I don't believe that for a second. At the very least, you need one of the top processors out now to decode h.264 at 1080 in realtime (at full quality).
So what can I do, other than subjective testing, to verify that claim?
But, it may simply be some dedicated chip for the purpose of mpeg decoding,
Yes, that's what XVMC is. What else would it be?
I could conceive of it as a program running on a GPU, seeing as the GPU is probably fast enough -- though maybe too specialized -- and any additional processor helps.
Because Vorbis came out several years too late to contend with MP3.
That's odd... That's not how I remember it, but I guess I'll take your word for it.
what is essentially a marriage between visual creativity and ingenuous coding.
Visual creativity? Maybe. Yet, most uses of Flash are not particularly creative -- just boilerplate kind of stuff, or a few fades + custom photos...
Ingenuous coding? You must be joking. Flash uses 50% of my CPU to display YouTube videos at fullscreen. None of my other players even use 1%. That kind of hurts your "ubiquity" argument, by the way -- it would be far easier to install VLC (or Windows Media, or QuickTime) on an older computer than it would be to buy a new computer with a faster CPU just so you didn't have to install players.
Flash is everywhere.
Except in 64-bit browsers.
there is a small cost for the Flash IDE, but it's nearly free to distribute
Are we talking about the Flash IDE being free to distribute, or the resultant content? Because keep in mind, I have never, ever met a Web tool, WYSIWYG or otherwise, that actually charged me for distributing my content -- that's what the Web is for!
And it's not a "small" cost. The "Basic" version of Flash, by itself, costs $400. I could buy myself a computer for $400. I didn't bother looking up "Professional" or anything else...
Choice is good. There are plenty of generators you can buy, for all kinds of varying prices, to churn out standard HTML+CSS. Or you can do it yourself, or use a CMS. But if you want to do Flash, you pretty much have to buy this one program.
Easy copy-paste to test things out. Flash permits drag-and-drop or copy-paste from one FLA to another, and it automatically brings along any dependent objects into the new library. This can make it incredibly easy to try out quick ideas outside of the main game...
I don't really see how that's different than using real version control. In fact, it seems considerably more limited. Maybe a bit more user-friendly at first, but if you're a programmer, you should be prepared to learn a thing or two about computers, right?
And if you're not a programmer, seriously, what are you doing in Flash?
Although I wouldn't be supprised if in the future Microsoft does in fact lock down its operating system and write all drivers for third party itself, requiring the hardware maker pay them to do so.
Actually, I wish they were this stupid.
The thing that immediately comes to mind is nvidia/ATI. Occasionally, I've heard it argued that ATI has better hardware -- but nvidia has always had better drivers, particularly on Linux. And either company is going to have people who know the hardware, and know it very well.
Furthermore, this means it costs more money for hardware developers to support anything other than Windows, because you can bet MS wouldn't be releasing quality nvidia drivers for Linux -- and I seem to remember that some company was actually paying nvidia for SLI support in the Linux drivers. This means that any hardware company with juicy contracts from, say, Apple -- Apple certainly pays companies for the hardware in those shiny MacBooks -- or IBM, or any other possibilities (I admit I'm guessing here), and Windows people buying their hardware.
So, consider something like ProTools -- I'd imagine this would be time for both ProTools and hardware manufacturers to take a long, hard look at porting to Linux. Cheaper to pay MS to redevelop your drivers, license them, etc, or to pay someone to develop Ardour?
But that's just the money aspect. In any case, I'm guessing it will partly be a sociological aspect, too. When someone's Linux can't get online, it's "Linux can't access my wireless," it's seen as Linux's fault. When someone's Windows can't get online, it's Dell's fault, or it's their wireless card's fault. This would pretty much level the playing field -- MS forced to write their own drivers for EVERYTHING, just like Linux, the only advantage being that people would pay MS to do it -- but MS already has the money to do it, the only reason Windows isn't the best OS imaginable is insane incompetence (malice, even?) on the part of the management. If they weren't having weekly meetings about the Start Menu -- nay, the fucking Shutdown feature of the Start Menu -- they could've done this already.
Besides, I was never suggesting sequences of 9 random alphanumericals.
No, you were suggesting 5 random alphanumericals. Which wouldn't work, by the way -- you'd very quickly fill up on things like sex.whatever.
Because there are plenty of other people who have just as much right to the name "coke" as the coca-coly company.
Which is why we mostly do first-come, first-serve.
Examples include suppliers of dry-destilled charcoal, columbian drug-cartels, people working to help coke-addicts, people who think the coca-cola company sucks, etc...
Wow, watch this: charcoal, columbian-coke, coke-addiction, cokesucks, coca-cola. And whoever is first to register gets "coke".
Actually, it's not named Apple Corp, it is named Apple Inc (and it was Apple Computer Inc until 8. jan 2007).
For someone so worried about confusion: I very specifically meant Apple Corps, which does not sell computers.
Many companies use different names when they register as a business, and when they conduct their business with real customers.
And in the corporate world, domain names are not business registrations, and business registrations are not domain names. Domain names are where they conduct business with real customers.
So, let's talk about Apple Computer: I don't go to applecomputerinc.com, I go to apple.com. If Apple Corps wanted a real web presence, they'd probably own applerecords.com (which it seems they do, it's just mis-managed). If Apple Records got there first, I could live with applecomputer.com, or mac.com (which does exist, and is owned by Apple).
