Are the video formats from the late eighties really all deficient in some important way? With all the formats that were floating around back then, competing to cram more video into less space, it's difficult to imagine that NONE of them can meet our needs in this decadent era of cheap storage, extravagant bandwidth, and powerful multi-core CPUs. What am I missing?
To give you an idea, in the mid-eighties, computers like the commodore 64 (1mhz cpu) and early pc's (up to 8mhz) ruled the world.
The audio cd came out in 1983 and contains uncompressed sound because there no compression hardware (or algorithm for that matter) was invented yet.
Only in the early 90's did mp3 become popular because by then cpu's were in the 200mhz range, enough at the time to play(!) an mp3 at 90% cpu utilization. By then transferring 3mb files had also become possible because of falling hard disk prices.
So no, the 80s had no codecs, and the first popular audio codec was mp3, still in use today.
Video followed many years later with divx/xvid.
It's fascinating to hear from a man who's been doing all his life what Google now claims to do - make all (or at least some) of humanity's written word available to everyone. I've heard stories of academics having very superior search technologies, and I think that's what he must be referring to when he calls Google a mediocre search engine. Too bad that the search technologies that are so much better than Google aren't available to everyone, but only to a few whose institution can afford the high fees. I'm sure he's right - Google would do a less than perfect job, but at least it would be accessible by anyone, and that would be an improvement. Finally, he refers about working on a project with the same goals. I suspect he feels a little bit of professional envy that his project is getting passed by Google! On the whole, I think he made reasonable points about bloggers, it's astounding how introspective they have managed to become in such a short time, with the petty wars. But I for one am happy to get access to huge libraries of texts, whether it's through Google, or some academic project that he works on.
So then you're paying $500 for a frontend when you can buy an xbox for $150. Ok, add the price of a mod chip ($25) + setup time, but that's still a big price difference.
That's downright asinine. Obesitity is a disease, and should be treated as such. There's no excuse for no exercise and bad diet. There are exceptions of course, but not to the extent of the current obese percentage of the american public. The surgeon general agrees with this, btw. Back to airplane seats - what an upside down world where normal thin people get penalized for his overweight fellow traveller! Instead, we need a much stricter policy that forces overweight people to buy two seats. Everyone has their own horror stories about flying, but the fat guy taking up your space must be the most common one and most preventable. In short, do what the surgeon general says, stay away from McDonalds and hit the gym.
Slashdot Mirror
Are the video formats from the late eighties really all deficient in some important way? With all the formats that were floating around back then, competing to cram more video into less space, it's difficult to imagine that NONE of them can meet our needs in this decadent era of cheap storage, extravagant bandwidth, and powerful multi-core CPUs. What am I missing?
To give you an idea, in the mid-eighties, computers like the commodore 64 (1mhz cpu) and early pc's (up to 8mhz) ruled the world. The audio cd came out in 1983 and contains uncompressed sound because there no compression hardware (or algorithm for that matter) was invented yet. Only in the early 90's did mp3 become popular because by then cpu's were in the 200mhz range, enough at the time to play(!) an mp3 at 90% cpu utilization. By then transferring 3mb files had also become possible because of falling hard disk prices. So no, the 80s had no codecs, and the first popular audio codec was mp3, still in use today. Video followed many years later with divx/xvid.
It's fascinating to hear from a man who's been doing all his life what Google now claims to do - make all (or at least some) of humanity's written word available to everyone.
I've heard stories of academics having very superior search technologies, and I think that's what he must be referring to when he calls Google a mediocre search engine.
Too bad that the search technologies that are so much better than Google aren't available to everyone, but only to a few whose institution can afford the high fees.
I'm sure he's right - Google would do a less than perfect job, but at least it would be accessible by anyone, and that would be an improvement.
Finally, he refers about working on a project with the same goals. I suspect he feels a little bit of professional envy that his project is getting passed by Google!
On the whole, I think he made reasonable points about bloggers, it's astounding how introspective they have managed to become in such a short time, with the petty wars.
But I for one am happy to get access to huge libraries of texts, whether it's through Google, or some academic project that he works on.
Wessel
So then you're paying $500 for a frontend when you can buy an xbox for $150.
Ok, add the price of a mod chip ($25) + setup time, but that's still a big price difference.
That's downright asinine. Obesitity is a disease, and should be treated as such. There's no excuse for no exercise and bad diet. There are exceptions of course, but not to the extent of the current obese percentage of the american public. The surgeon general agrees with this, btw.
Back to airplane seats - what an upside down world where normal thin people get penalized for his overweight fellow traveller!
Instead, we need a much stricter policy that forces overweight people to buy two seats.
Everyone has their own horror stories about flying, but the fat guy taking up your space must be the most common one and most preventable.
In short, do what the surgeon general says, stay away from McDonalds and hit the gym.
Instead of complicated firmware hacks, there's a tool that works for every DVD player on a PC:
DVD Region Free