"iPad Snivelers: Put Up or Shut Up"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 2nd Feb 2010 23:25 UTC, submitted by Chicken Blood
Apple The beauty of the internet is such that every opinion has become worthless; this goes doubly so for those with publish buttons on (relatively, we're humble) major websites. For every opinion, there's a matching counter-opinion, and that's great. Yesterday, we linked to an article by Mark Pilgrim about tinkerers and the iPad, and of course, someone was bound to disagree with that one.
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RE[3]: Now that's Sniveling!
by lemur2 on Wed 3rd Feb 2010 02:30 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Now that's Sniveling! "
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

And you seem to have a hard time with the reality that we are NOT talking about now, but about the future. A lot of people - me included - fear where this is going to, not where it is now.


Spot on, Thom. As you say, the enlightening quote is the one you pointed out regards DVD Jon.

From your introduction:
The quote in Pilgrim's article about DVD Jon really says it all. Which computer did he break into? His own.


My own computer is actually an "upgrade kit". It consisted originally of a motherboard, a CPU, some RAM sticks, a video card, a blank hard disk drive, a CD/DVD burner, and a case and power supply (some of these pieces were purchased seperately). I assembled these components, I turned it on, I set the BIOS to load an OS from a CD as first preference, and I put an Arch Linux install CD in the CD drive. All of the software and data that is now on that system I have added from there, this system has never seen any commercial EULA-restricted software installed on it at any time.

How on earth would I be deemed to have "broken into" my own system that I bought and then tinkered myself?

Yet doubtless this would be the attitude of the Apple's of this world. Control freaks extraordinaire. Anti-freedom in every sense.

The latest push from the control-freak set seems to be to try and subvert HTML5 so that the video codec is h264, not Theora.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy
have the potential for universal acceptance, creating a "baseline format" that everyone is both able and permitted to use without restrictions


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy#Opposition
Nokia's objection seems to be that the open Theora codecs that everyone is indeed "both able and permitted to use without restrictions" is not a proprietary codec! Really!
Among them, Nokia's paper states that "a W3C-led standardization of a 'free' codec, or the active endorsement of proprietary technology such as Ogg … by W3C, is, in our opinion, not helpful." Ogg's codecs are licensed under the BSD open source license, and are therefore not proprietary in any accepted sense of the word.


Well der.

Apple's objection was pure FUD:
Apple Computer have also opposed the inclusion of Ogg formats in the HTML standard on the grounds that H.264 performs better
... FUD obviously motivated by Apple's self-interest, since Apple are members of MPEG-LA.

The comment from Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group makes no sense at all, because it applies the least to Theora of all possible candidate codecs:
WHATWG has cited concerns over the Ogg formats still being within patent lifetime and thus vulnerable to unknown patents
(Ogg Theora is royalty-free covered by its own patents, and these are the oldest patents of any codec that was proposed).

Apple in particular is almost blatantly "advertising" for anyone to come forward who may have such a currently-mythical unkown patent, in an ill-disguised attempt to stop Theora adoption. Fortunately, no-one seems to actually have anything even resembling such a patent, thereby effectively disproving the WHATWG objection.

This is relevant because the iPad, delivered as it is with no Flash, has no support at all for web video other than HTML5/h264.

So the control freaks are out in force, and applying spin, spin and evermore spin trying to assert their control over what YOU may or may not do on YOUR OWN COMPUTER.

That is unbelieveable chutzpah.

Edited 2010-02-03 02:41 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 4