All these patents fights are over a software algorithm shows that there's no real innovation here:
I completely disagree. This shows that there is (amazingly) some innovation in places where before there was none. H.264 encode/decode is a pretty good "algorithm" (it is many). You get a lot of quality for a very, very low band-width price. The fact that it is an (among others) ITU-T job is astonishing. Such organizations are usually hindering progress, not foisting it.
The fact that Google is trying to copy this stuff and make it free for everybody is both bad behavior on part of Google, but it is also basically irrelevant for you and me. We are never going to pay for decoding H.264 online, not even indirectly. If we want to encode H.264 we'll have to buy software to do so, and the software vendor will have paid a license fee and baked it into the price of our product. Thing is, these apps are going to have to support H.264 anyway, so the better (and H.264 is better by a good margin than VP8) encoder is always going to be available to a content producer. Why would he use VP8? There is no gain or loss in selecting VP8 over H.264.
VP8 is pushed by Google for one, and only one reason. So that Google can stand on the shoulders of others and not pay. It's pathetic. If Google was half the companies their deluded employees think it is, they would have been able to come up with a solution that wasn't encumbered by patents. Sadly Google has only done one thing well, and that was a search engine. Everything else is either bought or just not that good, and they simply do not have the talent on staff to do what the ITU-T committee could.
A free as in money alternative that is as good as H.264 baseline profile will take a lot of revenue away from the MPLA.
Why would it? If you are in the encode business, you have to support H.264, it's that simple. Anyone who produces content is going to have a tool to create H.264 content. So what is the purpose of VP8? None for the community as such. Remember, you and I do not pay for this unless we are content creators, and as a content creator, if you don't do H.264 or MPEG-2, both have license fees, then you are not creating content for anything but your own mastubatory needs.
So, VP8 is a codec for one player, and one player only, Google. They don't want to pay for encoding H.264 so they make a bad, cheap copy and try to convince the world that it is better off with that encoder in it. Reality is that it doesn't matter at all. VP8 is junk, and it is designed to have Google, and ONLY Google, pay less for content creation on YouTube and probably in the mobile space in the future. Nothing else. For everybody else it is irrelevant and will always be irrelevant.
This isn't Google trying to do no evil, this is Google wanting to free-load on the works of others.
They still charge for encoding. Perhaps more importantly, do you think that they made H.264 decoding free out of the goodness of their good little hearts, or because Google called their bluff?
Neither. Honestly, they did it because that is what the players in the MPEG-LA wanted. They knew that a new standard codec was needed. The knew Microsoft was giving away VC-1 for free, and without a free play-back situation for H.264, the proprietary, single vendor (and arguably better quality) VC-1 would become the standard - remember the Blu-Ray standard allows VC-1 in addition to H.264 and MPEG-2.
H.264 is a great codec. It took a lot to get it up and going and it took a lot to get it standardized and documented. It should be obvious to anyone that the parties should be rewarded for the effort. The idea that Google should be allowed to just copy (yeah, VP8 is a bad, bad, bad copy of H.264) it and get away with it is absurd.
Look at how many millions Microsoft has put into Silverlight. Now, if they only have a handful of sites using it, they can only make money back off those same sites
Microsoft makes nothing off Silverlight. It's free from Microsoft, both the developer tools (unless you want to use the non-free versions, but why would you if cost is an issue?) and the runtime is entirely free.
Lets face it, the only reason that Netflix would choose to adopt a new technology is if it made it cheaper for them.
Possibly cheaper, more likely, with better features. Netflix can easily do with Silverlight what is currently not possible in HTML or easy in Flash.
Let me get this right - they're making money, while risking none of their own
Yeah, you must be right. They are not risking any of their own. Purchasing land, building casinos, hiring staff, training staff all of that stuff, and all of the other stuff that is required to run a brick-and-mortar casino is "risking none of their own".
Are you always this dumb or only when you have been corrected on statements that were wrong?
Floor space isn't expensive (relatively)
Hmmm. Seems like the dumb is a general condition. Heard about Opportunity Cost? Sorry, you are simply wrong. $100/hour is not a lot of cash. It probably is for you, by all means, but it doesn't more than just about cover the cost at a Vegas casino. Perhaps not even that. TV poker is where it is at for Casinos, but without poker there is no TV poker, so poker they need. Basically a loss-leader when considering opportunity cost.
the poker room can be in a secluded area
This one was in a suite, but most casinos have floor space in the main room dedicated to poker. You've never been to a casino?
