The parent was talking about MPEG-4 AVC (also known as H.264), which in terms of quality-per-bit is far superior to standard MPEG-4 and also a bit better than VC-1 (WMV), but at the expence of being more computationally expensive to decode (i.e. requires a faster and thus more expensive chip).
Also, most H.264 encoders are still fairly young, so we should see quality improve over the next year as these improve.
And of course, many MPEG-4 movies may be beaten by a huge MPEG-2 movie, but a huge MPEG-2 movie is beaten by a huge MPEG-4 movie which is beaten by a huge MPEG-4 AVC movie (hence using higher capacity discs in next-gen players).
I had a look for this on IMDB; but it's not there. I can see both fan movies and maybe even some original works becoming common on the the internet, I know it's certainly something that would interest me. Perhaps it's time for IMDB to expand the classes of movies it lists.
Though I'm certainly not suggesting that all amateur movies should be listed, a short-movies like this are clearly of a high-quality. Of course the difficult decision is where to put the cut off point, and who decides what is good enough. But from a percursory skim through parts of this, it looks alot better than many commercial films IMDB currently lists.
I whole-heartedly agree. I was replaying this game just last night using Exult. If you've never played it before and are an RPG fan I'd highly recommend you track down a copy (you'll probally have an easier time finding the "Ultima Collection" - Ultima 0-8) on ebay.
Though the Baldur's Gate series was also really good to play, but there is much it could of learnt from Ultima VII.
Several years back several supermarkets close to me (in the UK) had a similiar facility to this, you picked up a handheld barcode scanner and scanned everything you put in your trolley. Then when you went to a checkout to pay, the first few times they would still put your items through a till to check you scanned everything correctly and after that these checks were performed at random (or more often if you consistently made mistakes - yes, you needed to have a shop loyalty card to use these machines so they could keep track of your accuracy, and of course your shopping habits).
However, all the supermarkets seemed to drop these, I don't think it actually made shopping any faster or easier in the end. And it was quite annoying if you thought you were seconds away from leaving to have to have your whole trolley rescanned.
Fantastic! I'll just pay for an internet connection is the US and drag a cable across the atlantic.
For the UK this looks like a pretty good deal (except for the fact bandwidth caps are evil).
I've only tried playing it single player, the AI leaves alot to be desired. But we're warned of that on the front page, it could be quite a bit of fun multiplayer though, I'll have to try that soon.
GCC 3.4 has a new parser, no longer based on yacc.
Won't make the binaries any faster.
GCC 3.4, also has a new framework for optimization -- gimple and generic.
Umm... no it doesn't. They're both in GCC 3.5, which isn't even close to being stable.
x86 binary performance only improved marginally in 3.4 over 3.3. (some other arches, notable x86-64 saw much more significant improvements).
Sorry, don't mean to be bitchy, it's late in my neck of the woods.
Ummm... I think the parent is parent is possibly just refering to the integrated text editor (with POV syntax highlighting) and buttons to control POV-Ray, start, stop, render this portion of the image etc.
Though there are also some POV-Ray modellers out there, I never found them that useful (except for something like Wings3D to do meshes).
I've been using shfs to connect to my uni ssh server to access my files from home for about 6 months now, no problems at all (with both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels).
If Microsofts intention by giving this software away is to enforce their monopoly, then presumably they intend to be in a posisition to force their software on these people eventually (unless they intend to give their software away forever, reminds me of:
1. Give software away for free
2....
3. Profit!)
But as free/open software is driven by volunteers (and IBM etc as well of course) how do then surely this strategy is flawed. If they were battling another compnay then this may work, as the other company may run out of money - but they are not, the free/open software commuinity isn't going to run out of money, as it doesn't need any. All that is required is money for web hosting and time.
The only way MS could beat free/open software is by making a more solid produuct, and possibly by improving their EULA and licensing agreements.
A fantasy trilogy: The Empire Trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts (Book I: "Daughter Of The Empire"; Book II: "Servant Of The Empire"; Book III: "Mistress Of The Empire"). Fantastic read, the scale of the story increases with each book.
Sticking to the SciFi theme more, we have Iain M. Banks (he also does contempory crime, which is also very good). Specifically, "Look To Windwards", "Excession" and so far "Against A Dark Background" seems very good, but I've not finished it yet so I'll reserve full judgement. Banks imagination really is phenonemal (sp?), if you've not read any of his works then read "Look To Windwards" just to read about his "Culture". Seriously.
I'd say >99.5% of my messages are sucessful. And if it's really something that critical I'd tend to phone the person anyway, as they may have left their mobile at home, or dead battery... etc.
40 Billion in the Bank isn't everything. M$ are ruled by the city, if they experience a significant drop in quarterly profits then their share price will plummet.
Could this be the start of a belated "1984"? Ok, sure it's not the goverment that's doing it - but you can bet at least a few people from one of the agencies is wondering how much it'd cost to hire these guys.
This is a good point, most Linux orientated literature is techincal-based. I hadn't noticed this before as this is what I'd want anyway. However that's no good for people who just want to do basic user-end type stuff (word processing etc).
Slashdot Mirror
And I want to thank the people who are responsible for what WINE has become and did take the steps to do it.
