Quicktime today is h.264 video with AAC audio (Sorensen is gone).
h.264 is a licensed technology owned by MPEG LA. While it did go free for a few more years for usage, it was set to lose that until about a month ago and is still a licensed technology that can be used to lock.
iTMS files are AAC audio and fairplay is gone. Fairplay was easy to remove by yourself and Apple documented how to do so.
Again, AAC audio is not an open technology, it's a licensed one. The license is quite a easy one to stream and distribute (free), but to use the actual codec itself requires a company to obtain a license. This is why FOSS FAAC and FAAD software projects are only distributed in source code form only to avoid the patent issues. As for Fairplay, it was Apples way of keeping any songs bought from iTunes to only play on iPods. No other MP3 player was able to read the files helping Apple keep a monopoly, and is still being fought under the Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation Not to mention Fairplay is still being used by Apple. Also couldn't find anything on the Apple.com site on how to remove Fairplay from anything.
iTunes works with anything as long as anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes (the fact Palm doesn't understand how is Palm's failure). Some vendors even get sync functionality (many Motorola devices, following the ROKR partnership), not just the iPod as you say.
iTunes works as long as Apple says it's ok, not if anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes. Palm does know how and kept programming to make it work. It was Apple that kept altering iTunes to purposelybreak that connection to wall out Palm since they didn't want to jump through Apple's hoops.
What was your point again ? Oh right, outright lies.
The odds of two non-identical twin individuals sharing the same 26 marker genetic fingerprint are several billion to one. THe reason it is a bad idea is that it's unconstitutional, a severe violation of privacy and certain for abuse.
This has been shown to most like be wrong, and was even mentioned here on Slashdot. The research showed that positive matches of DNA happened a lot more often then expected, and at the time of that article they wanted to have access moved from Arizona's DNA database to the whole US's DNA database to show how much more likely it is to have multiple matches.
In a car analogy, Nokia is selling engines for cars. Everyone who wants to build a car has to buy a Nokia engine, and they all pay $5,000 for it. Since Nokia is the only company that can sell engines, they agreed to sell anyone who makes cars an engine for $5,000 (RAND). Apple comes along, builds the iCar, and wants to buy the Nokia engine. Nokia sees that the iCar has a nifty dashboard widget, and wants that for their cars. So Nokia charges Apple not just $5,000, but $5,000 plus the dashboard widget.
In this case, no one has clean hands nor is completely innocent.
Yes, but it's not just royalty rates involved in this case. Its patents and royalty rates. With your car analogy: Nokia is selling engines for cars, everyone who wants to build a car has to buy a Nokia engine up $5000 and offer up say $10000 worth of patents. Along comes Apple, a new comer to the field and wants to make the iCar with it's nifty dashboard widget. They only want to pay the $5000 everyone else pays but when it comes to the patent end, they only have $5000 worth of patents they can use, leaving a $5000 difference between what they want to pay and what everyone else is paying. (iPhone is only 3 years old so it's possible on that level). Now you have everyone paying a total of $5000 cash + $10000 patents value to make a total value of $15000. Apple offers only $5000 cash (like everyone else) + $5000 in patents = $10000, $5000 less then anyone else. That leaves Apple getting the unfair deal in their favor. Looking only at the cash value, yes that is horribly unfair of Nokia to want that extra $5000 from Apple, but it's only higher cash because the patent options lacked compared to what they normally charge.
They want to pay the *fair* rate - which Nokia is obliged to give them. They are claiming that Nokia is attempting to charge them more (in terms of cash and cross licenced patents) than they are allowed to charge.
They want to pay what other people pay. Nokia is not allowed to charge more to whoever it chooses.
What about the cross-patents they are licensing with other company's? The royal rates may work on a more sliding scale based on the usability of the patents included in the trade and since the iPhone is only 3 years old, its possible the patents they had to offer didn't add up financial as the could have meriting (in Nokia's eye) to a high royalty rate.
Hopefully the Bilski decision will come out and invalidate software patents. Then these companies can get back to competing on innovation.
Note that the patents Nokia are using against Apple are not Software patents, but real technology patents. The fact that Apple has nothing but software patents to respond with is a signal about how fragile Apple in fact is, with no real "valuable" intellectual property.
