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Silverlight 3.0 Released, Allows Apps Outside the Browser
Many different sources are reporting that Microsoft has unleashed the third major version of Silverlight to the masses. With 3.0 we see things like better 3D graphics support, the ability to offload tasks to a GPU, and the ability to run apps outside of the browser. "Silverlight's video capabilities have always been impressive when compared to Flash, and the new version boasts some new features that should keep the competition with Flash hot. It uses a media broadcasting technology Microsoft calls Smooth Streaming, an adaptive technology for playing the same H.264 video stream at the highest bitrate the device and its bandwidth limitations will allow. So if you've got a fast computer with an HD monitor and a wide open pipe, you'll see super high quality video at up to full 1080p HD. If you've got a dinky smartphone with mid-level data service, you'll see a constrained version of the same video."
3D graphics support does sound interesting, specially when thinking how many flash games there are out but how they lack better graphics. Maybe we start to see DirectX like games directly in web browser too.
They called it bitrate peeling.
I think one of the most reasonable concerns against the rising usage of silverlight, and therefore the need for moonlight for linux, is that if new version of moonlight can't keep up with the updated version of silverlight then its not the multiplatform wonder that it should be to be competitive with flash.
............oh wait
your referring to a cellphone aren't you?
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
and the ability to run apps outside of the browser.
It seems to me like this offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious vulnerabilities if it is not handled very very carefully.
Does it run under Linux (not Moonlight) and if so is it not a trash port that is wonky with poor performance?
If it does not run under Linux could this be considered an anti-competitive move by Microsoft to keep Linux out of the desktop or netbook market?
Inquiring minds want to know
RLH
Exactly what I was thinking. But I would say that this is still more innovation from MS and they look to be getting their crap together a bit lately - that is I would say that, if this wasn't /.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Woohoo party! Wait, ...has Mono's Moonlight even caught up with Silverlight 2.0 yet? ..Nope.
since most of us will probably be dead before Windows is.
With the "threat" of Silverlight's assault on the desktop looming, I wonder why Adobe will not open source Flash and all its components. Do they want to procrastinate like SUN did with their Java?
Seriously, in future, Flash will be in trouble.
I used to think Silverlight was unnecessary and not useful to me. Then I found Visifire and have had to admit, whether or not Visifire could have been done in Flash isn't so much relevant to me as the fact that this is very useful software to me, and if that means installing Silverlight, so be it. I don't use it for web usage (I'm using it to create static images, not live graphs), so whether Silverlight has a future as a general web platform isn't an issue for me.
Having said that, I suspect it won't, just because Flash is such a juggernaut, for all its flaws.
Did you have something specific in mind or just spewing standard zealot bullshit? I'm thinking the latter since your statement sounds just like a government sponsored generic warning...
"Driving while intoxicated offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious car accidents if it is not handled very very carefully."
Feh!
...been impressive when compared to Flash? Really? Then why did mlb.com switch from Silverlight to Flash? I remember when they did this - I had unsubscribed because the Silverlight player was such a mess, and I went back and signed up for the rest of the season.
That said, the ability to write Silverlight apps in Ruby is interesting.
The Army reading list
How long before Silverlight adds email support?
Silverlight running apps outside of the sandbox? Yeah, I'm downloading this right away.
Why would you want a security atrocity like DirectX? Aren't there enough security holes already? If anything, we should think about banning DirectX from the Web? We should also ban ActiveX.
Don't walk towards the Light. Run.
Silverlight, although not widely used yet (less than 5% of market), is great and innovative compared to Flash which itself now requires a $1499 set of programs for development.
Again, MS is building something better than the people who built it first. (OS, GUI, Office Tools, Chat, Browser, now Flash)
MS is not a Monopoly by accident. They are a Monopoly by improvement.
I think this is more like running the apps on your desktop when you doubleclick the icon, like Flash players can do already. It doesn't mean all Silverlight apps on websites or even on your computer suddenly gets access to all your files and stuff.
The one step up I see that Silverlight 3 has is licensing for H.264 codecs. Microsoft has the deep pockets to purchase licensing such as this.
It is interesting that Moonlight is not currently pursuing H.264, which makes me wonder if MS is purposely gimping their linux/unix implementation.
... that will add nothing new, etc. ...
Did you actually even read the summary? It listed lots of new features that dont exist in Flash, so I dont think it "doesn't add anything new".
