No, it isn't uncommon for manufacturing to produce more electricity than it consumes, and it doesn't violate thermodynamics. Hint: the GP didn't write "energy" in that quotation.
Bloat. Not just in IE, but everything else that wants to give you a pleasant browsing experience, including embedded devices.
Calling the built-in video acceleration system in Windows wouldn't be bloat. It would simply be sensible. Windows Media Player handles codecs ok, as far as I know, and adding another Windows dependency to Internet Explorer is hardly a problem.
So is the article saying their is no commercial purpose cameras out their, or the commercial ones just cost a lot more then $12,000, or just that some of the really expensive ones are for non commercial applications?
The article is saying that the cameras (except for a few using old technology) are for non-commercial use, unless you negotiate a separate license with the H.264 patent holders.
Xiph has done what they can to audit Theora for patent issues. They haven't just closed their eyes and ears and hoped for the best.
Obviously they may have missed something, but I'd be more worried about just about any other reasonably new free software, because practically noone else does any auditing before they implement.
If patents worked, every major company would have a bunch of engineers poring over new patents in their particular fields, picking which ones to license for their products. Knowledge would be shared for the good of everyone while at the same time inventors would be paid.
In reality, major companies specifically forbid their employees from reading patents, and when they are read, it is not to learn from them but to prove that you aren't using the knowledge found in them or to find ways to change processes to avoid using that particular knowledge.
DRM prevents regular people from sharing with their friends. This way pirates are faceless people on the Internet, and surely someone who uploads a movie deserves whatever punishment anyone can dream up.
Back in the day people would share their video and music collections with their friends, and some of that sharing was even legal. It's difficult to imagine today, but it was only 20 years ago.
Whoever wants more IP addresses will have to go out on the free market and try purchasing them from someone.
That depends on getting everyone else on the Internet to route them. I can assure you that there'll be people running bogon BGP services which list such sold addresses. The only question is whether they'll be in widespread use.
every NAT'ed connection requires a unique combination of public address and port
Only if you're Cisco. Sane NAT works by looking at the 5-tuple protocol, src address, dst address, src port, dst port. One IP address can support practically unlimited connections as long as the protocols survive having their source port changed (and pretty much anything does, these days).
And the neat thing is that there's a good chance that the last 1% are unprofitable customers you'd rather be rid of anyway. Just spread the word that everyone who runs servers or does P2P is uploading child porn, and suddenly the NAT'ed addresses are a security feature. Think of the children!
I'm a little bit surprised that MikroTik Routerboards haven't been mentioned yet. You can run OpenWRT on those if you prefer. I'm not all that impressed with them as access points though, at least not with Windows clients when using WPA. The Linux laptop and the Wii and various other devices work fine with it. It could be a RouterOS bug though, so maybe it'll work better with OpenWRT.
This is simply not true. UPDATABLE microcode appeared in the Pentium Pro, before that it was burned directly into the chip. Microcode has been used since the 8086, possibly since the 4004.
Is this ignoring the fact that most of Intel's chips for many years have basically been RISC processors with an x86 translation unit?
This doesn't really make sense. ALL CISC processors are pretty much RISC processors with a translation front end. This has been true since the 8086 and (especially) the 68000, when RISC wasn't invented. The whole point of RISC is that it was discovered that you can live without that front end. Look up microcode.
The original 8086 was a bit RISC-like in that some instructions were in hard-coded logic and didn't go through the microcode layer. Modern x86 is less RISC-like, because all instructions need to go through the instruction decoder.
The neat thing about the x86 architecture is that it has forced the chip designers to be really clever. E.g. the register limitations has forced them to find ways to make level 1 cache really fast; you'll be hard pressed to find non-x86 chips with faster level 1 cache. Similarly, the system call latency is fantastic. Most importantly the (quite) strong memory ordering provided by x86 means that x86 is pretty much unmatched when it comes to inter-CPU communication. Look at the hoops e.g. PA-RISC goes through to handle SMP in Linux, then compare with x86 where some of the memory barriers are even no-ops and just get turned into compiler barriers. RISC designers believe that cache coherency is expensive and that programmers should be aware of that cost. x86 has proven that it doesn't have to be expensive -- except in chip real estate.
Anyway, if you can live with somewhat sub-par performance, Larrabee shows that it's still possible to get decent performance with a smaller chip. Not quite as small as ARM or MIPS though, so a lot of the embedded space is closed to x86.
The problem is that it's difficult to block EC2 because they are so popular. It was discussed where I work, and the conclusion was that it was infeasible.
At least one attack came from Amazon. I reported it, and Amazon has confirmed that it was their customer. The packets weren't spoofed, no attempt was made to hide their origin.
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"often producing more electricity than they use"
Guys, seriously? Welcome to hyperbole 104.
No, it isn't uncommon for manufacturing to produce more electricity than it consumes, and it doesn't violate thermodynamics. Hint: the GP didn't write "energy" in that quotation.
I for one would have probably made the same decision as the IE9 manager.
Why would you bother implementing a specific codec in the browser, when Windows has a plug-in codec architecture already?
Bloat. Not just in IE, but everything else that wants to give you a pleasant browsing experience, including embedded devices.
Calling the built-in video acceleration system in Windows wouldn't be bloat. It would simply be sensible. Windows Media Player handles codecs ok, as far as I know, and adding another Windows dependency to Internet Explorer is hardly a problem.
Instead you can put 20 decimal digits in 64bits (3.2 bits per db) and do math much more faster
I want accurate math, not estimates.
