I also believe that that aspect, the battery price, will quickly be deal with as soon as a market for electric cars increases. I believe that there must be entrepreneurs salivating from the idea of all electric cars relying on replaceable batteries which would be exchanged in service stations, for a fair price of course. So the cars may rely on interchangeable batteries or the like but surely the idea of controlling the market of such an inelastic product as car fuel.
The economic analysis of a daily commute already favours electric transportation by a hefty margin, if we consider public transportation networks such as urban and suburban trains (subway). If electric makes sense for industrial exploration of a transportation network then it surely makes sense for personal transportation. It's only a question of how fast can it be adopted and how fast the service sector (repairing, power stations, etc..) can pick up the demand.
I can't say anything about your comments on the use patterns of the "standard pleb" but I do quite a lot of structural engineering work, which involves extensively using commercial structural analysis software on a daily basis and even developing my own programs, and I do all that on a "cheap and disposable" Athlon X2 4000+ system which cost me around 250 euros three years ago.
The thing is, you may have far more powerful CPUs in the market but the truth is that, although they can cost huge amounts of money, the only benefit that they bring you is that instead of you having to wait 6 minutes for your stuff to finish instead it only takes about 4, and that is a sporadic workload. More to the point, today's "cheap and disposable" processors are pretty much on par with your top of the line gear from, say, 6 years ago. And you know what? Those processors from 6 years ago were already far more powerful than whatever you needed.
And besides that, nowadays if someone needs more power under their computing hood then that person won't spend thousands of dollars on an entire system. It will spend at most hundreds of euros on a brand new graphics card, which not only will fully take care of your recreation needs but also computation needs.
If you happen to be one of those lucky persons who happen to have adopted a media player such as Amarok as their media player of choice then you can simply open Amarok's script manager and install the LyricWiki plugin. That enables your media player of choice to just dish out any particular words to a song you wish to access. The beauty of this plugin/site combo is that you can get any lyrics you wish for any obscure artist and perfectly independent of any corporation, media player and even format in which your songs are stored. And album artwork? You already get that by default in Amarok.
So where exactly is there a need for an encumbered, defective, unsupported and obscure format to be able to do exactly what countless people are already doing at this very moment?
Someone from Xiph.org isn't exactly an unbiased source
That accusation is absolutely irrelevant. The great thing about the scientific process is that no one is forced to blindly swallow any claim. claims such as those made in the xiph.org article can be peer reviewed by anyone who is remotely interested in doing so. That is why everyone who happens to watch the samples provided in that article can easily conclude by themselves that Theora is in fact on par with what h.264 offers, both in file size and image quality.
But if people like you have any gripe with that then there's also absolutely no problem at all. Instead of throwing vague and baseless accusations which amount to nothing more than personal attacks you can simply inspect how the comparison between Theora and h.264 was made and, from there, find any flaw in it. Any flaw at all will do. If you cannot do that then you still have alternatives available. You can simply perform your own comparison and see for yourself how Theora fairs against h.264. Heck, if you find the results on par with your beliefs you can even release it to the public on some blog which you can easily put up in 2 minutes.
So, to sum things up, if the comparison presented in that site is remotely as bogus as you claim to be then you should have absolutely no problem whatsoever debunking it by presenting any semblance of objective, measurable proof, either by pointing flaws in Xiph.org's comparison (which, oddly enough, you failed to provide) or even by providing your own comparison to back up your allegations. But oddly enough you failed to do any of that.
Yet, the odd thing was that instead, the best thing you could come up to try to disprove the article's validity was a regrettable ad hominem attack to try to smear Xiph.org's reputation while avoiding any technical aspect whatsoever. Is that the best you can do to FUD Theora's performance?
The need to "license other codecs" is exactly the problem. You shouldn't be forced to pay a toll to be able to perform basic, every day tasks such as watching web videos, particularly when you are supposed to be following an international standard. You aren't forced to deal with any of that crap if you happen to rely on a format which is patent-free. And that's why Mozilla is pushing for Theora, which is clearly the best solution to this absurd problem.
All of the bitching about the patent/royalty situation ignores the following facts:
H.264 is hardware accelerated on nearly every platform, desktop and mobile - Ogg is not.
This is a "chicken Vs egg" problem. There are hardware decoders for Theora out there and the only thing that stops you from getting hardware support for a format is the OEM's decision to add it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ogg produces inferior video at the same bitrate as H.264, or larger video for the same quality.
YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo have spoken in favor of H.264. Watch the dominoes topple.