Furthermore, this doesn't stop us from doing nice things like redirecting to a more relevant site, if you think someone might get lost -- parrotcode.org is about a VM called "Parrot", and it does say "Parrot is not about parrots", with a link to a Google search on parrots, the first result of which is the Wikipedia page. That Wikipedia page, by the way, is about the birds, but does provide a link to a disambiguation page, which includes links to pages about Parrot VM, and Parrot Records, and so on.
Of course, SSNs doesn't work within USA, so your idea may still have some merit.
You do realize that was sarcasm, right?
In the real world, we almost never run into people with the same first and last name, and if we do, we have things like nicknames, or "of $state", to sort them out. However, the real world is not exactly analogous here, as we do have a central authority of this kind of thing. Just as there can be only one "Apple, Inc" in the US, there also can be only one "apple.com" on the Internet. Both of them are generally first-come, first-serve. I just don't get why you want us to add random alphanumeric strings -- if you aren't imaginative enough to register "cokesucks" when Coca-Cola already owns "coke", then you don't deserve a web presence anyway.
"I don't like big companies putting up billboards along the main roads, while other people with fewer resources, who has something to say, are not allowed to put their own billboards up..."
I don't think you disagree with me there, I think you're still making the assumption that I want such a scheme to be successful -- that I even want a filtering scheme to be successful. If it gets to the point where I can add ".xxx" to a host file for my Public Library and check the box that says "Our Internet is filtered," I'm happy.
As of today, your mother is perfectly capable of using digits whenever she uses a phone. She probably even has one of those phone-books, and knows how to use it.
Yeah, DNS is the phone-book of the Internet. And by the way -- I'm not sure about my mother, but I almost never use the digits -- I have a phone book stored in my phone. I find a name, it dials the number, just like real DNS.
I'm sure you can teach her to use google too.
She knows how to use Google. It'd be significantly harder to teach her to use google.g2l8ai98o
And the coca-cola company probably has enough money to repeat registering their name untill they come up with something more rememberable by chance. Hell, if they keep going on long enough, they could have coke.itis, coke.drink, or coke.coke, all of them way cooler than coke.com.
So what? Throw away the TLDs, and they can have those anyway -- they can simply register "coke", and have drink.coke.
Besides, are you really suggesting we invest in a scheme where you get the name you want by simply throwing money at it? I know you can take that approach today (with domain-squatters, etC), but it's usually easier to just come up with a decent domain.
And with 5-letter domain-names, you can probably afford to weed out ridiculous combinations like c9xq9 before they are even sold.
Which leaves you with even less possibilities than you had in the first place. Tell me, if only English words are allowed, how is this better than the naive scheme everyone wants anyway: Doing away with TLDs and simply buying "coke"...
As the net grew larger, you were bound to have conflicts of people or companies that wanted the same name. Given that both of them are "right", the only sane solution is to make a system that guarantees nobody can "own" a name.
By mangling the names such that everyone can own a string of random characters.
You know, I try not to flame, but I wonder why I'm even responding to such a stupid idea. For once, I'm glad that DNS has such penetration that it'll never be changed unless it has to: coke.com is better than coke.c9xq9, end of story.
I mean, really -- why not change company names, too? Instead of Apple Corp, we'll have Apple blaealkcaoer. See? Oh, but don't you write company names down somewhere? Names! Ok, from now on, my name is no longer David Masover, it's David Masoecrkase5123. See? There may be others named "David Masover", though I haven't met any, but I guarantee there's NO ONE whose name is David Masoecrkase5123. Remember "Saving Private Ryan"? Never confuse Private James Francis Ryan with Private James Frederick Ryan again -- now they're just random alphanumeric sequences!
As it is, switching away from central TLDs (coke.com) towards a TLD for anyone (coke) really doesn't make the problem any worse than it already is, unless there is a good technical reason not to. Your solution does indeed solve the problem of lawsuits -- by destroying the system in the first place. It's a bit like saying, "I don't like billboards cluttering up the countryside. If we detonate a tactical nuke on the contryside, there won't be any billboards."
Just because someone has a $400 1080i HDTV, doesn't mean the computer they have it hooked-up to is an overclocked quad core Opteron...
I hardly get any lag with just my old-fashioned single-core 1.8 ghz amd64. But then, I'm not _quite_ running it at its design resolution (my monitor is only 1600x1200...)
So: Either your facts are dead wrong, or you are exaggerating, and possibly both. The end, unless you bring me something different and specific.
Second, EVERYONE has a highdef display. LCDs for maybe the past 5 years have been able to display around 1920x1080, and CRTs from long ago could as well.
I've never had one that was that high-res. Yes, they existed, but again, here I am with my 1600x1200, and I'm actually an exception. Looking around me, I see mostly 1280x1024.
People don't upgrade monitors as often as they upgrade computers -- generally, they move from CRT to LCD until it breaks. True, plenty of people don't upgrade computers that often, either...
Never the less, those 5 year-old system sure can't decode h.264... They CAN decode MPEG-4 (part 2).
At the same resolution?
The one advantage mpeg gives me is xvmc -- I can offload it to my video card. But, it may simply be some dedicated chip for the purpose of mpeg decoding, and how powerful is that? Are there limits to what resolution it will do?
