Yeah I agree with you it's how patent trolls do business, and from recent high profile cases, very successfully.
But you're assuming VP8 will be found to be infringing. I'm not saying it won't for that matter. There's about 100 comments on that topic between a lot of nerds, fan boys whoever. Frankly I am not sure any of them have any idea whatsoever, whether they are or aren't infringing. I certainly don't as I am not a U.S patent lawyer which specialises in algorithms. I doubt you are qualified either really:)
All I said was this move pushes us closer to fireworks. Place your bets gentlemen, place your bets.
The question you need to ask yourself, other than a widely read analysis made by a h.264 encoder developer and the MPEG-LA vaguely announcing they were compiling a patent pool for VP8. Is there any convincing review or proof that WebM is infringing existing patents? The fact is, it hasn't been tested in court by actual patent lawyers, as no case has been filed. Google are betting they are right, MPEG LA think they are. Everyone else is sitting on the fence and supporting both.
The growth is with mobile devices. The leaders among them is Apple with iOS, and Google with Android, both of which come with hardware support for H.264, and no WebM hardware support (future support in... theory, but I can say, count Apple out).
This is a good point but check out what those WebM guys are also heavily pushing http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html. Yes VP8 is rapidly catching up h.264 when it comes to hardware support on mobile devices. Fullscreen 1080p VP8 decoding on several chips due to go into Android devices.
This is just another shot across the bows however. What everyone is really waiting for are the major online video content providers to flip to WebM when it is supported by enough devices. With youtube being the biggest of them all making loud steps in that direction, it seems only a matter of time before they aim the guns at the main sail. Then we get fireworks:)
There was no 'linux team', it was outsourced to Transgaming and just branded as official. But the reality was Transgaming did a crap job of it.
When the last expansion was released it introduced a brand new graphics engine. The Transgaming client (Cedega) didn't support it and neither did Wine at first. However within a few weeks Wine got it running whereas Transgaming dragged their heels.
For anyone who hasn't followed the Transgaming story, they forked Wine a long time ago and then went closed source. They developed quite a lot of good directx (shader 1.x/2.x/3.x) code but they have never submitted it back to the Wine project. Wine basically restrict them from using any of their code since Transgaming decided to screw them. The end result is Transgaming's Cedega code base is horrifically out of date in places compared to the Wine code base.
In my opinion they should try and fix those bridges and merge the code. Transgaming still has a decent corporate structure to approach companies like CCP, as well as their successful MacOS range. The Wine developers aren't interested in that, only further improving Wine. Transgaming simply haven't got the balance right.
He does kind of go into this on page 2 of the article...
Just for you the tldr is that the pirates like being called pirates as do the West Indian trading companies... wait a sec.
Ignoring the legal arguments for once. Do we really want governments to censor what the public sees or does all in the name of protection?
You don't have to go there if you don't agree with it. You don't have to break the laws of your country if you choose not too. Do most people abide by laws because they're worried about the punishments or because they believe in them? There will always be some who don't, in a democracy it is a majority which matters.
However in a democracy surely it is important that the people have a choice? In this case the judge has decided it is not for him to decide.
Sooner or later the ISPS will start advertising "We dont restrict your usage, unlike ". The market competition will provide us net neutrality not government intervention
With the phone market being more competitive and generally more price sensitive in the UK, the question remains will the iphone make a dent. Handsets have a life time here of a year or less and we're very used to getting the newest handsets for free or very little. The hype here is still very high so its an interesting situation. Until the iphone the £200 handesets are all smart phones/ PDA's targeted at the business user / early adopters.
The 3G point is very overblown. The market penetration is still not very high in the UK, and even those with 3G capable sets see it as mostly novelty. The kind of demo graph the iphone is targeted at eg. the ipod market 10-25 is not the same as the 3G market.
Slashdot, theregister, wired, new scientist, anandtech, bbc news technology section (obligatory comedy option).
I used to read tomshardware until a few years ago when articles started becoming so blatantly biased towards whoever had sent 'tom' a new toy that week that it deteriorated from information source to propaganda.
Its one thing listing your sources of news but have you properly evaluated your source and understand what view point they may come from?/. is obviously very open source / linux biased god bless it, theregister seems to go down the route of IT tabloid in terms it will pick up any rumour and try and make witty remarks about it. anandtech claims total neutrality when benchmarking, bbc is watered down and only mainstream issues are picked up there.
Now, if you do something that is enabling you to cheat in the game (and breaking the software license), then I don't see why Microsoft shouldn't ban you and the console.
