Freescale and the missing plane from Malaysia

Freescale has confirmed what I heard on local news a couple days ago.  They announced in this release that 20 of their employees were on that flight.

For those that don't know, Freescale is the creation of its parent company, Motorola.  I have been a massive supporter of theirs for decades, and long before Freescale existed, and were just called the Motorola CPU division.

This is a very sad day for me, but I cannot even imagine what the people and families of Freescale must be going through.

My heart goes out to everyone involved.

I don't really know what else to say about it.  It's too stunning to really put into words properly.

Lubuntu Purge

As a BSD user since the 80's, Lubuntu was my first real venture into the Linux realm.  Prior to that I had only toyed with Linux a few times for brief periods.  This was pretty much at the same time I started this blog in 2012.

Lubuntu was the first distro I had ever given a true test drive to, and during my 'I know BSD, but I need to adapt that knowledge to a Linux' state.  I had always known of Debian through reputation, but somehow chose Lubuntu first.

In the end, Debian is a far better choice, and it will be the only Linux covered here moving forward.  All of the Lubuntu content here will be removed soon, so if you want to archive some of it, do it now.  I am no longer going to promote, in any manner, an OS I wouldn't use myself any longer.

By next weekend, all the Lubuntu content here will be gone.  As it should be. 

Lubuntu, and all the different flavours of Ubuntu, are all built on a foundation of Debian; upon which they then add their own shitty, unstable, user friendly and bloated code.

This is not meant as an insult to Canonical, but fact is fact, and I no longer want anything to do with what they call an OS.

Creative Commons

I have decided to drop the copyright I had, and adopt a Creative Commons 4.0 International license to protect the content here.  The reason is that CC gives the users/readers more freedom here, and it actually protects the content more with a recognized and legal license.

The truly great thing about Creative Commons licenses, is that you can customize them to suit you personally.  You can decide what freedoms and limitations people have with your work through some simple settings you select when creating your license.

The specific license I chose was a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.


Note the three terms listed in that license name (quoted text is CC's own summary):

Attribution -  "You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use."

Very simple and easy to understand language. 


Non-Commercial - "You may not use the material for commercial purposes."

This was added to prevent what happened with the copycat blog trying to mimic this blog for advertising money.


No Derivatives - "If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material."

I added this to stop the spread of misinformation, to stop people (like those that run Low End Mac) from latching on to my work, then adding ignorance to it.

If you feel you have worthy things to contribute to any and all content here, please feel free to contact me and ask permission.  If I find your additions sound and accurate, I will allow them.


A big thank you to Creative Commons for their nonprofit work.


Want to add a Creative Commons license to your work?  Create one here.

The copycat is no more

Good news!  Google has removed the copycat blog!

Before they did, I had the content thieves advertising funding source removed also.

A big thanks to Google for removing the blog, and to Click4Support.net for removing payments, and their ad, from the copycat blog.

I will tell the whole story in detail, and help others learn from my experience through all this.  For now I am a bit unmotivated to write here after having my work stolen.

I think this speaks largely about the current state of things in the world.  An individual is almost a rare thing now, and many people are not bothered by others stealing writing.  So many people pretend to know things now by latching on to the education, experience, and hard work, of others.  Originality, and more importantly self education, are how I got where I am.  Not emulating others, or even worse, stealing work from others.

Dan at PPC Luddite spoke up on his blog about it, so a big thanks also goes to him.  A true member of the PowerPC community, and someone I consider to be the greatest friend and ally of this blog.  He's a true individual also. 

More when I'm motivated again.

Sketchy little copycat

Every so often I google "PowerPC Liberation" to see what results spring up besides the pages here.  I did so this morning and found that some sketchy little senseless ape named Aman Rai has made a copycat blog to this one.  They have even used the same blog name but added a hyphen between, ie. powerpc-liberation in the blog address.  I am not going to link to it, as I don't want to encourage them more, but if you want to see their copy of this blog just enter a hyphen in the address and see for yourself.  If you do go there be warned, everything you click, even blank space, is a 3rd party pay per click link.

This person has literally copied this entire blog, and every word of every post, onto theirs and is passing it off as their own.  A truly sketchy ape brain at work.

