I can't help to join in, having nothing better to do.
This is why kids know about Einstein, not the CEO of Bank of America. Or else nobody will want to be a scientist, putting the human race in danger.
There is nothing new here. It shouldn't have been compared in the first place. The only difference in the apple cult consumers, who can now be geeks just by waiving their fingers.
Dennis will have a place in the history books. If you don't involve in operating system or language design or a software architecture or a programmer, you don't need to know him. But if you do, sooner or later you will find his name.
This is always how it works. A student in a profession will have to find out what had been done and what's the best. A paper, book, product will point you to the greats of the past. One day when you are curious enough, you will trace the history to them.
Dennis came at a time when computers are main frames, have their own primitive machine language called assembly language. The operating systems are written in machine language specific to a particular machine. The same for applications that need a lot of speed and memory.
The word then is portable. The aim is to make Unix, a minimal operating system, that can run on all computers. You can do that but nobody will listen to you. The only way feasible is to design a portable language that can run on all computers, and write the operation system on that, which don't need to change for every past and future computer.
So C is born, and Dennis is the sole(?) author or inventor of it. All sorts of languages and important concepts were developed ever since the invention of the computer, like object oriented, an ancient concept.
The key concept of C really isn't that key, but enable you to port Unix to any computer by writing a small compiler, translating C language to a particular machine language.
C is like a high speed machine language. You can control the speed and memory efficiency as in machine language, by how you write or optimise your program. You can also write in any style you want, so it branches into different forms, C++ is the obvious, objective C, parallel C. And since programmers are liberated from the arcane half machine language FORTRAN, there aren't any important syntax change from C. Any fragment of code of modern languages look like each other, C++, Javascript, Java.
Perhaps you will never know who thought of a portable operating system and pushed it through. But Dennis got the credit of authoring the C language and obvious they needed this for Unix. Something like C and Unix will evolve, and one won't be a lot better than the other. It's not like somebody "invented" C and Unix and changed the world. It's is in a way, but the concept of a portable operating system changed the world.
Jobs is a lot different. CEO's and super rich people don't go into student history books. Somebody is glad that Bill Gates is not yet dead. Jobs and Bill are indeed pioneers on personal computers. The criticism that they steal ideas is sort of right, but their vision is one computer to every person, while the computer industry is for large computers that can afford at least a mini computer, expensive terminals, or hire some computer for processing.
Jobs is credited for the Apple personal computer. But he is not alone for the Apple I, and that is most likely not the first PC. Before the IBM PC Microsoft is writing software and operating systems for the other manufacturers, such as NEC. As you can see, Apple is still losing out in terms of numbers of operating systems.
So Bill's major step backward operating system is still the king in numbers, and Apple's Unix based system, combined with all other Unix systems is far behind. Third will be Linux which is not Unix, but the important concept is open source.
I'm not trashing Jobs, but it's hard to pinpoint credits due to him. He is a great visionary and great entrepreneur but you can say that for many people, deserving it or not.
If he had been ahead of Microsoft, I bet he will do the same that Bill did, protecting his empire rather than pushing forward technology. You give what people want sooner in order go get ahead of the competition.
iPhone is of course a great product but all the tech are there one way or the other. Touch screen. High resolution screen. Pocket computer and organiser. Of course Jobs managed to put everything together and built a great company and great products. But he will lose out again to open source Android as history repeats itself in some ways. But who cares about the numbers when your profit margin is so much greater?
I would say Job is so popular with fans is because he enabled people to be geeks if they want to be. No qualification and training needed. In the beginning you can't usually touch computer hardware. You can be geek if you know some programming, doing it in company or edu computers. With early PC's you need to know at least some typing, even true today. With iPhone you can type like a journalist on blackberry, send and receive email whenever you are, text like a teen. For anything geek can do in software, you can pay $3 and get anything you want.
Of course, Job also enable kids to do computing with zero training using iPads. Again I bet that's not his original idea and others are doing it for much cheaper for not so rich kids.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Investigative journalism: the pirate wars
Even though SOPA, PIPA, ACTA are almost defeated or in serious trouble, the war with the pirates are far from over. The massive p2p lawsuits in UK are back, even though the last lawyer involved was utterly destroyed. In US, ISP's are preparing to deploy in summer what they agreed to do, patrolling their users and deal with repeat offenders.
To deal with piracy, the internet is in danger of unconstitutional censorship and even loss of the guaranteed right of anonymity. You can blame the pirates for coming to this. My guess is, with or without the pirates, the internet is heading that way anyway. Pirates is just the right excuse. I may not be right. But one thing is certain, the pirates will always become defenders of the constitution by the things they fight for. One is unknown. One is certain. Which side do you take?
We shouldn't have to care. If we are not one percent of the one percent, who cares if someone is losing money? Punishment should fit the crime, not using severe punishment as scare tactics just because those losing money are rich and powerful.
You know from my other blog I like to investigate myself. I want to see who's going to win the next round.
Megadownload and such are money making schemes. They have no efficiency and can't handle 3D movies 10 to 20 Gb each. So I look at bittorrent as an indicator.
If you do a simple search using Google, all the great movies and great games are there, in all the formats. BT isn't going to go away soon.
The Ship
The bittorrent protocol is an open book where everybody knows everybody else. There are ways to cut down your exposure - private trackers, seedbox, VPN.
Private trackers are like private clubs. Because of the small numbers of users swamping a torrent, it's much more inefficient to track down all the users. Users are sort of screened but there's no guarantee that management are not compromised. They have your IP just like public torrents.
Since you only need the most basic virtual server and website to run these clubs, they are almost untraceable. There are pretty good open source software for exactly this purpose. I'm sure they don't keep any logs. But the hosting company of these servers still may have connection logs, depending on the jurisdiction. There are in theory free if you want, but finding the right ones and begging to join is a hassle, on top of the hassle of juvenile management.
