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Well anyone who has watched Pwn to own or read the article posted on OSNews on OSX knows that security in the Apple camp as largely been a gift of security through obscurity which the incredible numbers put up by the iPhone and iPad killed pretty damned dead. Oh and before someone chimes in (as they always do) that they go after the Mac over the WinBox because the Mac is nicer? Protip: The first one to drop ANY machine gets $10,000 so risking that amount on trying to get a Macbook one could easily buy with the check would be dumb and those guys ain't dummies.

I'd say the real problem for Apple is they have both the white and black hats trying to crack them, the whites to jailbreak their iShiny while the blacks want to pwn the iShiny. Maybe they should take the whites out of the equation by offering a "void warranty and jailbreak now" button?

That would leave just the black hats which admittedly will be a MUCH harder problem, just look at how many years it took for MSFT to get Windows from the crazy 19 infections per 1000 boxes with WinXP to the 4 per 1000 with 7. They had to harden the OS with improvements to DEP, ASLR, process isolation, hell if that isn't enough for you you can do what I did with my customers and add Structured Exception Handling Overwrite Protection which works beautifully without any programs hanging.

But what Apple has ended up with is gonna be more than a bit of a puzzler, as the devices iOS runs on aren't really powerful enough to deal with the overhead of the above security features, yet people still expect to be able to install and run programs on the things like a laptop. Short of ripping out support for most functions and instead having everything go through Apple's servers in a thin client kind of way I just don't see how they are gonna stop the malware guys. The malware guys have seen the numbers of sales, have seen there is blood in the water, and now the sharks are coming wanting a bite. It doesn't help I've had conversation with Apple users that still believe the "Apple is immune to malware" meme, at least the Windows and Linux users see and accept the web is a dangerous place.

Perhaps the thin client model is the way to go for Apple. They certainly have the server capacity now and it would fit right in with their walled garden approach, the only question is would streaming everything client server style clog the networks worse than they are. Doesn't Opera already do this with their mobile browser BTW? Maybe taking a page from their book wouldn't be such a bad idea.

So 2005: http://www.osnews.com/thread?11786 nice story bro

Sure they have. Take this for example.

http://www.osnews.com/story/22331/FreeBSD_Gets_Grand_Central_Dispatch_Port

I could go on, but it's obvious you need to develop some research before forming opinion skills so I'll let you handle it from there.

Someone below said Android:

does not match what people would define as "Linux"

...but they refused to define who the people are and what their definition of Linux is.I'm going to put this argument not just to bed, but in its damn grave once and for all.

Let me quote someone for you all, Linus Torvalds, you know, the guy who created Linux from scratch and named it after himself (emphasis added):

In a separate incident Linus Torvalds the father of Linux expressed his anger at Google. Linus accused Google of undermining the role of Linux in Android. Due to Google's marketting of Android, apart from the tech-sisterhood, no one knows that Android is Linux. To give Linux its credit Linus is asking Google to call it Linux/Android or Android+Linux.

"I don't care if you put cart in front of horse or horse in front of cart. If you want to go somewhere you have to keep them together." ...

When RMS was asked to further explain his point, he said. "I have maintained from the very beginning that when you refer to whole system you must call it GNU+Linux or GNU/Linux but when you are referring only to the kernel its Linux and not GNU/Linux."

http://www.muktware.com/blogs/01/2011/943/richard-m-stallman-says-its-linux-not-gnulinux-linus-upset-android

Is it GNU/Linux? No. Is it Linux? YES. And going further, And speaking in reference to someone's claim that Google Android violated the GPL (emphasis added):

It seems totally bogus. We've always made it very clear that the kernel system call interfaces do not in any way result in a derived work as per the GPL, and the kernel details are exported through the kernel headers to all the normal glibc interfaces too. The kernel headers contain various definitions for the interfaces to user space, and we even actively try to make sure that the headers can be used by user space (and try to mark which of the headers are expected to be usable in such a way). Exactly because we know user space needs those details in order to interact with the kernel.
So I haven't looked at exactly what Google does with the kernel headers, but I can't see that they'd want to do anything fundamentally different from glibc in this respect.

