Windows might be more difficult, but that is because it has no good means of software package management. Installing almost anything on Windows requires more work than doing so on Linux.
What the hell? How could it be simpler on Windows?
1.) double click on Nic's XviD binary installer
2.) click OK
3.) click OK
4.) DONE!
That's how 99% of all software installations are on windows! You don't even need to restart!
To every slashdotter who uses XviD, it costs nothing because the binaries are downloadable for free. Let the developers worry about legal harassment from MPEG LA. You'll never have to worry about their attempts at charging you unless you download software that allows them to do that.
To 99.9% of people who aren't anal retentive, it doesn't matter that the legal status is questionable. All people want is a good free (as in beer) codec. It's not like it can call home and tell the MPAA lawyers to send you a nastygram.
Obviously I was talking about groups that illegally distribute movies and TV shows, if you paid attention to the context. And by serious I mean groups that don't suck and have been around for a while, like TCF, Centropy, esoteric, etc.
TMD doesn't count because they're a bunch of stupid script kiddies who dont know their ass from a codec and just reincode other people's releases into tiny mpeg2's that look like shit.
There's nothing unfree about the GPL except that it doesn't allow GPL'd code to become part of proprietary code, which is really the only way to keep the code free anyway...
Unlimited reproduction and distribution of taped shows is illegal by itself, but the fact that all the ads are cut out makes it even worse.
The only reason its legal to tape copyrighted TV content is because of "fair use" which says you can make a copy of it for your own private backup/use
Don't ask me why it should be illegal to distribute it with commercials intact, though.
I mean, regardless of when the divx.com sysadmin gets around to removing the old files, you will still be able to get old free versions from other sources (p2p, etc) Widely distributed files never just disappear from the net. Of course, sometime down the line, these will become obsolete, but it doesn't matter anyway.
I don't see what any of the fuss is about when any slashdotter could just go and download the pay version (cracked) for free from gnutella or bittorrent or whatever. 99% of the stuff you'd be using the DivX codec for is illegal, and you hate adware sellouts, so why not just pirate DivX?
Yeah, of course old non-adware versions of the divX codec will still be available for a while, but the point is that there won't be any new non-adware versions except the ones you have to buy.
XviD is a great alternative, which looks just as good as DivX (About 5mb per minute gets you very good quality if encoded properly. 10mb per minute is near DVD quality.)
It's completely free and GPL'd, and it's also already very popular, by my estimates its the second most popular codec, behind DivX, for the (ilegal) online distribution of movies and TV shows, unlike Ogg Theora which is completely unheard of fringe experimental codec that no serious group has ever used for a release.
Now try controling a game with only your fists. your analogy is total bullshit. The one-button mouse is a waste of independently working fingers that could, with a little training, be used to increase input bandwidth without confusing anybody who knows his face from his ass. Theres nothing un-ergonomical or slow or complicated about using the fingers in one hand to do more than one mashing motion. Are you come kind of psychotic mac fanatic who feels the need to rationalize every decision apple makes?
Can a product-delivery model where the actual recording costs and artist royalties represent less than 15% of the retail price continue to survive in the future? When (if ever) and how do you think more efficient middleman-reducing business models will begin to dominate the industry? Will the RIAA try to put a stop to more direct distribution models that bypass their inefficiency? How near is the death of brick-and-mortar music/software/etc distribution?
20 years? 50 years? 100 years? Never?
Here's my little speil on the subject of wasteful middlemen that defraud consumers of a bang for their buck:
As it is, at most $2 from every $10-$15 CD actually goes to the artists and recording/editing expenses. These obsolete middlemen are inflating the price of the good by a factor of 5-10 without adding any value to it, as 256kbps MP3 files distributed for relatively neglegible cost via the internet are just as valuable to the consumer as a CD with the same music. Advertizing is an inefficient necessary evil that does nothing to increase the actual value of the product to a consumer but certainly jacks up the retail price. The benefit of capitalism depends on the logical consumer, who seeks out the best product for the best price, and advertizing advertizing serves no purpose but to override the logic of the consumer and convince him to buy one product over another on the basis of anything but objective and independantly verified facts. In fact, advertizing claims have no correlation whatsoever to the actual quality of the product in comparison to its peers. So, you see, advertizing-intensive middlemen are an economic leech of sorts. They feed off of an arms race that does nothing to encourage rational buying decisions and adds nothing to the real value of any product, while doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the retail prices of said products. It is about as wasteful as the continuation of the nuclear weapons race between the US and USSR beyond the point that both powers had enough to destroy the world many times over. And yet is an indispensible method of competition that few products can survive without. The only losers are the consumers, who have no other purchasing options than to buy goods that are inflated in price many times over by advertizing costs, or else illegally acquire those goods online (at no marginal cost to the producer, mind you) and face the posibility of prison time for "piracy" (which would be more properly termed "unauthorized use" of copyrighted materials because it bears no resemblance to the violent theft of physical goods). How, if ever, will the consumer's enigma be solved? As long as the advertizing arms race continues, and people put up with inefficient middlemen, consumers will never be able to purchase a product for anything close to its actual value.
