It used to and them someone announced a crack that exploited Linux. It's annoying they dumped support but completely understandable in the circumstances. Either they support the minuscule number of users who need Linux and psn and they leave the door wide open pirates or they don't. The choice they made was regrettable but a no brainer.
Input content *will* usually have been compressed with H264. Even the likes of Google will find itself transcoding 99% of its content into VP8 from some other codec. That might suck for comparison tests but its a fact of life.
Microsoft has never been into making their tools cross-platform because their real interest is in promoting their own platform. As long as they continue down that route, I think the user base of their development tools will continue to dwindle.
The same could be said of Apple and with the same observation. Android is easily the most developer friendly platform out there (in terms of tools, fees, open source etc.) which in itself might not win the battle, but it will certainly encourage a lot of interesting apps to appear on the platform.
Ditto for MIPS. It's practically impossible to write code for some random MIPS chipset without being provided with the full build config, patches, drivers etc. That's probably a symptom of the space MIPS lives in - embedded devices where every chipset maker and their uncle produces a MIPS variant, some with bespoke hardware.
The PC is lucky that it's development has been so linear. Occasionally the path might branch off down a few competing technologies but usually one of them hits a dead end or they converge back together or they both become legacy and stable.
Yeah, exactly. We issue them with monopoly powers, so they can continue to enrich our culture. What do they do? They sit on them, let them stagnate, and when somebody actually does act in the interest of the public, and makes them available on platforms the original provider has never supported nor, it seems, ever intends to, they shut him down.
How do you know that Sony hadn't licenced versions for those platforms? After all Lemmings is on virtually every platform under the sun (including mobile phones) so why is that so hard to believe?
Even if they weren't planning on doing it (unlikely) it is still their IP to do with as they please. I imagine also that the person who ported Lemmings was also under licence in the first place and therefore should have paid more attention when releasing copies for other platforms.
Why does it terminate the plugin after a fixed number of seconds of unresponsiveness? It would be far more robust to have it default to some value, and the user themselves would be able to adjust the duration as desired in the application settings than arbitrarily choose a time that the end user will just have to live with.
It picks some arbitrary value because the browser is not psychic. It can't tell the difference between a plugin which is dead and one which is unresponsive. So it picks some reasonable value and assumes that once the plugin passes over that line that its dead. Unfortunately things like low memory, swap, CPU consumption elsewhere could mean the plugin takes longer to respond than normal and gets clobbered.
Funnily enough Firefox finds itself in the same pickle that OLE2 used to have on Windows. In OLE2 you can embed an object running from one process into a window of another process. Works well enough except for times when the object server goes dead and the host is trying to do a window resize or whatnot. The host can't resize because commands to the object are timing out. MFC used to install a message filter for this situation which kicked in too fast when the embedded object became unresponsive leading to a meaningless Cancel / Retry message appearing. Firefox has discovered its own version of the same issue.
In the real world, studies have shown the two perform quite similarly, actually. Also, at the rate VP8 adoption is going MPEG is going to have to sue a lot of people, and they're going to lose in public image among other things.
No, they'll just sue a couple prominent users of the technology, receive a squillion dollars in punitive damages and then everyone else cough up whatever licence fees bring them into compliance. It's obvious from various postings that VP8 is dangerously close to H264 in a number of ways so litigation is a very real threat. Furthermore, if it does turn into a legal battle that ultimately VP8 loses, there is no reason whatsover to continue using it since H264 is the industry standard.
It's very interesting that Google has their kill switch. Apple fanboys like to claim security in Apple's control over the App Store. Does this mean the big, bad spectre of malicious Marketplace apps takes on less importance?
I expect most online store / services of this nature have a killswitch or the means to "update" an app into oblivion. Even Apple's.
It would be easy to slip something malicious past Apple's approval process - an embedded crypto key which is actually executable code, a web call which "accidentally" allows the app to be bootstrapped, an image library which contains a buffer overflow etc. Anything that allows an app to pass the approval process, do something useful to gain lots of users and then after some time trigger its payload whatever it is. Common sense would suggest Apple have a kill switch for that possibility.
