Doom9 forum & Industry Moderators???

[unix_sansei]

Tossing up a general topic, I've always thought Doom9 was the front-line hang-out for video/audio hackers. You can easily find codes to break encryption, transcode, pretty much throw any digital copyright laws down the tube, which I why I like to hang out here and read what find out what's going on with the latest encoders/decoders.

So why are there moderators who work for M$? other professional companies? Is there a conflict of interest? something else going on? or maybe I'm just too old of a hacker and I'm a bit paranoid? I was hacking Unix/SunOs/DEC code before there ever was such a thing as DOS or WinDoZe. meh..

[Shinigami-Sama]

theres some occasional tension but not that much at all; as I recall many of the mods were hired by companies after being mods here.

tl;dr yes paranoid

[Guest]

No conflict as long as you obey the laws. We follow the laws here. Piracy and theft of content is stamped out very fast. Haven't you noticed?

We are exercising our right to use and safeguard the materials that we legitimately purchased.

I'd be very surpised if Doom9 did not pop in to give you a nice lecture about it.

[unix_sansei]

Originally Posted by neuron2

No conflict as long as you obey the laws. We follow the laws here. Piracy and theft of content is stamped out very fast. Haven't you noticed?

We are exercising our right to use and safeguard the materials that we legitimately purchased.

I'd be very surpised if Doom9 did not pop in to give you a nice lecture about it.

laws, ok, this isn't hackforums.net but i think way, way back the original dvix 3.1 codec was an actual hack of some MS codec??

oh yes that content that was 'bought', :-) hmm ask that crazy old dude over at the MPAA what he thinks ha ha.

[Guest]

I'm missing your point.

[Doom9]

I believe we have one mod working for Microsoft and one for Real - but as far as I can tell, they're doing their job as a moderator just as well as any other mod who works for an unrelated company/goes to school/etc. And their professional knowledge actually comes in handy here. So from my end, there's no conflict of interest. The other side of the argument is up to their respective employer - some employer frown upon employees visiting community sites and identify with the company, others don't mind, others encourage it as long as it does not negatively reflect back on their employer. If you have evidence that a moderator is pushing their own agenda over their moderator duties you're welcome to bring it to my attention - but I've yet to see either Ben or Karl trying to convert the x264 or XviD crowd to VC-1 / Real. Naturally you ask yourself whether a well known affiliation will have any impact on moderator performance but to the best of my knowledge, that question can be answered with a resounding no.

As a counterpoint, having people onboard that work for major players in the industry also means a certain amount of recognition and it helps with legitimacy. You could ask if this is a pirate den, then what are public faces of certain major companies doing here?

Who a moderator works for, where they're from, what they're called seems pretty irrelevant to me as long as they do their job - which in this board not only entails to moderate, but also help people out in topics at hand. With moderators from all over the world, it simply wouldn't be possible to figure these things out until somebody volunteers that information - and even then it can be hard to verify so all it comes down to is trust. I cannot swear to you that we don't have a mod working for the MPAA and rooting for our downfall and neither can you.

DivX wise, I'm not aware that Microsoft actively went after distribution at any point - after all, it was basically a piece of software they freely distributed - and it's old history now and I've always respected the wishes of content owners and took down software when somebody made a compelling argument for doing so.

And, we're widely known as a very strict board - and one of our most actively enforced rules is the one about questionable content - in fact you could argue that we're going quite a bit farther than the law really requires us to. And the premise of our approach to copyright law has never changed since the site's inception.. you'd think that if I had been corrupted, we might try to push another agenda all of a sudden.

[unix_sansei]

Originally Posted by neuron2

I'm missing your point.

People who work for companies, any companies, especially M$, have agendas. The free flow of ideas with a moderator with a boss like Gates to me is suspect.

For example, I'll take shots at M$ since they're the easiest.
Look at how M$ now whines about Google, yet.... yet

look how M$ thrashed Sun about/with Java putting out cripple ware etc

i've forgotten how many millions M$ has paid out for predatory/monopolistic business practices,

how M$ IE Browser until 8 is non-compliant, M$ expected the industry to conform to M$ which didn't happen

how M$ tries to manipulate every market it gets it hooks into, browser/desktop, media player/OS integration

so who is not to say that M$ isn't trying to leverage any 264 codecs obtained and incorporate them into VC-1 and yet slam it by saying VC-1 is the premiere codec.


as i said there are other companies, M$ is just the easiest to point at.