How exactly do "dominoes topple" if not only they can easily support Theora but also it is a very easy way to avoid licensing costs? Support for H.264 is not free, you know? Didn't you even read the part in the summary that reads "the current fee exemption for free-to-the-viewer internet delivery is only in effect until the end of 2010."?
There are two alternatives here - Flash-based video and H.264. Don't kid yourself that Ogg is a third, because it's not going to happen. Time for Mozilla to face reality and pay up the license as Apple and Google have done. Otherwise, watch Chrome really destroy Firefox.
Just because you try to repeat "Theora isn't an option" as a mantra of sorts it doesn't mean that it's anything remotely close to true. There is a whole world out there that happens to enjoy watching videos online and no one in their right mind wishes to start paying money to keep doing that, neither the video providers nor the audience. So please pick up your poorly conceived FUD and go waste it elsewhere.
That may be correct in a technical point of view and a very simple solution to this problem. Unfortunately, the world is a bit more complex than that, thanks for the mess of convoluted rules which each jurisdiction imposes on it's citizens. In this case, if you take a look at ffmpeg's patents min-FAQ" you will notice the following disclaimers:
Q: Does FFmpeg use patented algorithms? A: We do not know, we are not lawyers so we are not qualified to answer this. Also we have never read patents to implement any part of FFmpeg, so even if we were qualified we could not answer it as we do not know what is patented. Furthermore the sheer number of software patents makes it impossible to read them all so no one (lawyer or not) could answer such a question with a definite no, those who do lie. What we do know is that various standards FFmpeg supports contain vague hints that any conforming implementation might be subject to some patent rights in some jurisdictions, examples for such statements are: For H.264:
ITU draws attention to the possibility that the practice or implementation of this Recommendation may involve the use of a claimed Intellectual Property Right. ITU takes no position concerning the evidence, validity or applicability of claimed Intellectual Property Rights, whether asserted by ITU members or others outside of the Recommendation development process.
Q: Is it safe to use such patented algorithms? A: Patent laws vary wildly between jurisdictions, and in many countries patents on algorithms are not recognized. Plus the use of patents to prevent the usage of a format or codec on a specific operating system or together with specific other software might violate antitrust laws. So whether you are safe or not depends on where you live and how judges interpret the law in your jurisdiction.
So, although ffmpeg supports H.264 and other patent-encumbered formats, it does so in spite of the patents that affect the implementations. As a consequence, they make it clear that if you rely on ffmpeg then you are at your own risk. And needlessly putting yourself at risk is never a good thing.
I don't understand how that solves the problem of being forced to rely on patented code (and therefore being forced to pay license fees) to be able to perform a basic, mundane task. That is nothing more than playing hot potato with the problem and quickly passing it on to the users, expecting that somehow they solve the problem that they failed to tackle to begin with. In fact, that is a pretty big incentive for video sites such as youtube to simply stick with flash video. How is that a step forward?
That is not how you solve the problem. You solve it by not relying on patent-encumbered standards from the start, which is exactly where we are right now and which is exactly what Mozilla is doing. And unless organizations such as Mozilla make a stance on this issue then we, the public, are screwed once again.
If we want to go with "anything with a microprocessor is a computer" then sure, but I think when most people think of a computer they imagine something that can run a web browser, play games with, and use a word processor.
It's like saying that my sister's little electric barbie car is an automobile... I mean, sure in the strictest sense it has four wheels and a motor -- but I don't think I'll be using it for the morning commute anytime soon.
I don't know about web browsers and word processors but games? We already have that for ages. So the point stands. Moreover, the wrist watch reference was only made due to wrist watches being mentioned specifically by Asus as some sort of "new revolutionary paradigm". If we look beyond wristwatches and also consider other gadgets such as cell phones and mp3 players then the reality of this, which is that we already have it for decades, will become clearer. In fact, I've stopped using a wrist watch since I've replaced it with my first cell phone, which was around a decade ago.
And regarding the "morning commute" scenario, I'm also very sceptic that people will use those proposed "wearable computers" for that. I mean, people bitch that a netbook is too impractical to type, which is the most basic task that word processing and similar tasks demand. So why would anyone use wrist watches for that if using netbooks for that same task is, somehow, seen as unthinkable?
You got to be kidding. Well, there's a reason why you found it better to post as AC, isn't it? After all, if we play the clips available in that site side by side (which are equivalent in any way) then the only difference you may get will be nothing more than subjective opinions which, I believe, would be go up in smoke if a double blind test as conducted. In fact, if you play the 499kbit/sec comparison side by side you will find the image in the Theora/Vorbis clip to be less grainy and sharper than the h.264 counterpart.