Of course, we do have our own 'internal' headers too, and we have stuff that is meant to be relevant only for the kernel. But there would be no point for Google to even use those, since they are useless outside of the kernel, so I don't see what the whole brouhaha would be all about. Except if it's somebody politically motivated (or motivated by some need of attention). If it's some desperate cry for attention by somebody, I just wish those people would release their own sex tapes or something, rather than drag the Linux kernel into their sordid world.

http://www.osnews.com/story/24557/Torvalds_Android_GPL_Claims_quot_Totally_Bogus_quot_
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/03/23/014223/Linus-Says-Android-License-Claim-Is-Bogus

So, please, please, if you don't know what what you are talking about, refer to Linus and even RMS (shudder) who BOTH call Android Linux. So much so that RMS clarifies exactly how to call it Linux and Linus is pissed that it isn't named Linux!

DEBATE F%&^ING OVER! QED!

Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform,

This statement just cries out for at least a small amount of supporting evidence. The article doesn't appear to make this claim - so did jbrodkin simply pull this out of his nether regions, as I suspect?

It's been the subject of recent speculation given the numbers that HTC pays them $5 for each phone and has sold 30 million sets totaling $150 million. And then compare to what WP7 makes MS:

Microsoft has admitted selling 2 million WP7 licenses, and assuming a price of $15 per license, that's $30 million in revenue.

Okay so that could be incorrect but we're just seeing more and more Android licenses resulting in payment to Microsoft. And I don't think WP7 is keeping up with that.

Is this conclusive? Not at all. The above numbers could be false. Is it probable? Well, that's for you to decide.

In other cases this has been because microsoft wrote the tools and designed them to be hostile to Linux, e.g. ACPI. is there any of that here?

This is what he's talking about. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that Microsoft could have deliberately made ACPI difficult for Linux to implement.

... Microsoft actually does something innovative and maybe even goes a step further than Apple when it comes to user interfaces:
http://www.osnews.com/story/24811/Microsoft_Demos_Windows_8_New_Interface

If it's good I don't know. I like how the MeeGo for surf pads looked. Guess Playbook was ok to.

I think KDE looks boring and the applications such as Amarok look so bloated with.. Well.. Everything :D

http://www.osnews.com/story/19731/The-25-Year-Old-UNIX-Bug

These kinds of stories make me nervous, because I always assume that crackers know about these and are using them secretly.

Though this is obviously not a OSS issue. Were this Windows, it might not have been found at all.

Here are a couple articles describing some times when Microsoft has sued different companies over patents:

TomTom:

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/02/Microsoft_sues_TomTom_over_patents_in_case_with_Linux_subplot_40305732.html Salesforce:

http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/49826-microsoft-sued-over-patents-for-a-change

Motorola: http://www.osnews.com/story/23860/Microsoft_Slaps_Motorola_with_Patent_Lawsuit_over_Android

Barnes & Noble:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/microsoft-sues-barnes-noble/

Just a few of the companies being sued by Microsoft. Most companies don't wanna get sued by Microsoft - so they often settle. But Microsoft will sue if they don't get their way.

How are any of these links supporting this very specific claim (complete with snarky comments about others needing to do research): "Lindows, Android, Apple. You might actually want to do some research"

Here are a couple articles describing some times when Microsoft has sued different companies over patents:

TomTom:

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/02/Microsoft_sues_TomTom_over_patents_in_case_with_Linux_subplot_40305732.html
Salesforce:

http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/49826-microsoft-sued-over-patents-for-a-change

Motorola:
http://www.osnews.com/story/23860/Microsoft_Slaps_Motorola_with_Patent_Lawsuit_over_Android

Barnes & Noble:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/microsoft-sues-barnes-noble/

Just a few of the companies being sued by Microsoft.
Most companies don't wanna get sued by Microsoft - so they often settle.
But Microsoft will sue if they don't get their way.

I'd say OSNews is pretty nice, but since it has a small community you won't get 300 comment threads there (but no shit eater and nigger trolls for the most part, gotta look on the bright side) and if you only want to browse the headlines so as to avoid troll articles in the future then Daily Rotation lets you customize the headlines towards your interests. I have mine set for science, new tech gear, Windows gadgets and freeware, and the basic headlines.

Okay, Robert Lawrence. Keep thinking you're safe.

