The security on a smart phone isn't any worse (in many cases better, even) than that on most people's personal computers. The OS question is irrelevant, the big difference is that it's much easier to gain physical access. Just be vigilant and be have a plan ready to immediately block all access if you do lose your phone.
Yeah but will they drop html5/h264 support (eg. for iPad/iPhone) and go WebM only on a major property ? Doubtful. It's OK for Chrome, which I think is more a by-product of needing to have webkit expertise in house for Android than a core Google product.
No, the menu bar is there, but its placement is underneath the tab bar, though that is reversible. What is missing is the status bar. Now if you want to restore status bar functionality, you have install a freaking extension. The argument for removing it is weak (we need to recover 20 pixels!), and disingenuous (nobody uses it!). It's a stupid decision on the Mozilla developers part, and one that already is facing a backlash from users.
Exactly. I've been looking in the statusbar for hoover-over information and the like since Netscape 3. If you change a user element that's remained unchanged for >15 years you'd better damn well have a good reason for it. How f'ing difficult is it to just make it optional ?
That's the one I'm using too. Though I also had to download a theme (Strata reloaded) that put a clear separator between the bottom of the page and the top of the "Add-on bar" (yuck) or else it looks like ass.
I kinda like Tab Candy. I use it at work to keep work related and other browsing activities cleanly seperated. What I don't like is the lack of statusbar: I have been looking in the statusbar to look where a link leads since the nineties and now they move it to the addressbar of all places. That addressbar is now a jumble of functions: showing the address, page load indicator, status area, etc. They even moved the reload button in there. It's a mess.
Yes it is a barrier to entry and that's part of its purpose I'm sure. A sort of cover charge to make sure the developer is really serious about putting his app out there and maintaining it. Can you imagine the sheer number of fart apps Apple would have been sent if there was no $99 developer fee ?
Why would it "probably" be as patent encumbered as h.264? Google claims no patents at least, so that would in this case be if it's too similar in some regard to MPEG LA patents.
"But wait!", the OSS fans are saying. "Isn't Google really standing up for freedom and justice, because H.264 requires evil patent licensing?"
No. Expert opinion is that WebM infringes on numerous patents in the H.264 pool, and will need a licensing pool of its own to be set up, just like Microsoft's VC-1 did. So the patents are a wash. This is Google manipulating the market entirely for selfish advantage here, and it's all the worse because they're pretending otherwise. And it's going to be really frustrating watching people fall for it.
png: Created because of licenses/patents on Jpeg and GIF
Ogg: Created because of licenses/patents on MP3
Both wildly successfull, huh ? I guess you see PNG used these days but how long did it take to become moderately popular and today does your camera save PNG's or still those nasty encumbered JPG's ?
The only reason you have hardware-based decoding with h.264 is because Intel/AMD/Nvidia were ask/told/paid to do so. If someone adds WebM hardware-based decoding, people will flock to it.
Everyone is already buying h.264 hardware. It has been tested, it's cheaper 'cause everybody already buys it and it offers compatibility with already available content. Do you think they'll flock to hardware they'll have to support in addition to existing hardware (for backwards compatibility reasons) with all software development and testing costs that entails ?
How relevant will TV, radio, Blu-ray etc be in 2020? CD sales are already being replaced by digital downloads and while a lot of people continue to listen to the radio, they often do so by streaming it over the net. I see no reason why the future would be different for video.
Yes, all of those are already being streamed over the net or downloaded... using MPEG-4 standards. Maybe Google should be promoting VP8 by bribing release groups to use it:-)
Good luck, you are going to need it. Like Gruber said (about Theora) "Put another way, 'open and better' is a recipe for success; 'open but worse' is a recipe for obscurity." With the current lack of hardware support, especially on mobile devices, the latter looks more likely. Even if eventually it'll be "open and as good", that's probably not going to cut it with so many companies already aboard the h.264 train.
Naah. At least this way we won't go back to the days when to view a video you needed 10 different plugins from 10 different vendors.