Seedboxes are typically servers in the cloud that performs the bittorrent download for you. All you have to do is to download or stream the completed files into your computer. Amazon servers in the cloud are pretty good seedboxes, but since they charge by bandwidth, HD and 3D movies are out of the question. Because you have to seed, upload while downloading, you end up with twice the bandwidth usage. For a ten Gb movie, you are charged twice. It end up costing some $5 dollars for a 3D movie, which is a great deal but you can have it for free.
In Europe the cloud servers are not charged by bandwidth. They become heavens for seedboxes. Unlike Amazon, owning a server still cost too much for individuals. But typically seedbox operators hire a server and split it into seedboxes to resell to end users. But be careful that the server providers do not allow bittorrents. So these resellers may come and go, along with your money.
The weak link in seedboxes is the final download into your hard drive. Your IP has to be exposed. You can use proxies but fast and reliable and untraceable ones cost money.
Typically if you are a movie junkie, you need a seedbox. If you are a causal user, like at most a movie every two days, you don't need a seedbox. A basic boardband connection at home, the simplest netbook can do all the work in the background. It's even better if you have an old spare computer, or a cheap media computer attached to your TV.
If you do your bittorrent pirating at home, my source's advice is to hire some VPN provider. A http or socks proxy for the browser won't work as bittorrent clients now use udp as well. VPN has been called transparent proxy. When the VPN is turned on, every net traffic goes through it so you don't have to set the proxy of individual applications. There's no DNS leak unless you keep using your ISP's DNS server.
VPN typically cost the least of the above because it doesn't provide anything other than "anonymous" connection. Operators have no fear of being targeted. You can always use VPN on your last leg whatever you decide to use, which decreases your traceability. Also, the consideration of choosing a VPN is the same as choosing other services. Our further investigation is on VPN.
Other anonymous services such as TOR and Jondo are two slow or two expensive for huge movies.
The Base
Ironically, having real pirate problems, the Republic of Seychelles is heaven for pirates and legitimates business to setup off shore companies. Company officials are anonymous (with records kept securely in the Republic). That adds confidence if these people can hardly be identified, how can you?
The worse VPN or other services you can have is based in Europe, where they have the data retention laws. When they receive a court order, they just have to give up your IP when you connected to them some 6 months or two years ago. However, many countries haven't implemented the laws yet, and some like Germany are still fighting it.
On the other hand, Europe has the best data protection acts to protection your privacy. It's harder to bribe or make threats in order to get data. Everything has to be done properly, such as proper court orders, or the company will be liable.
Some countries are harder to get court orders such as Sweden. When the Pirate Bay got busted the last time round, anonymous persons carried on as a non-profit incorporated in Seychelles.
The Sword
Kryptotel is a VPN provider (amongst others) incorporated in Seychelles. The VPN service specifically allows bittorrent, while some don't. VPN by definition always allow anything unless you block it, or don't open the ports for it. It's also the cheapest, less than $5 a month if you pay in bulk.
I have no affiliation with Kryptotel. (There are few others and then some.) I'm just interested to go into real pirate infested waters to try out their service.
They sell service for just one month, monthly recurring, a couple of months and more. I brought one month for my investigation. The order form seems primitive and I am expecting to wait till tomorrow or next week to hear from them. But they must have monkeys sitting on the other end 24/7, or the system is actually fully automated in disguise.
Soon after I paid via paypal, I got in my email a configuration file for openvpn for linux. Of course they support Windows and Macs. Basically it contains the encryption key and also for your credentials to use the service. So you can connect any time in any machine as long as you have the file. Actually it's one configuration file for each country they have servers in, and one for random servers in the world if you want that. Type in the openvpn command with the configuration file and I'm in. Actually there are minor problems but since I'm a rarer case so I don't blame them. It's trivial problems.
For all the servers I tried, connection is instant. The connection speed maxed the broadband connection under trial. I don't lose anything in speed by going through the VPN. Typically torrents aren't that fast as typical broadband connections at home. So it's good enough. But I miss my Amazon EC2 seedbox. It ran as fast as several MB/s, making it almost movie on demand for popular torrents.
So I tried some public torrents with public domain contents (of course). The speed is good so I don't think they limit the speed or the servers are over used.
I paid using my personal paypal account because everybody who visits coffee houses using wifi should have one VPN account. It cost less than a coffee per month. It cost you more if you have your own Amazon VPN, or you have to turn your EC2 on whenever you need it. There is no hassle for Kryptotel.
If you are under aged you can get the cheapest VISA gift card for $25 plus $4 fee. Some are not as good as the others. The most VISA looking card allows you to enter any name and billing address online, while some don't. I believe you can setup a paypal account with that, or just pay online as a credit/debit card.
They even advice you to email them with a disposal account.
The Verdict
Will the pirates win? Avatar 3D Blu-ray cost $100, while the cheapest active 3D TV is just over $600. Go figure. It's like paying $150 for a Wii while each new game cost $30 or more.
They scare people away from bittorrents and move into direct download. It's inefficient and expensive. And you can easily close it down.
You cannot really close down public torrent trackers, and you will find them easily replaceable. You just can't track down all the private trackers and close them in all countries. There are new version of the protocols that are purely distributed p2p without the need for central trackers and hence nothing to close down.
Does a VPN service like Kryptotel provide sufficient anonymity? There's no money in it to cooperate with law enforcement. I think they just hire virtual servers from some providers when there are demands, or find some mom and pop at home servers as affiliates. To have accessible logs they have to ask all these operators to log huge amount of data, and send it to a central database to store. They won't do it if they don't have to.