Whereas your comment sounds like the standard Microsoft mitigation that "this is not a critical vulnerability, because the majority of people aren't bad".
It's yet another "autorun" vector allowing things on webpages to do / launch things elsewhere in your computer ... haven't you learnt anything from ActiveX, autorun.inf, resgistry Run & RunOnce & RunService and the hundred of other vectors that allow people to do bad things with Windows products ?
If they'd lock the thing down properly, it wouldn't have such a bad reputation ... still, let's wait for the first Silverlight 3 zero-day and then you'll know you were talking out of your ass, just as the rest of us have already realised.
..I still think that Microsoft did not understand what the Internet is about: interoperability. You can create whatever nice framework you want - as long as it is not supported by many systems the adoption rate will be slim. If they would make the API a public standard (that is not restricted) then people might adapt, if it is any good.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.
Another thing is I see is that the Silverlight frameworks seems to have some severe design issues as it is necessary to bring out a new version seemingly every half year. A well designed platform would try to get the basics right in the first few iterations and then add libraries to it that provide more functionality without having to do a 180 on the whole basic coding.
Guess this will even turn down Microsoft sympathising developers as they can't keep up with the change that's happening continuously. I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).
Another thing is, that though the feature list sounds impressive, there are a lot of undressed issues like security that is a very important one with this kind of networked technology.
that this is very useful software to me, and if that means installing Silverlight, so be it.
If you've already drunk Adobe's Kool-Aid, what's Microsoft's? It's like Coke and Pepsi, neither one particularly cares about the health effects of consuming their product.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Netflix, for one.
What difference does running in a browser make?
I suppose, if you only read the sentence and then never bother to look into how SL handles this...
The list of new features looks very familiar to the new Flash player that came out a while back: Hardware Acceleration, 3D Capabilities, Dynamic Streaming (Variable Bitrate), Etc.. http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/features/
Netflix uses silverlight for their movie streaming client.
Wow... its amazing how uninformed people here are when discussing MS.
http://www.mokosh.co.uk/post/Silverlight-Out-of-Browser-applications.aspx
I take it you don't have a vested interest in developing web based apps? Silverlight helps make tasks that were previously very complicated, into something much easier to handle.
More importantly, Silverlight is getting attention in the corporate world, from companies who are looking to develop their Intranet (what I do for a living). They often demand comprehensive graphing, hierarchy visualizations, streaming quarterly calls, etc... tasks that were previously "challenging" to implement with Flash or JavaScript. With Silverlight these tasks are much easier, and therefore cheaper, to develop, which has been netting me a lot more contracts of late.
Stereotypes are fatal in the business world, just because Microsoft does not make a top notch OS (I'm writing this on a Linux box) does not mean you should immediately invalidate all of their products.
Silverlight is interesting because it provides a markup that can be thought of us as a sort of an HTML 5. If Silverlight is widely adopted in the Windows world, then there's not going to be much of an impetus to have browsers other than to download applications for Windows with. So Microsoft is not competing against Flash per se, as much as they are competing against Google Chrome and ChromeOS.
This is my sig.
> the ability to run apps outside of the browser.
What could Possibly go wrong with that?!?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Does anyone outside of Microsoft use Silverlight? Seriously? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? I thought not. Stop giving Microsoft press every time they "update" their shitty little plugin that no one cares about, and let it die.
I wouldn't say that nobody uses it, exactly.
Reply to That ||
Downloaded Silverlight apps run with the same permissions as embedded ones, meaning no filesystem access etc. The only difference is that they can use the function keys.
Even when that competition comes from Microsoft. We all complain - and justly so - about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior; but Adobe's "software monopoly" has allowed it to continue releasing bloated crapware across most of its product line. Flash seems to be the biggest pig in the pen, too, in terms of resources needed for what it does.
Flash's one big plus, as I see it, is its wider cross-platform availability; but given Adobe's past behavior with regards to Apple, it would not be surprising to see Adobe drop Linux support with little notice.
I don't really trust Microsoft; but having suffered through the bloat and bugginess of CS4, I say more power to them in this case. I hope Silverlight starts to make some significant headway against Flash. I'd like to see it reach (and stabilize at) somewhere around 20-40 percent of Flash's current market.
#DeleteChrome
Oooh, the competition for video between Flash and Silverlight is "hot"! Using that word to describe the competition would only make sense if you are
a) A nerd
or
b) An online porn enthusiast.
But I repeat myself.
So basically after all this time and effort, the current state of the art wonderful new technology is "the thick client"? Colour me unimpressed :-/
People really need to stop being amazed every time the paradigm switches from thin client to thick and back, only each time with more abstraction layers...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
No. Not too many people. I mean, who watches the Olympics?
We aren't speaking about the average driver. We are speaking about the guiness book world records champion of car crashing. The one that created not one, but several industries categories to mitigate and try to prevent how badly specifically it crash and how much innocent casualties it provokes.
Now it took a new car, and will start driving again in the highways, promising again as every time before that will not crash, ever. Is so weird to start wondering if will crash again?
Wether it runs in or out of the browser, silverlight is still in the same sandbox. I don't believe there will be any significant security difference between the two.
If by "innovation", you mean "copying the feature list from Adobe Air and the next version of Flex so they could check the same boxes on the marketing literature without actually coming up with anything new", then...
The problem isn't how good your development teams are, because they will never be perfect and there will always be exploitable bugs somewhere. Actually, Bruce Schneier posted on his blog today about how it's demonstrably impossible to make an OS 100% virus proof.
The problem is that Silverlight is a browser plug-in, and plug-ins are much more vulnerable than for example Javascript or SVG which run inside a sandbox inside the browser. At least with Flash everything is sandboxed in the browser still, but it now looks like Silverlight apps will be able to access stuff outside the browser, much like a normal program. The attack surface (the number of points where a vulnerability could exist) is much larger, especially as it will then include things like DirectX which have not traditionally been that important in terms of security (after all, if an app can access DirectX you have already downloaded and executed it, so it's too late anyway and thus there is little point spending a lot of time checking DirectX itself for vulnerabilities).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You sir, are a moron.
It seems to me like this offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious vulnerabilities if it is not handled very very carefully.
Like... what?
If I download a SWF file to my desktop, and run it by double-clicking it, is it somehow less secure than if I run it in a browser?
Comment of the year
hey, you also have IE in Mac... does anybody use it? does it even work with any site today?
does it even work in recent MaOSX?
silverlight on mac is just like IE, it is just one excuse to say isnt windows dependent and stop any monopoly process... it will always be late, obsolete and full of bugs/incomplete features... after winning the market, they will discontinue it.
ohh well... nothing new here... nothing to see, move along...
Higuita
There must be a group of masochists over at MS. Apps outside the browser? Are they insane. I'm sure the sample exploit code is already out there.
Unfortunately, I don't have a citation for this handy, but if I remember correctly, Adobe actually started making a lot of changes to Flex after Expression Blend hit the market for Silverlight and got a lot of positive feedback. So Microsoft isn't the only one who copies features AND Microsoft can be innovative on occasion.
Really, it doesn't matter who copies from whom here, this is ALL good for consumers. Adobe finally has some competition (they're of course still winning on cross platform capability) and when someone copies features from another tool they normally copy useful features. That means each version of the respective companies development tools should get better and better.
Instead of spouting how insecure Silverlight is, perhaps actually READ something about it. Siliverlight OOB is STILL STANDBOXED. No file system access, nothing it couldn't do before has been added.
you got that slightly wrong....celebrating with a party when windows dies (not likely) is not being a nerd/geek. We call that being a fanboy.
Where does it say they're allowing that? I think its talking about standalone apps you install and run yourself.
Definately, we should never leave our homes.. its dangerous!
lol
Microsoft started the software industry. Even if you hate them, who cares?
Ignore them. What sort of empty person cares so much about the failure of company they dont like?
BG has never come over and ass raped you.. yet
I gotta agree with you man. Microsoft is getting their shit all in one sock. Now, if we can just lose the damned smelly sock we'll have it made!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I don't _want_ to see the best quality that my connection and system load can spare at any given instant, I want the best quality available so I can store it locally and transcode it to a less cpu-intensive format if necessary.
Basically, set up an FTP server and fill it with quality clips and let the fricken end-user worry about how to view it once he has it.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
No, it doesn't matter who copies from who. It does matter who takes credit though. Sure, Microsoft can be innovative on occasion, but this isn't an example. And of course this is what we were talking about.
Competition *does* benefit consumers usually. And it probably will here too, in the long term. In the short term, compatibility issues hurt consumers.