The rest of your comments are just laughable. If we are comparing youtube videos to Theora then it is more than legitimate to compare Theora's codec with youtube's h.264 codec. And your absurd complain about animation clips being used in the comparisson, let's not even delve into the obvious details that it is far easier to legally get your hands on HD videos. The link you provided explicitly states that:
I utilized the Blender Foundation's Big Buck Bunny as my test case because of its clear licensing status, because it's a real world test case, and because I have it available in a lossless format. I am not aware of any reason why this particular clip would favor either Theora or H.264.
But then again, don't let that fool you. You know, the great thing about the scientific method is that the hypothesis is always testable by third parties. This is one of those cases. If you wish to try to attack the fact that Theora's encoded videos are at least no worse than h.264's then please be my guest and not only put up your own tests and, as the people from xiph.org did, release them in order to be peer reviewed.
But then again, there must be a reason why you opted to desperately throw FUD around behind your AC status instead of being able to point out any objective flaw, let alone present your own comparison. And that reason is perfectly understandable from all the comparisons: Theora does at least as good as h.264 and does it with the same bandwidth and same file size.
We already have wristwatch computers for decades. That's what electronic wristwatches are, those that Casio has been pumping by the barrel since the the 80s, such as this one. Naturally, nowadays we have more computing power available in a smaller form factor but that doesn't mean that we haven't been wearing computers for ages.
Old technology? Since when is technology's age any relevant to it's value? Electricity was discovered centuries ago and we still rely on it up to this day. Do you believe that just because it's old technology it should be simply be abandoned without any relevant and rational reason to justify it?
And for your information, Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality. So, that's also not it.
Regarding that "hardware accelerated" bit, do you know what it takes for a codec do be "hardware accelerated"? It only takes the will of the manufacturer to offer hardware support for a specific format. The h.264 codec isn't magical nor is the Theora codec cursed. In fact there are Theora hardware decoders in the market already.
So please refrain from spewing ignorance and/or FUD. Theora may eventually stumble on relevant shortcomings but hard
Why throw around bullshit claims based on nothing more than your vague and absurd assertion that "every time you hear..."? You can easily search for that info yourself, which would take less time than it took to post to slashdot. For example, you have this purely subjective analysis which was done by encoding Theora and h.264 files with equivalent size and then having a dude claim what image he preferred. Although he claimed that h.264 was better according to his own personal tastes, you can easily see for yourself that, when comparing Theora and h.264, you get pratically the same quality with the same file size. It's the same bandwidth, same size, practically (and in some cases) indistinguishable quality and although Theora's developers had to intentionally avoid more efficient algorithms due to patents.
So who exactly is spewing those bullshit, FUD claims of "Theora needs triple storage capacity and wastes twice as much bandwidth"?
The way they worded their stance is very worrying. For example, this expression:
"when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message,"
The "message" part can be interpreted not as a packet but as any message such as email, IM or blog entry, which could be used to justify that any network traffic that crosses a network can be fiddled by the operators, even dropped, if it was sent through a connection which is communicating through protocols other than the ones officially sanctioned by the operators. So as your download isn't a message, your home-made VoIP service isn't a message or your internet gaming connection isn't a message then they would be free to just drop it as they see fit. To put it in other words, if the operators don't identify your connection traffic as being message exchanges then they can simply do what they wish with it, which, as wee have become used to, will mean that you and I are screwed.
Then, this next excerpt is also important to take notice:
" they write. The 'Net should operate as a place where no "central authority" can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs and network providers are able to "innovate without permission."
Well, that means nothing more than "and don't fuck with our business". That's terribly worrying because, together with the first stance, this reads as we get to choose what to do with our traffic and no one should ever bother us about it.
So this has the potential of being a horrible, horrible attack on today's free internet. And that is very scarry.
Is it due to the Wii's balance board being terribly cheap or is it due to the the price of the "medical-grade" device being extremely over-inflated? Some of the prices practised by medical equipment and even drug distributors are insane and they always hide behind the mysterious "it's fantastic, medical-grade stuff" and that quite possibly is plain bullshit to increase their profit.
