What are Microsoft codecs?

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Thu, 8/6/09, gilpel at altern.org <gilpel at altern.org> wrote:

> From: gilpel at altern.org <gilpel at altern.org>
> Subject: Re: What are Microsoft codecs?
> To: "Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora." <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 10:53 PM
> Antonio Olivares wrote:
> 
> >> Fedora policy is like GAYS IN THE
> > MILITARY ===> DONT ASK DON'T TELL and DON'T BOTHER
> :)
> 
> Red Hat, for better or for worst (see my thread on
> Shuttleworth and
> Debian), is a publicly traded company. If you're a stock
> holder, you
> /might/ have something to say in the way it manages things.
> As a Fedora
> user, you don't.
> 
> This said, I would have appreciated if, instead of being
> bashed, I would
> have been told earlier why Totem would never work swiftly
> with Windows
> Media(1).

Totem has come a long ways and you get it whether you like it or not because it meets Fedora's requirements + it does not have the ability to play proprietary file formats by default, one has to add them through other repositories like rpmfusion.  

> In business just as in open source software,
> there is no
> security through obscurity.
> 
> (1) Many thanks to Frank Murphy for a few helpful lines on
> the matter.
> 
> This said, I hope we can go on with determining if windows
> media codecs
> aren't, just as doc and xls formats, anything but a
> marketing scam.
>
I see several good things about the codecs(Micro$oft), as long as they can be played with a player like mplayer/vlc/xine/_____/ etc, then there are no problems :), but when that file or group of files is LOCKED and it cannot be opened with any player above, then it is a PROBLEM and this is where one can get PISSED OFF.  
> 
> It seems some people show a strange eagerness to make sure
> the subject is
> not discussed.
They feel that "The Horse has been killed long time ago" and it makes no sense to "beat up a dead horse", and in some regard they might have a point.  But that is to them and to each their own :)  When I have a chance to reply to a certain topic that I like and drop in my points, I will regardless if the horse "is beaten", "has been beaten", or "will continue being beaten and has not died".  But that is just me :)  
> 
> > Mathematicians writing compression/decompression
> algorithms?  This is
> something I would be interested in :), I only see certain
> situations like
> > for se playing a music file with mplayer I see a ratio
> depending on
> which
> > bitrate a file was encoded in:
> 
> The reason you can get a whole bootlegged movie on the
> internet that
> occupies much less than 4 GB, is because it's compressed. (
> I suppose MP2
> on DVDs also offers some compression.)
> 
> In order to provide video on the net, Real Media, Windows
> Media, Flash
> also compress video, but to different degrees. Also, if a
> program is very
> popular and thousands of people are asking for it, by
> waiting just a few
> seconds before beginning a stream, you will feed more than
> one viewer at a
> time. With video, bandwidth is a concern.
>
There's also the Adobe Flash plugin, while the FREE* alternatives are getting better, it is very difficult to compete with the original.  There are also vulnerabilities found in that software and intruders can get control of your machine if you don't update the flash player to a newer version if you have adobe's plugin.  With Video if you are on dialup, you might as well (forget about it), you will want to watch a video and it will take forever to download :(  
> 
> Anyways, that's how I understand things for now :) I'm sure
> some people
> will have more interesting considerations to add.
> 
I am sure that someone will add/delete and make other suggestions which is good for discussion and learning more of this and other eternally intriguing subjects :)  
> -- 

Regards,

Antonio