I hated UAC in Vista as much as the next person (plenty of evidence for that in my posting history) but there is no denying that it had an impact on security. My greatest gripe is I couldn't train UAC to ignore apps I knew were lax but keep enforcement for those that weren't.
Even so UAC has been good for Windows. Apps which were misbehaving had to fix themselves or risk alienating their users. By the time Windows 7 turned up, most apps were good citizens. Same could happen on Android - start punishing egregious permissions requests and apps are less likely to request them. Furthermore I think users have the right to deny certain actions even if they have installed the app. For example, an app might say it needs access to dial telephone numbers but I see no reason I shouldn't be able to overrule that action by policy or by an explicit request dialog.
Google's marketplace might be predominant but it is not the only way to install apps on your phone. If you don't like the conditions you agree to for using marketplace, don't get your apps from there. There are choices.
Personally I would be fine using marketplace until such time as they decide to yank content for reasons other than malicious software.
And weren't most of us ranting about how even DRM and "Trusted Computing" are bad because someone else gets to decide what you can or can't run on your computer? When did _that_ become good if it's Google doing it?
While I think a kill button could be abused, I think it is still a necessity for any service of this nature. Of course if you don't want Google nuking your apps, don't get them from the marketplace.
I'd add that Firefox possesses a similar ability to block apps and has exercised it, disabling a Java plugin which it deemed to be a risk. They even maintain a blocklist so that if an app proved to be buggy / malicious they can just kill it.
I thought I could run any app I wanted? That is what you people told me.
You can run any app you want. Just don't get it from the marketplace or you will be subject to the T&Cs of the marketplace.
And 20% malicious apps? As if there weren't enough problems getting iphone 4s as it is....
That figure refers to apps that ask for permissions they don't need, not malicious apps. Android has a finegrained permission model and some apps ask for more things than they require, things that could potentially be used for malicious purposes. Personally I think the model is sound but the implementation could do with more safeguards, possibly something akin to UAC in Windows for certain operations so that the user is always aware of what apps are doing.
Conclusion: Steve Jobs was right; flash doesn't belong on phones and I'm glad he is killing it, even if he is still an annoying control freak.
Lots of bog standard HTML web pages feature tiny buttons so should we conclude that web browsing is a waste of time on phones? Or could it be that some web sites need to be redesigned.
It's exactly the same with Flash. Some apps will work while others expect higher resolutions or features that phones don't support.
Had this been GPL, the person who rewrote significant portions of the software would have to have released his derivative works as GPL. He could have sold his portion of the software under any license, but the work as a whole would have to be GPL. The company that bought the rights to the software would have to remove any GPL portion, or release the entire thing (including proprietary addons) under GPL.
Not at all. The Firefox extension could have been under GPL in its entireity, including the part that runs the proprietary executable which is not under GPL. There would be no obligation to disclose that proprietary code because it would reside in a separate executable.
Before I visited Thailand for the first time I ordered some Thai currency from my local bank. Their paper notes features their King Bhumibol on one side but the odd thing was how they drew him with big jug ears poking out in a lopsided way. I thought it was odd but it kind of reminded me of some carvings of Bhudda so I thought it was some cultural thing.
Then when I get there I see photographs of his face plastered everywhere. And guess what - he just has big jug ears that stick out lopsidedly. So I guess the bank note engraver was working off a photograph.
Anyway Thailands official reverence of their king borders on the absurd. If the king is as revered as some claim then there shouldn't be any defamatory sites about him in the first place, especially considering the laws in place. And if he isn't so revered perhaps they should be kicking him to touch, or pressuring him to step aside.
AOL are like King Midas except everything they touch turns to shit. Netscape, CompuServe, Mapquest, Bebo et al. They buy these companies for their innovation and technology which they promptly smother until it is dead. AOL is conservative, risk averse, marketing driven company and inflicting that culture on acquisitions negates the reasons for buying them out in the first place.
You're kidding I hope. Discs cost money to produce, master, protect (aacs/BD+), replicate, print, package, ship, (over/under) stock with returns & defects to deal with. These costs must easily account for $4 of the cost of a wholesale title.