You mean that h.264 support they dropped earlier this year?

Total sidenote: x264 is an h.264 encoder. h.264 is the actual codec.

I am specifically referring to names in the kernel source tree using conflicting cases such as:

include/linux/netfilter/xt_connmark.h
include/linux/netfilter/xt_CONNMARK.h

This requires that the kernel source be stored on a case insensitive file system, and will not work with Cygwin, nor with the default filesystem for OS X.

I don't think building under Cygwin or OSX is a high priority to the Linux kernel developers :) That being said, why should Linux kernel sources be forced to support building from antiquated filesystems? Also, I can understand Windows having this problem, but OSX? I thought they would have at least got that right. Wow. Add another item to the long list of reasons to avoid OSX.

And from that link you provided:

When I tried to checkin the Kernel tree into Perforce,

Really? Seriously? I'm surprised anyone is even using Perforce.

Tell you what, why don't you do us a favor and file bug reports with Microsoft and Apple and tell them to try dragging their asses into (at least) the 20th century; UNIX has had case sensitive filesystems forever, so there's really no excuse. Hell, git works fine with mixed case on vfat under Linux. If case sensitivity is (supposedly) a user problem, well a) people mucking about with kernel sources should know better, and b) it should be solved in the DE/GUI/file manager (ie, application) level, not the kernel level.

Singlehandedly saved USB from oblivion. (vs. PS/2. A proprietary IBM standard created by the same proprietary mindset that created Microchannel Architecture)

*sigh...* No, it was Microsoft who did since they made it

Sigh.

If you are talking about USB, it was created by a combination of seven companies, of which Microsoft was but one. Intel was the one who actually created the first USB interface ICs, though. And as I have pointed out, USB connectors languished for several years on Windows PC motherboards. It wasn't until the popularity of the original CRT iMac that USB "caught on". That's why so many early USB peripherals mimicked the original iMac's color assortment.

BTW, Windows support for USB didn't even appear until what called Windows 95, OSR2. And it was widely considered to be nearly uselessly buggy until Windows 98. In fact, in Windows 95, USB isn't even enabled by default.

But don't let your lack of historical knowledge stop you from acting the fool.

And, BTW, I said "popularized" the USB interface; not "created" it. As I said above, many, many PC motherboards had USB connectors before the iMac; but it took the iMac's popularity to create that all-important "tipping point" for USB device availability. Which curiously enough, brings us back on-topic regarding Thunderbolt.

Now, if you were referring to MCA, MS had NOTHING to do with that; it was ALL IBM.

Here you go: This is all I needed to see out of that group. Talk about amateur hour. Scientific Linux indeed.

Apple needs to be a bit more carefully about older versions of the OS and models. Case in point:

1. This: http://www.osnews.com/story/24428/The_Next_Brick_to_Decorate_Your_Wall_iOS_3_x_Devices
After months this article got posted, the App Store STILL DOES NOT work properly. You still can't update an app from within the device by hitting "update". The button does nothing! You need iOS 4.x or above before you can update via iOS (so we now have to use iTunes, which I don't want to use since that iPod has no music in it, I just use it as a PDA).

2. Apple REMOVED AirTunes support from iOS 4 when the second generation of AppleTV came out. What they did exactly was to stop supporting the original AppleTV (that was still sold at the time), from within iOS. So I can't use the 1st Gen AppleTV to send audio too from my iOS device anymore. This used to work just fine up to a few months ago. After the iOS 4.2 update, the support was removed.

What's the penetration of this open and free format out in the music player industry? Zero. Another example: Theora. Penetration? Zero.

Normally I don't respond to AC's, but you're a fucking liar. My phone, portable music player, laptop, my wife's phone, my wife's laptop, and my wife's music player all play Vorbis and FLAC. The only ones that don't play Theora are the music players (which don't have color screens). Music players that support Vorbis aren't that hard to find.

as much facts as the reality that current WebM encoders do a worse job in terms of video quality than x264 does for H.264. End-users' experience doesn't matter, I take it.

Differences in quality between WebM and H.264 are negligable, at best. Most people won't notice or care. But how about that "end-user experience" of paying a royalty fee everytime you want to encode, decode, or distribute a video? Or not being able to play H.264 videos out of the box on Linux because the members of MPEG-LA can't compete any other way? Doesn't sound very fucking user-friendly to me.