I want to officially state that they have no authorization from me, no support from me, and have no involvement with the true PowerPC Liberation here. 


To Aman Rai I say:  Stop now or suffer my wrath.  You're illegally using every word I have ever written here as your own, and not giving any credit to the original author (myself and dr.dave), so stop now and take down your blog or I will use every possible legal means to make you suffer for being so pathetic and unoriginal.

Also, even if I had no issue with it, which I do, you're still not allowed to use every word someone else writes.  Check your "Fair Use" laws.  You also legally need my permission to use anything here.

If you take your blog, with all it's sketchy 3rd party links to make you money from my writing, down in the next week I won't pursue legal action against you.

You clearly have no shame though, so I don't expect you to take the easy way out.

People like you don't even deserve internet access.

XviD

In my opinion, XviD is the greatest overall, and most balanced video codec.  It's the open and more refined version of DivX.  Both are MPEG-4 based, but because XviD is open, a lot of different developers have tried to perfect it.  This has resulted in some great block smoothing advances in XviD which DivX lacks.

For people on PowerPC hardware (even as low as a G3 350MHz), XviD gives you the ability to have a respectable playback system with stock 13-14 year old hardware.  Something h.264 could never dream of.  DivX gives the same CPU efficient results as XviD but lacks some of the clarity.

I used DivX a lot myself in Handbrake for years, until I really took the time to see the visual advantages of XviD.  XviD in Handbrake 0.9.3 with a 1500+ kbps bitrate, and a 2-pass encode, can compete with h.264 of similar size.  The 1500kbps and 2-pass encode are key to that.

DivX in Handbrake is called FFmpeg, aka DX50, aka DivX 5.  Handbrake still retained FFmpeg in versions past 0.9.3, but dropped XviD and .avi wrapper support.  For these reasons, Handbrake 0.9.3 is the best overall version because every version after it is more limited.  I covered the same point in part 3 of the Video on PowerPC series.

A lot of the video industry has turned its back on XviD, but for us PowerPC users it's our best friend.  XviD makes 720p HD playable on a G4 under 1.0GHz.  Although I typically rip 400p XviD so that it will also play well on my slowest 400MHz CPU if ever needed.  400p XviD at 1500-2000kb in a 2-pass encode can compete with 480p h.264 for quality/clarity.

The main things that increase CPU use (after the codec of course) are resolution and framerate.  Bitrates under 3000kbps all use about the same amount of juice.  This is the key to making a low resolution look better than it is.  Keep the framerate at or under 30fps for best results on PowerPC hardware.  DVD are typically 24fps, but most video is 25-30.  If you rip something where the original is over 30fps, be sure to set your rip to 29.97 for best playback results.

Handbrake 0.9.3 needs Leopard, but if on Tiger then use 0.9.1.  Again, any version past 0.9.3 doesn't have XviD support.

Even those running modern Macs or any newer hardware can benefit from XviD.  XviD only consumes 1/2 to 1/3 of the CPU resources vs h.264 of the same resolution.  That means energy savings in your home for desktops, and longer battery life for portables vs. h.264.  Handbrake 0.9.3 runs perfectly on 10.6/10.7/10.8, but the version I link to below is PowerPC only.

The lesser appealing XviD is the mainstream stuff.  Most is only ripped around 1000kbps which is the main reason most who dislike XviD do, whether they realize that or not.  Once you get under 1300kbps it looks like a lesser codec.  Higher bitrates do equal bigger file sizes, but that is why I have almost 12TB of storage. Storage is infinite, CPU resources and energy aren't.

You could even say that XviD is a green alternative to h.264.

MP3 audio is typically best with XviD, but you can experiment with AC3 and AAC also if you desire.  128kbps for heavy dialogue, 256kbps for content with a lot of music.

Remember, 1500kbps+ and 2-pass = perfection!


Download Handbrake 0.9.3 for Leopard

Download Handbrake 0.9.1 for Tiger


This is how I would summarize the 3 codecs found in Handbrake 0.9.3 and 0.9.1:

DivX - rips fastest, efficient playback, looks the worst of the 3

h.264 - rips slowest, inefficient playback, quality only slightly better than HQ XviD

XviD - rips about 30% slower than DivX, efficient playback, quality only slightly lower than h.264, best of both worlds