People just need to be educated not to use proprietary formats. I mean, if someone went into a video store and they only rented Betamax there, people would know not to shop there. But people will buy music from a music store that only sells WMA or Fairplay-AAC and they don't think twice. It really isn't that complicated.
I was helping a guy put a church's sermons on the web. I recorded the sermons, converted them to MP3 at 3 different bitrates. Then the guy who does the web site took those and converted them to RealAudio files. Why do people do this??? Now half the congregation can't hear the sermons and nobody else can open and edit the files. Arggh!
The guy who edited my wedding video gave me the video in my choice of 2 formats: Uncompressed AVI or MPEG-2 Quicktime. This person does this professionally and has a degree in film. But he had no idea how to write an MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 file. Or even a pseudo-standard MPEG-4 AVI.
What makes it worse is that big business loves kickbacks and incentives. A while back Slashdot covered how Microsoft was helping to put digital movie projectors into theaters. And of course, they played WMV files. I would have expected that the movie industry would pick their own standard! But surely marketing + kickbacks + the promise of DRM meant that standards go out the window.
If we had all of this going on ten years ago there would be no internet, and we'd all be dialing up BBSs -- but only the BBSs that supported the same modem as the one we bought.
It seems to me that all the HTPC systems posted to Slashdot recently are suped-up hot-rod systems that are completely inappropriate for home theater purposes. I built my own desktop Turion HTPC recently, and it worked out very well. If anyone is considering a desktop Turion, I highly recommend it.
Democrats criticized Ehrlich's apparent shift on the paper-receipt issue, noting that he vetoed a bill last year that would have studied the option.
He didn't shift his view. The other bill was just a slimy political trick to delay paper ballots for a year by "studying" the idea instead of actually doing it. Delegate Sheila Hixson proposed this bill since it was easier than standing up and saying "I prefer rigging elections and Diebold gave me millions of dollars $$$$!!!" Instead you say "What a great idea! I propose that we spend a year studying this concept!" and hope that nobody remembers next year.
I was actually pleased that they compared like price points, rather than just taking the fastest part.
The problem with comparing the high-end is that these two companies leapfrog over each other every 6 months. And you seldom compare apples-to-apples that way. You might end up with a dual core power-hungry part against a single-core low-power part. For this test, they compared matching price points within the same series. That makes sense to me.
For Sale: One Wikipedia account with excellent karma. This account is useful for editing articles on politicians, controversial "scientific" theories, or adding goatse entries. As a bonus I will throw in an anonymizer account to hide your IP address as well.
How do they assign RFID numbers? 128-bits is probably plenty if they are given out efficiently. Or are they giving them out like IPv4 blocks and we are going to run out eventually?
You have just come upon the brink of why the internet is so powerful.
You see, they HAVE created Othernet, many times. But each time, they decide to connect Othernet to the internet. And why shouldn't they? That way, they can then have their own super network, that also provides internet access. But by doing so, it becomes part of the internet. And the internet is so vast, with so much more content than any Othernet can provide, that the Othernet seems to vanish and the internet takes over.
Examples: AOL, Prodigy, Internet2, China, your office Lan, your home lan, etc.
Not every Othernet has become absorbed yet. TV and radio, for example, haven't yet done it. But they will. It is happening slowly.
"Resistance is futile. Your network will be assimilated." - The Borg "In moments, you will no longer seek communication with each other for your superfluous purposes. You will each be part of me, and together, we will be complete." - The MCP
If you want your video to look its best and run as fast as it can, you have to enable all sorts of settings in the advanced properties of your player (or players, plural), and those settings can be different between ATI and Nvidia cards.
Yuck.
In short, Microsoft needs to seriously clean up this mess. Video codecs need to hook into a common framework, one that the graphics cards manufacturers can target for acceleration without needing to work with every individual codec maker on the planet.
This is an interesting statement, because the author just described exactly how DirectVideo works. Each step in the decoding process is a pipeline, and a "codec" can plug-in to this and provide whatever steps in the process that it can do best. For example, if playing a video looks like this:
Read a DVD -> Reading a file -> Decrypting -> Decompressing -> Motion compensation -> YUV2RGB -> Deinterlacing -> Scaling -> Displaying on video device -> ATI X1800
There can be a separate component registered for each step. Or many. And DirectVideo can determine which one is the most appropriate for the given input, output, and hardware configuration. So if you video card supports hardware YUV2RGB scaling, then it will do it. If not, the software can.
The problem is partially that crappy companies get in the way. I downloaded a codec so I could view DV files, and it registered such that all video types were DV. This is a common scenario that requires a purely brain-dead programmer:
boolean IsThisTheProperCodecForThisVideoType?(string videoType)
{ // TODO: Look at type code and see if it is a DV file
return true;
}
Re:Is it just a .Net book?
on
Practical Mono
·
· Score: 1
Because if I want to learn to program in.NET, why do I have to start with.NET then cross over to Mono? Why not learn on Linux to start with?
