Someone's tagline once said "cutting and pasting from the linked Slashdot article is not Informative... it's Redundant". I agree.
I would rather see some discussion more on-topic, such as why this is good, or bad... not "for your convenience" cut and pasting from obvious links.
I'm glad that people are excited about this format. I hope that in 5 years it becomes a well-used standard. PNG is just starting to catch on in the graphics industry, although it's nowhere near as well supported as say TIFF.
And that's too bad.. you always know PNG video frames are lossless, and they're lots smaller than pure uncompressed stuff.
More support than GIMP is needed I am afraid. This is needed in things like Broadcast 2000, where it might make an impact.
Given that Slashdot and a million other websites continue to use GIF *how many* ? years after PNG, I think MNG will take just as long to gain acceptance.
But Mozilla MNG support's still nice, for small niche websites where you know the audience is capable of viewing it without a Netscape 4 plugin and IE control.
I already block things like doubleclick - for obvious reasons - using squid_redirect (search freshmeat), but now I'll have to train myself to not visit news.com.
The cnet news has taken a downturn over the last year anyhow. Too bad, as it used to be one of my top 10 news sites (I'm a news junkie, OK?). Now they have pissed me off... such arrogance!
Oh yeah, I know I should be more mad at the US Patent Office... given our 2 presidential candidates I can only see this problem getting *worse* (and the really outragous stuff they won't support, just policy launder it! Send it to Europe as a treaty, so we can bypass Congress like they've done with the recent Privacy acts).
Can we declare a subterranian nation? Who needs the sun anyways. I was thinking of moving to a more liberal nation like the Netherlands, but then I realized why the conservatives here are fighting clean air laws... THOSE folks will be the first to be flooded by the melting icecaps.
Oh hell. Where is a 1 mile wide asteroid when you need one? Everything is so depressing...:P
Ever hear of IE for UNIX and how bad it sucked? Don't bother with Media Player on the Mac.
I tried playing one of these compressed clips on the MS Media Player for Mac, and it was dog slow and dropped frames like mad. It was totally unusable on a 350 MHz blue G3 with 196 megs RAM. I've seen MUCH better video using QuickTime on a PowerMac 6100... at 60 Mhz.
This is just a MS play at locking in the pirate community and using that momentum to displace legitimately used codec.
There are techniques such as smoothing that improve the usual compression rates of standard MPEG... it's just that bare bones software does not offer it. What Linux needs is something like Media Cleaner, for MPEG.
Q: (Why is it that most of those MPEG music videos, played under Linux, have all bad colors and bad sync among the compression tiles? I've never seen a MPEG play fine even on a fast Linux box, but they work fine in Windows ro the Mac)??
Pirates unwittingly assisting MS "embrace, extend"
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The author is a victim of M$ FUDding the issues. This is not MPEG-4, as has been pointed out already. What hasn't been pointed out is Microsoft "leaked" this codec to the Moviez and Pr0n kiddiez to establish momentum, as Microsoft's incomplete and Windows-biased implementation of MPEG-4 was rejected by the standards committee. Not only were current MS video implementations inferior to Apple QuickTime (even on Win32), but QT is *the* standard in professional video editing (even on Win32).
Why leak an obsolete codec? Because it, and the FREE MS compression tools (what the FTC sometimes calls product dumping by a monopoly) have conditioned the video pirates into using this format for trading.
Heh... wait till they try switching their OS over to Linux, won't they feel stupid. Oh wait, never mind. Where's the |33t sense of danger in using an OS that can never be pirated?;)
What *blind* editorializing from the tech. elite
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Universal Access
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What kind of crap is this? The story is *mildly* noteworthy, but after 50 other companies this is not news for nerds or stuff that matters.
This "techno elite often forget... technology gap" babble embarrasses me, and I'm proud to call myself a liberal. Hearing Jon Katz talk about this gap is like listening to those Volvo Turbo driving PSEUDO environmentalists (note I'm not targeting the environmentalists here just the mee-too's driving the eco-unfriendly-but-still-somehow-socially-consciou s vehicle crowd).
Tell me, how many disadvantaged are getting this helping hand? If "more and more" employers are helping the disadvantaged this way, back up that assertion withan employer that actually HIRES (or exploits) disadvanted folks, such as McDonalds, Tropicana, or the nondescript people in CHinese prisons and sweatshops who will inherit the remaining non-technology blue collar jobs in the USA.
Want to address the information gap? Then attack the problem at the SOURCE... public SCHOOLS. People don't need private corporations to solve social problems.... these things always come with hidden costs.
If we can admit that higher and quality education is what is needed to get people into jobs that allow them to be self-sufficent, then we as a country (and this is not just a USA problem) need to stop pushing the higher and higher costs of education back onto local governments that cannot afford it. There isn't much of a difference between elite public schools and elite private schools, yet there's plenty of bad public schools that churn out illiterates (and don't have the tax base to even fill street potholes). Governments are just becoming weaker and weaker, and handing 6000 years of progress to the multinationals.
Jon sometimes makes some good points, but he takes too long to get there, and usually comes across with the flair of a failed drama student.
18 months ago year, I inherited a 3 or 4 year old #9 video card. I had no documentation for this card. I emailed a quick driver question to their customer service, and from that mail they offered to email me an updated video BIOS chip. Mind you, I was NOT reporting a problem, but they wanted to do the "right thing" since the card was not registered (even if they did send postcards or email notifications). How many companies would do that today, even if you DID register? Registering typically is a way of harvesting demographic information (Microsoft is a particularly selfish example...) \
As a Maya user (not much of an artist), I have JUST ONE WORD FOR THIS: UNFREAKINBELIEVABLE!
I had to check the HTML for includes links outside aliaswavefront.com... I thought they had been HACKED! LOL...
This is very good news for the Mac folks and MacOS X in general. It's also good news for ME. My company is SynaPix, and our software ties in with Maya over the LAN. This in all probability means we will be geting our first Mac:-D
You have some interesting points, but I think they suck.:) 1>Yep. That's right. Lobby! Lobby! I'm no fan of lobbying - soft money should be outlawed entirely. BUT - if the recording CARTELS can pass so called "IP laws" that OUTLAW OPEN have ALREADY successfully lobbied for unconstitutional laws that OUTLAW OPEN SOURCE (Linux DVD player anyone?) who will lobby for us?? What think you of that?
