Yes, I can see it now: "Error: You need the Chrome Operating System to view this web page"
If this was from Microsoft, perhaps, however Google seem to have thought of that objection; from the article:
All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
If you're using IE I guess you might be left out in the cold, but IE users will be used to that by now.
I think you've missed the point. The point is to be able to serve one video and know that all standards compliant browsers _can_ show it. We know you can serve different video to different browsers.
I'm sure that's what you'd like the point to be, but it's not the point of the video tag, as defined in the spec.
I suspect most web designers and developers would prefer a system of a working (supported!) cross-browser base with possibility for progressive enhancement - eg you _can_ send Ogg Theora to all compliant browsers but sending H.264 to some and Dirac, say, to others gives better quality.
The spec supports this, but does not mandate it, as I said in my post above. Whether it happens is up to browser makers - the spec does not have a power to sanction or otherwise force them to comply, it must persuade, sometimes by introducing progress in small steps, like this video tag.
It would be better to be able to use the better format (PNG vs GIF later) if the browser makers (MS) can get the implementation right.
MS does not support video and has no plans to, so I don't know why you mention them. I'd like one video format to rule them all too, and a pony, but for now we'll have to deal with the realities on the ground, and a spec which respects those realities and gets agreement from a majority of browser vendors is more likely to gain traction than one which tries to mandate something no-one will fully agree to.
The problem is that many entities use the SSN *as* a check of identity. If I call my bank to conduct a transaction, I give them my name and account number. Then they ask me for either my SSN (possibly just the last four digits) or my mother's maiden name to verify that I'm me.
You should change bank, seriously.
The best security I've seen is the digital equivalent of a one-time pad that the bank gives you - that's what I have on one of my accounts (they sent me the gadget free, because it saves them money on fraud). The other uses a bank id, password and question/answer pair chosen by me, which is reasonably secure, or, for telephone contact, a telephone PIN which goes through an automated system the operator doesn't hear. So far as I know that's the norm here in the UK for banks.
I'm sure you'll agree that asking for something like an SSN is almost as bad as asking a predictable question like your mother's maiden name. That's not proof of ID at all. They should at least establish a password or PIN with you when you first open the account and require that as verification.
The method you outline means anyone who has seen your payment details and SSN (at an employer, or recruitment agency say), could withdraw money from your bank account. Ouch. It's so scarily insecure I'd consider changing banks for that alone.
I really don't think they will replace X11. It's a stable and effective windowing system, and it also consumes low amount of resources (my N800 also runs one perfectly fine, and that's a 400MHz ARM with no GPU).
Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.
Why would any of that concern Google?
They'll be offering a cut-down OS, probably with a new windowing system based on Android, which offers opportunities to develop web apps in the future which truly span the gap between connected desktop apps and web apps. They won't be concerned with porting existing Linux apps over, and neither will their users, who will be buying a netbook to use google mail, some sort of IM app and the internet, and not much more.
It's not even clear if you'll be able to write binary apps for the system at all (they mention web apps and nothing else). Supporting Linux apis would just slow them down, and it probably won't be X based anyway.
This is a foundation for a new generation of apps which aren't beholden to binary APIs controlled by the likes of Microsoft. In parallel with Chrome it lets them dictate the future of web/desktop integration, and start really pushing HTML5 features, and online/offline integration, rather than being continually held back by Microsoft's attempts to hobble the web and tie it to Windows.
Therefore at the most, someone could possibly collect your social security reimbursements by impersonating you.
Well, no, they couldn't, because you can't collection social security without proof of ID, you can't just go in and give them a number and no ID and expect to collect money. Surely they have similar checks in the US?
In the US, it identifies you in each and every database under the sun (and probably most underground ones). Major potential for problems. Design has been completely broken by the corporations.
That's really not your problem though is it - if some company uses your SSN and is subject to fraud, it has no comeback to you because you didn't somehow keep your SSN secret (how would you even do that when you have to hand it out to employers, government agencies, and companies like that one?). Companies like Experian use NI nos in the UK as well, as one factor in a process of identifying someone, not as the sole key - it's not uniquely used on government business.
If a company uses an external key like this, which isn't even guaranteed unique, and may change by government fiat, as their internal identifier, they've made a foolish mistake. Quite apart from the fact it can be guessed, it's also unreliable, and subject to change which they can't control.
However because some companies use a govt. supplied SSN as a unique ID for you, that doesn't make your SSN suddenly secure and secret; it has never been proof of identity, or a secret code, nor should it be treated as such by anyone. Do people accept your name as your proof of ID? Why should they then accept your SSN, with no further checks?