Math with 20 decimal digits in 64 bits is proper decimal arithmetic. It acts exactly like BCD does, it just doesn't waste tons of space and CPU power.
So is the article saying their is no commercial purpose cameras out their, or the commercial ones just cost a lot more then $12,000, or just that some of the really expensive ones are for non commercial applications?
The article is saying that the cameras (except for a few using old technology) are for non-commercial use, unless you negotiate a separate license with the H.264 patent holders.
Thankfully we don't have software patents in Europe
Not true, unfortunately. EPO grants lots of them. Whether they hold up in court, noone knows yet. I hope not.
Xiph has done what they can to audit Theora for patent issues. They haven't just closed their eyes and ears and hoped for the best.
Obviously they may have missed something, but I'd be more worried about just about any other reasonably new free software, because practically noone else does any auditing before they implement.
Running antenna cable to the servers requiring synchronization is often a problem.
To a lot of people these two situations aren't morally equivalent even if they're about equally difficult:
1) Buying a disc and burning a copy for a friend
2) Downloading a movie and burning a copy for a friend
DRM aims to prevent 1) and the MPAA/RIAA/etc. are hoping that most people will find their witch hunts on people who do 2) necessary and morally right.
If patents worked, every major company would have a bunch of engineers poring over new patents in their particular fields, picking which ones to license for their products. Knowledge would be shared for the good of everyone while at the same time inventors would be paid.
In reality, major companies specifically forbid their employees from reading patents, and when they are read, it is not to learn from them but to prove that you aren't using the knowledge found in them or to find ways to change processes to avoid using that particular knowledge.
DRM prevents regular people from sharing with their friends. This way pirates are faceless people on the Internet, and surely someone who uploads a movie deserves whatever punishment anyone can dream up.
Back in the day people would share their video and music collections with their friends, and some of that sharing was even legal. It's difficult to imagine today, but it was only 20 years ago.
Whoever wants more IP addresses will have to go out on the free market and try purchasing them from someone.
That depends on getting everyone else on the Internet to route them. I can assure you that there'll be people running bogon BGP services which list such sold addresses. The only question is whether they'll be in widespread use.
The fridge can probably get by with a link-only IPv6 address. It's difficult to get more secure than that, except by pulling the plug out.
This is evident in the design of things like FTP, etc.
FTP allows a client to request a server to transfer a file to another server. People were very trusting back then...
I haven't seen any FTP server software which implements that though.
every NAT'ed connection requires a unique combination of public address and port
Only if you're Cisco. Sane NAT works by looking at the 5-tuple protocol, src address, dst address, src port, dst port. One IP address can support practically unlimited connections as long as the protocols survive having their source port changed (and pretty much anything does, these days).
VoIP doesn't need public IP access, lots of people have spent countless hours breaking SIP to make it work through NAT.
most consumer routers even do it just fine.
Name a reasonably RFC-compliant IPv6 consumer router that isn't made by Apple.
Trouble is, 99% of users won't even notice.
And the neat thing is that there's a good chance that the last 1% are unprofitable customers you'd rather be rid of anyway. Just spread the word that everyone who runs servers or does P2P is uploading child porn, and suddenly the NAT'ed addresses are a security feature. Think of the children!
I'm a little bit surprised that MikroTik Routerboards haven't been mentioned yet. You can run OpenWRT on those if you prefer. I'm not all that impressed with them as access points though, at least not with Windows clients when using WPA. The Linux laptop and the Wii and various other devices work fine with it. It could be a RouterOS bug though, so maybe it'll work better with OpenWRT.
Microcode didnt come until the Pentium Pro
This is simply not true. UPDATABLE microcode appeared in the Pentium Pro, before that it was burned directly into the chip. Microcode has been used since the 8086, possibly since the 4004.
Is this ignoring the fact that most of Intel's chips for many years have basically been RISC processors with an x86 translation unit?
This doesn't really make sense. ALL CISC processors are pretty much RISC processors with a translation front end. This has been true since the 8086 and (especially) the 68000, when RISC wasn't invented. The whole point of RISC is that it was discovered that you can live without that front end. Look up microcode.
The original 8086 was a bit RISC-like in that some instructions were in hard-coded logic and didn't go through the microcode layer. Modern x86 is less RISC-like, because all instructions need to go through the instruction decoder.
The neat thing about the x86 architecture is that it has forced the chip designers to be really clever. E.g. the register limitations has forced them to find ways to make level 1 cache really fast; you'll be hard pressed to find non-x86 chips with faster level 1 cache. Similarly, the system call latency is fantastic. Most importantly the (quite) strong memory ordering provided by x86 means that x86 is pretty much unmatched when it comes to inter-CPU communication. Look at the hoops e.g. PA-RISC goes through to handle SMP in Linux, then compare with x86 where some of the memory barriers are even no-ops and just get turned into compiler barriers. RISC designers believe that cache coherency is expensive and that programmers should be aware of that cost. x86 has proven that it doesn't have to be expensive -- except in chip real estate.
Anyway, if you can live with somewhat sub-par performance, Larrabee shows that it's still possible to get decent performance with a smaller chip. Not quite as small as ARM or MIPS though, so a lot of the embedded space is closed to x86.
The problem is that it's difficult to block EC2 because they are so popular. It was discussed where I work, and the conclusion was that it was infeasible.
But how do you know you aren't breaking legitimate traffic?
At least one attack came from Amazon. I reported it, and Amazon has confirmed that it was their customer. The packets weren't spoofed, no attempt was made to hide their origin.