The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

The basics of data compression and how Youtube, Netflix and Spotify stream your stuff.

Step by step, you take a visual tour through the image compression process.

Source: [WayBack] Compression Decompressed | The website of Jack Preston, Computerer

Image source: [Archive.is] Twitter GIFs – Find & Share on GIPHY

Via:

[WayBack] Compression Decompressed or, Making Things Smaller. – ThisIsWhyICode – Google+

–jeroen

Edit 20190612

It seems all the fuzz sort of got restored: if you have an old product, not under maintenance support, then the registration count has been bumped and can be bumped further through the sales/renewal department.

This got posted a few hours after my blog post got live (the WayBack link does not archive all comments, sorry for that, that’s why I quoted toe comment):

[WayBack] From the GM: New Updates and Changes to the Registration “Bumps” Policy [UPDATED] – Blog – Developer Tools – IDERA Community

Atanas Popov 13 hours ago

Policy Update: We still receive occasional comments on this and want to make sure we are clear on our Policy. Registration limits were introduced a long time ago with very valid use cases, but many of these are now outdated. We still do them, just now they get approved by Account Management (Sales/Renewals) vs. Support. Further, we have done several auto-bumps for everyone that should limit these issues altogether (and will do more as needed). As communicated, over the summer, we will work on a more automated way to increase registration limits through the self-service portal.

Original article 20190611

Last month, people found out that retroactively, Embarcadero has changed the terms of the license agreements on products sold with a perpetual license:

In order to re-install those products, often a bump in license count is needed. That bump now requires an active maintenance subscription which has a substantial yearly cost.

This is yet another sign that Embarcadero parent company Idera is on their way towards becoming like Oracle or Computer Associates: hiding information behind account walls, and by all means trying to squeeze out money of older products.

I think the move is illegal in several countries, especially with products sold to private persons. Uwe Raabe agrees with me on that:

I am not sure they would get away with that – at least here in Germany. As long as the customer actually paid for the perpetual license (this excludes the CE), the ability to use it legally cannot be prohibited just because there is no current support contract. At least a reasonable fee for the registration bump would perhaps be acceptable, but definitely not denying it completely.

If you still own Delphi licenses, and are on maintenance for them, a path you might take is to switch to a local installation (on a separate machine, preferably virtual machine) of the ELC (formerly Belise) licensing server together with a named license.

That requires your machines to be in touch with that ELC service (you can reach it over a network connection, even via a tunnel) every 30 days to stay active.

Another way is to :

• always install in virtual machines, and keep a backup-history of those virtual machines at hand
• use different user names for doing different Delphi work (but be aware that a lot of Delphi tools and component suites still insist on installing as Administrator, therefore putting all the settings in that administrative user)

Note that :

• a Delphi license is bound to a Windows computer NAME, not a physical fingerprint of the machine
• it is likely easier to keep backups of the ECL/Belise server than of a full development machine
• ELC/Belise requires Java (JRE 1.5 or higher according to ELC Admin Guide.pdf ), which has it’s own licensing issues
• Though ELC stands for “Enterprise License Server”, it works for one-man shops equally well as for enterprises (heck: for enterprises it is likely more work as they usually want multiple groups of licenses users)

So renaming a machine will already invalidate your license (but you can usually restore that).

Background reading:

• [WayBack] Increasing registration count not possible without active maintenance support – Delphi IDE and APIs – Delphi-PRAXiS [en]
• [WayBack] Keine Reduzierung des Registrierungscounter ohne Subscription – Delphi-PRAXiS
• [WayBack] reinstall – Reinstalling Windows without re-registering Delphi – Stack Overflow
• [WayBack] license.embarcadero.com/lservers/ELC Admin Guide.pdf
• Some links on Belise/Elise licensing server (yes, AppWave is dead or at least: should be) « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff
• [WayBack] Tips, Tricks and Techniques – Embarcadero Community (which got removed from community.embarcadero.com; long live retention!)
  

  Tech Tipp #11: Lizenzserver ELC unter Windows Server 2016

  In den letzten Tagen bekomme ich häufiger diese Frage:

  Frage: Ich möchte den Lizenzserver ELC unter Windows Server 2016 installieren. Aber schon während der Installation bekomme ich einen hässlichen Fehler. Ich benutze dazu die Installationsdatei von http://altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win64/ELC532_64.exe, wie hier beschrieben:
  http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/ELC/53/en/ELC_Quick_Start

  Antwort: Nutzen Sie bitte diese Installationsdatei

  http://altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win64/ELC531_64.exe

  Die geht

• [WayBack] How we can use the new mobile-support in the pro-versions with the Licence server. We received the keys for them, but it as far as I know we can’t use them. (Because licence comes from the server and we can’t give IDE the new keys in any way I think)
• [WayBack] Delphi-PRAXiS – Einzelnen Beitrag anzeigen – Delphi 10.3 Rio ist da!
  

  Which points to Enterprise License Center (ELC) und neue Lizenzen (Update Subscription) that also got removed from the community server and is not available in the WayBack machine. I have copied the Google cached content below the fold.

• [WayBack] Embarcadero License Hosting – Login
• ELC 5.3.x documentation:
  • [WayBack] ELC Quick Start – ELC
  • [WayBack] ELC (Enterprise License Center)
    

    Introducing AppWave Enterprise License Center

    • Before you Start
    • What’s New
    • Release Notes
    • ELC Quick Start

    Install and Configure

    • Installing AppWave Enterprise License Center
    • Configuring AppWave Enterprise License Center
      • Configuring ELC Using the Web Admin Interface
      • Configuring ELC by Editing Configuration Files
      • Obtaining License Files
      • Setting Up the User List File with the LDAP Import Utility
      • Using Groups to Partition Concurrent Licenses
      • Using Group Reports
      • Configuring the IP List File
      • Configuring the Mail Notification
      • Setting up a Backup ELC for Temporary Redundancy

    User Interface

    • Product Families
    • Downloads
    • Licenses

    Admin Interface

    • Administering AppWave Enterprise License Center
    • Starting AppWave Enterprise License Center
    • Using AppWave Enterprise License Center commands
    • Administration Pages
    • Top Menu
    • Setting up a client for named user licensing
    • Setting up a client for concurrent licensing
    • Interpreting the logs
    • Reporting
      • Generating usage report logs
      • Using ELC reporting log data
      • Scheduled Reports

    Reference

    • Troubleshooting the server
    • Troubleshooting the client
    • Questions and Answers

  • [WayBack] Troubleshooting the client – ELC

Downloads (.bin files are for Linux x86 or x86_64; .exe files for Windows Win32 or Win64):

• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/linux64/ELC533_64.bin
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/linux32/ELC533.bin
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win64/ELC533_64.exe
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win32/ELC533.exe

• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/linux64/ELC532_64.bin
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/linux32/ELC532.bin
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win64/ELC532_64.exe
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win32/ELC532.exe

• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/linux64/ELC531_64.bin
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/linux32/ELC531.bin
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win64/ELC531_64.exe
• [WayBack] altd.embarcadero.com/download/ELC/win32/ELC531.exe

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »