Here is a better one. Let's say you take a basic flu strain and modify it to produce purple splotches. That flu strain now belongs to you. You are free to infect yourself with said flu strain. Now, if you do so, you are also free to wander around coughing on people. However, if anyone catches said flu, they are thieves. Anyone developing purple splotches is a thief, pure and simple.
Sounds similar to TeaLeaf. We recently had a demo of Tealeaf to show how the web interface could be evaluated and improved. Tealeaf tracks all of the generated html a customer views. It can replay the exact experience from the customer's view point. Interesting stuff... I've also seen some of Omniture's software. It was able to show what a customer clicked on to navigate to a certain spot in the site.It also showed how often different parts were clicked on.
This type of software is good to determine what is being used, and what is waste, on a site.
but there's still a whole lot of people who live out in the country and small rural towns where the population density isn't high enough for UPS, FedEx and broadband to be profitable enough to serve these citizens.
I still have family that lives in a small rural town. Population of about 4000, and the next town over (about 30,000 population) is a 2 hour drive. They installed fiber about 5 years ago. My grandmother has faster Internet than I can get in the city. UPS also has little problem delivering. Granted, 2-day delivery is more like 7-day. However, they do deliver. I have to wonder how many small towns still fit your description.
That all depends on whether you consider mail to be critical infrastructure or not. Twenty years ago, mail was the primary means of communication. It is not so much now. I haven't mailed anything (other than census info) in 15 years. As soon as the US Government learns about e-mail and digital signatures, I shouldn't even need mail delivery. Cell phones, Internet, and package carriers have largely replaced the post office.
Pizza delivery, on the other hand, has never been considered critical infrastructure. Unless you are a college student.
Used to live within a mile of a slaughterhouse. I really miss the fresh jerky and sausage... Commercial pig farms on the other hand do stink. Shame that small pig farms can't meet demand.
Of course, charging higher prices for rural wouldn't have an effect on any large commercial operation. Their mail comes from the corporate offices.
It might be an interesting case to hear, when it is disclosed that the owner broadcast detailed instructions to press the button on the glove box to access the contents.
I'd have to find my manual again, but I'm fairly certain that there is a paragraph in there somewhere that says that using the device to produce a copy of the movie violates your license to use the device. Come to think of it, I believe it also said something about professional movies being violation the license, So no, the camera company won't be sued, you will.
Chromium has limited support for addons. I installed Chromium, and went to look for my favorite addons. It was easy to find imitations, addons that borrowed the name of popular Firefox addons. However, going to DownloadThemAll's site brought me to: No Google Chrome support. The short article talks about Chrome's limitations. The gist of it can be shown in this quote: "While support for some types of extensions was added to Chrome just recently, the extension system in Chrome simply doesn’t cut it. It is only very limited in what you can do."
The end of the article links to Why Chrome has No NoScript. That short post goes on to link to forum posts and bug reports showing why basic addons can't work with Chrome.
you get 'I can't play that video on Linux, as it's in quicktime.' or 'You need to download codec pack 1.245.231.v.2010, but make sure you don't get 1.245.232.v.2010. Unless you have an ATI video card, in which case you need to download the source, run this diff file, then compile. Unless you're also using an AMD proc, in which case disable this compiler flag or you'll get weird sync issues.
I've not had any of these problems with current video on Internet. The only problems I've encountered are specialized plug-ins that only work on specific platforms. However, if these problems do exist, wouldn't it then be in the best interest of the media provider to use a codec that doesn't exhibit these problems? That still leaves the codec decision between the media provider and end-user, with the media player (browser) remaining neutral.
I don't get it. Why are browsers placing restrictions on codecs? Back when there was that big debate over which codec should be mandated by the standard, I thought it was smart to leave it out of the standard. After all, no other media player restricts playback to specific codecs. Now browsers are trying to restrict which codecs can be used. Why?
Why can't the browsers just use whatever is installed on the system and leave it up to the end users and media providers to decide which codecs to use, just like every other media player?
I actually didn't realize that Flash was an open standard. My assumption, based on the limited number of applications implementing it and its popularity, was that it was closed. I just figured that the very few non-Adobe applications that use it had reverse-engineered it. Learn something new everyday.