Another problem here is it says that when Apple counter sued for the 13 patents, they also admitted they are violating Nokia's patents because they didn't want to pay the royalty rates and cross-patent usage. Just because Apple didn't want to pay the rates and patent usages doesn't give them the legal right to use and profit from Nokia's work for free.
I see lots of posts that seem to miss the point. The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization. Think of all the things that would change (not all religious).
If we can ever _prove_ we're not alone out here, I honestly believe it could sway the attitudes and priorities of many governments. I mean, honestly, if we know there is another alien life out there, that we could potentially communicate with, how many stupid squabbles would end?
Right now, we only worry about ourselves because, well, that's all there is to worry about. The prospect of learning from another civilization, or even just being afraid and try to "defend" ourselves from them (sad, but you never know what spin governments would put on a finding like that) could be utterly revolutionary.
Then again, so many people would dis-believe due to religious and/or conspiratorial reasons would probably be mind boggling.
Only problem is, you seem to believe that people would treat aliens as friendly equals. History shows that it won't be anywhere as clean and simple as that. You do mention that we might just be afraid and try to 'defend' ourselves from them.
The biggest problem from the start is humanity as a species only got to the level we have not because we are kind to each other and learned from each other, but because we kill any and everything we fear. Humans have been traced to the rise of mammals and at the time surviving with the mega-fauna. While some mega-fauna do survive, most of them are gone and the majority being the ones that would kill humans. Some died of natural selection, but the common belief is that most are gone because we killed them. Fear of the unknown causes people to panic and panic leads to violence. We started near the lower ranks of the food chain. Now we have no equal at the top of the chain.
This show of history is also not limited to humans verse animals that cannot be reasoned with. We have the burning times where people killed 'evil witches', slavery of different people (black slavery is the most commonly thought of, but others like Herbrew slaves to the Egyptions, ect...), KKK killing minorities, acts of genocide, other acts/groups of racism/religious intolerance, ect...
Now lets take a whole species that in theory can be communicated with, might be a threat, and is truely unknown in abilities. Combine this with an inability to truly understand their underlying motives to interact with us and see how people act. History makes me lean toward one hell of a mob-like answer.
Then again, always a chance I'm wrong and it can become a wonderful and peaceful outcome. You never know.
An RFID reader on an iPhone, and RFID credit cards being hacked since 2008, wonder if someone will make a jailbroken only app for getting the information? Not like people think twice when they see someone playing with a iPhone in public. (while the video shows that the card pretty much needs to touch the card, the tech is getting better last I heard so the distance is getting further away and still getting the information. Plus set the program up, put your phone in your pocket and ride the bus/trains during rush hour, that would get some even with those short distances since your pretty much side by side.)
Microsoft has its own axe to grind vs Flash - Silverlight.
True, and possibly having it's own upper hand with Microsoft OK'ing Moonlight (the open source version being made by Novell). This brings Silverlight to all 3 major OS's. If Silverlight and Moonlight can out preform Flash on all 3 and then port both properly to Windows Mobile, iPhone and Android phones it would be a major game changer.
In the mean time, Mozilla has stated that they're unable to ship H.264 as part of Firefox [mozillazine.org]. H.264 has patent and licensing issues associated with it.
Isn't the codec the responsibility of a codec library? I played H.264 videos on Linux today. Mozilla could just use gstreamer or what ever else
According to the link about Mozilla stating that they're unable to ship H.264:
Mozilla should pick up and use H.264 codecs that are already installed on the user's system. I've previously written about a variety of reasons this would be a bad idea, especially on Windows. Really there are two main issues:
Most users with Windows Vista and earlier do not have an H.264 codec installed. So for the majority of our users, this doesn't solve any problem.
It pushes the software freedom issues from the browser (where we have leverage to possibly change the codec situation) to the platform (where there is no such leverage). You still can't have a completely free software Web client stack.
It's a mixture of that it won't help solve the problem on a lot of machines (until Windows 7 becomes much more common), and a moral issue which is theirs to choose.
Unless a biggie like Google/MS/Apple back on HTML5 i don't see why it would replace incumbent standard
Both Google and Apple are heavy HTML5 backers. Not only they're on the W3C working group for it, but their respective browsers already implement large parts of it (including, specifically, HTML5 video).
