Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 22nd Feb 2012 15:24 UTC, submitted by Ajeet
On my mark... Get set... Start not caring! Adobe has announced it plans to discontinue the stand-alone Flash Player for Linux, instead focussing all its effort on the version available through the Pepper API - which, besides Chrome, no one else is going to support.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Practical and ideological reasons prevent Mozilla from adopting Pepper. Practical because Pepper is underspecified and only exists as a code blob and allegedly is full of Webkitisms which make it hard to integrate into other code bases. Ideological because Mozilla would rather improve the web platform and not invest developer resources into what they consider technology of the past.
Good - focus on the future whilst in the present your market is destroyed by those living in reality. Plugins are going to be with us for at least the next 5 years minimum so it is time one just got used to that fact and moved on.
As for the implementation - why do they have to whole sale 'copy and paste' code form webkit? why didn't they participate in the develop and implement themselves instead of relying on someone else's work? the complaining sounds like a person failing a test then blaming the person sitting next to them for not allowing them to copy their answers.
Edited 2012-02-23 05:26 UTC
RE[3]: Pepper for Firefox
by Erunno on Thu 23rd Feb 2012 08:16
in reply to "RE[2]: Pepper for Firefox"
Member since:2007-06-22
Plugins are going to be with us for at least the next 5 years minimum so it is time one just got used to that fact and moved on.
That's why Mozilla is still supporting NPAPI. None of the other browser vendors (including Apple) have signaled any interest in supporting Pepper currently. Mozilla might rethink their position if market pressure demands it (i.e. they are the last non-supporting browser). Right now I don't see the necessity. Flash is still supported via NPAPI on important platforms like Windows and OS X which makes up the majority of their users.
And what other NPAPI plug-ins of note are currently required regularly apart from Flash and occasionally Java for the odd banking site?
As for the implementation - why do they have to whole sale 'copy and paste' code form webkit? why didn't they participate in the develop and implement themselves instead of relying on someone else's work?
*ring ring* 2011 called and would like to talk to you about Dart. Apparently Google isn't as interested in cooperative standards development anymore as they used to. Pepper, like Dart, was also devised and developed at Google in secret and was presented to the public after they had a mostly working system. And unlike a prototype which is used as a basis to start standardization discussion (including the option to make radical changes or discard the offer altogether) Google is already using Pepper in production systems so the opportunities for others to participate are rather narrow.
Edited 2012-02-23 08:17 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2007-06-22
Practical and ideological reasons prevent Mozilla from adopting Pepper. Practical because Pepper is underspecified and only exists as a code blob and allegedly is full of Webkitisms which make it hard to integrate into other code bases. Ideological because Mozilla would rather improve the web platform and not invest developer resources into what they consider technology of the past.