I would be very surprised if digital downloads came anywhere close to those costs. And certainly when the DRM is proprietary & locked to one vendor I do not see why anyone would be mad enough to lock themselves to a platform anyway.
I think digital will come of age when a SINGLE DRM is adopted by enough manufacturers to force an industry standard. Even then Blu Ray is going to be around for years to come.
You could plug an external BD drive into a Mac Mini and run Windows 7 for it. But if you are going to go that effort, may as well not bother with Apple in the first place. You could buy a (pretty ugly) Dell Zino with Blu Ray for $499, and I'm sure an Asus Eee Box option will appear sooner than later.
Blu Ray isn't dead, and when the inevitable happens (as with any tech), there are ways and means of preserving your content. The same is not true of most digital download services. If your service dies, so does your content.
That wouldn't be so bad if digital downloads were significantly cheaper to purchase than physical content but they're not.
It's trying to invoke kinetic and connect in one word. Some marketing drone must be celebrating with a line of coke at their awesome ability to combine words.
I take issue with this last line. I LIKE c#/.net. If I get to use it in more places, this is a good thing.
What about when only a photo app in a distribution uses C#/.NET and maintainers are forced to support the entire Mono runtime framework, QA, testing, security fixes etc. for the sake of that one app, bloating the installation footprint in the process. Not to mention the looming threat of litigation that always follows Mono.
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It used to and them someone announced a crack that exploited Linux. It's annoying they dumped support but completely understandable in the circumstances. Either they support the minuscule number of users who need Linux and psn and they leave the door wide open pirates or they don't. The choice they made was regrettable but a no brainer.
Input content *will* usually have been compressed with H264. Even the likes of Google will find itself transcoding 99% of its content into VP8 from some other codec. That might suck for comparison tests but its a fact of life.
The same could be said of Apple and with the same observation. Android is easily the most developer friendly platform out there (in terms of tools, fees, open source etc.) which in itself might not win the battle, but it will certainly encourage a lot of interesting apps to appear on the platform.
The PC is lucky that it's development has been so linear. Occasionally the path might branch off down a few competing technologies but usually one of them hits a dead end or they converge back together or they both become legacy and stable.
And if they want to take pictures closer they could always jump out of their piloted vessel and swim without breaking the law.
Which over 20 years is hardly a huge amount.
How do you know that Sony hadn't licenced versions for those platforms? After all Lemmings is on virtually every platform under the sun (including mobile phones) so why is that so hard to believe?
Even if they weren't planning on doing it (unlikely) it is still their IP to do with as they please. I imagine also that the person who ported Lemmings was also under licence in the first place and therefore should have paid more attention when releasing copies for other platforms.
Yeah fuck you Sony for protecting your intellectual property!
It picks some arbitrary value because the browser is not psychic. It can't tell the difference between a plugin which is dead and one which is unresponsive. So it picks some reasonable value and assumes that once the plugin passes over that line that its dead. Unfortunately things like low memory, swap, CPU consumption elsewhere could mean the plugin takes longer to respond than normal and gets clobbered.
Funnily enough Firefox finds itself in the same pickle that OLE2 used to have on Windows. In OLE2 you can embed an object running from one process into a window of another process. Works well enough except for times when the object server goes dead and the host is trying to do a window resize or whatnot. The host can't resize because commands to the object are timing out. MFC used to install a message filter for this situation which kicked in too fast when the embedded object became unresponsive leading to a meaningless Cancel / Retry message appearing. Firefox has discovered its own version of the same issue.
No, they'll just sue a couple prominent users of the technology, receive a squillion dollars in punitive damages and then everyone else cough up whatever licence fees bring them into compliance. It's obvious from various postings that VP8 is dangerously close to H264 in a number of ways so litigation is a very real threat. Furthermore, if it does turn into a legal battle that ultimately VP8 loses, there is no reason whatsover to continue using it since H264 is the industry standard.
I expect most online store / services of this nature have a killswitch or the means to "update" an app into oblivion. Even Apple's.