The GPS started out, still is and will never cease to be a military system. It's a military system which, just like the internet, has found quite a lot of civilian uses. Nonetheless, although civilian GPS clients have found themselves into the market it doesn't mean, for example, precision-guided bombs ceased to rely on it to navigate towards targets. And if your enemy is using the GPS to drive bombs right into your targets than you can bet you will desperately want to take them down.
Space is already weaponized. The only difference is that now some factions are managing to develop ways to put their enemy's weapons out of commission.
Well, that is the least of any government's worries if the alternative is letting his enemy freely communicate, spy, command and bomb their positions as they wish. If you absolutely need to point out the responsibility of turning space (well, the earth's orbit) into a shooting gallery then put the blame where it should be put: those who started putting there military equipment/targets there and not the ones needing to take them down.
You still haven't answered: what justifies the government taking it all away? If you don't think someone "deserves" all the money they make, then don't fucking give it to them.
First of all, your extensive use of loaded words when referring to taxes conveys the idea that you don't have a very open mind regarding this subject and are determined to denigrate it as hard as you can. If that is not the case then please refrain from using them. It leads you nowhere.
Having said that, you must bear in mind that your taxes are used to fund society; they are used to buy civilization. Your roads are paid off by taxes, your police force, your schools, your fire department, your legal system and even your public sanitation service is paid with your taxes. Being this slashdot, the internet was developed from a tax-funded government research institution.
The thing is, you may earn a hefty paycheck and you may even believe that every penny in it was earned exclusively due to your own awesomeness. Yet, the truth is that you don't live in a bubble and, if we think about it, every aspect of your life you benefit from is, directly or indirectly, funded by taxes. If it wasn't by the infrastructure and equipments built by the state your society would simply not work, at least remotely near the efficiency it now works. So you may not notice it but if it wasn't for taxes your life (along with everyone else's life) would be a never ending strife.
As taxes buy you civilization, it's pretty reasonable to demand that each individual should invest in society. Moreover, similar to what happens when you buy stock in some company, it is only fair that an investment pays dividends which are directly proportionate to the investment. That principle, which boils down to fairness, should also apply to your investment in society and the benefits you get from it. As a consequence, if you profit greatly from the social structure that was build, paid for and maintained through taxes then it is only fair that the amount you must invest should be proportional to the benefits you get. That means that if you are fortunate enough to enjoy a life of luxury then, as that is only possible due to all the state infrastructure and services that are purchased and maintained with taxes, then it is only fair that you contribute a proportional amount of your earnings in taxes. You still be rich (and richer than others) and you will still have plenty of disposable income to throw around as you see fit.
That being said I've yet to see a game using OpenGL that can render anything as well/as quickly as DX10.
That's cute and all but It's just a shame that it's blatantly and fundamentally wrong. Taken from TFA:
It's common knowledge that OpenGL has faster draw calls than DirectX (see NVIDIA presentations like this one if you don't want to take my word for it), and it has first access to new GPU features via vendor extensions.
The key question is if this tax will in fact be used to help the artists or will it be yet another way for media conglomerates to suck on the government's tit while the artist itself, the creative mind responsible for creating a work of art, will continue to get the shaft and continue to be relegated as simple temporary worker, receiving nothing more than a symbolic compensation for a one-off job. This is particularly sickening due to the fact that media conglomerates, which are thriving, are using their power and influence to not only avoid compensating any artist but also to screw the entire world out of their culture and their rights to access works of art without being subjected to the whims of a totalitarian gatekeeper.
Sorry, the iPod was also not revolutionary, not by a long shot. The iPod was released in 2001 and back then there were already a lot of portable digital players in the market such as the Diamond Rio PMP300, which was launched around 3 years before the iPod, way back in 1998. If you arrive 3 years late into an already large market you cannot claim any revolutionary status. Even our slasdot's history dispels the myth that apple's iPod represents any sort of revolution.
and forever changed the way people buy and listen to music.
Really? Everyone was already downloading and listening to MP3s a good while back before the first iPod was released to the market and iTunes was launched. I mean, Napster was up and running since around 1999 and, way before that, IRC was swarming with channels dedicated to transferring MP3 albums through DCC file transfers. The mIRC world was packed with scripts to automatically handle that stuff. Before that there was already a pretty extensive sneakernet dedicated to exchange music files through CD-Rs packed with MP3. Heck, back in 1994 I knew a group of people who were ripping CDs to WAV files and lending hard drives with that stuff (they were idiots but to each it's own). So, how exactly can a corporation "forever change the way people listen to music" if everyone was already doing exactly that for years before the company released a product?
