Microsoft's Silverlight Strategy 'Has Shifted'

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Microsoft might finally be realizing that Silverlight can't cover every platform, according to this conversation with Bob Muglia: '... when it comes to touting Silverlight as Microsoft’s vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime, "our strategy has shifted," Muglia told [ZDNet]. Silverlight will continue to be a cross-platform solution, working on a variety of operating system/browser platforms, going forward, he said. "But HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple's) iOS platform," Muglia said.'"

Comments

Heh

[DWMorse]

"But HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple's) iOS platform,"

I believe you meant HTML 5... right? =V

Re:Heh

[DWMorse]

I mean, unless I missed some HTML 4 or lower video inclusion somewhere.

Re:Heh

[mobets]

Seems to me that websites had embedded video long before FLV and HTML5. What was so bad about the pluggins and competition in codecs?

Re:Heh

[Nadaka]

You did, its called the object and anchor (a) tags. It just isn't exactly what a lot of people wanted.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, unless you want them to work on all platforms. You know, because you get more customers or advertizing revenue instead of shutting people out because their iphone doesn't support this particular version of encrypted real player or what ever the flavor of BS is these days. Seriously, I remember those days when I spent more time installing and updating the different players than I did watching videos. I don't miss them.

Re:Heh

[hairyfeet]

Yes on part of your post, but nobody has yet explained to me why supporting HTML V5 with H.264 is BETTER than supporting flash. It seems nobody is willing to talk about the elephant in the room: H.264, which is the biggest patent minefield in the history of bad patents. If we were talking WebM then yes, 100% right there behind you. But FOSS browsers like FF can't support H.264, since MPEG-LA has made it clear you WILL be cutting them a check, whereas Adobe doesn't give a shit who or what packages flash. Start advertising native H.264 support in a distro and watch MPEG-LA drop the troll hammer upon thee, whereas Adobe don't care, package away. So far they haven't even said boo about alternative render projects like Gnash.

So unless we can get the two Steves (Ballmer and Jobs) to get on board WebM I think we have a serious problem here. H.264 simply trades one master for another, and while I personally don't mind proprietary software as long as there is competition switching over to HTML V5 would pretty much hand the keys over to MPEG-LA, which have proven they just aren't nice. I only hope the web developers of the world will unite and demand that HTML V5 have a FOSS codec for video, be it Theora or WebM, rather than simply trade one lock in for another.

Re:Heh

[jo_ham]

Flash can be played on Macs. You just have to install the plugin if you want it now, rather than having a (potentially out of date, with security holes) one preinstalled. You know, just like the way it is done with Windows - if you want it, go and download it. Apple doesn't want to be responsible for shipping a plugin that you're going to have to update when you first use it anyway.

Not shipping it by default (to come into line with other OS vendors) is not the same as "can't be played [...] if Apple had their way".

This is how FUD starts.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Shortly after WebM was announced the IE team stated that IE would support WebM if it achieves web penetration. I believe them, or their earlier intent anyway, so that leaves only Safari.

Anyway, using Flash over H.264 is just... insane. It's running a whole secondary platform and runtime for a simple video. What the fuck? I don't care how expensive H.264 is, if the choices are between H.264 and Flash, H.264 is the only option when the other choice is fundamentally unsuited.

BTW, Mozilla wouldn't recommend Flash for video either. Think about it. Mozilla already won't allow the OS to handle video support (like all other apps do without problems) -- why would Mozilla recommend any third-party runtime to handle it? They won't -- H.264 is a political war to them, and Flash doesn't change that (Flash includes H.264 after all).

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes on part of your post, but nobody has yet explained to me why supporting HTML V5 with H.264 is BETTER than supporting flash.

Once you move away from Flash and to the VIDEO tag you can support any format you want. You can support multiple formats. You can move from one format to another over time (just list both file names, with the preferred ones first).

If all you do is support Flash (regardless of whether video is encoded in format X, Y, or Z), you're stuff with Flash.

Once you move from Flash to VIDEO tag+H.264 you're halfway to WebM (or anything else).

Re:Heh

[jo_ham]

Apple make more than just iPads and iPhones.

The charge was "flash can't be played on Macs".

iPods and iPhones are not Macs. They are made by Apple, but they are not the same.

Re:Heh

[Skrapion]

Right now it's looking like once everybody has upgraded to Firefox 4, IE 9, and Safari 4 (which will be a while) you'll have to upload two different formats (WebM and H.264) to be compatible on everything. That's not ideal, but it's a pretty big step up from relying on a Flash plug-in, which doesn't work on the iPhone and sucks on Linux. The <video> tag has built-in fall-back support, so we're not going to have the same problem we had in the pre-Flash-video days where web developers either had to force the user to click on their format of choice or deal with terrible browser-detection scripts.

Re:Heh

[davester666]

"Yes on part of your post, but nobody has yet explained to me why supporting HTML V5 with H.264 is BETTER than supporting flash"

Basically:

1) Everybody in the 'value' chain still gets their money, except for one entity, Adobe.
2) Browser makers can improve video handling on their own timeframe, and not be entirely dependent on a single company with a poor track record of timely updates or producing high-quality, efficient software.

Re:Heh

[TheRaven64]

I'm fairly sure that we've been over this a few hundred times already, but for people who weren't paying attention in any HTML5 story / article ever:

The first problem is parsing. Object is a fairly generic tag. It conveys nothing about the semantics of the thing being included. Video and audio tell the user agent a bit more, so they can make more intelligent decisions about how to render it.

The second problem is scripting. If you use an object tag to display a video, it may be rendered with QuickTime, Windows Media Player, ffmpeg, or some other platform-specific plugin. This plugin will expose some scripting interfaces, but those interfaces depend on the plugin, not on the file type. If you want to be able to play or pause the video from JavaScript, or synchronise JavaScript playback with something else (e.g. subtitles in HTML), then you need a separate code path for every possible plugin. The video and audio tags specify scripting interfaces which are the same irrespective of how the browser implements them.

Re:Heh

[JonMcL]

Just an FYI -- Firefox doesn't support MP3 natively in the audio tag either. Only OGG is supported.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Exceptionally right and I hadn't noticed it. Bravo.

Re:Heh

[bjourne]

FYI, most flash video is already streamed using h264. The options are plain old html + flash + h264 or html5 + h264. On Linux, there already are dozens of programs able to decode h264, none of which has gotten into any legal trouble. Adobe on the other hand, has actively been sending DMCA requests to any projects (such as rtmpdump) working on decoding the proprietary RTMP protocol which is integrated into flash streaming.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

nobody has yet explained to me why supporting HTML V5 with H.264 is BETTER than supporting flash. It seems nobody is willing to talk about the elephant in the room: H.264, which is the biggest patent minefield in the history of bad patents. If we were talking WebM then yes, 100% right there behind you. But FOSS browsers like FF can't support H.264, since MPEG-LA has made it clear you WILL be cutting them a check

Ok, then I'll come out and say why. HTML5+H.264 is better than Flash, because there are multiple implementations of H.264 and it has been ported to everywhere and those ports are getting maintenance. And in spite of the fact that MPEG-LA says you'll be cutting them a check, plenty of us will illegally use H.264 and they will never know who we are so that they can come after us. Or perhaps someone else already paid the license fee when we bought our hardware (e.g. NVIDIA pays them, we buy NVIDIA and install their VDPAU driver, plugins call VDPAU, and the browser people are totally left out of it).

H.264 simply trades one master for another

You're right, of course, but it trades for a weaker master. Gnash still doesn't implement enough of Flash to be totally useful; Flash is big and complex enough that it's too hard for anyone to ever implement which is why it will never be a standard. H.264, unlike Flash, is already here TODAY. There are many H.264 implementations right now, legal or not.

Well, duh?

[caywen]

I would think that HTML 5 being more cross platform is pretty obvious. Along the gradient of machine code -> interpreted/jit code -> scripting -> markup/declarative language, the more to the right you get, the more portable you inherently become.

Re:Well, duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. Try running an IBM JCL script on anything but a mainframe.

Re:Well, duh?

[DittoBox]

You mean to tell me that a machine that doesn't have the components to interpret your script, can't interpret your script?

And all this time I've been lead to believe...

Re:Well, duh?

[should_be_linear]

So, future of programming is HTML5? We are doomed just like Neanderthal people (with last remaining male representative being wasted MTV celebrity on LSD).

Re:Well, duh?

[blair1q]

Well, not really.

There are still things in HTLM3 that not every platform does.

It all depends on who has access to reference environments, money, access to the internals, and motivation to make the changes to make it work.

Microsoft, being buried in cash and having access to just about anything it wants to play with, and the only access to Silverlight, could easily set a goal of making it better propagated than similar functions in HTML5.

I think what it really wanted was for, somehow, people to adopt Silverlight and go "HTLM5, who needs that?"

Or -- and this is just a gut feeling -- they've finally got a few people on top of the software strategy pile who aren't constitutionally incapable of letting a standard succeed.

Re:Well, duh?

[blair1q]

From what I remember of JCL, you could probably have adapted it to any machine.

And I seem to remember a few emulators that ran on UNIX...

Re:Well, duh?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

There are emulators, or were, until IBM sued their asses not long ago.

Re:Well, duh?

[CAIMLAS]

the more to the right you get, the more portable you inherently become.

No, you don't. That is only the case if the language(s) you're dealing with are transportable due to having a virtual machine/runtime compilation design - and those languages have a multitude of platform-specific interpreters.