2> And when there is no-one left prepared to spend months working on an album for no reward whatsoever, are YOU going to entertain us?
No, I'll just keep hitting Reload at Slashdot. To put it another way, do YOU want to listen to an entertainer who's ONLY in it for the money? I prefer semi-underground bands, which Metallica once was, because they just like to fuck off and have FUN. Artists deserve to be rewarded - encouraging the arts is a good thing. But bands like Metallica are just like those whiney major league baseball players who strike because a million dollars is not enough for them...
>There ARE ways of enforcing rights of digital content.
Yes, welcome to the brave new world my friend. The latest Stephen King book is ONLY available in digital form. Under current "copyright" laws, yyou can give away a paperback after reading it. Giving that digital book away could land you a 30 THOUSAND dollar fine or maybe jail.
But I see this Napster isn't black and white - fine - but here is what I feel: I REFUSE to yield my consitiutional rights in a compromise to support some industry's not-well-thought-out business plan.
We'll see more conservative politicians take the side of the big corporations (in exchange for soft money). Maybe there are a few who really do believe in the founding fathers, and keeping the government out of our lives.
Do you also favor mandated back-doors into crypto, because crypto has the potential for abuse?
When CD's were in their infancy - and thus a vulnerable format - didn't all the record companies insist that CD's were 'only $15 until production gets up' then presumably it gets cheaper, no?
Why is it then that CASSETTES are cheaper than CD's? I will bet every penny I have that it cost more to mass produce a tape than a CD. SO why then is the price so unrealistic. BECAUSE THE RECORD COMPANIES HAVE AN UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT TO CONTINUE RIPPING US OFF.
Legally, due to anti-trust laws, record cannot discuss pricing among themselves, as this would be evidence of price-fixing. They seemed to have arrived at fixed priceing regardless.
Metallica fingers 300,000 Napster pirates? Weren't they an anti-authoritarian band, before they "left their anger on the barber shop floor"? Former glory or not, say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
I WONDER what effect say 300,000 signatures to Washington DC would do regarding recording industry price fixing and Metallica's possible involvement (as a label) in CD price-fixing.
These kids may be guilty, but their parents can vote! I hope Napster contacts these named users and successfully gets them to become a PAC lobbying group to put some constraints on these out of control copyright laws. Where do I sign up??
AH, yes, they can move over their pr0n... but how will they play it??
Microsoft is dumping 4l33t tools for making moviez, in order to build a base for a proprietary format. These kiddiez will download every Linux ISO out there and probably even TRADE them on IRC (lol!), but they'll never switch to Linux and lose their warez...
I can't BELIEVE the moderators +1'd this to 5! No wonder Slashdot's content is going downhill. Are the moderators selected these days purely by how frequently they post? Must be, because I haven't posted too much lately and I can't recall the last time I was selected.. (not that that's important to me... what's important is the MECHANISM for selecting moderators).
This is as stupid as those "please forward this to everyone you know" virux hoaxes. These moderators need a bitch slap.
HEY now SQLServer can "handle" 40 terrabytes! LOL
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Does anyone remember the Microsoft "street maps" demo they tried a while back (when MS stopped calling the Internet a fad, round 1997)?
Basically they set up this IIS/Access/SQL Server setup which served out *terrabytes* of data, and made the most of this PR.... hey Oracle can serve TerraBytes so can we. Essentially they turned the setup into a barely useful database which acted as a HTTP: server. We got a lot of laughs over the Pointy Ones who would tell us this was ready to replace Solaris + Oracle (maybe to index and serve your MP3 collection that's about it).
Expect the 40 terrabytes figure to be repeated. MS should just focus on true clustering... at least then users can factor in tripple redundancy and fully automate the daily reboot process.
:-/
At NAB 2000 I got to play with Mac OS X on PowerPC. Very neat little UNIX OS... can't wait to see how it runs games. The Blue Box, or 'compatability mode' wasn't as fast as I thought it would be, at least running evil MS Internet Extender... slight video tearing on PPC 500 (the native browser, not MSIE, was quick tho). Should be an interesting year for UNIX...
I use GIMP, and while it's real powerful, it's rather slow (or, on fast hardware it is 'not as fast as it should be'). Still, every chance I get I plug GIMP... especially to those morons using *unregistered* Paint Shop Pro. Yes, GIMP also runs on Windows. Consider that my obligatory " external link for +1 moderation whore" comment..;-)
Anyways, Photogenics is a real FAST, dead sexy app for Linux. If you DO buy software for Linux... give it a serious look. I bought this at Linux World NY, and the last emailed beta was like 500ish *KB* and ran real fast on my now-modest K62.
I talked to Paul at the show.. real humble guy. I never used this on the Amiga, but I do see this as evidence that even though the 80's are over, the LITTLE GUY can still come out with something cool and unique. You probably wont see this on the software aisles.. and that's my point. Store software generally sucks (gee want the latest shovelware from Metacreations or whatever).
The unadvertised bit is Pg's toolkit set... he wrote his own so he could do straight compiles from the AMiga codebase. It's a pretty good toolkit and he should consider licensing it for other Amiga ports, or just general Linux users (it's an in your face reminder just how bloated Qt and gtk are).
The effects? They's nice. I especially like the automatic masking when layering effects, and the lens flare utility is real nice.
I still cannot believe this thing fits on a FLOPPY...
Before anyone does anything, it would be nice if *everybody* could be honest about the issue, even if one doesn't want to be because it may hurt their arguement.
This is about piracy, but this is also about equally-important (more?) issues like freedom of speech, the right to assembly [online], and - probably the pivital issue - the EXPLOITATION of artists by the record labels.
Piracy. Sure, I download MP3's. Most have been (pathetically) compressed by some cheap bastard who too much values their disk space, and at 128/44 and are a useless substitute for The Real Thing. The recording industry would like everyone to believe the CD that takes all day to download on a 56k modem is an exact digital duplicate worthy of re-recording. Bzzt!
Freedom In the US we have [on paper] the right to free speech and assembly. Napster, etc. are both. The same arguemnents that say this technology should be illegal because it may be misused... well, I'm sure some folks at Microsoft or SCO would love an atmosphere where they could argue "foreign hackers" are hurting US Companies because they're doing commercial work (LINUX) for free. Or maybe trading of Grateful Dead shows - even though the GD says it's OK - should be banned because the concept of non-free works is too threatening.
