No, good programming practices are what prevents bugs. IMHO there isn't much difference between the various type-safe languages in bug prevention, but there is a huge difference between the various programming practices and quality standards. I have talked with plenty of folks who claim that there's "no performance penalty or other drawbacks" to not having the power of C/C++'s low-level control, but I haven't seen anyone back that up with proof. I would really enjoy for someone, anyone, to prove otherwise.
Amen to that. I write games for a living, and I eat, live, and breathe C++. Even as low as our 3D engine code, we've written our own "safe" versions of many troublemakers. Our replacement might be a macro or might be a complete class.
But I actually like this because seeing these macros every day makes our coders aware of what's a potential hole and what's not. And that makes them better programmers.
You'd be surprised how many vulnerable perl-based cgi scripts I saw in my ex-sysadmin days. People think just because it's Perl they are totally safe.
Now obviously as a game coder, C/C++ has many performance advantages for me. But I strongly believe that meticulous attention to detail, especially in a team environment, produces some of the most reliable code.
I can't directly disprove the claim that there's "no performance penalty or other drawbacks" in the type safe languages. But from my experience, I'll tell you a couple areas C/C++ shines for games:
Networking. TCP/IP is kindof losing favor with games nowadays. UDP has some advantages but it only really shines after quite a bit of work. IP networking code has much more history in C than anything else. Working in C/C++ pays off here when making in-depth modifications and looking for good examples. Bottom line: better game network performance.
Low level 3D functions. Handling a moderately large BSP tree can start to hit your performance in a hurry if you're not careful. C/C++ are good for handling this.
3rd party support. If we want to, say, enhance performance by supporting the new Intel instructions, we pretty much have to write in C/C++ and use their compiler.
Memory management. In a game, calling new / delete gets expensive pretty quickly. It also fragments memory. We tend to get around this using free lists and other tricks. Some of this stuff is possible because we know -exactly- what's going on with memory management. In a language where this stuff is abstracted away from you, it would become problematic.
Phew. Hope that wasn't too wordy. I'm not a language bigot - I believe there's a proper place for each one. But C/C++ often gets a bad rap because of inexperienced programmers using it, or people using it in a place it's not well suited.
While a Concord may contribute to ozone depletion, the amount it causes would be very minor. Modern jet engines are actually turbofans, which are efficient and relatively clean.
Contrast that with, say, an F-15 flying at extremely high altitude. Afterburners dump raw fuel into the situation, which is very inefficient and dirty.
Even this isn't TOO terrible, compared to CFCs (which I hope everyone knows about by now). These chemicals destroy ozone, and cause a chain reaction while doing it. They are far worse than anything coming out the tailpipe of a jet.
The military kills sea critters all the time. Submarines are horrible offenders. Consider that the a certain-sub-model-which-will-remain-unnamed has a reactor surrounded by water to protect the crew from radiation. On 3 sides. The bottom is pretty much flush against the hull, since no crew members go below the reactor compartment anyhow.
End result: sick fishies if they swim too close to the bottom of the sub.
And while I'm at it... active sonar and noisemakers aren't exactly eco-friendly either. Neither are the 55 lb cans they shoot out the TDU to the bottom of the ocean.
You send an email and your company's admin snoops it via logs or whatever is roughly equivalent to the following scenario:
You put a postcard in the mail. It goes to the post office, where it gets photocopied and archived. Then it is forwarded on to it's proper destination. Sometime in the future, the post office can look at the photocopy, supply it to courts, your ex-wife, or your dog.
If that sort of thing were happening to postcards, people would have a fit. Just keep in mind, while email may be easily readable like a postcard, it is much more easily archived than a postcard. And it's archived very frequently. Furthermore, it is easy to compile data on who is sending what, and to whom.
Yes encryption is one solution. But I still believe that the laws should require equal treatment of email versus snail mail, at least for personal email. Businesses should at the very least require employees to waive their email privacy before snooping on them. I don't really have a problem with that, since sending email from work is associating yourself with the company. They should get to control what leaves their servers, or at the very least, email heading to external addresses.
I didn't say Usenet was free of corporate influence. But on most active groups, you get to know the people who post there pretty quickly. And it becomes pretty obvious who's posting on behalf of a company (no matter how sly) and who's not.
