I bet that they are member of the Google android manufacturer club or whatever name they use like Open Hanset Alliance. There were a number of articles documenting Google trend to reduce Android fragmentation. It leads them to go away from the open source philosophy and values.
I bet that Huawei is simply caving on this pressure with the same effect on the open source side.
Programmers are the bottleneck of the digital economy. Scare and valuable resources. So the master plan looks good!
1. Design a fun and easy language to develop powerful applications 2. Get the kids hooked on it (meaning Dad and Mom has to pay to by a Mac AND the school too) 3. Say: hey! you can put your first app on the AppStore and maybe earn monies 4. Get more adult programmers trained on Apple only dev env. 5. $$$ 6. Create another new and fun and easier language and deprecate the previous one 7. Sell migration tools and other training courses 8. $$$
Let us invent another new binary format, that is self contained (pictures, media, etc) with a rich API. Each page would be a sigle file that coulb be cached by the browser. Nobody would be able to twick its content once deployed. Of course we would need to have a specific editor to edit and compile it.
MMmmm and as it will be very fast, let us call it Flash.
Oh and by the way, as I do not expect a native implementation I would suggest to add it as a plugin first.
The dangers that Tim Berner Lee describes are real. He call them gatekeepers. They are plain old monopolies. This is this classical situation when companies are taking advantage of infrastructures with decreasing marginal costs (e.g. rails). In the case of digital economy, marginal costs goes down to almost zero. That enables the creation and existence of monster sized companies with monster profits. On top of that their influence through search functions and social medias on public opinion is tremendously dangerous.
The novelty here is what Jean Tirole calls the biface markets where companies provide free services that are subsidised by other services (ads).
What (liberals) people fail to see is that all this is the very consequence of the founding principles of the Internet: a network without boundaries that refuses to regulate the service level. Or, a packet is worth another packet and that is all that count. This is dogma. This pure form of liberalism inevitably create almost pure monopolies. Only powerful authoritarian states as China are able to push back and impose their conditions.
The heart of the problem is that the real Internet governance is stopping at IP / UDP / TCP and DNS level. All the other RFC are not enforced. In a normal network, some general functions such as search (Google), directory (Facebook) would be part of the infrastructure and a common services. Communication services (chat, calls) would a real obligation of interoperability, compliance and interconnection. In a sane world, you could post on Facebook using your Google+ account maybe against a subscription.
SPAM is the other consequences of free services everywhere. No accountability for any e-mail sender that sends millions of fake e-mail. No real administration of this communication service.
By refusing to regulate and administrate on service level in the name of "innovation" we create a "winner take all" situation and let companies outgrow public authorities power's. We also create a space where abuser can cheat people using these free services. And to thank the authorities, GAFA compagnies are even "optimizing" their taxe - or to say it plainly - evading legally taxes and let the bridges and road crumble in the US.
It is true that so much has been created by this deregulation. I do not believe that was a bad thing at the beginning: liberalism is efficient usually more efficient in emerging markets. But now, part of the Internet is becoming mature enough so public authorities could put their nose back in the fray and regulate net neutrality - not at the network level but at the SERVICE level.
But this is sooo unamerican.
And many think that private sector > public sector
You have a bunch of guys that advocate for net neutrality for good reasons but then it kills off all attempts to have Internet wide class of service. Then you have the most powerful value added service provide taking over a lot of core Internet with private interconnects, AI and a lot of smart things. Then it offers... a diffenciated class of service with a different price
And you know what? The other cloud provider CANNOT offer the same because there is not Internet wide class of service !!!
Would you block foreign numbers? That would basically break the international telephone system. But I agree that some kind of way to test if a foreign number is legit is quite needed.
Well no that is not silly at all. Modern video codecs are in fact a toolbox containing different techniques that are more suited for such r such type of scenes. - action movies would have better movment over definition - still sequences - sequences where only part of the scene is moving.
Using deep neural network to 1- identify which type of scene and adjust codec settings on the fly 2- compare the rendering to the original uncompressed version 3- readjust if necessary and learn from the situation
This move from Mozilla foundation is consistent with what we have seen happening with Chrome, Edge. It has been initiated long by Apple which decided to drop flash support on their mobile device.
The motivation of these move are well known: less battery usage, more security. For general public it is justified.
However there are a whole range of corporate application that relied and still rely on plug-ins. Not just flash. So deep down, by not providing at least a supported version of browser with plugin, the industry is building a monolithic platform...again. Single language, single platform. Its about control not user choice.
