since MPEG2 requires such a high bitrate for decent looking video to emerge, I can give you five times better quality (for same size video file) using DivX;-) because Divx;-) is many times more efficient. Also note that MPEG2 is quite limited, doesn't work nicely with high resolutions, etc. The trick to good encoding is in knowing how to use NanDub (or VirtualDub, or VegasVideo, or whatever you use..) and knowing ALL of the various little settings that can be tweaked. The default settings INVARIABLY SUCK, with the quantizer matrix being set for fast, crappy quality video output. The max. quantizers (if using SBC or DivX5) should NEVER exceed 9, for example; however, the default is usually 31! You shouldn't use the default settings and still expect near-DVD quality.
I'm writing a proper, updated tutorial on SBC and Divx 5 Pro right now, which I will submit to various newsgroups when it's done. In the meantime, check out Doom9.org for a rough idea of how to rip properly. They ignore some pertinent details (ie, filters - esp. contrast filter) but you should get a very good idea of the work involved to produce a decent rip.
if authors deserve to have credits all over the free software that they created, then why stop there? Let's have popup ads on websites to give the sponsors their fair due! Let's have status bar scrollers in OpenOffice listing credits, and banners when the program is minimized - just in case using it wasn't annoying enough already. Take it a step further, and actually read Reiser's article.. here's my favourite part. With this little gem, Hans reveals that he is totally, unequivocally out to lunch. The rest of the article is nearly as bad..
This is why distros drop the K from all the KDE programs: somebody else is trying to establish a brand name, and that is a market threat they want to cut off.
Yeah Hans, it's not because the K is farking stupid or makes free software look like childish Krap; it's Klearly a Konspiracy! Users don't care, Hans. I skip channels, block popups, and kill adware faster than you can say "fuck the users." I suspect that many of the 0.3% of computer owners who use Linux full-time feel the same way.
Maguire was a wimpy Peter Parker, TOTALLY UNLIKE the original comic book guy.. he made Spidey look like a vacillating wimp without any of the snappy wit present in the comics. Anybody watch the cartoon show? The (voice) actors are better than the (live) actors in the movie. Oh, except for J. Jonah Jameson:D I view this as a chance to redeem the franchise. Hope they cast somebody a little more lively, who doesn't look like he's half-asleep all the time.
Just imagine the looks on your neighbors faces when you rumble into the midst of their barbecue in a Panzer, and paste the beer cooler with your 37mm potato cannon. That'll teach 'em to drink imported beer on the 4th of July.
that poor kid probably had too much watery American "beer," but I'll bet he's not even half feeling it. If this guy wandered into my party on July 1st (Canada Day) with that potato cannon he'd be pelted back pretty quick with dried squirrel meat and chunks of my melting igloo, that's for damned sure. I pity the fool.
That's funny, I'm using the Proxomitron and I haven't experienced any problems with the site.. all popups blocked with extreme prejudice but I sure as hell don't feel any pain. Without evidence of Anti-Leech, I'll have to just take your word for it; however, based on my experience, I'd say the guy's not a hypocrite..
On the other hand, do you really care about one measly popup (or two, or whatever you unproxomitronic people get) that much? I mean, how many times do you even visit the site? Regular Kazaa, on the other hand, installs a whole lotta spyware that gives you perpetual popups and ads whenever you use a browser. If I didn't block the popups, I think I'd consider it a worthy trade.
As a long-time zilla hater and Opera afficionado, I can tell you that this release is finally worth installing. Believe it or not, 1.3 is actually reasonably quick, both on initial loading and page renders - startup speed lags behind IE and Opera, obviously, but it's getting quite close! I don't have that disgusting pre-loading feature enabled, yet it no longer feels like you're loading a miniature version of OpenOffice. Page rendering has been the fastest thing I've ever seen since version 1.0, and I can't tell if it's any faster in that respect just yet. Hats off to the Mozilla crew for this fine release!
*note: talkin' about the Win32 version here. No idea about Linux. Sorry.
Soon the Germans will enjoy what we in Canada like to to refer to as "Nazi justice," or, as our American neighbors call it, a royal fucking up the arse.