Examples: perl, python, java, javascript, .NET.

Silverlight is a very 'high level' language - but it only has runtimes for Firefox and Safari on OSX, and (essentially) Windows. There are no mobile implementations (except for possibly Windows Mobile 6.x, couldn't find any info on it.) Flash is much more portable and cross-platform.

Even javascript isn't all that cross-platform/portable due to the use of different browsers/javascript implementations.

Re:Well, duh?

[Angst Badger]

So, future of programming is HTML5?

Only in the parallel universe where web applications are an appreciable percentage of the total software in use.

Web apps are certainly more visible than other apps, but for much the same reason that TV shows are more visible than other forms of art: everyone (or nearly everyone) has a web browser and a TV. But just as all the television shows ever made represent fewer works than are in the average large chain bookstore this evening, web applications represent a negligible proportion of the software in use.

Of course, if you spend a lot of time browsing the web and/or writing web apps, you might not notice this. It's the same phenomenon where a programmer who works mostly in language A on platform B announces that language X on platform Y to the amusement of the huge number of programmers and users of X and Y.

Some applications translate well to the web, others do not. And even for the former, there are often reasons to prefer local versions, e.g., security (nothing beats an air gap), lack of reliable (or any) network access, limited resources in embedded apps, and just plain stubbornness, etc.

So no, we're not doomed to do everything in HTML5, just as neither C++ nor Java took over the world nor even retained what dominance they had. Your pet technology won't conquer the world, either. By the time it gets here, the Singularity will probably turn out to be the Multiplicity, and we'll get to spend all day just trying to get the gist of flamewars on Slashdot between superhuman intelligences.

Re:Well, duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what language you code in. I just export my code to a pdf that way everyone can run it. Everyone can open pdfs!

Re:Well, duh?

[shutdown -p now]

There are no mobile implementations (except for possibly Windows Mobile 6.x, couldn't find any info on it.)

There is an implementation for Symbian (S60), but, quite obviously, it's too little too late.

Re:Well, duh?

[hitmark]

iirc, mozilla is working on a JIT for javascript...

Re:Well, duh?

[vakuona]

Or maybe, they realise that the more HTML5 apps are out there, the less of an advantage iOS and Android have over them in the mobile arena.

Re:Well, duh?

[aztracker1]

Well, mono has been cross-compiled to a number of platforms, and node.js (V8 engine) is available on many OSes as well... not to mention that the language implementation (aside from E4X support) is about the same everywhere (at the core ES3 level), it's the browser DOM that's the mot different. Since the majority of smart phone sales are heading into iPhone & Android territory (both using webkit), even that gets to be a pretty moot point.

Re:Well, duh?

[ThePromenader]

HTML 5 is still in development, and the hardware market (android, iPad, iPhone) has changed enormously in the past few years - I wouldn't at all be surprised if a few new 'multi-media' HTML5 features appear before it gets to its final version.

Yet HTML5 covers only the ~web~ part of the problem we have been facing since the dawn of the computer - cross-platform support. Even if I can transfer a file from one computer to another seamlessly - that is to say, like between finder windows - that doesn't mean I can read it. HTML5 will do all it can for the ~exchange~ of information, but will still be prey to different companies pushing their proprietary file formats and plugins (and how the market reacts to them).

In this respect (plugin-pushing), silverlight has failed; from the onset it had the already-enormous Flash market to contend with (better, overcome? - what were they thinking), and today it looks like (avoiding blanket speculation) HTML5 is going to do away with technological reduncancies such as Flash (javascript today can do what Flash does) altogether. So if Silverlight's goal was to overcome an existing giant (through imitation?), and the giant's existence itself is in question, of course they're going to change their 'strategy'.

Re:Well, duh?

[hairyfeet]

Actually if you are using an up to date version of Firefox you are already using their JIT which is called TraceMonkey BTW. There is also a link there to the code tree if any of the coders here would like to see if they can make it even better.

As for TFA it shows me that MSFT needs a better leader than Ballmer. I have seen some truly awesome Silverlight apps such as the SilveOS Silverlight OS in a browser, but MSFT just doesn't seem to be pushing the tech like they should. It is like they have this powerful framework but the suits just don't have a clue what to do with it. Hell just looking at SilveOS I can think of a few, like having OS VMs stored on a server at corporate headquarters that could be launched from ANY PC anywhere and give the employee a secure OS with access to the Intranet from anywhere in the world!

Silverlight is good tech that could easily do more than HTML anything, but MSFT just don't know how to promote it. Kinda sad really. BTW you can launch the browser in SilveOS and surf, so Yo Dawg you can have a browser in a browser so you can surf while you surf.

Re:Well, duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Phone 7 is All-In on Silverlight.

Translation

[MightyMartian]

Translation: "Well, I'd say that Silverlight plan crash and burned. I guess we'll have to back to plan A, and try to kill HTML. What's that I heard from R&D about a <activex> tag?"

Re:Translation

[gad_zuki!]

Naww, I think the translation is "Sure, you can use HTML5 for videos of your cat and basic apps, but if you're a commercial video publisher you'll love our built-in DRM, robust playback controls, dynamic quality change based on bandwidth/congestion, etc and other features. HTML5 isnt a threat because we're more focused on Hulu and Netflix, not your grandma's blog about baking." Adobe has the same attitude along with "oh btw, here's a script that provides fallback to Flash if your browser doesnt support 5 or whichever codec it wants to use."

These companies are generating good PR by playing up HTML5 while they are working on their own monopolizing strategies (itunes lockin, app stores, DRM support, etc). In fact HTML5 makes a lot of these companies happy because when pressed by regulators or by critics they can say "Oh course there's competition in this market. Look at HTML5! We're hardly monopolizing." Which is what MS says about linux, open office, chrome, etc.

Re:Translation

[Rogerborg]

Alternative translation: "Hey, Silverlight devs, you were great, really, but we've got an early meeting, so go call yourself a cab. We'll totally drop you a tweet or something though, kthnxbyenow."

And my reaction to anyone who invested in Silverlight could best be summed up as: Heh. Heheheh. Ah hah hah. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhahahahahahahahahah. Suckas.

Re:Translation

[NuShrike]

MS isn't about market-leading innovation. It's all about market-trailing lock-in.. ha ha ha ha.

Seems the only way they can sell Silverlight now is to push it as the framework for Wimpy7s.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is going to die but it may take some time.

no

[wodkamichi]

this can't be real - silverlight on multible platforms? does that mean we get the same crap on linux. perhaps even on solaris :(

Re:no

[ArhcAngel]

Moonlight works ok.

Re:no

[wodkamichi]

yeah, almost the same - but built on top of mono! and mono itself runs on many platforms - contrarily to most ms products.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps even on solaris :(

With Oracle's behavior as of late, who would run Solaris?

Re:no

[ArhcAngel]

TROLL? SERIOUSLY? damn there are some script kiddies with mod points.

Re:no

[wodkamichi]

I'd guess only people that run oracle databases...

Re:no

[should_be_linear]

In Linux, I need .NET like I need shotgun blast to the face!

Re:no

[Joe Tie.]

Moonlight seems to be a solution in search of a problem. It works great with aspects of silverlight nobody uses. And the only thing lacking in it is the ability to play the drm video of the few siliverlight using sites anyone actually cares about.

Re:no

[timeOday]

The only thing I ever needed Silverlight for was to watch Netflix streaming, and Moonlight didn't help any there. It's like Mono to run .net, or Wine to run Win32; you'll get a little ways with it, just not enough to be very useful. Microsoft simply does not do cross-platform (not even to the point of releasing and then following their own standards so others can make compatible implementations). If they say they are going to, it's a ploy. Sorry to have to repeat slashdot dogma, but it happens to be true in this case.

Re:no

[10101001 10101001]

Moonlight/Mono is part of Microsoft's cross-platform Silverlight/.NET strategy in the same way that Libre Office's OOXML support is part of Microsoft's cross-platform document strategy. Ie, at best it's an attempt by others to support Microsoft's de facto standard as best they can to avoid using Microsoft's software (especially in places where Microsoft doesn't actually offer software for the platform) and at best it's Microsoft's push to lure others into creating inferior supporting applications* which will in turn lure people to use "the real thing" in the form of Microsoft's software (and the one or two platforms they actually support).

In short, no, Moonlight doesn't count given the context of the discussion.

*Btw, this is incredibly stupid on Microsoft's part. One of the major reasons people chose Microsoft products in the past is because they offered good enough at a cheaper price. Mono/Moonlight and Libre Office are good enough.

Re:no

[marcello_dl]

good but they will always be playing catch up.

Anyway the move from MS is most unsurprising, playing nice and interoperable until enough traction is achieved, then use the marketshare to push a more ruthless domination agenda. And back.

IE is the perfect example.

   

Re:no

[Stregano]

Moonlight just can't do what the Windows version can unless there was some huge upgrade to it in the last 6 months that I missed. If I am incorrect, than I will be downloading it tonight, but last check, Moonlight is not very robust compared to the Windows version. I am talking SL 1.0 support only (maybe a version that is before 2.0, but I am unsure). SL 3 is awesome, and I have not touched SL 4 yet, but the leap from a media player to something where you can use it like a platform similar to flash.

I am pretty confident Moonlight just can't support the later versions of SL

Re:no

[Noitatsidem]

It has some support from versions later than 2- but not full support (if I remember correctly anyways.) Either way, it doesn't support DRM so there's really no point to it. I mean, wow there's an implementation that can't run 90% of the silverlight based websites worth running.

