The Google Code page for Webp makes grand claims that Webp is better than JPEG and JPEG2000 at compressing images, and then points to a study that compares the three methods by having each recompress an image that is already JPEG-compressed. Recompressing a previously-lossily-compressed image is a rather different task than compressed an original image.
It is unclear to me how quality was measured for all the graphs in the study -- was quality measured against the original image? I doubt that -- the images were harvested from Flickr, so the original (pre-JPEG-compression) aren't likely to be available. Instead, the quality was measured against the decompressed images, which have been blurred by the JPEG process.
If one wants to take one's collection of JPEG-compressed images and compress them further, without losing quality, one should decode the Huffman-encoded stream and re-encode using an arithmetic coder. One will save about 10% of the filesize without losing any quality at all. The Q coder is specified in the JPEG standard, so this can be done in a standards-compliant way, though no web browser supports that (which is a problem Webp also has).
"People don't want bug fixes, they want new features and bells and whistles instead."
I remember that interview: Bill Gates was asserting that people won't pay for bug fixes, but only for new bells and whistles. And he's right! People expect software with no bugs and they expect that the inevitable bugs will be fixed for free. The big problem, of course, is that Microsoft put new bells and whistles at a higher priority than bug fixes since they get paid for the former but do the latter for free.
For software companies, not just Microsoft, there is almost no cost associated with manufacturing and distribution. The cost of developing the software, however, is real and is accrued before the software ships, hence it is accounted for as "Research and Development." Microsoft's "billions of dollars" of R&D is really Microsoft's labor costs -- the programmers who write the code. I suspect that actual real research is a small portion of that sum.
This "war is good for technology" meme is complete hogwash. And has been throughout recorded history.
Unfortunately, this meme is not complete hogwash, but not because war is somehow inherently good.
The reason that war has coincided with many advances is that during war there is a concentration of investment into research and development. Whenever there is such a concentration, results follow. See for example all of the technology that came out of the space program.
this doesn't really mean TOO much in the document world Oh, but it does. The use of internationally-recognized standard document formats is slowly being mandated by governments world-wide. This also drove Microsoft to send OOXML to ISO. Adobe has been losing some sales to (for example) vendors of ISO-15444-6 (JPEG2000 compound image file format).
I bought AppleWorks, knowing full well that it was "abandonware," and that I will never see an upgrade. I bought it because it is native OS X, it is very easy to use, it is very well integrated, it does its job and does it very well, and it opens old AppleWorks and ClarisWorks files. It is a very good piece of software.
iWorks has some very nice programs. I use Pages -- for page layout it is nicer than AppleWorks. But iWorks still doesn't offer everything that AppleWorks did -- no paint tool, no draw tool, no database tool -- so even if (or when) I upgrade my iWorks to iWorks '08 I will still find uses for AppleWorks.
One of the requirements of the JPEG comittee for this proposed standard is that Microsoft (and all other participants of this process) provide their patents on a free and non-discriminatory basis. Free as in beer, no money. Non-discriminatory meaning that anyone can license them; Microsoft can't say that only certain developers are "cool enough" or "good enough" to receive a license. Many of the JPEG standards operate under these terms: the baseline process of the original JPEG, JPEG2000 part 1, and others.
Give the article some credit -- the author is trying to warn people about the risks of using pixelation or blurring on personal information, and rightly says that such information should be blacked out instead. Read some of the other comments on this thread and you'll see that people have already come up with several ways to improve the algorithm, strengthening the main point of the article.
Better in that he actually tested the Zune, measured its battery life (and found it to be 14% shorter than claimed), tested its WiFi sharing (and found it to not work as well as advertized), and actually used it.
The review is not all negative, and is worth reading.
Re:Take THAT, space science nay-sayers!
on
Glass In Spaaaaace
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· Score: 1
This is poor science, and very expensive at that. "Applications" are less science more more engineering or product development -- let the companies that see a profit in these products invest the enormous sums needed. If you want science, there are significantly better ways of spending money on research that will produce significantly more discoveries in a shorter amount of time.
PowerPoint and Word files look different on different Wintel machines. PPT and Word formats depend on the installed fonts, the system font size, random magic values from the printer driver, and probably the random number generator.
If you need to create a file that will look the same on most screens, you should probably use PDF or PostScript.
Or just stick to plain text. (what was that charset again?)