WebM is open and free in every sense of the word; the submarine patent issues apply equally to H.264; and hardware support for WebM is coming along rapidly. Face it, WebM is the future, and that's a good thing.

Business Software Alliance members

MPEG-LA H.264 licensors

Note how Microsoft and Apple are both members of the above groups (in case you haven't heard of BSA, they're basically the MPAA and RIAA of the software world). Google isn't a member of either group.

Any complaints that can be leveled against WebM can be leveled against H.264 (that is, it is just as likely that submarine patents exist for H.264 as for WebM). The difference is that Google is pushing for open standards that don't require license fees to use (including no license fees for playback or distribution). Google is doing the right thing, and Apple and Microsoft, as usual, are trying to lock customers into their products, limit choice, and stifle competition. Anyone who can't see that is deluding themselves, and is probably either a shill or shameless fanboi.

I don't blame Apple or Microsoft, though; if I had to compete against Linux, I'd try dirty political weasely tricks like this, because it's obvious Apple and Microsoft can't compete technically.

Utter rubbish.

http://www.osnews.com/permalink?470666

tl;dr "Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer implementations of this specification"

IOW: Anyone may use, anyone may implement, full permission is granted irrevocably and in perpetuity (as long as you don't sue Google).

Specification is documented and submitted to the ITEF.

An independent implementation is here:
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/499

Your claim "H.264 is far more open than WebM" couldn't be more wrong if you tried for millennia to make it more incorrect.

Windows is very rock solid. It is no longer the POS it once was. I recently wiped Linux off my system and switched to Windows because of bugs as well as Chrome and Firefox sucking goatballs on it.

Linux is a reliable server and the kernel stays up but X, my ATI drivers, Gnome, and web browsers are buggy and unreliable. Firefox 4 sucks on Linux and is why. Go to www.msnbc.com under Windows 7 with Firefox 4 or Chrome? Now do the same under Linux? My 3 year old laptop freezes up on it now.

If you can think of an OS that is as stable (user app wise) then please tell.

... Why would I buy one?

Because they are sold by these guys.

"Microsoft never has attacked other companies"

Microsoft files rare patent lawsuit against Salesforce.com
Microsoft Slaps Motorola with Patent Lawsuit over Android
Microsoft wins big on PND patent lawsuit
Microsoft Files Patent Lawsuit Vs TiVo Again
Patent Lawsuits Filed by Former Microsoft CTO’s Firm

Further, Microsoft has lobbied extensively in Europe for a software patent regime, funding numerous attempts to modify the current situation where a patent has to be litigated in each country separately. If they were being defensive, they would not do this, the current European patent system favors defense.

And further, Microsoft has pushed very hard, for many years now, to find a way to extract a toll on Linux, via patents.

They are not a patent troll, mainly because they delegated that job to Intellectual Ventures, a pure patent troll firm. They are repeatedly attacked by firms who hold patents, though often it seems Microsoft stole the technology, and the small firms are justified in seeking compensation. But they do abuse their patents, and they do abuse the patent system in an attempt to fight competitors like Linux and Android that they can't beat on technical merit.

But the thing about McAfee is that they *do* market themselves as "security experts". Therefore they should be held to a higher standard.

Go ahead and hold them to whatever standard you like. The fact is, computer security in general is completely unmanageable. ALL solutions fix a certain set of problems while not fixing (or creating) others.

Everything I have seen points to an inescapable conclusion: you cannot protect any network of significant size from intrusions and leaks. Nobody has accomplished it for any significant amount of time. Even openbsd can't do it, and that's on a "default install" which is 0.0001% of the problem faced by any real enterprise.

My point isn't to destroy the important distinction between better and worse - there are important distinctions. But that distinction is lost with the simplistic assertion that "McAfee should know better."

Apple vs Nokia ended in "Nokia did not infringe Apple's patents", too. Why is it not mentioned?http://www.osnews.com/story/23987/ITC_Staff_Sides_with_Nokia_in_Apple_Complaint

Probably because it doesn't come from a credible source. Please see Bloomberg

For those who don't want to click the link, the ITC judge will make a ruling on whether Nokia violated Apple patents on June 24.