Yeah, and the Kinect was the fastest selling electronic gadget in history just because... you know... because... let's see... I'd say, probably because it's one of the most awesome gadgets ever:-)
Its still closed source and not at all developer friendly
Yes, it is closed source, but not developer friendly? What do you mean by that? I do business apps, so I have to write code for our Win7 stuff, I need to look at (but have of course not deployed any) Win8 stuff, our mobile platform is Android, so some of the stuff I do have to work on Android, I have even dabbled in making one app available for iPhone users. To keep on top of things, obviously I also work on Win Phone stuff, particularly since I have one as my main phone, I prefer it over my Galaxy SIII.
I can say, with confidence, that delivering for Windows Phone is by far the best development experience. Delivering on Android is, comparatively, nightmarish, and even iOS is painful in comparison. I would estimate that development time is about 50-60% on WinPhone compared to Android and iOS - depending. Even a Java client app I had to port was ported faster to WinPhone than to Android.
WinPhone easily, and with a significant margin, has the best developer experience of the current mobile platforms. It is a boon that it can share code with the desktop and web (in the case of.NET MVC) apps of course. That is of course an advantage Android also has with our jBoss hosted apps.
Outside of IBM, I don't know of any technology company who has supported their existing customer base longer than Microsoft. Hell, you can even run a large number of DOS applications on Windows 7 today.
It is always a good idea if the moron posting to/. information from another source, that said moron actually knows how to read before posting. The article referred says nothing of the kind.
Slashdot is getting sadder and sadder. Once it was a forum for geek stuff, then it became a forum for uneducated idiots who wants to become geeks, and now, apparently, article posters are not even required to have basic reeding and righting skills.
It either takes a cut out of every pot or it takes a one-time fee (for tournaments). It doesn't however participate in the game. Also, no, it isn't really possible for everyone at the table to lose money, since the casino cut is quite small, much smaller than the skill variation among players. Even if, theoretically, every player was equally skilled and none were making a mistake, the statistical variation in the time-span that is a game would ensure a winner easily.
This is why casinos (used to) dislike poker, and poker players are not comped anywhere near what blackjack or other players are. In fact, until the TV phenomenon of poker tournaments, most poker players were typically not comped at all. In typical Vegas poker games, the rake can be $10-$15 per player per hour. Considering a skilled dealer is required and quite a bit of floor space, that is not a huge winning proposition for the casino.
The house is always going to win. In poker what you are gambling is your strategies and skill are better than the opponents.
Strategy [nytimes.com], though is frowned upon in most cases
What is frowned upon? That your strategy is better than the opponents? Not so, it is the only way there is poker. You can't, without cheating, get an edge on your opponent in poker in any other way than skill. Poker isn't, and never was, gambling. It is purely a game of skill.
if you think number of lines in a file or set of files is somehow an example of bad code
It generally is. The number of errors is statistically tied more or less linearly to the loc. So, more code is usually the same as worse code if the stuff accomplished is more or less the same.
They have already determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the current uptrend is caused not by any natural cyclical phenomenon, but by human activity
I'd love to see the documentation for that statement. I don't believe it exists. We are currently at the tail end of an ice age. One of many. All of those ice ages have ended and ushered in a warm period where things on earth generally were a lot better than during the ice age. What you are stating above is that the current ice age was never going to end. It was going to either continue as now in perpetuity except for the human element, or we should have dropped back to a time significantly colder than now.
I'd love to see documentation that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that this current ice age was not meant to end.
they pulled the page because it's implausible to claim increased CO2 isn't the cause of global warming
To claim that CO2 is "the cause of global warming" isn't plausible. It is dead wrong. It is probably a contributing factor to global warming, but since we are exiting an ice age, and we have been for quite a while, and we have a good bit to go, a global temperature increase is normal. The speed may not be.
Never forget in this debate that the earth oscillates between ice ages and warm periods every few hundred thousands of years. Ice ages being long, dry and cold, warm periods being short, humid and warm.
The coming warm period, whether CO2 is a contributing factor or not, is going to be bothersome but not catastrophic. The inevitable ice age that follows (unless of course we are able to warm the earth to the point where it doesn't) is going to be a human disaster of proportions that only huge comets could replicate. Slowly drowning coastal cities is going to be a picnic compared to slowly covering the Northern Hemisphere with a few kilometers of ice.
Slashdot Mirror
You should go back to your elementary school and demand your money back. They apparently never taught you how to read.
All these patents fights are over a software algorithm shows that there's no real innovation here:
I completely disagree. This shows that there is (amazingly) some innovation in places where before there was none. H.264 encode/decode is a pretty good "algorithm" (it is many). You get a lot of quality for a very, very low band-width price. The fact that it is an (among others) ITU-T job is astonishing. Such organizations are usually hindering progress, not foisting it.