For instance, if you copy down the numbers at the bottom of someone's personal check, you have all the information you need to do pretty much whatever you want.
In the country I live in, banks are not insane enough to allow access to an account, let alone drawing on that account, without proof of ID. Is that not the case in the US? If someone did manage to forge a cheque, the money would be restored as soon as the fraud was noticed - the bank is liable, not the customer.
If your bank does allow this, and doesn't offer fraud protection, I'd switch bank pronto, and quit worrying about SSNs, as those are the least of your problems.
It doesn't take a cryptography expert to recognise that an identifier is not a secret, and I'm mystified as to why the SSN is treated as some kind of special secret code.
The point is that it's not really about what big companies can afford to adopt (e.g. through h.264 licensing). The point is that the format is available for everyone...So at the end of the day, you have the big companies dictating which formats to use (h.264), which means that the average user will not be able to publish their own content as they don't have a license for it. That, and what happens when the licensing changes?
The spec does not mandate a particular format. Theora is already widely supported (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari with plugin), so if you wish to use that, you can do so. People are free to use whatever format they want, so the spec does not restrict them from doing that, and in fact encourages it.
Apple's actions restrict you from publishing ogg to Safari users, but that's another matter - they have their reasons. It's not just some anti-open codec crusade; they'll play anything quicktime supports, natively or via a plug-in. At present the performance/watt of h.264 will be vastly better than Theora because of hardware support. When/if Theora has hardware support and its quality improves, they may change their minds.
Do you really think if the spec mandated ogg Apple would jump to include it on iPhones and bundle with Safari, even it would degrade battery life significantly? The point of HTML5 is that it is a consensus, and sometimes that means compromises so that the spec actually reflects real world use rather than diverging from it and becoming meaningless (like, say XHTML2).
As usual Microsoft is late to the party, but presumably eventually will grudgingly add support one of the popular formats, or risk being marginalised.
We really need a "cryptology spokesman" with charisma to go out there and extol the virtues of not blabbing your freakin' financial information to everyone who asks. Or having a stupid number somewhere that does the same crap for you.
A cryptology spokesman would know that telling people your identifier would be no different to telling them your email address. It is an identifier used by the government for various purposes, not a secret passcode known only to you, or the equivalent of a private encryption key.
It is not the equivalent to blabbing your financial information, and if some company thinks it is, they have a problem, not you.
Are they actually used as a security device by people? Why do Americans think that SSNs should be somehow secret? What difference does it make if someone knows your SSN without knowing your other details?
The equivalent of SSN in other countries (e.g. the National Insurance number in the UK, DNI in Spain, etc) are not secret in any way, and it causes no problems whatsoever.
Really, if a company is stupid enough to just use your SSN to identify you, with no further checks, they deserve to be defrauded, and certainly couldn't use that as a reason to hold you liable for the fraud. They're not even unique.
The whole point of the element is to allow content providers to choose one of the always supported formats and therefore know a-priori that it will work in the user's browser. A "choose one from this list" strategy, or creating a new plugin-hell for codecs doesn't accomplish this end.
I disagree - the video element explicitly allows for several source files, so the whole point is not to allow only for one codec, or to mandate several codecs which are supported by everyone. That would have been nice, but hasn't been possible. As it is the video element is now being treated more like the image one - different browsers will support different image formats, but most will support a few core ones.
The whole point of the video element is to allow pages to easily embed video files (as opposed to the messy complicated method using object elements). The video element allows for several encodings in order, so the process of choosing a codec is transparent to the user, so long as you can give them something they can play, and is painless for the provider, given that there are free options for converting to ogg.
So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.
Life would be great if there was one clear unencumbered codec with no drawbacks, or at least a choice of a few (as there are for image formats), but there isn't one clear winner (ogg theora has definite disadvantages, the most important being lack of hardware support and quality issues). I think Apple should support Ogg, and see why Mozilla resist h.264 - there are strong arguments for both sides.
In the meantime the video element makes presenting video possible without a plugin with any sane browser (i.e. not IE), and is a step toward native browser support when people converge on a codec (or several) as they did with image formats.
It has already been announced a while ago: Silverlight 3 will support H.264 for video, and AAC for audio [on10.net].
Yes, they appear to have given up fighting to control codecs, though the more important question is whether IE will support the video element this decade.