Apple vs Nokia ended in "Nokia did not infringe Apple's patents", too. Why is it not mentioned? http://www.osnews.com/story/23987/ITC_Staff_Sides_with_Nokia_in_Apple_Complaint

MPEG LA created their own smartphone patent licensing firm last year... Get ready for the patent showdown of the ages Google vs Microsoft vs Apple with leeches like MPEG LA taking a cut off the top. http://www.osnews.com/story/23258/MPEG-LA-owned_Patent_Troll_Sues_Smartphone_Makers

Posted too quickly and forgot the reference for the quote.

I am still bothered by the way he pretended to invent multitasking instead of just admitting that he was catching up to Android,

Where did he ever say that? When he introduced multitasking for the iPhone he said that Apple was "late to the party".

Seriously I really think Apple-haters like to make things like this up or seem unable to separate marketing-speeak from reality.

The new Nokia CEO is apparently one of the top ten largest single stockholders of Microsoft shares (I think he weights int a # 7). So he has probably more incentive to care about Microsoft's performance than he may have regarding Nokia. Under that context his push for WP7 makes total sense, since Microsoft has much more to gain for such a move than Nokia does.

If I were an actual Nokia stock holder, I'd be asking a lot of questions to the board of that company right about now. That is a very serious conflict of interest for the CEO to have, esp. since Microsoft is still a direct competitor of Nokia.

Basically Microsoft may get away with taking over Nokia without spending a single dime. Which is why the two stock prices are having such a diverging behavior right now (not that the market is a good metric for anything).

source

Uhhh...you DO realize you have fallen for a classic Windows urban legend, yes? Superfetch will automatically hand memory over to programs if they request it, so all you are doing is making sure you have a pile of empty RAM for...what exactly? Just to say you have it?

And Readyboost uses a flash drive for a cache and is completely optional so A.-You won't even have it if you don't specifically choose to use it, and B.-a flash drive has faster random reads than any HDD so you are just making sure your random reads take longer again...why?

I would suggest you read about SuperFetch and ReadyBoost rather than act like it is still 1998 and the only thing that matters is how much free RAM task manager says it has. Unless of course you just WANT your PC to be slow for some reason, and if that is the case carry on!

"irrevocable.. 'cept for those cases where we reserve the right to revoke..."

Rockoon, I am wondering what your axe to grind is here. I've seen you write insightful stuff here on Slashdot, but not today.

Google hasn't reserved any right to revoke. They did specify one condition where you can forfeit your rights under the patent grant: if you sue to attack the patents, you lose your grant to use the patents. That's unusual (maybe even never seen before?) and it's sort of odd. But it doesn't leave Google with the power to say "We have decided we don't like you and we are taking away your patent grant."

So it really comes down to arguing over what "irrevocable" means. If it means "no third party has the ability to take away the grant" then this grant is "irrevocable". If it means "nothing will ever, ever, ever take away the grant", then this grant is not "irrevocable".

Personally, I think the fact that no third party can take away your patent grant rights means it really is "irrevocable". Google can't revoke your rights; nobody can; that's "irrevocable" enough for me. The fact that there is one, clearly spelled out, way that you can forfeit your patent grant does not cause any hidden dangers or uncertainty around the patent grant.

Compare with the H.264 patent holders, who have decided that if you use a camera that records in H.264 format, you have to dance to their tune, even if you immediately convert the H.264 video to some other format. Engadget asked MPEG-LA if the license agreement means what it says, and received official word that the license agreement doesn't mean what it says; that even though the license says you will need to pay extra if you used an H.264 camera for a "commercial" purpose, that you won't have to pay extra. But as I understand it, the patent laws give them the power to start enforcing that clause any time before the patents run out.

I'll take a format with an irrevocable patent grant (even if there is a way I could forfeit the grant) any day, over H.264. If you build a business on H.264, you have no idea how much you will have to pay to use it later; with WebM you know exactly how much you will have to pay, and that is zero.

steveha

Indeed, it's important not to confuse law and morals. But piracy advocates do this all the time. For instance, on OS News, Thom Holwerda cannot resist mentioning that "downloading is perfectly legal in The Netherlands and many other European countries", a matter he has mentioned before. He says this as the ultimate answer to any question about whether piracy is right or wrong. But heating on your wife is also legal in The Netherlands, and that doesn't make it right.

