It is surprising to me, and a sign that MPEG-LA has thrown in the towel and this is a last desperate throw of the dice for H.264. I expected MPEG-LA to be extolling the virtues of H.264 such as better quality and lower bit rates, large amounts of established hardware encoders and decoders, etc. By trying to now establish a VP8 patent pool they are telling the world at large that WebM is just as good as what they have. As it's patent free, with a current patent pool of 0, it looks like WebM might move from the web world into the consumer device world too.
Depends what country you are in. Here in France most people have to get 24 month contracts to make the phone affordable, and so are unlikely to change phone every single year like the population you apparently live in. I deliberately pay 2x the price for my handset in exchange for a 1 year contract, but I am in the minority here.
I also love my Nokia E71, and was holding out for a Meego handset. I guess I will have to give up and join the Android masses. Shame to see Nokia die, but I can't see Win7 phones taking off. I guess the next best thing is going to be the Samsung Galaxy S Pro, with the slide-out keyboard.
Try reading the comments above, there are plenty of them. Yes you can pay for those nice things when the bill arrives, you can just trade them on the exchange for dollars or euros. You won't get much of a contribution though, as the coins are difficult to generate. However, the idea isn't to generate them and make free money, the fact that it costs more in hardware/electricity than it takes to generate a coin is part of how it works. It creates the scarcity which gives it value.
Don't get hung up on the 'mining', or generating using network and CPU, of the coins. The idea is to trade bitcoins that exist. You don't need anything at all to do that. Just an electronic wallet.
I presume he means deflation is a bad thing in terms of currency as if it becomes an investment then people will hoard money rather than spend it, taking it out of circulation and causing a liquidity crisis.
How did the tech industry survive with falling prices all these years?
This is not related to deflation. The answer is (a) large amounts invested in R&D to create both new products to obsolete older models, and to lower costs of production, and (b) growing the market for tech products either through creating new markets or the cost of production making products accessible to a larger segment of the market.
That was sarcasm. If people want encrypted VoIP, they'll load Skype. There are already umteen million Skype users, so there is an actual possibility there will be someone to use it with.
The wonder of Android phones is that you can download and install software on it. Much like if you wish to speak to somebody on Skype both parties must install the requisite software, this also works with other software too.
Wake me when they write an Android/iPhone app that can insert itself into a traditional voice call, encrypting the voice stream without using VoIP.
Whilst you were asleep, traditional voice calls have switched from analogue to digital. It's now all packet based behind the scenes.
Obviously it'll only work if the person on the other end has the same software, but not relying on a 3G data channel would be a major step forward.
Eg Wifi? From here: "In contrast to many other SIP programs, RedPhone does not use a SIP gateway for communication, but establishes a direct connection to the other (RedPhone) user via WLAN or UMTS."
Good luck with that, by the way. Short of giving everyone OpenMoko hockey-puck phones, good luck in finding a way to insert yourself into the voice stream on a traditional cell phone.
Forcing me to pay for calls rather than calling for free where I have wifi? This is an advantage?
On top of that, after he claims Google plays such a minor role as they monitor every move on every site the user makes, when asked why not exclude Google to shut them up he basically admits it wouldn't work any more without Google. Seems pretty contradictory.
With tweets like "At Microsoft Productivity Council mtg on future of Office" and worse "Ribbon Hero which teaches how to use MSFT Office better. Making work (gasp!) fun", Charlene Li is obviously blatently dishonest in her representation of her position.
"Charlene Li, founder of technology research and advisory firm Altimeter Group" - and as sortius_nod says, now paid shill.
First to file is standard for every country outside of the US, and prior art is still equally important. You are correct that companies do file a lot of defensive patents, but then do anyway under first to invent. Don't forget that for a patent to be granted, it has to be non-obvious to somebody skilled in the art, so you can try filing everything everybody does but 99.99% will be a complete waste of money.
Rather than being a tax on innovation, it reduces the burden by giving much clearer rules which eliminate one potential reason for a court case... and it is the latter which is the greatest burden and the person with the deepest pockets often wins.
Why do you perceive it as stealing from other countries? The objective of the patent system is to get inventors to contribute their invention to the sum of human knowledge, in return for a time limited monopoly on the invention in the country in which they file.