In other words: At DVD resolution, my box doesn't break a sweat, mpeg or h.264. At below DVD resolution, it can look better, have a lower bitrate, and still use less CPU than Flash. So, when you're talking about cramming the most into a small download, or onto a single CD/DVD, it makes sense. And at the higher end, you're right, not everyone with a $400 HDTV has even a decent, 5-year-old computer to run it -- but let's face it, if you bought a $400 HDTV, and you also hooked your computer up to it, we've established that you are a geek and you have money to spend on toys -- so it seems likely that you'll have a decent computer, even a relatively recent Dell might do.
There are some cases where h.264 does worse than codecs like lavc and xvid... That's mainly because the latter are simply more mature.
So what you're saying is, this won't be the case forever. I suppose it could come down to personal preference, or to specific videos -- it may even be a good idea to encode twice, or compare. But from what I've seen, it really seems like h.264 will be the best, except perhaps vc1 (which isn't open) -- even if that won't happen for awhile, it may make sense to pick it up now. Or maybe not...
I suppose I should play with it more before I make broad statements, but I do stand by what I said: High-def looks great on my box, which isn't that new of a box, and at the other end of the spectrum (crap YouTube videos and scaled-down DVD rips), could be better or worse, seems almost inevitably better with h.264. So, if we are to standardize on something, h.264 looks like it.
I do wonder about that dedicated chip, though. I imagine that especially talking about embedded devices, we'll end up with some very nice chips that will do it reasonably efficiently. That seems to be what happened with mpeg2 and mp3, anyway...
Speaking of which, when people talk about how we "standardized on mp3"... Here, we have a similar situation. I don't know which is better of AC3, AAC, or Vorbis, but I do know that Vorbis has been better than mp3 for a long time, and has always been more free. So, assuming you need lossy compression at all (I have quite a lot of FLACs), why did we go with MP3, and not Vorbis?
The point your missing is that it is impossible hard for a human being to control all those units individually, the nature of those games (the god / 3rd person perspective) REQUIRES those features.
I'm sorry, what? I mean, yes, it's required for it to be fun, and the levels are designed around you having those features. But so what?
The original warcraft did unit control on an individual basis.
And so did Dune, as I said in my post. So, it is actually possible to control every unit individually. It just makes for a boring and tedious game.
The truth is gaming is about interacitivity, and the fact that interacitivity is going the way of the dodo
Blah, blah, blah. Almost sounds like marketspeak -- are you, by any chance, making a "truly interactive" game, where you have to control the player's every limb -- nay, every finger -- one by one, all the time?
(Note that to an extent, something like this has been tried. There was a Jurassic Park game that was horrible about physics, lots of box puzzles like Half-Life 2, only you had to actually position both hands on the box, then lift it clumsily... And there was also Ragdoll Kung-Fu, which was an example of this done right.)
Because you are not DOING anything, you are simply watching computer run the levels for you.
I should go play some FFXII, so I know what I'm talking about, but really, how is this different than Starcraft, where I can order a bunch of troops to defend an area, then go explore somewhere else? Or order a bunch of troops to attack a building, then flip back home and start building stuff with my SCVs?
I mean, I can see your argument, but automation does not mean there's no interactivity, or even that there is necessarily less interactivity. All it means is that the game does something for you, which is true of every game since Pong.
Yes, Pong. Let's talk about Pong. You deflect the ball... then you wait. It could be a fairly long wait, while the computer runs the ball for you. Then the ball comes back, and you do it again.
At that point what is the point of gaming? At that point.. there is none.
At that point -- even if we take this to the logical extreme you seem to fear, where I just push a big red "play" button and the game runs for me -- we call this a "tech demo", or even a "movie". Either can be interesting to watch. I know you want a game, not a movie, I'm just pointing out the obvious -- if a game has a good plot but no interactivity, it can still be worth playing.
But I don't really see why it's as bad as you think it is. Any modern strategy game you play will have some automation. Any Sim game. Yes, even any FPS. Does it offend your sensibilities that just about every modern FPS will automatically switch to more powerful weapons? Or in a game like Natural Selection -- aliens can drop buildings and either build them manually, or let them autobuild at a much slower rate. But even if I just drop them without stopping, I'm not going to get more than 10 or 15 before I run out of resources -- and I still choose where to put them.
I'm sorry if you don't see any point to it, or if you've completely lost the ability to enjoy games. I'll respect that as legitimate -- there really may be no more point to it for you. But I'm telling you: It's just you. Modern games are not any worse than games have ever been, or if they are, it certainly isn't for this reason.
you are gravely mistaken if you think they're not capable of something as trivial as performing manual lookups of a few well-known domain names.
By middle school, I imagine they will get through anyway.
So, in that sense -- yes, we could use other standards, but this one is technically dirt-simple to implement, has pretty much zero negative effect on the local system (a host file entry won't kill anyone; plenty of filtering software is resource-heavy and ultimately brain-dead), and basically fills a checkbox.
If I wanted filtering that actually worked, I'd start with something bayesian -- I'd take code from a spamfilter, implement it as a proxy server, and block all external access except through the proxy -- including requiring https to go through the proxy. This would hopefully allow everyone to get their work done, and school officials to easily blacklist/whitelist stuff (and make the filter learn), and I think it'd be a pretty effective filter.
But I don't want filtering that actually works. Frankly, I'm aware that the kids will always get around it -- it's really a waste of time. This would be useful for people who actually don't want to see it -- they just block XXX for themselves, deliberately -- and many schools and libraries are required to have filters. But the kids will always get around it if they want to, and the only way to stop them is for the parents to actually do their job -- and if that isn't working, maybe decide it's time for the kids to see it for themselves and make up their own mind.
