if it is impractical to deploy a new codec in the field alongside the existing codecs, a first mover will win. This is why U.S. OTA digital television is stuck on DVD/SVCD era codecs, but some countries whose digital transition happened later use H.264.

It's not true that H.264 is significantly better than MPEG-2 video, when used at high bit rates as in HDTV. Every video codec developed since MPEG-2, and every audio codec developed since MPEG-1 Layer II, has been focused on low-bit rate video that needs to look good, but doesn't need to actually be identical to the original.

This is because the first-generation audio and video codecs already got quite close to the theoretical limits of perceptual entropy, so there is NO room to double the efficiency while still making it indistinguishable from the uncompressed original. There's still tons of headroom, however, to make something low bit rate that just looks "good" and comprehensible without obvious distracting artifacts.

The article mentions Youtube, without giving any specifics. Seems they're shipping the plugin greyed out, disabled etc. and then WebRTC stuff will work (does anyone have either used that?) and then maybe you'll be able to use html5 video in some future version, maybe.

You don't need H.264 for Youtube. You can watch everything there, and at several other sites using the "Video WithOut Flash" plugin:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

It works pretty damn well.

The geek sees everything in terms of the "open" web.

But there is more to digital video than video distribution through the web.

The "distribution" is orthogonal to the codec being used. Most of the things that make a good "digital video" codec for the "web", also make it exceptionally good for physical media, dedicated hardware, etc., etc.

Which is why the mainstream commercial codecs dominate here.

No, MPEG codecs dominate, because they had NO open competitors, until *just now*.

VP3 was okay at the time, but it wasn't support by anything, Theora went nowhere for a DECADE and was awful compared to contemporary codecs, by the time they finalized their not-quite-VP3 format, and started pushing for adoption.

VP8 was a good codec, but it didn't get open sourced until LONG after H.264 had an overwhelmingly dominant installed base. The MPEG-LA also did their dammedest to threaten to sue anyone who used it, but now such challenges have been conclusively settled in court.

It's only just now, this year, that VP9 is being released for unencumbered use right about the same time as HEVC/H.265 came out. So it's only now that we'll see if the market is ready, willing, and able to adopt open formats.

I agree, but the poster to which I replied was bragging about how MSFT is doing so well and his stock portfolio is being counted by him and he is enjoying life. I merely pointed out that MSFT did not even perform better than the index.

So you have some perverse idea of what feminism is meant to be [...] (b) is your own invention in the first place.

Bullshit. I pulled the assertion straight from TFA. You can't blame me for it. Did YOU bother to read TFA?

From TFA:

"people think men and women receive the same harassment online. They do not."

"The Myth: Everyone in the games industry experiences harassment. Women are just too sensitive about it."

"If you are a woman in the industry with a critical opinion, you will get a disproportional amount of criticism, hostility, and scrutiny compared to men."

"male privilege makes them feel free to lash out."

You're insane.

I'm merely stating the logical conclusion of GP's self-justifications. What part of my statement is inaccurate? Of course demonizing anyone who disagrees with you is so much easier than honestly addressing the issues they bring up.

pick one that doesn't also apply virtually equally to women.

Women are seriously beaten and murdered at FAR LOWER rates than men. You seem to have a real problem with FACTS.

I'm supposed to walk around armed at all times (illegal here),

There's no territory in the world where it's illegal to carry a modest-size knife.

and if I don't, then it's my fault and its not really rape?

I never said anything of the sort. I simply said that you have options, and being deathly afraid of everyone is not necessary, nor is being physically small an excuse to get the world to cater to you.

The goal is clearly to produce usable power, not to need more filtering.

You don't need to do more filtering. Most devices will run BETTER on square wave output than on sine wave output.

We all know prison rapes don't count. After all, only evil people are in prison to begin with.

It's an urban legend. Studies find that prison rape is actually rare:

http://nij.gov/topics/correcti...

What I gather from this is that they managed to print the memory and the circuitry to read/write it. So, instead of requiring a mechanical transport and a magnetic head, you simply connect wires to contacts along the edge of the circuit, and use electrical signals to access the data, eliminating the need for moving components.

They had not in the prior ten years gotten stronger than the S&P 500. If ten years ago you had invested in an index fund tracking the S&P 500, your return to today would be 77% instead of the 57% you would have received by investing in MSFT. Many other companies out-performed the S&P 500 in the same ten-year period.

Not if it has paradox-absorbing crumple zones.

The same exact reasoning to justify TSA

They're incomparable. TSA is mandated by governments, you have no choice in the matter. Using a particular brand of smartphone is not. You are free to use a smartphone that doesn't use Google services and indeed are free to buy a Nexus 5 and then say "no" to the billion and one "trade data for feature?" prompts that appear when switched on the first time. No government goon is going to step in and insist that you send all your data to Google.

In fact, if you would prefer a smartphone that has a different data/features tradeoff then - conveniently! - Google provides a rather good open source operating system for free that you can use to build one. If others feel the same way you do you can even sell them without paying Google a dime.

Depends how you define "very popular" I guess. The most popular way to bypass state-level censorship in the Arab world and elsewhere is a product called HotSpot Shield. When Turkey blocked Twitter some time ago, HSS experienced 1000% growth and reached 1.1 million installs in the iOS App Store alone within only four days, with 800,000 regular users.

In contrast Tor went from 30,000 to 40,000 "direct connects" from Turkey.

HSS doesn't get much press in the geek world as it's just a plain old VPN run by a company in California that inserts ads into people's web pages to pay for the bandwidth costs. But usage wise it utterly dominates Tor.

I own two Panasonic blu-ray players and they have all been terribly slow at everything, from loading discs to using the "smart" features like Amazon and Netflix. One of the Panasonics quite regularly requires me to cut the power to it and cold start it to either watch Internet content ("NO NETWORK") or to watch a movie (hang up with a "Loading.." graphic).

The Amazon interface on them also seems stuck in the stone age -- you can browse titles or search, but the 'modern' Amazon interface found in Sonys or the iOS apps isn't there so the Watch List isn't available.

HBO discs are the worst with these units due to their bloated menu/multimedia content. I just reflexively cold start my player before trying to watch an HBO disc.

The number is utterly bogus:

http://aspiringeconomist.com/i...

And a woman's actual lifetime chance of being raped, is more like 8%:

http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1...