It's a perfectly legitimate (and common) for non-webmail users to have their outgoing server be their local ISP. So if google did what you're suggesting, all those people that use an IMAP client to receive their gmail, and send via their ISP wouldn't be able to send to other gmail users
This does not make it legitimate (though it may be common) to forge the From address line. They should use Reply To if they want to send From another address/mail server, and have replies to go their gmail account.
If you want to send with the correct From header, you should be using secured email and sending via the gmail servers (SMTP is the protocol used in any case). No ISPs I know of block the ports for secured email, so you can easily send via the google servers.
Forged From headers are a big problem for naive users (who think that spam message really did come from their account, or from msn.com etc), and google would be correct to ban those purporting to come from their server - they could at least offer the option to do this, so that I could stop spammers forging my from address with impunity.
Re:Sounds like a few people are confused...
on
XHTML 2 Cancelled
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· Score: 2, Informative
The doctype.
Not sure you'll like the answer : ) :
<!doctype html>
I believe because they wanted to keep it short and simple, and hixie doesn't believe in versioning HTML - having a version-less doctype forces people to keep it backwards-compatible when html6 rolls around. Perhaps someone else who followed the process better can chime in here.
Yeah, once you hack it and fool AT&T into thinking you don't actually have an iPhone.
1. The United States != The World 2. iPhones now do MMS, AT&T doesn't (at present) allow it
So if you want to bore us all about hilarious deficiencies in the iPhone, and how you're proud not to own one, I'm afraid you'll need to find something else (I'm sure you'll think of something).
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this 'social graph' to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire - rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now."
Translation from Wired corporate shilling:
Facebook CEO envisions a walled garden controlled by Facebook, where your identity, network of friends, colleagues, peers and family belongs to FaceBook, and where Facebook is the primary source of all information, just as they've always dreamed of being. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query FaceBook to find anything, rather than using the far more useful and wide-ranging Google search, which might lead you to sites which are not hosted by Facebook. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where the real internet is now.
I've never liked sites like Facebook since they started off by trying to make everyone join their site before they can actually access content. Visit their front page, and all you see is an exhortation to give them your email address and some personal details - that tells you everything you need to know about their intentions and the utility of their site. Joining them means being data-mined by Facebook for every ounce of your worth as a consumer. Thankfully Facebook's vision of the future of the internet is about as relevant as Wired magazine is nowadays.
The countries that have converted to SI are the countries that were late to the industrial revolution party.
Really? I wasn't aware that Britain or France were late to the 'Industrial Revolution party'. Britain has almost entirely converted to SI units, the only use of imperial I can think of are to do with cars - street signs are in miles. All engineering, architecture and science use metric. Even a '4 by 4' is measured in metric.
Almost every country in the world uses metric units for all science, and most engineering - apart from the United States. Stop making excuses, it's really not that hard.
Closing tags like li are going to compress down nicely with gzip if there are enough to take up lots of space.
I suspect that any kind of HTMLTidy approach on web pages is not going to be very successful at saving space, compared to something like gzip, or even in addition to it. For example leaving out end tags on lists won't save much space at all if those are already stored with a small token after compression, being so common. It's kind of like compressing a file twice - you're not going to see massive gains from doing this and doing gzip too, and it's a hassle and obfuscates the source for your users, which is a shame in a format that is designed to be human readable.
The only thing that could take up loads more space and is not compressible is comments, so if you do leave lots of comments in your HTML, then it might be good to provide a minified version of it. Typically for HTML that's just not a problem (if your markup is so complex that it needs comments, *that's* a problem), and it is more hassle than its worth (please do some tests and let us know if that's not the case, has been in my experience).
Perhaps in Javascript you'd want extensive comments, but there are various minify tools around for javascript that do this already - here's one. Typically libraries keep around a copy with comments, and also provide a minified version for production to cut download times.
So anyway, gzip nicely solves the "source and 'released binary' " problem that the grandparent brought up, by producing a binary representation of the source files automatically, without you having to think about it or post-process your HTML.
What you really need is a system to 'compile' the source pages to something less readable, but significantly smaller - removing comments, replacing the unneeded end tags, shortening the variable names. If that was automated...
ActionScript and Java run in a sandbox, but they're rejected too.
Javascript or Brainfuck also run arbitrary code in a sandbox, but they're not rejected.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the Apple app store, where any app could be removed at any time, because they could all be interpretted as infringing some part of the SDK rules.
Really? I wasn't aware that apps containing web views (which execute arbitrary javascript) were banned. That would exclude half the apps on the web store, and exclude people from using an API that Apple explicitly added to their SDK.