It would be easy to slip something malicious past Apple's approval process - an embedded crypto key which is actually executable code, a web call which "accidentally" allows the app to be bootstrapped, an image library which contains a buffer overflow etc. Anything that allows an app to pass the approval process, do something useful to gain lots of users and then after some time trigger its payload whatever it is. Common sense would suggest Apple have a kill switch for that possibility.
Even so UAC has been good for Windows. Apps which were misbehaving had to fix themselves or risk alienating their users. By the time Windows 7 turned up, most apps were good citizens. Same could happen on Android - start punishing egregious permissions requests and apps are less likely to request them. Furthermore I think users have the right to deny certain actions even if they have installed the app. For example, an app might say it needs access to dial telephone numbers but I see no reason I shouldn't be able to overrule that action by policy or by an explicit request dialog.
Personally I would be fine using marketplace until such time as they decide to yank content for reasons other than malicious software.
While I think a kill button could be abused, I think it is still a necessity for any service of this nature. Of course if you don't want Google nuking your apps, don't get them from the marketplace.
I'd add that Firefox possesses a similar ability to block apps and has exercised it, disabling a Java plugin which it deemed to be a risk. They even maintain a blocklist so that if an app proved to be buggy / malicious they can just kill it.
You can run any app you want. Just don't get it from the marketplace or you will be subject to the T&Cs of the marketplace.
And 20% malicious apps? As if there weren't enough problems getting iphone 4s as it is....
That figure refers to apps that ask for permissions they don't need, not malicious apps. Android has a finegrained permission model and some apps ask for more things than they require, things that could potentially be used for malicious purposes. Personally I think the model is sound but the implementation could do with more safeguards, possibly something akin to UAC in Windows for certain operations so that the user is always aware of what apps are doing.
Lots of bog standard HTML web pages feature tiny buttons so should we conclude that web browsing is a waste of time on phones? Or could it be that some web sites need to be redesigned.
It's exactly the same with Flash. Some apps will work while others expect higher resolutions or features that phones don't support.
Not at all. The Firefox extension could have been under GPL in its entireity, including the part that runs the proprietary executable which is not under GPL. There would be no obligation to disclose that proprietary code because it would reside in a separate executable.
Then when I get there I see photographs of his face plastered everywhere. And guess what - he just has big jug ears that stick out lopsidedly. So I guess the bank note engraver was working off a photograph.
Anyway Thailands official reverence of their king borders on the absurd. If the king is as revered as some claim then there shouldn't be any defamatory sites about him in the first place, especially considering the laws in place. And if he isn't so revered perhaps they should be kicking him to touch, or pressuring him to step aside.
My real name is P'ying O'hanrah'O'hanrahan von Frankfurt so you can imagine the problems I have.
AOL are like King Midas except everything they touch turns to shit. Netscape, CompuServe, Mapquest, Bebo et al. They buy these companies for their innovation and technology which they promptly smother until it is dead. AOL is conservative, risk averse, marketing driven company and inflicting that culture on acquisitions negates the reasons for buying them out in the first place.
I would be very surprised if digital downloads came anywhere close to those costs. And certainly when the DRM is proprietary & locked to one vendor I do not see why anyone would be mad enough to lock themselves to a platform anyway.
I think digital will come of age when a SINGLE DRM is adopted by enough manufacturers to force an industry standard. Even then Blu Ray is going to be around for years to come.
You could plug an external BD drive into a Mac Mini and run Windows 7 for it. But if you are going to go that effort, may as well not bother with Apple in the first place. You could buy a (pretty ugly) Dell Zino with Blu Ray for $499, and I'm sure an Asus Eee Box option will appear sooner than later.
Blu Ray isn't dead, and when the inevitable happens (as with any tech), there are ways and means of preserving your content. The same is not true of most digital download services. If your service dies, so does your content.
That wouldn't be so bad if digital downloads were significantly cheaper to purchase than physical content but they're not.
It's trying to invoke kinetic and connect in one word. Some marketing drone must be celebrating with a line of coke at their awesome ability to combine words.
What about when only a photo app in a distribution uses C#/.NET and maintainers are forced to support the entire Mono runtime framework, QA, testing, security fixes etc. for the sake of that one app, bloating the installation footprint in the process. Not to mention the looming threat of litigation that always follows Mono.