Apple deserves credit in exploring the "pay to download music files" market, particularly by convincing record companies to authorize a new business model to sell their product. Yet, they didn't changed any habits. They realized that there was an extensive and overwhelming demand for downloading music (there was a heck of a lot of people doing that) and they invested in an attempt to capitalize from that demand. They succeeded at that. But changing the way people listen to music? No, they didn't. They were successful in riding the wave but I'm sorry to tell you, they didn't changed any habits.
I guess I could agree that that split view is a killer feature - in the sense that it would kill any interest I would have in using a tool that forced me to waste screen space that way.
It doesn't force anyone to do anything. The split view is enabled/disabled through the F3 key and, following KDE's tradition of awesomeness, you can configure if you wish Dolphin to start off in split mode or simply with a single panel. I have the split view off by default but when I need to copy files around then it's just a quick F3 press and presto: split view goodness and no need to launch a new instance of Dolphin. Really nice stuff.
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I also believe that that aspect, the battery price, will quickly be deal with as soon as a market for electric cars increases. I believe that there must be entrepreneurs salivating from the idea of all electric cars relying on replaceable batteries which would be exchanged in service stations, for a fair price of course. So the cars may rely on interchangeable batteries or the like but surely the idea of controlling the market of such an inelastic product as car fuel.
The economic analysis of a daily commute already favours electric transportation by a hefty margin, if we consider public transportation networks such as urban and suburban trains (subway). If electric makes sense for industrial exploration of a transportation network then it surely makes sense for personal transportation. It's only a question of how fast can it be adopted and how fast the service sector (repairing, power stations, etc..) can pick up the demand.
I can't say anything about your comments on the use patterns of the "standard pleb" but I do quite a lot of structural engineering work, which involves extensively using commercial structural analysis software on a daily basis and even developing my own programs, and I do all that on a "cheap and disposable" Athlon X2 4000+ system which cost me around 250 euros three years ago.
The thing is, you may have far more powerful CPUs in the market but the truth is that, although they can cost huge amounts of money, the only benefit that they bring you is that instead of you having to wait 6 minutes for your stuff to finish instead it only takes about 4, and that is a sporadic workload. More to the point, today's "cheap and disposable" processors are pretty much on par with your top of the line gear from, say, 6 years ago. And you know what? Those processors from 6 years ago were already far more powerful than whatever you needed.
And besides that, nowadays if someone needs more power under their computing hood then that person won't spend thousands of dollars on an entire system. It will spend at most hundreds of euros on a brand new graphics card, which not only will fully take care of your recreation needs but also computation needs.
If you happen to be one of those lucky persons who happen to have adopted a media player such as Amarok as their media player of choice then you can simply open Amarok's script manager and install the LyricWiki plugin. That enables your media player of choice to just dish out any particular words to a song you wish to access. The beauty of this plugin/site combo is that you can get any lyrics you wish for any obscure artist and perfectly independent of any corporation, media player and even format in which your songs are stored. And album artwork? You already get that by default in Amarok.
So where exactly is there a need for an encumbered, defective, unsupported and obscure format to be able to do exactly what countless people are already doing at this very moment?
That accusation is absolutely irrelevant. The great thing about the scientific process is that no one is forced to blindly swallow any claim. claims such as those made in the xiph.org article can be peer reviewed by anyone who is remotely interested in doing so. That is why everyone who happens to watch the samples provided in that article can easily conclude by themselves that Theora is in fact on par with what h.264 offers, both in file size and image quality.
But if people like you have any gripe with that then there's also absolutely no problem at all. Instead of throwing vague and baseless accusations which amount to nothing more than personal attacks you can simply inspect how the comparison between Theora and h.264 was made and, from there, find any flaw in it. Any flaw at all will do. If you cannot do that then you still have alternatives available. You can simply perform your own comparison and see for yourself how Theora fairs against h.264. Heck, if you find the results on par with your beliefs you can even release it to the public on some blog which you can easily put up in 2 minutes.
So, to sum things up, if the comparison presented in that site is remotely as bogus as you claim to be then you should have absolutely no problem whatsoever debunking it by presenting any semblance of objective, measurable proof, either by pointing flaws in Xiph.org's comparison (which, oddly enough, you failed to provide) or even by providing your own comparison to back up your allegations. But oddly enough you failed to do any of that.
Yet, the odd thing was that instead, the best thing you could come up to try to disprove the article's validity was a regrettable ad hominem attack to try to smear Xiph.org's reputation while avoiding any technical aspect whatsoever. Is that the best you can do to FUD Theora's performance?