Google and Apple may be big companies that are heavy backers of HTML5, they aren't the big companies in the right market. Microsoft is the biggest player here at the moment since around 90% of all PC's are running Windows. And with these tests showing that Flash either does as well or even better then HTML5 then that means 90% of the people out there with a computer will more likely prefer Flash over HTML5.
Security through obscurity? What are you talking about? Name a better documented OS or distro.
Maybe you meant security due to small market share?
No, I mean security through obscurity. That means that part of the power of the system is a lack of users having a solid knowledge of the OS and it's finer details. That do not mean it's not well documented, it does not mean it doesn't have FAQ's, that does not mean that the information can't be found. It means that not many people know of the information. That is why I was highly advised to learn how to use BSD, not because it had a lack of information, but because it had a lack of qualified people who can properly utilize it. It's like things like quantum physics. Yes the information is out there about it, yes it can be learn, yes it is documented, yes there are text books well explaining the subject... doesn't make it a simple walk in the park to understand and most people don't have a solid grasp on it. It can be learned, but most people just don't know how to.
They're basically the only major operating system project that gives a damn about security. Sure, Linux, for instance, is better than Windows when it comes to security. But that's only because Microsoft has fucked up Windows' security so badly.
The OpenBSD developers, on the other hand, are proactive about security. Their coding practices and extensive code reviews prevent bugs and security problems in the first place.
OpenBSD is what you use when you need a system that's secure, stable, and will work for years without being touched. It's excellent for embedded systems, and is excellent for servers. We have some internal OpenBSD servers that haven't been rebooted in six years.
This utmost care permeates the entire OS. It makes it as close as we can get today to "perfect software". The only other project as close to OpenBSD in terms of quality and security is FreeBSD, which benefits a great deal from the code reviews and effort that the OpenBSD devs put in.
That's half the reason they are secure. The other half is who really knows much about OpenBSD? It's a small niche, much smaller then Linux and OSX and those 2 are considered so secure do to the lack of people knowing how to take advantage of them and their small user base. OpenBSD, while is very secure, does owe some, if not a lot, of it's security to security through obscurity. While I'm not saying no one understands OpenBSD, it's just a small user base that can and/or does use it.
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, yet he is often credited for it.
This is because his improvements in the automobile "ecosystem" (fabrication, costs, etc) took the car from a one-off product to the mass market.
iPad = Model T
Every other pad (CrunchPad, DellPad, MS Pad, 50 no-name linux pads) = one-off market
Its not for his improvements to the automobile that did it, it's because he sold them cheaply to the public with fighting the old patent for a 'internal combustible engine' that kept all vehicles expensive and away from the general public. He sold each car with a warranty that if the car was proven to violate that patent he would be held liable, not the buyer. In the end he did win since it wasn't an identical copy and that caused newer versions of engines to suddenly be affordable to everyone and no longer the rich, thus 'inventing' the modern vehicle.
As far as I can see, it's a consume only device. You can read ebooks, and watch videos, browse web pages, but anything which requires any sort of textual interaction will be a pain in the arse.
So it's a mobile media displayer? That's it?
Why do people want it? Marketing, a lots of it. Thats why people want it. Think, how much media hype has there been about this iPad? Not just in commercials, but in the news and how this unknown (at the time) device will be completely revolutionary and change the way anyone lives.In reality, after all the buzz, it's just an iTouch XL. And at the moment it can literally only do the exact same things, but everyone is still in the 'wow' phase of the marketing campaign speaking about all the things that it MIGHT do, allowing their imaginations run wild about all the possibilities and things they will supposedly do. People see this and think it will improve their lives, forgetting that their laptop/smartphone already does all these things just as easy or possibly even more easier without spending hundreds of more dollars. Just like how people by all sorts of junk items that they swear they will use and either never do or only use minimally. Look around yourself and be honest, how much stuff around you do you see that when you bought you swore you would use and it will change your life for the better, and now its sitting there either disused or no where near to the full extent you had imagined it would before you had it. While most people love to claim that they can't be swayed by a marketing campaign, the reality is different. Its the 'wow' effect that a good marketing campaign causes to sell an item. Think of every fad that came and went. It didn't take an amazing item, it took a slick marketing with the biggest example of this being the Pet Rock from the 70's. If I remember right it was a challenge to see how what marketing can do to sell an item and the Pet Rock was born.