[Doom9]

You should be careful to differentiate between a company's agenda, and single employees. Not everybody that works at Microsoft actually likes their DRM and/or identifies with it - just as an example.
The way you write Microsoft shows your agenda and how far that opinion has sunk in so there's really no point in continuing.. it's just flamebait at this point.

[nurbs]

Do you really believe everyone who works for microsoft from management down to the janitor is 100% behind everything the company does and therefore can't be trusted? You know the world isn't just black and white. When I'm looking for a job I want to do something in a field I'm interested in with a good atmosphere on the workplace. Company policy is pretty far down on my priority list.
From what I saw on this board the company people are very friendly, and they also take criticism of their software well as long as it's justified and not just some wild conspiracy accusations.

By the way your comment about integrating H.264 into VC-1 makes no sense. They are different standards. If they integrated for instance CABAC it wouldn't be VC-1 any more.

edit: beaten

[unix_sansei]

Originally Posted by Doom9

I believe we have one mod working for Microsoft and one for Real - but as far as I can tell, they're doing their job as a moderator just as well as any other mod who works for an unrelated company/goes to school/etc. And their professional knowledge actually comes in handy here. So from my end, there's no conflict of interest. The other side of the argument is up to their respective employer - some employer frown upon employees visiting community sites and identify with the company, others don't mind, others encourage it as long as it does not negatively reflect back on their employer. If you have evidence that a moderator is pushing their own agenda over their moderator duties you're welcome to bring it to my attention - but I've yet to see either Ben or Karl trying to convert the x264 or XviD crowd to VC-1 / Real. Naturally you ask yourself whether a well known affiliation will have any impact on moderator performance but to the best of my knowledge, that question can be answered with a resounding no.

As a counterpoint, having people onboard that work for major players in the industry also means a certain amount of recognition and it helps with legitimacy. You could ask if this is a pirate den, then what are public faces of certain major companies doing here?

Who a moderator works for, where they're from, what they're called seems pretty irrelevant to me as long as they do their job - which in this board not only entails to moderate, but also help people out in topics at hand. With moderators from all over the world, it simply wouldn't be possible to figure these things out until somebody volunteers that information - and even then it can be hard to verify so all it comes down to is trust. I cannot swear to you that we don't have a mod working for the MPAA and rooting for our downfall and neither can you.

DivX wise, I'm not aware that Microsoft actively went after distribution at any point - after all, it was basically a piece of software they freely distributed - and it's old history now and I've always respected the wishes of content owners and took down software when somebody made a compelling argument for doing so.

And, we're widely known as a very strict board - and one of our most actively enforced rules is the one about questionable content - in fact you could argue that we're going quite a bit farther than the law really requires us to. And the premise of our approach to copyright law has never changed since the site's inception.. you'd think that if I had been corrupted, we might try to push another agenda all of a sudden.

Thanks for the post.

For Pirate's den, is probably one of the few places MS, Real, Apple, etc can actually get latest, bleeding edge techniques of what codecs work and why in the 'real' world not some artificial construct. They aren't going to be sitting around a coffee table virtual or real. They wouldn't say anything, just wondering what technology each other is heading towards.

In this forum, it CAN be like the 'wild west', people hacking codecs, trying this transcode or that, shoving this avs file on this stack with these results. For them it's free R&D.

'hacking' is used as a term of experimentation with source code, settings, optimization.

[unix_sansei]

Originally Posted by nurbs

Do you really believe everyone who works for microsoft from management down to the janitor is 100% behind everything the company does and therefore can't be trusted? You know the world isn't just black and white.

No only ones who are online putting the MS face in forum.

Originally Posted by nurbs

When I'm looking for a job I want to do something in a field I'm interested in with a good atmosphere on the workplace. Company policy is pretty far down on my priority list.

Sounds similar what I read about what the guards said on trial at Nuremburg.

Originally Posted by nurbs

By the way your comment about integrating H.264 into VC-1 makes no sense. They are different standards. If they integrated for instance CABAC it wouldn't be VC-1 any more.

How would you know? Do you have source code for VC-1? You have no real idea what MS is up to but if you do have the source code so I'd like to see it. You actually believe MS follows standards? They are last ones to follow standards, they do their own thing and expect the standard to adjust to them.

I was playing around with one of the newer MS HD tools and Photo tools from their R&D group, their path forward appears to be interesting.