"So if you've got a fast computer with an HD monitor and a wide open pipe, you'll see super high quality video at up to full 1080p HD. If you've got a dinky smartphone with mid-level data service, you'll see a constrained version of the same video." .... And there damn well better be a way to turn off that behaviour. Where does ANYONE BUT ME get off deciding that I would rather sacrifice quality than speed? I would not. I'd watch it at 1080p no matter how long it took to buffer. I'm not a whiny little bitch who needs the video to start playing immediately.
Or... does Silverlight not buffer because then the client has the stream in memory which can then be manipulated in any number of tasty ways (DRM)? This is likely the real reason for eliminating choice here.
Hey MS, think of this... a 'Watch in Low Quality' button.... and a "'Watch in HD' button! Shit! Same benefits, more choice, no code updates to Silverlight required... what the fuck are you idiots doing in Redmond?
and the ability to run apps outside of the browser.
Sounds like a virus?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Jesus Christ, it's just a clone of Flash that attempts to make Vista's .Net as a binary substitute for the open web.
Clone of Flash? Hardly? If you would have actually tried to implement something in Silverlight, you might have noticed that Microsoft actually blew off matching Flash in visual effects in order to have better server side connectivity and more developer features.
Besides, I'd take C# over ActionScript, any day of the fricking week.
And yes, Microsoft is desperately trying to compete with Chrome/Chrome OS/HTML 5, just like the company successfully killed Client-side Java and non-IE browsers as a threat to the Win32 monopoly, then sat back and let IE go rotten once it ruled the roost.
First off, let me know when an HTML 5 browser actually -ships- that works. The best we have right now is a handful of -moz and -webkit extra tags for things like rounded corners and multicolumn text, which is cool, but, even rounded corners do not concurrently work with drop shadows in the latest Chrome.
Microsoft might be all you know, but it's time to start learning about alternatives or you'll be stuck with the dinosaurs.
I program on both Linux and Windows. I have both, and use both, and while Linux has many strengths, I wouldn't be one to say that Windows is a dinosaur..
Let me know when Gnome or KDE have file dialogs that don't suck:
A user perspective breakdown of Windows 7 vs Ubuntu Linux, that's actually objective
That's not to say Linux doesn't have its merits, it does, but if you want to see a dinosaur, go ahead and invoke FileOpenASuarus-Sux on any Linux box.
Besides, if Linux is so great from stem to stern, why on earth did Google go out of their way to tell everyone that they got rid of the windowing system in Linux and wrote their own? Have you even thought that ChromeOS, if open, really means that X-Windows is dead, and every Linux will be using Google Desktop?
That's going to be the Linux of the future, an FOSS of sorts but not exactly its ok Chrome OS gradually replacing woefully obsolete X windows with a stack that will likely be increasingly proprietary.
This is my sig.
This will turn out well....
Seriously, I realize I'm being a curmudgeon, but I've thus far completely avoided Silverlight. This new development just reinforces my feelings that I made the right move.
Time will tell.
The Digital Sorceress
So now the MSFT has embraced a Flash-like technology, does this count as "extending" it?
I trust Adobe slightly less than I trust Microsoft, but it seems like there is an "extinguish" in store for the near future.
Are there any Open Source vector-based web-development tools that could replace or compete with either of these formats/tools?
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
MSFT needs this more than ever. With Windows OS virtually in stand still (pahleez - nothing in Vista 2 is new), WinMo hardly making news, people moving to diverse personal computing environments and devices - This is one technology that can be extended to all systems (desktop, laptop, netbooks, tablets, mobile, set-top boxes) and continue to deliver MSFT based products, especially the future of Azure. I thought it was strange for Google to announce so-called Chrome OS so pre-maturely, but now I can understand. Personally I'll stick with WebKit. All the proprietary plug-ins hopefully will become obsolete.
Nevermind Moonlight, even Silverlight can't keep up with itself. The OS X version isn't even in sync.
Twinstiq, game news
Folks... the title I used is a TROLL
Saying "i think MS doesn't need to worry about linux compatibility" is NOT A TROLL.
Get your heads out of your asses and stop censoring dissenting opinions.
Nah, just joking, no doubt that the community thrives when we repress the demonic idea that the year of Liniux on the Desktop will never come.
What about Quake Live? It's not dependent on DirectX and it supposedly works quite well.
Sigh.
By the time we have reasonably working 2.0 support, they will be out with 4.0, or 6.5.
