Depends on where you get your definition for "obsolete", I suppose. According to Dictionary.com:
no longer in general use; fallen into disuse
So according to that, AVI is not yet obsolete. However, according to Google:
Something that is obsolete is no longer needed because something better has been invented.
Well... AVI is no longer needed because something better has been invented. I guess the question is whether you think the Google definition is a valid one, but I use the word "obsolete" that way.
I've argued that the reason the record industry is struggling is that their business model is "obsolete". When I argued that, I wasn't claiming that their business model was no longer in use, but that it should be thought of as antiquated, as a thing of the past which, for the most part, continues to exist out of inertia. If it didn't already exist and people weren't already invested in it, we wouldn't invent it now because it's not a sensible way to go about things given the current state of technology.
Right, but such a browser script would need to be programmed on a site-by-site basis, and a lot of video sites go to some trouble to obscure the location of the video file or block access except through the flash player. Sites like Hulu basically use Flash as a form of DRM, so you couldn't simply make a plugin or browser script that would bypass Flash for all of these video sites.
I was always under the impression that DivX wasn't 100% MPEG4 compliant, and had some unknown proprietary stuff in there. Is that not the case? If not, why then did people pay licensing fees to DivX?
Well it is still the dominant desktop OS. I'm not even saying they shouldn't care about Windows, but rather that h264 is not any weirder or non-standard than DivX. The way some people talk about it, you'd think h264 and AAC are strange inventions from Apple and therefore others shouldn't be expected to support them. On the contrary, DivX was the weird proprietary format, and h264 and AAC were created by MPEG.
Both H264 and AAC were created to be industry standards, replacing old MPEG video formats and MP3. Apple happened to be early to jump on board with them, but they aren't proprietary Quicktime formats. In short: this is what is supposed to be happening. Everyone is lining up behind the most advanced industry standards and slowly dropping legacy support. Even Microsoft is supporting h264 and AAC these days, and they hate standards.
A common annoyance with many media players, WMP included, is not having the right codec. WMP will try to detect which codecs are required and provide a location to download them, but this is hit-and-miss and less than convenient if all you want to do is play a video. In recognition of this, WMP12 includes support for H.264 video, AAC audio, and both Xvid and DivX video, in addition to all the formats supported by WMP11 in Vista (MPEG2, WMV, MP3, etc.). With these new codecs, WMP should support the majority of video found on the Internet out of the box.
When you visit Youtube, I believe that it tells the browser to load an.swf file, which is a Flash file and not a video file. This swf file is actually a video player (including the controls and everything) which has been written in Flash, and that player plays whatever video file it has been instructed to play.
Even if VLC could load that swf file correctly, it would then be running the YouTube Flash application which would in turn play the movie, and that's not what you want. You want direct access to the FLV file.
FLV itself isn't a terrible format, though. I think it's basically just h263, which... yeah, just like you'd think, was a precursor to h264. Youtube is encoding everything in h264 these days anyway, and Flash plays h264 files. In all cases, the problem isn't the video file encoding, but the Flash player that's used to play it.
XBox 360 can't decode h264? I thought it could. If not, then maybe they ought to get on board, since it looks like h264 is the current de facto standard.
Windows doesn't play DivX or XviD files by default. To my knowledge, Handbrake never encoded files that Windows would play without installing an extra player or codec.
Because Google has been working on Google Gears and HTML offline functionality? If that stuff is working, you should be able to run Gmail, Google Docs, and other applications without a connection.
...most online folk these days start at an agregator...
This is a good point. A lot of this isn't an issue of people being unwilling to pay for content so much as there being a culture of expecting free content. Aggregators won't link to articles behind a paywall because if they do, people will complain. If aggregators won't link to the articles, no one will know it exists.
I'm not sure the problem is insoluble, but the chief problem might be finding ways to publicize interesting articles, giving enough information to get people interested, while keeping the meat of the article behind a paywall. After all, that's what newspapers are doing when they put something on their front page with big headlines. The idea is that you'll see the headline while walking past a newsstand, but the newsstand operator won't let you sit and read the newspaper without buying it.
Oh, also, Microsoft didn't drop Exchange support from office:mac until Office 2008 - in January 2008.
Not sure what you mean there. Microsoft used to make Outlook for OS9, but with the first release of Office for OSX, they completely dropped Exchange support and released Entourage (which only supported IMAP) instead of Outlook. They started offering limited support for Exchange around 2004, but even in Entourage 2008 the Exchange support isn't very good. Supposedly they're going to be releasing a fully-cocoa version of Office in 2010 which will include Outlook and full Exchange support, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Yup. They're already selling audio books. It's not a stretch at all.
I just have to wonder, at what point do they rebrand the iTunes Music Store? I guess they've already dropped the "Music" part of the name in most places, but "iTunes" hardly seems fitting anymore for the name of the store or the application itself. The store sells movies, TV shows, and software in addition to "tunes".
"Subjective" doesn't necessarily mean "worthless" or "unhelpful". Even anecdotal evidence is evidence, and the submitter may prefer making his decisions based on the experiences of like-minded individuals to making his decisions based on nothing.
