Readers rant over Microsoft's re-invention of the jpeg

SUBJECT: Wheel

Having traced my family tree back through 275 generations it seems my Ur-grandfather invented the wheel.

I think car manufacturers should pay me some back-dated royalties.

Say a dollar per wheel.

Podders

Subject: Windows piracy hunt tool phones home if aborted

Seems that WGA is spyware by Microsoft's own definitions:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/msft/analysis.mspx

Leonard

Subject: Solar power

Nice job on the solar panels, so who are you going to hang out the window to take a roof shot?

Oh, one thing was missing from your article which is present in almost all the others... The cost... Come on, we're all sitting down...

Steve

Subject: Better than JPEG?

I thought this format already existed, and was called JPEG-2000...? See comparison at the end of this article:

http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=109739-3

rmn

Subject: ha, this is an easy one

say you've got 19GB of images on your hard drive. Your hard drive is 20GB. Windows one-click solution converts all of them to HD Photo and frees a quarter of your hard disk with no perceptible loss of image quality. And it comes as part of WinMP 10 or as a service pack or patch.

The same goes for video as now HD Photo can replace the MPEG compression.

How are you going to stop it?

With an Inquirer article? bwhahahahah

come on. Even the JPEG group has come out with a better version of jpeg.

touristguy

Subject: Microsoft wants you to use its photo file format

I wouldn't trust Microsoft with the plain-text file format, let alone an image file format. I can't think of any other operating system that uses 2 characters ( : carriage return and newline) just to produce a line break.

ttly

Subject: AMD delays Austin move due to bad newts

You do know that Arsenal is a FOOTBALL team don't you?

Björn

Subject: Solar Panels

Good for you!

On my house I have both solar panels for hot water and some (less than you have) electric panels. With a roof that is perfectly situated then I get all the sun that is possible (when it isn't too cloudy). However even some cloud results in both hot water and electricity.

The amazing thing is the water heating. This heats all of our hot water (it is stored indoors using another water tank)from about may through to september. Even now it is heating 40% of our hot water and will also run the CV (low temperature) in the evnings to take the chill off the house.

The installation we have was installed about 5 years ago, again with substantial subsidy. I don't have a monitor on the inverter so don't know how much power we have handed back to the grid. However it is nice to see the dial going backwards (it really does). We don't need a contract to push power back, but there are limits on what we can push back (I think of aroung 1200W)

Anyway it is good to see this being promoted.

Gr, Tim Binsted

Subject: Microsoft wants you to use its photo file format

Screw MS and their I want to rule the world attitude. They are trying and doing a real good job at killing Open GL but are loosing against MP3 if you ask me. .jpg is fully entrenched and I am sure that their wannabe standard (HD Photo) picture format besides being their proprietary format is full of DRM crap too.

Have a great day,
Mac User Glenn

Subject: Creative releases Vista X-Fi 32-driver

According to Creatives site (at the link you provided) they released both 32 and 64 bit drivers. Your headline lead me to believe it would be 32-bit only.

Regards,
Lutz

Subject: Microsoft wants you to use its photo file format

Uh, no thanks. Bloody Microsoft is worse than anything Orwell dreamed of. Worse yet (if you can imagine) is that they have this deal with Ford to provide "Sync" for several Ford vehicles. Cripes! The last thing I want to do is pay a Microsoft tax on top of all the other taxes involved with buy a car. @$@#$@.

Darryl

Subject: hardly a final driver for creative

you should see what the driver doesnt do, simple dolby decoding no not in this release, no dts signal, no 6.1 eax game surround, frigging hopless, plus the thx console which allows you to redirect frequency to the subwoofer so your sattelites dont get bass and blow them up doesnt work either, this is a load of absoloute bullshit *sorry*

stewart

Subject: INQ solar panels up and running

Nice setup you have. I expect to see a link to the MRTG/RRD graphs of production, consumption, sunlight/cloud cover, effeciency, etc. very soon now. And please don't tell me that you haven't planned to share this information because bragging about this kind of thing also comes with great responsibility.

Greetings
Bertho

Subject: vista and Nforce 2 boards???

In this article, it was said

"Early Vista adopters have to be thrilled about it as it will give them a chance to keep their bellowed Nforce 2 motherboards and Athlon XP CPUs or simply good old Netburst Pentium 4 marchitecture."

did i miss something? i have been trying to get vista to work for ages and then i read that nVidia is not supporting Nforce for Vista, yet you said this. now very confused and still holding out hope for my beautiful a7n8x deluxe!! if you could shed some light on this for me please.

pjl

Subject: Come on guys

I don't mean this sarcastically, but I'm surprised to see your reply in my inbox. Thanks for taking the time to respond. My initial rage has burned off but I still annoyed for the reason that I could have read this same sentiment in a comment on slashdot. Most of the time I think I get and appreciate the inquirer's humor, but sometimes it goes the other way. Maybe there was some element of sarcasm in this piece?

