Reflection

Google Chrome deprecates H.264: the right move, but little change for HTML5 video

Samat Jain — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:07:53 +0000

Google has decided to deprecate H.264 in Chrome. This is nothing but good for the future of web video. With support in three major browsers (Firefox 4, Chrome, and Opera) it means that WebM/VP8, instead of H.264, will become the defacto codec for HTML5 video.

I’ve talked to several people who think that this move has killed HTML5 video. I’m not sure I follow the logic — little has changed, except what will become the dominant codec.

You can say it’s made Flash the least common denominator, which ignores the fact that Flash already IS the least common denominator for web video.

Regarding codec fragmentation, little is changed there too: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 and Apple’s various Webkit products still do not have WebM/VP8 support. Content providers wanting to support HTML5 still need to encode to both H.264 and WebM.

With the codec fragmentation problem as yet unsolved, do content providers have any reason to use HTML5 video when Flash still is the least common denominator? Well, Flash is no longer included with Windows 7 or Mac OS X (and was never included with any reputable Linux distribution). Are content providers still willing to force users to download plugins, when they can just use the dominant HTML5 video codec?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, nor does anyone else. Nobody said that the problem of open video would be solved easily or overnight. But focusing on WebM is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction.

In the meanwhile, WebM is winning, so why don’t you start encoding your videos to WebM now? On SamatsWiki I’ve a sparse page on encoding to WebM (which will work with stock Debian/Ubuntu tools), as well as one on encoding to Ogg Theora. If you’re on Linux, the easiest way to convert videos is OggConvert, an easy-to-use GNOME-based GUI. Publishing them on the Web is just as easy. Check out the HTML5 video chapter in Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5, or Jakub Steiner’s How to get your clips on the web.

Topic:

Microsoft's Hyper-V contribution is not outside their agenda

Samat Jain — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:26:05 +0000

If you pay attention to Linux-related news, you may have heard that Microsoft has contributed code adding Hyper-V acceleration to the Linux kernel. This event is not something that falls outside of their corporate agenda (whether it falls out of their strategy, I’ll let Steve Balmer voice).

Hyper-V is Microsoft’s hypervisor, included with the server editions of Windows (somewhat similar to VMware Workstation or Sun’s VirtualBox). It lets you run other guest operating systems within the currently running one (called the host OS). Typically, virtualizing guest OSes is slow. To improve performance, rather than virtualizing everything, special drivers and software can be installed into the guest OS to make certain things faster (such as graphics, disk I/O, etc).

The popular Linux hypervisors (Xen, KVM, etc) don’t have special drivers like these for Windows, so they won’t be able to run Windows particularly quickly. With Microsoft’s contribution, Linux now will ship with built-in acceleration for Microsoft’s hypervisor, making Linux run that much faster. If you were an IT shop that simultaneously needed to maximize performance and run both Linux and Windows, would you:

Run an open-source Linux hypervisor, and virtualize Windows (slow)
Run Microsoft’s hypervisor, included with expensive Windows Server licenses, and virtualize Linux (fast)

The answer’s clear. Microsoft’s kernel contribution brings them good PR and satisfies real-world customer demands, while continuing to promote their agenda to make running Windows seem like the best choice. Smart move!

Topic:

Linux

Corporations

Microsoft

New Mexico, slowest Internet in the union

Samat Jain — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:28:20 +0000

PCMag has ranked states according to average Internet speeds (via GigaOM). New Mexico came in last. I can attest to this… my Internet connection in Las Cruces is a crazy fast 144 Kbps IDSL connection, which costs over $120/month. And it’s been the best land-line Internet access I could get for the past 3 years.

Is there a correlation with New Mexico being one of the dumbest states (at 95.7, rank 46 of 50) with regards to IQ? One has to think about these things…

Topic:

Politics

New Mexico

Yes, GNOME is limiting!

Samat Jain — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:28:00 +0000

There’s been a lot of fallout from Linus’ latest criticism of the GNOME desktop, with which I complete agree. I feel as if I need to comment on some of the responses.

Carthik Sharma writes in Of Apples and Oranges, GNOME and KDE:

I dread having to find something, since it most definitely will be placed in some non-intuitive sub-menu.

KDE has no control over where applications decide to place themselves.

I like the way GNOME display fonts on the screen. I don’t want to have to change every little variable to get the perfect system.

GNOME pioneered use of fontconfig; in fact, lately, GNOME has been pioneering the use of many next-gen APIs and technologies (e.g. AIGLX, Beryl, etc). But Qt/KDE have also been using fontconfig for several years now—what’s different?

Interesting enough, there has been criticism about how GNOME handles fonts. Taking points from that article, GNOME’s font configuration is a mess:

What’s a “Terminal” font (it should be called “Monospace,” as it is in KDE, because this is how it’s also used throughout GNOME)?
What does “size” mean (apparently, it’s not what you think)?
Why do I care about the subpixel ordering of my fonts’ antialiasing?
Why would I need to set fonts at all (see my weblog entry The GNOME font dialog, why?)?