The argument that HTML5 is now mature enough does not fly very far. Mature enough for common web app sure. But it you start using advanced feature such as WebRTC, you'll start seeing glitches and incompatibilities that pushes some service to advertize "please use Chrome"...
The fact is that now people in general (users, developers and software editors) are techno racists. They want security and despite technology that is not 'like them'. So the prefer to slam the door and drop the plugins and by decree ban any foreign technology from our beloved HTML / JS free platform.
This is unfortunately consistent with the behavior of the political world of today...
[rant on] It strikes me that Google hires probably the brightest minds and do not grasp basics of IT: different people have different needs!
While it is acceptable to start restricting an securing web browser by disabling some features and external plugins for general public, it is quite unacceptable NOT to leave any option but not to upgrade for specialized use. I still did not get over NPAPI deprecation. Companies like mine have built specialized solutions around plugins and/or flash and with Google ecosystem (and with Apple one) we have NO choice.
As they represents a sizeable chunk of the market. It's a PROBLEM.
We had to basically rebuild our own web browser with NPAPI support to continue our business.
I can imagine how flash based solutions companies are thrilled about this announcement. And then - the question: what is the procedure to make it into the 'whitelist'. Google is turning into nanny state organization. Seems that they upgraded their motto as well
'Don't do evil' -> 'We do you good (even against your wish)
At least, the reviled Microsoft is doing a fine job ensuing good compatibility with their decade old WIn32 API. The perfect example is ActiveX support that has been removed from WIn10 / EDGE browser. But Win10 ships with Internet Explorer that HAS kept the active X support.
I can here teams of young (male virgin?) bright devs shrieking and getting excited by the newest JS bla bla framework and sighting when having to support legacy code. What a turn off for them !
But....
To me, plugins where not only 'small add-ons'. They represented a web compound documents model, open toward other technologies.
Pure HTML5 is a 'la pensée unique', 'there is no alternative' way.
It reflects in the code how insecure people feel about 'foreign' things more generally and it is sad.
I remember when apple rolled out iOS 8 and our web app broke (it was a simple form with buttons !)
Also when you are using advanced feature such as webrtc, then you have to block users for loading the page with Safari or Internet Explorer. I am sorry but while on paper HTML5 is the best approach, it does not yet offer the uniform API an behavior that web developper need to save time and money.
I agree except on the development time will decrea
on
A Farewell To Flash
·
· Score: 2
I am all for HTML5 improved support and standard but our experence with various HTML5 implementation is that developpers actually spend a LOT of time accomodating the differences between browsers and browser versions.
Not only between mobile and desktop but between different browsers and different version of the SAME browser.
Different implementations of the same standards are almost always breaking the code.
So on the contrary using HTML5 increases the development time and maintenance cost as web sites or web apps have to be "corrected" to follow browser support or interpretation of HTML5.
In comparison, such maintenance for flash applications is close to nil even flash was upgraded from version 5 to version 11.
However, I agree that flash beiing proprietary, it is not the way to go now.
It is probable that you can break down your algorithm -(I do not mean code) into a pipeline of elementary processing and find implementations (IP) for each of them.
to give out an estimate: - subdivise your algorithm into simpler pieces - find for each simple piece how it can or could be implemented in hardware and the complexity of each piece. - do the sum.
Indeed an hardware designer or consultant would be of a great help here.
The press knows how to run Microsoft ... good !
on
Break Microsoft Up
·
· Score: 1
Hey its AMAZING to see so many people in the tech press that know exactly how to run microsoft. I thought that CEO of this kind of giant company were pretty difficult to find. Its a relief to see that there are plenty of candidate for the position...
Seriously, in a perfect world, I would force such people to open a successfull bakery before being granted the right to send 'advises' to entrepreneurs or company bosses.
But of course, Google's people know better and have more money. And the list can go on. Dart as a replacement of javascript. Protocol buffer as replacement of ASN.1, SPDY to replace HTTP. With Jingle google tried to replace SIP protocol as well but at least the extended an existing standard but they dropped the support when stopping Google talk. For couse everyting is free, open source and Not Evil. So why bother?
Well as an aging network engineer, I am starting to be fed up with such "innovations". More consensus building would be refreshing.
French telecommunication regulator is right to try to impose operator burdends on Skype.