From a torrent, you can only prove that a certain IP downloaded certain content at some point in time. If that IP is from your ISP, it links to you directly. Even without data retention laws, typically ISP log IP's for 6 month or more. With a VPN, that particular IP is shared, probably simultaneously, likely different people at work shares the same external IP. Even if you can trace everything, you have to log a lot more than connection time as at your ISP.
I'm no expert but think of it this way. They have to monitor the server you are using, and monitor you at your ISP, just to catch you in the act. That's just too stupid to catch one bittorrent user.
If you are one strike from your ISP, and you get a VPN service, there's no difference from downloading a torrent or surfing in a coffee shop. Though the coffee time is much longer. And if you encrypt your movies at home, they can't hold you anything even if they knock down your doors.
If you have a rich enemy that's another matter. But you just can't find these anonymous guys to bribe.
3D is a reason you stay at home. More controllable viewing angle, better 3D glasses. There are more decent 3D titles now than a year or two ago. 3D TVs are approaching the $500 mark, and they are the better ones than the older generation. A few times brighter and arguable finer characters can be read off the screen.
I doubt if the ISP's are doing anything but lip service. For few dollars a month worth of protection, they cannot do anything but actively target you one at a time without probable cause. In that case you can switch to DSL, get a VPN as the final leg, rent a seed box, and you will be very welcomed to join a private tracker club. That cost about a Blu-ray 3D per year or every quarter.
If all else fails, there's always the Pirate Parties all over the world. In a few year's time, a lot of people will turn 18 and vote. If I were your, don't mess up their internet connection starting this summer.
To deal with piracy, the internet is in danger of unconstitutional censorship and even loss of the guaranteed right of anonymity. You can blame the pirates for coming to this. My guess is, with or without the pirates, the internet is heading that way anyway. Pirates is just the right excuse. I may not be right. But one thing is certain, the pirates will always become defenders of the constitution by the things they fight for. One is unknown. One is certain. Which side do you take?
We shouldn't have to care. If we are not one percent of the one percent, who cares if someone is losing money? Punishment should fit the crime, not using severe punishment as scare tactics just because those losing money are rich and powerful.
You know from my other blog I like to investigate myself. I want to see who's going to win the next round.
Megadownload and such are money making schemes. They have no efficiency and can't handle 3D movies 10 to 20 Gb each. So I look at bittorrent as an indicator.
If you do a simple search using Google, all the great movies and great games are there, in all the formats. BT isn't going to go away soon.
The Ship
The bittorrent protocol is an open book where everybody knows everybody else. There are ways to cut down your exposure - private trackers, seedbox, VPN.
Private trackers are like private clubs. Because of the small numbers of users swamping a torrent, it's much more inefficient to track down all the users. Users are sort of screened but there's no guarantee that management are not compromised. They have your IP just like public torrents.
Since you only need the most basic virtual server and website to run these clubs, they are almost untraceable. There are pretty good open source software for exactly this purpose. I'm sure they don't keep any logs. But the hosting company of these servers still may have connection logs, depending on the jurisdiction. There are in theory free if you want, but finding the right ones and begging to join is a hassle, on top of the hassle of juvenile management.
Seedboxes are typically servers in the cloud that performs the bittorrent download for you. All you have to do is to download or stream the completed files into your computer. Amazon servers in the cloud are pretty good seedboxes, but since they charge by bandwidth, HD and 3D movies are out of the question. Because you have to seed, upload while downloading, you end up with twice the bandwidth usage. For a ten Gb movie, you are charged twice. It end up costing some $5 dollars for a 3D movie, which is a great deal but you can have it for free.
In Europe the cloud servers are not charged by bandwidth. They become heavens for seedboxes. Unlike Amazon, owning a server still cost too much for individuals. But typically seedbox operators hire a server and split it into seedboxes to resell to end users. But be careful that the server providers do not allow bittorrents. So these resellers may come and go, along with your money.
The weak link in seedboxes is the final download into your hard drive. Your IP has to be exposed. You can use proxies but fast and reliable and untraceable ones cost money.
Typically if you are a movie junkie, you need a seedbox. If you are a causal user, like at most a movie every two days, you don't need a seedbox. A basic boardband connection at home, the simplest netbook can do all the work in the background. It's even better if you have an old spare computer, or a cheap media computer attached to your TV.
If you do your bittorrent pirating at home, my source's advice is to hire some VPN provider. A http or socks proxy for the browser won't work as bittorrent clients now use udp as well. VPN has been called transparent proxy. When the VPN is turned on, every net traffic goes through it so you don't have to set the proxy of individual applications. There's no DNS leak unless you keep using your ISP's DNS server.
VPN typically cost the least of the above because it doesn't provide anything other than "anonymous" connection. Operators have no fear of being targeted. You can always use VPN on your last leg whatever you decide to use, which decreases your traceability. Also, the consideration of choosing a VPN is the same as choosing other services. Our further investigation is on VPN.
Other anonymous services such as TOR and Jondo are two slow or two expensive for huge movies.
The Base
Ironically, having real pirate problems, the Republic of Seychelles is heaven for pirates and legitimates business to setup off shore companies. Company officials are anonymous (with records kept securely in the Republic). That adds confidence if these people can hardly be identified, how can you?
The worse VPN or other services you can have is based in Europe, where they have the data retention laws. When they receive a court order, they just have to give up your IP when you connected to them some 6 months or two years ago. However, many countries haven't implemented the laws yet, and some like Germany are still fighting it.
On the other hand, Europe has the best data protection acts to protection your privacy. It's harder to bribe or make threats in order to get data. Everything has to be done properly, such as proper court orders, or the company will be liable.
Some countries are harder to get court orders such as Sweden. When the Pirate Bay got busted the last time round, anonymous persons carried on as a non-profit incorporated in Seychelles.