KDE is no different than GNOME in trying to provide “sensible” defaults, defaults that its developers have decided are intrinsic to a “perfect desktop.” But, what the developers have decided is the perfect desktop may not be your perfect desktop—and here lies the essence of Linus’ argument, and the difference with KDE and GNOME. With KDE, you may have an option to make a setup “perfect”; with GNOME, quite often the option won’t exist and you are limited to what the powers that be decided was perfect for them, not you. This is Linus’ argument: GNOME is limiting.

Topic:

Wikimania 2006

Samat Jain — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 03:40:08 +0000

Wikimania 2006, a conference for Wikimedia and Wikipedia people, fans, and advocates, finished up today. I attended as a visitor, to just see the seminars and sessions and soak up enthusiasm about wikis in general.

A separate event held before Wikimania, the Wikimania Hacking Days, had many of MediaWiki and Wikipedia developers come to discuss future directions of the infrastructure and software architectural of Wikiedia. Even though it was held at the offices where I work, the OLPC, I did not attend any of the seminars or hacking sessions. Most were heavily focused on MediaWiki, which I can honestly say I do not like much: the Wiki syntax is awful, and it is slow (I think Wikipedia is the fastest MediaWiki-powered site I know of).

Some of the interesting stuff I liked at Wikimania:

Chuck Smith’s Wiki Markup Mess poster detailed the many different types of Wiki markup in use, and put forth a “standard” Wiki markup to be adopted by all. I personally think this is the way standards should be made, that is, after-the-fact based on things that are already working in the wild. Interesting enough, ErfurtWiki, which I used on my old website, supports the syntax unification they were proposing.
Lawrence Lessig’s Ethics of a Free Culture Movement talk was excellent. While the presentation he used was a little corny, it detracted nothing from his message: copyright law has stinted the culture of the last 100 yrs, and new laws are needed for the new culture of the next 100 yrs
Markus Krötzsch’s Semantic MediaWiki extension, demonstrated as part of the Wikipedia and the Semantic Web panel, was very interesting to me. Lack of structure to information in wikis is a pet peeve with me; semantically tagging bits of information so they can be pulled out from articles with automated tools is just cool.

Topic:

Web 2.0

Wiki

Conference

The philosophical difference between math and science

Samat Jain — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:45:06 +0000

Contemporary society lumps math and science as one thing, but they are not the same. Reading a passage in Simon Blackburn’s Think, I saw some insight about this, which I will paraphrase and expand on here.

Math is based on abstractions, and relationships between abstractions. Abstractions in math are generally absolute truths, meaning it is impossible that the abstraction is not true. Very few things that are accepted in mathematics get retracted later. New abstractions can be formed from existing ones, usually from those that are absolute truths, and these new abstractions can be formed by simply sitting at a desk and thinking about it long enough: there’s an adage, a mathematician is a machine that turns coffee into theorems.

The basis of science is empiricism. One observes something about the natural world, and tries to create their own model of how it works or occurs–they try to turn it into math. When the conversion is successful, we can use the new math to create technology, to invent and engineer new things.

Verification of a model is usually not absolute, and through repetition and logic something is “believed” to be true when as far as anyone can tell there’s no evidence that it is false. The only way to verify something in science is to repeat it: you’re not going to get the next scientific breakthrough by only sitting at your desk. Because science is often not based on absolute truths, many things in science that are once accepted get retracted from days to centuries layer.

This philosophical difference I think explains how there can exist child prodigies, and their distribution among math and the sciences… There are many children who are math prodigies, fewer who are prodigies of physics, and almost none of chemistry. Child prodigies in biology and the life sciences are completely unheard of.

Topic:

Philosophy

Science

Comments on DNS hosting provided by domain registrars

Samat Jain — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:30:56 +0000

Wes makes a comment about DNS registrars’ DNS:

Boy, if they run a domain registrar their DNS servers should have better uptime than what I could achieve.

This isn’t necessarily true–why?

Domain registrars make money from domain name registration, plain and simple. Registering a domain name basically consists of adding an entry to some text file somewhere, hosted on a server that most registrars have absolutely nothing to do with. Registrars do not necessarily have any experience running systems like DNS.

DNS offered by registrars is a value-added service, one that makes them no money. It’s offered because everyone else offers it, and it helps sell domain names.

OK, that’s a lie. Registrars hosting DNS can make money, through what is known as “domain parking.” Domain parking lets you buy a domain without having a website or hosting for it; you can buy a domain and the registrar keeps it for you, for free! It’s very nice of them isn’t it? Until you notice that “parked” domains have pages full of advertising, making money for the registrar. The tricky thing here is that with most registars, the nameservers for parked domains and those that answer customer-supplied DNS records are different. Registrars can spend more money on the parked domains’ nameservers, those which essentially make them money, than other DNS servers, which don’t.

