Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Going Its Own Way On Audio/Video Specification
An anonymous reader writes "Several groups are currently working on specifications for plugin-free, real-time audio and video communication. The World Wide Web Consortium has one called WebRTC, rudimentary support for which is found in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Back in August, Microsoft announced its own specification, CU-RTC-Web, because it thought WebRTC wasn't worthwhile. W3C carried out a vote to choose between the two specs, which came out strongly in favor of WebRTC. Microsoft went ahead anyway, and it has now published a prototype for the proposed specification. 'So what's Microsoft playing at, persevering with its own spec in spite of its rejection by the WebRTC group? The company's argument is twofold. First, WebRTC simply isn't complete yet, and Microsoft believes that working on its proposal can shed light on how to solve certain problems such as handling changes in network bandwidth or keeping cellular and Wi-Fi connections open in parallel to allow easy failover from one to the other. Even if Redmond's spec isn't adopted wholesale, portions of it may still be useful. Second, the company believes that WebRTC may not be as close to real standardization as its proponents might argue.'"
Does anybody even care what Microsoft does these days? They even seem to fail at being evil, though they still try.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Here you go: comic
"We think their standard is crap, so let's make our own"
"But, how will it work?"
"Lots of security holes. compatible with IE only, and make damn well sure that they can't remove it from the OS."
Great job, Microsoft, add another junk program that takes up our precious CPU.
I guess you see what you want to see. Yes, they have a spotty past.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 5-10 times, and I deserve to have a gorilla throw chairs at me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.