The Sword
Kryptotel is a VPN provider (amongst others) incorporated in Seychelles. The VPN service specifically allows bittorrent, while some don't. VPN by definition always allow anything unless you block it, or don't open the ports for it. It's also the cheapest, less than $5 a month if you pay in bulk.
I have no affiliation with Kryptotel. (There are few others and then some.) I'm just interested to go into real pirate infested waters to try out their service.
They sell service for just one month, monthly recurring, a couple of months and more. I brought one month for my investigation. The order form seems primitive and I am expecting to wait till tomorrow or next week to hear from them. But they must have monkeys sitting on the other end 24/7, or the system is actually fully automated in disguise.
Soon after I paid via paypal, I got in my email a configuration file for openvpn for linux. Of course they support Windows and Macs. Basically it contains the encryption key and also for your credentials to use the service. So you can connect any time in any machine as long as you have the file. Actually it's one configuration file for each country they have servers in, and one for random servers in the world if you want that. Type in the openvpn command with the configuration file and I'm in. Actually there are minor problems but since I'm a rarer case so I don't blame them. It's trivial problems.
For all the servers I tried, connection is instant. The connection speed maxed the broadband connection under trial. I don't lose anything in speed by going through the VPN. Typically torrents aren't that fast as typical broadband connections at home. So it's good enough. But I miss my Amazon EC2 seedbox. It ran as fast as several MB/s, making it almost movie on demand for popular torrents.
So I tried some public torrents with public domain contents (of course). The speed is good so I don't think they limit the speed or the servers are over used.
I paid using my personal paypal account because everybody who visits coffee houses using wifi should have one VPN account. It cost less than a coffee per month. It cost you more if you have your own Amazon VPN, or you have to turn your EC2 on whenever you need it. There is no hassle for Kryptotel.
If you are under aged you can get the cheapest VISA gift card for $25 plus $4 fee. Some are not as good as the others. The most VISA looking card allows you to enter any name and billing address online, while some don't. I believe you can setup a paypal account with that, or just pay online as a credit/debit card.
They even advice you to email them with a disposal account.
The Verdict
Will the pirates win? Avatar 3D Blu-ray cost $100, while the cheapest active 3D TV is just over $600. Go figure. It's like paying $150 for a Wii while each new game cost $30 or more.
They scare people away from bittorrents and move into direct download. It's inefficient and expensive. And you can easily close it down.
You cannot really close down public torrent trackers, and you will find them easily replaceable. You just can't track down all the private trackers and close them in all countries. There are new version of the protocols that are purely distributed p2p without the need for central trackers and hence nothing to close down.
Does a VPN service like Kryptotel provide sufficient anonymity? There's no money in it to cooperate with law enforcement. I think they just hire virtual servers from some providers when there are demands, or find some mom and pop at home servers as affiliates. To have accessible logs they have to ask all these operators to log huge amount of data, and send it to a central database to store. They won't do it if they don't have to.
From a torrent, you can only prove that a certain IP downloaded certain content at some point in time. If that IP is from your ISP, it links to you directly. Even without data retention laws, typically ISP log IP's for 6 month or more. With a VPN, that particular IP is shared, probably simultaneously, likely different people at work shares the same external IP. Even if you can trace everything, you have to log a lot more than connection time as at your ISP.
I'm no expert but think of it this way. They have to monitor the server you are using, and monitor you at your ISP, just to catch you in the act. That's just too stupid to catch one bittorrent user.
If you are one strike from your ISP, and you get a VPN service, there's no difference from downloading a torrent or surfing in a coffee shop. Though the coffee time is much longer. And if you encrypt your movies at home, they can't hold you anything even if they knock down your doors.
If you have a rich enemy that's another matter. But you just can't find these anonymous guys to bribe.
3D is a reason you stay at home. More controllable viewing angle, better 3D glasses. There are more decent 3D titles now than a year or two ago. 3D TVs are approaching the $500 mark, and they are the better ones than the older generation. A few times brighter and arguable finer characters can be read off the screen.
I doubt if the ISP's are doing anything but lip service. For few dollars a month worth of protection, they cannot do anything but actively target you one at a time without probable cause. In that case you can switch to DSL, get a VPN as the final leg, rent a seed box, and you will be very welcomed to join a private tracker club. That cost about a Blu-ray 3D per year or every quarter.
If all else fails, there's always the Pirate Parties all over the world. In a few year's time, a lot of people will turn 18 and vote. If I were your, don't mess up their internet connection starting this summer.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Playing .mkv files on Internet TV's
This is outdated. See Reformatting and recoding video files for Internet TV's and other devices.
As you know, my small and sexy netbook do not play 1080p files well under Ubuntu without hardware driver for video acceleration. In Windows 7, it's barely OK, but the default media player do not recognise .mkv format. Other players suffers from the same thing on Linux, without hardware driver that use video acceleration.
It is very frustrated when these Internet TV's can play 2x1080p from the blu-ray player, 1080p 3D movies from Vudu and even Youtube.
My TV says the media app can only play mp3 and view pictures from the USB ports. It will only support flash thumb drives. And that the format have to be the old FAT. (It' the E3D420VX for the bathroom :-) This is very wrong, protectionism. This is pure software. The hardware can obviously play anything from anywhere, USB or even stream via Wifi.
Out of frustration I plugged in my external USB drive in the standard Windows format - NTFS. It works and plays mp4!!! Another upgrade it should connect to your PC or file server via wifi and no need to carry your USB drive around. Now almost any USB drive works. I have a 1 TB Western Digital, and another very old laptop hard drive savaged and put in an external box to adapt it into a portable usb drive. This one is even better as it uses y-cable instead of power adaptor. No need to find another power socket.
There are only two problems. Like Windows, the media play won't recognise .mkv files. Even though it's not FAT, the video file size is limited to 4Gb. It will play larger files, but would crash at the 4Gb point. I think if these are sorted out, they will update the manuals.