This is yet another silly clause in the Apple SDK contract, directly contradicting what they do in fact allow for certain apps, which should be struck out. If their app store is any good, it'll out-compete all the other alternative delivery mechanisms for code. If their bundled browser is any good (which I believe it is), it'll out-compete any competitors' offerings. What's wrong with other browsers like Opera being available for their platform? What are they afraid of, a little bit of competitiion?
If this clause was not selectively enforced, it woud disallow most of the apps on the store - anything using interpreted javascript, webviews, bundled scripts, opening word docs with macros etc. However, like many of their other rules, it is selectively enfornced, and used to exlude apps they don't feel like letting on to their platform, and it's difficult to tell in advance if a particular app will be excluded or not, particularly when it appears there is no clear line on this internally.
I say this is a lame move from Apple, and they deserve to be called out on it. Technically and legally they're well within their rights to exclude whatever they want, ethically, it's not acceptable.
Nonsense - they're choices provided by a free nation.
Just so we can be clear, which free nation do you take as a good example of a pure capitalist market, untainted by government intervention? If you don't think there is one, please stop speaking in absolutes.
A market regulated by cartels is hardly capitalist.
I assume you meant to assert that a regulated market is hardly capitalist, as I didn't say anything about a market regulated by cartels.
If you feel a regulated market (i.e. what we experience in most western countries) is hardly capitalist, please come up with an example of an unregulated pure and free capitalist market in the real world which actually works and doesn't descend into anarchy.
Obviously you don't actually believe that controlling commerce and controlling violence are the same thing
Actually, I do see the two functions as interlinked. A completely unregulated market quickly devolves into displays of naked violence and power as competitors seek to control their customers and one another (e.g. Chicago alcohol market during prohibition, the East India Company in India, present day oil companies in Africa, diamond extraction in Africa etc).
That's why we have laws against mistreating workers, cartels, using monopolies to coerce competitors and consumers, blackmail. etc etc. Some of which are laws against direct violence, and some of which are laws against abuse of power. All of those laws act as breaks on the free capitalist market, making it strictly speaking non-free, and all of them require a government to enforce them.
An unregulated capitalist market has very rarely existed, and I'd say that's a good thing.
Very true. Isn't it great, therefore, that we have so many other choices?
Those choices are given to you by a controlled, regulated market.
It depends on the availability of resources, of course. However, in any capitalist market "non-owners" have the opportunity to acquire resources, thereby creating new choices. The only ones who seem to have a problem with that are those who are unable or unwilling to be productive.
For certain values of 'capitalist market', i.e. ones which have enough regulations to keep cartels, monopolies and other protection rackets restrained, this holds roughly true. That's why we have the social contract called government which so many affect to despise while they live under its wing.
In a completely free unregulated capitalist market, the man who starts with the biggest stick wins, until someone even more brutal comes along. See Somalia.
I was just going by the Moonlight website, which says it has not yet reached parity with 2.0 in all areas. From their website, at present their 2.0 version is in Alpha, not beta, or a final release:
So, for example does it support PlayReady just now? From the Microsoft website it doesn't look like it:
Silverlight 2 will provide digital rights management support built on Microsoft PlayReadyâ content access technology, on Windows and Mac. For Silverlight-compatible playback on Linux we are discussing possible approaches with Novell, which is developing a Silverlight-compatible implementation for Linux.
There's a promise that it will someday support it, that's not the same as supporting it now.
Any features in Silverlight which Moonlight isn't going to be able to implement?
It really isn't a question of not going to be able to - really most things are technically possible, it's a question of whether I as a consumer and developer trust Microsoft to a) Allow other operating systems to work just as well as Windows, b) Not choke off support later at a time of their choosing to assert control over the platform's direction (see PlaysForSure, Java, IE Mac, etc).
The answer to both is no, based on their past actions.
Why do you think HTML 5 won't be implemented with a binary plugin?
For the user/developer doesn't matter if it is done as a binary plugin, so long as it is supported in all mainstream browsers (i.e. not a separate plugin download), and is not controlled by one vendor. I don't want either Microsoft or Adobe to be in charge of all the content I produce, and gatekeepers for tools to manipulate that content - that's why I prefer HTML.
But again, you're attempting to argue about whether things are technically similar - I don't think anyone would argue that Silverlight is somehow technically hobbled, or inferior technology, it's evidently not. Its credibility is however hobbled by the past actions of Microsoft and the attitudes of the current CEO of your company.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I can see it now: "Error: You need the Chrome Operating System to view this web page"
If this was from Microsoft, perhaps, however Google seem to have thought of that objection; from the article:
All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
If you're using IE I guess you might be left out in the cold, but IE users will be used to that by now.