Limiting the right to online assembly would be a fatal blow to the US Constitution. Sure, people *are* trading copyrighted works online... but think for a moment how frightening it would be if the media adopted the arguements against rap or heavy metal concerts, on the assumption there will be drug use inside that may not take place otherwise. Tough shit. The RIAA has no soul and NOTHING is too draconian if it means protecting their 20th century pre-digital business model.
RIAA: Want a way to make it more difficult to pirate movies and audio?? Make the content BIGGER. 24-bit, 4 channel audio is noticably better than 16-bit stereo. Push the channel envelope and maybe we will get some REAL innovation in speaker design (you'll need to hide 2 dozen discrete speakers..)
The Artists. The artists LOSE when we pirate music, but remember the RIAA has an AGENDA. Just like the US Government declaring pot smoking can cause insanity, etc. the truth between two stubborn groups is somewhere far away.
Artists should question the information given to them by the RIAA regarding this technology. I do "keep" some MP3's I download, and burn them to CD. I also BUY music I "find" online.
Culture, CONTROL and media manipulation. I saw a "frightening" story of online piracy on Fox News. Hey, does Sony own a TV network yet? Does anyone see a bigger problem with this??
This is about CORPORATE CONTROL. These companies hold TREMENDOUS influence over the artists, and the outlets (radio). Why else would so many artists request anonyminity when discussing Napster. Why else would CD's be price-fixed at $15 each, when in 1984 we were told this price was "temporary" until production was up. Why else would most of the radio stations be either owned or influenced by the big recording studios. Most radio stations are soooo distant from what's new and cool. Why is that? My answer is because the radio networks are conservative and get their suggested playlists from the RIAA. The DJ's are old because no one in the AUDIENCE would ever play the Eagles and Metallica back to back... but the radio networks don't see the irony in this. Rock music is not supposed to be conservative, but most rock stations play the same sound since the mid-80's that even my parents recognize. Why is it you can always strike a conversation by saying "MTV sucks"? This is about who should be allowed to influence our culture!
Because the radio sucks, I've found a lot of MP3's from artists I've "heard of" (or not heard enough of to justify a $15 CD purchase). These are artists you never hear on the corporate radio, like Frontline Assembly, Muslimgauze, Bauhaus, Black Flag, [ironically] Throwing Muses, and more. They may not have got my money before I listened to them, and i may not have purchased my every MP3, but they DID get my money BECAUSE of MP3.
This post was made with Mozilla and Linux, because I'm too cheap to buy Windows 98 to get on that there Internet Thingy.:-D
I want to be fair... why is it when there's an Apple story, even Commander Taco has to put his 2 cents into the story summary?
How about Slashdot stories that are summarized with "Now if only CommanderTaco would fully open the Slashdot codebase".
News should be news and editorials are clearkly labeled JonKatz.
Pre-emptive comment: Please, moderators, don't knock this post down -- it makes Slashdot look bad when the mob can't rule itself.
For what it's worth, I also would wish for Apple to open their hardware. I also wish for Sun and SGI (IRIX) to do the same, I wish BeOS was open source, I wish BSD were more open to outside involvement (or updated their perception so), and if I were feeling really selfish I'd wish for everyone to get read/write CVS accounts to the Linux kernel tree and we vote on it's direction (no offense to our Fearless Leader).
Apple gets it plenty... they choose to open where they can and stay closed where it maximizes their chances for success. Simply being open isn't a recipie for success... Alpha is doing OK but it's a stagnant market relative to x86 (and maybe PPC?)
This kind of preservation the motivation for M.A.M.E.?
Also, some catalogs specialize in old movies that have escaped the gravitational pull of corporate greed, and become public domain. Unfortunately it's expensive to preserve these.
What is really criminal however is the same companies that will sue to prevent "fair use" of their copyrighted materials... or worse pay off Congress to extend copyright law (hello Disney!). Without corporate support for preservation, these films are food for mold.
Actually, it wasn't two 32-bit chipps added together. There *were* 64 bit chips and busses in there doing real grunt work. It's just that the CPU was a 32-bit 680x0 (like the ST) and that's why people cried foul.
If the CPU is demoted to tasks like controlling I/O and keeping the other chips in line - and those chips are 64-bit -- I don't think it's unreasonable to call it 64-bit.
Of course, another way to draw the line is how the code is compiled... in this case 32-bit. But it's kind of interesting to think about this when we get to the point that CPU's don't matter. CPU's only matter in today's architecture because ** INTEL SUCKS ** and they want everything tied in such a way that the system can't scale without upgrading the CPU. Well designed (in this respect) systems are Solaris, Alpha boxes, and even PowerMacintosh. For better or for worse though the market says that bad designs will win because of economies of scale.
On a different note, I had *really* hoped Atari would regain their glory with this system. A cartridge system could have scored big if Atari got this out on time. As it was, 18 months too late, CD rom was the only way to go. Atari later made a CD Rom expansion, but those type of expansions *always* fail because you fragment your market (just like Microsoft... LOL)
Just 7 months after the whole/. community was screaming over "Apple licensing" of Firewire, I find this most ironic.
USB 2.0, be it an eventual product or vaporware announcement, was designed to steal mindshare from Firewire.
USB was designed for cheap low-bandwidth plug in parts. That's what it is good at. Trying to scale up from that detracts from the original design. It makes absolutely no sense to have a mouse on the same bus as an external hard drive or video capture.
Now that Firewire has been FUDDED into a mostly-Apple expansion port, Intel moves in for the harvest. Nice. You didn't see it coming?
FOr those of you that don't know, "Firewire" is the same as "Sony i.Link" and 1394 ports. Sony just calls it that to prevent mindshare from Firewire.
Don't use M13 unless you're happy with what works and what doesn't. If you really want to use Mozilla, get daily builds. On my Linux box I have cronned a small script that cd's to my cvs/mozilla directory and runs gmake. I may have 56k, but that's what's so cool about cron... builds automated to occur at 4AM - sweet.