Want a better example? Think of the biggest 'must have' items YOU want. A fancy car is typical, but why? So you can spend your entire paycheck on gas that it will burn since most fancy cars are horrible on gas? Or to mentally look like James Bond/Hugh Hefner with all the ladies/ect, or those fantasy drives in the wilderness surrounded by nature you see in those Jeep/ect commercials? Big house maybe? So you can spend 24/7 cleaning that much space? Or to live the fantasy high life in the movies of beautiful designed rooms (that you can't afford) with a family that is sickly sweet and never fights? Or throwing house parties that would pack a small town in so everyone knows your name and you know everyone and having the ultimate time of your life?
The basics of any marketing campaign are to create a demand by making the object either improve your life, wonder how you ever survived without this object, or wow your imagination to make you fantasize of the endless uses of the product (regardless of what it's true limitations are).
I know a lot of OSX users that fit that description.
And a quick check of Ubuntu Forums should convince anyone that Linux has long since joined the party. If posts on/. don't.
How is this a troll? He's right. Not everyone who uses Linux is a computer expert. Hell, when I started using Linux I was a beginner with Linux and just took a blind plunge. Wasn't hard with Ubuntu and thats why the forums are there, to help beginners and solve problems. It's the online FOSS version of Apple's Genius Bar in there stores and Microsoft store's Guru Bar. OSX and Linux are gaining speed with all users, not just the hardcore users.
Malware is malware, regardless of what version of windows you are running.
Let me fix that for you.
Malware is malware, regardless of what OS your running.
And as for assuming anything, assumptions are where the biggest screw ups happen. If you just assume you know the problem with having little to no information to the problem then you are more likely to make a bigger problem. Lets assume then that we all give this person sites upon sites, a literal gold mine of sites for Windows machines. The person then spends hours upon hours combing through these sites and finds nothing. They then declare that everything listed was a complete waste of time, effort and use leaving them to assume that there is no such place that this information exists. The problem is they are the 6-8% of people using a Mac. And your assumption made this whole problem worse because they are still no closer to a solution for a place to learn this information but are now worse off thinking it's a lost cause. The question is also where to find legitimate software, not just ones that are malware. Maybe software that is free and not demanding money, or isn't known to conflict with other common software. Maybe they are worried that the site is hosting a pirated copy and not being noted. Or maybe the software is now abandoned and there are bigger better kinds like it.
And all of these reasons of what makes an iPhone so amazing are why so many people jailbreak their iPhone? I hear more complaints about iPhone's and their programs going crazy (the twitter ones seem to be a issue lately) and the simple problems like not being able to read and reply to a text message without having to quit the game/app they are using then any other phone. If you need to modify your phone to a point that isn't factory standard/approved then it isn't the greatest ideas.
Tthe glitch where it thinks it's been pirated and down grades you to changing to a black background and nags you to buy a real copy (even though you are using one)
Considering that id Software was able to successfully port every game from Doom 1 to Enemy Territories Quake Wars to Linux makes me call your bluff. I remember Quake 3 having a sticker mentioning it as able to be played on Linux as a selling point when it was released 10 years ago when the Linux market was much smaller then today. It might not be as simple as a Windows game, but it still is very doable with id Software being able to show this.
No one is "giving" you anything, they are allowing you to test drive it, that is all. So, for the car analogy, you go to the Ford dealership to test drive a car. After the first mile, it won't go over 30. After 3 miles, it won't go over 20. After 5 miles, it will only idle, forcing you to pull over. Then a salesman drives up in his demo model and offers you a ride back if you promise to buy the car. Yea, thats a good idea. Does that make you want to buy it? I didn't think so.
Yeah, but the problem with this is that when your car there dies your left in a real bind and more or less need to spend money or call up a friend to help you (pick you up). With a game demo your back to where started, no better or worse then before (maybe with the difference of you might want to pay for the game). You are not backed into a corner with a sales man giving you the option of 'pay me money or be stuck here with something that won't work and get you back to at least where you started'.
I read a FAQ about this DRM scheme on Ubisoft's website. They said they would release a patch if they ever shut down the game servers that lets you play offline.
This is also in consideration that they legally can do something like that. Ubisoft is both a developer and a publisher. Any game they develop can have the DRM like that removed (games like Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5) but games they were just the publisher and they don't own the actual game is another story, I'm pretty sure they'd need the makers permission to do that (games like Settlers 7 (made by Blue Byte), Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (made by Techland) and R.U.S.E. Art of Deception (made by Eugen Systems).