1/ More and more people are adopting this service a primary phone service because of SkypeIn and SkypeOut feature. This means that there will be more and more case where user will need to make emergency calls. This lack of emergency call support is a shame. So the post above is... very shortsighted. One day you may need it yourseff.
2/ VOIP Technology / Skype are more and more displacing regular phones. They play the same role so they need somehow to be regulated in the same manner. There is in France a declarative licence for small telcos, the so called "L33-1". I know a couple of medium sized company operating VoIP service that applied to this without any problem. So it is not like it is unbearable for companies like Microsoft.
3/ I am so amazed by comment like: Skype should cut skype in/out, or avoid physical presence in France (replace by country xxx if you want) to avoid any form of regulation.
Damn ! these regulations are non discriminatory and made for the common good. Its like on the road, if you have no rules, you end up with a dysfunctional traffic. I see in all these comment some kind of selfish, short sighted spirit, 'I want the lowest cost regardless the consequences" that is a worrying trend.
Just because someone sees the work "governement", "regulation" they jump to the roof, say its bad, andy freedom and they try to avoid it without even pondering the consequences or the actual need for regulation. I see this ultimately as some kind of subtul selfishness.
As much as I agree that freedom and freedom to innovate should be preserved and fostered, it should not be a the cost of forgetting the notion of common good.
yeah an just an API so... imagine a socket API that does not allow you to connect to a server because the underlying protocols are not yet compatible. THAT would be useful.
Don't get me wrong: webrtc is a good thing (well would be better if they chose H.264 for interoperating with the rest of the world) but networking and protocols are now getting over 30 years old and its time that when an standard API is proposed, the interop work is done before so application developpers can really thrive doing their business. Not debugging details of DTS-TLS or STUN / ICE obscure stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
These devices may not be able to take pictures but they still measure speed. And the results are damning:
They detect a 30 % increase [fr] of rides above the speed limit. The lessons of all this are clear:
Excellent!
I bet that they are member of the Google android manufacturer club or whatever name they use like Open Hanset Alliance. There were a number of articles documenting Google trend to reduce Android fragmentation. It leads them to go away from the open source philosophy and values.
I bet that Huawei is simply caving on this pressure with the same effect on the open source side.
Good move from Apple serving his own interests !
Programmers are the bottleneck of the digital economy. Scare and valuable resources. So the master plan looks good!
1. Design a fun and easy language to develop powerful applications
2. Get the kids hooked on it (meaning Dad and Mom has to pay to by a Mac AND the school too)
3. Say: hey! you can put your first app on the AppStore and maybe earn monies
4. Get more adult programmers trained on Apple only dev env.
5. $$$
6. Create another new and fun and easier language and deprecate the previous one
7. Sell migration tools and other training courses
8. $$$
Let us invent another new binary format, that is self contained (pictures, media, etc) with a rich API.
Each page would be a sigle file that coulb be cached by the browser. Nobody would be able to twick its content once deployed.
Of course we would need to have a specific editor to edit and compile it.
MMmmm and as it will be very fast, let us call it Flash.
Oh and by the way, as I do not expect a native implementation I would suggest to add it as a plugin first.
So true ...
Both are very fond of control and walled gardens.
The dangers that Tim Berner Lee describes are real. He call them gatekeepers. They are plain old monopolies. This is this classical situation when companies are taking advantage of infrastructures with decreasing marginal costs (e.g. rails). In the case of digital economy, marginal costs goes down to almost zero. That enables the creation and existence of monster sized companies with monster profits. On top of that their influence through search functions and social medias on public opinion is tremendously dangerous.
The novelty here is what Jean Tirole calls the biface markets where companies provide free services that are subsidised by other services (ads).
What (liberals) people fail to see is that all this is the very consequence of the founding principles of the Internet: a network without boundaries that refuses to regulate the service level. Or, a packet is worth another packet and that is all that count. This is dogma. This pure form of liberalism inevitably create almost pure monopolies. Only powerful authoritarian states as China are able to push back and impose their conditions.
The heart of the problem is that the real Internet governance is stopping at IP / UDP / TCP and DNS level. All the other RFC are not enforced. In a normal network, some general functions such as search (Google), directory (Facebook) would be part of the infrastructure and a common services. Communication services (chat, calls) would a real obligation of interoperability, compliance and interconnection. In a sane world, you could post on Facebook using your Google+ account maybe against a subscription.