Because registrars can and do often host the DNS for millions of domain names, that means their systems are that much more loaded and susceptible to DoS attacks. Because registrars don’t make any money hosting your DNS, they just have to keep their DNS service (barely) working, it doesn’t have to be good.

Topic:

Hosting

Good wedding music

Samat Jain — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:47:00 +0000

Interesting snippet from IRC…

Me: am I badass…
Me: that I just seriously recommended someone play Bone Thugs n Harmony for a wedding?
Matt: I think you get disqualified for badassedness when people ask you what to play at weddings
Me: crap =/

And yes, I was serious: Bone Thugs n Harmony have some very, slow, thoughtful tracks that I think would be great wedding music. No one is allowed to ask me what to play at weddings anymore. Have a nice day.

Topic:

Uncategorized

The meaning of prayer

Samat Jain — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:51:31 +0000

I was talking to a friend today, who does not believe in god. She was making a remark that she did not like to eat with her Christian friends, because their saying grace made her feel awkward. She felt awkward because she would feel dishonest if she participated in their prayer.

There are two kinds of “active” non-believers, those who believe religion and issues of god are something are totally meaningless (could be atheists or agnostics), and those who vehemently opposed and offended by anything to do with religion (probably only atheists).

This feeling of “dishonesty” made no sense to me if you fit into one of the above two categories. If you are opposed and offended, you would find the prayer annoying. If you thought it was a bunch of meaningless ritual, then you are just reciting a bunch of nonsense, so there’s no reason to feel dishonest and not participate, as long as it was not offensive.

I’m not really sure if acting like this is offensive to Christians. I don’t mean going to church and acting like a believer; I’m talking about simple everyday things like saying a prayer before a meal. If you’re a Christian I’m interested in your opinion.

I like to think I am the former kind of non-believer, the one just sees it all as meaningless. The latter kind of non-believer, the one who finds religion offensive, are the kind that make the news. Consider the controversy over the removal of the phrase “under god” from the national anthem [of the USA]. My feeling is that it does not belong there: added not even a century ago, it is no way part of America’s history, and is a clear violation of the seperation of church and state. That said, I don’t really care to get it removed because of how much hassle it would be. Basically, I’m glad something is thinking and doing something about these things, but I’m glad I am not paying for it.

Topic:

Politics

Philosophy

Chernobyl's 20th anniversary

Samat Jain — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:11:12 +0000

It’s been 20 years since Chernobyl.

…And I almost forgot it. I was watching CNN for a few hours this afternoon, I don’t remember it being mentioned, though it is on CNN’s website. I don’t remember hearing about it on NPR, though my friend Kristen says they mentioned it. Can we have a hurrah for the American media?

For those who don’t remember, Chernobyl was (or rather, is) the worst nuclear disaster in the short history of mankind. Contrary to popular belief, it was not a nuclear explosion, which are impossible with nuclear reactors. Chernobyl released massive amounts of dangerous, unnatural, and exotic radioactive material into the environment, much of which was airborne and spread across the entire earth.

I’ve written a summary on Chernobyl, keeping it layman but hopefully with much more detail than what you’d find in a newspaper.

Topic:

Nuclear proliferation

Giving up on my bookmarks system and joining del.icio.us

Samat Jain — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 05:54:15 +0000

I wrote my bookmark system a few years ago because I had no good way for sharing bookmarks online, or amoung web browsers on different machines on different platforms. I’ve not ported it from the old site to this new one, and I’m not sure I care… While my bookmark system did what I wanted it to do, it was not flexible. I look at the PHP code I wrote and remark: I hate this.

So, I now use del.icio.us. Am I now a Web 2.0 (I hate that term) loser now?

Topic:

Software

Site

Bought my 15th domain--randomized.info

Samat Jain — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:54:05 +0000

I have bought my 16th domain name today, randomized.info, for a project that I am going to do some day soon.

The way I see it, domain names are like Internet real estate. And indeed, some people market them like this (though I wouldn’t). The domain name system and the top-level domains everyone knows and loves (.com, etc) are not going away anytime soon, nor is there any kind of suitable replacement to solve its inherent problems.

Topic:

Software

Site

Embrace and... embrace some more?

Samat Jain — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 05:16:21 +0000

Microsoft’s infamous Windows Genuine Advantage program is an attempt at combating piracy of Windows, and it is supposedly working quite well.

Microsoft has had a past of “embracing and extending” various technologies, but apparently here’s an instance of them just embracing: if you visit Microsoft’s download center with an alternate browser such as Mozilla Firefox. Instead of being told to switch to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, they offer a plugin that can perform the Windows Genuine Validation within Firefox and other Netscape-compatible browsers.

I’m impressed. Go Microsoft.

Topic:

Microsoft

Microsoft Windows