16 Years ago: Email 2.0 / EIG

Anlässlich einer kleinen Diskussion bei den elephånten eine klitzekleine Klarstellung:

eMail 2.0 wurde 1989 auf einem zwischenzeitlich obsoleten OS releas(e)d(t).

Wenn IBM (wo der binärcode jetzt ist) und MSFT (wo, damit sie endlich von 1.99 auf 2.0 upgraden können, die implementationsneuronen engagiert sind) das Zeuch jetzt noch taggen und offensourcen, dann aber hallo!

Ihr denkt unwahrscheinlich, glaub' ich nich'! We all will live to see that. Just look at Declan Lynch and Rocky Oliver's Blog(o)sphere.

Danke nochmal an kris für die Inspiration.

Noch 2 - 3 Kleinigkeiten.

• Stevie Jobs scheint jetzt wirklich der größte Disney Acktionär zu werden. Der meint es ernst.
• Es ist ja bekannt, dass slauti elektromechanische devices lieber hat als elektronische. Er wusste nie recht warum. Dank Andy Milonakis ist nun alles klar: Electronic Devices Are Gay!.
• GVP (Google Video Player) is rather uncool and heavily DRMed.

But then again: Everything is gay! Grand New Music!

Gay things: CD-Burners, Superbowl, Orange Juice. Also don't miss to enjoy the AMS feta. Lil Jon Skit. Slauti Says: The Butty and Beaverhead trad rules the Radiowaives ok. And asks, cause he don't watch tv annymore: Does this play on Goiman MTV?

update: i've chegged it out and will probably watch it tonite.

Business computing vs. scientific computing

and its intertwines

Do not always go for the obvious lessons

The ENIAC was a highly parallel computer; ... Long before ENIAC was completed, it became clear to the designers that they could utilize the equipment more efficiently if they would adopt serial methods instead of so much parallelism;

Don Knuth :Von Neumann's First Computer Program

This paper exists as a pdf in the ACM portal. You gotta have an account to get the full text delivered.

What are MS betting on with VC-1?

From their own website:

"VC-1 minimizes the complexity of decoding HD content through improved intermediate stage processing and more robust transforms. As a result, VC-1 decodes HD video twice as fast as the H.264 standard, while offering 2-to-3 times better compression than MPEG-2. * VC-1 offers superior quality across a wide variety of content types and bit rates, which has been well documented by independent sources: * DV Magazine found VC-1 to be superior to both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. * TANDBERG Television found VC-1 produces significantly better quality than MPEG-2 and comparable quality to H.264. These results were presented at the 2003 International Broadcasting Convention (IBC). ...."

What does that mean? MS say only that VC-1 quality is better than older MPEG4 codecs and that decoding is faster than H.264. MS are even admitting that VC-1 quality is slightly worse (=comparable) than H.264. Alle of these statements are proposed to be valid for HD only.

MS are clearly betting on once more finding the successful compromise. Although they might be wrong in spite of all the mistakes MPEG has made and will continue to make MS will still grab a significant if minority share of that market.

As to proprietary vs open vs standard: VC-1 and H.264 are both controlled and owned technologies with H.264 being able to claim the advantage of being owned by many greedy companies while VC-1 is dominantly owned by MS.

It is a pity that Theora cannot compete. I will follow closely what the BBC will be doing with DIRAC.

What will really happen in the Box world is multicodec chippety chip - see here - for example (in German). VLC Player is doing this on PCs already.

Ladio LoserLand: Endlich!

UserLand will no longer be providing free EditThisPage.Com Manila site hosting. Sites will stop running as of December 1, 2005.

To continue hosting your weblog with UserLand, you can purchase ManilaSite hosting. Contact UserLand customer service.

Makes me sad, anyway.