Most tech groups will jump all over someone if they start spouting B.S. without being able to back it up.
I'm not saying you can get 100% proof of which card is best by reading newsgroups. But you can get a pretty good idea. At least there, anyone can post, and there is less of this kind of influence from companies.
On hardware websites, you're only reading what is spoon-fed to you, so take it with a grain of salt.
Imperative langauges have limitations on the optimizing of code. This means that we will eventually see compiled functional langauges which produce faster code then ANY imperative langauge
Mind clarifying that? What limitations apply to all imperative languages, that don't apply to functional languages? Or maybe you were thinking of a specific imperative language? As long as I'm able to drop to assembly language, I guarantee I can write code the outperforms any functional language.
Or to put it another way: hardware doesn't know about functional programming. It has registers, and various commands for moving and comparing things. Functional programming is an extra layer of abstraction.
... is that this sort of legislation tacked onto unrelated bills happens all the time.
For instance, it is fairly well known that the U.S. was not paying it's U.N. fees for quite some time. However, if you dig a little deeper, you'll find out why we weren't paying. Apparently the Republican dominated Congress was insisting on an additional "provision" in the legislation that would've payed that bill.
This provision, in a nutshell, stated that the U.S. would not provide economic aid to nations or foreign agencies which provided abortion as part of women's health care.
As far as I know, Clinton refused to sign this bill as long as that provision was attached. Thus, leaving our U.N. bill unpaid. Now, whether you agree with abortion or not is not the issue. The fact is that this had NOTHING to do with the U.N. fees, and had no business being part of that bill.
Politics is downright nasty. But a great deal of this is possible because of voter apathy and ignorance. If the public would get more informed and more active, then maybe politicians would start representing us, instead of pulling b.s. like this.
So in addition to calling your Congressman, pass the info to a friend or two when you see stuff like this. And ask them to spread the word. Every little bit helps.
Get beyond that line and I stated what I think is a better way to profit. Plus, my point was that advertising is intrusive, and a poor angle to draw revenue from.
Um if you've read any of my posts you'd know I post what's on my mind. That's all.
Or are you just listening to the drivel that they put on MTV?
Actually WHEN I buy a CD, it's usually from a group I've heard quite a bit already - either from live shows or a friend's CD. But have you looked in a music store lately? You have to do some serious digging to get beyond all the crap shoved in your face.
Thanks for listening.
SEAL
P.S. If I wanted to listen to crappy music with advertisements, I'd just turn on the local top 40 station.
I'm so sick of the advertising angle. Er maybe that's because I work late hours and arrive home to nothing but infomercials. Still...
I realize people feel the need to make money but this isn't the way to go about it. I'm even more amazed that advertisers would go for such a scheme. Look at the low click through rates on web banners. People are almost desensitized to this continual bombardment.
If the music industry (or small artists -- whoever) want to turn a buck off of downloadable music, I think selling individual songs is the better way to go about it. Charge more for the really popular tracks. But time and time again, people have shown that when you charge a fair price, many will cough up the $$ honestly. Many people dislike buying CDs because they get a song or two they like, and a bunch of filler crap.
Advertising in songs would just piss people off more IMO. I'm certainly not going to put up with that if I'm shuffling a large number of songs randomly all evening, for example.
If the job you're working is so bad then organize a mass resignation. That's not illegal last time I checked... unless you're in military service or something where you signed your life away. But really - if you don't like your job, get another one. If your job is SO unfair, then it shouldn't be hard to convince others to quit / not hire on. And then maybe the company'll have to change its ways.
If, on the other hand, your job truly isn't that bad -- then maybe the union is too pampered and asking for things it shouldn't. Sorta like those umpires. "Oh wait... those manager bastards hired college umps to replace us. We want our jobs back... wahhhhhh."
If you act like a sheep you're going to get treated like one. Take decisive action and stand by your choices, and you'll garner more respect. I'm so sick of the poor whiny working class arguments... get a life.
But when I'm off company time - what I do is none of the company's business, period.
Even when what you're doing is illegal? That's where your AIDS comparison falls short. There are many reasons a company might not want to hire a drug abuser. Having a person show up stoned for work is only one of them.