Also, the view that file sharing is moral, and attempts to stop it are immoral, are actually quite contentious. I refer you to Slashdot user "Cliffski", an independent game designer whose games have been widely pirated, because he has the opposite view. To him, sharing without permission is immoral, along with the attitude that excuses and permits it. I find it difficult not to see his point.

Indeed, it's important not to confuse law and morals. But piracy advocates do this all the time. For instance, on OS News, Thom Holwerda cannot resist mentioning that "downloading is perfectly legal in The Netherlands and many other European countries", a matter he has mentioned before. He says this as the ultimate answer to any question about whether piracy is right or wrong. But heating on your wife is also legal in The Netherlands, and that doesn't make it right.

Also, the view that file sharing is moral, and attempts to stop it are immoral, are actually quite contentious. I refer you to Slashdot user "Cliffski", an independent game designer whose games have been widely pirated, because he has the opposite view. To him, sharing without permission is immoral, along with the attitude that excuses and permits it. I find it difficult not to see his point.

Define standard.

Some counter arguments:
http://www.osnews.com/thread?458060

"What you perhaps actually mean is that WebM is a standard that is not yet endorsed by any official independent standards body."

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_standard):

"A technical standard may be developed privately or unilaterally, for example by a corporation, regulatory body, military, etc."

H.264 is not a standard acceptable by the W3c http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2011/01/13/openness

And finally:
http://annevankesteren.nl/2011/01/why-webm

"And lets face it, WebM has a specification, independent implementations, backing from hardware manufacturers, and is supported in all browsers that are not MPEG LA H.264 patent licensor — once Firefox 4 is released that makes about sixty percent of the desktop browser market."

Also, I don't know why no one here remembers the h264 camera patents fiasco: http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA

Did you ever stop to consider that no one is suing these folks because they had no one with money behind it? Google is hardly starving in that regard. It makes WebM a very attractive target now that it has deep pockets behind it, which may be what folks have been waiting on all along.

I still fail to see how removing support for an industry standard codec is good for end users. All this will do is strengthen Flash, which is completely proprietary, which they failed to remove. The fans claim that doing so is the wrong time because Flash is so prevelent on the Web. I hate to break it to them but H.264 is the most popular video format on the web as most flash utilizes it under the covers as well.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/01/h-264-66-percent-web-video/

Why keep flash? This is pure politics.

I already have H.264 support bought and paid for, and now my favorite browser wont' support it, which leaves me with the chore of finding another browser. Google could have simply used the OS support if it's there but they also took that choice away as well (all for my own good I'm sure...)

Google is above reproach these days and the fans are just stumbling over themselves to defend this action claiming it promptes FOSS when all it will do is line Google's pockets in the end. If they were all about FOSS they would have removed Flash support from Chrome as well (it's still bundled in and will continue to be since there has been no mention of removing it).

http://www.osnews.com/story/23081/Google_To_Bundle_Flash_with_Chrome_Yup

H.264 is competely free to use when it's not used for profit. It's an excellent quality codec with a huge hardware supported base. All irrelevant and again for our own good apparently.

Google has become just as frightening if not more so than Microsoft ever was. Microsoft was at least up front with it's MS brand Evil. Google has found that a little good PR goes a long way when the end result still sends money back to the company coffers. They have become wrapped around far too much of the internet in a way that should scare the hell out of folks, but no one pays any attention because they offer 'free' services. I have to wonder when it will come back and bite us in the ass.

This appears to be more about Google's pissing match with Apple and less about FOSS. I just wish Google had picked a better bed mate than Adobe.

Cameras can record in it, but not legally for commercial use.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA

Windows and Mac come with a license for personal use, but other operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD do not. Also, if you want to use it for commercial use, you need a separate license.

Yes, Youtube, Windows, and Mac are licensed, and you can use the web like a cable TV.. That's exactly my point. If we want nothing more than we have today, H.264 is fine. If we want freedom for code slingers and artists to choose their own path we need free standards.