SPAM is the other consequences of free services everywhere. No accountability for any e-mail sender that sends millions of fake e-mail. No real administration of this communication service.
By refusing to regulate and administrate on service level in the name of "innovation" we create a "winner take all" situation and let companies outgrow public authorities power's. We also create a space where abuser can cheat people using these free services. And to thank the authorities, GAFA compagnies are even "optimizing" their taxe - or to say it plainly - evading legally taxes and let the bridges and road crumble in the US.
It is true that so much has been created by this deregulation. I do not believe that was a bad thing at the beginning: liberalism is efficient usually more efficient in emerging markets. But now, part of the Internet is becoming mature enough so public authorities could put their nose back in the fray and regulate net neutrality - not at the network level but at the SERVICE level.
But this is sooo unamerican.
And many think that private sector > public sector
And we would need a worldwide consensus anyway.
Not gonna happen soon.
Mwahahahh ! AAhahahahha ! Lol !
21st century is WONDERFUL
You have a bunch of guys that advocate for net neutrality for good reasons but then it kills off all attempts to have Internet wide class of service. ... a diffenciated class of service with a different price
Then you have the most powerful value added service provide taking over a lot of core Internet with private interconnects, AI and a lot of smart things. Then it offers
And you know what? The other cloud provider CANNOT offer the same because there is not Internet wide class of service !!!
MORT DE RIRE !
Signed: an old telco engineer
I wonder how they would be considered as financial institution ?
Would you block foreign numbers? That would basically break the international telephone system.
But I agree that some kind of way to test if a foreign number is legit is quite needed.
Well no that is not silly at all. Modern video codecs are in fact a toolbox containing different techniques that are more suited for such r such type of scenes.
- action movies would have better movment over definition
- still sequences
- sequences where only part of the scene is moving.
Using deep neural network to
1- identify which type of scene and adjust codec settings on the fly
2- compare the rendering to the original uncompressed version
3- readjust if necessary and learn from the situation
would be a breakthrough IMHO.
This move from Mozilla foundation is consistent with what we have seen happening with Chrome, Edge. It has been initiated long by Apple which decided to drop flash support on their mobile device.
The motivation of these move are well known: less battery usage, more security. For general public it is justified.
However there are a whole range of corporate application that relied and still rely on plug-ins. Not just flash. So deep down, by not providing at least a supported version of browser with plugin, the industry is building a monolithic platform ...again. Single language, single platform. Its about control not user choice.
The argument that HTML5 is now mature enough does not fly very far. Mature enough for common web app sure. But it you start using advanced feature such as WebRTC, you'll start seeing glitches and incompatibilities that pushes some service to advertize "please use Chrome" ...
The fact is that now people in general (users, developers and software editors) are techno racists. They want security and despite technology that is not 'like them'. So the prefer to slam the door and drop the plugins and by decree ban any foreign technology from our beloved HTML / JS free platform.
This is unfortunately consistent with the behavior of the political world of today ...
It may create a new life form. And possibily human extinction as a minor side effect!
[rant on] It strikes me that Google hires probably the brightest minds and do not grasp basics of IT: different people have different needs!
While it is acceptable to start restricting an securing web browser by disabling some features and external plugins for general public, it is quite unacceptable NOT to leave any option but not to upgrade for specialized use. I still did not get over NPAPI deprecation. Companies like mine have built specialized solutions around plugins and/or flash and with Google ecosystem (and with Apple one) we have NO choice.
As they represents a sizeable chunk of the market. It's a PROBLEM.
We had to basically rebuild our own web browser with NPAPI support to continue our business.
https://github.com/operationiv... (for those interested)
I can imagine how flash based solutions companies are thrilled about this announcement. And then - the question: what is the procedure to make it into the 'whitelist'. Google is turning into nanny state organization. Seems that they upgraded their motto as well
'Don't do evil' -> 'We do you good (even against your wish)
At least, the reviled Microsoft is doing a fine job ensuing good compatibility with their decade old WIn32 API. The perfect example is ActiveX support that has been removed from WIn10 / EDGE browser. But Win10 ships with Internet Explorer that HAS kept the active X support.
I can here teams of young (male virgin?) bright devs shrieking and getting excited by the newest JS bla bla framework and sighting when having to support legacy code. What a turn off for them !
But ....
To me, plugins where not only 'small add-ons'. They represented a web compound documents model, open toward other technologies.