I think you've missed the point. The point is to be able to serve one video and know that all standards compliant browsers _can_ show it. We know you can serve different video to different browsers.
I'm sure that's what you'd like the point to be, but it's not the point of the video tag, as defined in the spec.
I suspect most web designers and developers would prefer a system of a working (supported!) cross-browser base with possibility for progressive enhancement - eg you _can_ send Ogg Theora to all compliant browsers but sending H.264 to some and Dirac, say, to others gives better quality.
The spec supports this, but does not mandate it, as I said in my post above. Whether it happens is up to browser makers - the spec does not have a power to sanction or otherwise force them to comply, it must persuade, sometimes by introducing progress in small steps, like this video tag.
It would be better to be able to use the better format (PNG vs GIF later) if the browser makers (MS) can get the implementation right.
MS does not support video and has no plans to, so I don't know why you mention them. I'd like one video format to rule them all too, and a pony, but for now we'll have to deal with the realities on the ground, and a spec which respects those realities and gets agreement from a majority of browser vendors is more likely to gain traction than one which tries to mandate something no-one will fully agree to.
The problem is that many entities use the SSN *as* a check of identity. If I call my bank to conduct a transaction, I give them my name and account number. Then they ask me for either my SSN (possibly just the last four digits) or my mother's maiden name to verify that I'm me.
You should change bank, seriously.
The best security I've seen is the digital equivalent of a one-time pad that the bank gives you - that's what I have on one of my accounts (they sent me the gadget free, because it saves them money on fraud). The other uses a bank id, password and question/answer pair chosen by me, which is reasonably secure, or, for telephone contact, a telephone PIN which goes through an automated system the operator doesn't hear. So far as I know that's the norm here in the UK for banks.
I'm sure you'll agree that asking for something like an SSN is almost as bad as asking a predictable question like your mother's maiden name. That's not proof of ID at all. They should at least establish a password or PIN with you when you first open the account and require that as verification.
The method you outline means anyone who has seen your payment details and SSN (at an employer, or recruitment agency say), could withdraw money from your bank account. Ouch. It's so scarily insecure I'd consider changing banks for that alone.
I really don't think they will replace X11. It's a stable and effective windowing system, and it also consumes low amount of resources (my N800 also runs one perfectly fine, and that's a 400MHz ARM with no GPU).
Does Android use X11?
Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.
Why would any of that concern Google?
They'll be offering a cut-down OS, probably with a new windowing system based on Android, which offers opportunities to develop web apps in the future which truly span the gap between connected desktop apps and web apps. They won't be concerned with porting existing Linux apps over, and neither will their users, who will be buying a netbook to use google mail, some sort of IM app and the internet, and not much more.
It's not even clear if you'll be able to write binary apps for the system at all (they mention web apps and nothing else). Supporting Linux apis would just slow them down, and it probably won't be X based anyway.
This is a foundation for a new generation of apps which aren't beholden to binary APIs controlled by the likes of Microsoft. In parallel with Chrome it lets them dictate the future of web/desktop integration, and start really pushing HTML5 features, and online/offline integration, rather than being continually held back by Microsoft's attempts to hobble the web and tie it to Windows.
Therefore at the most, someone could possibly collect your social security reimbursements by impersonating you.
Well, no, they couldn't, because you can't collection social security without proof of ID, you can't just go in and give them a number and no ID and expect to collect money. Surely they have similar checks in the US?
In the US, it identifies you in each and every database under the sun (and probably most underground ones). Major potential for problems. Design has been completely broken by the corporations.
That's really not your problem though is it - if some company uses your SSN and is subject to fraud, it has no comeback to you because you didn't somehow keep your SSN secret (how would you even do that when you have to hand it out to employers, government agencies, and companies like that one?). Companies like Experian use NI nos in the UK as well, as one factor in a process of identifying someone, not as the sole key - it's not uniquely used on government business.
If a company uses an external key like this, which isn't even guaranteed unique, and may change by government fiat, as their internal identifier, they've made a foolish mistake. Quite apart from the fact it can be guessed, it's also unreliable, and subject to change which they can't control.
However because some companies use a govt. supplied SSN as a unique ID for you, that doesn't make your SSN suddenly secure and secret; it has never been proof of identity, or a secret code, nor should it be treated as such by anyone. Do people accept your name as your proof of ID? Why should they then accept your SSN, with no further checks?