On Ubuntu you need to install two packages to solve everything.
#sudo apt-get install gpac mkvtoolnix
First you need to find the exact frame rate and the tracks.
#mkvinfo hugo.mkv
You should read the exact video frame rate, eg, 23.976 fps. So far all the movies are on this rate.
Usually track 1 is the video, 2 and 3 are alternative audio formats, DTS and AC3. Next extract the tracks you want. Extensions are important. This is how the file formats are recognized.
Since dts and ac3 in the same language are not put in blu-rays, you need to convert the dts audio track obtained the same way as above.
#ffmpeg -i hugo.dts -acodec ac3 -ab 640000 hugo.ac3
where -ab is the audio bit rate, 640kb/s may be the max for ac3, while dts is higher.
Now put them back in mp4 format.
#MP4Box -fps 23.976 -add hugo.h264 -add hugo.ac3 hugo.mp4
For some reasons, mp4box cannot detect the video frame rate correctly. And if you put in 24 instead of 23.976, it will be out of audio sync sooner or later. Audio sampling rates are well defined with no problems.
In contradiction to what I have researched, ac3 audio works perfectly in the mp4 format, and on my TV. So mp4 got updated, the TV player cheated, or mkv is a mistake. The mkv file is 11 GB, while the mp4 file is only 9 GB. Still mp4box don't support DTS format.
Finally split up the big mp4 file into 4GB trunks.
#MP4Box -splits 4000000 hugo.mp4
This is totally lossless. Totally fastest. You can also concat the split files so you don't need to store the complete movie file. Can totally be done in the cloud. Now EC2 provides 30Gb free for one year for new signups. But Amazon will be totally not suitable for movies because they charge bandwidth.
My prediction is that the most popular file format will be mp4 with ac3 audio or whatever what is in blu-ray. And the 3D format will be HTB. The blu-ray format is full side by side, meaning 2x 1080p. To keep the current HD bit rate, the more common format is half that - HSBS. However, in passive 3D TV's, half the vertical resolution is dropped so each eye can see all the time on a 1080p display. So half top-bottom is best for passive, with no further loss of resolution.
Now the cheapest Vizio becomes the best. A lot of people says passive are better. Passive allow gamers to play 3D 24 hours instead of an hour or two. Passive is a few times brighter. Surprisingly, you can see finer small text in passive. Anyway, if you know a thing or two about active, it seems like an electronic gadget for torture via your eyes.
As you know, my small and sexy netbook do not play 1080p files well under Ubuntu without hardware driver for video acceleration. In Windows 7, it's barely OK, but the default media player do not recognise .mkv format. Other players suffers from the same thing on Linux, without hardware driver that use video acceleration.
It is very frustrated when these Internet TV's can play 2x1080p from the blu-ray player, 1080p 3D movies from Vudu and even Youtube.
My TV says the media app can only play mp3 and view pictures from the USB ports. It will only support flash thumb drives. And that the format have to be the old FAT. (It' the E3D420VX for the bathroom :-) This is very wrong, protectionism. This is pure software. The hardware can obviously play anything from anywhere, USB or even stream via Wifi.
Out of frustration I plugged in my external USB drive in the standard Windows format - NTFS. It works and plays mp4!!! Another upgrade it should connect to your PC or file server via wifi and no need to carry your USB drive around. Now almost any USB drive works. I have a 1 TB Western Digital, and another very old laptop hard drive savaged and put in an external box to adapt it into a portable usb drive. This one is even better as it uses y-cable instead of power adaptor. No need to find another power socket.
There are only two problems. Like Windows, the media play won't recognise .mkv files. Even though it's not FAT, the video file size is limited to 4Gb. It will play larger files, but would crash at the 4Gb point. I think if these are sorted out, they will update the manuals.
On Ubuntu you need to install two packages to solve everything.
#sudo apt-get install gpac mkvtoolnix
First you need to find the exact frame rate and the tracks.
#mkvinfo hugo.mkv
You should read the exact video frame rate, eg, 23.976 fps. So far all the movies are on this rate.
Usually track 1 is the video, 2 and 3 are alternative audio formats, DTS and AC3. Next extract the tracks you want. Extensions are important. This is how the file formats are recognized.
#mkvextract tracks hugo.mkv 1:hugo.h264 3:hugo.ac3Since dts and ac3 in the same language are not put in blu-rays, you need to convert the dts audio track obtained the same way as above.
#ffmpeg -i hugo.dts -acodec ac3 -ab 640000 hugo.ac3
where -ab is the audio bit rate, 640kb/s may be the max for ac3, while dts is higher.
Now put them back in mp4 format.
#MP4Box -fps 23.976 -add hugo.h264 -add hugo.ac3 hugo.mp4
For some reasons, mp4box cannot detect the video frame rate correctly. And if you put in 24 instead of 23.976, it will be out of audio sync sooner or later. Audio sampling rates are well defined with no problems.
In contradiction to what I have researched, ac3 audio works perfectly in the mp4 format, and on my TV. So mp4 got updated, the TV player cheated, or mkv is a mistake. The mkv file is 11 GB, while the mp4 file is only 9 GB. Still mp4box don't support DTS format.
Finally split up the big mp4 file into 4GB trunks.
#MP4Box -splits 4000000 hugo.mp4
This is totally lossless. Totally fastest. You can also concat the split files so you don't need to store the complete movie file. Can totally be done in the cloud. Now EC2 provides 30Gb free for one year for new signups. But Amazon will be totally not suitable for movies because they charge bandwidth.
My prediction is that the most popular file format will be mp4 with ac3 audio or whatever what is in blu-ray. And the 3D format will be HTB. The blu-ray format is full side by side, meaning 2x 1080p. To keep the current HD bit rate, the more common format is half that - HSBS. However, in passive 3D TV's, half the vertical resolution is dropped so each eye can see all the time on a 1080p display. So half top-bottom is best for passive, with no further loss of resolution.