The fact that Google is trying to copy this stuff and make it free for everybody is both bad behavior on part of Google, but it is also basically irrelevant for you and me. We are never going to pay for decoding H.264 online, not even indirectly. If we want to encode H.264 we'll have to buy software to do so, and the software vendor will have paid a license fee and baked it into the price of our product. Thing is, these apps are going to have to support H.264 anyway, so the better (and H.264 is better by a good margin than VP8) encoder is always going to be available to a content producer. Why would he use VP8? There is no gain or loss in selecting VP8 over H.264.
VP8 is pushed by Google for one, and only one reason. So that Google can stand on the shoulders of others and not pay. It's pathetic. If Google was half the companies their deluded employees think it is, they would have been able to come up with a solution that wasn't encumbered by patents. Sadly Google has only done one thing well, and that was a search engine. Everything else is either bought or just not that good, and they simply do not have the talent on staff to do what the ITU-T committee could.
A free as in money alternative that is as good as H.264 baseline profile will take a lot of revenue away from the MPLA.
Why would it? If you are in the encode business, you have to support H.264, it's that simple. Anyone who produces content is going to have a tool to create H.264 content. So what is the purpose of VP8? None for the community as such. Remember, you and I do not pay for this unless we are content creators, and as a content creator, if you don't do H.264 or MPEG-2, both have license fees, then you are not creating content for anything but your own mastubatory needs.
So, VP8 is a codec for one player, and one player only, Google. They don't want to pay for encoding H.264 so they make a bad, cheap copy and try to convince the world that it is better off with that encoder in it. Reality is that it doesn't matter at all. VP8 is junk, and it is designed to have Google, and ONLY Google, pay less for content creation on YouTube and probably in the mobile space in the future. Nothing else. For everybody else it is irrelevant and will always be irrelevant.
This isn't Google trying to do no evil, this is Google wanting to free-load on the works of others.
They still charge for encoding. Perhaps more importantly, do you think that they made H.264 decoding free out of the goodness of their good little hearts, or because Google called their bluff?
Neither. Honestly, they did it because that is what the players in the MPEG-LA wanted. They knew that a new standard codec was needed. The knew Microsoft was giving away VC-1 for free, and without a free play-back situation for H.264, the proprietary, single vendor (and arguably better quality) VC-1 would become the standard - remember the Blu-Ray standard allows VC-1 in addition to H.264 and MPEG-2.
H.264 is a great codec. It took a lot to get it up and going and it took a lot to get it standardized and documented. It should be obvious to anyone that the parties should be rewarded for the effort. The idea that Google should be allowed to just copy (yeah, VP8 is a bad, bad, bad copy of H.264) it and get away with it is absurd.
Look at how many millions Microsoft has put into Silverlight. Now, if they only have a handful of sites using it, they can only make money back off those same sites
Microsoft makes nothing off Silverlight. It's free from Microsoft, both the developer tools (unless you want to use the non-free versions, but why would you if cost is an issue?) and the runtime is entirely free.
Lets face it, the only reason that Netflix would choose to adopt a new technology is if it made it cheaper for them.
Possibly cheaper, more likely, with better features. Netflix can easily do with Silverlight what is currently not possible in HTML or easy in Flash.
can't stand gambling myself
Poker isn't gambling :-)
Sorry, I thought this is Slashdot (so I didn't really read the article
First time on /.? Reading the article is mandatory, the summary is usually both idiotic, misleading, wrong and click-bait.
Let me get this right - they're making money, while risking none of their own
Yeah, you must be right. They are not risking any of their own. Purchasing land, building casinos, hiring staff, training staff all of that stuff, and all of the other stuff that is required to run a brick-and-mortar casino is "risking none of their own".
Are you always this dumb or only when you have been corrected on statements that were wrong?
Floor space isn't expensive (relatively)
Hmmm. Seems like the dumb is a general condition. Heard about Opportunity Cost? Sorry, you are simply wrong. $100/hour is not a lot of cash. It probably is for you, by all means, but it doesn't more than just about cover the cost at a Vegas casino. Perhaps not even that. TV poker is where it is at for Casinos, but without poker there is no TV poker, so poker they need. Basically a loss-leader when considering opportunity cost.
the poker room can be in a secluded area
This one was in a suite, but most casinos have floor space in the main room dedicated to poker. You've never been to a casino?
Microsoft - Wrong Choice...
Your choice of school was worse since they apparently didn't even teach you basic reading skills. Remember reeding and righting is important.
As someone once said, don't expect malice where incompetence would adequately explain.
That is the case here. The original poster is just a clueless moron who can't read at a 5 year level.
Yeah, and the Kinect was the fastest selling electronic gadget in history just because... you know... because... let's see... I'd say, probably because it's one of the most awesome gadgets ever :-)
And? He was asking about Outlook, which shows he's clueless. Of course WP has POP3 support.
