I guess thats also why we have things like Knoppix and a whole bunch of other live cds around..
And with regards to a game console.. I have enough electronic junk here.. theres no reason why I shouldn't reuse my pc for playing games, and I rather prefer linux games..
Given that many non technocal users are not too likely to bother getting linux and linux games installed and workign on their PC while in my experience Linux simply gives a better playing experience for games like Enemy Territory and similar games (no crashes and better memory usage so less sluggish on huge maps) there is somethign to win from this for developers, technical users and non technical users.
If you want to run it on your Linux box, why bother booting the cd, just run the thing (and make sure you can support your linux box)
Tell me again, whats so terrible about such a solution?
Well, to some extent you are right, but many DOS games wouldn't leave a workign machien after exiting them (if at all possible).. anyway, thats no longer true with windows.
There are however 2 reasons to want a setup like that.
First of all, it removes a lot of headaches regarding having the right versions of all kinds of OS components (Most games I have come with their prefered version of directx tho a newer version will usually do) and all kinds of configuration options.
Second, it gives the consumer a disk they can put in, press a button and play, without havign to buy a seperate game console for that.
Of course there are problems like drivers for the bizare variation of PC hardware out there.
> Yeah, and on Linux here I can run libc5 a.out binaries no problem. The point wasn't that BSD has a binary compatibility problem, just that Linux doesn't have one either.
I am quite aware that that is possible, I have maintained a Linux distribution for abotu 1 1/2 years for a small company, and we had no problem with binary compatability.
That said, it is a rather common experience for a Linux end-user to run into a package meant for an older version of their distribution, and having to actually know what they are doing to get it to work, whereas this is not the case on BSD.
Besides, my comment was a reply to a claim that BSD did NOT offer such backward compatibility, read the parent maybe?:)
> Are you talking about BSDs having different kernels? You probably didn't realise there are literally thousands of different kernel patches and trees being maintained by different parties with different directions.
I am aware of that, and I have used several of those. With all respect for their maintainers, few have the level of consistency and userbase to be an option for me for a production environment, there are 4 BSD variations (on kernel level) that do offer substantially different solutions and hardware compatability while all being quite an option for a production environment.
I think that the underlying questions is something like.. what matters in internet related crime, the physical location of a server or the physical location of the user.
The internet has created a new situation where you can commit a crime in one country while being located in another physically, and in one way or another the laws of countries will have to reflect that.
Hmm.. yeah, since a recent update I can no longer run a.out binaries from the 2.x era... but for as far as external packages and ports are concerned, thats about the first case where you can't get software for older releases to work with a current version using one of the compatxx packages.
That said, some tools (esp those using kmem) should be kept in sync with the kernel, and when at it, why not just build a new userland, its easier then figuring out what you have to update.
The concurrently developing BSD variatiens allow trying out a variety of low level solutions to problems while sharing a lot of their experiences.
Such diversity doesn't really exist in Linux despite its zillion distributions (which provide a lot of variation in user experience tho)
And that problem is older the MMORPGs, it has existed on MUDs for over a decade. Didn't stop peopel from playing, and neither are you right in that there is no game element in it. In the end you have to diversify your character, make the right choices to beat the bigger challanges, have to use the right tactics etc.
You are right however about the fact that the social interaction is an even bigger aspect.
What you say is quite true. In fact, if you are going from mpeg-2 to mpeg-4, there are 2 basic rules for preserving quality:
- DO NOT RESCALE - Use a yuv based intermediate format if you have to.
The reasons for it have to do with an effect that you also see with jpeg compressed images that get rescalled and recompressed, throwing away colour information for part of the pixels and then re-generating it (interpolation based) from the remainign pixels that do have colour information.
If you don't rescale and use a yuv intermediate, the original yuv subsampling from the mpeg-2 file can be reused, saving a yuv->rgb->yuv conversion and thus preventing interpolation and then resampling based on interpolated and so inacurate information.
This however does not account for the differences in this specific test. divx is yet another mpeg-4 variation, and if this problem occured here, both divx and qt/mpeg-4 should have shown similar quality issues.
Problem is... the encoding/compression standard used is only one part of the story.
The actual encoder that is used and the parameters used for encoding are of at least as much importance.
Then, there is a whole lot of compromises to be made. I am not too familiar with sorenson and wmv9 but for mpeg video you have a lot of things you can tune on the encoder side (for all mpeg versions, tho the actual tunables differ). At any given resolution and average bitrate, you still have a choice to use more I frames, more b frames between i/p frames, a whole variety of different ways to find macroblocks, quite a few ways to do the yuv subsampling, different ways to distibute bandwidth over a frame (ie: analyse frame, divide bandwidth such that most bits are available for the higher detail parts of it, set an average and increase quantizer when bitrate gets over it due to detail level, simply drop bitrate toward the end of a frame if you find you haev used too much etc etc)
Those things have a major impact on the resulting quality at a given bitrate, they usually also have significant impact on encoding time.