Re:no

[grcumb]

In Linux, I need .NET like I need shotgun blast to the face!

sudo aptitude install dick-cheney

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

mod this funny ffs

Re:no

[aztracker1]

Honestly, I happen to like a lot of the concepts behind the DLR, its really like a more polished JVM. The biggest resistance seems to stem from it being that MS came up with the thing, they came up with XHR, SMB/CIFS as well, which seem to be widely used. The other point is the patent issues, but MS released the Community Promise, which is more than Sun/Oracle have done. Beyond this, they've helped Mono/Moonlight as projects, and released th DLR and other code (ASP.Net MVC) as able to run under Mono.

I honestly don't see the point in limiting one's options to a single language/platform under the OS... may as well limit yourself to just C/C++ and Python... or is Ruby your dynamic language of choice? I like JavaScipt (node.js and mongodb) myself.

Re:no

[aztracker1]

CLR/CLI (Common Language Runtime)... .Net runtime.

Re:no

[profplump]

Nobody -- not even MS -- thinks SMB was a good file-sharing protocol. It became popular only because it was the only option available for MS clients. And even MS ditched it more or less as soon as they figured out that network file systems would be the normal way of doing business rather than some transient storage used to replace sneakernet.

CIFS is a better choice, though still not ideal. It's acceptable for many user-oriented filesystem mounts, but it has several limitations (some of which can be avoided if you run samba at both ends) in terms of permissions/etc. for POSIX systems, and it offers no multi-user mounting options, which are still quite useful for things like sharing applications folders. CIFS is a reasonable choice but I think most people would agree it's popularity is mostly due to its compatibility with MS clients, not its technical superiority to alternative network filesystems.

Re:no

[jimicus]

Actually, I can see some logic in that.

Any product which tries to ape a Microsoft product - no more, no less - can't really start development properly until the equivalent Microsoft product has at least been released as a beta. And almost invariably has fewer resources.

Which means it'll inevitably be 2 years behind at best, more likely 5 years. And this is an industry where being 5 years behind the times is seldom a good idea.

Re:no

[Alioth]

The Microsoft definition of multiplatform is "runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, plus Windows Server 2003 and 2008". It runs on five platforms!

Re:no

[mvdwege]

Oh really? During the World Cup, our local broadcaster offered live coverage of matches using Silverlight, but no way that that worked on Moonlight.

So no, it does not work ok.

Mart

Re:no

[Compaqt]

>In Linux, I need .NET like I need shotgun blast to the face!

Meerkat comes with Dick Cheney?

Re:no

[aztracker1]

I was mainly pointing to it's wide use in FLOSS deployments as a bigger patent minefied than a development language/platform...

Re:no

[pagaboy]

We need more context. Can you post a photo?

I don't care about the DRM implications...

[by (1706743)]

I want Silverlight for Linux; essentially the only reason I ever boot into Windows is for Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature.

Of course, my desire for this despite the DRM probably means I'm going to open-source fundamentalist hell...I mean, I even use the proprietary nVidia drivers...

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[MightyMartian]

Of course, my desire for this despite the DRM probably means I'm going to open-source fundamentalist hell...I mean, I even use the proprietary nVidia drivers...

Those that sell Essential Liberty for decent 3D effects deserve neither Liberty or 3D effects!

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[PolyDwarf]

*gasp*

Unless you let the gospel of RMS into your heart, you will burn in the fires of Hades!

He who hath heard the Good News and let it fill his soul will have taken their first steps to redemption. Every time you say "GNU/Linux", you take another step upon that path (but, watch out... if you say Linux, without the "GNU", you will fall off the path, into the waiting hands of the Ballmer Devil!)

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Xtravar]

Would it kill performance to use VMWare? I'm going to GNUHell too.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[mobets]

Moonlight has kept up with Silverlight in supporting Silverlight on Linux. I'm pretty sure Linux is banned from NetFlix for entirely different reasons.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

the only reason I ever boot into Windows is for Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature.

Of course, my desire for this despite the DRM probably means I'm going to open-source fundamentalist hell..

If that Hell is a world where the middle-men have even greater control over distribution than they do now, where the first sale doctrine is an anachronism, where cultural history can be rewritten or censored as easily as deleting a file, then yeah, you are merrily skipping down that path.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[guyminuslife]

You'd be wrong. Sort of.

Netlix never "banned" Linux. If you can get it to work with the site, great, they'd be happy for you. The problem comes in with the studios, who demand that Netflix use DRM when a user streams a video on their site. So they use Silverlight's built-in DRM API, which the studios are okay with. The only problem is that Moonlight does not implement Silverlight's DRM scheme. The details are proprietary, and although Novell has asked Microsoft for permission to use their DRM scheme in Moonlight, Microsoft has said "no." They don't want to share it, they definitely don't want it open-sourced (what's the point of an open-source DRM implementation?). This all makes sense from both parties' perspective; the only one really making a stupid mistake is Netflix, for using Silverlight in the first place. (Although I don't know whether their licensing terms played a part in that or not---in any case Flash nowadays has lots of DRM support, and would of course be a viable solution should Netflix decide to switch.)

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu NE team contact here, running 10.10 with Gallium3D Nouveau. Works great. 0 bugs observed so far, surprisingly, even with basic 3d games.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Zebedeu]

Can you run Compiz on the Nouveau drivers?
I heard you couldn't, and I'm getting hell trying to install the nVidia drivers on my 10.10 installation.

I'm currently running 10.04 just because of that...

Did you do something special to install/activate yours? I might give it a try here :-)

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[rec9140]

You'd be wrong. Sort of.

NO thanks on the DRM...

NO thanks on the flash....just like on every other OS... if there is something that crashes, causes a crash... this is it!

NO thanks on the H.264...

NO thanks on the disease either... miguel and novell can peddle that crap elsewhere.

This disease is just as bad for Linux as H.264, no thanks.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Sloppy]

The problem comes in with the studios, who demand that Netflix use DRM when a user streams a video on their site.

and the solution is for users to interpret that as "the studios have demanded that people bittorrent non-DRM versions." If you Just Say No to DRM, all problems go away. If that means no Netflix, aw geez, too bad. Call me back when you really open for business.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Motormouz]

On 10.10 do:

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental

Log out, log in and enable desktop effects. I'm using it now. Compiz is no problem. Even Nexuiz runs ok although a bit slow

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Zebedeu]

Thanks.
I'll try that just as soon as I finish creating this startup pen drive :-)

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you can get it to work with the site, great, they'd be happy for you. The problem comes in with the studios, who demand that Netflix use DRM when a user streams a video on their site.

Except when a 'studio' demands that their videos be streamed without DRM netflix is not happy to cooperate either. Not even to go so far as to include a pre-roll to the movie telling viewers where they can get a Free copy.

Re:I don't care about the DRM implications...

[vegiVamp]

> what's the point of an open-source DRM implementation

Could as well be asking what the point is of an open-source authentication and encryption scheme. Who would ever use a thing like that ? No, I think I'll stick to my openssh.

Wait, I think I missed something there...

HTML5

[bonch]

HTML5--another in a long line of standards forcefully popularized by Apple that Apple won't get credit for when everyone takes it for granted. See also: 3.5-inch floppies, USB hardware, the "File Edit View Window Help" menu layout, and more...

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple popularized Firewire (which became IEEE 1394), not USB.

Re:HTML5

[im_thatoneguy]

I'm confused are we talking about the 3.5" floppies that everybody had but Apple killed first. Or USB hardware that was running in oposition to Apple's preferred standard: Firewire?

Re:HTML5

[R.Mo_Robert]

Apple popularized Firewire (which became IEEE 1394), not USB.

You must have missed the iMac (G3, I mean).

Re:HTML5

[modmans2ndcoming]

dude... Apple killed the 3.5" floppy before everyone else because it was time to do it.

you must be 12 or something because I recall seeing 3.5 inch floppies on the first Mac in 1984

Re:HTML5

[Sique]

Actually, USB is an Intel designed standard and came with the ATX board design and the BX430 chipset, also from Intel.

Re:HTML5

[bonch]

I'm talking about the 3.5-inch floppies that Apple was first to include in its Lisa and Macs. They were removed in the late 90s when nobody was using floppies anymore. If you're seriously arguing that 1.5MB floppies were still widely used by 2000, I don't know what to say.

Firewire was started in the mid-80s to replace parallel SCSI, nearly a decade before USB's existence. It is still the standard for data transfer between devices such as A/V equipment. Apple's been phasing it out over the years has always been a supporter of USB, adopting it in the original iMac to the exclusion of older keyboard and mouse connectors, forcing hardware manufacturers to support the new standard.

Re:HTML5

[bennomatic]

Actually, Apple *invented* Firewire; Sony made it popular outside of the Mac world by taking the generic specification (IEEE1394) and using it on their DV cameras. But Apple did indeed popularize USB by making it the only peripheral port on the iMac, encouraging more peripheral manufacturers to support it (the iMac was pretty wildly successful when it first came out), and it was largely because of this that *every* PC manufacturer started making USB a priority over the old serial ports.

Re:HTML5

[gfody]

and iomega zip drives! remember those?

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused are we talking about the 3.5" floppies that everybody had but Apple killed first.

They killed them when nobody was using them anymore in the era of CD burning and the internet.

Or USB hardware that was running in oposition to Apple's preferred standard: Firewire?

iPods/iPhones use USB. Apple obviously prefers USB, at least for non-professional users, since they keep removing Firewire ports from their Macs, and they put USB ports on everything (I run my mouse through one of the USB ports on my keyboard). Apple started Firewire to replace SCSI back in 1986. USB came out in 1995.