If I am a widget manufacturer X in the UK that has invented and patented the sprocket, and the UK is my only market, then as a business decision I may decide to only file in the UK. If a widget manufacturer in the US decides to file it there then it doesn't affect me as I don't do business in the US. If the US widget manufacturer then tries to export back to my local UK market he will be in violation of the UK patent, thus my market is still protected.
Furthermore, if a rival US widget manufacturer thinks that another widget manufacturer is simply copying the UK patent, he can try and get the US patent invalidated citing the UK patent as prior art.
As Zelgadiss says below, somebody can still sue all H.264 users as well for patent infringement. However, (a) Google are trusting their engineers as they are converting everything, YouTube etc, to WebM, and (b) they are trusting On2 who spent a fortune developing a codec specifically to be patent free.
You can't live your life in fear of some invisible patent troll, whether H.264 or WebM. People have done their due diligence, and if the worst comes to the worst you can tie the troll up in court until a work-around is reached and their patent made worthless. CPU is cheap and transcoding may take a little time but easily done. It's unlikely though that Google would pay $133M without paying some pretty good patent lawyers to check. For all this talk of 'submarine patents', the patent databases are publicly searchable. You can delay publication but only for a limited time period.
Well KDE 3 could get best supporting role, but its performance is steady and not very flashy. They tried KDE 4.0 but found it a bit of a prima donna, with an unstable temperament. I am not sure *nix is going to regain the heady glory days such as with Sandra Bullock in The Net, though Ubuntu made a debut on the small screen with Big Bang Theory.
They seem to have deleted any videos. Perhaps this is linked to the fact when you do a frame capture and zoom in, through the cockpit window you can see Tom Cruise giving the bird?
I know, isn't it awful. I'm going to tell off those kids throwing their toys out of the pram into the streets of Tunisia and Egypt.
At the end of the day the DDoS attacks were a publicity stunt to raise awareness. No real damage was done. And they obviously drew on a vein of popular support as there were no shortage of people prepared to take the risk in running the DDoS client.
They knew there was little chance of getting caught. Out of the thousands that may have run it in the UK, a whole 5 people have been arrested, of which maybe 0 will be convicted. The effect this will have on next time? About the same that convicting a couple of people downloading movies has had on file sharing.
The US carried out a DoS on Wikileaks... blackmailed Amazon into hitting the kill switch. Anyway, they just want to be seen to be doing something. I doubt any warrants are for key members of Anon, just a bunch of school kids who probably didn't even realise they were doing something wrong. They will mess up the lives of a couple for publicity purposes and the rest will just get a slap on the wrist.
Doubt they will incarcerate him, but you should be able to get a restraining order. It's good you went the legal route rather than taking more direct action. Back on topic, how did you see those messages on Facebook? Did you not un-friend him after the first death threat?
Add me to the list. It is so heavy and slow, but losing working Shoucast station integration was the last straw for me. Before Amarok I was using Songbird, until that died, then I went to using Exaile under KDE. Excellent player. Clementine is supposed to be Amarok-lite (based on the KDE 3.5 version), but I now use Guayadeque which is snappy and has all the functionality I need.
Same solution that first sprang to my mind. When the car starts generate a random number as UID. Then poll, multi-casting a UDP packet with UID and GPS co-ordinate. Receivers can interpolate to generate predictive traffic patterns in the local area. Packets can also be triggered on events, such as sharp braking or accelerating.
The Wi-fi only has limited range, so Traffic Management wouldn't be able to track every car unless it embedded receivers everywhere. Criminals will disable this anyway, so the current CCTV is a better overall solution for law enforcement tracking.
The important thing is to make it an open standard, so that it can be built into any cheap car GPS device.
Slashdot Mirror
It is surprising to me, and a sign that MPEG-LA has thrown in the towel and this is a last desperate throw of the dice for H.264. I expected MPEG-LA to be extolling the virtues of H.264 such as better quality and lower bit rates, large amounts of established hardware encoders and decoders, etc. By trying to now establish a VP8 patent pool they are telling the world at large that WebM is just as good as what they have. As it's patent free, with a current patent pool of 0, it looks like WebM might move from the web world into the consumer device world too.