I call BS. There is nothing difficult or complicated about a multibutton mouse interface, except for someone with a negative IQ who hasn't used a computer for more than 1 hour in their life. It invariably speeds up command & control without any complications or negative side effects. Muddling through doing everything with a single mouse button is like trying to type with only one finger and leads to LESS EFFICIENT interfaces.
I'm talking about the school computers. I would never waste money on a fucking Mac. My home built PC beats the shit out of any similarly priced prebuilt computer, even before I overclocked it.
Yeah, what the hell was apple smoking with a one button mouse? It makes all sorts of input slower, clumasier, or impossible. Having 2 mouse buttons is nearly essential for any FPS, preferably more than that for various keybinds. It's much faster to click a mouse button than type a key because of little things called stroke length and seek time which are both practically zero on the mouse. 2-button scrollwheel mice should be standard on every computer, i'm sick of those dinky useless 1-button puck mice on all the macs at my school. (actually, several of them have real mice, but they're not even configured to support the 2nd button or the scrollwheel because OS9 doesn't even support that by default (lol).
fygment writes "...according to recent studies. It seems we're more closely related to rodents than tofelines and canines. Primates did not evolve from carnivorous mammals such as noble jungle cats, wolves, etc. We're closer to rats. Of course, this has long been suspected of lawyers and SCO execs..."
Honestly, all it takes is a once-over at 250 WPM to catch 99% of all grammatical errors. The Slashdot editors are so incompetant they don't even take the necessary 30-60 seconds to fix an article before publishing it on the front page.
DARPA started the internet, and DARPA is funded as congress damn well pleases, and funds can be earmarked for certain projects. So yes, Al gore did have a role in creating the internet.
As it is, you could pack enough (very cheap) ammonium nitrate into a minivan to take out an entire skyscraper. Have terrorists done that? Nope, only these weak ass suicide bombings with a few pounds of dynamite or other cheap explosives. Why? Well, probably because 99.9% of the would-be terrorists are too poor to have a car, or too stupid to make a decent bomb, or both. The last 2 suicide bombings combined killed 2 and injured ~10. That's TINY. That's like one stick of dynamite hidden in your crotch.
Airport Security Lady: "Is that dynamite in your underwear or are you just happy to see me... Mind if I strip search you?":D
Speaking of which, a compact ceramic gun like a glock 18 in your underwear could be smuggled thru airport security very easily. I don't think they would frisk anybody in the privates unless they were damn sure, but the gun wouldnt set off any of the metal detectors. Only a tiny minority of checkpoints have full-body x-rays.
In summary, you're kidding yourself if you think it would be difficult for anybody with brains to execute a large-scale terrorist attack, despite all the new security measures. If they wanted to attack they could have done it already.
You'd think that would be the ultimate weapon for suicide bombers, but actually the stuff would be too expensive aqnd easy to detect from a distance with a geiger counter unless it had a few inches of lead casing surrounding it (not somehing you can hide under a jacket).
defense is 20-25%, and interest on debt is 30%. With a lot less of the former over the last 20 years, you wouldn't have the latter and the federal spending would be half what it is now.
The problem lies in trying to control things in 3D from a 2D view. The only great GUI for that is the first-person shooter... You're gonig to have user-interface difficulties no matter what program you use.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows might be more difficult, but that is because it has no good means of software package management. Installing almost anything on Windows requires more work than doing so on Linux. What the hell? How could it be simpler on Windows? 1.) double click on Nic's XviD binary installer 2.) click OK 3.) click OK 4.) DONE! That's how 99% of all software installations are on windows! You don't even need to restart!