The firmware hack did not allow you to do this. Since all code on the Xbox 360 (and PS3 for that matter), is signed and run through a hypervisor, for you to run a backup it needs to be identical to the original. Altering any of the code for wall hacks in Hallo 3 for example will change the result of the signing algorithm and the 360 will refuse to run it. The hypervisor was briefly compromised a while ago on the 360 but quickly patched (6 days I believe, so quicker than the file copying bug in vista). Using back ports of the previously hacked Xbox motherboard firmware it is possible to get a few things running such as preliminary XBMC and emulators (I'm not 100% on this maybe someone can confirm). However it is still not possible to run unsigned games.
Incidentally the method Microsoft used to detect the hack this time is very interesting. It was believed that the DVD drive firmware hack was un-detectable as well as un-patchable since Microsoft had no way of remotely upgrading or checking the firmware. A few weeks ago it was theorized that Microsoft could possibly pick up the difference in DVD read jitter between DVD-R media versus printed originals. You can kinda make out jitter by listening to the extra work a DVD drive does when reading a DVD-R compared to a printed DVD. Anyway a firmware patch was released for this purpose. It appears to not have worked however since reports are coming in that people are getting banned even with this latest patch. Currently its being theorized that possibly Microsoft are checking the read speed difference, between DVD-R and pressed DVD's. Data rates tend to drop slightly to my knowledge when reading DVD-R's, so this could be detected from the main 360 software. Others are speculating that Microsoft have just been data mining for the past few months and have just banned those they have picked up until the jitter patch was released.
Finally it is also interesting that Microsoft have only banned the detected Xbox console and not the Live account. They clearly want the hackers to spend more money buying more hardware off them. An interesting way of getting some lost revenue back.
Programmers are having enough problems writing code for the PS3 at the moment. Sony's support doesn't help game companies are fidning they are having ask IBM to help since Sony know only slightly more than they do about it. Just recently one the lead PS3 launch managers has set off to make an offshoot company to try and do some cool stuff with the Cell chip. It's almost as if they are saying well if we don't do it who will?
TRIP's is still in the research stage there will be very little in terms of libraries to take advantage of this and even less api's for anything like EA to get the teeth into. Wake me up when this becomes news please.
Unfortunately you have to pay $1500 view the detailed report BBC used as it's source. There other source is a "Gerhard Florin, executive vice president at EA and the general manager of its international publishing business." The article itself resides in the Business section and was written by Tim Weber Business editor.
The article reads like an EA advertisement for investors. It talks about future revenue streams such as in-game advertising user-generated revenue, online tie ins etc...
I really have to question the neutrality of the source when the main interviewee has such a huge vested interest in the revenue streams he's hoping for his own wallet will come to pass. especially in the online sector where he incidentally berates the Wii
Nintendo's efforts, scoffs Mr Barton, are "frankly stone age compared to the others". As well as the parent poster mentioning the Wii isn't losing money on the console. Aren't the sales figures wrong on Screendisgest's graph. That to me is suggesting as of this month the PS3 is outselling the Wii by 30%. I was under the impression that these sales figures are still be released for independent review and that the Wii was selling better than the PS3 was in at least 2 of the big 3 territories.
Heres something which really caught my eye:
Players will be able to create new levels for games and share them online. "Users could create revenue for games," says Mr Barton. "The potential for this is absolutely enormous". Step 1. Community makes maps, mods, skins etc.. for a game.
Step 2. Publisher claims it as there own IP
Step 3. Profit
This really annoys me. They can go **** themselves if they think I'm going to spend 40 hours programming something interesting for a game I enjoy just to have them take it and make money out of it to subsidise the inadequacies of their retarded business model.
Forgive me for being sceptical here, but in the last 5 years (or ever come to think of it), can you name an FPS game which moved sucessfully from a console to a PC? Crys of "omfg Halo is the pwnzors" will not suffice since it was hardly as sucessful as say the Quake/Doom or Half-Life series or most original PC made FPS games.
IMO they simply dont translate well because fundamentally the controls are simplified on a console. Moving from an inaccurate control system to a more accurate keyboard and mouse means the gameplay is changed and I am yet to see it translated well enough to satisfy the so called PC "twitch gamers". This is of course assuming that you dont want to use a gamepad (in which case why dont you have a console in the first place?)
"You're the guy who wants to give (Grand Theft Auto publisher) Take-Two my scalp. You chose to believe people that you knew were thieves and liars, and now you are their useful SLAPP Bar complainant... These are your corporate criminal buddies, Judge Moore. These are the folks with whom you made your bed, the folks whom your good friend said he could fix the case."
JT and evidence never have gone hand in hand.
So for the 80gig model:
425.00 GBP = 837.355 USD
RRP in the US 499 USD
That is:
338.355 USD more expensive in the UK.
171.768 GBP more expensive in the UK.
So I can buy a Wii + game or an Xbox 360 with the price difference alone. So why buy a PS3 again?
These kind fo rumours have been flying around since WoW sales went throguh the roof. The reality of it is that Blizzard are still struggling maintaining is enormous WoW user base. The first expansion hasn't been released yet. Blizzard have stated that at the game development heart they remaina small company focussing on high quality products.