Innovation requires freedom. I produce some small commercial videos and I write code. I cannot legally do what I want with H.264 without licensing, and they won't sell me a license. For me the choices are to break the law, use free standards, or drop the project. You'll see millions of instances of this over the next 17 years until H.264 patents expire if we don't have a free standard that's supported everywhere.

You want to have a website with paid tutorial videos? Can't use H.264 to sell content without a license.

Want to use the excellent handbrake video encoder? Can't without breaking the law.

You want to build a distributed, self-generating screensaver that produces web video? Cant without free standards.

Patented standards hamper innovation and economic growth. The most important examples of this are the ones we haven't come up with yet...

There is only one side.
Bright says the move is against openness because h264 was developed in the open.
I posit that that's irrelevant if the source is open if patents prevent you to doing anything to it.
Developing patent encumbered projects in the open is a great idea because: 1. more eyes means more testing. 2. more eyes means that it's easier to sue competitors who might or might not have looked up the source because the source is freely available.

So software patents, which were born for the main reason of letting big corps use for software market the same tactics they employ in real markets , have the added bonus to make open source more evil than closed source.

The only questions that matter are: is that software free or encumbered? - If it's encumbered is it worth the hassle?
In the case of h264 you have:
- big market share
- current market share being irrelevant in two years' turnaround time
- minor advantage in efficiency
- minor disadvantage in decoding efficiency against theora when dedicated hardware is not present
- being tied for the rest of your material's life to MPEG LA decisions :"The [street-smart] people at MPEG-LA have made sure that from the moment we use a camera or camcorder to shoot an mpeg2 (e.g. HDV cams) or h.264 video (e.g. digicams, HD dSLRs, AVCHD cams), we owe them royalties, even if the final video distributed was not encoded using their codecs!" source

The last point kills it for me, and after SCO trial I think that being paranoid on these issues is not a bad idea. YMMV.

H.264 is an open but not free standard. The patent grant is both costly and non-transitive. WebM is a closed standard, with a libre and transitive license and patent grant and libre reference implementation.

Also, remember Theora is still available in multiple browsers, and other codecs will appear in the future. A vote against H.264 is not necessarily a vote for WebM, though it is probably the best choice at the moment.

No hardware support you say? Hardware rendering of WebM in soon to be shipped hardware was shown at CES:
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html
http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/chips-delivers-vp8-hd-video-hardware.html

I know of no linux that has x264 out of the box. In many countries, it's illegal to use x264 without paying licensing fees, as all encoders and decoders require licenses. Today there are 3 legal ways to play H.264 on Ubuntu in the USA: the Flash player, and http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/complete-set-of-playback-plugins/ and Google Chrome.

Freedom is freedom for innovation. You want to build a new video software application or hardware device with H.264? Time to pay the piper. And the piper doesn't sell 10 packs of licenses.

You want to charge for video on the web? You can't use H.264 without paying licensing fees, and they don't talk to small potatoes.

With most video cameras that support H.264, you're breaking the law if you use them for commercial purposes. http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA

We need a free format for video to be widely supported. What would have happened to the web if you had to buy a patent license to create commercial content, servers, or browsers? It would have a few thousand users probably.

Innovation matters. Don't burden the future with what might make sense today.

If it is the law, give me proof. ;)

You should check my comment on Osnews: http://www.osnews.com/thread?454581

Specially in the second part, when I talk about the LPI ( Ley de Propiedad Intelectual = Intellectual Property Law).

The thing is that the "Copia Privada" right, only applies when the source is a legal one. The trick comes here: "downloading music from another use" isn't a legal but "alegal" source. Therefore, the act of sharing copyrighted is "alegal"

Best regards

Oh, Typing 101... boy, how I really do miss those clickidy-clackidy keyboards!

Nope.
There are quite a few different methods to accomplish this.
For what apple wants to do with it the Panel method is probably what they "patented".

Panel System: This is the most likely use of 3D without glasses. What happens is that a thin screen is placed in front of the TV which as the same function as glasses would. It polarizes the images and causes the right and left eye to receive different images. This would create a 3D effect without any glasses at all.

Apple finds ways to patent things that are already out there by simply taking something designed for projection rooms and putting it on a phone or a computer.

They then have a large portfolio of indefensible patents which look good on paper, but as soon as they try to enforce them they lose big time.

