Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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?"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Those that sell Essential Liberty for decent 3D effects deserve neither Liberty or 3D effects!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
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)
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.
Everything will be taken away from you.
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.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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
It's just the normal noises in here.
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 !
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.)
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.