I can't get Mozilla to build on Win32 using just Cygnus as an environment. The Mozilla pages assume you know a lot more about build debugging than I do, or maybe it really does require MC VC++? Oh well.
It's real nice to try Mozilla every day and see what's new, like the new "Sherlock-like" Search bar -- WAY COOL.
I can get about 20 minutes uptime in Mozilla vs. 30 mins in Netscape on Linux and Netscape/W32 an hour. I can extend my Linux uptime of Netscape by typing by Slashdot replies in Gnotepad and using cut and paste:). The promising bit is Mozilla uses *Linux* as the reference platform so we can be sure the bugs will be fixed. I hope the Win version is stable enough that it's widely adopted there.
The road is not that long though. We'll have a good Mozilla before the summer. Too bad no PC vendors will bundle it, and Apple probably won't either because of the UI design "violations" (I'll bet MS has Apple under contract to not 'support' Mozilla with code contributions, like they have supported Apache. This is pure speculation however).
Um, small point here -- and totally meaningless in the "real world", but AltiVec does not mean G4.
The G4 has a lot of enhancements besides AV, and AV could theoretically been retrofitted into a G3.
More importantly, the G3 was pretty close to a PPC 603e chip -- great integer performance but so-so floating point scores. Of course, the FP scores of a 603e still trounced Pentiums at the time, so it was deliciously ironic to hear PC lovers talking about "crippled" FP in the G3. Other enhancements to the G3 carried the FP scores forward even though no major effort was made to make FP gains.
I could be wrong, but I think the G4 is closer to the PowerPC 604e. Among the similarities is SMP - multiprocessor support. Apple gave up on SMP in MacOS long ago, but the BSD kernel in Mac OS X is more than up to it.
Lastly, the MacOS is probably MORE portable thank Linux. MacOS has been under a major rewrite for the last 2 years. Much of the MacOS is tied to just a few libraries, most prominent of the group is QuickTime (update that library for AV support and lotsa linked apps get a kick in the ass). Apple has been preparing for a move to MacOS X, and afterwards a move to 64-bit, for quite some time. Apple does not want to maintain two OS trees indefinately, like some other OS companies we know of...
Lastly, people have already forgotton that MacOS X did beta in an Intel version. Remember Rhapsody? I saw it and actually fought to try installing it on three PC's (lovely... hardware conflicts with a Mac:-D).
For all that Apple still doesn't do (no bundled development tools... grrr), they have made the best of their situation.... better than any of their "wut no floppie drive" detractors. Nice clean systems with no ribbon cables strewn across 3 or four internal case/CPU fans.
Anyways, I got off the track, but last thing is Apple has an amazing record of making quite varied hardware APPEAR to be what they've used before. Just ask the LinuxPPC coders how varied the Apple hardware is. For all the MacOS glitches over the year, they have the flexibility to do anything they like with their systems... things that Microsoft and Intel can only immitate. If Apple wants to move onto Transmeta or even Intel, you can bet those new systems will never have the same problems as Windows/WinCE on same platforms.
Scott
PS _ Does anyone know if BSD on PowerPC can run Linux/PPC binaries, like say BSD/x86 can run Linux binaries?? This would be real interesting if someone starts shipping PowerPC Linux boxes (plain vanilla), and you can target BSD and still execute the binary under MacOS Consumer...
Huh? Your comments indicate you read the summary here, but know very little about Quicktime (sorry). Let me fill you in on the state of Quicktime:
If all the qt codecs were open source...
We wouldn't HAVE as many codecs. Think Sorenson would donate their codecs for the good of mankind? They're only bad guys if they *prevent* you - yes YOU - from writing your own implementation of a QT coded. Wasn't it Linus who said people who complain about other's licenses are just whiners. You CAN do something about this if you code yourself.
...a certain other company beginning with M would suddenty support it..
Microsoft *already* supports QT in Windows Media Player. In fact, it STEALS your file associations and makes itself the default player for MOV's on Windows. That's wrong, but as a registered Apple developer Microsoft has easy access to Quicktime internals. Plus, Microsoft settled out of court for allegedly misusing that access to build a Windows media player that even today is only half as good.
Please, do NOT wish for a Linux version of MS Media Player - they made a version for the Mac, and using a G3/300 it is SOOO slow it actually drops frames and the audio pops. Mind you I've gotten better performance in Quicktime, fullscreen, on a PowerMac 6100/60MHz and only 40 megs RAM.
BTW, the downloadable Macintosh version of QuickTime *also* has the annoying register message. If you upgrade your Mac to System 9 you get a registered player.
By complaining that Apple will never open source the QT player you add further to the internal arguement that Apple shouldn't support a bunch of yammering Linux users who believe all software should be free. If that's your opinion - I respect it - but if you ever buy ANY OTHER software you have no right to complain and you cloud the arguement.
Oh, two things: if you read the Apple developer docs you can "extend" Apple's Quicktime and make any damn player design you want. There are Perl-based MP3 players for the Mac, that just hook into the QT runtime.
I will bet anything that Apple will support QuickTime Player on Linux sometime between the summer release of OS X Consumer, and say 2 years from now. Why do I believe this? Because Apple wants to sell software, and it would be STUPID for them to handout an x86 Linux player when they are going to try selling their OWN verison of UNIX.
Technological reasons aside, I think a big reason Apple is 'going UNIX' is to fuck Microsoft and their crap NT model. Apple is a FAR better friend to the Linux/OSS community than say Sun, yet people always bitch about Apple Quicktime or the inevitable missing floppy drive.
This post made with Mozilla M13. Yum.
At that (or ANY) age, Piers Anthony and T. Brooks
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This is probably the thread LEAST likely to incite a flame war.:-D
Piers Anthony was a favorite of mine when I was that age. OK, this is more "Fantasy" than sci-fi, but it's a GREAT series and the author didn't lose that imagination that people do when they stop being kids.
Terry Brooks also writes great fantasy books.
Fantasy is not Sci-Fi, but it makes sense to me that there's a lot of spill-over in the genres, and if you like one you quite possibly will enjoy the other.
Also, download the Zork interactive fiction from activision.com. They're not true books, but the old Infocom games were the reason I bought my first disk drive in 1983 (a whopping 90K per disk side!).:-D
Slashdot Mirror
Someone's tagline once said "cutting and pasting from the linked Slashdot article is not Informative... it's Redundant". I agree.
