I suspect it could be quite some time before we see an open source player for Windows Media Format, if one appears at all. The CNet story doesn't say so, but I think we can assume that Real (and the other 70 companies) have paid Microsoft, and probably quite handsomly, for the license.
Even if one of the major distributions, Red Hat, SuSE, etc were to license it, you can bet the terms of the license would not permit the opening of the codec. What we could possibly see would be an open source player using plugins for various codecs (this would make it very expandable without the need to recompile a new version for new codecs of course) where the WMF plugin had to be closed source.
Course it could still be free for download and all that malarky, which is definately better than nothing.
WMF seems to unfortunately becoming a very popular standard amongst streaming media services, this does rather seem to strengthen Microsoft's grip (not monopolistic yet, but you know that's where they're planning to head) on the streaming media area. The more players support WMF, the more suppliers will serve their streams as WMF, and M$ control the standard.
Of course, WMF pales in comparison to MPEG2 (and newer versions). As broadband in the home becomes more of a reality, and the hardware to provide decent decoding for MPEG more accesible (most new video cards include hardware decoding, and even if they don't, something like the Creative Dxr* cards are not very expensive) the relatively open standard of MPEG could make a good showing, especially in the open source arena.
Ummm, GeForce is by NVidia, and is not part of the Matrox card.
Are there any dual-head GeForce based cards out there incidentally? Does the GeForce chipset include support for it? I don't remember reading anywhere that it does...
There is nothing wrong with email, IRC and the like (yes, Slashdot included) as methods of communication for developers so long as people understand the limitations and treat them sensibly. A few obvious guidelines:
Be aware of people's timezones - and this doesn't neccessarily just mean where they are in the world. Someone could be just up the M1 (Brit reference, sorry everyone else) but it doesn't mean that they exist on the same timezone as you. They may work all night, sleep all day, or not be that extreme, but still not do the 9 - 5 thing. This means that you don't expect instant replies unless you know that the person in question is liklely to furnish you with one.
Treat people like people. They're not just words, text even images on a screen, they're flesh and blood, prick them do they not bleed, DoS them do they not crash? Flames should be a thing of the past. Yes, people say stupid things, but that doesn't mean they should be ripped to pieces. Try to understand people, and remember that people can be hurt by what they read on a screen if it's directed towards them.
Plan your communication as far as possible. A drink and discussion in the pub has to be arranged otherwise you may arrive 2 hours later than the person you were aiming to talk to. Same with IRC chats - arrange when to meet (including time zone), what channel (if there's going to be more than two of you) and, very importantly, what 'net. If you can specifiy a server, so much the better, that way you can avoid netsplits.
In addition to office productivity software (StarOffice, KOffice, GNOME Office, ApplixWare - OK, that one's pretty well on the way to being sorted) the other major issue that the Open Source community needs to address is internet accessibility, and more specifically ease of use once online.
Much as I hate to admit it, Internet Explorer is the browser to beat, largely because of M$'s [illegal?] bundling of it with the OS and OS integration, the average home user wants to be able to click on an icon that's there when they get their PC - that's IE.
Mozilla is the only option for a compliant 'next-generation' browser. The browsers of the near future are going to have to be a one-stop-shop for net usage encompassing browsing with mail, news, instant messaging, chat, streaming media etc etc. This is possible with Mozilla. In addition, they have to be SECURE. When the traditional media report on the internet, and it's one of the rare occasions when it's not about porn, it's about shopping online, banking online, share dealing online. Security is a big BIG issue here.
People who say they shouldn't be including this in beta software have clearly missed the point of beta software. If it doesn't get beta tested, how the hell is it ever going to be made ready for release to the general public?
Go, download this version, test it, try it, even buy stuff with it, be as careful when doing so as you should be with any browser, but most of all, when you break it report it or fix it.
It seems to me that unlike other big corporate competitions (example: supermarket price wars), the speed war between Intel and AMD runs the risk of being bad news for consumers.
As the two companies rush to get newer and faster models of their processors to market before the other, they run the risk of sloppiness.
It's all well and good if AMD can release 900MHz+ Athlons and they work properlly, just as much as it's fresh 'n' funky if Intel can achieve the same with the PIII - there'll always be someone out there who'll buy them, be it to get that extra little kick in Q3A, or to process those SQL statements that little bit faster. However, if the price we have to pay for the extra speed is more than a few extra dollars [or pounds:)] - reduced reliability, it's probably not worth it.
