Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 16th May 2010 12:52 UTC, submitted by mrsteveman1
Mozilla, sticking to its ideals of the open web, decided long ago that support for the patent-encumbered H264 codec would not be included in any of its products. Not only is H264 wholly incompatible with the open web and Free software, it is also incredibly expensive. Mozilla could use one of the open source implementations, but those are not licensed, and the MPEG-LA has been quite clear in that it will sue those who encode or decode H264 content without a license. Software patents, however, are only valid in some parts of the world, so an enterprising developer has started a project that was sure to come eventually: Firefox builds with H264 support.
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RE[5]: Why not just use built in decoders?
by steogede2 on Tue 18th May 2010 12:47
in reply to "RE[4]: Why not just use built in decoders?"
Member since:2007-08-17
Here are the specs for my video card:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/...
"ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2)
Enabling hardware decode acceleration of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
There is also quite a long list of other functions related to hardware video acceleration, although these are not specific to h.624 I would think.
"
Does Hardware Accelerated Decoding (or "hardware decode acceleration") === Hardware Decoding? I know that the terms are often used synonymously, but are they the same thing. Surely your graphics card still requires some software which understands h.264, to tell the GPU what to do.
RE[6]: Why not just use built in decoders?
by lemur2 on Tue 18th May 2010 14:34
in reply to "RE[5]: Why not just use built in decoders?"
Member since:2007-02-17
"
Here are the specs for my video card:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/...
ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2)
Enabling hardware decode acceleration of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
There is also quite a long list of other functions related to hardware video acceleration, although these are not specific to h.624 I would think.
Here are the specs for my video card:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/...
ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2)
Enabling hardware decode acceleration of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
There is also quite a long list of other functions related to hardware video acceleration, although these are not specific to h.624 I would think.
Does Hardware Accelerated Decoding (or "hardware decode acceleration") === Hardware Decoding? I know that the terms are often used synonymously, but are they the same thing. Surely your graphics card still requires some software which understands h.264, to tell the GPU what to do. "
The graphics card functions are accessed via an Application Programming Interface ... aka an API.
Software which calls that API would be termed a "driver".
Video player software which could play H.264 videos would call the driver, which in turn would use the video card API to pass on the video data to the video card to be decoded by the card's decoder functions (collectively known as UVD).
The decoder functions are on the video card. They are not executed by any of the higher layers of software in this stack.
My Linux system could have a player, say Firefox, or VLC, or SMPlayer, which would call the driver, xf86-video-ati, which in turn would call the card's hardware video acceleration API, XvMC, which would then access the actual decoder embedded on the card. None of the software layers would actually have a H.264 encoder themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XvMC
X-Video Motion Compensation (XvMC), is an extension of the X video extension (Xv) for the X Window System. The XvMC API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU video-hardware.
See? The video decoding is offloaded to the GPU video-hardware.
Therefore, the higher layers of software do not violate any H.264 patent.
Therefore, since I have purchased the video card, I have an implied license to use the patented decoder functions embedded within the video card, and I do not require any further license to use the rest of the stack (the higher layers), since these are not patented. Therefore, I can use all of this on my Linux system perfectly legally, since I have paid for the video card.
Edited 2010-05-18 14:45 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2007-02-17
Here are the specs for my video card:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/...
2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2)
Enabling hardware decode acceleration of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
There is also quite a long list of other functions related to hardware video acceleration, although these are not specific to h.624 I would think.
In any event, the video card hardware covers the patented functions of H.264. There can be no patents applicable to getting the video data stream in to and out from these hardware functions, because those processes are in no way novel or inventive.
Since I paid for the video card, I have an implied license to use all of the functions of the card listed in the specifications (link above), even if the OS that I run happens to be Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine
Therefore, I am licensed to use UVD 2 (which is described as a 2nd generation Unified Video Decoder enabling hardware decode acceleration of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2) on my ATI card (even if I run Linux as my OS). Therefore, also, it is legal for Mozilla to ship an open source browser that used UVD 2 (if it was present) to decode h.264 videos.
Edited 2010-05-16 23:24 UTC