Looks to me like Google by doing this is trying to refragment a market that looked like it was going to be ruled by the one codec to bind them all, H264.
If they (Google) were really concerned about openness they'd spend the money fighting software patents instead which is the real underlying issue here. But there's not much chance of that.
All those devices use hardware decoding, which has also made it into modern GPU's. What it comes down to is that either we go back to offloading decoding onto the CPU, forget about this for mobile and its going backwards even on the desktop, or separate hardware will need to be developed which will be more expensive than the h264 hardware because that will have a scale advantage since everybody else is using it. In short if Google gets its way we're in for a real "win" for consumers: either we get choppy playback because of software decoding or we get more expensive hardware... but it's at least it's "open" (Google gets to drive development and saves on license fees.)
The ones that can keep winning, better than chance, over a long period of time are the ones who show that they have skill, and are not simply winning due to luck. (Yes, there is a possibility it's "all luck", but that decreases the longer a person wins. In fact, the Two Plus Two Pokercast was mentioning a couple of people that were big names a few years ago, but you no longer hear about them.)
In a large enough sample there are going to be people who are going to seemingly win an inordinate number of times. You are just not considering the thousands of losers who are invisible. Read "Fooled by randomness" it explains it better than I could.
Google don't have the stones to wager one of their major properties on this. Someone like Jobs would be stubborn and brazen enough to make such a move (and have the clout in his organization to do so), but Google ?
That's what audits are for wether it's a financial audit or a security audit. Draconian procedure will get circumvented or will backfire on you on the worst possible moment. Just make some basic rules and have an independent third party check once in a while.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah but there's a difference between putting a bolt on a glass door or on a steel reinforced one.
The security on a smart phone isn't any worse (in many cases better, even) than that on most people's personal computers. The OS question is irrelevant, the big difference is that it's much easier to gain physical access. Just be vigilant and be have a plan ready to immediately block all access if you do lose your phone.
Yeah but will they drop html5/h264 support (eg. for iPad/iPhone) and go WebM only on a major property ? Doubtful. It's OK for Chrome, which I think is more a by-product of needing to have webkit expertise in house for Android than a core Google product.
I know of at least one game that was recalled for being a blatant rip-off.
No, the menu bar is there, but its placement is underneath the tab bar, though that is reversible. What is missing is the status bar. Now if you want to restore status bar functionality, you have install a freaking extension. The argument for removing it is weak (we need to recover 20 pixels!), and disingenuous (nobody uses it!). It's a stupid decision on the Mozilla developers part, and one that already is facing a backlash from users.
Exactly. I've been looking in the statusbar for hoover-over information and the like since Netscape 3. If you change a user element that's remained unchanged for >15 years you'd better damn well have a good reason for it. How f'ing difficult is it to just make it optional ?
That's the one I'm using too. Though I also had to download a theme (Strata reloaded) that put a clear separator between the bottom of the page and the top of the "Add-on bar" (yuck) or else it looks like ass.
I kinda like Tab Candy. I use it at work to keep work related and other browsing activities cleanly seperated. What I don't like is the lack of statusbar: I have been looking in the statusbar to look where a link leads since the nineties and now they move it to the addressbar of all places. That addressbar is now a jumble of functions: showing the address, page load indicator, status area, etc. They even moved the reload button in there. It's a mess.
Yes it is a barrier to entry and that's part of its purpose I'm sure. A sort of cover charge to make sure the developer is really serious about putting his app out there and maintaining it. Can you imagine the sheer number of fart apps Apple would have been sent if there was no $99 developer fee ?
Relax. It's a rumor, which in Apple related stories means it has 99% certainty of being bullshit and/or linkbait.
He made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
They can and should, but don't. They are as schizophrenic about software patents as they have been about net neutrality.
How would that philosophy be applied differently to closed source?
It doesn't that's the point. Open or not, you have to bring a better product to succeed in an established market.