Shameless plug for a page about mpeg-1 and 2 encoding with mpeg2enc on unix systems: Video CD encoding on Unix It describes some of those tunables with regards to mpeg-1 and 2 encoding with mpeg2enc
And this is exactly why I encode everythign in mpeg-2 format... no, it is not the most efficient, but it does play on their dvd player, no computer needed on their side.
> This is, without a doubt, the last thing I'd ever expect to read on Slashdot!
Hmm, I agree but I think theres something to keep in mind...
Where content providers in the music and movie industry have mostly tried to limit what peopel consider fair use rights, such as transfer to different media, I find many websites who'd have reason to protect their content usually actively offer a way to get my 'paper copy' of it from my own printer, hence actively supporting media conversion for example.
I do not mind strong legislation for protecting copyright at all, but I do want content that I can listen to/watch/read when I want in the way I want.
2 decades ago, that was a situation provided at least in part by the movie and music industries, even if it was due to things like the home copy act (or in my case, the dutch equivalent of it) and fair use rights in general.
That is what I object to, and I can imagine, many with me. Trying to get around established fair use rights, and not giving the customer what they want and pay for. That btw does not legitimize piracy itself, tho I think that the 'content tax' (or levy if thats what you want to call it) as we pay it on recordable media does legitimize it. Part of the issue is the content and the content providers, not copyright itself (tho the duration of copyright is a big issue)
OSX is not a complete rewrite, and is not based on the BSD kernel. It is based on a microkernel (mach?) and uses feebsd and next derived components and a bit of new stuff.
It is entirely different from OS 9, thats for sure.
A complete rewrite can be a good thing, usually it is better still to have a design that has enough flexibility to adapt to new situations and to be extendable and moldable.
No its not. Unix is for a very large part the implementation, re-implementation and adoptation of a few very basic designs for a huge number of different purposes.
The simplicity of unix shows in concepts like 'everythign is a file' and in how things like pipes work.
A complex system? indeed, but built from in themselves very simple components.
Windows is possibly even more complex, and is not built from very simple components.
If you read my original post, you will see there was actually a practical reason which started this.
Regarding provocative, that is not a matter in this case of people regarding it as such, but of people explicitly (and admitted by those same people!) try to use it as such.
There is no debate killed, debate is actually encouraged. Attempts at provokation are normally shrugged off, but in this particular situation they are not.
Then, Nazi germany nor the Soviet Union had lack of religion that they tried to push onto people, their specific religions did not include a god, but that is another thing. (tho you may reason that they tried to create a kind of living god, much in the picture of Egyptian faraos and roman emperors, esp. when lookign at Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Lenin)
I fully agree that debate and tolerance is the solution to this. In the face of a small but seriously intolerant and provocative group of people, we do have the choice of sayin: Hey, if you want that, do so in your own community and on your own schools, but not in the public ones that are supposed to serve all of us. You can't have a very small group try to seriously dominate things there.
Also, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are not exactly the same thing. There are as you may know limits on freedom of speech, there are other limits on freedom of religion (ie, freedom of religion or not, we dont allow human sacrifices as religious expression)
I nowhere see a law saying that peopel are not allowed to believe this or that. I see multiple examples of restrictions on religious expression however, in all cases for the protection of society.
Again, this has nothign to do with freedom of speech, and in no way prevents debate, rather, it has sparked a lot of debate.
If that works for you, fine.
If your identity depends on what you wear then you have a problem tho I think.
I'm not very happy with this kind of law btw, but living in Europe myself I can see very well why France introduced it.
Education is fine, and is indeed needed, but while you are working on that, it is a good idea to not allow it to grow into conflict, we have seen enough killing in the name of religion here.
And how exactly? because of not being allowed to wear very visible religious symbols while in class in public schools? You are not allowed to wear a hat there either.
Is this a restriction of religious rights? definitely not. You can believe whatever you believe, and if you are so insistent on wearing whatever religious symbols in class then you better go visit a private school.
This all has to do with 2 things: - Not being allowed to wear other things that hide part of the face because it simply gets in the way of normal contact between teacher and student, counter argument was that it had to be allowed because of being a religious symbol. - Actual provocations usign such 'symbols' in schools.