I would rather see some discussion more on-topic, such as why this is good, or bad... not "for your convenience" cut and pasting from obvious links.
I'm glad that people are excited about this format. I hope that in 5 years it becomes a well-used standard. PNG is just starting to catch on in the graphics industry, although it's nowhere near as well supported as say TIFF.
And that's too bad.. you always know PNG video frames are lossless, and they're lots smaller than pure uncompressed stuff.
More support than GIMP is needed I am afraid. This is needed in things like Broadcast 2000, where it might make an impact.
Given that Slashdot and a million other websites continue to use GIF *how many* ? years after PNG, I think MNG will take just as long to gain acceptance.
But Mozilla MNG support's still nice, for small niche websites where you know the audience is capable of viewing it without a Netscape 4 plugin and IE control.
They had this in the Apple 2, so they could squish ultra-small letters for 80 and 120 column terminals.
Seeing *that* melon-head get snuffed would be worth $15. He makes me laugh, in the worst way..
I already block things like doubleclick - for obvious reasons - using squid_redirect (search freshmeat), but now I'll have to train myself to not visit news.com.
:P
The cnet news has taken a downturn over the last year anyhow. Too bad, as it used to be one of my top 10 news sites (I'm a news junkie, OK?). Now they have pissed me off... such arrogance!
Oh yeah, I know I should be more mad at the US Patent Office... given our 2 presidential candidates I can only see this problem getting *worse* (and the really outragous stuff they won't support, just policy launder it! Send it to Europe as a treaty, so we can bypass Congress like they've done with the recent Privacy acts).
Can we declare a subterranian nation? Who needs the sun anyways. I was thinking of moving to a more liberal nation like the Netherlands, but then I realized why the conservatives here are fighting clean air laws... THOSE folks will be the first to be flooded by the melting icecaps.
Oh hell. Where is a 1 mile wide asteroid when you need one? Everything is so depressing...
Ever hear of IE for UNIX and how bad it sucked? Don't bother with Media Player on the Mac.
I tried playing one of these compressed clips on the MS Media Player for Mac, and it was dog slow and dropped frames like mad. It was totally unusable on a 350 MHz blue G3 with 196 megs RAM. I've seen MUCH better video using QuickTime on a PowerMac 6100... at 60 Mhz.
This is just a MS play at locking in the pirate community and using that momentum to displace legitimately used codec.
There are techniques such as smoothing that improve the usual compression rates of standard MPEG... it's just that bare bones software does not offer it. What Linux needs is something like Media Cleaner, for MPEG.
Q: (Why is it that most of those MPEG music videos, played under Linux, have all bad colors and bad sync among the compression tiles? I've never seen a MPEG play fine even on a fast Linux box, but they work fine in Windows ro the Mac)??
The author is a victim of M$ FUDding the issues. This is not MPEG-4, as has been pointed out already. What hasn't been pointed out is Microsoft "leaked" this codec to the Moviez and Pr0n kiddiez to establish momentum, as Microsoft's incomplete and Windows-biased implementation of MPEG-4 was rejected by the standards committee. Not only were current MS video implementations inferior to Apple QuickTime (even on Win32), but QT is *the* standard in professional video editing (even on Win32).
;)
Why leak an obsolete codec? Because it, and the FREE MS compression tools (what the FTC sometimes calls product dumping by a monopoly) have conditioned the video pirates into using this format for trading.
Heh... wait till they try switching their OS over to Linux, won't they feel stupid. Oh wait, never mind. Where's the |33t sense of danger in using an OS that can never be pirated?
What kind of crap is this? The story is *mildly* noteworthy, but after 50 other companies this is not news for nerds or stuff that matters.
u s vehicle crowd).
This "techno elite often forget... technology gap" babble embarrasses me, and I'm proud to call myself a liberal. Hearing Jon Katz talk about this gap is like listening to those Volvo Turbo driving PSEUDO environmentalists (note I'm not targeting the environmentalists here just the mee-too's driving the eco-unfriendly-but-still-somehow-socially-conscio
Tell me, how many disadvantaged are getting this helping hand? If "more and more" employers are helping the disadvantaged this way, back up that assertion withan employer that actually HIRES (or exploits) disadvanted folks, such as McDonalds, Tropicana, or the nondescript people in CHinese prisons and sweatshops who will inherit the remaining non-technology blue collar jobs in the USA.
Want to address the information gap? Then attack the problem at the SOURCE... public SCHOOLS. People don't need private corporations to solve social problems.... these things always come with hidden costs.
If we can admit that higher and quality education is what is needed to get people into jobs that allow them to be self-sufficent, then we as a country (and this is not just a USA problem) need to stop pushing the higher and higher costs of education back onto local governments that cannot afford it. There isn't much of a difference between elite public schools and elite private schools, yet there's plenty of bad public schools that churn out illiterates (and don't have the tax base to even fill street potholes). Governments are just becoming weaker and weaker, and handing 6000 years of progress to the multinationals.
Jon sometimes makes some good points, but he takes too long to get there, and usually comes across with the flair of a failed drama student.
18 months ago year, I inherited a 3 or 4 year old #9 video card. I had no documentation for this card. I emailed a quick driver question to their customer service, and from that mail they offered to email me an updated video BIOS chip. Mind you, I was NOT reporting a problem, but they wanted to do the "right thing" since the card was not registered (even if they did send postcards or email notifications). How many companies would do that today, even if you DID register? Registering typically is a way of harvesting demographic information (Microsoft is a particularly selfish example...) \
As a Maya user (not much of an artist), I have JUST ONE WORD FOR THIS: UNFREAKINBELIEVABLE!
:-D
I had to check the HTML for includes links outside aliaswavefront.com... I thought they had been HACKED! LOL...
This is very good news for the Mac folks and MacOS X in general. It's also good news for ME. My company is SynaPix, and our software ties in with Maya over the LAN. This in all probability means we will be geting our first Mac
You have some interesting points, but I think they suck. :)
1>Yep. That's right. Lobby! Lobby!
I'm no fan of lobbying - soft money should be outlawed entirely. BUT - if the recording CARTELS can pass so called "IP laws" that OUTLAW OPEN have ALREADY successfully lobbied for unconstitutional laws that OUTLAW OPEN SOURCE (Linux DVD player anyone?) who will lobby for us?? What think you of that?
2> And when there is no-one left prepared to spend months working on an album for no reward whatsoever, are YOU going to entertain us?
No, I'll just keep hitting Reload at Slashdot. To put it another way, do YOU want to listen to an entertainer who's ONLY in it for the money? I prefer semi-underground bands, which Metallica once was, because they just like to fuck off and have FUN. Artists deserve to be rewarded - encouraging the arts is a good thing. But bands like Metallica are just like those whiney major league baseball players who strike because a million dollars is not enough for them...
>There ARE ways of enforcing rights of digital content.
Yes, welcome to the brave new world my friend. The latest Stephen King book is ONLY available in digital form. Under current "copyright" laws, yyou can give away a paperback after reading it. Giving that digital book away could land you a 30 THOUSAND dollar fine or maybe jail.
But I see this Napster isn't black and white - fine - but here is what I feel:
I REFUSE to yield my consitiutional rights in a compromise to support some industry's not-well-thought-out business plan.
We'll see more conservative politicians take the side of the big corporations (in exchange for soft money). Maybe there are a few who really do believe in the founding fathers, and keeping the government out of our lives.
Do you also favor mandated back-doors into crypto, because crypto has the potential for abuse?
When CD's were in their infancy - and thus a vulnerable format - didn't all the record companies insist that CD's were 'only $15 until production gets up' then presumably it gets cheaper, no?
Why is it then that CASSETTES are cheaper than CD's? I will bet every penny I have that it cost more to mass produce a tape than a CD. SO why then is the price so unrealistic. BECAUSE THE RECORD COMPANIES HAVE AN UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT TO CONTINUE RIPPING US OFF.
Legally, due to anti-trust laws, record cannot discuss pricing among themselves, as this would be evidence of price-fixing. They seemed to have arrived at fixed priceing regardless.
Metallica fingers 300,000 Napster pirates? Weren't they an anti-authoritarian band, before they "left their anger on the barber shop floor"? Former glory or not, say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
I WONDER what effect say 300,000 signatures to Washington DC would do regarding recording industry price fixing and Metallica's possible involvement (as a label) in CD price-fixing.
These kids may be guilty, but their parents can vote! I hope Napster contacts these named users and successfully gets them to become a PAC lobbying group to put some constraints on these out of control copyright laws. Where do I sign up??
AH, yes, they can move over their pr0n... but how will they play it??
Microsoft is dumping 4l33t tools for making moviez, in order to build a base for a proprietary format. These kiddiez will download every Linux ISO out there and probably even TRADE them on IRC (lol!), but they'll never switch to Linux and lose their warez...
I can't BELIEVE the moderators +1'd this to 5! No wonder Slashdot's content is going downhill. Are the moderators selected these days purely by how frequently they post? Must be, because I haven't posted too much lately and I can't recall the last time I was selected.. (not that that's important to me... what's important is the MECHANISM for selecting moderators).
This is as stupid as those "please forward this to everyone you know" virux hoaxes. These moderators need a bitch slap.
Does anyone remember the Microsoft "street maps" demo they tried a while back (when MS stopped calling the Internet a fad, round 1997)?
Basically they set up this IIS/Access/SQL Server setup which served out *terrabytes* of data, and made the most of this PR.... hey Oracle can serve TerraBytes so can we. Essentially they turned the setup into a barely useful database which acted as a HTTP: server. We got a lot of laughs over the Pointy Ones who would tell us this was ready to replace Solaris + Oracle (maybe to index and serve your MP3 collection that's about it).
Expect the 40 terrabytes figure to be repeated. MS should just focus on true clustering... at least then users can factor in tripple redundancy and fully automate the daily reboot process.
:-/
At NAB 2000 I got to play with Mac OS X on PowerPC. Very neat little UNIX OS... can't wait to see how it runs games. The Blue Box, or 'compatability mode' wasn't as fast as I thought it would be, at least running evil MS Internet Extender... slight video tearing on PPC 500 (the native browser, not MSIE, was quick tho). Should be an interesting year for UNIX...
I use GIMP, and while it's real powerful, it's rather slow (or, on fast hardware it is 'not as fast as it should be'). Still, every chance I get I plug GIMP... especially to those morons using *unregistered* Paint Shop Pro. Yes, GIMP also runs on Windows. Consider that my obligatory " external link for +1 moderation whore" comment.. ;-)
Anyways, Photogenics is a real FAST, dead sexy app for Linux. If you DO buy software for Linux... give it a serious look. I bought this at Linux World NY, and the last emailed beta was like 500ish *KB* and ran real fast on my now-modest K62.
I talked to Paul at the show.. real humble guy. I never used this on the Amiga, but I do see this as evidence that even though the 80's are over, the LITTLE GUY can still come out with something cool and unique. You probably wont see this on the software aisles.. and that's my point. Store software generally sucks (gee want the latest shovelware from Metacreations or whatever).
The unadvertised bit is Pg's toolkit set... he wrote his own so he could do straight compiles from the AMiga codebase. It's a pretty good toolkit and he should consider licensing it for other Amiga ports, or just general Linux users (it's an in your face reminder just how bloated Qt and gtk are).
The effects? They's nice. I especially like the automatic masking when layering effects, and the lens flare utility is real nice.
I still cannot believe this thing fits on a FLOPPY...
Before anyone does anything, it would be nice if *everybody* could be honest about the issue, even if one doesn't want to be because it may hurt their arguement.
:-D
This is about piracy, but this is also about equally-important (more?) issues like freedom of speech, the right to assembly [online], and - probably the pivital issue - the EXPLOITATION of artists by the record labels.
Piracy.
Sure, I download MP3's. Most have been (pathetically) compressed by some cheap bastard who too much values their disk space, and at 128/44 and are a useless substitute for The Real Thing. The recording industry would like everyone to believe the CD that takes all day to download on a 56k modem is an exact digital duplicate worthy of re-recording. Bzzt!
Freedom
In the US we have [on paper] the right to free speech and assembly. Napster, etc. are both. The same arguemnents that say this technology should be illegal because it may be misused... well, I'm sure some folks at Microsoft or SCO would love an atmosphere where they could argue "foreign hackers" are hurting US Companies because they're doing commercial work (LINUX) for free. Or maybe trading of Grateful Dead shows - even though the GD says it's OK - should be banned because the concept of non-free works is too threatening.
