Linked by Kroc Camen on Fri 25th Sep 2009 22:19 UTC, submitted by clododunord
"We are pleased to announce a new stable release of libtheora,
the Xiph.org Foundation's reference implementation of the royalty-free Theora video
format. This new release, version 1.1, codenamed Thusnelda, incorporates all of the recent encoder improvements we have been making over
the past year, though some of the code had its genesis all the way back in 2003.
It also brings substantial speed and robustness improvements to the 1.0 decoder." For a more visual run-down of the changes, check out Mozilla's excellent article.
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RE[5]: Comment by kaiwai
by lemur2 on Sun 27th Sep 2009 23:08
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by kaiwai"
Member since:2007-02-17
"[q]'they' being a directed point made regarding the lack of decent plugins from Xiph developers for Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player.
Surely it is up to Apple and Microsoft to properly support Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player respectively. Just as it is up to VLC developers to support VLC. If VLC can take a Xiph.org codec reference implementation and make it work well in VLC, why is a similar task apparently beyond the abilities of Apple and Microsoft? " I suspect it's a case of "don't want to" rather than "can't," because of four words: "Quicktime" and "Windows Media Video." [/q] Precisely.
I am reminded of a phrase (perhaps an urban legend, I don't know) I have seen sometimes on the web:
"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Wasn't there a successful lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows 3 (which used to run on top of DOS) such it was discovered that if Windows on starting up detected an underlying DRDOS instead of MSDOS it would simply (deliberately) quit?
It could easily be a similar story here, one might surmise.
I thought the free-enterprise theory was that proprietary software companiens were supposed to try to put the MOST functionality into their code in order to attract customers? Yet we seee, apparently, the exact opposite ... they deliberately refuse to support stuff which would give their customers some freedom and actual choice. Hmmmmm.
RE[6]: Comment by kaiwai
by lemur2 on Mon 28th Sep 2009 01:02
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by kaiwai"
Member since:2007-02-17
I thought the free-enterprise theory was that proprietary software companiens were supposed to try to put the MOST functionality into their code in order to attract customers? Yet we seee, apparently, the exact opposite ... they deliberately refuse to support stuff which would give their customers some freedom and actual choice. Hmmmmm.
For a little more musing on the topic of how proprietary offerrings seem to give you so much less functionality for so much more money, here is an interesting review of the upcoming Windows 7 (Professional) versus some other possible choices of operating systems.
http://www.psy-q.ch/blog/articles/2009/09/13/win7-review-from-free-...
Windows 7 is neither overly powerful, customizable or modern. It does avoid many of the problems of Windows Vista by introducing aggressive prefetching and changing the UI design so actions require less clicks, and this makes the system appear faster. This comes at the expense of chewing up a lot of RAM, so a gaming system should probably have 4 GB or more.
Windows 7 makes a good OS for gaming simply because so many games are available on it. There is no other reason.
Windows 7 makes a reasonable OS for everyday work (office suite, web browser, e-mail, watching media files, simple games). It is RAM-hungry while doing that, although the same could be said about a fully customized KDE 4. Media file support is very weak out of the box. If gaming is not a priority for you, you would be better off replacing Windows with one of the FOSS systems. That gets you freedom in addition to an operating system that does everything you need.
Windows 7 makes a good OS for gaming simply because so many games are available on it. There is no other reason.
Windows 7 makes a reasonable OS for everyday work (office suite, web browser, e-mail, watching media files, simple games). It is RAM-hungry while doing that, although the same could be said about a fully customized KDE 4. Media file support is very weak out of the box. If gaming is not a priority for you, you would be better off replacing Windows with one of the FOSS systems. That gets you freedom in addition to an operating system that does everything you need.
I hope that this review illustrates what I mean. The issue of the media player is discussed.
The included media player appears to be a resource hog and can only play very few media formats. It couldn’t identify a Matroska file correctly, and then failed to download the appropriate codecs, even though it acted as if it could. A third-party player (like VLC) is necessary if you have any sort of variety in your media collection.
Apparently, Windows 7 messes up even the very simple text editor included:
I am typing this in Win 7’s included text editor, and it has been acting strangely from time to time. When I select some text, some other text might slip down one line and ruin my selection. When I save via Ctrl-S, my cursor often jumps back by a random number of characters (2 – 4). Sometimes selecting text becomes impossible as well (the cursor freezes when clicking anywhere in the window). Copying the text and pasting it into another application (e.g. a browser) makes random newlines appear all over it. It looks messy, like a battlefield. My text was thoroughly raped, even the copy saved to the file is broken, and only Windows 7’s editor can even display it now.
I don’t know how, but Microsoft managed to break ASCII text files. That’s an achievement.
I don’t know how, but Microsoft managed to break ASCII text files. That’s an achievement.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. A lot of people have to put up with this sort of stuff.
RE[6]: Comment by kaiwai
by StephenBeDoper on Mon 28th Sep 2009 05:11
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by kaiwai"
Member since:2005-07-06
I am reminded of a phrase (perhaps an urban legend, I don't know) I have seen sometimes on the web:
"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Wasn't there a successful lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows 3 (which used to run on top of DOS) such it was discovered that if Windows on starting up detected an underlying DRDOS instead of MSDOS it would simply (deliberately) quit?
It could easily be a similar story here, one might surmise.
"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Wasn't there a successful lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows 3 (which used to run on top of DOS) such it was discovered that if Windows on starting up detected an underlying DRDOS instead of MSDOS it would simply (deliberately) quit?
It could easily be a similar story here, one might surmise.
In this case, they don't even have to actively block Ogg video - by simply not supporting it, Microsoft and Apple can ensure that it will be used less than their respective formats. Which I think is short-sighted, since they've both already lost to Flash video for the vast majority of web video (thanks to the same sort of stubbornness).
I thought the free-enterprise theory was that proprietary software companiens were supposed to try to put the MOST functionality into their code in order to attract customers? Yet we seee, apparently, the exact opposite ... they deliberately refuse to support stuff which would give their customers some freedom and actual choice. Hmmmmm.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Surely it is up to Apple and Microsoft to properly support Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player respectively. Just as it is up to VLC developers to support VLC.
If VLC can take a Xiph.org codec reference implementation and make it work well in VLC, why is a similar task apparently beyond the abilities of Apple and Microsoft? "
I suspect it's a case of "don't want to" rather than "can't," because of four words: "Quicktime" and "Windows Media Video."