It's entirely possible that your hospital signed a deal with Microsoft...by exclusively using their products, they would get a discount.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time...
Its also likely that they are using special software programs that only run on Windows that generate html pages using IE only tags. If I was using a program that did that I would make it mandatory for everyone to use Windows and IE since this can save lives or kill. This is a hospital that needs to be as exact as possible. Using something like OSX or Linux and running the program through something like Wine may cause the program to get unstable and/or crash. Imagine having to tell the family that their 9 year old son just went into cardiac arrest and you need to re-boot the program because you wanted to run it through your prefered OS and you need to know what medication the child is on to make sure there shouldn't be any complications. Or by using Firefox and the IE only tags in the html file caused a medical graph to be out of sync, this could cause dosage issues and other problems. Not to mention one mistake that can be attributed to this would turn into the lawsuit of hell.
Slashdot Mirror
Quicktime today is h.264 video with AAC audio (Sorensen is gone).
h.264 is a licensed technology owned by MPEG LA. While it did go free for a few more years for usage, it was set to lose that until about a month ago and is still a licensed technology that can be used to lock.
iTMS files are AAC audio and fairplay is gone. Fairplay was easy to remove by yourself and Apple documented how to do so.
Again, AAC audio is not an open technology, it's a licensed one. The license is quite a easy one to stream and distribute (free), but to use the actual codec itself requires a company to obtain a license. This is why FOSS FAAC and FAAD software projects are only distributed in source code form only to avoid the patent issues. As for Fairplay, it was Apples way of keeping any songs bought from iTunes to only play on iPods. No other MP3 player was able to read the files helping Apple keep a monopoly, and is still being fought under the Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation Not to mention Fairplay is still being used by Apple. Also couldn't find anything on the Apple.com site on how to remove Fairplay from anything.
iTunes works with anything as long as anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes (the fact Palm doesn't understand how is Palm's failure). Some vendors even get sync functionality (many Motorola devices, following the ROKR partnership), not just the iPod as you say.
iTunes works as long as Apple says it's ok, not if anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes. Palm does know how and kept programming to make it work. It was Apple that kept altering iTunes to purposely break that connection to wall out Palm since they didn't want to jump through Apple's hoops.
What was your point again ? Oh right, outright lies.
No, that was your point to make outright lies.
The odds of two non-identical twin individuals sharing the same 26 marker genetic fingerprint are several billion to one. THe reason it is a bad idea is that it's unconstitutional, a severe violation of privacy and certain for abuse.
This has been shown to most like be wrong, and was even mentioned here on Slashdot. The research showed that positive matches of DNA happened a lot more often then expected, and at the time of that article they wanted to have access moved from Arizona's DNA database to the whole US's DNA database to show how much more likely it is to have multiple matches.
In a car analogy, Nokia is selling engines for cars. Everyone who wants to build a car has to buy a Nokia engine, and they all pay $5,000 for it. Since Nokia is the only company that can sell engines, they agreed to sell anyone who makes cars an engine for $5,000 (RAND). Apple comes along, builds the iCar, and wants to buy the Nokia engine. Nokia sees that the iCar has a nifty dashboard widget, and wants that for their cars. So Nokia charges Apple not just $5,000, but $5,000 plus the dashboard widget.
In this case, no one has clean hands nor is completely innocent.
Yes, but it's not just royalty rates involved in this case. Its patents and royalty rates. With your car analogy: Nokia is selling engines for cars, everyone who wants to build a car has to buy a Nokia engine up $5000 and offer up say $10000 worth of patents. Along comes Apple, a new comer to the field and wants to make the iCar with it's nifty dashboard widget. They only want to pay the $5000 everyone else pays but when it comes to the patent end, they only have $5000 worth of patents they can use, leaving a $5000 difference between what they want to pay and what everyone else is paying. (iPhone is only 3 years old so it's possible on that level). Now you have everyone paying a total of $5000 cash + $10000 patents value to make a total value of $15000. Apple offers only $5000 cash (like everyone else) + $5000 in patents = $10000, $5000 less then anyone else. That leaves Apple getting the unfair deal in their favor. Looking only at the cash value, yes that is horribly unfair of Nokia to want that extra $5000 from Apple, but it's only higher cash because the patent options lacked compared to what they normally charge.
