OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Patent Troll Larry Horn of MPEG-LA Assembling VP8 Patent Pool

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-21 Legal 87 Comments

Let the spreading of FUD begin! Known patent troll Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG-LA, is clearly feeling the heat - a heat that might set fire to his company's license to print money. After a decade of empty threats towards Theora, the company is apparently putting its it's-impossible-to-create-a-video-codec-that-doesn't-infringe-on-our-stuff attitude into practice once again, by assembling a patent pool to go after VP8. Google, in the meantime, is not impressed.

The In-depth Technical Analysis of VP8; Counterpoints

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Multimedia, AV 131 Comments

There's an incredible amount of momentum behind Google's WebM Project. Opera, Mozilla, and of course Google will all include it in their browsers by default, meaning about 35% of web users will be able to use it with a minimal amount of fuss. On top of that, Microsoft has changed its previously announced plans to make HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9 H264-only to include VP8 as well. Only Apple's opinion was unclear - until now.

Lightspark Reaches Beta Status

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Internet 20 Comments

Lightspark, the project that aims to create an LLVM-based Free Flash payer, has reached beta status. "JIT compilation of ActionScript to native x86 bytecode using LLVM; hardware accelerated rendering using OpenGL Shaders (GLSL); very good and robust support for current-generation ActionScript 3; a new, clean codebase exploiting multithreading and optimized for modern hardware. Designed from scratch after the official Flash documentation was released."

10 Questions for MPEG-LA on H264

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Multimedia, AV 11 Comments

"Prior to Google's announcement of its open sourcing the VP8 video codec, a spokesperson for MPEG LA - the licensing agent that manages the patent portfolio for multimedia technologies relating to the H.264 codec, among others - agreed to answer ten questions submitted to the agency in advance. Those questions regard how it licenses the codec that Microsoft and Apple consider the best solution for HTML 5, the next markup language for the Web." Ten questions, ten answers, and the H264 licensing and royalties mess has managed to become even less clear. Let's compare this to WebM: "You can do whatever you want with the WebM code without owing money to anybody." Now you again, MPEG-LA.

Android-based Google TV Coming to Living Rooms this Fall

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Google 15 Comments

"Google has finally announced its long-rumored TV efforts at Google I/O. Senior product manager Rishi Chandra said during the Thursday keynote that 'video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, and that's the TV', and that it hoped to combine the Web and TV-viewing experience in ways that others have yet to do."

Google Unveils Android 2.2, Takes Aim at Apple

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Google 62 Comments

At the Google I/O conference, Google just held its second keynote address, which focussed on Android. The talk was held by Vic Gundotra, and he unveiled a number of new features coming in Android 2.2 "Froyo", as well as some features coming in Froyo+1. The main theme of the entire keynote? Openness and choice, and a whole bucketload of not-so-subtle jabs at Apple. I'd like to apologise upfront for a possible lack of critical notes in this article - I'm still handing out the brownie points to Google for yesterday.

Xiph.Org Announces Support for WebM Open Media Project

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Multimedia, AV 8 Comments

Monty from Xiph.org Foundation, the people behind Theora and Vorbis, have announced their support for Google's WebM container format. "The Xiph.Org Foundation is pleased to announce its support of the WebM open media project as a project launch partner. As announced earlier today at the Google I/O Developer Conference, the WebM format combines the VP8 video codec, the Matroska container, and the Vorbis audio codec developed by Xiph into a high-quality, open, unencumbered format for video delivery on the Web. Xiph will continue to contribute to WebM as a whole and collaborate in its further development and deployment." Remember, people, without the hard work from the boys and girls at Xiph, Google would not have been able to do this.

EU Busts Price-Fixing DRAM Chipmakers

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-20 Legal 5 Comments

European antitrust regulators have fined nine semiconductor manufacturers more than USD 404 million following a years-long investigation into price fixing in the market for DRAM memory chips. The European Commission said all of the companies submitted settlements admitting their liability for infringement. The companies fined are Samsung Electronics, Infineon, Hynix Semiconductor, Elpida Memory, NEC Electronics, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric and Nanya Technology. A tenth company, Micron, escaped a fine since it told the Commission about the cartel in 2002.

Guest post by foldingstock 2010-05-19 OpenBSD 21 Comments

OpenBSD 4.7 is the newest installment in the proactively secure UNIX-like operating system. With 4.7 comes a range of new features including support for the Loongson 2E and 2F MIPS-compatible processors. See the release page for a complete list of new features.

Chrome Unveils Chrome Web Store

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-19 Google 3 Comments

"We believe it should be easier for users to discover web apps and for developers to reach a large audience. That's why today at Google I/O, we announced the Chrome Web Store, an open marketplace for web apps. Google Chrome users who find web apps in the store will be able to create convenient shortcuts in Chrome for easy access. Also, developers will have the option to easily sell their apps through the store using a convenient and secure payment system."

IBM Ships Servers Equipped with NVIDIA GPUs

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-19 IBM 2 Comments

IBM has updated its System x iDataPlex servers to include graphics processors from Nvidia. The new servers are aimed at organizations that want to run scientific and commercial applications on graphics processors.