Phillip.
Depends what country you are in. Here in France most people have to get 24 month contracts to make the phone affordable, and so are unlikely to change phone every single year like the population you apparently live in. I deliberately pay 2x the price for my handset in exchange for a 1 year contract, but I am in the minority here.
Phillip.
I also love my Nokia E71, and was holding out for a Meego handset. I guess I will have to give up and join the Android masses. Shame to see Nokia die, but I can't see Win7 phones taking off. I guess the next best thing is going to be the Samsung Galaxy S Pro, with the slide-out keyboard.
Phillip.
Probably the lack of Wall Street traders mugging grannies on their lunch break to feed their coke habit.
Phillip.
Try reading the comments above, there are plenty of them. Yes you can pay for those nice things when the bill arrives, you can just trade them on the exchange for dollars or euros. You won't get much of a contribution though, as the coins are difficult to generate. However, the idea isn't to generate them and make free money, the fact that it costs more in hardware/electricity than it takes to generate a coin is part of how it works. It creates the scarcity which gives it value.
Don't get hung up on the 'mining', or generating using network and CPU, of the coins. The idea is to trade bitcoins that exist. You don't need anything at all to do that. Just an electronic wallet.
Phillip.
How does that make it a bad thing?
I presume he means deflation is a bad thing in terms of currency as if it becomes an investment then people will hoard money rather than spend it, taking it out of circulation and causing a liquidity crisis.
How did the tech industry survive with falling prices all these years?
This is not related to deflation. The answer is (a) large amounts invested in R&D to create both new products to obsolete older models, and to lower costs of production, and (b) growing the market for tech products either through creating new markets or the cost of production making products accessible to a larger segment of the market.
Phillip.
According to this article, it uses standard ZRTP for voice and OTR for text.
Phillip.
That was sarcasm. If people want encrypted VoIP, they'll load Skype. There are already umteen million Skype users, so there is an actual possibility there will be someone to use it with.
The wonder of Android phones is that you can download and install software on it. Much like if you wish to speak to somebody on Skype both parties must install the requisite software, this also works with other software too.
Wake me when they write an Android/iPhone app that can insert itself into a traditional voice call, encrypting the voice stream without using VoIP.
Whilst you were asleep, traditional voice calls have switched from analogue to digital. It's now all packet based behind the scenes.
Obviously it'll only work if the person on the other end has the same software, but not relying on a 3G data channel would be a major step forward.
Eg Wifi? From here: "In contrast to many other SIP programs, RedPhone does not use a SIP gateway for communication, but establishes a direct connection to the other (RedPhone) user via WLAN or UMTS."
Good luck with that, by the way. Short of giving everyone OpenMoko hockey-puck phones, good luck in finding a way to insert yourself into the voice stream on a traditional cell phone.
Forcing me to pay for calls rather than calling for free where I have wifi? This is an advantage?
Phillip.
Yup. It's only us humans that suffer from 'philosophy'. Food, sex and death for everyone else.
Phillip.
On top of that, after he claims Google plays such a minor role as they monitor every move on every site the user makes, when asked why not exclude Google to shut them up he basically admits it wouldn't work any more without Google. Seems pretty contradictory.
Phillip.
With tweets like "At Microsoft Productivity Council mtg on future of Office" and worse "Ribbon Hero which teaches how to use MSFT Office better. Making work (gasp!) fun", Charlene Li is obviously blatently dishonest in her representation of her position.
"Charlene Li, founder of technology research and advisory firm Altimeter Group" - and as sortius_nod says, now paid shill.
Phillip.
I don't understand. Why does first to file rather than first to invent invalidate the whole concept of prior art?
Phillip.
First to file is standard for every country outside of the US, and prior art is still equally important. You are correct that companies do file a lot of defensive patents, but then do anyway under first to invent. Don't forget that for a patent to be granted, it has to be non-obvious to somebody skilled in the art, so you can try filing everything everybody does but 99.99% will be a complete waste of money.
Rather than being a tax on innovation, it reduces the burden by giving much clearer rules which eliminate one potential reason for a court case... and it is the latter which is the greatest burden and the person with the deepest pockets often wins.
Phillip.