Sounds fine to me, really, although anybody who would "steal" German music is likely desperate enough to steal the hardware itself too. Has anything changed since the second world war over there?
Eh. I just hope that the video stores around here catch on with this RFID tagging... Have you ever phoned to reserve a movie, been told it's there, and spent an hour trying to locate the damned thing in a store with 10 thousand movies? I see this as a major convenience.
As a Canadian, I think a little different action should be taken by our southern neighbors. Why not introduce a new bill called Freedom For the People and Justice for All? You can call it "Fuck the DMCA" for short; basically all it needs to do is repeal the DMCA in its whole misbegotten entirety.
I suspect that the troll is timing Linux+KDE (or GNOME) and that's why it takes an inordinate amount of time to boot. I've noticed the same thing with Mandrake and Red Hat.. booting up to the GUI point is very quick, then it hits the molasses.
Gnutella is broken, as anybody comparing FastTrack to (your choice of Gnutella servant here) can attest. It's slow, downloads have a completion rate that is barely usable, and even advances like swarmed downloads don't work very well. Here, try this.. Kazaa Lite is the clean version of Kazaa. Then try this. Limewire is relatively popular, and wholly commercial. You can post your findings here.
I've tried Shareaza too, and it's faster and has a nicer interface than the other Gnutella servants. It's not, however, on a level with Kazaa yet. You'll notice that this whole debate over the legitimacy of Gnutella2 (or Mike's Protocol, as Vinnie likes to call it) has two distinct sides: on the one hand, you've got the COMMERCIAL developers, including Vinnie Falco, LimeWire, and Xolox; on the other hand, you've got Mike Stokes and Gnucleus.
What this article fails to mention is that the registration of Gnutella2.com is the real issue at stake. The commercial interests are pissy because they've been one-upped by an upstart, as they see it.
Gnutella 2 is deservedly named, and clearing away the cruft was the only way to improve Gnutella. Mike Stokes clobbered the adware vendors with Shareaza, and did what they were all afraid to do: start fresh, start clean, and start out on a level with the current state of the art P2P applications currently available. I applaud the guy for having such guts. He registered the name, and he deserves to keep it. F*ck the spyware perpetrators.
I used to care about these KDE vs. GNOME wars, but you know what? They're both equally useless, when it comes right down to it. Bloat is bloat is bloat. Who gives a fuck, really, when there are alternatives like Windows 2000 or Mac OS X? Come on, fringe users don't count.
Whoops. I think I just offended about.0001 percent of the population. Somebody mod me down!
of course, I could have read the article and commented intelligently, but this is slashdot, I'm tired, and the laundry is finished. Now can I go to sleep? Thank you.
My new machine - a HP Pavilion 750n, P4-1.8, 512MB RAM. It should fly, from everything I've read, but it simply doesn't. From video encoding to video playback, games, sound editing, etc. it just sucks compared to my homebuilt P4-1.6 GHz running Win2K. Can it be the motherboard, FSB speed difference, whatever? No, because the Pavilion runs like a champ with Win2K installed. I'd say the Pavilion with XP runs about as fast as my old P3-750 IBM Thinkpad laptop, which runs Win2K. My main laptop is an older Compaq Armada, P3-600 with 192MB RAM. It runs beautifully with Win2K, but I've tried XP Pro (same services running, same paging file size, etc.) and there's no comparison. XP sucks. I've done enough testing with enough configurations, from stock to my personal tweaked preferences.
I think the whole problem in your case is that Apple can't exactly deliver what they want to, at least until they ditch Motorola. The G4 is pretty nice, and I like the battery life, but raw performance just isn't very good.
I think Microsoft doesn't get it, here. They can't deliver better usability, and WinXP makes EVERY computer run like a dog. I've tried it on about twelve computers so far, tweaked it as far as possible, but there's no way to make it go faster. It boots nicely, but after that - forget about it. Who wants to switch to something that's darned near as slow as OSX? That's been my experience with XP, and I'll never switch. Long live Windows 2000 I guess.
...until they embed this Digital Rights Restrictions nonsense into WinXP as an essential service that you can't disable. Just try blocking WinXP's access to the 'net through your firewall.. No internet==no problem. Except that you might want to get networked things done eventually.