Re:HTML5

[bennomatic]

WRT the floppies, you must either be joking or a kid. Long before Apple was the first to abandon 3.5" floppies, they were among the first mass market computer makers to adopt their use. When the original Mac came out, nearly every other system came by default with 5.25" floppy drives. 3.5" drives were available as options for those other systems, but the Mac was, if not the first, one of the first to have 3.5" as the built-in standard.

WRT FireWire vs. USB, I'm pretty certain (although I could stand corrected) that Apple's stance has always been that there are some things for which FW is better, and other things for which USB is better. I'm pretty sure that every Mac that has shipped with a FW port has also shipped with at least one USB port. Apple never, ever, ever tried to push anyone towards FW keyboards and mice, for example.

What's interesting is that with USB2.0--while it's still not as fast as FW400 due to its half-duplex connection--Apple has accepted that FW's benefits aren't really all that tangible outside of the professional realm. Running a music studio and need to do 32-track digital audio? Get a Mac Pro with FW800. Recording your neighborhood jam sessions with Garage Band? The USB interface on your MacBook is good enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if, once USB3.0 ships, Apple even moves away from FW800 on pro devices and just puts USB3 on everything. My understanding is that USB3 goes full duplex *and* increases to 800Mbps (though I could be wrong). If that is indeed the case, then unless there's something I'm not aware of, the benefits of FW400/800 are essentially nil.

Re:HTML5

[bonch]

The first iMac was controversial at the time because it eschewed all previous peripheral connector types for USB ports. At the time, USB was a new standard that wasn't as widely adopted as it is today.

Like I said--another popularization of technology taken for granted.

Re:HTML5

[bonch]

I didn't say Apple invented USB. I'm saying that it wasn't until the original iMac that hardware manufacturers fully embraced the standard in order to support the new Mac, which used USB ports. At the time, the standard with PCs was still a PS/2 mouse and keyboard, a parallel port for printers, and so on, so the iMac's design was very forward-thinking.

Re:HTML5

[phillymjs]

Though 3.5" floppy drives had been around since 1982, they did not meet with success until the 3.5" floppy drive was chosen for the original 1984 Macintosh (quickly followed by the Atari ST and Amiga the following year). Apple was not too far ahead of their time when they killed the floppy in 1998, but they saw where things were going and made the right call-- Mac users who still really needed a floppy drive were able to buy an external one. Windows users questioned it because they weren't (really, still aren't) accustomed to being able to boot from any device with an OS on it that's connected to their computer, so floppies were their lifeline.

Though USB had been on PC motherboards beginning in 1996, nobody did anything with it until Apple put it in the iMac in 1998 and excluded all other port types. Lots of people will argue that Microsoft finally adding USB support to Windows (in Win95 OSR2) was the tipping point, but that's bull. Windows users had the option of clinging to their peripherals that used the ancient parallel and serial ports, and cling they did. iMac users had no such option, and the popularity of the iMac meant that if hardware makers wanted iMac owners' money, they had to start churning out USB-based peripherals for them.

As an aside, Firewire did not appear in a Mac until the Blue & White G3, in January of 1999. It did not appear in an iMac until the 6th revision, in October of 1999. Apple's view was that USB and Firewire were complementary... USB for low-bandwidth stuff like keyboards and mice, and Firewire for hard drives, video cameras, and other high-bandwidth devices. Intel was the one that had the apparently inferiority complex and started working on USB2, to compete. Based on my experience using both, Firewire 800 is superior to USB2, and if I have the choice between those two I'll always pick Firewire. (As for the future, Firewire 1600 and 3200 have been approved by the IEEE but aren't in any shipping product, I haven't seen a USB3 device in the wild yet, and Light Peak is a wildcard at this point.)

To sum up, Apple is the tech company that is not afraid to chop off legacy stuff at the knees, and by doing so indeed often drags the rest of the industry kicking and screaming with it.

~Philly

Re:HTML5

[Kjella]

Firewire was started in the mid-80s to replace parallel SCSI, nearly a decade before USB's existence. It is still the standard for data transfer between devices such as A/V equipment.

Yep, most notably all DV cams and even HDV cams. But the modern cams based on AVCHD don't anymore, things get stored to a HDD/memory card so no need for firewire's perfect realtime capture. It's just transferred as any other file...

Re:HTML5

[hedwards]

Firewire had serious security implications which weren't particularly well advertised and I'm not sure that I'd really know how to handle them. Part of why Firewire was faster than USB was that it had direct access to the computers memory. I remember connecting two computers via Firewire and then connecting a peripheral to one only to have it appear on the other computer.

I assume that my memory is a bit glitchy, but that's pretty close. Firewire was great for debugging computers, but you had to be sure that you could trust whatever it was that you were plugging in there every time.

Re:HTML5

[hedwards]

Those were horrible. I hope that they never come back into vogue, no matter how many GB the next revision can handle. They had this nasty habit of losing files, even worse that floppy disks.

Re:HTML5

[h4rr4r]

This was a feature not a bug. Firewire was designed to replace SCSI. PCI and PCIe both have DMA. If someone can touch your computer the game is over, security wise.

Re:HTML5

[ConceptJunkie]

Plus they never went down in price for like 15 years.

Re:HTML5

[miknix]

Firewire was started in the mid-80s to replace parallel SCSI, nearly a decade before USB's existence. It is still the standard for data transfer between devices such as A/V equipment.

firewire is great to quickly create a *very fast* network link between two computers side to side, if you have the cable of couse. In Linux just load firewire-net and you should see a firewire0 net device popping up.
Gigabit ethernet is getting more common in laptops though. However I still find a lot of laptops with firewire.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple was the first to remove floppies. All of the rest of the industry followed suit.

http://www.designboom.com/history/floppydisk.html

If you're going to try and revise history you should probably wait a few more years. The computer geeks from the 90's are still alive and breathing thank you very much.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

WRT the floppies, you must either be joking or a kid. Long before Apple was the first to abandon 3.5" floppies, they were among the first mass market computer makers to adopt their use. When the original Mac came out, nearly every other system came by default with 5.25" floppy drives. 3.5" drives were available as options for those other systems, but the Mac was, if not the first, one of the first to have 3.5" as the built-in standard.

Though I think you may be retroactively creating intention where there wasn't any.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_FileWare

Re:HTML5

[R.Mo_Robert]

Actually, USB is an Intel designed standard and came with the ATX board design and the BX430 chipset, also from Intel.

designing != popularizing

The iMac popularized USB because PCs at the time were still using a variety of connectors (PS/2, parallel, serial, etc.), and the situation was similar with previous Macs. Including USB as the only* external hardware connector on the first iMac is presumed to have spurred the industry to create appropriate peripherals faster. For that record, we can say the same thing about the floppy drive, which, as you may remember, the iMac also omitted.

*Yes, I'm lying: there was also FireWire, Ethernet, phone line, headphone, and microphone/line-in connectors (most of which are still with us today), but the point is that it abandoned ADB, GeoPort, and other randomness for USB.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised if, once USB3.0 ships, Apple even moves away from FW800 on pro devices and just puts USB3 on everything. My understanding is that USB3 goes full duplex *and* increases to 800Mbps (though I could be wrong). If that is indeed the case, then unless there's something I'm not aware of, the benefits of FW400/800 are essentially nil.

How's CPU utilization on USB3?

With 1 and 2, you need the CPU involved since the USB controllers are fairly dumb and need babysitting. FireWire on the other hand has smarter (and thus slightly more expensive) controllers, so the 'hub' and the device can transfer data via DMA without getting the CPU involved as often. Two FW devices can even transfer between each other without involving the host to a certain extent.

I've seen USB hard disk transfer soak up an entire core in 2.0. I'm curious to know how much USB3 will use since it transfers even more data.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the "click of death" on the iomega drives. And the crappy SyQuest drives, too. I lost of a lot of data in those days. That's when I swore to never buy proprietary storage devices ever again. CDRs and DVDs only, please.

Re:HTML5

[NortonDC]

> Though USB had been on PC motherboards beginning in 1996,
> nobody did anything with it until Apple put it in the
> iMac in 1998 and excluded all other port types.

That's incorrect, on several core points. First off, as for iMacs having no other ports? Not so much. The original iMac also included the irDA port, through which it supported networking and files transfers and printing.

And all the major PC players were all over USB before the iMac appeared on August 15, 1998:

Compaq - 1997

IBM - February 11, 1998

Dell - January 30, 1998

HP - February 14, 1998

Gateway - March 1, 1998

And those aren't introduction dates, they're just handy examples.

By the way, those listed companies were the top 5 PC makers in Q3 1998, globally and in the US, and they accounted for the strait-up majority of the US PC market at the time.

And Apple sold only a tiny fraction of the USB PCs bought in the era of the early iMac. "USB PC shipments were estimated at 20 million units in 1997 and 100 million units in 1999." So I'll split the difference and say 1998 saw 50 million USB PCs sold. How many were iMacs? Try 0.8 million. So that's 0.8 million versus 50 million. Let's be charitable and call that a 50:1 ratio or 2% of market share. Ouch.

Well, that wasn't a full year. How about 1999? We've seen the overall number of 100 million USB PCs, but in 1999 Apple sold only 1.8 million iMacs. So in 1999 USB iMacs again accounted for roughly 2% of the USB PC market. Still ouch.