Guest post by snydeq 2010-05-19 Internet 6 Comments

Despite its recent feud with Apple over HTML5 and Flash, Adobe will add HTML5 and CSS3 support to its Dreamweaver HTML authoring tool. With the Adobe HTML5 Pack extension for Dreamweaver CS5, developers leveraging HTML5 and CSS3 gain such capabilities as code-hinting, in which the tool helps finish lines of code based on what already has been entered on the keyboard. HTML5 Pack extension also features WebKit engine updates and improvements to support video and audio in the Dreamweaver Live View capability for previewing designs. Also, HTML5 starter layouts are featured.

Submitted by kragil 2010-05-19 Internet Explorer 71 Comments

This warrants a new post as far as I'm concerned, mostly because the original post is getting buried in updates and will soon drop below the fold. Microsoft has just announced it will support VP8 in HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9, but only if the user has the DirectShow filter installed. Update: Yes, the updates keep on coming. Zencoder has added support for VP8. Update II: Zencoder's side project, video.js, offers a player that can fallback between h.264, OGG and VP8 on most browsers. Support for Android browsers is underway too. Update III: The H264 supporters' hardware argument for mobile is sounding moot too, since ARM explains on its blog that mobile devices with Cortex-A8 and Snapdragon processors "will be able to take advantage of WebM" through those chips' NEON SIMD engine.

Howto: MacOS 9 on Ubuntu Using SheepShaver

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-19 Apple 32 Comments

Remember MacOS 9, or Classic as Apple named it once Mac OS X was released? On PowerPC Macintosh machines, you can install a Classic environment which launches a virtualised instance of MacOS 9 whenever you launch a Classic application. This environment has been dropped from Intel releases of Mac OS X, but thanks to SheepShaver, you can still set it up yourself on Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and even BeOS if you want to. I decided to try SheepShaver on my Ubuntu machine, and discovered just how easy it really is.

Submitted by bnolsen 2010-05-19 Multimedia, AV 121 Comments

Yes, I broke my own rules and used a "breaking" modifier for this story (let me have my fun for once). Here we have it, as the rumour mill suggested, Google has released the On2 VP8 video codec as open source (royalty free, BSD-style), while also launching the WebM container format which combines a VP8 video stream with Vorbis audio. Support for WebM has been enabled on YouTube's HTML5 beta, and you can download patches against ffmpeg as well as DirectShow filters for Windows (Gstreamer plugins are labelled as "coming soon"). Mac users are out of luck for now; no QuickTime plugins have been announced yet. Update: The WebM blog is now open - and the list of partners is pretty decent already. It includes ARM, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, and many others. Update II: VP8 will be baked into Flash. Update III: The Opera labs version with WebM support has been released too, for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Facebook’s Privacy Woes; Chrome Issue Tempest in a Teapot

Submitted by Nitrodist 2010-05-19 Internet 32 Comments

If there's one subject that's really hot right now on the web, it's privacy. There's the whole Facebook saga, and especially the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, seems somewhat averse to the concept of privacy. We also have a much smaller issue with the Chrome web browser, where someone found out zoom settings are stored somewhere, even when in incognito mode. It turned out to be a feature (sort of) but it does highlight how important the concept of privacy on the web has become.

Google to Microsoft on Office vs. Docs: Oh Yeah?

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-18 Google 6 Comments

"Google's hackles are raised over Microsoft's claim that Google Docs doesn't work well with Office files, and in fact, has a tendency to butcher Office's page design elements. Alex Payne, Director, Online Product Management, Microsoft, said Office and Google Docs don't play well together because Google Docs converts Office files into a different file format for viewing and editing, which strips out fonts, styles, charts, and other page elements. On Wednesday, Google said it has made a lot of progress in maintaining document fidelity when importing Microsoft Office documents into Google Docs. But Google apparently also sees some irony in Microsoft's reasoning."

Fedora 13 Delay Fixes Linux GRUB Bug

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-18 Fedora Core 8 Comments

"No, Fedora 13 Linux is not coming out today. The release was pushed back by a week to fix a number of blocker bugs, among them is an interesting one that many users might simply consider to be just a papercut nuisance."

Apple Quietly Boosts MacBook Speed, Battery Life

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-18 Apple 18 Comments

"Apple today quietly refreshed its entry-level MacBook laptop, boosting the processor speed and inserting a longer-life battery. The MacBook remains priced at $999. Apple bumped the MacBook's Intel Core 2 Duo processor speed to 2.4GHz, up from 2.2GHz, and replaced the battery with a 10-hr. battery to match the estimate that it uses in the higher-priced MacBook Pro line. Like the batteries used in those more expensive cousins, the MacBook's is within the case, and cannot be swapped out by the user. The MacBook now sports Nvidia's GeForce 320M integrated graphics, the specially-made-for-Apple successor to the GeForce 9400M, the MacBook's former chipset. The GeForce 320M also powers the two lowest-priced 13-in. MacBook Pro laptops, priced at $1199 and $1499."

revMobile Rejected from App Store, Unity Team Not Worried

Submitted by RJay75 2010-05-18 Apple 25 Comments

While I was too young to experience its heyday, I have heard a lot of people wax lyrically about Apple's HyperCard. Even Steve Jobs himself said, earlier this year, that he'd love for a HyperCard-like environment to come to the iPhone, but that someone would have to build it. Well, someone did indeed build it, called it revMobile, but Apple has rejected 'it' from the App Store (i.e., applications developed using revMobile) because it violates section 3.3.1 of the iPhone SDK agreement. The team behind Unity, however, are luckier: Unity games are still being accepted into the App Store, and as such, they're not worried.