Open PDF-creating software is just finally getting started really it seems
Not sure what you mean here. I've been using Ghostscript for 14 years now. It has never had a problem generating PDF for me. You did say open, so I should note that the GPL version came out 7 years ago.
It may be because most programs for creating SVG graphics are using the.svg format instead of PDF
Hmm, I never thought about using SVG to replace PDF. I suppose you could. I'm not sure how well SVG implements paper-space.
They have different purposes. SVG was designed to produce vector graphics for the WWW. PDF was designed to produce a digital print job. PDF does make use of vector graphics. However, it was meant as an end-deliverable. That is why the ability to edit PDF is so limited.
It's still a complete mystery why HTML web standards stopped at "dynamic and moving text" instead of continuing onto "dynamic and moving verticies and lines"
That isn't much of a mystery. HTML stands for Hyper-TEXT markup language. The World Wide Web Consortium did create a web-standard to handle "dynamic and moving verticies and lines". They called it Scalable Vector Graphics
Bought the DVD. Tried it on 3 players. On the RJTech, it dies half way into the movie. The home-brew media center plays the movie. However, I can't get scene selection to work. It plays with some minor skipping on the original XBox. I honestly just thought it was a bad encoding until I seen this story.
No, it keeps honest people from using the product they've paid for.
It doesn't stop the people who want to steal your car radio, GPS, etc., but it stops all the people who might be willing to just reach inside and take something off your car seat.
It also keeps the people who own the fucking car from driving it.
Hmm, so it is like the lock on my car. Battery dies in the key ring and the car is useless until I can get it replaced. Have to spend a few hundred dollars to get a copy of the key, a backup, because there is some radio thing embedded in the key and the local lock smith can't copy it.
Does the copy to CD feature in XP create an ISO-9660 compatible CD file system, or even Joliet? I thought it was some weird packet writing format.
No special formats, it writes standard ISO-9660 with Joliet extensions. I've used it plenty of times when I needed to copy data off a computer.
I'm not bashing PDF, but just pointing out that PDF writers are rare. Windows doesn't have default printer drivers that write to PDF, Word doesn't have a save-as-PDF option that I can find.
The business segment you refer to will be buying new pcs with win7 pro installed
Businesses use pre-installed operating systems? Maybe Mom-and-Pop small business that doesn't have an IT department. Everyone else has a default image they load themselves. The company I work for still uses XP, skipped Vista, and is experimenting with 7.
You can play some really cool uber geeky games like "fox hunting" where you put your radio direction finding skills to the test.
Reminds me of "Cat and Mouse". Played it as a teen with CB. The idea was to find a spot to hide and then transmit what you could see around you. Then everyone else had to find you. Great fun!
I've been this way for my entire life, as have my wife and kids. Personally, I have always just believed that the one-size-fits-all model of human behavior is wrong. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority in this opinion. It is nice to know that it is being studied. Thanks for the link. It is an interesting article.
I was thinking of the AVI 1.0 spec when I wrote that. In that spec, file size is limited to 4GB by spec, 2GB by Windows. That spec also fails to standardize methods for encoding aspect ratios or time stamps. It lacks support for variable frame rates. It can not access future video frame data beyond the current frame. There have been several extensions to that spec, created by various manufacturers. It doesn't surprise me that one of them extended the maximum file size. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a current AVI spec that includes all of the extensions. Several of these extensions are not mutually compatible.
If you are using DV with AVI, and use professional equipment, chances are you are using the DV-AVI Type 1 spec. It keeps the audio/video in the DV-DIF container, dumping the DV-DIF container into the AVI video section to overcome the AVI limitations. A lot of the consumer-grade stuff uses DV-AVI Type 2, which splits the audio off into the AVI audio section. However, you lose DV's tight A/V synchronization. Unless you are targeting a particular platform (Windows in this case), there is no benefit to wrapping DV-DIF in a different container.
You are correct that Microsoft never standardized MJPEG. In fact, no one did. It's just a bunch of JPEG images stitched together. To consider this a real video standard, you would also have to consider animated GIFs to be real video.