If you're talking about something tiny -- suppose YouTube switched over to mpeg4 -- then the CPU requirements become pretty irrelevant compared to other concerns. (YouTube via Flash uses 50% of my CPU, the same video via mplayer/ffmpeg uses 0.3%. I imagine if YouTube switched to h.264 in.mov format (thus insisting on QuickTime), you'd have two immediate results: Everyone and their dog would have QuickTime, and it would also use _less_ CPU (in the browser) and look _better_ than it does now.)
If you're talking about something huge -- say, 1080p -- first, generally systems hooked up to a display device that can handle it will also have the CPU to handle it. But also, 20% is significant. 20% is the difference between, say, 20 gigs and 16 gigs. It may be only 20%, but it's also 4 gigs.
Now, make all the jokes you wish about what such "hotties" would look like, but you get the point -- having a domain that pretends to be you shouldn't imply association, anymore than whitehouse.com ever did.
I must've gotten those confused for years without noticing. Thanks for pointing that out.
Still, there you go. Mostly some very good advice, although I imagine that vorbis is really acceptable. I use flac for my music, but that's mostly because I don't like to lose more quality than I have to by transcoding, and you never know when I might buy something like an iPod and have to transcode -- flac->aac is better than, say, vorbis->aac. And also because my music collection is small enough that that works.
But for video, it's all on my laptop, desktop, or MythTV box, so I figure I'm good as long as I leave it in a format that ffmpeg can play, and avoid transcoding unless I'm really running into space issues.
And yes, I know why you'd use h.264 -- it seems better than the rest at pretty much every level, so the only reason I wouldn't encode to it is if I'm artificially forced into something else (DVD only supports mpeg2), or if Theora is actually better, which I doubt. Seems like h.264 might be a better target for Ogg.
Actually, I liked the original, Someplace Else, a lot better. (Minerva is a sequel to Something Else; Minerva seems to be distributed as a full mod, whereas Something Else was pretty much just a map for the original Half-Life.)
I understand the technical reasons why they exist...
Is there a single one other than momentum? As far as I can tell, everyone and their dog owns a.com name, so if the.com servers can handle it, why not just pool those into the root DNS servers?
Can anyone give me a good technical reason we can't handle this?
You, and one other poster, are assuming that this makes the legal situation any different.
Explain to me how Apple Computer vs Apple Record Company is any easier over, say, apple.com? You're still going to have confusion like apple.com vs applecorps.com -- if I remove ".com" from that name, there should be absolutely no difference.
Oh, and since this was a discussion about usability, tell me how my mother will be just thrilled that Coke's website is coke.c9xq9 instead of coke.com. You may as well just have her enter 216.64.210.31, it's just as easy to remember!
PG-13 sites will become contentious -- she's in a lacy bra: is the bra see-through or opaque? Or mostly opaque? Or mostly see-through? A whole host of semi-erotic or tastefully erotic sites will suddenly live in a nether-world of "yes it's.xxx" or "no it's just the beauty of God's creation" etc.
And if it's voluntary, that's entirely for that site to decide.
I know this particular article is about legislation, but really, establishing a.xxx TLD does not require that legislation be passed to force anybody to use it.
If not, porn could be accessed by any child using just the IP address rather than the fully qualified domain name.
And how are they going to get that? A kid who has the technical expertise to, say, go to his friend's house, visit a porn site, look up some info on it, and write down the IP and take that home, is also a kid who will not be stopped by ANY filter.
You could look it up in a whois database or something -- but then, you can get around any filter by finding a proxy site, and it's roughly the same thing.
It's insanely easy to block a whole TLD, but no one's forcing you to block it, and no one's forcing pornographers to use it. Hell, plenty of them already have "You must be 18 or over" links, and even banner ads for things like NetNanny.
And you aren't exaggerating your fears, really, but you are having a knee-jerk reaction to one immediate assumption. It's true, this article makes that assumption, but you can still stop frothing at the mouth and try to look at this sanely. You are not required to be a corporation, or participate in any kind of commerce (other than your registration fees) to own a.com name. You are not required to have any kind of network, or be related to any kind of network, to own a.net name. You are not required to be a nonprofit, officially or unofficially, to own a.org name.
The only one I know of that's actually enforced is.gov, but the only thing similar that could happen here is the.XXX registrar(s) refusing to accept registrations from anyone who won't use it for porn.
The implications already are that.com is commerce,.org is nonprofits,.gov is government, and.net is for networks (for instance, ISPs).
As far as I know, only.gov is actually enforced.
So, basically, registering a.XXX domain is like having one of those "You must be 18 to enter" things. It's a way of self-censorship, of saying "I know this is pornography, and not safe for children."
There have been technical arguments against.XXX, but I think having your filtering software be a line in a host file is really, really nice.
The only truly, intentionally open standard I know of is Theora, and I really haven't heard much about it.
For that matter, I haven't heard any measurements lately of AAC vs Vorbis, but it seems to me that unless Vorbis is actually better, the best way to encode a video would be h.264+aac, probably wrapped in ogm or mkv, but could also work as avi or mov.
Of course, I often just keep the original DVD stream around, which means -- what -- mpeg2+aac?
Aside from being able to compile source code off the board and thus correct the professor (when it won't compile)...
You're right, taping the lecture is probably a bad idea, simply because it will take too long to replay it.