Another observation: a large group might suck, but many small groups might make something cool. Perhaps not as cool as StarCraft, but cool nonetheless... You can separate the game engine from the graphics, sound, and everything is modular. I've seen a couple interestingopen-source3D engines, and I think it's VERy possible that a good game or several will come out eventually. The bad part: it takes forever, because virtually nobody has the time to create a Doom 3 in their free time. Or even a Commander Keen. As one guy says,
Software development is one hundred percent design
You need vision to create a great game, and large open source projects tend not to have that vision. Is that why there aren't any great games built by large open source collaboration? Maybe. I think it's more likely attributable to the clone problem.. nothing truly new is being created by the commons. Would you rather read a sci-fi novel written by forty people, or one written by somebody with a burning vision (Asimov, Heinlein, etc)?
Also check out http://home.t-online.de/home/BuschnicK/
notice that the RIAA wants to stop legislation that will guarantee your fair use rights despite the DMCA. Basically, RIAA will settle for the DMCA as it is, unabridged. That's not progress. That's no deal. That's a step backwards, no matter what the headline to this story reads.
I'd agree with you if you mean that "distributing" is actually "pushing" copyrighted material (illegally - meaning the receiver has no right to the copyrighted material) to another's hard drive. When one pulls an mp3 (as in current P2P networks) then the uploader is merely a passive party to the transaction - the software makes it possible for the uploader to be unaware that a transaction is even taking place.
[it is] illegal for you to distribute to other people, even if you believe they own the CD
Distribution is different from merely making certain copyrighted works available for others to download at will. Distribution, in the copyright world, implies an active component to the transaction, which, from the uploader's point of view, is simply not present in the majority of P2P transactions.. in fact, quite the opposite! The most popular P2P programs will actually search your hard drive for mp3 songs to share by default; the user of such programs doesn't even have to actively tell the machine what to make available. Simply install Kazaa Lite and away ye go..
technically, when one participates in a P2P network such as FastTrack, they're still not violating copyright law. Here's the point I want to make in a nutshell, and argue about it as you will:
nobody is violating copyright laws by simply "sharing" files. The only copyright infringers are the ones who download shared files without owning a license to those copyrighted works.
In other words, in order to break the law, one must download a copyrighted, non-free file that you don't have the rights to use. When the RIAA or MPAA claims you are breaking the law, they are bluffing - they have no way to ascertain whether you've actually got a license to use the files you share, and they have no idea whether you're downloading files which you don't have rights to. Note that this whole argument took place many years ago when the VCR first came into popular use.
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since MPEG2 requires such a high bitrate for decent looking video to emerge, I can give you five times better quality (for same size video file) using DivX ;-) because Divx ;-) is many times more efficient. Also note that MPEG2 is quite limited, doesn't work nicely with high resolutions, etc.
The trick to good encoding is in knowing how to use NanDub (or VirtualDub, or VegasVideo, or whatever you use..) and knowing ALL of the various little settings that can be tweaked. The default settings INVARIABLY SUCK, with the quantizer matrix being set for fast, crappy quality video output. The max. quantizers (if using SBC or DivX5) should NEVER exceed 9, for example; however, the default is usually 31! You shouldn't use the default settings and still expect near-DVD quality.
I'm writing a proper, updated tutorial on SBC and Divx 5 Pro right now, which I will submit to various newsgroups when it's done. In the meantime, check out Doom9.org for a rough idea of how to rip properly. They ignore some pertinent details (ie, filters - esp. contrast filter) but you should get a very good idea of the work involved to produce a decent rip.
Take it a step further, and actually read Reiser's article.. here's my favourite part. With this little gem, Hans reveals that he is totally, unequivocally out to lunch. The rest of the article is nearly as bad..
Yeah Hans, it's not because the K is farking stupid or makes free software look like childish Krap; it's Klearly a Konspiracy!
Users don't care, Hans. I skip channels, block popups, and kill adware faster than you can say "fuck the users." I suspect that many of the 0.3% of computer owners who use Linux full-time feel the same way.
I guess that's all I've got to say on the matter.