The need to "license other codecs" is exactly the problem. You shouldn't be forced to pay a toll to be able to perform basic, every day tasks such as watching web videos, particularly when you are supposed to be following an international standard. You aren't forced to deal with any of that crap if you happen to rely on a format which is patent-free. And that's why Mozilla is pushing for Theora, which is clearly the best solution to this absurd problem.
All of the bitching about the patent/royalty situation ignores the following facts:
This is a "chicken Vs egg" problem. There are hardware decoders for Theora out there and the only thing that stops you from getting hardware support for a format is the OEM's decision to add it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ogg produces inferior video at the same bitrate as H.264, or larger video for the same quality.
Sorry, back here in reality Theora's quality is at least on par with H.264 with the same size. But thanks for your attempt at FUD, though.
YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo have spoken in favor of H.264. Watch the dominoes topple.
How exactly do "dominoes topple" if not only they can easily support Theora but also it is a very easy way to avoid licensing costs? Support for H.264 is not free, you know? Didn't you even read the part in the summary that reads "the current fee exemption for free-to-the-viewer internet delivery is only in effect until the end of 2010."?
There are two alternatives here - Flash-based video and H.264. Don't kid yourself that Ogg is a third, because it's not going to happen. Time for Mozilla to face reality and pay up the license as Apple and Google have done. Otherwise, watch Chrome really destroy Firefox.
Just because you try to repeat "Theora isn't an option" as a mantra of sorts it doesn't mean that it's anything remotely close to true. There is a whole world out there that happens to enjoy watching videos online and no one in their right mind wishes to start paying money to keep doing that, neither the video providers nor the audience. So please pick up your poorly conceived FUD and go waste it elsewhere.
That may be correct in a technical point of view and a very simple solution to this problem. Unfortunately, the world is a bit more complex than that, thanks for the mess of convoluted rules which each jurisdiction imposes on it's citizens. In this case, if you take a look at ffmpeg's patents min-FAQ" you will notice the following disclaimers:
So, although ffmpeg supports H.264 and other patent-encumbered formats, it does so in spite of the patents that affect the implementations. As a consequence, they make it clear that if you rely on ffmpeg then you are at your own risk. And needlessly putting yourself at risk is never a good thing.
I don't understand how that solves the problem of being forced to rely on patented code (and therefore being forced to pay license fees) to be able to perform a basic, mundane task. That is nothing more than playing hot potato with the problem and quickly passing it on to the users, expecting that somehow they solve the problem that they failed to tackle to begin with. In fact, that is a pretty big incentive for video sites such as youtube to simply stick with flash video. How is that a step forward?
That is not how you solve the problem. You solve it by not relying on patent-encumbered standards from the start, which is exactly where we are right now and which is exactly what Mozilla is doing. And unless organizations such as Mozilla make a stance on this issue then we, the public, are screwed once again.
If we want to go with "anything with a microprocessor is a computer" then sure, but I think when most people think of a computer they imagine something that can run a web browser, play games with, and use a word processor.
It's like saying that my sister's little electric barbie car is an automobile... I mean, sure in the strictest sense it has four wheels and a motor -- but I don't think I'll be using it for the morning commute anytime soon.
I don't know about web browsers and word processors but games? We already have that for ages. So the point stands. Moreover, the wrist watch reference was only made due to wrist watches being mentioned specifically by Asus as some sort of "new revolutionary paradigm". If we look beyond wristwatches and also consider other gadgets such as cell phones and mp3 players then the reality of this, which is that we already have it for decades, will become clearer. In fact, I've stopped using a wrist watch since I've replaced it with my first cell phone, which was around a decade ago.
And regarding the "morning commute" scenario, I'm also very sceptic that people will use those proposed "wearable computers" for that. I mean, people bitch that a netbook is too impractical to type, which is the most basic task that word processing and similar tasks demand. So why would anyone use wrist watches for that if using netbooks for that same task is, somehow, seen as unthinkable?
You got to be kidding. Well, there's a reason why you found it better to post as AC, isn't it? After all, if we play the clips available in that site side by side (which are equivalent in any way) then the only difference you may get will be nothing more than subjective opinions which, I believe, would be go up in smoke if a double blind test as conducted. In fact, if you play the 499kbit/sec comparison side by side you will find the image in the Theora/Vorbis clip to be less grainy and sharper than the h.264 counterpart.