So, the iMac was not the first PC with USB, the iMac was not the major but rather a fractionally tiny vector for USB into the marketplace, and the iMac did not "exclude all other port types."

Re:HTML5

[profplump]

You're talking about two different things.

Firewire has DMA. So does eSATA. I don't see anyone whining about DMA there. In fact, they'd whine if eSATA didn't support DMA. And there are methods available on both busses to require devices to be authorized before DMA requests work.

Firewire is also a master-less system. USB can only connect one master to multiple slaves. This is why you can't connect your camera to your phone or visa versa -- both devices are setup as slaves and can only connect to a host. This also means you can't connect two computers together via USB, as they are both masters. Firewire works like SCSI or Ethernet, where all devices are peers -- any FW device can talk to any other FW device on the same bus. You can even interconnect electrical busses with relatively intelligent routing to give you multiple collision domains while maintaining connectivity among a large number of devices. This again is a feature -- if your computer, phone, and camera all had FW instead of USB you could connect them in arbitrary combinations and still have them work. You can also use FW for IP networking and other Ethernet-like functions (and in fact modern FW provides support for cat-5 connectors that automatically switch between FW and Ethernet).

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Just no. No one F-ing cared about macs at the time. They had no market share. The operating system was less stable than win 98. You could not walk into any electronics store and buy software made for a mac. It was dead. So when they released a new computer you didn't have any third party hardware company going OOH a new computer form APPLE!!! I must redesign my product to make it work!!!

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Firewire was meant as a replacement to scsi. Firewire was fairly daisy-chainable. Link one to the first, link a third to the second, link a fourth to the second, link a fifth to the third, and so on. I don't know if USB had that kind of fan out. On the other hand, as long as the data moves, and fast, I don't care which one I use.

Re:HTML5

[Iskender]

I'm not a Mac zealot or anything (writing this from a self-assembled Linux box) but I think you're missing the point.

This is not about having USB, it's about having USB while not having serial and parallel. irDA is really small compared to the giants that are serial, parallel and USB - it matters about as much as PCMCIA.

I built my first "own" computer in 1999 and it had all the old ports. I used all kinds of parallel and serial devices and no USB at the time - had I had an iMac, I would have bought USB devices. I had a printer which ate parallel, and it's pretty obvious that I used the existing parallel port instead of buying a new one just because USB was there. Yet with an iMac I would have been forced to buy a brand new USB device.

See how this works? Hell, when I started out with that computer I used an ISA sound card I had left over from before which perceptibly slowed the entire system down with its ancient hardware communications. Good luck using such shit with the iMac even back then - it's not about having the new standard, it's about forcing it by not having what everyone used to have.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking about the 3.5-inch floppies that Apple was first to include in its Lisa and Macs. They were removed in the late 90s when nobody was using floppies anymore. If you're seriously arguing that 1.5MB floppies were still widely used by 2000, I don't know what to say.

Back in 2000, floppies were necessary to boot Linux under a variety of circumstances.

Re:HTML5

[TheRaven64]

USB and FireWire were not competing, initially. FireWire was for things like video cameras, ad-hoc networks[1], and hard disks that needed either isochronous behaviour, lots of bandwidth, or both. USB (limited to 11Mb/s in theory, much less in practice) was for cheap / slow things like keyboards, mice, and floppy drives. It wasn't until USB2 that USB became vaguely competitive with FireWire.

The original iMac shipped with both. The mouse and keyboard were USB and the keyboard contained a USB hub so you could plug a mouse and another device into it. If you wanted something faster, you used FireWire.

[1] The easiest way of getting a decent speed network between two Macs for ages was to sling a FireWire between them. They'd both bring up an IP-over-FireWire network adaptor, self-assign IP addresses, and see each others' network shares. This was especially useful when you were using the ethernet port on one and wanted to share the network with another one.

Re:HTML5

[jimicus]

Yep, and I lost count of the number of PCs with USB I saw which ran Windows '95. For about three or four years it was the most pointless port in the whole of history. (I include the first year of Windows '98s life because even then there weren't a great deal of USB-only peripherals around).

Re:HTML5

[TheRaven64]

The problem with FireWire is not that it has DMA, it's that the device can initiate DMAs and a lot of cheap FireWire chips don't provide a mechanism for the host to validate this. Basically, if you plug a device into the FireWire port on a Mac, you can copy the entire contents of memory without the kernel being able to stop you (other than by disabling FireWire). With eSATA (and USB), DMA is always initiated by the device owning the memory; an eSATA hard disk can't say 'send me a copy of the memory at physical address x', but the computer can tell the DMA controller to send the device pages of physical memory.

Re:HTML5

[SteeldrivingJon]

Even if you have gigabit ethernet, firewire networking is useful for setting up a makeshift, very fast second network when the ethernet port is occupied.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

My cs program used to make everyone turn in their homework on a 1.5 meg floppy, that was in 2002.

Re:HTML5

[phillymjs]

I know the iMac had the irDA port. It didn't bear mentioning because nobody used it-- it was little more than a curiosity, and vanished from the iMac by January of 1999 when the 3rd revision came out.

And the previous reply was right, you are completely missing my point about USB. The iMac wasn't the first PC with USB-- which would be why I said it had been on PC motherboards since 1996-- but it was the first to basically force its adoption through the elimination of legacy ports.

Remember the Gates on-stage BSOD while demoing connecting a USB scanner in Win98? Remember the "plug and pray" jokes? USB support in Windows wasn't what I would consider usable and trustworthy until 98SE (shipped in May, 1999), so people with the option to do so would stick with their trusty serial and parallel peripherals for their Windows PCs. Meanwhile Apple had been selling computers with only USB ports for nearly a year, driving demand for USB peripherals.

~Philly

Re:HTML5

[Rockoon]

Not just copy all of memory, but also MODIFY all of memory.

THAT was the essential security problem with Macintosh Firewire. A device which was plugged in could do whatever it damn well pleased with the memory of the device it was connected to (and vice-versa.)

This was because (as someone else noted) that all Firewire devices are considered peers. So the computer has a DMA controller and the device has a DMA controller and either one can initiate a transfer to the other.

The design was fine before devices themselves became trivially programmable.

Re:HTML5

[Ant P.]

USB3 is several Gbps, IIRC. Firewire didn't stop at 800 though, it's up to 3200 or thereabouts now.

Re:HTML5

[bennomatic]

Good point; I hadn't thought of that. I don't know what USB3 is going to be like. Maybe the work will be offloaded to the video processor... :)

Re:HTML5

[bennomatic]

That's right; USB is strictly a master/slave deal, and even though it seems like there's a daisy-chain option, it's not a real daisy chain. A computer->keyboard->mouse connection is really a computer to hub connection, and the hub within the keyboard fans out to the actual keyboard and then one or two more ports.

Re:HTML5

[NortonDC]

"Apple put it in the iMac in 1998 and excluded all other port types."

and then

"I know the iMac had the irDA port."

Now that you've established that you knew your statement was false when you made it, there's not much point in having a factual discussion with you anymore.

Good day.

Re:HTML5

[FoolishOwl]

The last time I saw a price for a 100 MB Zip disk, it was still more expensive than the 2 GB USB flash drives that were for sale in the "impulse buy" area at the checkout line in a drugstore.

Re:HTML5

[TheRaven64]

The design was fine before devices themselves became trivially programmable.

Not really, because you could always plug two computers in to each other and modify the the contents of memory of one from the other, with no authentication. That said, it's an implementation problem rather than a design issue. A FireWire controller can restrict peers' allowable DMA ranges, and some do. The cheap ones that Apply buys do not (or did not, they may have changed this policy more recently).

Re:HTML5

[toddestan]

I'm talking about the 3.5-inch floppies that Apple was first to include in its Lisa and Macs. They were removed in the late 90s when nobody was using floppies anymore. If you're seriously arguing that 1.5MB floppies were still widely used by 2000, I don't know what to say.

You're off by a few years. Maybe try about 2003-2005 or so. In 2000, the first USB flash drives had just hit the market: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive#First_commercial_product. They were 8-16MB, and expensive. The most common OS in use by home users at the time, Windows 98, did not support USB mass storage devices without loading additional drivers (which commonly came on...a floppy!).

You still had CD burners (not yet common in 2000, though CD readers were pretty much ubiquitous), the network/internet - which for the typical home user in 2000 was dialup, and maybe if you were really lucky both computers had a ZIP drive you could utilize. And of course the 3.5" floppy diskette, which you could count on everyone being able to read (even the Mac users, as you were virtually guaranteed to find a USB floppy disk drive close by to any iMac you ran encountered in 2000).

So while floppies were definitely showing their age in 2000, they were still in common use because most people did not have a better way of conveniently moving small files between computers until USB flash drives became cheap and common, high speed internet became cheap and common, and CD burners became cheap and common which wasn't until a few years past 2000.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

>

Firewire was started in the mid-80s to replace parallel SCSI...

It's pronounced sexy.

Is this the offical end of Flash?

[Slutticus]

Sounds like MS is in line with what Jobs has been saying for a quile now about HTML5

Re:Is this the offical end of Flash?

[hedwards]

It's probably more a matter of Flash being so awful that they have to agree that it's terrible. So they try to kill it only to realize that like IE6 it's undead.

Sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

they're going to do the old shutout routine again.

Thanks Apple!

[nine-times]

Yet again, we all benefit from the fact that Steve Jobs is an asshole. His refusal to adopt WMA or license FairPlay killed DRM in the music industry, and now his refusal to allow Flash/Silverlight is pushing Internet standards forward.