Many countries mandate school uniforms, you also screaming about them? because that definitely also restricts peoples rights to wear what they feel they should wear, including things they'd wear as a religious symbol.
Last but not least, the real problem is a very small group of very vocal muslim people, many muslims of the younger generations here in Erope don't wear a veil and those who do do so more for fashion reasons then religious ones usually (there are exceptions, but see above, those really do have a choice and can wear them almost always if they feel like that, even at school if they dont go to public school but to a private one that allows it)
Most people seem to only know the stereotype muslim woman with veil, well, within the muslim world there is disagreement over if this is actually a required thing, and if it has to do with the religion at all.
At any rate, before you americans scream religious restrictions, you should really look at what the situation is about, and take a look at how the school system there actually works, this is not what it seems, and is definitely not what you (and some small but very vocal muslims) seem to make out of it.
Good points regarding the computer case, but regarding cpu and graphics card..
In many cases you can overclock those without causing lockups. It will most likely reduce the life expectancy, but with current rate of upgrading it is extremely unlikely that it will reduce it below the time till next upgrade.
This lower life expectancy might not even be true if you combine your overclocking with better cooling.
That said, its fine for my hobby computer, its not for my production server, there that tiny little difference in reliability is relevant.
Heh, a litle whoile ago I stumbled upon my Amiga 2000... It contains this 40mb st-506 disk.. only 3.5", yet heavy as a stone;) Ah well.. at any rate, my st-506 controller is a zorro-II card (A2090-A).. of course it also has a scsi (1) controller;)
I was rather surprised to find that the drive still works... but even more surprised to find that most of my Amiga floppies still work as well.
No, I am suggesting that not contract law but copyright law is the first approach to take when dealing with violations of the GPL.
Why? because untill the GPL has actually been upheld in court, you are in a far better position when having the defendent accept the GPL explicitly instead of trying to fight it.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess thats also why we have things like Knoppix and a whole bunch of other live cds around..
And with regards to a game console.. I have enough electronic junk here.. theres no reason why I shouldn't reuse my pc for playing games, and I rather prefer linux games..
Given that many non technocal users are not too likely to bother getting linux and linux games installed and workign on their PC while in my experience Linux simply gives a better playing experience for games like Enemy Territory and similar games (no crashes and better memory usage so less sluggish on huge maps) there is somethign to win from this for developers, technical users and non technical users.
If you want to run it on your Linux box, why bother booting the cd, just run the thing (and make sure you can support your linux box)
Tell me again, whats so terrible about such a solution?
Did I ever mention I hate posting as html formatted by accident? ;P
Well, to some extent you are right, but many DOS games wouldn't leave a workign machien after exiting them (if at all possible).. anyway, thats no longer true with windows. There are however 2 reasons to want a setup like that. First of all, it removes a lot of headaches regarding having the right versions of all kinds of OS components (Most games I have come with their prefered version of directx tho a newer version will usually do) and all kinds of configuration options. Second, it gives the consumer a disk they can put in, press a button and play, without havign to buy a seperate game console for that. Of course there are problems like drivers for the bizare variation of PC hardware out there.
A bootable, playable CD would solve a lot of headaches for game developers.. provided you can solve the driver issues.
Oh, and I forgot.. you can still enable a.out compatability, its just no longer there by default it seems. All it takes is compiling a new kernel.
> Yeah, and on Linux here I can run libc5 a.out binaries no problem. The point wasn't that BSD has a binary compatibility problem, just that Linux doesn't have one either.
:)
I am quite aware that that is possible, I have maintained a Linux distribution for abotu 1 1/2 years for a small company, and we had no problem with binary compatability.
That said, it is a rather common experience for a Linux end-user to run into a package meant for an older version of their distribution, and having to actually know what they are doing to get it to work, whereas this is not the case on BSD.
Besides, my comment was a reply to a claim that BSD did NOT offer such backward compatibility, read the parent maybe?
> Are you talking about BSDs having different kernels? You probably didn't realise there are literally thousands of different kernel patches and trees being maintained by different parties with different directions.
I am aware of that, and I have used several of those. With all respect for their maintainers, few have the level of consistency and userbase to be an option for me for a production environment, there are 4 BSD variations (on kernel level) that do offer substantially different solutions and hardware compatability while all being quite an option for a production environment.
I think that the underlying questions is something like.. what matters in internet related crime, the physical location of a server or the physical location of the user.
The internet has created a new situation where you can commit a crime in one country while being located in another physically, and in one way or another the laws of countries will have to reflect that.