On the other hand, if the machines these processors are going to go in are gonna run Windoze, they'll probably be beaten to crashing by the OS anyway:)
The 1Ghz figure is important to the computing community for the same reason that the year 2000 was important to society as a whole.
We humans have an irrational interest in what we consider to be 'round numbers' whereby we feel that a year with a 'round number' or, in this case, a processor clocked at one will in some way be extra-better as it were over previous incarnations than if it did not have that round number in it's name.
There is also the psychological effect that canging the name of the unit has. Once we are able to rate processors in GHz rather than MHz, people will subconciously expect them to run significantly faster (the difference between 900 & 1000 MHz is not that big, but the difference between 900MHz and 1GHz sounds like a lot more), so the manufacturer who can hit that 'magic number' first will have a bit of a head-start in shifting increased numbers of units.
And of course, the people who buy those processors expecting increased performance gains, will then brag about them, even if they're not noticable, because otherwise they may look foolish.
What very few people will ask is "do I need this". Personally, I have a P166MMX at home, and it does everything I need. I can run Linux, Star Office and Nyetscrape without difficulty. 1GHz would be nice, but frankly, I don't need it.
OK, we all know that the US government owns the world, and that what it says goes, right?
But, how exactly would it prevent Beowulf ending up in the hands of 'unsavoury' regimes?
When, for example, AMD is manufacturing Athlons in Germany, and the code for Beowulf must be mirrored all over the world already, what does the US govt expect to be able to do?
If they wanted to resrict large quantities of CPU's making it to these regimes, it would have to ban US chip manufacturers from building fabs abroad (not terribly feasible, legally). Even if they managed that, there would be nothing to stop foreign firms manufacturing chips.
Then what would they do about the mirrored versions of the code? Shut down every Linux related FTP site in the world 'just-in-case'?
This smells far too much like paranoia, and fuss over nothing, it ain't gonna happen, so why worry about it?
I arrive at work 9am, leave at 5.30, which, with an hour for lunch works out at 37 1/2 hours a week - quite standard for the UK.
For some people (like myself) enjoying life is more important than progressing fast in the workplace. Big deal if my colleagues are putting in more hours than me - I have a wife who I'd quite fancy seeing for a couple of hours before the end of the day.
People don't have to work such long hours - they choose to, and if they don't claim for overtime, then that again is their choice.
I think the fact that this has wiped more than $1bn off the value of M$'s shares (is that American or European billions I wonder...) means that the people who ultimately could make or break M$, the stock guys, care about this ruling.
All the report actually says is that they will look into the possibility of M$ using their position to lever themselves into dominance of other markets. This is something that I suspect they would do to any other big company. In fact, I'm sure they have taken similar action against other comapnies.
What's interesting is that when they do it for other 'monopolistic' companies, there is a pretty mixed response amongst the general populous, but this will almost universally welcomed, irrespective of whether it is actually a good thing for the freedom of the market (which is after all what the EU is there to promote and protect)
Does Red Hat UK actually have a URL of it's own? Or just the entry in redhat.com's list of offices...
Also, does anyone know if Alan'll still be working from home, or if he'll have to move to Guildford (eeewww - that kind of put me off too when I applied for a job with them, just as well I didn't get one in a way)
The quote does indeed say it all, who knows, with a royal seal of approval we might manage to get GNU/Linux in places that hitherto have still remained very anti it (like my place of work, where we rather bizarrly have a Netware web server.
Oh, and in case she does read/., God bless ya your majesty.:)
Should we? Would it really be good for the community?
Microsoft have essentially had the freedom to 'innovate' up until now, and just look at what they've come up with - proprietory systems that redefine the word "unstable"
In any case, what community are you refering to? The 'Open Source' community? The Linux Community? The UN*X Community? or the online/computing community as a whole?
We should all have the freedom to innovate, it's organisations like M$ that seek to restrict that freedom by squashing opposition and their good ol' propoganda.
I say break 'em up, or force them to make Windows Open Source (or at the very least free). The second option is attractive, I would feel less disinclined to pay 200 or whatever it is for Office if I hadn't had to pay about for Windows!