What if you're bringing a controlled substance onto company grounds? Oop but hey we can't search you. Or what about other irresponsible actions / landing in jail? Do you think it really helps a company when one of their employees gets in this sort of situation?
Yada yada yada.
For what it's worth, many companies DO have help available for employees with drug problems. This is a step in the right direction anyhow... treat your employees as people.
Most of the time when job hunting, you're asked to report prior felony convictions. I don't see drug testing as any more intrusive.
I don't think anyone ever managed to decrypt the character files in Diablo 1. In-memory editors were used to hack the characters while you were playing the game.
There's usually a couple week span between the time a game is "done" internally, and the time it hits store shelves.
All this says, is that Blizzard was pressed to ship this thing, but they decided to take advantage of those extra couple weeks. You try not to do that, but it's sort of like a little extra insurance (to help avoid situations like Ultima 9)...
And I believe one of the developers posted on/. awhile back, saying that higher bitrates were in the works. I'll be damned if I can find the link though.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your real complaint is about the service providers, not the people who use it.
If the provider advertised truthfully, then:
a) Customers could use all the bandwidth provided to them in any (legal) manner they see fit, and:
b) The provider would take technological steps to limit customer bandwidth usage to an amount that won't have a detrimental effect on others.
Unfortunately, providers are selling more bandwidth than they have capacity for. It's a heavy temptation, when you have tons of customers who do light surfing for an hour or two a day. You can make a lot more money by selling them bandwidth that they will probably never use. Of course, sooner or later, someone actually does use it, at which point the provider backpedals and bends its terms of service to somehow restrict this person's usage (which he/she is actually paying for).
Personally, I'd rather know I'm paying for limited service and leave it at that. Sure I'd like huge bandwidth. But I'd rather have less bandwidth with a straightforward policy, than "unlimited" with strings attached.
I'm a game developer so I'd like to chip in on this one:
Most game developers aren't lazy about their code. At least where I work, we strive to keep it as clean as possible - start to finish. It makes it easier for others to work on your code.
Optimization goes in two phases. First and most important - is the planning / design before much of the code gets written. This is the chance to figure out what's going in your game and what algorithms you might need; that sort of thing. Second, you optimize after you're almost done - this usually has limited scope.
What things contribute to bad performance? I'd say bad or overzealous design, tight deadlines, and 3rd party tools that are out of your control. Diablo 2 made the design decision to use a 2D engine. This helps performance in those large fights with hordes of creatures. They decided to limit the game to 640x480 which also favors slower machines. I would say these two choices account for a large portion of their good performance (although they've done some good work on reducing area-load times). Blizzard is not one to push a game out early, but I'd say this is more for gameplay reasons, and less for performance.
Other games may decide to go with a full 3D engine, or whatever. You weigh the pros and cons of each design choice. When you get to the end of the project, sure - a little extra time helps with optimization. But I strongly believe that good design is the key to good performance. At the end of the project, you are fairly limited in the optimizations you can make, regardless of your deadline.
Wavelet compression has a coolness factor for geeks, but it's essentially useless.
That's what I was replying to when I mentioned audio as another application. Don't accuse me of being annoying when you don't clarify your own points.
Second, PNG is great if you want lossless compression. I don't dispute that. However, bandwidth is sometimes a concern, in which case you may use lossy compression. If jpg and a wavelet format were equally supported by Netscape/IE, then I would generally lean towards a wavelet format for high-compression images.
Finally, I was also unclear when I mentioned resizing. I should've separated this into two things: rescaling (which you covered), and changing the aspect ratio. High-compression jpg images do not handle aspect ratio changes very well at all. Wavelet-compressed images DO handle these, though.
Granted, in a perfect world, we would all have access to original images in their uncompressed format before trying to modify them. And usually that is the case. But once in awhile you may have to deal with less than optimal conditions. That's all I was trying to point out.
I seriously doubt that the JP2K (needs shortening) standard will use less disk space/bandwidth than PNG, and it definitely won't create better quality since PNG is essentially lossless in the first place.
Wavelet image compression is lossy. Therefore you can get much smaller file sizes compared to PNG, which is lossless as you point out. One of the reasons to use wavelet compressed images is for high compression. Most of us don't crunch jpgs down too much because they end up looking like crap. Wavelet compressed images tend to retain their visual quality better.