Now the cheapest Vizio becomes the best. A lot of people says passive are better. Passive allow gamers to play 3D 24 hours instead of an hour or two. Passive is a few times brighter. Surprisingly, you can see finer small text in passive. Anyway, if you know a thing or two about active, it seems like an electronic gadget for torture via your eyes.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Kindle touch is on par with multi touch smart phones
From the reviews, I hesitated to buy the Kindle touch version, worrying that it will be too bad compared to the smart phones the family is used to. The tiny guy likes to pinch every image on her colour picture book on the kindle phone app. It turns out that it's the best feature is the touch, especially if you are used to smart phones like iphone.
If you have kids already reading phone book thick books, e-ink is a no brainer. They don't need colour books. You can hurt their eye sight least with e-ink, reading for hours at a time.
The screen resolution of 800x600 is quite adequate for reading. The more important is the dpi. With e-ink, kindles are better than tablets and the kindle fire, and not as dense as smart phones. But you only need that density on 3 to 4 inch phones. Indeed if I can do it again, I would not pay more for smart phones like qHD or the iPhone 4 or newer HD screens in smart phones. Movies and websites look really beautiful on the tiny screens, but I think even if I ever watch a movie on it, I wouldn't mind as long as it plays.
So kindle and e-ink is best for reading, period. And cheaper than the kindle fire. If I want anything else, I have the netbook. The latest kindle screen is slightly better than the last model, and noticeably better than the 1st generations - it was reported.
Page turning or transition on the kindle is said to be like ATM machines in the 90's. That is, slow. In reality you can see the transition, but not as if you need to wait. And it is a lot faster than turning a paper book. So for web browsing, you have to expect a little delay when you fetch a new page, not to wait for the download, but for the ink to settle.
There is one home button at the bottom, and one power button on the side bottom. Contrary to some reviews, these buttons are not sensitive at all. It's pretty hard to accidentally toggle these buttons as in phones. You really don't need to use the power button often because the battery last for a month or two, and the device will go to sleep automatically. The home button is huge, and I think there is redundancy in it to last longer. So the kindle touch will outlast other devices, when it's not worthwhile to repair any malfunction buttons.
The touch screen is supposed to be resistive, meaning that you can use anything instead of your fingers. In phones they have capacitive screens to avoid triggering the phone other than your fingers. But resistive screen isn't a bad thing on the kindle at all. You can use a soft tip to type, and it will not leave grease too.
The kindle screen is like matte as compared to glossy on phones. So the kindle is more tolerable to grease. But it is just superficial. Wipe with any micro fibre cloth and it will be fine.
Basically the kindle is a mutli touch device very much like an Android 2.3 multi touch phone. You can turn pages with wiping and change font sizes with pinching. Same thing when using the browser. Because the screen is so much bigger, it is easier on the kindle than on the phone. You don't worry about too sensitive or not sensitive enough.
They have a context sensitive keyboard, which is standard on reading mode and change to web mode when browsing. But somehow not when you are entering your username and passward, so you have a relative hard time entering your email address with the standard keyboard.
Of course the touch keyboard will be superior than any physical keyboard on devices of the same size and smaller. You only need landscape mode on phones because of the keyboard size. The kindle is wide enough not to need it. And you read, you the natural mode is portrait. Though, if you have challenged eye sight or movement abilities, you may need the landscape mode, or a bigger device.
Keyboard on phones have optional sound and vibration for feedback. The kindle doesn't. But the ink color transition on the keys is a pretty good visual feedback.
Browsing is not bad at all, other than that it's black and white, do not play flash video, and have to wait a little for the ink to settle. But I can comfortably manage my emails, and browse the news for example. There is also an article mode during browsing, probably for better reading of news and such. It's neat that you will be left on the last page of your book, and also your web page always. (Not sure after completely power down.)
For the software you have the whole Amazon store. The Amazon Prime deal isn't as good as it seems. Other than the selection is probably not as many as Netflix, Amazon video don't work on Linux (used to at some point), and neither on the Wii. So you need to have a wifi TV or a cheap wifi streaming box.
Amazon Prime is limited to one new book per month. So for children readers it is obviously not enough. But there are many free books. The problem is that they don't have a precise catalogue by design. So there's an industry of paid books and subscriptions, telling you how to find free books. And you can have the free books perhaps as long as you have a kindle, not Amazon prime.
I picked the Kindle over the Nook because I'm sure the kindle books work on the phone, the computers, and I can download kindle books from the library. I think the Nook will be similar but I don't see the word Nook on the library website. I tried to install readers on Linux to read the other formats, but so far only the kindle web reader works without hassle.
As a final word, the screen savers with commercials are beautifully done. It reminds me of Casablanca the movie. It's that good.
If you have kids already reading phone book thick books, e-ink is a no brainer. They don't need colour books. You can hurt their eye sight least with e-ink, reading for hours at a time.
The screen resolution of 800x600 is quite adequate for reading. The more important is the dpi. With e-ink, kindles are better than tablets and the kindle fire, and not as dense as smart phones. But you only need that density on 3 to 4 inch phones. Indeed if I can do it again, I would not pay more for smart phones like qHD or the iPhone 4 or newer HD screens in smart phones. Movies and websites look really beautiful on the tiny screens, but I think even if I ever watch a movie on it, I wouldn't mind as long as it plays.
So kindle and e-ink is best for reading, period. And cheaper than the kindle fire. If I want anything else, I have the netbook. The latest kindle screen is slightly better than the last model, and noticeably better than the 1st generations - it was reported.