However, as much as I might sometimes wish to draw pictures and graphs (node-graph-like mnemonic structures), everything else you said I can pretty much do: I'll put it in a simple text file, organize it with indentation, emphasize it (like circling) with _underlines_ and *similar* CONVENTIONS <i>for</i>:showing: |emphasis|, and type fast enough that if I need to transcribe, I can. (Sometimes, you really do want the direct quote. Others, it's much better to take shorter notes.)
However, if you're still convinced yours is better, there is one additional reason for using, say, a TabletPC-like device: it's digital. That means easy backups and organization; I lose paper notes all the time, but I never lose anything in my computer.
And if you're that easily distracted, you will be anyway -- by what that cute girl in the row ahead of you is wearing, or by what's out the window, or by something the prof said that launches you into a completely different train of thought. If you want to focus, you'll focus.
Ask around -- ask colleges you're interested in, ask your high school -- what you want is something that will be legal for tests.
Then, find the best TI that you can guarantee will be allowed pretty much everywhere -- or better, get your parents to buy it; it's for education, right?
This does not excuse you from having a laptop in college. The TI is for math -- the class and the tests. The laptop is for every class that isn't math. Put your calendar on it, put notes on it, and if at all possible, put your books on it -- I was often able to get away with just a Powerbook and one textbook, and by the time you're in college, you might not even need that textbook.
Oh, by the way, if you can get by without graphing features, do that for awhile. College rules could change, and this is a high school chem course -- consider if it'll be terribly inconvenient to buy a $5 non-graphing calculator, or even *gasp* consider not using one! I didn't need one in high school till I was pretty much doing calculus, and then, the class was small enough that we could just borrow a supply of the school's own calculators.
Slashdot Mirror
So what can I do, other than subjective testing, to verify that claim?
Yes, that's what XVMC is. What else would it be?I could conceive of it as a program running on a GPU, seeing as the GPU is probably fast enough -- though maybe too specialized -- and any additional processor helps.
That's odd... That's not how I remember it, but I guess I'll take your word for it.
Visual creativity? Maybe. Yet, most uses of Flash are not particularly creative -- just boilerplate kind of stuff, or a few fades + custom photos...
Ingenuous coding? You must be joking. Flash uses 50% of my CPU to display YouTube videos at fullscreen. None of my other players even use 1%. That kind of hurts your "ubiquity" argument, by the way -- it would be far easier to install VLC (or Windows Media, or QuickTime) on an older computer than it would be to buy a new computer with a faster CPU just so you didn't have to install players.
Except in 64-bit browsers.
Are we talking about the Flash IDE being free to distribute, or the resultant content? Because keep in mind, I have never, ever met a Web tool, WYSIWYG or otherwise, that actually charged me for distributing my content -- that's what the Web is for!
And it's not a "small" cost. The "Basic" version of Flash, by itself, costs $400. I could buy myself a computer for $400. I didn't bother looking up "Professional" or anything else...
Choice is good. There are plenty of generators you can buy, for all kinds of varying prices, to churn out standard HTML+CSS. Or you can do it yourself, or use a CMS. But if you want to do Flash, you pretty much have to buy this one program.
I don't really see how that's different than using real version control. In fact, it seems considerably more limited. Maybe a bit more user-friendly at first, but if you're a programmer, you should be prepared to learn a thing or two about computers, right?
And if you're not a programmer, seriously, what are you doing in Flash?
Actually, I wish they were this stupid.
The thing that immediately comes to mind is nvidia/ATI. Occasionally, I've heard it argued that ATI has better hardware -- but nvidia has always had better drivers, particularly on Linux. And either company is going to have people who know the hardware, and know it very well.
Furthermore, this means it costs more money for hardware developers to support anything other than Windows, because you can bet MS wouldn't be releasing quality nvidia drivers for Linux -- and I seem to remember that some company was actually paying nvidia for SLI support in the Linux drivers. This means that any hardware company with juicy contracts from, say, Apple -- Apple certainly pays companies for the hardware in those shiny MacBooks -- or IBM, or any other possibilities (I admit I'm guessing here), and Windows people buying their hardware.
So, consider something like ProTools -- I'd imagine this would be time for both ProTools and hardware manufacturers to take a long, hard look at porting to Linux. Cheaper to pay MS to redevelop your drivers, license them, etc, or to pay someone to develop Ardour?
But that's just the money aspect. In any case, I'm guessing it will partly be a sociological aspect, too. When someone's Linux can't get online, it's "Linux can't access my wireless," it's seen as Linux's fault. When someone's Windows can't get online, it's Dell's fault, or it's their wireless card's fault. This would pretty much level the playing field -- MS forced to write their own drivers for EVERYTHING, just like Linux, the only advantage being that people would pay MS to do it -- but MS already has the money to do it, the only reason Windows isn't the best OS imaginable is insane incompetence (malice, even?) on the part of the management. If they weren't having weekly meetings about the Start Menu -- nay, the fucking Shutdown feature of the Start Menu -- they could've done this already.
No, you were suggesting 5 random alphanumericals. Which wouldn't work, by the way -- you'd very quickly fill up on things like sex.whatever.
Which is why we mostly do first-come, first-serve.
Wow, watch this: charcoal, columbian-coke, coke-addiction, cokesucks, coca-cola. And whoever is first to register gets "coke".
For someone so worried about confusion: I very specifically meant Apple Corps, which does not sell computers.
And in the corporate world, domain names are not business registrations, and business registrations are not domain names. Domain names are where they conduct business with real customers.
