Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 13th Jan 2011 20:31 UTC
And the fallout from Google's decision to drop H.264 support from its Chrome web browser continues to fall. Opera's Haavard - speaking on his own behalf - slammed the article which appeared on Ars Technica earlier today, while Micrsoft's Tim Sneath likened Google's move to the president of the United States banning English in favour of Esperanto. Also within, a rant (there's no other word for it) about the disrespect displayed by H.264 proponents towards the very open source community that saved and invigorated the web.
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RE[7]: Bad writing this time, please improve argumentation
by lemur2 on Sat 15th Jan 2011 13:18
in reply to "RE[6]: Bad writing this time, please improve argumentation"
Member since:2007-02-17
I know that royalty-free is what the W3C requires and it is a great idea, but the web isn't just what W3C wants.
This is not the way it works. HTML5 is a W3C standard. It is a standard written by W3C. The HTML5 standard therefore IS just what W3C wants.
What the W3C wants is driven by many, many more participants across the industry other than just Microsoft and Apple. What the W3C wants is that technologies used within W3C standards must be royalty-free. W3C have an industry-wide consensus on this policy. All other W3C standards conform to this policy.
HTML5 is a W3C standard. Therefore, HTML5 must not include technologies that are not royalty-free.
That is the way that it works.
Edited 2011-01-15 13:19 UTC
RE[8]: Bad writing this time, please improve argumentation
by avgalen on Sun 16th Jan 2011 02:22
in reply to "RE[7]: Bad writing this time, please improve argumentation"
Member since:2010-09-23
There is NO current standard for video on the web! The only standard is what people did because there was (and is) no standard. THAT is why Flash-Video, H.264 and other things browser makers and content providers came up with (realplayer, activex mediaplayer, quicktime) had to be used and are now in use. This has been a PITA for the last 10 years.
http://www.w3.org/standards/techs/html#w3c_all
HTML 5 is listed as a working draft on January 13. It isn't a recommendation or standard at all.
Dropping support for something that is used right now, to support something that will be part of a future standard is a powerplay.
(I am really hoping that MPEG-LA will shock the world by saying "royalty-free for web-use". If that happens, would there still be a need for WebM/Theora?)
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
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."More News »
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Member since:
2010-09-23
Chrome having H.264 first, then removing it and then adding it again if Apple and Microsoft do something? No, no, no. That is starting to sound more and more like blackmail.
The web is full of non-open and non-free technologies and there are many ways around it and the web is doing just fine. I know that royalty-free is what the W3C requires and it is a great idea, but the web isn't just what W3C wants. For that, the W3C is FAR too slow, indecisive and fickle. A few years ago the direction was to go XHTML, not HTML5. The web itself and browsermakers are the ones that really dictate the future.
From a purely technical point of view I would like browsers to NOT support any image/audio/video technology at all. I would like them to rely on technology that is already present in the OS. That way H.264/WebM should only be included in the OS and can then be played by all media players, including browsers. Improvements will only need to be applied once and licenses wouldn't be a problem for most users. As far as I understand Chrome is actually capable of this, as will IE and Firefox be. If it does work that way, I would actually welcome all browsers to drop support for H.264, WebM, Theora, etc and would hope that plugins/codecs for OS's would be made available until these technologies get included in the OS by default.
I would like (web)video to "just work", without the need for Flash (clientside) or re-encoding (serverside)