Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 31st Jan 2010 14:20 UTC, submitted by lemur2
Despite the recent interest in adopting HTML5's video tag, there is still one major problem: there is no mandated standard video codec for the video tag. The two main contestants are the proprietary and patended h264, and the open and free Theora. In a comment on an LWN.net article about this problematic situation, LWN reader Trelane posted an email exchange he had with MPEG-LA, which should further cement Theora as the obvious choice.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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Technical matters are not really the issue here.
The issue is that h.264 is entirely unsuitable for web video, because of the way it's licensed.
The issue in question is the requirement that anyone who distributes an h.264 decoder is required to pay a royalty to the MPEG-LA (currently, up to US$0.20 per unit).
Since this requires the ability to monitor distribution, and to restrict redistribution (otherwise, you could get one copy from Mozilla and give it to thousands of end-users), this is entirely incompatible with any free software.
The license is not transferrable. If Mozilla had a license, it would only cover copies distributed by Mozilla. Linux distributors could not include Firefox. Developers of other software that uses Gecko could not distribute Gecko without getting their own license. OEMs could not include Firefox on a machine (PCs, netbooks, phones, whatever) without getting their own license. No forking. No modified versions. No developing new software based on it. No incorporating it into something else.
The h.264 decoder licenses would also seem to limit distribution of source code, which makes matters even worse. Notice that Chrome has an h.264 decoder, but Chromium (the open-source version) does not.
Opera has a similar problem as Mozilla - they couldn't include a licensed h.264 decoder in their free desktop browser for the same reasons that Mozilla can't include one in Firefox. They also won't, because it's too expensive.
That's not even getting into licenses for encoders (same as the decoders, plus the possibility that you may have to pay $2,500 directly to the MPEG-LA for each copy you use for distributing video). Or worse - royalty payments for streaming video. Unless the MPEG-LA are willing to forgo those royalty payments until 2015, they'll start charging those royalties in 2011.
Basically, using h.264 prices everyone except the really big players right out of the market.
Safari or Google could build a browser that supports h.264, because they have lots of money to spend on it, and can control the distribution of their browser. Nobody else can. Worse - you wouldn't even be able to build one of these web browsers into another application, or into some piece of hardware, without paying royalties to the MPEG-LA.
The likes of YouTube can afford the royalty payments on video encoders, and on the videos themselves, but could a smaller site? Could YouTube itself have been able to afford it before they were bought by Google? Would YouTube have even existed if they had to pay those royalties back when it was three guys in a garage?
How about the current trend to try to use video content to generate ad revenue? Remember that ads are typically pay-per-click, while those royalties on the video are payable for each view. What's the chance that the ad revenue would even come close to covering the royalties?
For that matter, what about all the other uses for web video that nobody's thought of yet?
That guy from Mozilla was right - the web grew up on, and thrives on, royalty free.
The technical problems with Theora are solvable. The licensing problems with h.264 are not solvable. Seems like a simple choice to me.