Limiting the right to online assembly would be a fatal blow to the US Constitution. Sure, people *are* trading copyrighted works online... but think for a moment how frightening it would be if the media adopted the arguements against rap or heavy metal concerts, on the assumption there will be drug use inside that may not take place otherwise. Tough shit. The RIAA has no soul and NOTHING is too draconian if it means protecting their 20th century pre-digital business model.
RIAA: Want a way to make it more difficult to pirate movies and audio?? Make the content BIGGER. 24-bit, 4 channel audio is noticably better than 16-bit stereo. Push the channel envelope and maybe we will get some REAL innovation in speaker design (you'll need to hide 2 dozen discrete speakers..)
The Artists.
The artists LOSE when we pirate music, but remember the RIAA has an AGENDA. Just like the US Government declaring pot smoking can cause insanity, etc. the truth between two stubborn groups is somewhere far away.
Artists should question the information given to them by the RIAA regarding this technology. I do "keep" some MP3's I download, and burn them to CD. I also BUY music I "find" online.
Culture, CONTROL and media manipulation.
I saw a "frightening" story of online piracy on Fox News. Hey, does Sony own a TV network yet? Does anyone see a bigger problem with this??
This is about CORPORATE CONTROL. These companies hold TREMENDOUS influence over the artists, and the outlets (radio). Why else would so many artists request anonyminity when discussing Napster. Why else would CD's be price-fixed at $15 each, when in 1984 we were told this price was "temporary" until production was up. Why else would most of the radio stations be either owned or influenced by the big recording studios. Most radio stations are soooo distant from what's new and cool. Why is that? My answer is because the radio networks are conservative and get their suggested playlists from the RIAA. The DJ's are old because no one in the AUDIENCE would ever play the Eagles and Metallica back to back... but the radio networks don't see the irony in this. Rock music is not supposed to be conservative, but most rock stations play the same sound since the mid-80's that even my parents recognize. Why is it you can always strike a conversation by saying "MTV sucks"? This is about who should be allowed to influence our culture!
Because the radio sucks, I've found a lot of MP3's from artists I've "heard of" (or not heard enough of to justify a $15 CD purchase). These are artists you never hear on the corporate radio, like Frontline Assembly, Muslimgauze, Bauhaus, Black Flag, [ironically] Throwing Muses, and more. They may not have got my money before I listened to them, and i may not have purchased my every MP3, but they DID get my money BECAUSE of MP3.
This post was made with Mozilla and Linux, because I'm too cheap to buy Windows 98 to get on that there Internet Thingy.
I want to be fair... why is it when there's an Apple story, even Commander Taco has to put his 2 cents into the story summary?
How about Slashdot stories that are summarized with "Now if only CommanderTaco would fully open the Slashdot codebase".
News should be news and editorials are clearkly labeled JonKatz.
Pre-emptive comment: Please, moderators, don't knock this post down -- it makes Slashdot look bad when the mob can't rule itself.
For what it's worth, I also would wish for Apple to open their hardware. I also wish for Sun and SGI (IRIX) to do the same, I wish BeOS was open source, I wish BSD were more open to outside involvement (or updated their perception so), and if I were feeling really selfish I'd wish for everyone to get read/write CVS accounts to the Linux kernel tree and we vote on it's direction (no offense to our Fearless Leader).
Apple gets it plenty... they choose to open where they can and stay closed where it maximizes their chances for success. Simply being open isn't a recipie for success... Alpha is doing OK but it's a stagnant market relative to x86 (and maybe PPC?)
This is great stuff.
This kind of preservation the motivation for M.A.M.E.?
Also, some catalogs specialize in old movies that have escaped the gravitational pull of corporate greed, and become public domain. Unfortunately it's expensive to preserve these.
What is really criminal however is the same companies that will sue to prevent "fair use" of their copyrighted materials... or worse pay off Congress to extend copyright law (hello Disney!). Without corporate support for preservation, these films are food for mold.
Actually, it wasn't two 32-bit chipps added together. There *were* 64 bit chips and busses in there doing real grunt work. It's just that the CPU was a 32-bit 680x0 (like the ST) and that's why people cried foul.
If the CPU is demoted to tasks like controlling I/O and keeping the other chips in line - and those chips are 64-bit -- I don't think it's unreasonable to call it 64-bit.
Of course, another way to draw the line is how the code is compiled... in this case 32-bit. But it's kind of interesting to think about this when we get to the point that CPU's don't matter.
CPU's only matter in today's architecture because ** INTEL SUCKS ** and they want everything tied in such a way that the system can't scale without upgrading the CPU. Well designed (in this respect) systems are Solaris, Alpha boxes, and even PowerMacintosh. For better or for worse though the market says that bad designs will win because of economies of scale.
On a different note, I had *really* hoped Atari would regain their glory with this system. A cartridge system could have scored big if Atari got this out on time. As it was, 18 months too late, CD rom was the only way to go. Atari later made a CD Rom expansion, but those type of expansions *always* fail because you fragment your market (just like Microsoft... LOL)
Just 7 months after the whole /. community was screaming over "Apple licensing" of Firewire, I find this most ironic.
:-)
USB 2.0, be it an eventual product or vaporware announcement, was designed to steal mindshare from Firewire.
USB was designed for cheap low-bandwidth plug in parts. That's what it is good at. Trying to scale up from that detracts from the original design. It makes absolutely no sense to have a mouse on the same bus as an external hard drive or video capture.
Now that Firewire has been FUDDED into a mostly-Apple expansion port, Intel moves in for the harvest. Nice. You didn't see it coming?
FOr those of you that don't know, "Firewire" is the same as "Sony i.Link" and 1394 ports. Sony just calls it that to prevent mindshare from Firewire.
Bah. No more coffee this morning.
Don't use M13 unless you're happy with what works and what doesn't. If you really want to use Mozilla, get daily builds. On my Linux box I have cronned a small script that cd's to my cvs/mozilla directory and runs gmake. I may have 56k, but that's what's so cool about cron... builds automated to occur at 4AM - sweet.