And I thought AMD made Intel 'clones'.. seems its the other way around now ;P
Hmm.. yeah, since a recent update I can no longer run a.out binaries from the 2.x era... but for as far as external packages and ports are concerned, thats about the first case where you can't get software for older releases to work with a current version using one of the compatxx packages.
That said, some tools (esp those using kmem) should be kept in sync with the kernel, and when at it, why not just build a new userland, its easier then figuring out what you have to update.
The concurrently developing BSD variatiens allow trying out a variety of low level solutions to problems while sharing a lot of their experiences.
Such diversity doesn't really exist in Linux despite its zillion distributions (which provide a lot of variation in user experience tho)
And that problem is older the MMORPGs, it has existed on MUDs for over a decade. Didn't stop peopel from playing, and neither are you right in that there is no game element in it. In the end you have to diversify your character, make the right choices to beat the bigger challanges, have to use the right tactics etc.
You are right however about the fact that the social interaction is an even bigger aspect.
Hmm..
:)
>> I will pay $20.00 to go to a crappy movie with my wife and we will have a good time
> Dunno what to tell you there. Personally, if I go to a movie that's really that bad, I want my money back.
I'd think the wife has something to do with it.. its just not clear to me yet why you'd want to spend $20 to be in a semi public place but hmm..
Hmm... I am quite sure they have copyright protection... but usually no copy protection ;)
sorry, just nitpicking.
What you say is quite true. In fact, if you are going from mpeg-2 to mpeg-4, there are 2 basic rules for preserving quality:
- DO NOT RESCALE
- Use a yuv based intermediate format if you have to.
The reasons for it have to do with an effect that you also see with jpeg compressed images that get rescalled and recompressed, throwing away colour information for part of the pixels and then re-generating it (interpolation based) from the remainign pixels that do have colour information.
If you don't rescale and use a yuv intermediate, the original yuv subsampling from the mpeg-2 file can be reused, saving a yuv->rgb->yuv conversion and thus preventing interpolation and then resampling based on interpolated and so inacurate information.
This however does not account for the differences in this specific test. divx is yet another mpeg-4 variation, and if this problem occured here, both divx and qt/mpeg-4 should have shown similar quality issues.
Problem is... the encoding/compression standard used is only one part of the story.
The actual encoder that is used and the parameters used for encoding are of at least as much importance.
Then, there is a whole lot of compromises to be made. I am not too familiar with sorenson and wmv9 but for mpeg video you have a lot of things you can tune on the encoder side (for all mpeg versions, tho the actual tunables differ). At any given resolution and average bitrate, you still have a choice to use more I frames, more b frames between i/p frames, a whole variety of different ways to find macroblocks, quite a few ways to do the yuv subsampling, different ways to distibute bandwidth over a frame (ie: analyse frame, divide bandwidth such that most bits are available for the higher detail parts of it, set an average and increase quantizer when bitrate gets over it due to detail level, simply drop bitrate toward the end of a frame if you find you haev used too much etc etc)
Those things have a major impact on the resulting quality at a given bitrate, they usually also have significant impact on encoding time.
Shameless plug for a page about mpeg-1 and 2 encoding with mpeg2enc on unix systems:
Video CD encoding on Unix
It describes some of those tunables with regards to mpeg-1 and 2 encoding with mpeg2enc
And this is exactly why I encode everythign in mpeg-2 format... no, it is not the most efficient, but it does play on their dvd player, no computer needed on their side.
> This is, without a doubt, the last thing I'd ever expect to read on Slashdot!
Hmm, I agree but I think theres something to keep in mind...
Where content providers in the music and movie industry have mostly tried to limit what peopel consider fair use rights, such as transfer to different media, I find many websites who'd have reason to protect their content usually actively offer a way to get my 'paper copy' of it from my own printer, hence actively supporting media conversion for example.
I do not mind strong legislation for protecting copyright at all, but I do want content that I can listen to/watch/read when I want in the way I want.
2 decades ago, that was a situation provided at least in part by the movie and music industries, even if it was due to things like the home copy act (or in my case, the dutch equivalent of it) and fair use rights in general.
That is what I object to, and I can imagine, many with me. Trying to get around established fair use rights, and not giving the customer what they want and pay for. That btw does not legitimize piracy itself, tho I think that the 'content tax' (or levy if thats what you want to call it) as we pay it on recordable media does legitimize it.
Part of the issue is the content and the content providers, not copyright itself (tho the duration of copyright is a big issue)
OSX is not a complete rewrite, and is not based on the BSD kernel. It is based on a microkernel (mach?) and uses feebsd and next derived components and a bit of new stuff.
It is entirely different from OS 9, thats for sure.