Apple recently put a whole bunch of patents at risk of being declared invalid when they tried to exercise them against Nokia. See Here and also Here.

Sorry but you are wrong: Four words Xserver and Hardware ABI, or a lack of it. I set up nearly a half dozen machines with bog standard hardware, all big name OEM stuff both desktop and laptop, and tried running Ubuntu on them from 6-9.04. Guess how many upgraded correctly with ZERO need for CLI or 'fixes"? NONE. Zip zero zilch nada squat.

Then take in the fact that simple things like launching a video can cause the whole damned Xserver to crash like something out of Win9x which before someone screams shill and modbombs I am far from the only one saying this and you have an OS that is fine IF you have a CS degree AND don't mind tweaking AND don't mind learning CLI AND don't mind trawling forums for "fixes" when the lack of hardware ABI causes the whole thing to shit itself and die.

So while I wish Linux was ready for consumers, it just ain't. And if FLOSSies would stop trying to compare themselves to XP, a decade old OS that nobody even sells anymore, and compare their offering to windows 7 and the latest OSX they'd see I'm right. in both of those OSes GUI and intuitiveness is king, full stop. Hell my 67 year old dad installed Windows 7 by himself when he didn't want to wait to have me do the "work". Windows 7 held his hand, asked nothing but simple questions like 'Are you at home or the office?" and even found and downloaded ALL the drivers for him automatically. Show me a Linux that does anywhere near that level of hand holding, or one where you could remove the CLI completely and never need it. Because I have yet to see anything get close to Vista and Tiger levels of easy, much less Win7 and Snow Leopard.

Or do they still arrogantly dismiss proper access control models without understanding them?

Their money makers are windows, xbox, office etc.

Not xbox-- that division has lost billions since inception. And not "etc.", either. Just Window and Office. Really, Microsoft never WAS a consumer company; it's always been a business company. So saying it's "no longer" a consumer brand is like saying that Apple no longer dominates the enterprise market.

The first Microsoft Mouse kicked ass. The curvature felt the most natural (as long as you were right handed). How about the Force Feedback Sidewinder Joystick? It kicked ass as well...until XP came out and they pulled a Steve Jobs and didn't support it (fuckers). Anyways, I think they still make decent mice/keyboards.

Their money makers are windows, xbox, office etc.

Not xbox-- that division has lost billions since inception. And not "etc.", either. Just Window and Office. Really, Microsoft never WAS a consumer company; it's always been a business company. So saying it's "no longer" a consumer brand is like saying that Apple no longer dominates the enterprise market.

More _REAL_ news:

" Apple To Remove Java from Mac OS X?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Oct 2010 09:13 CET
After the news that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Flash pre-installed (which is news considering Flash has been part of Mac OS X for a very long time), we now have news that Apple is also taking what appears to be the first steps towards removing Apple's own Java runtime from Mac OS X.
  1 Read More 88 Comment(s)"

Apple knows better than you do what you really want to do and use your computer/gadgets for. Enjoy.

I assume you can install Flash and an old version of their JRE yourself. And I guess Oracle will want to provide a JRE of their own.

More _REAL_ news:

" Apple To Remove Java from Mac OS X?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Oct 2010 09:13 CET
After the news that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Flash pre-installed (which is news considering Flash has been part of Mac OS X for a very long time), we now have news that Apple is also taking what appears to be the first steps towards removing Apple's own Java runtime from Mac OS X.
  1 Read More 88 Comment(s)"

Apple knows better than you do what you really want to do and use your computer/gadgets for. Enjoy.

I assume you can install Flash and an old version of their JRE yourself. And I guess Oracle will want to provide a JRE of their own.

More _REAL_ news:

" Apple To Remove Java from Mac OS X?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Oct 2010 09:13 CET
After the news that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Flash pre-installed (which is news considering Flash has been part of Mac OS X for a very long time), we now have news that Apple is also taking what appears to be the first steps towards removing Apple's own Java runtime from Mac OS X.
  1 Read More 88 Comment(s)"

Apple knows better than you do what you really want to do and use your computer/gadgets for. Enjoy.

I assume you can install Flash and an old version of their JRE yourself. And I guess Oracle will want to provide a JRE of their own.