What's next? Video? Can we get a real TVoIP system to kill cable? DRM-free movie/TV purchases?

Re:Thanks Apple!

[modmans2ndcoming]

It is called Roku.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[bennomatic]

His refusal to adopt WMA or license FairPlay killed DRM in the music industry

I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the fact that WMA and FairPlay sucked, nor a little out-of-bottle genie called Napster.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about the cases where "things for Apple's benefit" coincides with "things that benefit consumers"? They are not two mutually exclusive categories.

The HTML5 web is going to be a fun trip back to the days when Linux didn't have any of the gizmos needed to view video or anything else. Boy, I can't wait! Thanks Steve!

I'm sorry, what - other than a dogmatic refusal to run "non-open" software on your Linux system - prevents you from viewing H.264 video in something like VLC, or a browser like Chrome or Opera that supports it?

Re:Thanks Apple!

[GrumpySteen]

Apple didn't kill DRM. Music from the iTunes store continued to be laden with DRM for more than a year after Amazon's DRM-free MP3 store opened. It was only after Amazon took away about 10% of the MP3 market that Apple removed DRM and that was only done in order to remain competitive.

Thanks Amazon! Without you, we'd still be stuck choosing between piracy, buying CDs to rip to MP3s or buying DRM-laden MP3s that could only be played on iPods.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[hedwards]

Except he mysteriously waited until the iPod had an almost unassailable grip on the market and then started to attack the DRM. Having used the DRM to lock everybody else out of the ITMS.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[UnknowingFool]

It was only after Amazon took away about 10% of the MP3 market that Apple removed DRM and that was only done in order to remain competitive.

Your premise is somewhat based on the assumption that Apple has the only say in the matter. It assumes that the music companies would gleefully allow Apple to sell music with no DRM. It was always the music companies that insisted on DRM.

In fact almost a full year before Amazon offered DRM free music in January 2008, Steve Jobs publicly stated in February 2007 that Apple would sell DRM free music if allowed. And EMI allowed Apple to sell DRM-free tracks since May 29, 2007.

Unfortunately for the other music companies, they didn't see the consequence if Apple became the #1 music seller. It would ironically make them more dependent on Apple because of DRM. That and when Apple agreed to tiered pricing did the rest finally relent.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet again, we all benefit from the fact that Steve Jobs is an asshole. His refusal to adopt WMA or license FairPlay killed DRM in the music industry, and now his refusal to allow Flash/Silverlight is pushing Internet standards forward.

Steve Jobs is a former phone phreak, I fear Apple post-Jobs. Steve Jobs, yeah he may be an asshole -- but he's an asshole that's lived in the real world; he's our type of asshole. I think everybody in the tech game can respect Jobs while Ballmer is viewed as the outright business-cunt that he is.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[jo_ham]

Apple was a supporter of DRM-free music and music sharing/fair use long before the iTunes store or iPod revolution - remember "Rip, Mix, Burn"? From the very start they never wanted DRM, but if they wanted content to sell, they had to include it.

So, they made it as weak as possible - they included the ability *in iTunes itself* to strip off the DRM from your tracks, and encouraged you to do so every time you downloaded music. It wasn't ideal (since it required making an Audio CD, so had a transcoding loss if you reripped back to a DRM-free format, but it was a standard audio CD, unencumbered by DRM that you burned from your DRM-covered tracks.

And they also make no secret that the iTunes Store is a vehicle to drive iPod/iPhone sales - it is hardly a huge profit turner for them. The real money is in the hardware, as they have said before on numerous occasions.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[GrumpySteen]

> In January 2008, Steve Jobs publicly stated in February 2007 that Apple would sell DRM free music if allowed.

You actually believed that?!?

Consider: If Apple wanted to sell DRM-free music, it would mean that that they wanted people to be able to play music they bought from the iTunes store on any MP3-capable device they owned. If that's the case, why has Apple spent years updating iTunes, sending cease and desist letters and filing lawsuits to prevent people from being able to do so?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#Circumventing_FairPlay

Actions speak louder than words. Apple loves their FairPlay DRM and loves having users who buy music they can only play on Apple products. It's no coincidence that Apple sells DRM-free music at a higher price than the DRM-encumbered music. They would much rather people buy the DRM protected files because that will keep them buying only Apple products.

And EMI's DRM-free offerings through iTunes? They did their own tests and discovered that higher quality DRM-free songs outsold lower quality DRM-encumbered songs 10-to-1. EMI was the one who stepped up and made deals with Apple, Amazon and several other stores in addition to making a deal with YouTube to allow EMI music videos to be shown.

Apple didn't kill music DRM, no matter how you look at it. They followed the trend of businesses moving away from it.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[aztracker1]

Well, you can build cross-compiled Flash apps, as well as Silverlight (Moonlight actually) applications targeting i-devices.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Raenex]

Laughable. Jobs has been a corporate asshole for a long, long time. Just because he got his jollies phone phreaking in his college days doesn't mean shit.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[UnknowingFool]

Apple said in February 2007 that they would offer DRM free music if allowed. EMI allowed them in May 2007. Actions speak louder than words I guess. Amazon didn't offer it until January 2008. So technically Apple was the first to offer DRM-free music. That dispels your theory that Amazon was the leader.

Amazon was the music companies' attempt to wrest their dependence on Apple. The music companies created the dependence problem in the first place by insisting on DRM. They didn't think that Apple was actually make a successful store where others failed. The problem was now their customers were really Apple's customers. However, by releasing Apple from the its DRM obligations that would have to admit that DRM didn't really work. There were however able to negotiate tiered pricing which they wanted in exchange.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[profplump]

I know QuickTime doesn't have the best history (though neither does any other commercial A/V system), but it's now *the* standard for MP4 A/V wrappers and supports the same sorts of features that the built-in video systems on all other platforms do including a wide variety of easy-to-install open-source codecs an an extensible codec/wrapper framework. While it would be nice if there was one universal A/V system such a thing does not exist, and on supported platforms QuickTime is not such a terrible choice.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Phroggy]

His refusal to adopt WMA or license FairPlay killed DRM in the music industry

I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the fact that WMA and FairPlay sucked, nor a little out-of-bottle genie called Napster.

It definitely had nothing to do with FairPlay sucking. FairPlay does suck a little bit, but all other implementations of DRM suck a lot more. What Apple did was 1) create the #1 best selling portable digital music player of all time, and 2) refuse to allow music purchased from any online store but theirs to play on it. This had the effect of motivating everyone else who wanted to compete with the iTunes Store to convince the record labels to allow THEM (not Apple) to sell DRM-free music, since there was no other way for them to meet customers' demands of something that's compatible with an iPod. Once this happened, it wasn't too much of a stretch for the record labels to allow Apple to sell DRM-free music too (although Apple did have to compromise in the negotiations, and allow the record companies to set different prices for some songs).

Your out-of-bottle genie is part of the reason the record labels insisted on DRM in the first place.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[MojoStan]

UnknowingFool (672806) writes:

Apple said in February 2007 that they would offer DRM free music if allowed. EMI allowed them in May 2007.

Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg said in February 2006 (at the Music 2.0 conference) that the music companies should sell DRM-free music: "Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players."

Bill Gates also expressed his problems with the state of music DRM in December 2006 in an informal Q&A discussing the Mix Conference: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then."

Actions speak louder than words I guess. Amazon didn't offer it until January 2008. So technically Apple was the first to offer DRM-free music.

"Technically," eMusic and Amie Street offered DRM-free music way before Apple, but I understand why we aren't counting them in this thread.

However, Yahoo Music acted ("experimented," actually) by offering Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" as a DRM-free MP3 file in July 2006, offred an entire Jesse McCartney album in September 2006, and a Norah Jones single in December 2006.

All this before Steve Jobs made his "bold" statement in Febraury 2007.

That dispels your theory that Amazon was the leader.

Interestigly, Amazon was rumored to be considering an MP3-only music download store in January 2007 (at the latest), before Steve Jobs made his statement.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[jimicus]

That's funny, my recollection is that Napster was sued into oblivion. A few years later the name was resurrected as a legit pay-per-download service.

WMA's DRM was floundering several years ago when it was fairly clear that Apple were basically eating up the portable music player market without even breaking a sweat. I can't remember the last time I saw someone using an MP3 player that wasn't an Apple product - even using their iPod while at the same time using a mobile phone that almost certainly has perfectly capable media player support builtin.

The final nail in the WMA DRM coffin was when the Zune didn't support it.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotf.

Apple is NOT anti DRM and it does not like open at all, proof being that everything they make is packed to the gills with DRM and they love to control everything.

The ONLY reason Steve wrote the open letter on music DRM was the fact the EU was about to force Apple to licence fairplay to others.

It was the same story with the recent back down over what dev tools can be used on iOS. Again the regulators were about to step in and instead of risk loss of all the locks on Apple toys they yield just enough to stop the investigation.

I am not saying HTML5 is not the route to go but your view on Apple needs adjustment :)

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Xarvh]

This is called "competition", and yes, as a Linux zealot, I still think it is better to have Apple (or MS) than not to have it.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Graff]

2) refuse to allow music purchased from any online store but theirs to play on it.

Just to clarify, because I'm pretty sure this is what you meant:

Apple refused to allow DRM music purchased from any online store but theirs to play on it. The iPod would play DRM-free music in most of the popular formats purchased from any online store.