I've got a miniDV camera, and a canon point and shoot that thanks to chdk can record good-enough video. Both give me ".AVI" files, even though one is miniDV, while the other is Mjpeg. Mjpeg files don't work in my editor, while miniDV does.
If you are just doing web-cam quality recording, AVI should be just fine. If you want DVD( or higher) quality video longer than about an hour, multiple sound tracks, subtitles, or menus, AVI files no longer work.
Mjpeg files don't work in my editor,
Ironically enough, this is one of the major problems with most (all?) proprietary codecs. They cost money to use. Most times, this payment is made by the programmer/publisher. To keep the software affordable, they limit the number of proprietary codecs used. If you want software that supports more proprietary codecs, pay more. Your other choices are to pick a common codec that supports what you need and software that supports it, or use non-proprietary codecs.
I assume that I'm not unusual in that I own a lot of books. My book purchasing habits can be broken down as follows:
Have I heard of the book, author, or series? No? Buy it in paperback.
Have I read the paperback and liked the book, author, or series? Yes? Buy it in hardback.
When e-books are priced at or below paperbacks, they replace paperbacks. Otherwise, I don't buy e-books. Don't take this to mean I don't own e-books. I've found some surprisingly good authors who self-publish. There are also several publishers that either give e-books away, or sell them near paperback prices. I have no interest otherwise.
*Notebook computer (2007-?): Can put it in your purse and hold it like the bible, but good luck reading a document, doing anything useful. My wife uses hers to play Netflix movies while she uses her fullsize laptop.
My Wife disagrees a bit. She likes to read a lot. I tried the full size laptop, it was too bulky. I tried the PDA, the display was too small. The Netbook fit just right with her needs. She uses it for reading (ebooks), email, SIP, movies, and notes. She uses the desktop for document creation as she prefers a full size keyboard.
As for the Tablet, my brother is the artist type. He uses a tablet computer as a portable sketch book.
Slashdot Mirror
Somehow your analogies don't scale.
Here is a better one. Let's say you take a basic flu strain and modify it to produce purple splotches. That flu strain now belongs to you. You are free to infect yourself with said flu strain. Now, if you do so, you are also free to wander around coughing on people. However, if anyone catches said flu, they are thieves. Anyone developing purple splotches is a thief, pure and simple.
Sounds similar to TeaLeaf. We recently had a demo of Tealeaf to show how the web interface could be evaluated and improved. Tealeaf tracks all of the generated html a customer views. It can replay the exact experience from the customer's view point. Interesting stuff... I've also seen some of Omniture's software. It was able to show what a customer clicked on to navigate to a certain spot in the site.It also showed how often different parts were clicked on.
This type of software is good to determine what is being used, and what is waste, on a site.
but there's still a whole lot of people who live out in the country and small rural towns where the population density isn't high enough for UPS, FedEx and broadband to be profitable enough to serve these citizens.
I still have family that lives in a small rural town. Population of about 4000, and the next town over (about 30,000 population) is a 2 hour drive. They installed fiber about 5 years ago. My grandmother has faster Internet than I can get in the city. UPS also has little problem delivering. Granted, 2-day delivery is more like 7-day. However, they do deliver. I have to wonder how many small towns still fit your description.
That all depends on whether you consider mail to be critical infrastructure or not. Twenty years ago, mail was the primary means of communication. It is not so much now. I haven't mailed anything (other than census info) in 15 years. As soon as the US Government learns about e-mail and digital signatures, I shouldn't even need mail delivery. Cell phones, Internet, and package carriers have largely replaced the post office.
Pizza delivery, on the other hand, has never been considered critical infrastructure. Unless you are a college student.
How about a slaughterhouse?
Used to live within a mile of a slaughterhouse. I really miss the fresh jerky and sausage... Commercial pig farms on the other hand do stink. Shame that small pig farms can't meet demand.
Of course, charging higher prices for rural wouldn't have an effect on any large commercial operation. Their mail comes from the corporate offices.
It might be an interesting case to hear, when it is disclosed that the owner broadcast detailed instructions to press the button on the glove box to access the contents.
I'd have to find my manual again, but I'm fairly certain that there is a paragraph in there somewhere that says that using the device to produce a copy of the movie violates your license to use the device. Come to think of it, I believe it also said something about professional movies being violation the license, So no, the camera company won't be sued, you will.