To every slashdotter who uses XviD, it costs nothing because the binaries are downloadable for free. Let the developers worry about legal harassment from MPEG LA. You'll never have to worry about their attempts at charging you unless you download software that allows them to do that. To 99.9% of people who aren't anal retentive, it doesn't matter that the legal status is questionable. All people want is a good free (as in beer) codec. It's not like it can call home and tell the MPAA lawyers to send you a nastygram.
Obviously I was talking about groups that illegally distribute movies and TV shows, if you paid attention to the context. And by serious I mean groups that don't suck and have been around for a while, like TCF, Centropy, esoteric, etc. TMD doesn't count because they're a bunch of stupid script kiddies who dont know their ass from a codec and just reincode other people's releases into tiny mpeg2's that look like shit.
There's nothing unfree about the GPL except that it doesn't allow GPL'd code to become part of proprietary code, which is really the only way to keep the code free anyway...
Unlimited reproduction and distribution of taped shows is illegal by itself, but the fact that all the ads are cut out makes it even worse. The only reason its legal to tape copyrighted TV content is because of "fair use" which says you can make a copy of it for your own private backup/use Don't ask me why it should be illegal to distribute it with commercials intact, though.
I mean, regardless of when the divx.com sysadmin gets around to removing the old files, you will still be able to get old free versions from other sources (p2p, etc) Widely distributed files never just disappear from the net. Of course, sometime down the line, these will become obsolete, but it doesn't matter anyway. I don't see what any of the fuss is about when any slashdotter could just go and download the pay version (cracked) for free from gnutella or bittorrent or whatever. 99% of the stuff you'd be using the DivX codec for is illegal, and you hate adware sellouts, so why not just pirate DivX?
Yeah, of course old non-adware versions of the divX codec will still be available for a while, but the point is that there won't be any new non-adware versions except the ones you have to buy.
XviD is a great alternative, which looks just as good as DivX (About 5mb per minute gets you very good quality if encoded properly. 10mb per minute is near DVD quality.)
It's completely free and GPL'd, and it's also already very popular, by my estimates its the second most popular codec, behind DivX, for the (ilegal) online distribution of movies and TV shows, unlike Ogg Theora which is completely unheard of fringe experimental codec that no serious group has ever used for a release.
XviD source code
Nic's XviD binary (best)
A divX digest page with links to several other, older XviD binaries
That's like saying maybe you can get a free hospital visit if you shoot yourself. Put down the reefer!
I said similarly priced, not 3 times the price.
Now try controling a game with only your fists. your analogy is total bullshit. The one-button mouse is a waste of independently working fingers that could, with a little training, be used to increase input bandwidth without confusing anybody who knows his face from his ass. Theres nothing un-ergonomical or slow or complicated about using the fingers in one hand to do more than one mashing motion. Are you come kind of psychotic mac fanatic who feels the need to rationalize every decision apple makes?
Can a product-delivery model where the actual recording costs and artist royalties represent less than 15% of the retail price continue to survive in the future? When (if ever) and how do you think more efficient middleman-reducing business models will begin to dominate the industry? Will the RIAA try to put a stop to more direct distribution models that bypass their inefficiency? How near is the death of brick-and-mortar music/software/etc distribution? 20 years? 50 years? 100 years? Never?
Here's my little speil on the subject of wasteful middlemen that defraud consumers of a bang for their buck:
As it is, at most $2 from every $10-$15 CD actually goes to the artists and recording/editing expenses. These obsolete middlemen are inflating the price of the good by a factor of 5-10 without adding any value to it, as 256kbps MP3 files distributed for relatively neglegible cost via the internet are just as valuable to the consumer as a CD with the same music. Advertizing is an inefficient necessary evil that does nothing to increase the actual value of the product to a consumer but certainly jacks up the retail price. The benefit of capitalism depends on the logical consumer, who seeks out the best product for the best price, and advertizing advertizing serves no purpose but to override the logic of the consumer and convince him to buy one product over another on the basis of anything but objective and independantly verified facts. In fact, advertizing claims have no correlation whatsoever to the actual quality of the product in comparison to its peers. So, you see, advertizing-intensive middlemen are an economic leech of sorts. They feed off of an arms race that does nothing to encourage rational buying decisions and adds nothing to the real value of any product, while doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the retail prices of said products. It is about as wasteful as the continuation of the nuclear weapons race between the US and USSR beyond the point that both powers had enough to destroy the world many times over. And yet is an indispensible method of competition that few products can survive without. The only losers are the consumers, who have no other purchasing options than to buy goods that are inflated in price many times over by advertizing costs, or else illegally acquire those goods online (at no marginal cost to the producer, mind you) and face the posibility of prison time for "piracy" (which would be more properly termed "unauthorized use" of copyrighted materials because it bears no resemblance to the violent theft of physical goods). How, if ever, will the consumer's enigma be solved? As long as the advertizing arms race continues, and people put up with inefficient middlemen, consumers will never be able to purchase a product for anything close to its actual value.