Page turning or transition on the kindle is said to be like ATM machines in the 90's. That is, slow. In reality you can see the transition, but not as if you need to wait. And it is a lot faster than turning a paper book. So for web browsing, you have to expect a little delay when you fetch a new page, not to wait for the download, but for the ink to settle.
There is one home button at the bottom, and one power button on the side bottom. Contrary to some reviews, these buttons are not sensitive at all. It's pretty hard to accidentally toggle these buttons as in phones. You really don't need to use the power button often because the battery last for a month or two, and the device will go to sleep automatically. The home button is huge, and I think there is redundancy in it to last longer. So the kindle touch will outlast other devices, when it's not worthwhile to repair any malfunction buttons.
The touch screen is supposed to be resistive, meaning that you can use anything instead of your fingers. In phones they have capacitive screens to avoid triggering the phone other than your fingers. But resistive screen isn't a bad thing on the kindle at all. You can use a soft tip to type, and it will not leave grease too.
The kindle screen is like matte as compared to glossy on phones. So the kindle is more tolerable to grease. But it is just superficial. Wipe with any micro fibre cloth and it will be fine.
Basically the kindle is a mutli touch device very much like an Android 2.3 multi touch phone. You can turn pages with wiping and change font sizes with pinching. Same thing when using the browser. Because the screen is so much bigger, it is easier on the kindle than on the phone. You don't worry about too sensitive or not sensitive enough.
They have a context sensitive keyboard, which is standard on reading mode and change to web mode when browsing. But somehow not when you are entering your username and passward, so you have a relative hard time entering your email address with the standard keyboard.
Of course the touch keyboard will be superior than any physical keyboard on devices of the same size and smaller. You only need landscape mode on phones because of the keyboard size. The kindle is wide enough not to need it. And you read, you the natural mode is portrait. Though, if you have challenged eye sight or movement abilities, you may need the landscape mode, or a bigger device.
Keyboard on phones have optional sound and vibration for feedback. The kindle doesn't. But the ink color transition on the keys is a pretty good visual feedback.
Browsing is not bad at all, other than that it's black and white, do not play flash video, and have to wait a little for the ink to settle. But I can comfortably manage my emails, and browse the news for example. There is also an article mode during browsing, probably for better reading of news and such. It's neat that you will be left on the last page of your book, and also your web page always. (Not sure after completely power down.)
For the software you have the whole Amazon store. The Amazon Prime deal isn't as good as it seems. Other than the selection is probably not as many as Netflix, Amazon video don't work on Linux (used to at some point), and neither on the Wii. So you need to have a wifi TV or a cheap wifi streaming box.
Amazon Prime is limited to one new book per month. So for children readers it is obviously not enough. But there are many free books. The problem is that they don't have a precise catalogue by design. So there's an industry of paid books and subscriptions, telling you how to find free books. And you can have the free books perhaps as long as you have a kindle, not Amazon prime.
I picked the Kindle over the Nook because I'm sure the kindle books work on the phone, the computers, and I can download kindle books from the library. I think the Nook will be similar but I don't see the word Nook on the library website. I tried to install readers on Linux to read the other formats, but so far only the kindle web reader works without hassle.
As a final word, the screen savers with commercials are beautifully done. It reminds me of Casablanca the movie. It's that good.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The best way to capture, record any sound playback in Oneiric Ubuntu Linux
The best means what the sound architecture designed to be used. It's lossless - the same digital signal goes to your speaker and to the file.
Any means what you hear is what you get (WYHIWYG). All you need is any sound card or USB device so you can hear anything.
The problem of Ubuntu forums is that the information isn't update and the obsolete post pull you into it like a magnet.
In Oneiric, the sound architecture is ALSA and the sound server is Pulseaudio. I have no clue what it means, but simple things become complicated and many info are obsolete.
Oneiric is bundled with the command pavucontrol, and it has no manual page for it, brilliant. You can find PulseAudio Volume Control in the dash, or just enter the command in a terminal. It has GUI. It's not just volume control, but master control of everything.
Now you need to play some sound. Play a movie file or play a youtube video, with sound of course. In the Input Device tab of pavucontrol, you should choose to show "monitors" at the bottom. For each output device, you have a corresponding monitor device as the input that you can record. Is that simple? You should see the volume meter moving up and down.
Now you need some recording software. The only thing that works for me is Audacity. It's good for many thing else. You can install it via the Ubuntu software center. Fire up audacity. There's typically nothing to set, or it doesn't matter that much. Just in case, you need to set the 4 selector right above the sound wave area to ALSA, default, default, stereo. You have to start recording with the red button or nothing will happen.
Now go back to pavucontrol. At the record tab, you should see the application Audacity. You just need to set the capture selector to "monitor of whatever sound device you are playing back". And that is one of the monitors at the Input Device tab.
The settings will be remembered on a per application basis. (I think.) So you can set the default sound device and settings for each application. And because of this, without any configurations, it always give me the wrong device during playback.
Any means what you hear is what you get (WYHIWYG). All you need is any sound card or USB device so you can hear anything.
The problem of Ubuntu forums is that the information isn't update and the obsolete post pull you into it like a magnet.
In Oneiric, the sound architecture is ALSA and the sound server is Pulseaudio. I have no clue what it means, but simple things become complicated and many info are obsolete.
Oneiric is bundled with the command pavucontrol, and it has no manual page for it, brilliant. You can find PulseAudio Volume Control in the dash, or just enter the command in a terminal. It has GUI. It's not just volume control, but master control of everything.
Now you need to play some sound. Play a movie file or play a youtube video, with sound of course. In the Input Device tab of pavucontrol, you should choose to show "monitors" at the bottom. For each output device, you have a corresponding monitor device as the input that you can record. Is that simple? You should see the volume meter moving up and down.
