you're out you'll feel better in a lot of ways. Not because the "real world" (haha) is less prejudiced, but because you can pick your crowd.
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I'm currently developing subtitling software for Linux and other Unix-alikes called BakaSub. You can find more info here on the main site. I know that's not video production at large, but it is a sizable segment of video editing.
What's difficult about leaving the hard disk blank is that the manufacturers have to test the hardware one way or another. This generally involves some kind of "burn in" test where a program is used to test the hardware for long periods of time under stressful conditions. This software is probably for Windows only, and they figure that reformatting the disk could somehow invalid the tests.. or perhaps you could recover Windows and get a free copy.
To preinstall another OS would require them to port their testing program to the new OS, and they can't be sure that it's as effective as the original. The beuracracy will prevent anything ad-hoc from being used.
But my point is that there ARE technical reasons for it. (Not that I like it any better.. =)
"The wise man keeps some of his skills in reserve," they say. ;-) I've learned this one the hard way too, as most jobs I've been at started out as simpler tech jobs, and turned into me running the network, being a primary programmer, and also the major knowledge base for the company in question. Play normal and slip in a good one now and then that makes people wonder about your superhuman powers =)
Something that most people seem to have skimmed over or forgotten completely in this discussion is packages with multiple authors. Now that the Linux kernel has a bazillion contributors, each one "owns" a small piece of the code in the kernel. Each and every person would have to change their licensing terms to let the kernel as a whole change its licensing terms. So no, you can't just change the terms whenever you want if your product becomes popular enough to have multiple contributors.
On the other hand, I am an author who uses the GPL on my software because most of my stuff is small potatoes in a niche market (subtitling =), and I have no extra contributors right now. It would be way easy for someone to take my hard work and turn it into their own proprietary product. I am making my work for fellow fansubbers (and any commercial houses who want to use it) and I would be very irritated indeed if someone repackaged my software (credit or not) and sold it for $1000 a pop.
>Sami Tammilehto wins the second prize. Some large connectionless packets can cause crashes.
So! Who else recognizes that name? Does the name 'Future Crew' ring a bell? ^_^/
Hehe. It's nice to see that those guys are still hanging in there.
I wonder how many people noticed that those were actually about half numbers/letters and half backwards katakana (Japanese phonetic characters usually used for foreign words, like italics in English).
^_^
Hi, self! Err, try 3 megaBITS per second.
Thanks to the lovely connectedness here in town, everyone and their dog are buying up broadband for residences now. The apartments I'm living in are managed by a company (Archstone) who are planning to install broadband as a standard part of all new compleces. However, I got disgusted with the cable modem's lack of a decent ISP for the incredibly cool technology, and I've reluctantly turned in the cable modem when I moved. Instead we're going to try out something called Nobell (http://www.nobell.com/ - sorry I'm tired and it's too late to bother with html tags) which is an encrypted, packet-based wireless broadband service. 3MBs symmetric, 6" dish outside the apartment, $40 a month. Pretty sweet =). Oh yeah, and NAT Ok and IXC upstream. Screw C&W.
Dan
> Since OSS doesn't offer any method of synchronizing multiple soundcards or transparently rolling multiple soundcards into one, the only way to do it is a very platform and soundcard dependant DMA routine at the application level. Only a couple soundcards work with DMA methods and anyone using it has to rewrite their program everytime a new kernel comes out so it hasn't really worked.
:-p =). I wrote a program that does real-time sample / separate / output for Dolby decoding with two soundcards, one full-duplex and one half-duplex. I watched the first of the third Star Wars episode with it.. it sounded pretty bad ass =).
Sorry, you are wrong
You can setup DMA buffers with OSS and then use select() to synchronize output. This only works right if you have two soundcards of the same kind (or they are willing to share a DMA buffer size) but it is NOT kernel or card dependent.
That doesn't cover 5.1 encoding though ^_^;
Over the past few weeks I've really been reevaluating what I think is wrong with society. This isn't something that was brought on by the Colorado incident neccessarily, but it made me think about it a bit more. And what I came up with...
I think people these days are brought up far too much to think only of themselves. You can see a very big difference between those who are thinking about others and those who are out for ME ME ME! If you know what I mean =).
I am in college now, in about my sixth year. I don't know, I lost count =). I started watching for this behavior among people at college and I was amazed at what I saw. People were mean and selfish to eachother all the time with a few exceptions. The people who were the exceptions were the ones actually enjoying life. In fact, even the mean people couldn't truly feel mean towards them because here was someone else who is simply refusing to play their game. I started actively trying to live this way and it has helped me like you wouldn't imagine. It enhances a feel-good "can do" attitude. As bad of a cliche as that is, it really is nice compared to angst.
And of course, this starts back with the parents again. Why is it that we keep training our children to grow up looking out only for themselves? This is producing a psychopathic society!!
A good book on this matter is "The Celestine Prophecy" -- not because I believe in all the new-ager stuff in it, but because it details a new way, a new paradigm, of looking at psychological interactions between people. It also has some suggestions on how parents can help this matter.
It all boils down to one thing though: think about something besides your own skin, and pay attention. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. Five minutes of saying "Hi Son, what are you up to tonight?" could be worth years of saved jail time later on.
BTW, I went to TAMS too (@ UNT in Texas) and graduated in '96. I had a pretty easy time of it in high school as those things go, as they didn't manage to do much physical damage to me and I found good friends in the faculty at each "normal" school. I also was lucky enough to get into a magnet school with loads of geek friends, and escape to TAMS later on from the normal school I still had to attend. It's sad to see that TAMS too is heading towards the "normal conformity" that everyone else is eschewing. It used to be a haven for smart kids. It's becoming a private school for preps in a lot of ways. =(
Oh well, everyone in school, hang in there. It's bad for now but once you're out you'll feel better in a lot of ways. Not because the "real world" (haha) is less prejudiced, but because you can pick your crowd.
Dan Potter