For instance, if you copy down the numbers at the bottom of someone's personal check, you have all the information you need to do pretty much whatever you want.
In the country I live in, banks are not insane enough to allow access to an account, let alone drawing on that account, without proof of ID. Is that not the case in the US? If someone did manage to forge a cheque, the money would be restored as soon as the fraud was noticed - the bank is liable, not the customer.
If your bank does allow this, and doesn't offer fraud protection, I'd switch bank pronto, and quit worrying about SSNs, as those are the least of your problems.
It doesn't take a cryptography expert to recognise that an identifier is not a secret, and I'm mystified as to why the SSN is treated as some kind of special secret code.
The point is that it's not really about what big companies can afford to adopt (e.g. through h.264 licensing). The point is that the format is available for everyone...So at the end of the day, you have the big companies dictating which formats to use (h.264), which means that the average user will not be able to publish their own content as they don't have a license for it. That, and what happens when the licensing changes?
The spec does not mandate a particular format. Theora is already widely supported (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari with plugin), so if you wish to use that, you can do so. People are free to use whatever format they want, so the spec does not restrict them from doing that, and in fact encourages it.
Apple's actions restrict you from publishing ogg to Safari users, but that's another matter - they have their reasons. It's not just some anti-open codec crusade; they'll play anything quicktime supports, natively or via a plug-in. At present the performance/watt of h.264 will be vastly better than Theora because of hardware support. When/if Theora has hardware support and its quality improves, they may change their minds.
Do you really think if the spec mandated ogg Apple would jump to include it on iPhones and bundle with Safari, even it would degrade battery life significantly? The point of HTML5 is that it is a consensus, and sometimes that means compromises so that the spec actually reflects real world use rather than diverging from it and becoming meaningless (like, say XHTML2).
As usual Microsoft is late to the party, but presumably eventually will grudgingly add support one of the popular formats, or risk being marginalised.
We really need a "cryptology spokesman" with charisma to go out there and extol the virtues of not blabbing your freakin' financial information to everyone who asks. Or having a stupid number somewhere that does the same crap for you.
A cryptology spokesman would know that telling people your identifier would be no different to telling them your email address. It is an identifier used by the government for various purposes, not a secret passcode known only to you, or the equivalent of a private encryption key.
It is not the equivalent to blabbing your financial information, and if some company thinks it is, they have a problem, not you.
Are they actually used as a security device by people? Why do Americans think that SSNs should be somehow secret? What difference does it make if someone knows your SSN without knowing your other details?
The equivalent of SSN in other countries (e.g. the National Insurance number in the UK, DNI in Spain, etc) are not secret in any way, and it causes no problems whatsoever.
Really, if a company is stupid enough to just use your SSN to identify you, with no further checks, they deserve to be defrauded, and certainly couldn't use that as a reason to hold you liable for the fraud. They're not even unique.
The whole point of the element is to allow content providers to choose one of the always supported formats and therefore know a-priori that it will work in the user's browser. A "choose one from this list" strategy, or creating a new plugin-hell for codecs doesn't accomplish this end.
I disagree - the video element explicitly allows for several source files, so the whole point is not to allow only for one codec, or to mandate several codecs which are supported by everyone. That would have been nice, but hasn't been possible. As it is the video element is now being treated more like the image one - different browsers will support different image formats, but most will support a few core ones.
The whole point of the video element is to allow pages to easily embed video files (as opposed to the messy complicated method using object elements). The video element allows for several encodings in order, so the process of choosing a codec is transparent to the user, so long as you can give them something they can play, and is painless for the provider, given that there are free options for converting to ogg.
So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.
Life would be great if there was one clear unencumbered codec with no drawbacks, or at least a choice of a few (as there are for image formats), but there isn't one clear winner (ogg theora has definite disadvantages, the most important being lack of hardware support and quality issues). I think Apple should support Ogg, and see why Mozilla resist h.264 - there are strong arguments for both sides.
In the meantime the video element makes presenting video possible without a plugin with any sane browser (i.e. not IE), and is a step toward native browser support when people converge on a codec (or several) as they did with image formats.
It has already been announced a while ago: Silverlight 3 will support H.264 for video, and AAC for audio [on10.net].
Yes, they appear to have given up fighting to control codecs, though the more important question is whether IE will support the video element this decade.
It's a perfectly legitimate (and common) for non-webmail users to have their outgoing server be their local ISP. So if google did what you're suggesting, all those people that use an IMAP client to receive their gmail, and send via their ISP wouldn't be able to send to other gmail users
This does not make it legitimate (though it may be common) to forge the From address line. They should use Reply To if they want to send From another address/mail server, and have replies to go their gmail account.