Chromium has limited support for addons. I installed Chromium, and went to look for my favorite addons. It was easy to find imitations, addons that borrowed the name of popular Firefox addons. However, going to DownloadThemAll's site brought me to: No Google Chrome support. The short article talks about Chrome's limitations. The gist of it can be shown in this quote: "While support for some types of extensions was added to Chrome just recently, the extension system in Chrome simply doesn’t cut it. It is only very limited in what you can do."
The end of the article links to Why Chrome has No NoScript. That short post goes on to link to forum posts and bug reports showing why basic addons can't work with Chrome.
Not surprising. I've heard that a butterfly, flapping its wings on the other side of the planet, can adversely affect the stock market.
you get 'I can't play that video on Linux, as it's in quicktime.' or 'You need to download codec pack 1.245.231.v.2010, but make sure you don't get 1.245.232.v.2010. Unless you have an ATI video card, in which case you need to download the source, run this diff file, then compile. Unless you're also using an AMD proc, in which case disable this compiler flag or you'll get weird sync issues.
I've not had any of these problems with current video on Internet. The only problems I've encountered are specialized plug-ins that only work on specific platforms. However, if these problems do exist, wouldn't it then be in the best interest of the media provider to use a codec that doesn't exhibit these problems? That still leaves the codec decision between the media provider and end-user, with the media player (browser) remaining neutral.
I don't get it. Why are browsers placing restrictions on codecs? Back when there was that big debate over which codec should be mandated by the standard, I thought it was smart to leave it out of the standard. After all, no other media player restricts playback to specific codecs. Now browsers are trying to restrict which codecs can be used. Why?
Why can't the browsers just use whatever is installed on the system and leave it up to the end users and media providers to decide which codecs to use, just like every other media player?
Open PDF-creating software is just finally getting started really it seems
Not sure what you mean here. I've been using Ghostscript for 14 years now. It has never had a problem generating PDF for me. You did say open, so I should note that the GPL version came out 7 years ago.
It may be because most programs for creating SVG graphics are using the .svg format instead of PDF
Hmm, I never thought about using SVG to replace PDF. I suppose you could. I'm not sure how well SVG implements paper-space.
They have different purposes. SVG was designed to produce vector graphics for the WWW. PDF was designed to produce a digital print job. PDF does make use of vector graphics. However, it was meant as an end-deliverable. That is why the ability to edit PDF is so limited.
It's still a complete mystery why HTML web standards stopped at "dynamic and moving text" instead of continuing onto "dynamic and moving verticies and lines"
That isn't much of a mystery. HTML stands for Hyper-TEXT markup language. The World Wide Web Consortium did create a web-standard to handle "dynamic and moving verticies and lines". They called it Scalable Vector Graphics
Bought the DVD. Tried it on 3 players. On the RJTech, it dies half way into the movie. The home-brew media center plays the movie. However, I can't get scene selection to work. It plays with some minor skipping on the original XBox. I honestly just thought it was a bad encoding until I seen this story.
Well, it's like a lock on a car door
No, it's nothing like a lock on a car door.
it keeps honest people honest
No, it keeps honest people from using the product they've paid for.
It doesn't stop the people who want to steal your car radio, GPS, etc., but it stops all the people who might be willing to just reach inside and take something off your car seat.
It also keeps the people who own the fucking car from driving it.
Hmm, so it is like the lock on my car. Battery dies in the key ring and the car is useless until I can get it replaced. Have to spend a few hundred dollars to get a copy of the key, a backup, because there is some radio thing embedded in the key and the local lock smith can't copy it.
Does the copy to CD feature in XP create an ISO-9660 compatible CD file system, or even Joliet? I thought it was some weird packet writing format.
No special formats, it writes standard ISO-9660 with Joliet extensions. I've used it plenty of times when I needed to copy data off a computer.
I'm not bashing PDF, but just pointing out that PDF writers are rare. Windows doesn't have default printer drivers that write to PDF, Word doesn't have a save-as-PDF option that I can find.
Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS. It is a free download.
Myself, I use a simple format saved in HTML. Everything, including my old Atari, can read it.