Is T-Mobile's service really enough better than AT&T's to warrant buying an iPhone and jailbreaking it? If so, how so?
My impression is that when people complain about the iPhone being stuck on AT&T, they would rather move it to Verizon because their data network is more robust and has better coverage. (I don't actually know that Verizon has better service, but that seems to be the consensus.)
Finally, I'm going to say once again, tablets just aren't that useful compared to laptops with keyboards.
A lot of the rumors point less to a generalized tablet and more to something like a super-high-end Kindle. Imagine a sleeker version of the Kindle DX with a hybrid e-paper LCD screen capable of displaying web pages or movies in full color, including a multitouch screen and a modified iPhone OS.
Still rumor at this point, but it makes a little more sense than the idea of marketing it as a low-end netbook in tablet form at a $1000 price point.
Apple has consistently shown that they're happy with just a portion of the markets they play in--provided it's the most lucrative end of that market
This is a good point. If you've been following Apple for the past decade or so, it's pretty clear that they aren't aiming to achieve world domination (at least not anytime soon). They seem to be satisfied to please what customers they have, keep a high profit margin, and rake in the profits. This seems like a healthy attitude to me. I almost get the sense sometimes like their dominance in MP3 players and online music sales is unintentional, like some kind of happy accident.
From listening to Jobs talk and watching Apple's moves, I don't think they're aiming for every computer to be a Mac or every phone to be an iPhone. They don't even seem to want to compete in the sub-$500 desktop market or sub-$1k laptop market. They like being perceived as the underdog who deserves to win and the company that makes cool high-end products. I can almost imagine Jobs being disappointed if owning a Mac becomes normal and totally uninteresting.
When I right click on the first result and select "Copy Link Location" this is copied into clipboard:
I did that, and here's the output from my clipboard:
http://www.test.com/
Someone else has apparently discovered that what you're describing only happens in Firefox. Maybe it's Mozilla's fault? Or maybe there's an extension that's doing this?
Well in that case I believe that he also provided the voice for the character. I think there was another movie, though, where he provided the motion capture without any voice. (Maybe for King Kong in Peter Jackson's version? He's credited as "Kong" in IMDB.)
Slashdot Mirror
If Apple switches to Bing, then Microsoft has the data on that search. Do you think Apple should trust Bing more than Google?
Unfortunately, that will probably only help you with Youtube. There isn't a universal way to bypass Flash for *all* video sites.
Depends on where you get your definition for "obsolete", I suppose. According to Dictionary.com:
no longer in general use; fallen into disuse
So according to that, AVI is not yet obsolete. However, according to Google:
Something that is obsolete is no longer needed because something better has been invented.
Well... AVI is no longer needed because something better has been invented. I guess the question is whether you think the Google definition is a valid one, but I use the word "obsolete" that way.
I've argued that the reason the record industry is struggling is that their business model is "obsolete". When I argued that, I wasn't claiming that their business model was no longer in use, but that it should be thought of as antiquated, as a thing of the past which, for the most part, continues to exist out of inertia. If it didn't already exist and people weren't already invested in it, we wouldn't invent it now because it's not a sensible way to go about things given the current state of technology.
In that sense, AVI and DivX are also obsolete.
Right, but such a browser script would need to be programmed on a site-by-site basis, and a lot of video sites go to some trouble to obscure the location of the video file or block access except through the flash player. Sites like Hulu basically use Flash as a form of DRM, so you couldn't simply make a plugin or browser script that would bypass Flash for all of these video sites.
I was always under the impression that DivX wasn't 100% MPEG4 compliant, and had some unknown proprietary stuff in there. Is that not the case? If not, why then did people pay licensing fees to DivX?
Why would they care about what windows does?
Well it is still the dominant desktop OS. I'm not even saying they shouldn't care about Windows, but rather that h264 is not any weirder or non-standard than DivX. The way some people talk about it, you'd think h264 and AAC are strange inventions from Apple and therefore others shouldn't be expected to support them. On the contrary, DivX was the weird proprietary format, and h264 and AAC were created by MPEG.
Both H264 and AAC were created to be industry standards, replacing old MPEG video formats and MP3. Apple happened to be early to jump on board with them, but they aren't proprietary Quicktime formats. In short: this is what is supposed to be happening. Everyone is lining up behind the most advanced industry standards and slowly dropping legacy support. Even Microsoft is supporting h264 and AAC these days, and they hate standards.
A common annoyance with many media players, WMP included, is not having the right codec. WMP will try to detect which codecs are required and provide a location to download them, but this is hit-and-miss and less than convenient if all you want to do is play a video. In recognition of this, WMP12 includes support for H.264 video, AAC audio, and both Xvid and DivX video, in addition to all the formats supported by WMP11 in Vista (MPEG2, WMV, MP3, etc.). With these new codecs, WMP should support the majority of video found on the Internet out of the box.
Windows 7 is supposed to also play h264 files out of the box. I assumed we were talking about previous versions of Windows.
When you visit Youtube, I believe that it tells the browser to load an .swf file, which is a Flash file and not a video file. This swf file is actually a video player (including the controls and everything) which has been written in Flash, and that player plays whatever video file it has been instructed to play.