They want to pay the *fair* rate - which Nokia is obliged to give them. They are claiming that Nokia is attempting to charge them more (in terms of cash and cross licenced patents) than they are allowed to charge.
They want to pay what other people pay. Nokia is not allowed to charge more to whoever it chooses.
What about the cross-patents they are licensing with other company's? The royal rates may work on a more sliding scale based on the usability of the patents included in the trade and since the iPhone is only 3 years old, its possible the patents they had to offer didn't add up financial as the could have meriting (in Nokia's eye) to a high royalty rate.
Hopefully the Bilski decision will come out and invalidate software patents. Then these companies can get back to competing on innovation.
Note that the patents Nokia are using against Apple are not Software patents, but real technology patents. The fact that Apple has nothing but software patents to respond with is a signal about how fragile Apple in fact is, with no real "valuable" intellectual property.
Another problem here is it says that when Apple counter sued for the 13 patents, they also admitted they are violating Nokia's patents because they didn't want to pay the royalty rates and cross-patent usage. Just because Apple didn't want to pay the rates and patent usages doesn't give them the legal right to use and profit from Nokia's work for free.
I see lots of posts that seem to miss the point. The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization. Think of all the things that would change (not all religious).
If we can ever _prove_ we're not alone out here, I honestly believe it could sway the attitudes and priorities of many governments. I mean, honestly, if we know there is another alien life out there, that we could potentially communicate with, how many stupid squabbles would end?
Right now, we only worry about ourselves because, well, that's all there is to worry about. The prospect of learning from another civilization, or even just being afraid and try to "defend" ourselves from them (sad, but you never know what spin governments would put on a finding like that) could be utterly revolutionary.
Then again, so many people would dis-believe due to religious and/or conspiratorial reasons would probably be mind boggling.
Only problem is, you seem to believe that people would treat aliens as friendly equals. History shows that it won't be anywhere as clean and simple as that. You do mention that we might just be afraid and try to 'defend' ourselves from them.
The biggest problem from the start is humanity as a species only got to the level we have not because we are kind to each other and learned from each other, but because we kill any and everything we fear. Humans have been traced to the rise of mammals and at the time surviving with the mega-fauna. While some mega-fauna do survive, most of them are gone and the majority being the ones that would kill humans. Some died of natural selection, but the common belief is that most are gone because we killed them. Fear of the unknown causes people to panic and panic leads to violence. We started near the lower ranks of the food chain. Now we have no equal at the top of the chain.
This show of history is also not limited to humans verse animals that cannot be reasoned with. We have the burning times where people killed 'evil witches', slavery of different people (black slavery is the most commonly thought of, but others like Herbrew slaves to the Egyptions, ect...), KKK killing minorities, acts of genocide, other acts/groups of racism/religious intolerance, ect...
Now lets take a whole species that in theory can be communicated with, might be a threat, and is truely unknown in abilities. Combine this with an inability to truly understand their underlying motives to interact with us and see how people act. History makes me lean toward one hell of a mob-like answer.
Then again, always a chance I'm wrong and it can become a wonderful and peaceful outcome. You never know.
An RFID reader on an iPhone, and RFID credit cards being hacked since 2008, wonder if someone will make a jailbroken only app for getting the information? Not like people think twice when they see someone playing with a iPhone in public. (while the video shows that the card pretty much needs to touch the card, the tech is getting better last I heard so the distance is getting further away and still getting the information. Plus set the program up, put your phone in your pocket and ride the bus/trains during rush hour, that would get some even with those short distances since your pretty much side by side.)
Microsoft has its own axe to grind vs Flash - Silverlight.
True, and possibly having it's own upper hand with Microsoft OK'ing Moonlight (the open source version being made by Novell). This brings Silverlight to all 3 major OS's. If Silverlight and Moonlight can out preform Flash on all 3 and then port both properly to Windows Mobile, iPhone and Android phones it would be a major game changer.
In the mean time, Mozilla has stated that they're unable to ship H.264 as part of Firefox [mozillazine.org]. H.264 has patent and licensing issues associated with it.