If you want to send with the correct From header, you should be using secured email and sending via the gmail servers (SMTP is the protocol used in any case). No ISPs I know of block the ports for secured email, so you can easily send via the google servers.
Forged From headers are a big problem for naive users (who think that spam message really did come from their account, or from msn.com etc), and google would be correct to ban those purporting to come from their server - they could at least offer the option to do this, so that I could stop spammers forging my from address with impunity.
The doctype.
Not sure you'll like the answer : ) :
<!doctype html>
I believe because they wanted to keep it short and simple, and hixie doesn't believe in versioning HTML - having a version-less doctype forces people to keep it backwards-compatible when html6 rolls around. Perhaps someone else who followed the process better can chime in here.
Yeah, once you hack it and fool AT&T into thinking you don't actually have an iPhone.
1. The United States != The World
2. iPhones now do MMS, AT&T doesn't (at present) allow it
So if you want to bore us all about hilarious deficiencies in the iPhone, and how you're proud not to own one, I'm afraid you'll need to find something else (I'm sure you'll think of something).
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this 'social graph' to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire - rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now."
Translation from Wired corporate shilling:
Facebook CEO envisions a walled garden controlled by Facebook, where your identity, network of friends, colleagues, peers and family belongs to FaceBook, and where Facebook is the primary source of all information, just as they've always dreamed of being. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query FaceBook to find anything, rather than using the far more useful and wide-ranging Google search, which might lead you to sites which are not hosted by Facebook. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where the real internet is now.
I've never liked sites like Facebook since they started off by trying to make everyone join their site before they can actually access content. Visit their front page, and all you see is an exhortation to give them your email address and some personal details - that tells you everything you need to know about their intentions and the utility of their site. Joining them means being data-mined by Facebook for every ounce of your worth as a consumer. Thankfully Facebook's vision of the future of the internet is about as relevant as Wired magazine is nowadays.
The countries that have converted to SI are the countries that were late to the industrial revolution party.
Really? I wasn't aware that Britain or France were late to the 'Industrial Revolution party'. Britain has almost entirely converted to SI units, the only use of imperial I can think of are to do with cars - street signs are in miles. All engineering, architecture and science use metric. Even a '4 by 4' is measured in metric.
Almost every country in the world uses metric units for all science, and most engineering - apart from the United States. Stop making excuses, it's really not that hard.
Closing tags like li are going to compress down nicely with gzip if there are enough to take up lots of space.
I suspect that any kind of HTMLTidy approach on web pages is not going to be very successful at saving space, compared to something like gzip, or even in addition to it. For example leaving out end tags on lists won't save much space at all if those are already stored with a small token after compression, being so common. It's kind of like compressing a file twice - you're not going to see massive gains from doing this and doing gzip too, and it's a hassle and obfuscates the source for your users, which is a shame in a format that is designed to be human readable.
The only thing that could take up loads more space and is not compressible is comments, so if you do leave lots of comments in your HTML, then it might be good to provide a minified version of it. Typically for HTML that's just not a problem (if your markup is so complex that it needs comments, *that's* a problem), and it is more hassle than its worth (please do some tests and let us know if that's not the case, has been in my experience).
Perhaps in Javascript you'd want extensive comments, but there are various minify tools around for javascript that do this already - here's one. Typically libraries keep around a copy with comments, and also provide a minified version for production to cut download times.
So anyway, gzip nicely solves the "source and 'released binary' " problem that the grandparent brought up, by producing a binary representation of the source files automatically, without you having to think about it or post-process your HTML.
What you really need is a system to 'compile' the source pages to something less readable, but significantly smaller - removing comments, replacing the unneeded end tags, shortening the variable names. If that was automated...
Something like gzip compression perhaps?
isn't the C64 emulator a sandbox?
ActionScript and Java run in a sandbox, but they're rejected too.
Javascript or Brainfuck also run arbitrary code in a sandbox, but they're not rejected.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the Apple app store, where any app could be removed at any time, because they could all be interpretted as infringing some part of the SDK rules.
Really? I wasn't aware that apps containing web views (which execute arbitrary javascript) were banned. That would exclude half the apps on the web store, and exclude people from using an API that Apple explicitly added to their SDK.
This is yet another silly clause in the Apple SDK contract, directly contradicting what they do in fact allow for certain apps, which should be struck out. If their app store is any good, it'll out-compete all the other alternative delivery mechanisms for code. If their bundled browser is any good (which I believe it is), it'll out-compete any competitors' offerings. What's wrong with other browsers like Opera being available for their platform? What are they afraid of, a little bit of competitiion?