You need to get a new IT department, they don't know a computer from a flower pot.
Its still closed source and not at all developer friendly
Yes, it is closed source, but not developer friendly? What do you mean by that? I do business apps, so I have to write code for our Win7 stuff, I need to look at (but have of course not deployed any) Win8 stuff, our mobile platform is Android, so some of the stuff I do have to work on Android, I have even dabbled in making one app available for iPhone users. To keep on top of things, obviously I also work on Win Phone stuff, particularly since I have one as my main phone, I prefer it over my Galaxy SIII.
I can say, with confidence, that delivering for Windows Phone is by far the best development experience. Delivering on Android is, comparatively, nightmarish, and even iOS is painful in comparison. I would estimate that development time is about 50-60% on WinPhone compared to Android and iOS - depending. Even a Java client app I had to port was ported faster to WinPhone than to Android.
WinPhone easily, and with a significant margin, has the best developer experience of the current mobile platforms. It is a boon that it can share code with the desktop and web (in the case of.NET MVC) apps of course. That is of course an advantage Android also has with our jBoss hosted apps.
Netflix.
Outside of IBM, I don't know of any technology company who has supported their existing customer base longer than Microsoft. Hell, you can even run a large number of DOS applications on Windows 7 today.
No, you don't, you need -1 for trolling and an additional -1 for the fact that you don't have basic reading skills.
As usual, the /. article says something completely different from what the quoted article actually says.
It is always a good idea if the moron posting to /. information from another source, that said moron actually knows how to read before posting. The article referred says nothing of the kind.
Slashdot is getting sadder and sadder. Once it was a forum for geek stuff, then it became a forum for uneducated idiots who wants to become geeks, and now, apparently, article posters are not even required to have basic reeding and righting skills.
It generally takes a cut of every pot
It either takes a cut out of every pot or it takes a one-time fee (for tournaments). It doesn't however participate in the game. Also, no, it isn't really possible for everyone at the table to lose money, since the casino cut is quite small, much smaller than the skill variation among players. Even if, theoretically, every player was equally skilled and none were making a mistake, the statistical variation in the time-span that is a game would ensure a winner easily.
This is why casinos (used to) dislike poker, and poker players are not comped anywhere near what blackjack or other players are. In fact, until the TV phenomenon of poker tournaments, most poker players were typically not comped at all. In typical Vegas poker games, the rake can be $10-$15 per player per hour. Considering a skilled dealer is required and quite a bit of floor space, that is not a huge winning proposition for the casino.
The house is always going to win. In poker what you are gambling is your strategies and skill are better than the opponents. Strategy [nytimes.com], though is frowned upon in most cases
What is frowned upon? That your strategy is better than the opponents? Not so, it is the only way there is poker. You can't, without cheating, get an edge on your opponent in poker in any other way than skill. Poker isn't, and never was, gambling. It is purely a game of skill.
Yes, they have a mathematical edge in the long run
No in poker. The casino doesn't participate.
if you think number of lines in a file or set of files is somehow an example of bad code
It generally is. The number of errors is statistically tied more or less linearly to the loc. So, more code is usually the same as worse code if the stuff accomplished is more or less the same.
Drupal definitely has a "cleaner" code base and better software architecture than Wordpress
That's like saying being shot in the back of the head is better than being shot in the face.
They have already determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the current uptrend is caused not by any natural cyclical phenomenon, but by human activity
I'd love to see the documentation for that statement. I don't believe it exists. We are currently at the tail end of an ice age. One of many. All of those ice ages have ended and ushered in a warm period where things on earth generally were a lot better than during the ice age. What you are stating above is that the current ice age was never going to end. It was going to either continue as now in perpetuity except for the human element, or we should have dropped back to a time significantly colder than now.
I'd love to see documentation that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that this current ice age was not meant to end.
they pulled the page because it's implausible to claim increased CO2 isn't the cause of global warming
To claim that CO2 is "the cause of global warming" isn't plausible. It is dead wrong. It is probably a contributing factor to global warming, but since we are exiting an ice age, and we have been for quite a while, and we have a good bit to go, a global temperature increase is normal. The speed may not be.
Never forget in this debate that the earth oscillates between ice ages and warm periods every few hundred thousands of years. Ice ages being long, dry and cold, warm periods being short, humid and warm.
The coming warm period, whether CO2 is a contributing factor or not, is going to be bothersome but not catastrophic. The inevitable ice age that follows (unless of course we are able to warm the earth to the point where it doesn't) is going to be a human disaster of proportions that only huge comets could replicate. Slowly drowning coastal cities is going to be a picnic compared to slowly covering the Northern Hemisphere with a few kilometers of ice.