So, let's talk about Apple Computer: I don't go to applecomputerinc.com, I go to apple.com. If Apple Corps wanted a real web presence, they'd probably own applerecords.com (which it seems they do, it's just mis-managed). If Apple Records got there first, I could live with applecomputer.com, or mac.com (which does exist, and is owned by Apple).
Furthermore, this doesn't stop us from doing nice things like redirecting to a more relevant site, if you think someone might get lost -- parrotcode.org is about a VM called "Parrot", and it does say "Parrot is not about parrots", with a link to a Google search on parrots, the first result of which is the Wikipedia page. That Wikipedia page, by the way, is about the birds, but does provide a link to a disambiguation page, which includes links to pages about Parrot VM, and Parrot Records, and so on.
You do realize that was sarcasm, right?
In the real world, we almost never run into people with the same first and last name, and if we do, we have things like nicknames, or "of $state", to sort them out. However, the real world is not exactly analogous here, as we do have a central authority of this kind of thing. Just as there can be only one "Apple, Inc" in the US, there also can be only one "apple.com" on the Internet. Both of them are generally first-come, first-serve. I just don't get why you want us to add random alphanumeric strings -- if you aren't imaginative enough to register "cokesucks" when Coca-Cola already owns "coke", then you don't deserve a web presence anyway.
Ahem. Domain Names are dirt cheap.
Besides, you yourself said:
I don't think you disagree with me there, I think you're still making the assumption that I want such a scheme to be successful -- that I even want a filtering scheme to be successful. If it gets to the point where I can add ".xxx" to a host file for my Public Library and check the box that says "Our Internet is filtered," I'm happy.
Yeah, DNS is the phone-book of the Internet. And by the way -- I'm not sure about my mother, but I almost never use the digits -- I have a phone book stored in my phone. I find a name, it dials the number, just like real DNS.
She knows how to use Google. It'd be significantly harder to teach her to use google.g2l8ai98o
So what? Throw away the TLDs, and they can have those anyway -- they can simply register "coke", and have drink.coke.
Besides, are you really suggesting we invest in a scheme where you get the name you want by simply throwing money at it? I know you can take that approach today (with domain-squatters, etC), but it's usually easier to just come up with a decent domain.
Which leaves you with even less possibilities than you had in the first place. Tell me, if only English words are allowed, how is this better than the naive scheme everyone wants anyway: Doing away with TLDs and simply buying "coke"...
By mangling the names such that everyone can own a string of random characters.
You know, I try not to flame, but I wonder why I'm even responding to such a stupid idea. For once, I'm glad that DNS has such penetration that it'll never be changed unless it has to: coke.com is better than coke.c9xq9, end of story.
I mean, really -- why not change company names, too? Instead of Apple Corp, we'll have Apple blaealkcaoer. See? Oh, but don't you write company names down somewhere? Names! Ok, from now on, my name is no longer David Masover, it's David Masoecrkase5123. See? There may be others named "David Masover", though I haven't met any, but I guarantee there's NO ONE whose name is David Masoecrkase5123. Remember "Saving Private Ryan"? Never confuse Private James Francis Ryan with Private James Frederick Ryan again -- now they're just random alphanumeric sequences!
As it is, switching away from central TLDs (coke.com) towards a TLD for anyone (coke) really doesn't make the problem any worse than it already is, unless there is a good technical reason not to. Your solution does indeed solve the problem of lawsuits -- by destroying the system in the first place. It's a bit like saying, "I don't like billboards cluttering up the countryside. If we detonate a tactical nuke on the contryside, there won't be any billboards."
I hardly get any lag with just my old-fashioned single-core 1.8 ghz amd64. But then, I'm not _quite_ running it at its design resolution (my monitor is only 1600x1200...)
So: Either your facts are dead wrong, or you are exaggerating, and possibly both. The end, unless you bring me something different and specific.
I've never had one that was that high-res. Yes, they existed, but again, here I am with my 1600x1200, and I'm actually an exception. Looking around me, I see mostly 1280x1024.
People don't upgrade monitors as often as they upgrade computers -- generally, they move from CRT to LCD until it breaks. True, plenty of people don't upgrade computers that often, either...
At the same resolution?
The one advantage mpeg gives me is xvmc -- I can offload it to my video card. But, it may simply be some dedicated chip for the purpose of mpeg decoding, and how powerful is that? Are there limits to what resolution it will do?
In other words: At DVD resolution, my box doesn't break a sweat, mpeg or h.264. At below DVD resolution, it can look better, have a lower bitrate, and still use less CPU than Flash. So, when you're talking about cramming the most into a small download, or onto a single CD/DVD, it makes sense. And at the higher end, you're right, not everyone with a $400 HDTV has even a decent, 5-year-old computer to run it -- but let's face it, if you bought a $400 HDTV, and you also hooked your computer up to it, we've established that you are a geek and you have money to spend on toys -- so it seems likely that you'll have a decent computer, even a relatively recent Dell might do.
So what you're saying is, this won't be the case forever. I suppose it could come down to personal preference, or to specific videos -- it may even be a good idea to encode twice, or compare. But from what I've seen, it really seems like h.264 will be the best, except perhaps vc1 (which isn't open) -- even if that won't happen for awhile, it may make sense to pick it up now. Or maybe not...
I suppose I should play with it more before I make broad statements, but I do stand by what I said: High-def looks great on my box, which isn't that new of a box, and at the other end of the spectrum (crap YouTube videos and scaled-down DVD rips), could be better or worse, seems almost inevitably better with h.264. So, if we are to standardize on something, h.264 looks like it.