The only DRM the iPod would play was Apple's Fairplay, which was implemented on the demand of the music companies. Fairplay was dropped soon after the music companies allowed the other online stores to sell DRM-free music.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[nine-times]

If that's the case, why has Apple spent years updating iTunes, sending cease and desist letters and filing lawsuits to prevent people from being able to do so?

They were contractually obligated by record labels to make their best effort to maintain their DRM system. If they hadn't tried to keep it intact, record labels would pull their content from the store.

You're creating some revisionist history here. Jobs had been outspoken about the problems of DRM for years, and it's known that Apple created their DRM scheme, above Jobs's objections, because record labels insisted. Record labels also had Apple remove the ability to copy music off of your iPod, which was possible in early iPod models.

After years of trying to negotiate for DRM-free tracks, Jobs wrote an open letter asking record labels to give up their position. The record labels began to fear Apple's influence, and decided to prop up Amazon as a competitor. They gave Amazon a better deal, allowing for cheaper prices and DRM-free tracks. Eventually Apple came to a deal with the record labels-- the record labels would give Apple DRM-free songs, while Apple would allow record labels to sell their songs at higher prices (until then, Apple had insisted in keeping prices at $0.99/song and $9.99/album). Apple would also get higher-quality encodes in order to help justify the increased prices.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[nine-times]

Well Napster was long-dead. Fairplay wasn't bad for a DRM scheme (of course, any DRM kind of sucks, but that's a side issue).

The entire music industry was united behind WMA and Plays-For-Sure, and pretty much every online store was using it and pretty much every MP3 player supported it. Apple was the roadblock.

The record industry insisted that Apple use DRM, so they created their own. The record industry tried to get Apple to support Plays-For-Sure or to license their FairPlay to other stores, and Apple refused on both counts. Meanwhile Apple was dominating the market, which meant that the record industry had two choices: let Apple own music distribution, or allow other stores to drop DRM so that they could sell songs that would play on the iPod and on other players.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Phroggy]

Ah, yes of course! At the time, there weren't any online stores selling non-DRM'd music in the US, as far as I'm aware, but I should have been more specific! There was (and still is) a fair amount of confusion about this point - the iPod has always been able to play non-DRM'd music from any source. ...As long as it's not in Ogg format, of course.

Re:Thanks Apple!

[Graff]

At best there was that Russian store selling quasi-legal DRM-free music downloads. But yeah, there are a lot of people who still think that the iPod was and still is not able to play DRM-free tracks so I always remind myself to explicitly point out that Apple has always supported DRM-free media.

Ogg format is another matter! It's too bad that it never really became a big player and I don't think there's any hope for it ever gaining the critical mass it needs to join the mainstream. iTunes and the iPod support quite a few DRM-free formats but only the more popular ones, not the fringe.

Blast from the Past

[Un pobre guey]

Here's something you don't hear much anymore: de facto standard

Good riddance, too.

Silverlight, we barely knew ye..

[mewsenews]

Thou were intended to be the ActiveX of our age, to witness the glorious rise of the ye Microsoft of old, alas, tis not to be.. alas..

(fucking rot in hell)

Re:Silverlight, we barely knew ye..

[Rogerborg]

Let me speak plainer: don't have Silverlight, never, ever needed Silverlight, don't know what Silverlight is, don't care. Plainest of all: Suck. My. Balls. Ballmer.

Realizing something else

[istartedi]

Perhaps realizing that even longtime Windows user like myself refuse to click the "must install Silverlight" link on the few websites that have it.

The only place I have this problem is on a few streaming radio sites. In almost all cases, they have another link for the "basic player" which gives me what I wanted: audio from their station without having to install more crap.

Re:Realizing something else

[CAIMLAS]

To the exception of Netflix, I can think of no site I've been to which uses silverlight.

I've got a friend who, despite his worthwhile attributes, really likes Microsoft software (always has). He's mentioned that "does not work with silverlight" is a big game killer for him: apparently there are a number of sites and appliances which require silverlight plugins to use, which are important to his clients and their management. IMO, that's a huge fail.

Unfortunately, like IE6 is now, it looks like Silverlight will be another Y2K type problem for IT in a couple years, if MS starts avoiding Silverlight improvement. They had been pushing Sharepoint + silverlight for some time, even. People won't be able to upgrade their systems to Windows 2015 or whatever, because they need Silverlight. Shame...

(And people think IPv6 is a good idea. Hrmph. Lacking IPv6 support is an even lower level shortcoming than requiring IE, and there are many, many, many 'must have' appliances and devices which need to be gotten rid of before we can even consider rolling out IPv6. - Does your smartphone support IPv6?)

Re:Realizing something else

[Symbha]

It's 'for all intents and purposes'.

Re:Realizing something else

[Un pobre guey]

AFAIK, IPv4 and IPv6 will be able to coexist for a long time. Devices that do not actively support IPv6 will probably fall into disuse or disrepair before it becomes a blocking issue.

Re:Realizing something else

[cshay]

If I remember right, the NCAA basketball tournament and the olympics required it for online viewing...

Re:Realizing something else

[Anonymous Coward]

Word on the street is that MS subsidized most Silverlight streaming to induce people to even use it at all

Re:Realizing something else

[GreyWolf3000]

Longtime Windows user, eh? I'm sorry to hear that.

HTML wins

[rsborg]

Nice. For those of you complaining about how HTML doesn't or can't do everything that Flash/Silverlight/Java can do, realize that most of that stuff is not really necessary for basic information display purposes.

Now I'm waiting to see how Silverlight+WP7 and AdobeAir+Playbook will pan out. If the responsiveness and capabilities can't parallel native, these interpreted OS layers will be at a significant disadvantage. However, Palm did deliver something quite great with WebOS which was based on HTML/CSS/JS, so maybe this is the next step and most natural fit for technologies like Silverlight and Air...

Re:HTML wins

[Tablizer]

For those of you complaining about how HTML doesn't or can't do everything that Flash/Silverlight/Java can do, realize that most of that stuff is not really necessary for basic information display purposes.

Yeah, but we want dancing mouse-cursor kittens that cast rainbow shadows. It makes paying bills more pleasant.

Seriously, though I agree with you for most consumer websites, business needs better CRUD GUI's for frequent usage, such as decent editable data grids (not like the clunky jittery AJAX shit). HTML5 seems more geared toward eye-candy and multimedia than CRUD. I'd like a see a good GUI markup language become a standard that gives desktop-like GUI's over HTTP.

Re:HTML wins

[shutdown -p now]

Silverlight does not go away - it will simply take the place of ActiveX as the platform of choice for "kinda Web but not really" apps in MS-centric shops. A few places like that I know are all either already using Silverlight in that role, or are seriously considering it. On the other hand, I know of few sites on the Net which serve Silverlight content to end users.

If you look at the feature set changes in recent versions (especially Silverlight 4), it seems that this is also the direction in which it is being pushed. It now has a fairly complete widget library, and not one but two (WCF Data Services client library, and WCF RIA Services) data manipulation frameworks which integrate seamlessly with ORM on the backend, support integrated Windows authentication, etc. Immensely useful for business apps, but not so much so for typical consumer stuff.

HTML not completely cross platform...

[cleepa]

If only it would work in IE6!

Re:HTML not completely cross platform...

[Anonymous Coward]

IE 6 is a cross platform -- the developers forced to use IE6 are cross, the users forced to use IE6 are cross.

Re:HTML not completely cross platform...

[kikito]

Allow me, dear:

http://www.google.com/chromeframe

Embrace-Extend-Extinguish

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they intend to use Javascript for their web applications or what?

That makes more sense with the Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy than just cornering yourself with your own obscure platform. It's all about controlling the platform, after all. So, I'm not that surprised.

P.S.

[bonch]

Further, how is Firewire their preferred standard when every iPod and iPhone comes with a USB connector? Apple has always been the biggest supporter of USB. They even put extra USB ports on their keyboards and cinema displays, for crying out loud.

Re:P.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Further, how is Firewire their preferred standard when every iPod and iPhone comes with a USB connector?

Every iPod came with a Firewire connector until 2005, and every Macintosh produced between 1995 and 2008 included a firewire port.

Re:P.S.

[GlassHeart]

Every iPod came with a Firewire connector until 2005, and every Macintosh produced between 1995 and 2008 included a firewire port.

Which is because we're talking about USB 1.1 in those days, when the 400 Mbps that Firewire provided exceeded both USB and Ethernet. Today, in a world of USB 2.0 and gigabit ethernet, Firewire has mostly outlived its uniqueness.

Re:P.S.

[jo_ham]

They only included the USB2 protocol and connector on the iPod when they made it Windows compatible. It was originally Firewire only, then had both for a while (it was always better with firewire on the Mac, and charged much faster too), then they dropped firewire and went USB only to make them cheaper to manufacture - only one controller to support, and you can cut out some hardware and make it smaller.

Re:P.S.

[primalamn]

Apple switched iPods, and by that decision later iPhones and iPads, to USB [after I think the 3rd generation iPods] because the FW controller in the device was too thick for their desires to make smaller/thinner devices, and the sheer speed and peer-to-peer qualities of FW were not necessary for users of iPods. You do a large transfer maybe once or twice, not all the time like a FW hard drive or something. Later, it is just a 20-100MB transfer, no problem for USB.

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[account_deleted]

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Netflix

[guyminuslife]

They use Silverlight. They use it on the Mac. I am assuming that Microsoft is basically shouting at them to drop it and switch to Flash.

Which really doesn't mean anything for Windows or Mac users, but does mean that Linux users may be able to use Netflix streaming sometime soon.