;)
The parent was talking about MPEG-4 AVC (also known as H.264), which in terms of quality-per-bit is far superior to standard MPEG-4 and also a bit better than VC-1 (WMV), but at the expence of being more computationally expensive to decode (i.e. requires a faster and thus more expensive chip).
Also, most H.264 encoders are still fairly young, so we should see quality improve over the next year as these improve.
And of course, many MPEG-4 movies may be beaten by a huge MPEG-2 movie, but a huge MPEG-2 movie is beaten by a huge MPEG-4 movie which is beaten by a huge MPEG-4 AVC movie (hence using higher capacity discs in next-gen players).
I had a look for this on IMDB; but it's not there. I can see both fan movies and maybe even some original works becoming common on the the internet, I know it's certainly something that would interest me. Perhaps it's time for IMDB to expand the classes of movies it lists.
Though I'm certainly not suggesting that all amateur movies should be listed, a short-movies like this are clearly of a high-quality. Of course the difficult decision is where to put the cut off point, and who decides what is good enough. But from a percursory skim through parts of this, it looks alot better than many commercial films IMDB currently lists.
I whole-heartedly agree. I was replaying this game just last night using Exult. If you've never played it before and are an RPG fan I'd highly recommend you track down a copy (you'll probally have an easier time finding the "Ultima Collection" - Ultima 0-8) on ebay.
Though the Baldur's Gate series was also really good to play, but there is much it could of learnt from Ultima VII.
Several years back several supermarkets close to me (in the UK) had a similiar facility to this, you picked up a handheld barcode scanner and scanned everything you put in your trolley. Then when you went to a checkout to pay, the first few times they would still put your items through a till to check you scanned everything correctly and after that these checks were performed at random (or more often if you consistently made mistakes - yes, you needed to have a shop loyalty card to use these machines so they could keep track of your accuracy, and of course your shopping habits).
However, all the supermarkets seemed to drop these, I don't think it actually made shopping any faster or easier in the end. And it was quite annoying if you thought you were seconds away from leaving to have to have your whole trolley rescanned.
Fantastic! I'll just pay for an internet connection is the US and drag a cable across the atlantic. For the UK this looks like a pretty good deal (except for the fact bandwidth caps are evil).
Having random maps certainly helped add another dimension to SimCity 2000.
I've only tried playing it single player, the AI leaves alot to be desired. But we're warned of that on the front page, it could be quite a bit of fun multiplayer though, I'll have to try that soon.
I suscribe to New Scientist, it's basically the UK version of Scientific American, but I find it a much better read.
Ummm... I think the parent is parent is possibly just refering to the integrated text editor (with POV syntax highlighting) and buttons to control POV-Ray, start, stop, render this portion of the image etc.
Though there are also some POV-Ray modellers out there, I never found them that useful (except for something like Wings3D to do meshes).
Default = 60 (from cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness)
I've been using shfs to connect to my uni ssh server to access my files from home for about 6 months now, no problems at all (with both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels).
Would highly recommend it.
I have a 1991 3Com Etherlink II (with BNC connector) in one of my machines (that is still in use) at home.
If Microsofts intention by giving this software away is to enforce their monopoly, then presumably they intend to be in a posisition to force their software on these people eventually (unless they intend to give their software away forever, reminds me of: 1. Give software away for free 2. ...
3. Profit!)
But as free/open software is driven by volunteers (and IBM etc as well of course) how do then surely this strategy is flawed. If they were battling another compnay then this may work, as the other company may run out of money - but they are not, the free/open software commuinity isn't going to run out of money, as it doesn't need any. All that is required is money for web hosting and time.
The only way MS could beat free/open software is by making a more solid produuct, and possibly by improving their EULA and licensing agreements.
If it genuinely is completely unbreakable then it must also be undecryptable.
Well, I was about to say I wish I lived in South Africa, but that would be a lie, any ever heard of the flamethrower car defense system?
A fantasy trilogy: The Empire Trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts (Book I: "Daughter Of The Empire"; Book II: "Servant Of The Empire"; Book III: "Mistress Of The Empire"). Fantastic read, the scale of the story increases with each book.
Sticking to the SciFi theme more, we have Iain M. Banks (he also does contempory crime, which is also very good). Specifically, "Look To Windwards", "Excession" and so far "Against A Dark Background" seems very good, but I've not finished it yet so I'll reserve full judgement. Banks imagination really is phenonemal (sp?), if you've not read any of his works then read "Look To Windwards" just to read about his "Culture". Seriously.
I'd say >99.5% of my messages are sucessful. And if it's really something that critical I'd tend to phone the person anyway, as they may have left their mobile at home, or dead battery... etc.
Damn, missed it.
40 Billion in the Bank isn't everything. M$ are ruled by the city, if they experience a significant drop in quarterly profits then their share price will plummet.
I think slashdotting it has a similar effect to boycotting it - but also blocks out the non-slashdot commuinity as well. :-D
Could this be the start of a belated "1984"?
Ok, sure it's not the goverment that's doing it - but you can bet at least a few people from one of the agencies is wondering how much it'd cost to hire these guys.
Vinegar and ketchup??? No way! Brown sauce and salt all the way.
This is a good point, most Linux orientated literature is techincal-based. I hadn't noticed this before as this is what I'd want anyway. However that's no good for people who just want to do basic user-end type stuff (word processing etc).