Slashdot Mirror
I've used iStopMotion -- and loved it. Only a customer, not connected with the company in any way.
It is unclear to me how quality was measured for all the graphs in the study -- was quality measured against the original image? I doubt that -- the images were harvested from Flickr, so the original (pre-JPEG-compression) aren't likely to be available. Instead, the quality was measured against the decompressed images, which have been blurred by the JPEG process.
If one wants to take one's collection of JPEG-compressed images and compress them further, without losing quality, one should decode the Huffman-encoded stream and re-encode using an arithmetic coder. One will save about 10% of the filesize without losing any quality at all. The Q coder is specified in the JPEG standard, so this can be done in a standards-compliant way, though no web browser supports that (which is a problem Webp also has).
"People don't want bug fixes, they want new features and bells and whistles instead."
I remember that interview: Bill Gates was asserting that people won't pay for bug fixes, but only for new bells and whistles. And he's right! People expect software with no bugs and they expect that the inevitable bugs will be fixed for free. The big problem, of course, is that Microsoft put new bells and whistles at a higher priority than bug fixes since they get paid for the former but do the latter for free.
Canada is actually a mash-up of Great Britain 2.1 and France 2.2.
That would be easy, just get George Lucas to do it.
NO! Call Michael Bay!
Surely you meant Uwe Boll?
/me ducks
What's next, not hiring someone because the name of the street they live on is dorky?
What, like this?
For software companies, not just Microsoft, there is almost no cost associated with manufacturing and distribution. The cost of developing the software, however, is real and is accrued before the software ships, hence it is accounted for as "Research and Development." Microsoft's "billions of dollars" of R&D is really Microsoft's labor costs -- the programmers who write the code. I suspect that actual real research is a small portion of that sum.
This "war is good for technology" meme is complete hogwash. And has been throughout recorded history.
Unfortunately, this meme is not complete hogwash, but not because war is somehow inherently good.
The reason that war has coincided with many advances is that during war there is a concentration of investment into research and development. Whenever there is such a concentration, results follow. See for example all of the technology that came out of the space program.
I bought AppleWorks, knowing full well that it was "abandonware," and that I will never see an upgrade. I bought it because it is native OS X, it is very easy to use, it is very well integrated, it does its job and does it very well, and it opens old AppleWorks and ClarisWorks files. It is a very good piece of software.
iWorks has some very nice programs. I use Pages -- for page layout it is nicer than AppleWorks. But iWorks still doesn't offer everything that AppleWorks did -- no paint tool, no draw tool, no database tool -- so even if (or when) I upgrade my iWorks to iWorks '08 I will still find uses for AppleWorks.
One of the requirements of the JPEG comittee for this proposed standard is that Microsoft (and all other participants of this process) provide their patents on a free and non-discriminatory basis. Free as in beer, no money. Non-discriminatory meaning that anyone can license them; Microsoft can't say that only certain developers are "cool enough" or "good enough" to receive a license. Many of the JPEG standards operate under these terms: the baseline process of the original JPEG, JPEG2000 part 1, and others.
Give the article some credit -- the author is trying to warn people about the risks of using pixelation or blurring on personal information, and rightly says that such information should be blacked out instead. Read some of the other comments on this thread and you'll see that people have already come up with several ways to improve the algorithm, strengthening the main point of the article.
Better in that he actually tested the Zune, measured its battery life (and found it to be 14% shorter than claimed), tested its WiFi sharing (and found it to not work as well as advertized), and actually used it.
The review is not all negative, and is worth reading.
Zune (pronounced zee-yoon) - Hebrew colloquialism for fornication; also getting screwed.
It is all out in the open -- if you just speak the right language...
[OT: Kia, the Korean car company, pronounced kee-yah, in Hebrew means vomit. Guess why I'm not buying one?]
And now available as a MacOSX Screensaver module! No hacking necessary! Share and Enjoy!
XScreenSaver
This is poor science, and very expensive at that. "Applications" are less science more more engineering or product development -- let the companies that see a profit in these products invest the enormous sums needed. If you want science, there are significantly better ways of spending money on research that will produce significantly more discoveries in a shorter amount of time.
PowerPoint and Word files look different on different Wintel machines. PPT and Word formats depend on the installed fonts, the system font size, random magic values from the printer driver, and probably the random number generator.
If you need to create a file that will look the same on most screens, you should probably use PDF or PostScript.
Or just stick to plain text. (what was that charset again?)