To me, a video game is best when it is a movie that I can play. I enjoy the cinematics when they add to the plot and draw me into the game. But obviously, they should be skippable. I doubt that the testers and developers manage to complete the product without a skip option. And playing the same cinematic more than once during a gaming session doesn't make sense either. This is just plain common sense.
The problem is not the cinematics, it's the crappy implementation of them.
I don't mind the FBI warning on the front of a DVD - I just mind that I can't skip it.
Awesome! That's as good a money maker as my plan go to college frat parties and collect the gold from the bottles of Goldschlager! We can collect the gold then sell it on ebay! Yeeessss!!!
They have come a long way in production and distribution since they first tried this. This is an interesting experiment in Indie movies over the internet. We should all support them just to see how far they can go. Indie music distributors as well as the big companies could learn a thing or two from watching this group. I really hope they stick around.
I applaud that they now offer their video files via bittorrent. They seem to be surviving the Slashdotting this time (it may even help download speeds). But their download page needs some work. The episodes are in random order, and the formats they offer are kinda weird. For example: 1 episode is a full 4.7GB DVD? And if I want Spanish subtitles it is an entirely different DVD. I don't know what the Special Editions are, and they are only available in a Microsoft proprietary format. That's almost an improvement, since they used to only be available in an Apply proprietary format. When will people start using.mp4? Most often I see things as mpeg-4 AVI files, which is a pretty close approximation to that since it is fully documented and supported on multiple platforms.
The forum (hosted at metalgearsolid.org) has been taken offline at the request of Government agencies following these news reports."
This appears to be true. The site is down and displays the message below. To me, the story here is how and why "Government agencies" (whoever that is) requested the site to be shut down. And the message appears to be from the ISP, not from metalgearsolid.org. Is this another ISP caving at the first request to shut a site down? Or is there something legitimate happening there? Shutting the site down, when there is nothing wrong with it, just adds to the sensationalism.
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...the answer I usually get to that question is "Dell" or "HP."
Even worse, most people I know say "Microsoft." Who else here gets the mom and pop calls that start with "I'm having a problem with my Microsoft. Can you help?"
...that can covert spoken words and simple phrases into sign language...
Ignoring the spelling, this implies that it has speech recognition. It converts SPOKEN words.
...recognizes the 50-character hiragana syllabary and about 10 simple phrases such as "ohayo" (good morning)...
Hiragana is the Japanese phonetic alphabet, so it READS. Huh?
Now, does it read only 10 simple phrases, or does it read anything plus it recognizes 10 simple audio phrases. I guess the breakthrough is the hand articulation and the idea, not the rest.
No, fair use is title 17, section 107 of US copyright law. Although it could be repealed, it is not something that is grandfathered in by English law, or the bill of rights, or a supreme court decision. Fair use is law.
You are backwards. You are teaching EXACTLY like the teachers I had. Is our definition of the word applied completely backwards? You are really confusing me.
You say "...apparently what you were taught was taught in a very applied mode..." when all I got was theory. I wish my linear algebra teacher could have given me one single real-life example of how linear algebra was applied. Just one is all I want. Then, I might have seen where it was going.
I would love to have this conversation with a gym teacher.:-) Imagine if they started by explaining what a ball was. And how to compute scoring. Then they could talk about teamwork, and showering. Some time in college you would get to see a baseball game. Or do you think that it would be better to show the student a baseball game before explaining how to throw the ball?
You have to start with an example so that the student has a chance to say "AHA!" and become interested. Then they hunger for more knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
People just need to be educated not to use proprietary formats. I mean, if someone went into a video store and they only rented Betamax there, people would know not to shop there. But people will buy music from a music store that only sells WMA or Fairplay-AAC and they don't think twice. It really isn't that complicated.
I was helping a guy put a church's sermons on the web. I recorded the sermons, converted them to MP3 at 3 different bitrates. Then the guy who does the web site took those and converted them to RealAudio files. Why do people do this??? Now half the congregation can't hear the sermons and nobody else can open and edit the files. Arggh!
The guy who edited my wedding video gave me the video in my choice of 2 formats: Uncompressed AVI or MPEG-2 Quicktime. This person does this professionally and has a degree in film. But he had no idea how to write an MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 file. Or even a pseudo-standard MPEG-4 AVI.
What makes it worse is that big business loves kickbacks and incentives. A while back Slashdot covered how Microsoft was helping to put digital movie projectors into theaters. And of course, they played WMV files. I would have expected that the movie industry would pick their own standard! But surely marketing + kickbacks + the promise of DRM meant that standards go out the window.
If we had all of this going on ten years ago there would be no internet, and we'd all be dialing up BBSs -- but only the BBSs that supported the same modem as the one we bought.
It seems to me that all the HTPC systems posted to Slashdot recently are suped-up hot-rod systems that are completely inappropriate for home theater purposes. I built my own desktop Turion HTPC recently, and it worked out very well. If anyone is considering a desktop Turion, I highly recommend it.
Source: True Vote MD
I was actually pleased that they compared like price points, rather than just taking the fastest part.
The problem with comparing the high-end is that these two companies leapfrog over each other every 6 months. And you seldom compare apples-to-apples that way. You might end up with a dual core power-hungry part against a single-core low-power part. For this test, they compared matching price points within the same series. That makes sense to me.