Why do you perceive it as stealing from other countries? The objective of the patent system is to get inventors to contribute their invention to the sum of human knowledge, in return for a time limited monopoly on the invention in the country in which they file.
If I am a widget manufacturer X in the UK that has invented and patented the sprocket, and the UK is my only market, then as a business decision I may decide to only file in the UK. If a widget manufacturer in the US decides to file it there then it doesn't affect me as I don't do business in the US. If the US widget manufacturer then tries to export back to my local UK market he will be in violation of the UK patent, thus my market is still protected.
Furthermore, if a rival US widget manufacturer thinks that another widget manufacturer is simply copying the UK patent, he can try and get the US patent invalidated citing the UK patent as prior art.
Phillip.
As Zelgadiss says below, somebody can still sue all H.264 users as well for patent infringement. However, (a) Google are trusting their engineers as they are converting everything, YouTube etc, to WebM, and (b) they are trusting On2 who spent a fortune developing a codec specifically to be patent free.
You can't live your life in fear of some invisible patent troll, whether H.264 or WebM. People have done their due diligence, and if the worst comes to the worst you can tie the troll up in court until a work-around is reached and their patent made worthless. CPU is cheap and transcoding may take a little time but easily done. It's unlikely though that Google would pay $133M without paying some pretty good patent lawyers to check. For all this talk of 'submarine patents', the patent databases are publicly searchable. You can delay publication but only for a limited time period.
Phillip.
Why is adding support for a dying web format useful? Soon H.264 will be an Apple quirk, much like Quicktime.
Phillip.
FTA "the device still only draws a minuscule 5W under load"
Phillip.
Well KDE 3 could get best supporting role, but its performance is steady and not very flashy. They tried KDE 4.0 but found it a bit of a prima donna, with an unstable temperament. I am not sure *nix is going to regain the heady glory days such as with Sandra Bullock in The Net, though Ubuntu made a debut on the small screen with Big Bang Theory.
Phillip.
They seem to have deleted any videos. Perhaps this is linked to the fact when you do a frame capture and zoom in, through the cockpit window you can see Tom Cruise giving the bird?
Phillip.
I know, isn't it awful. I'm going to tell off those kids throwing their toys out of the pram into the streets of Tunisia and Egypt.
At the end of the day the DDoS attacks were a publicity stunt to raise awareness. No real damage was done. And they obviously drew on a vein of popular support as there were no shortage of people prepared to take the risk in running the DDoS client.
Phillip.
They knew there was little chance of getting caught. Out of the thousands that may have run it in the UK, a whole 5 people have been arrested, of which maybe 0 will be convicted. The effect this will have on next time? About the same that convicting a couple of people downloading movies has had on file sharing.
Phillip.
The US carried out a DoS on Wikileaks... blackmailed Amazon into hitting the kill switch. Anyway, they just want to be seen to be doing something. I doubt any warrants are for key members of Anon, just a bunch of school kids who probably didn't even realise they were doing something wrong. They will mess up the lives of a couple for publicity purposes and the rest will just get a slap on the wrist.
Phillip.
Doubt they will incarcerate him, but you should be able to get a restraining order. It's good you went the legal route rather than taking more direct action. Back on topic, how did you see those messages on Facebook? Did you not un-friend him after the first death threat?
Phillip.
Add me to the list. It is so heavy and slow, but losing working Shoucast station integration was the last straw for me. Before Amarok I was using Songbird, until that died, then I went to using Exaile under KDE. Excellent player. Clementine is supposed to be Amarok-lite (based on the KDE 3.5 version), but I now use Guayadeque which is snappy and has all the functionality I need.
Phillip.
Same solution that first sprang to my mind. When the car starts generate a random number as UID. Then poll, multi-casting a UDP packet with UID and GPS co-ordinate. Receivers can interpolate to generate predictive traffic patterns in the local area. Packets can also be triggered on events, such as sharp braking or accelerating.
The Wi-fi only has limited range, so Traffic Management wouldn't be able to track every car unless it embedded receivers everywhere. Criminals will disable this anyway, so the current CCTV is a better overall solution for law enforcement tracking.
The important thing is to make it an open standard, so that it can be built into any cheap car GPS device.
Phillip.