Fact is, there's no need at all for JP2K. Wavelet compression has a coolness factor for geeks, but it's essentially useless.
Utter crap. Wavelet compressed images offer a couple benefits. They look better than standard jpgs if both are highly compressed. Also, the compression is not scale-dependent. FFT-based lossy compression has problems with this. In other words, if you compress a 320x200 image into a jpg, and then resize that image to different dimensions, image quality will suffer. It becomes more noticeable the more you compress. Wavelet based images don't suffer from this problem.
Oh yeah, and aside from images, wavelet compression has uses in audio. Useless isn't a word I would describe it with.
The IP issues, you hit the nail on the head. The only way to really break a new format / protocol / whatever into mainstream use is to make it freely available. Look at mp3. If Fraunhofer had clamped down on mp3 as soon as it became available, it probably wouldn't enjoy the popularity it has today. Of course now they are trying to bring home the bacon, but that's another story...
In the U.S. we don't hold a referendum for every single law that gets passed. Not even close. You elect representatives to stand up for the things you believe in. If they are passing laws that you disagree with, then vote them out, live with it, take up citizenship in another country, or become a criminal. Those are the choices.
I don't think the DMCA is good law. I also think our government has serious corruption and bribery problems. But I care about my country, and I strongly feel that we should work within the law to change it.
Consider that the RIAA loves to market shitty bands to you (the 1 hit wonders). They have one good song on their entire album. They release this song (and no others) to radio stations. People hear it and think "ahha - this band is cool I think I'll buy the album".
Soon they learn how worthless this band really is. But it's too late, the consumer has already spent his $15+ on the album. Which is exactly what the RIAA wants, and exactly why they oppose mp3 trading.
Because of this attitude, the big labels probably won't adopt a pay-per-song system anytime in the near future. However, if they did, it's very likely they would have a "standard" song price for a particular band/album, plus "premium" pricing for popular songs.
For example, take... oh... Metallica:) A "standard"...And Justice For All song price (9 songs on the album, so let's say $1.50 each). The song "One" might cost you 6 bucks, since it was heavily promoted on the radio and MTV.
So overall, they could make more money per album, if people bought all the songs. What scares the RIAA is that people will only buy a few songs because most bands they promote these days are utter crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Jon Johansen, above left, of Norway, helped develop computer code to crack encrypted DVD's that Eric Corley, above right, posted on his Web site.
Nice of the reporter to use the English language in an ambiguous way. I wonder if anyone checked 2600's site for DVDs? :)
Best regards,
SEAL
Amen to that. I write games for a living, and I eat, live, and breathe C++. Even as low as our 3D engine code, we've written our own "safe" versions of many troublemakers. Our replacement might be a macro or might be a complete class.
But I actually like this because seeing these macros every day makes our coders aware of what's a potential hole and what's not. And that makes them better programmers.
You'd be surprised how many vulnerable perl-based cgi scripts I saw in my ex-sysadmin days. People think just because it's Perl they are totally safe.
Now obviously as a game coder, C/C++ has many performance advantages for me. But I strongly believe that meticulous attention to detail, especially in a team environment, produces some of the most reliable code.
I can't directly disprove the claim that there's "no performance penalty or other drawbacks" in the type safe languages. But from my experience, I'll tell you a couple areas C/C++ shines for games:
Phew. Hope that wasn't too wordy. I'm not a language bigot - I believe there's a proper place for each one. But C/C++ often gets a bad rap because of inexperienced programmers using it, or people using it in a place it's not well suited.
Best regards,
SEAL
While a Concord may contribute to ozone depletion, the amount it causes would be very minor. Modern jet engines are actually turbofans, which are efficient and relatively clean.
Contrast that with, say, an F-15 flying at extremely high altitude. Afterburners dump raw fuel into the situation, which is very inefficient and dirty.
Even this isn't TOO terrible, compared to CFCs (which I hope everyone knows about by now). These chemicals destroy ozone, and cause a chain reaction while doing it. They are far worse than anything coming out the tailpipe of a jet.