If Microsoft really want to encourage innovation, the way to go about it is *not* to start lobbying Congress to leave them alone - it's to start developing good products in a fair way.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect it could be quite some time before we see an open source player for Windows Media Format, if one appears at all. The CNet story doesn't say so, but I think we can assume that Real (and the other 70 companies) have paid Microsoft, and probably quite handsomly, for the license.
Even if one of the major distributions, Red Hat, SuSE, etc were to license it, you can bet the terms of the license would not permit the opening of the codec. What we could possibly see would be an open source player using plugins for various codecs (this would make it very expandable without the need to recompile a new version for new codecs of course) where the WMF plugin had to be closed source.
Course it could still be free for download and all that malarky, which is definately better than nothing.
WMF seems to unfortunately becoming a very popular standard amongst streaming media services, this does rather seem to strengthen Microsoft's grip (not monopolistic yet, but you know that's where they're planning to head) on the streaming media area. The more players support WMF, the more suppliers will serve their streams as WMF, and M$ control the standard.
Of course, WMF pales in comparison to MPEG2 (and newer versions). As broadband in the home becomes more of a reality, and the hardware to provide decent decoding for MPEG more accesible (most new video cards include hardware decoding, and even if they don't, something like the Creative Dxr* cards are not very expensive) the relatively open standard of MPEG could make a good showing, especially in the open source arena.
--
Ummm, GeForce is by NVidia, and is not part of the Matrox card.
Are there any dual-head GeForce based cards out there incidentally? Does the GeForce chipset include support for it? I don't remember reading anywhere that it does...
--
Well, it'll run under any OS that has drivers written for it ;)
But, I expect Matrox will provide drivers for Winxxx, and XFree86 4.0 has support for it, including multi-head and overlays (in 8-bit and 24-bit)
For information, it also includes support for GeForce and Voodoo3
http://www.xfree86.org/4.0/RELNOTES2.html#15 for info
--
A few obvious guidelines:
--
Much as I hate to admit it, Internet Explorer is the browser to beat, largely because of M$'s [illegal?] bundling of it with the OS and OS integration, the average home user wants to be able to click on an icon that's there when they get their PC - that's IE.
Mozilla is the only option for a compliant 'next-generation' browser. The browsers of the near future are going to have to be a one-stop-shop for net usage encompassing browsing with mail, news, instant messaging, chat, streaming media etc etc. This is possible with Mozilla. In addition, they have to be SECURE. When the traditional media report on the internet, and it's one of the rare occasions when it's not about porn, it's about shopping online, banking online, share dealing online. Security is a big BIG issue here.
People who say they shouldn't be including this in beta software have clearly missed the point of beta software. If it doesn't get beta tested, how the hell is it ever going to be made ready for release to the general public?
Go, download this version, test it, try it, even buy stuff with it, be as careful when doing so as you should be with any browser, but most of all, when you break it report it or fix it.
--
All pretty cool/useful stuff
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...France intends to use this instead of doing the tests for real (remember a few years ago?), then this is great news.
:)
Interesting that this comes so soon after the magical 1GHz announcements by Intel and AMD. Surely not a coincidence?
--
It seems to me that unlike other big corporate competitions (example: supermarket price wars), the speed war between Intel and AMD runs the risk of being bad news for consumers.
:)] - reduced reliability, it's probably not worth it.
:)
As the two companies rush to get newer and faster models of their processors to market before the other, they run the risk of sloppiness.
It's all well and good if AMD can release 900MHz+ Athlons and they work properlly, just as much as it's fresh 'n' funky if Intel can achieve the same with the PIII - there'll always be someone out there who'll buy them, be it to get that extra little kick in Q3A, or to process those SQL statements that little bit faster. However, if the price we have to pay for the extra speed is more than a few extra dollars [or pounds
On the other hand, if the machines these processors are going to go in are gonna run Windoze, they'll probably be beaten to crashing by the OS anyway
--
The 1Ghz figure is important to the computing community for the same reason that the year 2000 was important to society as a whole.
We humans have an irrational interest in what we consider to be 'round numbers' whereby we feel that a year with a 'round number' or, in this case, a processor clocked at one will in some way be extra-better as it were over previous incarnations than if it did not have that round number in it's name.
There is also the psychological effect that canging the name of the unit has. Once we are able to rate processors in GHz rather than MHz, people will subconciously expect them to run significantly faster (the difference between 900 & 1000 MHz is not that big, but the difference between 900MHz and 1GHz sounds like a lot more), so the manufacturer who can hit that 'magic number' first will have a bit of a head-start in shifting increased numbers of units.