The business segment you refer to will be buying new pcs with win7 pro installed
Businesses use pre-installed operating systems? Maybe Mom-and-Pop small business that doesn't have an IT department. Everyone else has a default image they load themselves. The company I work for still uses XP, skipped Vista, and is experimenting with 7.
You can play some really cool uber geeky games like "fox hunting" where you put your radio direction finding skills to the test.
Reminds me of "Cat and Mouse". Played it as a teen with CB. The idea was to find a spot to hide and then transmit what you could see around you. Then everyone else had to find you. Great fun!
Unfortunately, not everywhere. I have business users screaming to be allowed to use databases. However, IT insists they use Excel.
I'd have to find the current stats. However, I don't think it is Windows 7. More likely, it is Windows XP. IE9 won't run on that operating system.
I've been this way for my entire life, as have my wife and kids. Personally, I have always just believed that the one-size-fits-all model of human behavior is wrong. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority in this opinion. It is nice to know that it is being studied. Thanks for the link. It is an interesting article.
I was thinking of the AVI 1.0 spec when I wrote that. In that spec, file size is limited to 4GB by spec, 2GB by Windows. That spec also fails to standardize methods for encoding aspect ratios or time stamps. It lacks support for variable frame rates. It can not access future video frame data beyond the current frame. There have been several extensions to that spec, created by various manufacturers. It doesn't surprise me that one of them extended the maximum file size. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a current AVI spec that includes all of the extensions. Several of these extensions are not mutually compatible.
If you are using DV with AVI, and use professional equipment, chances are you are using the DV-AVI Type 1 spec. It keeps the audio/video in the DV-DIF container, dumping the DV-DIF container into the AVI video section to overcome the AVI limitations. A lot of the consumer-grade stuff uses DV-AVI Type 2, which splits the audio off into the AVI audio section. However, you lose DV's tight A/V synchronization. Unless you are targeting a particular platform (Windows in this case), there is no benefit to wrapping DV-DIF in a different container.
You are correct that Microsoft never standardized MJPEG. In fact, no one did. It's just a bunch of JPEG images stitched together. To consider this a real video standard, you would also have to consider animated GIFs to be real video.
I've got a miniDV camera, and a canon point and shoot that thanks to chdk can record good-enough video. Both give me ".AVI" files, even though one is miniDV, while the other is Mjpeg. Mjpeg files don't work in my editor, while miniDV does.
If you are just doing web-cam quality recording, AVI should be just fine. If you want DVD( or higher) quality video longer than about an hour, multiple sound tracks, subtitles, or menus, AVI files no longer work.
Mjpeg files don't work in my editor,
Ironically enough, this is one of the major problems with most (all?) proprietary codecs. They cost money to use. Most times, this payment is made by the programmer/publisher. To keep the software affordable, they limit the number of proprietary codecs used. If you want software that supports more proprietary codecs, pay more. Your other choices are to pick a common codec that supports what you need and software that supports it, or use non-proprietary codecs.
Paying clerks $6.00 an hour to work from midnight to 8:00AM
They still have those? I thought they replaced them all with card readers years ago.
I assume that I'm not unusual in that I own a lot of books. My book purchasing habits can be broken down as follows:
Have I heard of the book, author, or series? No? Buy it in paperback.
Have I read the paperback and liked the book, author, or series? Yes? Buy it in hardback.
When e-books are priced at or below paperbacks, they replace paperbacks. Otherwise, I don't buy e-books. Don't take this to mean I don't own e-books. I've found some surprisingly good authors who self-publish. There are also several publishers that either give e-books away, or sell them near paperback prices. I have no interest otherwise.
*Notebook computer (2007-?): Can put it in your purse and hold it like the bible, but good luck reading a document, doing anything useful. My wife uses hers to play Netflix movies while she uses her fullsize laptop.
My Wife disagrees a bit. She likes to read a lot. I tried the full size laptop, it was too bulky. I tried the PDA, the display was too small. The Netbook fit just right with her needs. She uses it for reading (ebooks), email, SIP, movies, and notes. She uses the desktop for document creation as she prefers a full size keyboard.
As for the Tablet, my brother is the artist type. He uses a tablet computer as a portable sketch book.
The rest I agree with.