The rest of your comments are just laughable. If we are comparing youtube videos to Theora then it is more than legitimate to compare Theora's codec with youtube's h.264 codec. And your absurd complain about animation clips being used in the comparisson, let's not even delve into the obvious details that it is far easier to legally get your hands on HD videos. The link you provided explicitly states that:
But then again, don't let that fool you. You know, the great thing about the scientific method is that the hypothesis is always testable by third parties. This is one of those cases. If you wish to try to attack the fact that Theora's encoded videos are at least no worse than h.264's then please be my guest and not only put up your own tests and, as the people from xiph.org did, release them in order to be peer reviewed.
But then again, there must be a reason why you opted to desperately throw FUD around behind your AC status instead of being able to point out any objective flaw, let alone present your own comparison. And that reason is perfectly understandable from all the comparisons: Theora does at least as good as h.264 and does it with the same bandwidth and same file size.
We already have wristwatch computers for decades. That's what electronic wristwatches are, those that Casio has been pumping by the barrel since the the 80s, such as this one. Naturally, nowadays we have more computing power available in a smaller form factor but that doesn't mean that we haven't been wearing computers for ages.
Old technology? Since when is technology's age any relevant to it's value? Electricity was discovered centuries ago and we still rely on it up to this day. Do you believe that just because it's old technology it should be simply be abandoned without any relevant and rational reason to justify it?
And for your information, Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality. So, that's also not it.
Regarding that "hardware accelerated" bit, do you know what it takes for a codec do be "hardware accelerated"? It only takes the will of the manufacturer to offer hardware support for a specific format. The h.264 codec isn't magical nor is the Theora codec cursed. In fact there are Theora hardware decoders in the market already.
So please refrain from spewing ignorance and/or FUD. Theora may eventually stumble on relevant shortcomings but hard
Why throw around bullshit claims based on nothing more than your vague and absurd assertion that "every time you hear..."? You can easily search for that info yourself, which would take less time than it took to post to slashdot. For example, you have this purely subjective analysis which was done by encoding Theora and h.264 files with equivalent size and then having a dude claim what image he preferred. Although he claimed that h.264 was better according to his own personal tastes, you can easily see for yourself that, when comparing Theora and h.264, you get pratically the same quality with the same file size. It's the same bandwidth, same size, practically (and in some cases) indistinguishable quality and although Theora's developers had to intentionally avoid more efficient algorithms due to patents.
So who exactly is spewing those bullshit, FUD claims of "Theora needs triple storage capacity and wastes twice as much bandwidth"?
The way they worded their stance is very worrying. For example, this expression:
The "message" part can be interpreted not as a packet but as any message such as email, IM or blog entry, which could be used to justify that any network traffic that crosses a network can be fiddled by the operators, even dropped, if it was sent through a connection which is communicating through protocols other than the ones officially sanctioned by the operators. So as your download isn't a message, your home-made VoIP service isn't a message or your internet gaming connection isn't a message then they would be free to just drop it as they see fit. To put it in other words, if the operators don't identify your connection traffic as being message exchanges then they can simply do what they wish with it, which, as wee have become used to, will mean that you and I are screwed.
Then, this next excerpt is also important to take notice:
Well, that means nothing more than "and don't fuck with our business". That's terribly worrying because, together with the first stance, this reads as we get to choose what to do with our traffic and no one should ever bother us about it.
So this has the potential of being a horrible, horrible attack on today's free internet. And that is very scarry.
Is it due to the Wii's balance board being terribly cheap or is it due to the the price of the "medical-grade" device being extremely over-inflated? Some of the prices practised by medical equipment and even drug distributors are insane and they always hide behind the mysterious "it's fantastic, medical-grade stuff" and that quite possibly is plain bullshit to increase their profit.
The GPS started out, still is and will never cease to be a military system. It's a military system which, just like the internet, has found quite a lot of civilian uses. Nonetheless, although civilian GPS clients have found themselves into the market it doesn't mean, for example, precision-guided bombs ceased to rely on it to navigate towards targets. And if your enemy is using the GPS to drive bombs right into your targets than you can bet you will desperately want to take them down.
Space is already weaponized. The only difference is that now some factions are managing to develop ways to put their enemy's weapons out of commission.
Well, that is the least of any government's worries if the alternative is letting his enemy freely communicate, spy, command and bomb their positions as they wish. If you absolutely need to point out the responsibility of turning space (well, the earth's orbit) into a shooting gallery then put the blame where it should be put: those who started putting there military equipment/targets there and not the ones needing to take them down.