If this clause was not selectively enforced, it woud disallow most of the apps on the store - anything using interpreted javascript, webviews, bundled scripts, opening word docs with macros etc. However, like many of their other rules, it is selectively enfornced, and used to exlude apps they don't feel like letting on to their platform, and it's difficult to tell in advance if a particular app will be excluded or not, particularly when it appears there is no clear line on this internally.
I say this is a lame move from Apple, and they deserve to be called out on it. Technically and legally they're well within their rights to exclude whatever they want, ethically, it's not acceptable.
Nonsense - they're choices provided by a free nation.
Just so we can be clear, which free nation do you take as a good example of a pure capitalist market, untainted by government intervention? If you don't think there is one, please stop speaking in absolutes.
A market regulated by cartels is hardly capitalist.
I assume you meant to assert that a regulated market is hardly capitalist, as I didn't say anything about a market regulated by cartels.
If you feel a regulated market (i.e. what we experience in most western countries) is hardly capitalist, please come up with an example of an unregulated pure and free capitalist market in the real world which actually works and doesn't descend into anarchy.
Obviously you don't actually believe that controlling commerce and controlling violence are the same thing
Actually, I do see the two functions as interlinked. A completely unregulated market quickly devolves into displays of naked violence and power as competitors seek to control their customers and one another (e.g. Chicago alcohol market during prohibition, the East India Company in India, present day oil companies in Africa, diamond extraction in Africa etc).
That's why we have laws against mistreating workers, cartels, using monopolies to coerce competitors and consumers, blackmail. etc etc. Some of which are laws against direct violence, and some of which are laws against abuse of power. All of those laws act as breaks on the free capitalist market, making it strictly speaking non-free, and all of them require a government to enforce them.
An unregulated capitalist market has very rarely existed, and I'd say that's a good thing.
Very true. Isn't it great, therefore, that we have so many other choices?
Those choices are given to you by a controlled, regulated market.
It depends on the availability of resources, of course. However, in any capitalist market "non-owners" have the opportunity to acquire resources, thereby creating new choices. The only ones who seem to have a problem with that are those who are unable or unwilling to be productive.
For certain values of 'capitalist market', i.e. ones which have enough regulations to keep cartels, monopolies and other protection rackets restrained, this holds roughly true. That's why we have the social contract called government which so many affect to despise while they live under its wing.
In a completely free unregulated capitalist market, the man who starts with the biggest stick wins, until someone even more brutal comes along. See Somalia.
Are you sure the IPhone can act as a Wi-Fi access point?
Mac OS X can, so there's no reason an iPhone couldn't. It would use up the battery very quickly though if you're also using the radio for a 3G signal.
I was just going by the Moonlight website, which says it has not yet reached parity with 2.0 in all areas. From their website, at present their 2.0 version is in Alpha, not beta, or a final release:
Mooonlight 2.0 Alpha - Silverlight 2.0 compatible engine.
So, for example does it support PlayReady just now? From the Microsoft website it doesn't look like it:
Silverlight 2 will provide digital rights management support built on Microsoft PlayReadyâ content access technology, on Windows and Mac. For Silverlight-compatible playback on Linux we are discussing possible approaches with Novell, which is developing a Silverlight-compatible implementation for Linux.
There's a promise that it will someday support it, that's not the same as supporting it now.
Any features in Silverlight which Moonlight isn't going to be able to implement?
It really isn't a question of not going to be able to - really most things are technically possible, it's a question of whether I as a consumer and developer trust Microsoft to a) Allow other operating systems to work just as well as Windows, b) Not choke off support later at a time of their choosing to assert control over the platform's direction (see PlaysForSure, Java, IE Mac, etc).
The answer to both is no, based on their past actions.
Why do you think HTML 5 won't be implemented with a binary plugin?
For the user/developer doesn't matter if it is done as a binary plugin, so long as it is supported in all mainstream browsers (i.e. not a separate plugin download), and is not controlled by one vendor. I don't want either Microsoft or Adobe to be in charge of all the content I produce, and gatekeepers for tools to manipulate that content - that's why I prefer HTML.
But again, you're attempting to argue about whether things are technically similar - I don't think anyone would argue that Silverlight is somehow technically hobbled, or inferior technology, it's evidently not. Its credibility is however hobbled by the past actions of Microsoft and the attitudes of the current CEO of your company.