Why would it "probably" be as patent encumbered as h.264? Google claims no patents at least, so that would in this case be if it's too similar in some regard to MPEG LA patents.
In an earlier slashdot discussion znu writes:
"But wait!", the OSS fans are saying. "Isn't Google really standing up for freedom and justice, because H.264 requires evil patent licensing?"
No. Expert opinion is that WebM infringes on numerous patents in the H.264 pool, and will need a licensing pool of its own to be set up, just like Microsoft's VC-1 did. So the patents are a wash. This is Google manipulating the market entirely for selfish advantage here, and it's all the worse because they're pretending otherwise. And it's going to be really frustrating watching people fall for it.
Camera on the back + really ugly speaker grate = fake.
png: Created because of licenses/patents on Jpeg and GIF
Ogg: Created because of licenses/patents on MP3
Both wildly successfull, huh ? I guess you see PNG used these days but how long did it take to become moderately popular and today does your camera save PNG's or still those nasty encumbered JPG's ?
The only reason you have hardware-based decoding with h.264 is because Intel/AMD/Nvidia were ask/told/paid to do so.
If someone adds WebM hardware-based decoding, people will flock to it.
Everyone is already buying h.264 hardware. It has been tested, it's cheaper 'cause everybody already buys it and it offers compatibility with already available content. Do you think they'll flock to hardware they'll have to support in addition to existing hardware (for backwards compatibility reasons) with all software development and testing costs that entails ?
How relevant will TV, radio, Blu-ray etc be in 2020? CD sales are already being replaced by digital downloads and while a lot of people continue to listen to the radio, they often do so by streaming it over the net. I see no reason why the future would be different for video.
Yes, all of those are already being streamed over the net or downloaded ... using MPEG-4 standards. :-)
Maybe Google should be promoting VP8 by bribing release groups to use it
Good luck, you are going to need it. Like Gruber said (about Theora) "Put another way, 'open and better' is a recipe for success; 'open but worse' is a recipe for obscurity." With the current lack of hardware support, especially on mobile devices, the latter looks more likely. Even if eventually it'll be "open and as good", that's probably not going to cut it with so many companies already aboard the h.264 train.
Naah. At least this way we won't go back to the days when to view a video you needed 10 different plugins from 10 different vendors.
Looks to me like Google by doing this is trying to refragment a market that looked like it was going to be ruled by the one codec to bind them all, H264.
If they (Google) were really concerned about openness they'd spend the money fighting software patents instead which is the real underlying issue here. But there's not much chance of that.
According to this article IE and Safari, through plugins, eventually.
All those devices use hardware decoding, which has also made it into modern GPU's. What it comes down to is that either we go back to offloading decoding onto the CPU, forget about this for mobile and its going backwards even on the desktop, or separate hardware will need to be developed which will be more expensive than the h264 hardware because that will have a scale advantage since everybody else is using it. In short if Google gets its way we're in for a real "win" for consumers: either we get choppy playback because of software decoding or we get more expensive hardware ... but it's at least it's "open" (Google gets to drive development and saves on license fees.)
The ones that can keep winning, better than chance, over a long period of time are the ones who show that they have skill, and are not simply winning due to luck. (Yes, there is a possibility it's "all luck", but that decreases the longer a person wins. In fact, the Two Plus Two Pokercast was mentioning a couple of people that were big names a few years ago, but you no longer hear about them.)
In a large enough sample there are going to be people who are going to seemingly win an inordinate number of times. You are just not considering the thousands of losers who are invisible. Read "Fooled by randomness" it explains it better than I could.
Google don't have the stones to wager one of their major properties on this. Someone like Jobs would be stubborn and brazen enough to make such a move (and have the clout in his organization to do so), but Google ?
So just use one of the many programs that have a shell escape: vi, more, find, ...
That's what audits are for wether it's a financial audit or a security audit. Draconian procedure will get circumvented or will backfire on you on the worst possible moment. Just make some basic rules and have an independent third party check once in a while.