I've been out of the loop re: windows development, so I apologize in advance. But I had thought that Silverlight was a browser-based implementation of WPF (XAML+.NET), WPF being the new way to develop windows desktop apps. So the fact that Silverlight can run outside of the browser makes me wonder
Smooth Streaming, an adaptive technology for playing the same H.264 video stream at the highest bitrate the device and its bandwidth limitations will allow
Though this works pretty well, the marketing description is extremely misleading. There is not "one" video stream. Instead the source video has been pre-encoded at several different qualities, into different files on the source, and these are switched between (I think glitchless-switching is a bit tricky so they deserve some credit there). This all according to the Microsoft representatives at NAB where they were demoing this. This does not work for live video due to the delay (it also would require multiple encoder cards). Switching according to their demo app is about once per second in very regular periods.
Another mystery is that "silverlight 1" is actually Javascript and not .net. This makes me very mystified as to how Mono could have anything to do with Silverlight 1 working at all, when in fact it should only help Silverlight 2 and that is in much worse shape than Silverlight 1. Any explanation for this?
The NAB booth prominantly displayed that SIlverlight 3.0 video was cross-platform with "Windows, OS/X, Linux" listed by name. Interesting, but this was a booth directed at video professionals. The Microsoft rep said they are doing zero about supporting Moonlight but that "the Novell people will be working on it soon".
Except for the fact that the Gnash is making the open source stomach health-compatible with the coke (flash) drink and Microsoft stearing a porting of the web sucks balls.
I'd rather have Adobe (teaming up with Google for FLOSS Chrome OS, releasing partial but critical spec to a dominant plugin on the web and choosing ODF for future Adobe documents) than Microsoft taking Adobe's place and being able to seriously fscking us all in the butt. Now think again...
Here be signatures
You probably never played a 3D flash game... Nothing new here...
Here be signatures
Yeah... exactly: Cheap to develop, but if you take your head out of your ass then you'll realise that the long term costs of supporting a Windows powered intranet costs a company much more on the long run and makes you work for a shorter time. Think it through...
Here be signatures
No we call that frustration. Computer rage, look it up on Google. Never ever had that with anything else then Windows. And that's not a lie...
Here be signatures
He has; countless hours at birthdays... Ah nice, having a beer, talking to someone and... "Hey V!NCENT can you fix my computer" *FSCK!*
Turning the pc on... 10 minuted to usefull desktop... sigh... ah ridden with crapwar... all overe the place... great reinstall EVERYTHING
FSCK....THAT....SHIT!!!
Here be signatures
SL3 apps cannot install themselves without the user either asking them to do it, or the app prompting them (the app does not get to decide how this prompt looks, the framework itself displays it, so it looks the same for all SL3 apps). Furthermore, the application cannot initiate this prompt automatically, it has to be in response to a user initiated event (eg, mouse click). SL3 out of browser apps actually function far less privileges than adobe air apps. If you're going to bash a technology, do so factually and not by guessing.
I'm interested in trying out Silverlight for the first time, so I downloaded the SDK and of course that does nothing by itself. So I read a bit more and it said to uninstall the SDK and get Silverlight Tools as an addon for Visual Web Developer. So I installed VWD and then tried installing the tools. Unfortunately the 32MB Silverlight Tools installer just sits there trying to connect to a non-existent internet.
Has anyone found an OFFLINE installer so I can actually see what the fuss is about?
The last time MS gave a browser the ability to run applications.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
The worlds biggest movie web site YouTube will never use Silverlight cause Google will never use Microsoft's Technology.
Because of this, and also because Microsoft have a bad reputation with web standards, I don't think Silverlight will ever take off.
I have said this in earlier posts, but obviously time will tell.
I think Silverlight is a powerful technology, but because it is from Microsoft, is closed source and doesn't support Linux, it will fail.
Poweful technology alone is not what it takes to succeed on the web, cause the web is also a community!
At least with Flash everything is sandboxed in the browser still, but it now looks like Silverlight apps will be able to access stuff outside the browser, much like a normal program.
You're not looking hard enough. Silverlight apps, in our out of the browser, have the same security model and sandbox. Access "stuff outside the browser", e.g. to the file system is still severely gated. Like with flash.
The attack surface ... will then include things like DirectX
No, no it won't. Sandbox, remember?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
If the code can use DirectX to render objects (which must obviously use the polygone/texture/shader data provided by the Silverlight app) then there is the potential for buffer overruns and other types of exploit. DirectX does not run in a sandbox, it has to access drivers at a pretty low level. You can include the driver itself in the attack surface now too.