A complete rewrite can be a good thing, usually it is better still to have a design that has enough flexibility to adapt to new situations and to be extendable and moldable.
No its not. Unix is for a very large part the implementation, re-implementation and adoptation of a few very basic designs for a huge number of different purposes.
The simplicity of unix shows in concepts like 'everythign is a file' and in how things like pipes work.
A complex system? indeed, but built from in themselves very simple components.
Windows is possibly even more complex, and is not built from very simple components.
If you read my original post, you will see there was actually a practical reason which started this.
Regarding provocative, that is not a matter in this case of people regarding it as such, but of people explicitly (and admitted by those same people!) try to use it as such.
There is no debate killed, debate is actually encouraged. Attempts at provokation are normally shrugged off, but in this particular situation they are not.
Then, Nazi germany nor the Soviet Union had lack of religion that they tried to push onto people, their specific religions did not include a god, but that is another thing. (tho you may reason that they tried to create a kind of living god, much in the picture of Egyptian faraos and roman emperors, esp. when lookign at Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Lenin)
I fully agree that debate and tolerance is the solution to this. In the face of a small but seriously intolerant and provocative group of people, we do have the choice of sayin: Hey, if you want that, do so in your own community and on your own schools, but not in the public ones that are supposed to serve all of us. You can't have a very small group try to seriously dominate things there.
Also, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are not exactly the same thing. There are as you may know limits on freedom of speech, there are other limits on freedom of religion (ie, freedom of religion or not, we dont allow human sacrifices as religious expression)
I nowhere see a law saying that peopel are not allowed to believe this or that. I see multiple examples of restrictions on religious expression however, in all cases for the protection of society.
Again, this has nothign to do with freedom of speech, and in no way prevents debate, rather, it has sparked a lot of debate.
If that works for you, fine. If your identity depends on what you wear then you have a problem tho I think. I'm not very happy with this kind of law btw, but living in Europe myself I can see very well why France introduced it. Education is fine, and is indeed needed, but while you are working on that, it is a good idea to not allow it to grow into conflict, we have seen enough killing in the name of religion here.
And how exactly? because of not being allowed to wear very visible religious symbols while in class in public schools? You are not allowed to wear a hat there either.
Is this a restriction of religious rights? definitely not. You can believe whatever you believe, and if you are so insistent on wearing whatever religious symbols in class then you better go visit a private school.
This all has to do with 2 things:
- Not being allowed to wear other things that hide part of the face because it simply gets in the way of normal contact between teacher and student, counter argument was that it had to be allowed because of being a religious symbol.
- Actual provocations usign such 'symbols' in schools.
Many countries mandate school uniforms, you also screaming about them? because that definitely also restricts peoples rights to wear what they feel they should wear, including things they'd wear as a religious symbol.
Last but not least, the real problem is a very small group of very vocal muslim people, many muslims of the younger generations here in Erope don't wear a veil and those who do do so more for fashion reasons then religious ones usually (there are exceptions, but see above, those really do have a choice and can wear them almost always if they feel like that, even at school if they dont go to public school but to a private one that allows it)
Most people seem to only know the stereotype muslim woman with veil, well, within the muslim world there is disagreement over if this is actually a required thing, and if it has to do with the religion at all.
At any rate, before you americans scream religious restrictions, you should really look at what the situation is about, and take a look at how the school system there actually works, this is not what it seems, and is definitely not what you (and some small but very vocal muslims) seem to make out of it.
> Unknown variable $people assuming "people".
;P
Guess why I hate perl
I suggest trying again with a c compiler, tho you'll have to wrap some int main() { } around it.
Good points regarding the computer case, but regarding cpu and graphics card..
In many cases you can overclock those without causing lockups. It will most likely reduce the life expectancy, but with current rate of upgrading it is extremely unlikely that it will reduce it below the time till next upgrade.
This lower life expectancy might not even be true if you combine your overclocking with better cooling.
That said, its fine for my hobby computer, its not for my production server, there that tiny little difference in reliability is relevant.
Heh, a litle whoile ago I stumbled upon my Amiga 2000... It contains this 40mb st-506 disk.. only 3.5", yet heavy as a stone ;) ;)
Ah well.. at any rate, my st-506 controller is a zorro-II card (A2090-A).. of course it also has a scsi (1) controller
I was rather surprised to find that the drive still works... but even more surprised to find that most of my Amiga floppies still work as well.
No, I am suggesting that not contract law but copyright law is the first approach to take when dealing with violations of the GPL. Why? because untill the GPL has actually been upheld in court, you are in a far better position when having the defendent accept the GPL explicitly instead of trying to fight it.