[unix_sansei]

Originally Posted by Doom9

You should be careful to differentiate between a company's agenda, and single employees. Not everybody that works at Microsoft actually likes their DRM and/or identifies with it - just as an example.
The way you write Microsoft shows your agenda and how far that opinion has sunk in so there's really no point in continuing.. it's just flamebait at this point.

Maybe you didn't read or understand, MS was an example, there are a myriad of IT companies who could be substituted.

no flamebait but if anyone tries, i have no problems nuking them.

the way i write Microsoft, whether it's MS, M$ or WinDoZe, doesn't matter, if you interpret it as something negative that's your issue.

you are wrong again, my opinion of MS hasn't sunk, it has never been that high. now if you want to bang bits are OS architecture, memory, ints versus any flavor unix that's a different forum.

From your agenda on how you defend MS, shows your lack of understanding of their corporate policies and history.

MS DRM. MS doesn't make ANY content, why wouldn't they be content with their DRM? ask the old dude at MPAA or any studio, you'll get a vastly different response.

[smok3]

with the power of this board the few employees cannot be really harmful in any way, quite the opposite, the board owns them.

[Sagekilla]

There's a little something called "edit," please try using it instead of triple posting. By the way you're posting, it doesn't sound like you're just "throwing up a general topic for discussion" but more like actively pursuing a bash on microsoft. Your reply to nurbs saying Microsoft would do something like adding CABAC to VC-1 shows you know nothing of what you speak about. You don't just add stuff in like CABAC to VC-1: To do so would require a -whole- new standard to be drawn up. Or at least a very large amendment to be made that wouldn't come into affect for a number of years in the consumer world.

If you dislike Microsoft, fine. But all you're doing here is flamebaiting and borderline bashing on Ben Waggoner. I'm no fan of Microsoft either, but to completely distrust companies in a "the world is black and white" kind of view is unhelpful in this kind of environment.

[unskinnyboy]

unix_sansei, If Microsoft had an agenda, it hasn't worked here on Doom9. Note that this is the same board where viodentia and Divine Tao posted successive releases of FairUse4WM. Microsoft would have loved for getting their hands on them, and if they could use their "agents" here, it wouldn't have been all that difficult to grab their IPs (unless they had masked it), the conspiracy theorist in me thinks. Or at the very least, Microsoft would have forced Ben Waggoner, Alex Zambelli and the like to disassociate themselves from Doom9, the site which so abundantly seem to hurt Microsoft's bottom line.

In reality though, the presence of some real faces from Microsoft, Real Networks, Nero AG etc, has actually helped the users to take a much more open approach to using Microsoft-specific proprietary technologies like VC-1, Silverlight, WMV etc., Real Networks-specific technologies like RealVideo, RealAudio, RMVB etc. & Nero-specific technologies like Nero Digital. I bet Microsoft/Real Network/Nero AG actually encourages their folks (very specific ones though) to be around here, because of the sole fact that the Doom9 crowd is probably the best bunch of beta testers when it comes to video (and to a certain extent, audio) related technologies. I don't see Microsoft or us losing anything from this approach. I only see gain on either side.

Your suspicions are unfounded.

[nurbs]

Originally Posted by unix_sansei

No only ones who are online putting the MS face in forum.

When I ask a question about say the NeroAAC encoder and the guy answering is a Ahed employee then it is at least safe to assume he knows what he's talking about.

Originally Posted by unix_sansei

Sounds similar what I read about what the guards said on trial at Nuremburg.

Because genocide and using ones market dominance on nonessential goods (like software) to further leverage said dominance are clearly in the same league.

Originally Posted by unix_sansei

How would you know? Do you have source code for VC-1? You have no real idea what MS is up to but if you do have the source code so I'd like to see it. You actually believe MS follows standards? They are last ones to follow standards, they do their own thing and expect the standard to adjust to them.

I do not have the source code for VC-1, by which I assume you mean Microsofts own implementation of the standard, but the standard is available if you really want to read it and I find it highly unlikely that MS managed to get dozens of software and hardware manufacturers and also open source software developers like the ffmpeg people to secretly add H.264 features to their respective VC-1 decoders without them being mentioned in the standard and without anyone noticing it.

[Doom9]

This is going nowhere. The OP has been given the opportunity to provide information about moderator bias but failed to do so.. instead all we get are conspiracy theories.