What if this file type turns out to be technically superior? I highly doubt that if this turns out to be true that it will get a fair shake compared to other companies in that market segment like Adobe. Adobe which is, in my opinion, the MS of the digital photo world....

I personally expect it to fail because its vogue to out of hand reject everything MS. Everyone is going to bad mouth it because its MS' product and the world plus dog will reject it without ever considering if its worth anything. Which is why I felt let down when you guys took what I consider a cheap shot at this thing.

I do love it when you guys take cheap shots at Apple....So you can take all of this for what its worth. I just think that a lot of the reporting I see lacks context making it easy to create straw man arguements. Especially when the whole world is caught up in group think in terms of who's 'good' and who's 'bad' in the the market place. I would have been more impressed if you all had researched Adobe's DNG for example to see if corporate efforts to impact the market file usage made any headway as a means to gauge the likely success of such a venture. And avoid what become a cliche part of what it requires to be in the in crowd on most forums I read.

All in all I enjoy the Inquirer as it continues to be the most entertaining news source I frequent.

Marty Wood

Subject: Gears of War to come to PC

I wonder how much MS paid to keep it off the PC to start with. I am sure the contract said MS had all the power and the game developer was their flunky to do as MS told them or be sued out their nose.

I will get it for the PC and run it on my 24" iMac under bootcamp with XP that I use for games. OS X for everything else.

Have a great day,
Glenn

Subject: How to Fleece investors

I don't know how Mr. Bachus can claim anything he knows about dealing with investors that he could say openly and not expose some form of questionable practices the FTC would want to know about.

The man was key player along with CEO Timothy Roberts in a sham company that was exposed three years before its demise by Hard OCP. The company blew through 60+ million and produced only a few mock units. Just do a search for - hardocp phantom - Amazing read.

Mr. Bachus and all should be doing late night infomercials selling DVDs of their experience in seeking funding for projects. One of the cover titles should be "Where to put all that money once you get it." Set against tropical drinks against a sunset.

Rich

Subject: Puns

You guys are so adept at punjabs, how come you haven't coined the term Volesta?

jabloomf

Subject: iPlayer

Yeah! A pan UK service as long as you use a Windoze PC sounds like a dictatorship to me.

simty

Subject: not really a flame...

I just thought you might want to know that at the end of the second to last paragraph, there is a sentence that says "This is somewhat pants." Is that slang for something over on the other side of the pond or is that a typo? Just wondering.

Thanks,

Marc G

Subject: WGA phoning home on cancel

Isn't this contrary to the Data Protection Principles enshrined in the Data Protection Act? See http://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk/council/dp-and-foi/dp-principles.cfm Note principles 1 and 3. They say it's not enough to identify someone, but the MAC address is globally unique, and is therefore a personal identifier.

Qstephen

Subject: HD - name sounding familiar

Hmm.....HD Photo....

When does a photo image become HD? 5 megapixels in a 3x5? or 10? what about 20?

HD - subject to the same DRM as HD formats for video on their latest revenue stream known as Fista

Rocky

Subject: Billionaires 'paid $1 a year'

People don't hate Bill Gates because he's rich. Warren Buffett is nearly as rich but quite well regarded by a large majority of people in the US because he made his money by working hard and playing by the rules. Bill Gates is because of the illegal and unethical means by which Microsoft became dominant and he became rich. He's actually regained some respect in the past few years due to his charity work and reduced association with Microsoft's day to day business (Ballmer gets that now, and is even more hated than Gates ever was because he not only got rich due to Microsoft but throws chairs in his office and jumps screaming around the stage like a monkey)

The guys who started Google are well regarded because they had a great idea and created something very useful and indispensable on the Internet. Any of us who uses the internet frequently couldn't imagine getting along without Google (or another search engine, all of which use a method similar to their original page ranking scheme)

It remains to be seen how well they adhere to their "don't be evil" mantra, if they started trying to eliminate competition in their markets through strong arm tactics by striking exclusive deals with their advertisers (i.e., say something like "if you want to advertise on Google, you better not advertise on Microsoft or Yahoo) then you'd see fewer people respecting them the way they do Buffett, and more comparison to Gates.

Doug

Subject: Windows piracy hunt tool phones home if aborted

OK, I give up - what's the story here? I'd be much more surprised to find Micr0$0ft bloatware that does NOT phone home w/ user information... This is news?

Jim