I do wonder about that dedicated chip, though. I imagine that especially talking about embedded devices, we'll end up with some very nice chips that will do it reasonably efficiently. That seems to be what happened with mpeg2 and mp3, anyway...
Speaking of which, when people talk about how we "standardized on mp3"... Here, we have a similar situation. I don't know which is better of AC3, AAC, or Vorbis, but I do know that Vorbis has been better than mp3 for a long time, and has always been more free. So, assuming you need lossy compression at all (I have quite a lot of FLACs), why did we go with MP3, and not Vorbis?
I'm sorry, what? I mean, yes, it's required for it to be fun, and the levels are designed around you having those features. But so what?
And so did Dune, as I said in my post. So, it is actually possible to control every unit individually. It just makes for a boring and tedious game.
Blah, blah, blah. Almost sounds like marketspeak -- are you, by any chance, making a "truly interactive" game, where you have to control the player's every limb -- nay, every finger -- one by one, all the time?
(Note that to an extent, something like this has been tried. There was a Jurassic Park game that was horrible about physics, lots of box puzzles like Half-Life 2, only you had to actually position both hands on the box, then lift it clumsily... And there was also Ragdoll Kung-Fu, which was an example of this done right.)
I should go play some FFXII, so I know what I'm talking about, but really, how is this different than Starcraft, where I can order a bunch of troops to defend an area, then go explore somewhere else? Or order a bunch of troops to attack a building, then flip back home and start building stuff with my SCVs?
I mean, I can see your argument, but automation does not mean there's no interactivity, or even that there is necessarily less interactivity. All it means is that the game does something for you, which is true of every game since Pong.
Yes, Pong. Let's talk about Pong. You deflect the ball... then you wait. It could be a fairly long wait, while the computer runs the ball for you. Then the ball comes back, and you do it again.
At that point -- even if we take this to the logical extreme you seem to fear, where I just push a big red "play" button and the game runs for me -- we call this a "tech demo", or even a "movie". Either can be interesting to watch. I know you want a game, not a movie, I'm just pointing out the obvious -- if a game has a good plot but no interactivity, it can still be worth playing.
But I don't really see why it's as bad as you think it is. Any modern strategy game you play will have some automation. Any Sim game. Yes, even any FPS. Does it offend your sensibilities that just about every modern FPS will automatically switch to more powerful weapons? Or in a game like Natural Selection -- aliens can drop buildings and either build them manually, or let them autobuild at a much slower rate. But even if I just drop them without stopping, I'm not going to get more than 10 or 15 before I run out of resources -- and I still choose where to put them.
I'm sorry if you don't see any point to it, or if you've completely lost the ability to enjoy games. I'll respect that as legitimate -- there really may be no more point to it for you. But I'm telling you: It's just you. Modern games are not any worse than games have ever been, or if they are, it certainly isn't for this reason.
By middle school, I imagine they will get through anyway.
So, in that sense -- yes, we could use other standards, but this one is technically dirt-simple to implement, has pretty much zero negative effect on the local system (a host file entry won't kill anyone; plenty of filtering software is resource-heavy and ultimately brain-dead), and basically fills a checkbox.
If I wanted filtering that actually worked, I'd start with something bayesian -- I'd take code from a spamfilter, implement it as a proxy server, and block all external access except through the proxy -- including requiring https to go through the proxy. This would hopefully allow everyone to get their work done, and school officials to easily blacklist/whitelist stuff (and make the filter learn), and I think it'd be a pretty effective filter.
But I don't want filtering that actually works. Frankly, I'm aware that the kids will always get around it -- it's really a waste of time. This would be useful for people who actually don't want to see it -- they just block XXX for themselves, deliberately -- and many schools and libraries are required to have filters. But the kids will always get around it if they want to, and the only way to stop them is for the parents to actually do their job -- and if that isn't working, maybe decide it's time for the kids to see it for themselves and make up their own mind.
If you're talking about something tiny -- suppose YouTube switched over to mpeg4 -- then the CPU requirements become pretty irrelevant compared to other concerns. (YouTube via Flash uses 50% of my CPU, the same video via mplayer/ffmpeg uses 0.3%. I imagine if YouTube switched to h.264 in .mov format (thus insisting on QuickTime), you'd have two immediate results: Everyone and their dog would have QuickTime, and it would also use _less_ CPU (in the browser) and look _better_ than it does now.)
If you're talking about something huge -- say, 1080p -- first, generally systems hooked up to a display device that can handle it will also have the CPU to handle it. But also, 20% is significant. 20% is the difference between, say, 20 gigs and 16 gigs. It may be only 20%, but it's also 4 gigs.
After all, I can always do something like:
slashdothotties.com
Now, make all the jokes you wish about what such "hotties" would look like, but you get the point -- having a domain that pretends to be you shouldn't imply association, anymore than whitehouse.com ever did.
I must've gotten those confused for years without noticing. Thanks for pointing that out.
Still, there you go. Mostly some very good advice, although I imagine that vorbis is really acceptable. I use flac for my music, but that's mostly because I don't like to lose more quality than I have to by transcoding, and you never know when I might buy something like an iPod and have to transcode -- flac->aac is better than, say, vorbis->aac. And also because my music collection is small enough that that works.