Even if VLC could load that swf file correctly, it would then be running the YouTube Flash application which would in turn play the movie, and that's not what you want. You want direct access to the FLV file.
FLV itself isn't a terrible format, though. I think it's basically just h263, which... yeah, just like you'd think, was a precursor to h264. Youtube is encoding everything in h264 these days anyway, and Flash plays h264 files. In all cases, the problem isn't the video file encoding, but the Flash player that's used to play it.
XBox 360 can't decode h264? I thought it could. If not, then maybe they ought to get on board, since it looks like h264 is the current de facto standard.
Windows doesn't play DivX or XviD files by default. To my knowledge, Handbrake never encoded files that Windows would play without installing an extra player or codec.
Because Google has been working on Google Gears and HTML offline functionality? If that stuff is working, you should be able to run Gmail, Google Docs, and other applications without a connection.
How? Or do you think aggregators will link to stories that aren't free?
...most online folk these days start at an agregator...
This is a good point. A lot of this isn't an issue of people being unwilling to pay for content so much as there being a culture of expecting free content. Aggregators won't link to articles behind a paywall because if they do, people will complain. If aggregators won't link to the articles, no one will know it exists.
I'm not sure the problem is insoluble, but the chief problem might be finding ways to publicize interesting articles, giving enough information to get people interested, while keeping the meat of the article behind a paywall. After all, that's what newspapers are doing when they put something on their front page with big headlines. The idea is that you'll see the headline while walking past a newsstand, but the newsstand operator won't let you sit and read the newspaper without buying it.
Ok. I must have misremembered. If it was Jobs, it would have to have been be right when he took over.
Still, the Apple/Microsoft relationship hasn't been all roses and chocolates.
Oh, also, Microsoft didn't drop Exchange support from office:mac until Office 2008 - in January 2008.
Not sure what you mean there. Microsoft used to make Outlook for OS9, but with the first release of Office for OSX, they completely dropped Exchange support and released Entourage (which only supported IMAP) instead of Outlook. They started offering limited support for Exchange around 2004, but even in Entourage 2008 the Exchange support isn't very good. Supposedly they're going to be releasing a fully-cocoa version of Office in 2010 which will include Outlook and full Exchange support, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Yeah, I think unlimited data and SMS and the cheapest talk plan for the iPhone is about $90, and that doesn't allow tethering.
Yup. They're already selling audio books. It's not a stretch at all.
I just have to wonder, at what point do they rebrand the iTunes Music Store? I guess they've already dropped the "Music" part of the name in most places, but "iTunes" hardly seems fitting anymore for the name of the store or the application itself. The store sells movies, TV shows, and software in addition to "tunes".
"Subjective" doesn't necessarily mean "worthless" or "unhelpful". Even anecdotal evidence is evidence, and the submitter may prefer making his decisions based on the experiences of like-minded individuals to making his decisions based on nothing.
Is T-Mobile's service really enough better than AT&T's to warrant buying an iPhone and jailbreaking it? If so, how so?
My impression is that when people complain about the iPhone being stuck on AT&T, they would rather move it to Verizon because their data network is more robust and has better coverage. (I don't actually know that Verizon has better service, but that seems to be the consensus.)
Finally, I'm going to say once again, tablets just aren't that useful compared to laptops with keyboards.
A lot of the rumors point less to a generalized tablet and more to something like a super-high-end Kindle. Imagine a sleeker version of the Kindle DX with a hybrid e-paper LCD screen capable of displaying web pages or movies in full color, including a multitouch screen and a modified iPhone OS.
Still rumor at this point, but it makes a little more sense than the idea of marketing it as a low-end netbook in tablet form at a $1000 price point.
Apple has consistently shown that they're happy with just a portion of the markets they play in--provided it's the most lucrative end of that market
This is a good point. If you've been following Apple for the past decade or so, it's pretty clear that they aren't aiming to achieve world domination (at least not anytime soon). They seem to be satisfied to please what customers they have, keep a high profit margin, and rake in the profits. This seems like a healthy attitude to me. I almost get the sense sometimes like their dominance in MP3 players and online music sales is unintentional, like some kind of happy accident.
From listening to Jobs talk and watching Apple's moves, I don't think they're aiming for every computer to be a Mac or every phone to be an iPhone. They don't even seem to want to compete in the sub-$500 desktop market or sub-$1k laptop market. They like being perceived as the underdog who deserves to win and the company that makes cool high-end products. I can almost imagine Jobs being disappointed if owning a Mac becomes normal and totally uninteresting.
Try this search:
http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&q=test [google.ca]
When I right click on the first result and select "Copy Link Location" this is copied into clipboard:
I did that, and here's the output from my clipboard:
http://www.test.com/
Someone else has apparently discovered that what you're describing only happens in Firefox. Maybe it's Mozilla's fault? Or maybe there's an extension that's doing this?
You mean like Justin Long and John Hodgeman beating up Brent Spiner?
Well in that case I believe that he also provided the voice for the character. I think there was another movie, though, where he provided the motion capture without any voice. (Maybe for King Kong in Peter Jackson's version? He's credited as "Kong" in IMDB.)