I call BS. There is nothing difficult or complicated about a multibutton mouse interface, except for someone with a negative IQ who hasn't used a computer for more than 1 hour in their life. It invariably speeds up command & control without any complications or negative side effects. Muddling through doing everything with a single mouse button is like trying to type with only one finger and leads to LESS EFFICIENT interfaces.
I'm talking about the school computers. I would never waste money on a fucking Mac. My home built PC beats the shit out of any similarly priced prebuilt computer, even before I overclocked it.
having more than one mouse button also streamlines normal desktop navigation and school-related use. There's no reason not to.
Yeah, what the hell was apple smoking with a one button mouse? It makes all sorts of input slower, clumasier, or impossible. Having 2 mouse buttons is nearly essential for any FPS, preferably more than that for various keybinds. It's much faster to click a mouse button than type a key because of little things called stroke length and seek time which are both practically zero on the mouse. 2-button scrollwheel mice should be standard on every computer, i'm sick of those dinky useless 1-button puck mice on all the macs at my school. (actually, several of them have real mice, but they're not even configured to support the 2nd button or the scrollwheel because OS9 doesn't even support that by default (lol).
fygment writes "...according to recent studies. It seems we're more closely related to rodents than to felines and canines. Primates did not evolve from carnivorous mammals such as noble jungle cats, wolves, etc. We're closer to rats. Of course, this has long been suspected of lawyers and SCO execs ..."
Honestly, all it takes is a once-over at 250 WPM to catch 99% of all grammatical errors. The Slashdot editors are so incompetant they don't even take the necessary 30-60 seconds to fix an article before publishing it on the front page.
Only if you don't watercool them with niagara falls.
DARPA started the internet, and DARPA is funded as congress damn well pleases, and funds can be earmarked for certain projects. So yes, Al gore did have a role in creating the internet.
now that would REALLY overload the power grid...
As it is, you could pack enough (very cheap) ammonium nitrate into a minivan to take out an entire skyscraper. Have terrorists done that? Nope, only these weak ass suicide bombings with a few pounds of dynamite or other cheap explosives. Why? Well, probably because 99.9% of the would-be terrorists are too poor to have a car, or too stupid to make a decent bomb, or both. The last 2 suicide bombings combined killed 2 and injured ~10. That's TINY. That's like one stick of dynamite hidden in your crotch.
:D
Airport Security Lady: "Is that dynamite in your underwear or are you just happy to see me... Mind if I strip search you?"
Speaking of which, a compact ceramic gun like a glock 18 in your underwear could be smuggled thru airport security very easily. I don't think they would frisk anybody in the privates unless they were damn sure, but the gun wouldnt set off any of the metal detectors. Only a tiny minority of checkpoints have full-body x-rays.
In summary, you're kidding yourself if you think it would be difficult for anybody with brains to execute a large-scale terrorist attack, despite all the new security measures. If they wanted to attack they could have done it already.
You'd think that would be the ultimate weapon for suicide bombers, but actually the stuff would be too expensive aqnd easy to detect from a distance with a geiger counter unless it had a few inches of lead casing surrounding it (not somehing you can hide under a jacket).
defense is 20-25%, and interest on debt is 30%. With a lot less of the former over the last 20 years, you wouldn't have the latter and the federal spending would be half what it is now.
The problem lies in trying to control things in 3D from a 2D view. The only great GUI for that is the first-person shooter... You're gonig to have user-interface difficulties no matter what program you use.
Anyone crazy enough to pay $1.2 million for any sort of advantage in a silly MMO is out of their mind and deserves to be ripped off...
SCO is doing the IP-law equivalent of going on a rampage shooting people to steal their wallets because you think the "world owes you"