Internet Archive

The End of the Free Internet

Internet 49 Comments
There's an article today at abc.com that looks at recent trends around net-based pay-for services and the smattering of paywalls from News Corp to the NYT that are up or threatening to be put up, and speculating that this could be the beginning of a trend. Of course, a YouTube video rental site and a few large publishers putting up paywalls will make zero difference to the "free internet" on their own. But if they're successful, it could spark emulation. But could this be a trend that could snowball enough to change the nature of the net?
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Computer Latency Problems Research

  Submitted by fran Internet 15 Comments
Ever since the iPhone crashed AT&T's network, it has become common cause that the increase in mobile data, or rather data that is transmitted over the air, is going to grow. A lot. Networks are already straining to cope. But that's not the big problem, says Andrew Herbert, director of Microsoft's Cambridge Lab. The real problem, he says, is latency. Latency is the delay between sending a signal and receiving an acknowledgment of receipt. The time it takes light to circumnavigate the Earth, about 133 milliseconds, is a fundamental constraint on network speed.
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Sad State of South Korean Internet

  Submitted by neticspace Internet 76 Comments
Internet users throughout the world, and particularly in the United States, have long been chastened to hear of South Korea's legendary broadband penetration. The urbanized, technologically-advanced nation has been famous for rolling out ultra high speed network for the majority of its citizens, and many of us have looked on with envy. However, it turns out it's not all good news. An OSNews reader gives us the skinny from the trenches in Korea.
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Smokescreen: Flash in HTML5 & JavaScript

Internet 20 Comments
Unless you've been under a rock, you're probably familiar with the fact that Flash doesn't run on any mobile Apple device. Moreover, it looks like Apple is never going to let Flash onto the iPhone/iPod/iPad empire. Rather than just whinge about the fact, the ad network company RevShock decided to do something about it by creating Smokescreen, an open source product that converts Flash to HTML5 & Javascript. While mainly designed for ads, and still very much in the testing stages, the demos certainly look very promising, and it ticks all the boxes for those who want everything to be open and free.
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Disabling the Tynt Copy/Paste Nonsense on Websites

Internet 55 Comments
If there's one thing several people are really, really good at, it's ruining the web. The latest attempt is something quite insipid, something that had me scratching my head a few times before I realised what was going on. When copying and pasting text from certain websites, content would be added to your clipboard without you knowing about it - something like "Read more at". John Gruber finds this just as insipid as I do, and investigated a little further - while also coming up with a way to block this nonsense. Seriously - this is right up there with those in-text underline ad things.
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Lightspark Reaches Beta Status

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."
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Adobe Backs HTML5 in Dreamweaver

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

  Submitted by Nitrodist 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.
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Apache support for Grand Central Dispatch (GCD)

Internet 5 Comments
FreeBSD developer Robert Watson has announced an Apache GCD MPM that uses Apple's Grand Central Dispatch concurrent programming framework, and cites 1/4 the number of lines of code for threaded MPMs to accomplish the same goals. Currently, the MPM is being distributed on Mac OS X Forge, and runs on FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Apache developer Paul Querna has proposed merging it to the Apache trunk. There are also ongoing efforts to port libdispatch to Solaris and Linux, so hopefully it will work there soon as well!
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Wild Fox: Firefox Fork with H.264 Support

  Submitted by mrsteveman1 Internet 49 Comments
Mozilla, sticking to its ideals of the open web, decided long ago that support for the patent-encumbered H264 codec would not be included in any of its products. Not only is H264 wholly incompatible with the open web and Free software, it is also incredibly expensive. Mozilla could use one of the open source implementations, but those are not licensed, and the MPEG-LA has been quite clear in that it will sue those who encode or decode H264 content without a license. Software patents, however, are only valid in some parts of the world, so an enterprising developer has started a project that was sure to come eventually: Firefox builds with H264 support.
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Why Flash Dissatisfies Me, and What Adobe Can Do About it

Internet 79 Comments
It annoys me that Flash is required for most video sites. Especially when Flash isn't available on a lot of devices or at least not the latest, required version. Whenever I try to use my Internet Tablet to watch shows on sites like Hulu, Veoh, Crackle, Joost, etc., I can't, because they require a newer version of Flash, and I'm stuck with what I have. Thankfully not every site uses the latest version. At least not yet anyways.
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Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook

  Submitted by cmoraes Internet 38 Comments
"A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in a computer lab downtown on Mercer Street, decided to build a social network that wouldn't force people to surrender their privacy to a big business. It would take three or four months to write the code, and they would need a few thousand dollars each to live on. They gave themselves 39 days to raise $10,000, using an online site, Kickstarter, that helps creative people find support." They call the project Diaspora and have managed to raise $100K in just 20 days.
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The H.264 Debacle: We’re Complaining to the Wrong People

Internet 87 Comments
A lot of articles lately have been focused on why Apple and Microsoft are the bad guys by supporting H.264 and not Theora. Well, yes, they are bad guys, but there really is not much point whining to them. It will in all likelihood fall on deaf ears, simply because they are acting in their own best interests--as MPEG stakeholders and commercial, DRM-encouraging, royalty-loving, proprietary-operating-system-hawking corporations. But that could all change--if the HTML5 spec didn't allow H.264.
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Microsoft Signs the Joomla! Contributor Agreement

Internet 36 Comments
So, the deal with HTC isn't the only partnership Microsoft entered into today. The Joomla! project has announced that Microsoft has signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement, meaning the Redmond company is now a contributor to this GPL project. Microsoft code has already found its way into the upcoming Joomla! 1.6 release, and closer cooperation between Joomla! and Microsoft will follow.
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China UK Passes Controversial Digital Economy Bill

  Submitted by aargh Internet 17 Comments
"The controversial Digital Economy Bill has been passed into law during the wash-up period, which sees outstanding legislation rushed through before a general election. The most controversial aspects of the bill - which could see persistent illegal file-sharers disconnected from the web and copyright holders given the power to block access to websites hosting illegal content - survived the process."
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