Maguire was a wimpy Peter Parker, TOTALLY UNLIKE the original comic book guy.. he made Spidey look like a vacillating wimp without any of the snappy wit present in the comics. Anybody watch the cartoon show? The (voice) actors are better than the (live) actors in the movie. Oh, except for J. Jonah Jameson :D
I view this as a chance to redeem the franchise. Hope they cast somebody a little more lively, who doesn't look like he's half-asleep all the time.
If this guy wandered into my party on July 1st (Canada Day) with that potato cannon he'd be pelted back pretty quick with dried squirrel meat and chunks of my melting igloo, that's for damned sure. I pity the fool.
That's funny, I'm using the Proxomitron and I haven't experienced any problems with the site.. all popups blocked with extreme prejudice but I sure as hell don't feel any pain. Without evidence of Anti-Leech, I'll have to just take your word for it; however, based on my experience, I'd say the guy's not a hypocrite..
On the other hand, do you really care about one measly popup (or two, or whatever you unproxomitronic people get) that much? I mean, how many times do you even visit the site? Regular Kazaa, on the other hand, installs a whole lotta spyware that gives you perpetual popups and ads whenever you use a browser. If I didn't block the popups, I think I'd consider it a worthy trade.
As a long-time zilla hater and Opera afficionado, I can tell you that this release is finally worth installing. Believe it or not, 1.3 is actually reasonably quick, both on initial loading and page renders - startup speed lags behind IE and Opera, obviously, but it's getting quite close! I don't have that disgusting pre-loading feature enabled, yet it no longer feels like you're loading a miniature version of OpenOffice. Page rendering has been the fastest thing I've ever seen since version 1.0, and I can't tell if it's any faster in that respect just yet.
Hats off to the Mozilla crew for this fine release!
*note: talkin' about the Win32 version here. No idea about Linux. Sorry.
Soon the Germans will enjoy what we in Canada like to to refer to as "Nazi justice," or, as our American neighbors call it, a royal fucking up the arse.
Sounds fine to me, really, although anybody who would "steal" German music is likely desperate enough to steal the hardware itself too. Has anything changed since the second world war over there?
Eh. I just hope that the video stores around here catch on with this RFID tagging... Have you ever phoned to reserve a movie, been told it's there, and spent an hour trying to locate the damned thing in a store with 10 thousand movies?
I see this as a major convenience.
As a Canadian, I think a little different action should be taken by our southern neighbors. Why not introduce a new bill called Freedom For the People and Justice for All? You can call it "Fuck the DMCA" for short; basically all it needs to do is repeal the DMCA in its whole misbegotten entirety.
I suspect that the troll is timing Linux+KDE (or GNOME) and that's why it takes an inordinate amount of time to boot. I've noticed the same thing with Mandrake and Red Hat.. booting up to the GUI point is very quick, then it hits the molasses.
'tis better to trade for a condom-testing job at Trojan.
You nerds have it all ass-backwards.
Gnutella is broken, as anybody comparing FastTrack to (your choice of Gnutella servant here) can attest. It's slow, downloads have a completion rate that is barely usable, and even advances like swarmed downloads don't work very well. Here, try this.. Kazaa Lite is the clean version of Kazaa. Then try this. Limewire is relatively popular, and wholly commercial.
You can post your findings here.
I've tried Shareaza too, and it's faster and has a nicer interface than the other Gnutella servants. It's not, however, on a level with Kazaa yet.
You'll notice that this whole debate over the legitimacy of Gnutella2 (or Mike's Protocol, as Vinnie likes to call it) has two distinct sides: on the one hand, you've got the COMMERCIAL developers, including Vinnie Falco, LimeWire, and Xolox; on the other hand, you've got Mike Stokes and Gnucleus.
What this article fails to mention is that the registration of Gnutella2.com is the real issue at stake. The commercial interests are pissy because they've been one-upped by an upstart, as they see it.
Gnutella 2 is deservedly named, and clearing away the cruft was the only way to improve Gnutella. Mike Stokes clobbered the adware vendors with Shareaza, and did what they were all afraid to do: start fresh, start clean, and start out on a level with the current state of the art P2P applications currently available. I applaud the guy for having such guts. He registered the name, and he deserves to keep it. F*ck the spyware perpetrators.
