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Comment Re:What about firefox (ogg video)? (Score 1) 265

by hullabalucination (#30849504) Attached to: YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video

A quote from the Xiph paper referenced:

That's a valid question. The original reason we made this graph was to offer a rebuttal to a quite sloppy paper that both incorrectly claimed x264 exceeded Theora PSNR by nearly 20dB (!) on this specific clip, as well as incorrectly implied that PSNR comparisons conclusively indicate relative codec superiority. This paper was beginning to see wide distribution as yet another piece of 'evidence' that Theora has no hope of competing and was not worth considering for use. Although we've contacted the author, he's not yet shown any inclination to correct the errors.

Comment Re:What about firefox (ogg video)? (Score 1) 265

by hullabalucination (#30849156) Attached to: YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video

Everyone likes to whine about patents for h.264, but there are free/oss decoders available and the best h.264 encoder is probably the open source x264.

Apparently, even though x264 is GPL'd, it violates MPEG-LA's patents in jurisdictions that recognize software patents:

http://www.unmediated.org/archives/2005/05/videolan_x264_e.php

Comment Re:h264 being "not open" confuses me... (Score 1) 265

by hullabalucination (#30848770) Attached to: YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video

Second, if h264 needs to be licensed at such exorbitant prices, how do x264, VLC, and MPC-HC do it?

I don't know about MPC-HC, but x264 (which is the h264-compatible codec used in VLC) is a cleanroom reverse-engineering job. So, it's technically not h264. Just very compatible. And it's GPL'd. However, we now have the question of why the Mozilla folks aren't supporting a GPL'd codec. I'm guessing because there are possible legal patent-related issues surrounding a reverse-engineered codec like x264.

Doing a bit more searching, we find this:

http://www.unmediated.org/archives/2005/05/videolan_x264_e.php

x264 is a free library for encoding H.264/AVC video streams. x246 has features such as CABAC and DirectShow encoding. It is released under the terms of the GPL, but this license is incompatible with the MPEG-LA patent licenses in jurisdictions that recognize software patents.

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Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect. —Stephen Wright

OS X

Apple Patches Massive Holes In OS X 246

Posted by timothy from the well-it-wouldn't-be-polite-to-patch-windows dept.
Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost: "Apple's first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site." Hit the link for a list of the highlights among these fixes.
Image

Own Your Own Fighter Jet Screenshot-sm 222

Posted by samzenpus from the only-one-on-the-block dept.
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
Businesses

Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180

Posted by Soulskill from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.
Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."
Games

Palm Pre and WebOS Get Native Gaming 49

Posted by Soulskill from the break-out-your-rocket-launcher dept.
rboatright writes "WebOS developers have been waiting, and with the 1.3.5 release, Palm's open source page suddenly listed SDL. Members of the WebOS internals team took that as a challenge and within 24 hours had a working port of Doom running in SDL on the Pre, in a webOS card. 48 hours later, they not only had Quake running, but had found in the latest LunaSysMgr the requirements to launch a native app from the webOS app launcher from an icon just like any other app. At the same time, the team demonstrated openGL apps running. With full native code support, with I/O available via SDL, developers now have a preview into Palm's future intent with regard to native code SDK's, and a hint of what's coming."
Programming

An Open Source Compiler From CUDA To X86-Multicore 71

Posted by timothy from the abstraction-gains-a-layer dept.
Gregory Diamos writes "An open source project, Ocelot, has recently released a just-in-time compiler for CUDA, allowing the same programs to be run on NVIDIA GPUs or x86 CPUs and providing an alternative to OpenCL. A description of the compiler was recently posted on the NVIDIA forums. The compiler works by translating GPU instructions to LLVM and then generating native code for any LLVM target. It has been validated against over 100 CUDA applications. All of the code is available under the New BSD license."
Censorship

Sharp Rise In Jailing of Online Journalists; Iran May Just Kill Them 233

Posted by timothy from the your-ethics-may-vary dept.
bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists has published their annual census of journalists in prison. Of the 136 reporters in prison around the world on December 1, 'At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail.' Print was next with 51 cases. Also, 'Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business.' China, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma were the top 5 jailers of journalists." rmdstudio writes, too, with word that after the last few days' protest there, largely organized online, the government of Iran is considering the death penalty for bloggers and webmasters whose reports offend it.
Debian

FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux 206

Posted by Soulskill from the changing-horses dept.
dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."

Comment Re:Brilliant piece of software (Score 2, Informative) 225

by hullabalucination (#30227492) Attached to: Inkscape 0.47 Released

So great, Inkscape SVGs are renderable in Inkscape, and really simple ones will work in Firefox and Opera. Whoopdee-doo.

Just out of curiosity, I opened the native Inkscape (0.47) version of a logo I'm working on in Firefox (Linux, v3.5.5). It rendered beautifully. Same with Opera v9.63. The art has ~50 paths with more than 600 nodes each (largest ones around 3000 nodes each), transparency and blur filter effects, linear color blends and I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of radial blends in there as well. So, what's all this f*cking nonsense about "really simple ones will work in Firefox and Opera?"

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I'd horse whip you, if I only had a horse."
—Groucho Marx

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