All sandboxes are not equal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And I'm running AMD dual core. Oh damn!
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
I try my best not to get paranoid but...
1) Shockwave, which has state of art design tools is available since 1990s, does the exact same thing and easy enough to use by designers, not developers. Runs under both OS X and Windows. One of its powers is 3d support even extensible with other "engines", online. People even pack it to .exe and .apps to sell the games as some kind of native executables.
2) Adobe Air, it is there since 2006, there are already working (some even commercial, like earthbrowser) under 3 different operating systems, OS X, Linux, Windows (and *BSD). There is a huge major vendor support including AOL, major record companies, major online services. It can be used, designed completely open source without any kind of questionable licenses and runtimes.
What exactly causes the tone of submission and people with high IDs "partying" over this release while it is clear that there will be months to clone this technology which won't really be a perfect copy under Linux? Obviously, companies won't really bother with "GTK something layer", they will fire up Visual Studio and code for Windows clients in mind.
The question is: "Is this the biggest astroturfing ever?" If Slashdot or its parent needs money, let us subscribe or donate. This is really getting something that could mark the end of Slashdot.
What about "patent atrocity"? I hope nobody will dare to claim DirectX is not patented by Microsoft. It is their "real power", the Windows OS is impossible to give up by gamers because of DirectX games. For example, even if the entire earth says "OS X is better", EA will keep shipping their top selling titles in DirectX. Their "OS X" games are actually Windows executables you know.
So, the day you get "Moonlight with 3d!" from a camp who is only interested in cloning MS technologies and infecting Linux, you get the "DirectX" patent bomb too. They will probably find a idiot to code a cool app depending on it with no other reason than "it can".
Not like I can believe they can really clone directx, I am just saying where things are heading with this "me too" technology and monkeys trying to clone it.
Failure of Microsoft means a lot philosophically. It would even mean a lot to OS X users who are one of the best Microsoft customers via MS Office and Windows XP/Vista (piracy isn't too popular here).
That is unless you are one of the types trying to clone their junk and expect respect and prestige from open source community.
So if you've got a fast computer with an HD monitor and a wide open pipe, you'll see super high quality video at up to full 1080p HD. If you've got a dinky smartphone with mid-level data service, you'll see a constrained version of the same video.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but i distinctively remember that being a feature of the Real Server and Real Player, back in the days before videos were piped trough Flash.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If the code can use DirectX to render object then there is the potential for buffer overruns and other types of exploit
That's total rubbish - like saying "if java can use the cpu to add two numbers then java is also vulnerable to cpu buffer overruns"
Gated access is the key to any sandbox.
All sandboxes are not equal
So what do you know about the .net/Wpf.Silverlight sandbox?
If nothing then STFU.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
You don't seem to grasp the issue here. Say there is a bug in DirectX where if you send a certain pixel shader program to it there is a buffer overflow allowing execution of arbitrary x86 code. Keep in mind that DirectX cannot run inside the sandbox because in order to render anything with the GPU it has to access the video driver. The same sort of thing goes for the display driver itself too.
This sort of thing has happened before. Flaws in the sandboxes of Firefox and Internet Explorer have allowed Javascript to access the filesystem by breaking out of the sandbox:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-214620.html
http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2005/mfsa2005-41.html
That isn't even mentioning XSS vulnerabilities, the most common kind these days.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So what's special about DirectX and silverlight? Yes, DirectX is used to render the shapes and textures that make up Silverlight and WPF content.
But your statement could be phrased as "If the code can use the OS to service requests (which must obviously use data provided by the Sandboxed app) then there is the potential for buffer overruns and other types of exploit. The OS does not run in a sandbox, it has to access drivers at a pretty low level. You can include the driver itself in the attack surface now too."
That is equal for all sandboxes and sandboxed environments. I'm not excluding the possibility of bugs in Silverlight, just failing to see why it's not fixable.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Did anyone else read it as "Silverlight 3.0 released, allows ads outside the browser?"
bah... POS! Message ID: 1512 Silverlight installation failed because upgrading Silverlight for Developers requires the latest Silverlight for Developers installer. If you are not a developer and want to avoid this error in the future, follow these steps: * Close your browser. * Uninstall Silverlight by following the Silverlight Uninstall Instructions. * Download and install the latest version of Silverlight.