I used to care about these KDE vs. GNOME wars, but you know what? They're both equally useless, when it comes right down to it. Bloat is bloat is bloat. Who gives a fuck, really, when there are alternatives like Windows 2000 or Mac OS X? Come on, fringe users don't count.
.0001 percent of the population. Somebody mod me down!
Whoops. I think I just offended about
of course, I could have read the article and commented intelligently, but this is slashdot, I'm tired, and the laundry is finished. Now can I go to sleep? Thank you.
My new machine - a HP Pavilion 750n, P4-1.8, 512MB RAM. It should fly, from everything I've read, but it simply doesn't. From video encoding to video playback, games, sound editing, etc. it just sucks compared to my homebuilt P4-1.6 GHz running Win2K. Can it be the motherboard, FSB speed difference, whatever? No, because the Pavilion runs like a champ with Win2K installed. I'd say the Pavilion with XP runs about as fast as my old P3-750 IBM Thinkpad laptop, which runs Win2K.
My main laptop is an older Compaq Armada, P3-600 with 192MB RAM. It runs beautifully with Win2K, but I've tried XP Pro (same services running, same paging file size, etc.) and there's no comparison. XP sucks. I've done enough testing with enough configurations, from stock to my personal tweaked preferences.
I think the whole problem in your case is that Apple can't exactly deliver what they want to, at least until they ditch Motorola. The G4 is pretty nice, and I like the battery life, but raw performance just isn't very good.
I think Microsoft doesn't get it, here. They can't deliver better usability, and WinXP makes EVERY computer run like a dog. I've tried it on about twelve computers so far, tweaked it as far as possible, but there's no way to make it go faster. It boots nicely, but after that - forget about it. Who wants to switch to something that's darned near as slow as OSX? That's been my experience with XP, and I'll never switch. Long live Windows 2000 I guess.
...until they embed this Digital Rights Restrictions nonsense into WinXP as an essential service that you can't disable. Just try blocking WinXP's access to the 'net through your firewall.. No internet==no problem. Except that you might want to get networked things done eventually.
Best to wait for the crack.
You can separate the game engine from the graphics, sound, and everything is modular. I've seen a couple interesting open-source 3D engines, and I think it's VERy possible that a good game or several will come out eventually.
The bad part: it takes forever, because virtually nobody has the time to create a Doom 3 in their free time. Or even a Commander Keen. As one guy says, You need vision to create a great game, and large open source projects tend not to have that vision. Is that why there aren't any great games built by large open source collaboration? Maybe. I think it's more likely attributable to the clone problem
Also check out http://home.t-online.de/home/BuschnicK/
Looks like the bastard child of a VW Thing (link includes pictures from Playboy! click now!) and a Pontiac Aztec. Yuck.
Seriously, who doesn't block AOL?
notice that the RIAA wants to stop legislation that will guarantee your fair use rights despite the DMCA. Basically, RIAA will settle for the DMCA as it is, unabridged. That's not progress. That's no deal. That's a step backwards, no matter what the headline to this story reads.
Distribution is different from merely making certain copyrighted works available for others to download at will. Distribution, in the copyright world, implies an active component to the transaction, which, from the uploader's point of view, is simply not present in the majority of P2P transactions.. in fact, quite the opposite! The most popular P2P programs will actually search your hard drive for mp3 songs to share by default; the user of such programs doesn't even have to actively tell the machine what to make available. Simply install Kazaa Lite and away ye go..
technically, when one participates in a P2P network such as FastTrack, they're still not violating copyright law.
Here's the point I want to make in a nutshell, and argue about it as you will:
nobody is violating copyright laws by simply "sharing" files. The only copyright infringers are the ones who download shared files without owning a license to those copyrighted works.
In other words, in order to break the law, one must download a copyrighted, non-free file that you don't have the rights to use. When the RIAA or MPAA claims you are breaking the law, they are bluffing - they have no way to ascertain whether you've actually got a license to use the files you share, and they have no idea whether you're downloading files which you don't have rights to.
Note that this whole argument took place many years ago when the VCR first came into popular use.
what a breakthrough :D finally, something we all can use.