We probably will see WoS or WoD in the future but not while WoW continues as it currently is.
So of the government statistics for gun related self defence incidences in the USA in the last 5 years according to the fact government website is:-
2.5 million incidents per year.
so 10% is 250,000 where the gun is fired?
Only takes 1 bullit to kill you.
I do hope that your figure of 10% is a lot lower:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I agree with you it's how patent trolls do business, and from recent high profile cases, very successfully.
But you're assuming VP8 will be found to be infringing. I'm not saying it won't for that matter. There's about 100 comments on that topic between a lot of nerds, fan boys whoever. Frankly I am not sure any of them have any idea whatsoever, whether they are or aren't infringing. I certainly don't as I am not a U.S patent lawyer which specialises in algorithms. I doubt you are qualified either really :)
All I said was this move pushes us closer to fireworks. Place your bets gentlemen, place your bets.
The question you need to ask yourself, other than a widely read analysis made by a h.264 encoder developer and the MPEG-LA vaguely announcing they were compiling a patent pool for VP8. Is there any convincing review or proof that WebM is infringing existing patents? The fact is, it hasn't been tested in court by actual patent lawyers, as no case has been filed. Google are betting they are right, MPEG LA think they are. Everyone else is sitting on the fence and supporting both.
The growth is with mobile devices. The leaders among them is Apple with iOS, and Google with Android, both of which come with hardware support for H.264, and no WebM hardware support (future support in... theory, but I can say, count Apple out).
This is a good point but check out what those WebM guys are also heavily pushing http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html. Yes VP8 is rapidly catching up h.264 when it comes to hardware support on mobile devices. Fullscreen 1080p VP8 decoding on several chips due to go into Android devices. This is just another shot across the bows however. What everyone is really waiting for are the major online video content providers to flip to WebM when it is supported by enough devices. With youtube being the biggest of them all making loud steps in that direction, it seems only a matter of time before they aim the guns at the main sail. Then we get fireworks :)
There was no 'linux team', it was outsourced to Transgaming and just branded as official. But the reality was Transgaming did a crap job of it.
When the last expansion was released it introduced a brand new graphics engine. The Transgaming client (Cedega) didn't support it and neither did Wine at first. However within a few weeks Wine got it running whereas Transgaming dragged their heels.
For anyone who hasn't followed the Transgaming story, they forked Wine a long time ago and then went closed source. They developed quite a lot of good directx (shader 1.x/2.x/3.x) code but they have never submitted it back to the Wine project. Wine basically restrict them from using any of their code since Transgaming decided to screw them. The end result is Transgaming's Cedega code base is horrifically out of date in places compared to the Wine code base.
In my opinion they should try and fix those bridges and merge the code. Transgaming still has a decent corporate structure to approach companies like CCP, as well as their successful MacOS range. The Wine developers aren't interested in that, only further improving Wine. Transgaming simply haven't got the balance right.
He does kind of go into this on page 2 of the article... Just for you the tldr is that the pirates like being called pirates as do the West Indian trading companies... wait a sec.
Ignoring the legal arguments for once. Do we really want governments to censor what the public sees or does all in the name of protection?
You don't have to go there if you don't agree with it. You don't have to break the laws of your country if you choose not too. Do most people abide by laws because they're worried about the punishments or because they believe in them? There will always be some who don't, in a democracy it is a majority which matters.
However in a democracy surely it is important that the people have a choice? In this case the judge has decided it is not for him to decide.
Sooner or later the ISPS will start advertising "We dont restrict your usage, unlike ". The market competition will provide us net neutrality not government intervention
sed 's/FF0000/00FF00/' manhunt2/src/*
You read the comments on torrentfreak then? Not so sure about the silence however...
With the phone market being more competitive and generally more price sensitive in the UK, the question remains will the iphone make a dent. Handsets have a life time here of a year or less and we're very used to getting the newest handsets for free or very little. The hype here is still very high so its an interesting situation. Until the iphone the £200 handesets are all smart phones/ PDA's targeted at the business user / early adopters.
The 3G point is very overblown. The market penetration is still not very high in the UK, and even those with 3G capable sets see it as mostly novelty. The kind of demo graph the iphone is targeted at eg. the ipod market 10-25 is not the same as the 3G market.
Slashdot, theregister, wired, new scientist, anandtech, bbc news technology section (obligatory comedy option).
I used to read tomshardware until a few years ago when articles started becoming so blatantly biased towards whoever had sent 'tom' a new toy that week that it deteriorated from information source to propaganda.
Its one thing listing your sources of news but have you properly evaluated your source and understand what view point they may come from? /. is obviously very open source / linux biased god bless it, theregister seems to go down the route of IT tabloid in terms it will pick up any rumour and try and make witty remarks about it. anandtech claims total neutrality when benchmarking, bbc is watered down and only mainstream issues are picked up there.