But for video, it's all on my laptop, desktop, or MythTV box, so I figure I'm good as long as I leave it in a format that ffmpeg can play, and avoid transcoding unless I'm really running into space issues.
And yes, I know why you'd use h.264 -- it seems better than the rest at pretty much every level, so the only reason I wouldn't encode to it is if I'm artificially forced into something else (DVD only supports mpeg2), or if Theora is actually better, which I doubt. Seems like h.264 might be a better target for Ogg.
Actually, I liked the original, Someplace Else, a lot better. (Minerva is a sequel to Something Else; Minerva seems to be distributed as a full mod, whereas Something Else was pretty much just a map for the original Half-Life.)
Actually, I liked "Something Else" a lot better. She had a lot more personality in that one.
Is there a single one other than momentum? As far as I can tell, everyone and their dog owns a .com name, so if the .com servers can handle it, why not just pool those into the root DNS servers?
Can anyone give me a good technical reason we can't handle this?
You, and one other poster, are assuming that this makes the legal situation any different.
Explain to me how Apple Computer vs Apple Record Company is any easier over, say, apple.com? You're still going to have confusion like apple.com vs applecorps.com -- if I remove ".com" from that name, there should be absolutely no difference.
Oh, and since this was a discussion about usability, tell me how my mother will be just thrilled that Coke's website is coke.c9xq9 instead of coke.com. You may as well just have her enter 216.64.210.31, it's just as easy to remember!
And if it's voluntary, that's entirely for that site to decide.
I know this particular article is about legislation, but really, establishing a .xxx TLD does not require that legislation be passed to force anybody to use it.
And how are they going to get that? A kid who has the technical expertise to, say, go to his friend's house, visit a porn site, look up some info on it, and write down the IP and take that home, is also a kid who will not be stopped by ANY filter.
You could look it up in a whois database or something -- but then, you can get around any filter by finding a proxy site, and it's roughly the same thing.
It's insanely easy to block a whole TLD, but no one's forcing you to block it, and no one's forcing pornographers to use it. Hell, plenty of them already have "You must be 18 or over" links, and even banner ads for things like NetNanny.
.com name. You are not required to have any kind of network, or be related to any kind of network, to own a .net name. You are not required to be a nonprofit, officially or unofficially, to own a .org name.
.gov, but the only thing similar that could happen here is the .XXX registrar(s) refusing to accept registrations from anyone who won't use it for porn.
And you aren't exaggerating your fears, really, but you are having a knee-jerk reaction to one immediate assumption. It's true, this article makes that assumption, but you can still stop frothing at the mouth and try to look at this sanely. You are not required to be a corporation, or participate in any kind of commerce (other than your registration fees) to own a
The only one I know of that's actually enforced is
The implications already are that .com is commerce, .org is nonprofits, .gov is government, and .net is for networks (for instance, ISPs).
.gov is actually enforced.
.XXX domain is like having one of those "You must be 18 to enter" things. It's a way of self-censorship, of saying "I know this is pornography, and not safe for children."
.XXX, but I think having your filtering software be a line in a host file is really, really nice.
As far as I know, only
So, basically, registering a
There have been technical arguments against
The only truly, intentionally open standard I know of is Theora, and I really haven't heard much about it.
For that matter, I haven't heard any measurements lately of AAC vs Vorbis, but it seems to me that unless Vorbis is actually better, the best way to encode a video would be h.264+aac, probably wrapped in ogm or mkv, but could also work as avi or mov.
Of course, I often just keep the original DVD stream around, which means -- what -- mpeg2+aac?
This has been done with the PS2.
Aside from being able to compile source code off the board and thus correct the professor (when it won't compile)...
:showing: |emphasis|, and type fast enough that if I need to transcribe, I can. (Sometimes, you really do want the direct quote. Others, it's much better to take shorter notes.)
You're right, taping the lecture is probably a bad idea, simply because it will take too long to replay it.
However, as much as I might sometimes wish to draw pictures and graphs (node-graph-like mnemonic structures), everything else you said I can pretty much do: I'll put it in a simple text file, organize it with indentation, emphasize it (like circling) with _underlines_ and *similar* CONVENTIONS <i>for</i>
However, if you're still convinced yours is better, there is one additional reason for using, say, a TabletPC-like device: it's digital. That means easy backups and organization; I lose paper notes all the time, but I never lose anything in my computer.
And if you're that easily distracted, you will be anyway -- by what that cute girl in the row ahead of you is wearing, or by what's out the window, or by something the prof said that launches you into a completely different train of thought. If you want to focus, you'll focus.
Ask around -- ask colleges you're interested in, ask your high school -- what you want is something that will be legal for tests.
Then, find the best TI that you can guarantee will be allowed pretty much everywhere -- or better, get your parents to buy it; it's for education, right?
This does not excuse you from having a laptop in college. The TI is for math -- the class and the tests. The laptop is for every class that isn't math. Put your calendar on it, put notes on it, and if at all possible, put your books on it -- I was often able to get away with just a Powerbook and one textbook, and by the time you're in college, you might not even need that textbook.
Oh, by the way, if you can get by without graphing features, do that for awhile. College rules could change, and this is a high school chem course -- consider if it'll be terribly inconvenient to buy a $5 non-graphing calculator, or even *gasp* consider not using one! I didn't need one in high school till I was pretty much doing calculus, and then, the class was small enough that we could just borrow a supply of the school's own calculators.
Oh, so should we have checked "whitelists suck"?
Which is still too much. Blacklists can block things I'd rather have come through.