Best regards,
SEAL
The military kills sea critters all the time. Submarines are horrible offenders. Consider that the a certain-sub-model-which-will-remain-unnamed has a reactor surrounded by water to protect the crew from radiation. On 3 sides. The bottom is pretty much flush against the hull, since no crew members go below the reactor compartment anyhow.
End result: sick fishies if they swim too close to the bottom of the sub.
And while I'm at it... active sonar and noisemakers aren't exactly eco-friendly either. Neither are the 55 lb cans they shoot out the TDU to the bottom of the ocean.
*shrug*
SEAL
You send an email and your company's admin snoops it via logs or whatever is roughly equivalent to the following scenario:
You put a postcard in the mail. It goes to the post office, where it gets photocopied and archived. Then it is forwarded on to it's proper destination. Sometime in the future, the post office can look at the photocopy, supply it to courts, your ex-wife, or your dog.
If that sort of thing were happening to postcards, people would have a fit. Just keep in mind, while email may be easily readable like a postcard, it is much more easily archived than a postcard. And it's archived very frequently. Furthermore, it is easy to compile data on who is sending what, and to whom.
Yes encryption is one solution. But I still believe that the laws should require equal treatment of email versus snail mail, at least for personal email. Businesses should at the very least require employees to waive their email privacy before snooping on them. I don't really have a problem with that, since sending email from work is associating yourself with the company. They should get to control what leaves their servers, or at the very least, email heading to external addresses.
Best regards,
SEAL
I didn't say Usenet was free of corporate influence. But on most active groups, you get to know the people who post there pretty quickly. And it becomes pretty obvious who's posting on behalf of a company (no matter how sly) and who's not.
Most tech groups will jump all over someone if they start spouting B.S. without being able to back it up.
SEAL
I'm not saying you can get 100% proof of which card is best by reading newsgroups. But you can get a pretty good idea. At least there, anyone can post, and there is less of this kind of influence from companies.
On hardware websites, you're only reading what is spoon-fed to you, so take it with a grain of salt.
SEAL
Mind clarifying that? What limitations apply to all imperative languages, that don't apply to functional languages? Or maybe you were thinking of a specific imperative language? As long as I'm able to drop to assembly language, I guarantee I can write code the outperforms any functional language.
Or to put it another way: hardware doesn't know about functional programming. It has registers, and various commands for moving and comparing things. Functional programming is an extra layer of abstraction.
SEAL
For instance, it is fairly well known that the U.S. was not paying it's U.N. fees for quite some time. However, if you dig a little deeper, you'll find out why we weren't paying. Apparently the Republican dominated Congress was insisting on an additional "provision" in the legislation that would've payed that bill.
This provision, in a nutshell, stated that the U.S. would not provide economic aid to nations or foreign agencies which provided abortion as part of women's health care.
As far as I know, Clinton refused to sign this bill as long as that provision was attached. Thus, leaving our U.N. bill unpaid. Now, whether you agree with abortion or not is not the issue. The fact is that this had NOTHING to do with the U.N. fees, and had no business being part of that bill.
Politics is downright nasty. But a great deal of this is possible because of voter apathy and ignorance. If the public would get more informed and more active, then maybe politicians would start representing us, instead of pulling b.s. like this.
So in addition to calling your Congressman, pass the info to a friend or two when you see stuff like this. And ask them to spread the word. Every little bit helps.
Best regards,
SEAL
Get beyond that line and I stated what I think is a better way to profit. Plus, my point was that advertising is intrusive, and a poor angle to draw revenue from.
Of course, maybe you're just trolling. Who knows.
Best regards,
SEAL
Um if you've read any of my posts you'd know I post what's on my mind. That's all.
Or are you just listening to the drivel that they put on MTV?
Actually WHEN I buy a CD, it's usually from a group I've heard quite a bit already - either from live shows or a friend's CD. But have you looked in a music store lately? You have to do some serious digging to get beyond all the crap shoved in your face.
Thanks for listening.
SEAL
P.S. If I wanted to listen to crappy music with advertisements, I'd just turn on the local top 40 station.
I'm so sick of the advertising angle. Er maybe that's because I work late hours and arrive home to nothing but infomercials. Still...