I know it was an AC, but mod they are right: mod it up.
From the mouth of your grandchildren:
"Grandpa, what's a history book?"
For Sale: One Wikipedia account with excellent karma. This account is useful for editing articles on politicians, controversial "scientific" theories, or adding goatse entries. As a bonus I will throw in an anonymizer account to hide your IP address as well.
$1000 OBO.
If you used the type where the ball is under your thumb, try the ones with the ball in the middle. Also, the
m b/7/79/200px-Trackball2.jpgm b/6/68/Logitech-trackball.jpg/180px-Logitech-track ball.jpg
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thu
-vs-
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thu
For the "surgeon's hands" issue, get one with a really big ball so you don't have to be so precise.
How do they assign RFID numbers? 128-bits is probably plenty if they are given out efficiently. Or are they giving them out like IPv4 blocks and we are going to run out eventually?
You have just come upon the brink of why the internet is so powerful.
You see, they HAVE created Othernet, many times. But each time, they decide to connect Othernet to the internet. And why shouldn't they? That way, they can then have their own super network, that also provides internet access. But by doing so, it becomes part of the internet. And the internet is so vast, with so much more content than any Othernet can provide, that the Othernet seems to vanish and the internet takes over.
Examples: AOL, Prodigy, Internet2, China, your office Lan, your home lan, etc.
Not every Othernet has become absorbed yet. TV and radio, for example, haven't yet done it. But they will. It is happening slowly.
"Resistance is futile. Your network will be assimilated." - The Borg
"In moments, you will no longer seek communication with each other for your superfluous purposes. You will each be part of me, and together, we will be complete." - The MCP
I thought common carrier status meant that you are a monopoly.
You are correct. I meant DirectShow.
Read a DVD -> Reading a file -> Decrypting -> Decompressing -> Motion compensation -> YUV2RGB -> Deinterlacing -> Scaling -> Displaying on video device -> ATI X1800
There can be a separate component registered for each step. Or many. And DirectVideo can determine which one is the most appropriate for the given input, output, and hardware configuration. So if you video card supports hardware YUV2RGB scaling, then it will do it. If not, the software can.
The problem is partially that crappy companies get in the way. I downloaded a codec so I could view DV files, and it registered such that all video types were DV. This is a common scenario that requires a purely brain-dead programmer:
boolean IsThisTheProperCodecForThisVideoType?(string videoType)
// TODO: Look at type code and see if it is a DV file
{
return true;
}
Because if I want to learn to program in .NET, why do I have to start with .NET then cross over to Mono? Why not learn on Linux to start with?
Will this neutrino evidence support or detract from Heim Theory, which also predicts multiple dimensions?
** REPORT RESULTS: Bayesian Query = 'STOCK WINNERS' **
George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Darl McBride
To me, a video game is best when it is a movie that I can play. I enjoy the cinematics when they add to the plot and draw me into the game. But obviously, they should be skippable. I doubt that the testers and developers manage to complete the product without a skip option. And playing the same cinematic more than once during a gaming session doesn't make sense either. This is just plain common sense.
The problem is not the cinematics, it's the crappy implementation of them.
I don't mind the FBI warning on the front of a DVD - I just mind that I can't skip it.
Awesome! That's as good a money maker as my plan go to college frat parties and collect the gold from the bottles of Goldschlager! We can collect the gold then sell it on ebay! Yeeessss!!!
They have come a long way in production and distribution since they first tried this. This is an interesting experiment in Indie movies over the internet. We should all support them just to see how far they can go. Indie music distributors as well as the big companies could learn a thing or two from watching this group. I really hope they stick around.
.mp4? Most often I see things as mpeg-4 AVI files, which is a pretty close approximation to that since it is fully documented and supported on multiple platforms.
I applaud that they now offer their video files via bittorrent. They seem to be surviving the Slashdotting this time (it may even help download speeds). But their download page needs some work. The episodes are in random order, and the formats they offer are kinda weird. For example: 1 episode is a full 4.7GB DVD? And if I want Spanish subtitles it is an entirely different DVD. I don't know what the Special Editions are, and they are only available in a Microsoft proprietary format. That's almost an improvement, since they used to only be available in an Apply proprietary format. When will people start using
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Following is a link for our acceptable use and terms of service for bluehost.com : Terms of Service
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Ironically, the article is talking about England, not the US. :-)
No, fair use is title 17, section 107 of US copyright law. Although it could be repealed, it is not something that is grandfathered in by English law, or the bill of rights, or a supreme court decision. Fair use is law.
You are backwards. You are teaching EXACTLY like the teachers I had. Is our definition of the word applied completely backwards? You are really confusing me.
You say "...apparently what you were taught was taught in a very applied mode..." when all I got was theory. I wish my linear algebra teacher could have given me one single real-life example of how linear algebra was applied. Just one is all I want. Then, I might have seen where it was going.
I would love to have this conversation with a gym teacher.
You have to start with an example so that the student has a chance to say "AHA!" and become interested. Then they hunger for more knowledge.