Now you need some recording software. The only thing that works for me is Audacity. It's good for many thing else. You can install it via the Ubuntu software center. Fire up audacity. There's typically nothing to set, or it doesn't matter that much. Just in case, you need to set the 4 selector right above the sound wave area to ALSA, default, default, stereo. You have to start recording with the red button or nothing will happen.
Now go back to pavucontrol. At the record tab, you should see the application Audacity. You just need to set the capture selector to "monitor of whatever sound device you are playing back". And that is one of the monitors at the Input Device tab.
The settings will be remembered on a per application basis. (I think.) So you can set the default sound device and settings for each application. And because of this, without any configurations, it always give me the wrong device during playback.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Create launcher / shortcut for applications in Ubuntu Oneiric
Everybody have their little scripts for automating anything. It used to be very easy to create launchers or shortcuts for launching applications in Ubuntu. It make very little difference if the app is installed software packages or your own little script. You just right click on the desktop and create a launcher. You can even move the launcher into your desktop panels for quick launch.
Not anymore. Ubuntu Oneiric took it all away. It's still there, and very easy to use. But it was so simple and transparent that I didn't know the details before.
Basically instead of creating launcher on the desktop, you need to run from a terminal:
#gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop
It's the same as before, when you want to create a launcher on your Desktop. Give it a name, the path to the application or your script, it's done. Typically for scripts you check the item "it's application in terminals". Optionally you can change the icon by clicking on it.
You can drag your launcher icon on the desktop into the unity bar to keep it there always.
You can create a script for the above command, create a launcher for it. So you never need to type the command again. (It doesn't work without putting it in a script first.)
Basically a launcher is a simple nameXX.desktop text file anywhere. From the desktop GUI you see this as a launcher. Inside is just the name of the app, path of application or script, and path of icon.
Sometimes you can't move the launcher icon into the unity bar for various reasons. Sometimes it turns into a black block in there. There may be some legacy problems. There is an icon path where the icons are to be searched. This include ~/.icons If your script have the same name with one of the icons, the icon will be automatically loaded, which may not be your intention. Etc, etc.
Not anymore. Ubuntu Oneiric took it all away. It's still there, and very easy to use. But it was so simple and transparent that I didn't know the details before.
Basically instead of creating launcher on the desktop, you need to run from a terminal:
#gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop
It's the same as before, when you want to create a launcher on your Desktop. Give it a name, the path to the application or your script, it's done. Typically for scripts you check the item "it's application in terminals". Optionally you can change the icon by clicking on it.
You can drag your launcher icon on the desktop into the unity bar to keep it there always.
You can create a script for the above command, create a launcher for it. So you never need to type the command again. (It doesn't work without putting it in a script first.)
Basically a launcher is a simple nameXX.desktop text file anywhere. From the desktop GUI you see this as a launcher. Inside is just the name of the app, path of application or script, and path of icon.
Sometimes you can't move the launcher icon into the unity bar for various reasons. Sometimes it turns into a black block in there. There may be some legacy problems. There is an icon path where the icons are to be searched. This include ~/.icons If your script have the same name with one of the icons, the icon will be automatically loaded, which may not be your intention. Etc, etc.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Unsolved problem: Playing HD video 720p 1080p on Linux netbooks such as AO722
The bundled Movie Player (Totem) doesn't play anything HD, so I thought the AO722 is useless for video. I used another player and even 1080p can play smoothly with out of sync sound.
I spent some time investigating because, if you are given a HD video, you want to be able to view on the netbook without recoding the whole movie into 480p, which can take hours I think.
The core component of a media player is the codecs. All the players use more or less the same, such as FFmeg. The problem is these things have license restrictions, making it a nightmare to distribute. So often you are not using the best and fastest codecs. These codecs are available as plugins to overcome the license restrictions.
On the next level there's the video backend, or engine. There are basically 4, gstreamer, mplayer, vlc, xine. Gstreamer has a few plugins doing similar things. Mplayer has different branches. Xine is basically fading away but still has updates.
There are one to many GUI frontends for each engine. The default ubuntu, gnome player is Movie Player, which is actually called totem, use gstreamer. There is the Gnome-mplayer, and smplayer for the mplayer backend. There's also the mplayer-gui and mplayer can be used in the command line. Similarly there are a few xine gui's. The company Videolan makes both the frontend and backend of VLC and not used by any others.
Movie Player (Totem) and VLC don't play any HD on AO722 in any meaningful way by default. Mplayer and xine plays even 1080p smoothly. But I can't find ways to sync the audio because the video is lacking far behind.
In a faster but old machine, I discovered that only VLC can sync the audio, in the expense of some noticeable artifacts on the video.
On the AO722, I discovered that I can tweak the preferences to get a lower quality video but with perfect sync of HD 1080p (>900p) such as the Bourne Ultimatum demo clip. Try low quality, skip frames, etc.
I concluded that you can watch HD on AO722 smoothly, with compromise in quality. The problem is how to configure the player.
Totem/Gstreamer is most comprehensive. I can't believe that I couldn't find out how to install and use the ffmpeg plugins, for example. Not in the official website nor the ubuntu forums. At least not in the form I understand.
You should be able to configure a lot of things for mplayer (and xine), but the problem is too many options. There's no tutorial for crippling the player for slow machines.
I manage to tweak the VLC options to play HD with perfect sync. But some 1080p are more consuming that others. So it's not a complete solution.
Video for the browser is another story. HD on youtube is mostly mp4. It's better to use a video player to play youtube videos, mp4 or not, than using the crippled flash implementation. The VLC browser plugin doesn't work. That left us with the Gnome-player plugin. Disable other plugins and use FlashVideoReplacer extension for Firefox and you can play youtube videos just like flash, but only on youtube and a few other sites. You can play 720p with perfect sync, but not any higher. That's not a problem because youtube always give you different resolutions from 240 up to 1080p.
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