I realize people feel the need to make money but this isn't the way to go about it. I'm even more amazed that advertisers would go for such a scheme. Look at the low click through rates on web banners. People are almost desensitized to this continual bombardment.
If the music industry (or small artists -- whoever) want to turn a buck off of downloadable music, I think selling individual songs is the better way to go about it. Charge more for the really popular tracks. But time and time again, people have shown that when you charge a fair price, many will cough up the $$ honestly. Many people dislike buying CDs because they get a song or two they like, and a bunch of filler crap.
Advertising in songs would just piss people off more IMO. I'm certainly not going to put up with that if I'm shuffling a large number of songs randomly all evening, for example.
Best regards,
SEAL
Give me a break.
If the job you're working is so bad then organize a mass resignation. That's not illegal last time I checked... unless you're in military service or something where you signed your life away. But really - if you don't like your job, get another one. If your job is SO unfair, then it shouldn't be hard to convince others to quit / not hire on. And then maybe the company'll have to change its ways.
If, on the other hand, your job truly isn't that bad -- then maybe the union is too pampered and asking for things it shouldn't. Sorta like those umpires. "Oh wait... those manager bastards hired college umps to replace us. We want our jobs back... wahhhhhh."
If you act like a sheep you're going to get treated like one. Take decisive action and stand by your choices, and you'll garner more respect. I'm so sick of the poor whiny working class arguments... get a life.
But when I'm off company time - what I do is none of the company's business, period.
Even when what you're doing is illegal? That's where your AIDS comparison falls short. There are many reasons a company might not want to hire a drug abuser. Having a person show up stoned for work is only one of them.
What if you're bringing a controlled substance onto company grounds? Oop but hey we can't search you. Or what about other irresponsible actions / landing in jail? Do you think it really helps a company when one of their employees gets in this sort of situation?
Yada yada yada.
For what it's worth, many companies DO have help available for employees with drug problems. This is a step in the right direction anyhow... treat your employees as people.
Most of the time when job hunting, you're asked to report prior felony convictions. I don't see drug testing as any more intrusive.
Best regards,
SEAL
I don't think anyone ever managed to decrypt the character files in Diablo 1. In-memory editors were used to hack the characters while you were playing the game.
There's usually a couple week span between the time a game is "done" internally, and the time it hits store shelves.
All this says, is that Blizzard was pressed to ship this thing, but they decided to take advantage of those extra couple weeks. You try not to do that, but it's sort of like a little extra insurance (to help avoid situations like Ultima 9)...
And I believe one of the developers posted on /. awhile back, saying that higher bitrates were in the works. I'll be damned if I can find the link though.
SEAL
OK I've been at work waaay too long... time to go home heh.
It's also used if the sub, for some incredibly unlikely reason, has to traverse a minefield.
If the provider advertised truthfully, then:
a) Customers could use all the bandwidth provided to them in any (legal) manner they see fit, and:
b) The provider would take technological steps to limit customer bandwidth usage to an amount that won't have a detrimental effect on others.
Unfortunately, providers are selling more bandwidth than they have capacity for. It's a heavy temptation, when you have tons of customers who do light surfing for an hour or two a day. You can make a lot more money by selling them bandwidth that they will probably never use. Of course, sooner or later, someone actually does use it, at which point the provider backpedals and bends its terms of service to somehow restrict this person's usage (which he/she is actually paying for).
Personally, I'd rather know I'm paying for limited service and leave it at that. Sure I'd like huge bandwidth. But I'd rather have less bandwidth with a straightforward policy, than "unlimited" with strings attached.
Best regards,
SEAL
I'm a game developer so I'd like to chip in on this one:
Most game developers aren't lazy about their code. At least where I work, we strive to keep it as clean as possible - start to finish. It makes it easier for others to work on your code.
Optimization goes in two phases. First and most important - is the planning / design before much of the code gets written. This is the chance to figure out what's going in your game and what algorithms you might need; that sort of thing. Second, you optimize after you're almost done - this usually has limited scope.