You still haven't answered: what justifies the government taking it all away? If you don't think someone "deserves" all the money they make, then don't fucking give it to them.
First of all, your extensive use of loaded words when referring to taxes conveys the idea that you don't have a very open mind regarding this subject and are determined to denigrate it as hard as you can. If that is not the case then please refrain from using them. It leads you nowhere.
Having said that, you must bear in mind that your taxes are used to fund society; they are used to buy civilization. Your roads are paid off by taxes, your police force, your schools, your fire department, your legal system and even your public sanitation service is paid with your taxes. Being this slashdot, the internet was developed from a tax-funded government research institution.
The thing is, you may earn a hefty paycheck and you may even believe that every penny in it was earned exclusively due to your own awesomeness. Yet, the truth is that you don't live in a bubble and, if we think about it, every aspect of your life you benefit from is, directly or indirectly, funded by taxes. If it wasn't by the infrastructure and equipments built by the state your society would simply not work, at least remotely near the efficiency it now works. So you may not notice it but if it wasn't for taxes your life (along with everyone else's life) would be a never ending strife.
As taxes buy you civilization, it's pretty reasonable to demand that each individual should invest in society. Moreover, similar to what happens when you buy stock in some company, it is only fair that an investment pays dividends which are directly proportionate to the investment. That principle, which boils down to fairness, should also apply to your investment in society and the benefits you get from it. As a consequence, if you profit greatly from the social structure that was build, paid for and maintained through taxes then it is only fair that the amount you must invest should be proportional to the benefits you get. That means that if you are fortunate enough to enjoy a life of luxury then, as that is only possible due to all the state infrastructure and services that are purchased and maintained with taxes, then it is only fair that you contribute a proportional amount of your earnings in taxes. You still be rich (and richer than others) and you will still have plenty of disposable income to throw around as you see fit.
That's cute and all but It's just a shame that it's blatantly and fundamentally wrong. Taken from TFA:
The link to NVidia's presentation is here and the wikipedia article on the subject also states that OpenGL is faster than DirectX.
So, where exactly do you base your "OMG OpenGL is tHe sLowZz" claims?
The key question is if this tax will in fact be used to help the artists or will it be yet another way for media conglomerates to suck on the government's tit while the artist itself, the creative mind responsible for creating a work of art, will continue to get the shaft and continue to be relegated as simple temporary worker, receiving nothing more than a symbolic compensation for a one-off job. This is particularly sickening due to the fact that media conglomerates, which are thriving, are using their power and influence to not only avoid compensating any artist but also to screw the entire world out of their culture and their rights to access works of art without being subjected to the whims of a totalitarian gatekeeper.
Sorry, the iPod was also not revolutionary, not by a long shot. The iPod was released in 2001 and back then there were already a lot of portable digital players in the market such as the Diamond Rio PMP300, which was launched around 3 years before the iPod, way back in 1998. If you arrive 3 years late into an already large market you cannot claim any revolutionary status. Even our slasdot's history dispels the myth that apple's iPod represents any sort of revolution.
Really? Everyone was already downloading and listening to MP3s a good while back before the first iPod was released to the market and iTunes was launched. I mean, Napster was up and running since around 1999 and, way before that, IRC was swarming with channels dedicated to transferring MP3 albums through DCC file transfers. The mIRC world was packed with scripts to automatically handle that stuff. Before that there was already a pretty extensive sneakernet dedicated to exchange music files through CD-Rs packed with MP3. Heck, back in 1994 I knew a group of people who were ripping CDs to WAV files and lending hard drives with that stuff (they were idiots but to each it's own). So, how exactly can a corporation "forever change the way people listen to music" if everyone was already doing exactly that for years before the company released a product?
Apple deserves credit in exploring the "pay to download music files" market, particularly by convincing record companies to authorize a new business model to sell their product. Yet, they didn't changed any habits. They realized that there was an extensive and overwhelming demand for downloading music (there was a heck of a lot of people doing that) and they invested in an attempt to capitalize from that demand. They succeeded at that. But changing the way people listen to music? No, they didn't. They were successful in riding the wave but I'm sorry to tell you, they didn't changed any habits.
It doesn't force anyone to do anything. The split view is enabled/disabled through the F3 key and, following KDE's tradition of awesomeness, you can configure if you wish Dolphin to start off in split mode or simply with a single panel. I have the split view off by default but when I need to copy files around then it's just a quick F3 press and presto: split view goodness and no need to launch a new instance of Dolphin. Really nice stuff.