Oh brother.

[aussersterne]

Yeah, because MS Silverlight is *so* easy to view in Linux in comparison to HTML5.

Ideology is spread pretty thick around these parts.

Hey Microsoft, here is a cloud seed for you...

[NullProg]

The 5 primary Desktop computers in my home run Linux. I purchase services (annual subscriptions in Microsoft speak) from the NFL/MLB/HBO and several others. They all work with Linux. They all work with my Windows Netbook, Wii, MacBook, and Linux Laptop. The producers know the product they produce is viewable with Linux and several other OS's. They get my subscription fees while Microsoft doesn't. Check it out, I'm not tied to any platform.

        Cross platform does not mean Windows XP/Vista/CE/7 only. Cloud services does not mean Windows XP with IE 99 or Windows 7 with IE 8.5. Cross platform and cloud services mean Droid, Windows, Linux, Mac, Blackberry, iPhone, HP, Wii, PS3 or any other platform that is standards compliant.

Come out with a .Net runtime with Silverlight that runs native on Multiple non-Microsoft platforms. And no, Mono sucks and is full of traps.

My rant.
Enjoy

Re:Hey Microsoft, here is a cloud seed for you...

[jimicus]

Thing is, I believe that some quarters (particularly those who deal with desktop software) within Microsoft honestly think that "cross platform" means "works with more than one version of Windows". Were you to walk into one of their meetings and suggest supporting a non-Windows based platform, you'd get everything from funny looks to comments along the lines of "But nobody's used DOS for years!". As far as they're concerned, you might just as well propose video streaming to a paper pad, it'd be equally absurd.

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[account_deleted]

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Not Cross-Platform ?

[eulernet]

Hey, it works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, so it's cross-platform.

Once again, Slashdot promotes an article bashing Microsoft.

This is so unfair !

Re:Not Cross-Platform ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It also works fine OS X you moron.

Re:Not Cross-Platform ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It also works on OSX and linux and any other platform that someone cares enough to port moonlight to.

Re:Not Cross-Platform ?

[rubycodez]

what, no Windows ME or Windows CE support? now that's not very cross-platform at all, is it?

Re:Not Cross-Platform ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, so it's cross-platform.

Once again, Slashdot promotes an article bashing Microsoft.

This is so unfair !

Uhmm.. Microsoft is shifting their focus from Silverlight to HTML5, saying right out "HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything". Where does your "Windows-only" comment fit into moving to HTML5?

Re:Not Cross-Platform ?

[ukyoCE]

It also works on OSX and linux

Really? Can you show me how to watch Netflix Instant from Linux?

And how many versions behind is the Linux version of Silverlight again?

Silverlight is only one of the faces...

[sideslash]

... of Microsoft's XML based / GUI / animation-friendly / .NET based vector interface technology. The beast underlying Silverlight will continue to find its widest audience in WPF on the desktop, and possibly a decent sized user base in Windows Phone 7 -- if MS can get traction on the latter. Displacing Flash on the web has always been a pipe dream, and based on the dictates of iOS not even a pipe dream worth so very much effort anymore.

Re:Silverlight is only one of the faces...

[foniksonik]

Yes you can kill Flash but you can't replace it.

Are you listening Netflix!

[ScaredOfTheMan]

Netflix? Are you listen as MS kills off that piece of bloated junk. I never let Sliverlight touch my Mac, and so I was forced to watch Netflix streaming on my inferior windows laptop. Do you you know the pain and anguish I felt as I tried to enjoy my netflix on the lenovo's screen? My eyes have slowly melted.

So Netflix, please move all your web base streaming to a nice non MS standard like HTML5 based players or Flash or anything that keeps my machine free of extra players.

Thank you, your humble customer

Re:Are you listening Netflix!

[Anonymous Coward]

dream on cocksucker - get jobs' rotten old pecker from out of your mouth and maybe someone will listen to you.

Mono isn`t Silverlight

[Ilgaz]

Moonlight works ok.

Mono is not at feature parity with Silverlight. I don`t even talk about non existing developer and designer environment for Linux/OS X/BSD.

Even MS admits that Silverlight may not be really cross platform as once envisioned and you Mono/Moonlight/Icaza fans still mention Moonlight.

For industry (if they took SL serious, silverlight is whatever offered at MS Windows Update, which is version 4 or something now.

You really needed that blog entry?

[Ilgaz]

First of all, this is valid for all offerings. If a company claims to ship a website design/rapid development tool, a new codec, a container, check if they offer OS X support. E.g. a Quicktime output codec, Adobe tools plugins, plugins to popular website building tools. If they don't exist, it is safe to ignore.

Next, take OS X as reference as it doesn't have claimed quirks of Linux. Does it have exactly same plugin support? Do users care? I suggest OS X as example because Linux has these great excuses by plugin developers. For example adding DRM, h264 becomes big deal as excuse of lazy developers and clueless companies while Linux users happily installs Adobe Flash plugin which has same potential political issues.

So, World's nr1 designer choice of OS with a huge company and a strict roadmap to rely on doesn't have Silverlight functionality as equal to Windows one. It really required that blog to figure that it is a failed attempt to kill Flash?

Shifted?... what is shifted?

[slick7]

The strategy shifted? Did it shift red or blue?

That was fast

[mordejai]

...It only took them 8 years longer than it took for everyone else.

Re:the guy's an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

you don't get out much nowadays do you son?

Lisp/Scheme is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Lisp/Scheme is the answer

Machine code - check
interpreted - check
scripting - check
markup/declarative - check

Can any other modern language say the same?

Toss the HTML/XML crap that the world government has been publishing, and embrace Lisp/Scheme ...you know I'm right

Re:Lisp/Scheme is the answer

[Paradise Pete]

Lisp/Scheme is the answer

(mod(parent(up))))

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[account_deleted]

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the answer to life, the universe and everything

[SquareState]

Shouldn't that be HTML 42 if it's going to cover everything?

I warned management

[marcel]

We got a talk about Silverlight in 2007 from some MS-exec telling us that this would be the next best thing since sliced bread. When I asked some akward questions asking about continued multiplatform support, both the MS and internal management told me to shut up and told me that the 'community should step in' in the Linux case (moonlight). In 2008 they launched their Silverlight app and not all customers could access it (basically, none could due to bugs in the app, but after these were fixed, at least a small ammount of customers who went through the hassle of installing Silverlight could access it). Some customers were never able to access the application (due to Silverlight issues on their platform or the absence of Silverlight). And now finally MS finds out that they cannot deliver anyway in their usual 180 degrees turn. Oh how I'd love to do that meeting again...

here we go again

[kikito]

I'm talking to you, developers that spend time, energy and money on learning and using microsoft technologies.

Even if it fills the plate today, for your own shake, invest some time on alternatives to ms-only. Otherwise you can see that knowledge go to waste.

Learn from history.

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is, MS has bought lots of influence in terms of corrupt politicians, school boards, etc.

Take the Toronto District School Board, for instance, currently pushing some junk called AW (Academic Workplace) on the entire school board in all schools in Toronto.

Yep, you guessed it...full of Silverlight junk, being tested/pushed by adminstrators, teachers and brainwashed students, so that the next generation will be properly 'educated' (enslaved/brainwashed). Gotta produce some brainwashed Silverlight junkies somehow, eh? What better place than a large school board full of compliant administrators, helpless students and corrupt/bought politicians/senior staff/incompetent MSCEs? Check it out at: (or find someone in education in Toronto that has an account):

http://aw.tdsb.on.ca

Yes, floppies were widely used

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially because many PATA/SATA interfaces required drivers to be loaded only by floppy disk for Windows based systems.

Game of chicken

[Compaqt]

I think it'll be a game of who blinks first. If Google puts WebM as the primary codec on YouTube, many (most?) device manufacturers will feel compelled to support it.

I think it's also possible Google could get its Android partners posse (and maybe Nokia) to also use WebM. With both Nokia and and Samsung/Motorola/HTC/LG/Sony etc., that's the majority of phones out there.

More importantly

[Anonymous Coward]

If Microsoft has come to this realization, why hasn't Adobe?

Re:More importantly

[triso]

If Microsoft has come to this realization, why hasn't Adobe?

I suppose Adobe is blinded by the 1000s of games and web sites that use flash. The only site that used Silverlight was microsoft and I never saw any SL games.

NetFlix on Linux or Symbian

[SpzToid]

Here's my (not fully tested) solution to watching NetFlix using my favorite, cheap Ubuntu NetBook as well as my Nokia N95, via UPnP. These are my current plans actually.

Perhaps your requirement is for non-US NetFlix access, so it should be possible to SSH to a US-based DD-WRT router serving as a proxy. I sold my older Asus Eee and am now waiting for the newer dual-core 1015PEM to be released, and it comes with Windows 7 Starter.

http://www.playon.tv/playonPlayOn is a Windows-based proxy for streaming NetFlix, etc. as UPnP; and costs about $30. I plan to use Acronis True Image to move the Windows 7 to a Virtual Machine environment (VirtualBox these days), and install PlayOn there. Also I'll install Bitvise Tunnelier so I can re-direct the Windows ports to use the SSH-connected US router/proxy.

I'll also use the Ubuntu Alternate installer, to fully-encrypt the Asus hard disk during installation. Then I'll add the netbook interface options select 'Ubuntu Netbook' from Synaptec's 'Mark Packages by Task' option. OR, I might test the newly released Meego Netbook 1.1 from last week.