What things contribute to bad performance? I'd say bad or overzealous design, tight deadlines, and 3rd party tools that are out of your control. Diablo 2 made the design decision to use a 2D engine. This helps performance in those large fights with hordes of creatures. They decided to limit the game to 640x480 which also favors slower machines. I would say these two choices account for a large portion of their good performance (although they've done some good work on reducing area-load times). Blizzard is not one to push a game out early, but I'd say this is more for gameplay reasons, and less for performance.
Other games may decide to go with a full 3D engine, or whatever. You weigh the pros and cons of each design choice. When you get to the end of the project, sure - a little extra time helps with optimization. But I strongly believe that good design is the key to good performance. At the end of the project, you are fairly limited in the optimizations you can make, regardless of your deadline.
Best regards,
SEAL
Wavelet compression has a coolness factor for geeks, but it's essentially useless.
That's what I was replying to when I mentioned audio as another application. Don't accuse me of being annoying when you don't clarify your own points.
Second, PNG is great if you want lossless compression. I don't dispute that. However, bandwidth is sometimes a concern, in which case you may use lossy compression. If jpg and a wavelet format were equally supported by Netscape/IE, then I would generally lean towards a wavelet format for high-compression images.
Finally, I was also unclear when I mentioned resizing. I should've separated this into two things: rescaling (which you covered), and changing the aspect ratio. High-compression jpg images do not handle aspect ratio changes very well at all. Wavelet-compressed images DO handle these, though.
Granted, in a perfect world, we would all have access to original images in their uncompressed format before trying to modify them. And usually that is the case. But once in awhile you may have to deal with less than optimal conditions. That's all I was trying to point out.
SEAL
I seriously doubt that the JP2K (needs shortening) standard will use less disk space/bandwidth than PNG, and it definitely won't create better quality since PNG is essentially lossless in the first place.
Wavelet image compression is lossy. Therefore you can get much smaller file sizes compared to PNG, which is lossless as you point out. One of the reasons to use wavelet compressed images is for high compression. Most of us don't crunch jpgs down too much because they end up looking like crap. Wavelet compressed images tend to retain their visual quality better.
Fact is, there's no need at all for JP2K. Wavelet compression has a coolness factor for geeks, but it's essentially useless.
Utter crap. Wavelet compressed images offer a couple benefits. They look better than standard jpgs if both are highly compressed. Also, the compression is not scale-dependent. FFT-based lossy compression has problems with this. In other words, if you compress a 320x200 image into a jpg, and then resize that image to different dimensions, image quality will suffer. It becomes more noticeable the more you compress. Wavelet based images don't suffer from this problem.
Oh yeah, and aside from images, wavelet compression has uses in audio. Useless isn't a word I would describe it with.
The IP issues, you hit the nail on the head. The only way to really break a new format / protocol / whatever into mainstream use is to make it freely available. Look at mp3. If Fraunhofer had clamped down on mp3 as soon as it became available, it probably wouldn't enjoy the popularity it has today. Of course now they are trying to bring home the bacon, but that's another story...
Best regards,
SEAL
In the U.S. we don't hold a referendum for every single law that gets passed. Not even close. You elect representatives to stand up for the things you believe in. If they are passing laws that you disagree with, then vote them out, live with it, take up citizenship in another country, or become a criminal. Those are the choices.
I don't think the DMCA is good law. I also think our government has serious corruption and bribery problems. But I care about my country, and I strongly feel that we should work within the law to change it.
Consider that the RIAA loves to market shitty bands to you (the 1 hit wonders). They have one good song on their entire album. They release this song (and no others) to radio stations. People hear it and think "ahha - this band is cool I think I'll buy the album".
:) A "standard" ...And Justice For All song price (9 songs on the album, so let's say $1.50 each). The song "One" might cost you 6 bucks, since it was heavily promoted on the radio and MTV.
Soon they learn how worthless this band really is. But it's too late, the consumer has already spent his $15+ on the album. Which is exactly what the RIAA wants, and exactly why they oppose mp3 trading.
Because of this attitude, the big labels probably won't adopt a pay-per-song system anytime in the near future. However, if they did, it's very likely they would have a "standard" song price for a particular band/album, plus "premium" pricing for popular songs.
For example, take... oh... Metallica
So overall, they could make more money per album, if people bought all the songs. What scares the RIAA is that people will only buy a few songs because most bands they promote these days are utter crap.
Best regards,
SEAL