Pure HTML5 is a 'la pensée unique', 'there is no alternative' way.
It reflects in the code how insecure people feel about 'foreign' things more generally and it is sad.
[/rant finished]
That has been attempted several times. One attempt is compact HTML
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE...
I remember when apple rolled out iOS 8 and our web app broke (it was a simple form with buttons !)
Also when you are using advanced feature such as webrtc, then you have to block users for loading the page with Safari or Internet Explorer. I am sorry but while on paper HTML5 is the best approach, it does not yet offer the uniform API an behavior that web developper need to save time and money.
I am all for HTML5 improved support and standard but our experence with various HTML5 implementation is that developpers actually spend a LOT of time accomodating the differences between browsers and browser versions.
Not only between mobile and desktop but between different browsers and different version of the SAME browser.
Different implementations of the same standards are almost always breaking the code.
So on the contrary using HTML5 increases the development time and maintenance cost as web sites or web apps have to be "corrected" to follow browser support or interpretation of HTML5.
In comparison, such maintenance for flash applications is close to nil even flash was upgraded from version 5 to version 11.
However, I agree that flash beiing proprietary, it is not the way to go now.
Hello,
It is probable that you can break down your algorithm -(I do not mean code) into a pipeline of elementary processing and find implementations (IP) for each of them.
to give out an estimate:
- subdivise your algorithm into simpler pieces
- find for each simple piece how it can or could be implemented in hardware and the complexity of each piece.
- do the sum.
Indeed an hardware designer or consultant would be of a great help here.
Hey its AMAZING to see so many people in the tech press that know exactly how to run microsoft. I thought that CEO of this kind of giant company were pretty difficult to find. Its a relief to see that there are plenty of candidate for the position ...
Seriously, in a perfect world, I would force such people to open a successfull bakery before being granted the right to send 'advises' to entrepreneurs or company bosses.
Games, document sharing, aptics, real time text chat.
Here we are again.
After VP8, protocol buffer, Google is a it again providing some free replacement of some existing standard (DTLS here http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4347.txt)
But of course, Google's people know better and have more money. And the list can go on. Dart as a replacement of javascript. Protocol buffer as replacement of ASN.1, SPDY to replace HTTP. With Jingle google tried to replace SIP protocol as well but at least the extended an existing standard but they dropped the support when stopping Google talk. For couse everyting is free, open source and Not Evil. So why bother?
Well as an aging network engineer, I am starting to be fed up with such "innovations". More consensus building would be refreshing.
French telecommunication regulator is right to try to impose operator burdends on Skype.
1/ More and more people are adopting this service a primary phone service because of SkypeIn and SkypeOut feature. This means that there will be more and more case where user will need to make emergency calls. This lack of emergency call support is a shame. So the post above is ... very shortsighted. One day you may need it yourseff.
2/ VOIP Technology / Skype are more and more displacing regular phones. They play the same role so they need somehow to be regulated in the same manner. There is in France a declarative licence for small telcos, the so called "L33-1". I know a couple of medium sized company operating VoIP service that applied to this without any problem. So it is not like it is unbearable for companies like Microsoft.
3/ I am so amazed by comment like: Skype should cut skype in/out, or avoid physical presence in France (replace by country xxx if you want) to avoid any form of regulation.
Damn ! these regulations are non discriminatory and made for the common good. Its like on the road, if you have no rules, you end up with a dysfunctional traffic. I see in all these comment some kind of selfish, short sighted spirit, 'I want the lowest cost regardless the consequences" that is a worrying trend.
Just because someone sees the work "governement", "regulation" they jump to the roof, say its bad, andy freedom and they try to avoid it without even pondering the consequences or the actual need for regulation. I see this ultimately as some kind of subtul selfishness.
As much as I agree that freedom and freedom to innovate should be preserved and fostered, it should not be a the cost of forgetting the notion of common good.
yeah an just an API so ... imagine a socket API that does not allow you to connect to a server because the underlying protocols are not yet compatible. THAT would be useful.
Don't get me wrong: webrtc is a good thing (well would be better if they chose H.264 for interoperating with the rest of the world) but networking and protocols are now getting over 30 years old and its time that when an standard API is proposed, the interop work is done before so application developpers can really thrive doing their business. Not debugging details of DTS-TLS or STUN / ICE obscure stuff.
HTML5 is supposed to be a standard, no? Interoperbility is long overdue. That should have been done in the first place.