Jobs Drops Hint on VP8 →

Sounds like he doesn't like it...

Satisfaction With U.S. Historically Low for Midterm Year →

So far in 2010, an average of 23% of Americans have been satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is well below the 40% historical average Gallup has measured since 1979, when it began asking this question. The 2010 average is also the lowest Gallup has measured in a midterm election year, dating to 1982.

In-Depth Technical Analysis of VP8 →

Great analysis of the pros and cons behind the spec and implementation of Google's new open-source video codec. Summary:

VP8, as a spec, should be a bit better than H.264 Baseline Profile and VC-1. It's not even close to competitive with H.264 Main or High Profile. If Google is willing to revise the spec, this can probably be improved.

VP8, as an encoder, is somewhere between Xvid and Microsoft's VC-1 in terms of visual quality. This can definitely be improved a lot, but not via conventional means.

VP8, as a decoder, decodes even slower than ffmpeg's H.264. This probably can't be improved that much.

With regard to patents, VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free.

VP8 is definitely better compression-wise than Theora and Dirac, so if its claim to being patent-free does stand up, it's an upgrade with regard to patent-free video formats.

VP8 is not ready for prime-time; the spec is a pile of copy-pasted C code and the encoder's interface is lacking in features and buggy. They aren't even ready to finalize the bitstream format, let alone switch the world over to VP8.

Google made the right decision to pick Matroska and Vorbis for its HTML5 video proposal.

WebM from Google →

As expected, Google announced this morning that it is open-sourcing the VP8 video codec acquired during its buyout of On2. The codec will be included in a new video container format called WebM.

WebM includes:

• VP8, a high-quality video codec we are releasing today under a BSD-style, royalty-free license
• Vorbis, an already open source and broadly implemented audio codec
• a container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container

WebM is supported by over 40 companies, including Mozilla, Opera, and Adobe, and Microsoft issued a statement offering limited support in IE9.

This was expected to provide a higher-quality alternative to Theora and Dirac video codecs, while remaining open-source, unlike H.264, currently the most popular web video codec. This would then make it an ideal candidate for the default implementation of the HTML5 video tag. Upon a technical analysis, however, it appears that even with user improvements, VP8 will lag behind H.264 in visual quality and is in fact similar enough to H.264 to allow for possibility of patent infringement claims.

More Information:
Ars Technica
Engadget
TechCrunch

SEC 'Flash Crash' Rules →

To paraphrase: "Every explanation we have for the 'flash crash' is just a theory." Are there problems when the regulators don't even understand the market?

Cheesiness Is a Sin →

Authentic movies, ones that portray the honest complexities of life, challenge us, move us, and inspire reflection—but authenticity is hard to come by in Christian films. Christian movies rarely depict genuine characters living in the real world. The Christian film industry's offerings are easy to dismiss, not necessarily for their message, but for their artlessness—their predictable plots, clumsy moralizing, and sentimental endings.