:). The promising bit is Mozilla uses *Linux* as the reference platform so we can be sure the bugs will be fixed. I hope the Win version is stable enough that it's widely adopted there.
I can't get Mozilla to build on Win32 using just Cygnus as an environment. The Mozilla pages assume you know a lot more about build debugging than I do, or maybe it really does require MC VC++? Oh well.
It's real nice to try Mozilla every day and see what's new, like the new "Sherlock-like" Search bar -- WAY COOL.
I can get about 20 minutes uptime in Mozilla vs. 30 mins in Netscape on Linux and Netscape/W32 an hour. I can extend my Linux uptime of Netscape by typing by Slashdot replies in Gnotepad and using cut and paste
The road is not that long though. We'll have a good Mozilla before the summer. Too bad no PC vendors will bundle it, and Apple probably won't either because of the UI design "violations" (I'll bet MS has Apple under contract to not 'support' Mozilla with code contributions, like they have supported Apache. This is pure speculation however).
Gimme the Atari "fuji" logo, or stamps with Pac Man/Congo Bongo/Galaga....
Isn't that what the 80's were all about?
Heck, I still *collect* ATari 2600 carts, and XL/XE disk images. Those're some of the BEST games ever 'made for Linux'...
Um, small point here -- and totally meaningless in the "real world", but AltiVec does not mean G4.
:-D).
The G4 has a lot of enhancements besides AV, and AV could theoretically been retrofitted into a G3.
More importantly, the G3 was pretty close to a PPC 603e chip -- great integer performance but so-so floating point scores. Of course, the FP scores of a 603e still trounced Pentiums at the time, so it was deliciously ironic to hear PC lovers talking about "crippled" FP in the G3. Other enhancements to the G3 carried the FP scores forward even though no major effort was made to make FP gains.
I could be wrong, but I think the G4 is closer to the PowerPC 604e. Among the similarities is SMP - multiprocessor support. Apple gave up on SMP in MacOS long ago, but the BSD kernel in Mac OS X is more than up to it.
Lastly, the MacOS is probably MORE portable thank Linux. MacOS has been under a major rewrite for the last 2 years. Much of the MacOS is tied to just a few libraries, most prominent of the group is QuickTime (update that library for AV support and lotsa linked apps get a kick in the ass). Apple has been preparing for a move to MacOS X, and afterwards a move to 64-bit, for quite some time. Apple does not want to maintain two OS trees indefinately, like some other OS companies we know of...
Lastly, people have already forgotton that MacOS X did beta in an Intel version. Remember Rhapsody? I saw it and actually fought to try installing it on three PC's (lovely... hardware conflicts with a Mac
For all that Apple still doesn't do (no bundled development tools... grrr), they have made the best of their situation.... better than any of their "wut no floppie drive" detractors. Nice clean systems with no ribbon cables strewn across 3 or four internal case/CPU fans.
Anyways, I got off the track, but last thing is Apple has an amazing record of making quite varied hardware APPEAR to be what they've used before. Just ask the LinuxPPC coders how varied the Apple hardware is. For all the MacOS glitches over the year, they have the flexibility to do anything they like with their systems... things that Microsoft and Intel can only immitate. If Apple wants to move onto Transmeta or even Intel, you can bet those new systems will never have the same problems as Windows/WinCE on same platforms.
Scott
PS _ Does anyone know if BSD on PowerPC can run Linux/PPC binaries, like say BSD/x86 can run Linux binaries?? This would be real interesting if someone starts shipping PowerPC Linux boxes (plain vanilla), and you can target BSD and still execute the binary under MacOS Consumer...
If all the qt codecs were open source...
We wouldn't HAVE as many codecs. Think Sorenson would donate their codecs for the good of mankind? They're only bad guys if they *prevent* you - yes YOU - from writing your own implementation of a QT coded. Wasn't it Linus who said people who complain about other's licenses are just whiners. You CAN do something about this if you code yourself.
Microsoft *already* supports QT in Windows Media Player. In fact, it STEALS your file associations and makes itself the default player for MOV's on Windows. That's wrong, but as a registered Apple developer Microsoft has easy access to Quicktime internals. Plus, Microsoft settled out of court for allegedly misusing that access to build a Windows media player that even today is only half as good.
Please, do NOT wish for a Linux version of MS Media Player - they made a version for the Mac, and using a G3/300 it is SOOO slow it actually drops frames and the audio pops. Mind you I've gotten better performance in Quicktime, fullscreen, on a PowerMac 6100/60MHz and only 40 megs RAM.
BTW, the downloadable Macintosh version of QuickTime *also* has the annoying register message. If you upgrade your Mac to System 9 you get a registered player.
By complaining that Apple will never open source the QT player you add further to the internal arguement that Apple shouldn't support a bunch of yammering Linux users who believe all software should be free. If that's your opinion - I respect it - but if you ever buy ANY OTHER software you have no right to complain and you cloud the arguement.
Oh, two things:
if you read the Apple developer docs you can "extend" Apple's Quicktime and make any damn player design you want. There are Perl-based MP3 players for the Mac, that just hook into the QT runtime.
I will bet anything that Apple will support QuickTime Player on Linux sometime between the summer release of OS X Consumer, and say 2 years from now. Why do I believe this? Because Apple wants to sell software, and it would be STUPID for them to handout an x86 Linux player when they are going to try selling their OWN verison of UNIX.
Technological reasons aside, I think a big reason Apple is 'going UNIX' is to fuck Microsoft and their crap NT model. Apple is a FAR better friend to the Linux/OSS community than say Sun, yet people always bitch about Apple Quicktime or the inevitable missing floppy drive.
This post made with Mozilla M13. Yum.
This is probably the thread LEAST likely to incite a flame war. :-D
:-D
Piers Anthony was a favorite of mine when I was that age. OK, this is more "Fantasy" than sci-fi, but it's a GREAT series and the author didn't lose that imagination that people do when they stop being kids.
Terry Brooks also writes great fantasy books.
Fantasy is not Sci-Fi, but it makes sense to me that there's a lot of spill-over in the genres, and if you like one you quite possibly will enjoy the other.
Also, download the Zork interactive fiction from activision.com. They're not true books, but the old Infocom games were the reason I bought my first disk drive in 1983 (a whopping 90K per disk side!).