And of course, the people who buy those processors expecting increased performance gains, will then brag about them, even if they're not noticable, because otherwise they may look foolish.
What very few people will ask is "do I need this". Personally, I have a P166MMX at home, and it does everything I need. I can run Linux, Star Office and Nyetscrape without difficulty. 1GHz would be nice, but frankly, I don't need it.
--
OK, we all know that the US government owns the world, and that what it says goes, right?
But, how exactly would it prevent Beowulf ending up in the hands of 'unsavoury' regimes?
When, for example, AMD is manufacturing Athlons in Germany, and the code for Beowulf must be mirrored all over the world already, what does the US govt expect to be able to do?
If they wanted to resrict large quantities of CPU's making it to these regimes, it would have to ban US chip manufacturers from building fabs abroad (not terribly feasible, legally). Even if they managed that, there would be nothing to stop foreign firms manufacturing chips.
Then what would they do about the mirrored versions of the code? Shut down every Linux related FTP site in the world 'just-in-case'?
This smells far too much like paranoia, and fuss over nothing, it ain't gonna happen, so why worry about it?
--
I work my contracted hours and no more!
I arrive at work 9am, leave at 5.30, which, with an hour for lunch works out at 37 1/2 hours a week - quite standard for the UK.
For some people (like myself) enjoying life is more important than progressing fast in the workplace. Big deal if my colleagues are putting in more hours than me - I have a wife who I'd quite fancy seeing for a couple of hours before the end of the day.
People don't have to work such long hours - they choose to, and if they don't claim for overtime, then that again is their choice.
--
I think the fact that this has wiped more than $1bn off the value of M$'s shares (is that American or European billions I wonder...) means that the people who ultimately could make or break M$, the stock guys, care about this ruling.
All the report actually says is that they will look into the possibility of M$ using their position to lever themselves into dominance of other markets. This is something that I suspect they would do to any other big company. In fact, I'm sure they have taken similar action against other comapnies.
What's interesting is that when they do it for other 'monopolistic' companies, there is a pretty mixed response amongst the general populous, but this will almost universally welcomed, irrespective of whether it is actually a good thing for the freedom of the market (which is after all what the EU is there to promote and protect)
--
Also, does anyone know if Alan'll still be working from home, or if he'll have to move to Guildford (eeewww - that kind of put me off too when I applied for a job with them, just as well I didn't get one in a way)
Quite apart from the fact that there are other projects already out there, you ouight to at least get your own URL right...
Try http://www.cubicle2.freeserve.co.uk/ instead
There is more than England in the EU, in fact, there's more than England just in the UK...
This decision will have been taken in Brussels I expect.
I would say that the Operating System is the very core of what's running on your system. The barest minimum without which nothing would run.
i.e. it's the bit that talks directly to the hardware, and which applications, services etc require to run.
It does not include a browser, text editor, compiler or even the GUI (sorry Bill).
Sorry this isn't terribly technical or even coherant, not had much caffeine yet today...
The quote does indeed say it all, who knows, with a royal seal of approval we might manage to get GNU/Linux in places that hitherto have still remained very anti it (like my place of work, where we rather bizarrly have a Netware web server.
/., God bless ya your majesty. :)
Oh, and in case she does read
RT
Microsoft have essentially had the freedom to 'innovate' up until now, and just look at what they've come up with - proprietory systems that redefine the word "unstable"
In any case, what community are you refering to? The 'Open Source' community? The Linux Community? The UN*X Community? or the online/computing community as a whole?
We should all have the freedom to innovate, it's organisations like M$ that seek to restrict that freedom by squashing opposition and their good ol' propoganda.
I say break 'em up, or force them to make Windows Open Source (or at the very least free). The second option is attractive, I would feel less disinclined to pay 200 or whatever it is for Office if I hadn't had to pay about for Windows!
If Microsoft really want to encourage innovation, the way to go about it is *not* to start lobbying Congress to leave them alone - it's to start developing good products in a fair way.
Yes, because, well, yes the law (UK law anyway, I assume US law) states that goods have to be sold as advertised.
No, because I suspect you will find something in the small print of the declaration (if one were made) that covered it!
I do hope they don't get that certification until it is 100% compatible, wouldn't do a great deal for Red Hat's or Linux's reputation, now would it?