Do you know what your reading?
The firmware hack did not allow you to do this. Since all code on the Xbox 360 (and PS3 for that matter), is signed and run through a hypervisor, for you to run a backup it needs to be identical to the original. Altering any of the code for wall hacks in Hallo 3 for example will change the result of the signing algorithm and the 360 will refuse to run it. The hypervisor was briefly compromised a while ago on the 360 but quickly patched (6 days I believe, so quicker than the file copying bug in vista). Using back ports of the previously hacked Xbox motherboard firmware it is possible to get a few things running such as preliminary XBMC and emulators (I'm not 100% on this maybe someone can confirm). However it is still not possible to run unsigned games.
Incidentally the method Microsoft used to detect the hack this time is very interesting. It was believed that the DVD drive firmware hack was un-detectable as well as un-patchable since Microsoft had no way of remotely upgrading or checking the firmware. A few weeks ago it was theorized that Microsoft could possibly pick up the difference in DVD read jitter between DVD-R media versus printed originals. You can kinda make out jitter by listening to the extra work a DVD drive does when reading a DVD-R compared to a printed DVD. Anyway a firmware patch was released for this purpose. It appears to not have worked however since reports are coming in that people are getting banned even with this latest patch. Currently its being theorized that possibly Microsoft are checking the read speed difference, between DVD-R and pressed DVD's. Data rates tend to drop slightly to my knowledge when reading DVD-R's, so this could be detected from the main 360 software. Others are speculating that Microsoft have just been data mining for the past few months and have just banned those they have picked up until the jitter patch was released.
Finally it is also interesting that Microsoft have only banned the detected Xbox console and not the Live account. They clearly want the hackers to spend more money buying more hardware off them. An interesting way of getting some lost revenue back.
Programmers are having enough problems writing code for the PS3 at the moment. Sony's support doesn't help game companies are fidning they are having ask IBM to help since Sony know only slightly more than they do about it. Just recently one the lead PS3 launch managers has set off to make an offshoot company to try and do some cool stuff with the Cell chip. It's almost as if they are saying well if we don't do it who will? TRIP's is still in the research stage there will be very little in terms of libraries to take advantage of this and even less api's for anything like EA to get the teeth into. Wake me up when this becomes news please.
Heres something which really caught my eye: Players will be able to create new levels for games and share them online. "Users could create revenue for games," says Mr Barton. "The potential for this is absolutely enormous". Step 1. Community makes maps, mods, skins etc.. for a game.
Step 2. Publisher claims it as there own IP
Step 3. Profit
This really annoys me. They can go **** themselves if they think I'm going to spend 40 hours programming something interesting for a game I enjoy just to have them take it and make money out of it to subsidise the inadequacies of their retarded business model.
Forgive me for being sceptical here, but in the last 5 years (or ever come to think of it), can you name an FPS game which moved sucessfully from a console to a PC? Crys of "omfg Halo is the pwnzors" will not suffice since it was hardly as sucessful as say the Quake/Doom or Half-Life series or most original PC made FPS games.
IMO they simply dont translate well because fundamentally the controls are simplified on a console. Moving from an inaccurate control system to a more accurate keyboard and mouse means the gameplay is changed and I am yet to see it translated well enough to satisfy the so called PC "twitch gamers". This is of course assuming that you dont want to use a gamepad (in which case why dont you have a console in the first place?)
"You're the guy who wants to give (Grand Theft Auto publisher) Take-Two my scalp. You chose to believe people that you knew were thieves and liars, and now you are their useful SLAPP Bar complainant... These are your corporate criminal buddies, Judge Moore. These are the folks with whom you made your bed, the folks whom your good friend said he could fix the case." JT and evidence never have gone hand in hand.
So for the 80gig model: 425.00 GBP = 837.355 USD RRP in the US 499 USD That is: 338.355 USD more expensive in the UK. 171.768 GBP more expensive in the UK. So I can buy a Wii + game or an Xbox 360 with the price difference alone. So why buy a PS3 again?
These kind fo rumours have been flying around since WoW sales went throguh the roof. The reality of it is that Blizzard are still struggling maintaining is enormous WoW user base. The first expansion hasn't been released yet. Blizzard have stated that at the game development heart they remaina small company focussing on high quality products.
We probably will see WoS or WoD in the future but not while WoW continues as it currently is.
Clearly God must smile upon this slightly more intelligently designed being.
So of the government statistics for gun related self defence incidences in the USA in the last 5 years according to the fact government website is:- 2.5 million incidents per year. so 10% is 250,000 where the gun is fired? Only takes 1 bullit to kill you. I do hope that your figure of 10% is a lot lower :)