Isn't the codec the responsibility of a codec library? I played H.264 videos on Linux today. Mozilla could just use gstreamer or what ever else
According to the link about Mozilla stating that they're unable to ship H.264:
Mozilla should pick up and use H.264 codecs that are already installed on the user's system. I've previously written about a variety of reasons this would be a bad idea, especially on Windows. Really there are two main issues:
Most users with Windows Vista and earlier do not have an H.264 codec installed. So for the majority of our users, this doesn't solve any problem.
It pushes the software freedom issues from the browser (where we have leverage to possibly change the codec situation) to the platform (where there is no such leverage). You still can't have a completely free software Web client stack.
It's a mixture of that it won't help solve the problem on a lot of machines (until Windows 7 becomes much more common), and a moral issue which is theirs to choose.
Unless a biggie like Google /MS /Apple back on HTML5 i don't see why it would replace incumbent standard
Both Google and Apple are heavy HTML5 backers. Not only they're on the W3C working group for it, but their respective browsers already implement large parts of it (including, specifically, HTML5 video).
Google and Apple may be big companies that are heavy backers of HTML5, they aren't the big companies in the right market. Microsoft is the biggest player here at the moment since around 90% of all PC's are running Windows. And with these tests showing that Flash either does as well or even better then HTML5 then that means 90% of the people out there with a computer will more likely prefer Flash over HTML5.
Security through obscurity? What are you talking about? Name a better documented OS or distro. Maybe you meant security due to small market share?
No, I mean security through obscurity. That means that part of the power of the system is a lack of users having a solid knowledge of the OS and it's finer details. That do not mean it's not well documented, it does not mean it doesn't have FAQ's, that does not mean that the information can't be found. It means that not many people know of the information. That is why I was highly advised to learn how to use BSD, not because it had a lack of information, but because it had a lack of qualified people who can properly utilize it. It's like things like quantum physics. Yes the information is out there about it, yes it can be learn, yes it is documented, yes there are text books well explaining the subject... doesn't make it a simple walk in the park to understand and most people don't have a solid grasp on it. It can be learned, but most people just don't know how to.
If you would like to better understand security through obscurity, here's the wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
They're basically the only major operating system project that gives a damn about security. Sure, Linux, for instance, is better than Windows when it comes to security. But that's only because Microsoft has fucked up Windows' security so badly.
The OpenBSD developers, on the other hand, are proactive about security. Their coding practices and extensive code reviews prevent bugs and security problems in the first place.
OpenBSD is what you use when you need a system that's secure, stable, and will work for years without being touched. It's excellent for embedded systems, and is excellent for servers. We have some internal OpenBSD servers that haven't been rebooted in six years.
This utmost care permeates the entire OS. It makes it as close as we can get today to "perfect software". The only other project as close to OpenBSD in terms of quality and security is FreeBSD, which benefits a great deal from the code reviews and effort that the OpenBSD devs put in.
That's half the reason they are secure. The other half is who really knows much about OpenBSD? It's a small niche, much smaller then Linux and OSX and those 2 are considered so secure do to the lack of people knowing how to take advantage of them and their small user base. OpenBSD, while is very secure, does owe some, if not a lot, of it's security to security through obscurity. While I'm not saying no one understands OpenBSD, it's just a small user base that can and/or does use it.
Apple is as big as Microsoft.
Not in computers, Mac's only account for 6-8% of all computers, the lions share of 90% is Windows. The last few are a selection of Linux and BSD.
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, yet he is often credited for it.
This is because his improvements in the automobile "ecosystem" (fabrication, costs, etc) took the car from a one-off product to the mass market.
iPad = Model T Every other pad (CrunchPad, DellPad, MS Pad, 50 no-name linux pads) = one-off market
Its not for his improvements to the automobile that did it, it's because he sold them cheaply to the public with fighting the old patent for a 'internal combustible engine' that kept all vehicles expensive and away from the general public. He sold each car with a warranty that if the car was proven to violate that patent he would be held liable, not the buyer. In the end he did win since it wasn't an identical copy and that caused newer versions of engines to suddenly be affordable to everyone and no longer the rich, thus 'inventing' the modern vehicle.
I don't get it.
As far as I can see, it's a consume only device. You can read ebooks, and watch videos, browse web pages, but anything which requires any sort of textual interaction will be a pain in the arse.
So it's a mobile media displayer? That's it?
Why do people want it? Marketing, a lots of it. Thats why people want it. Think, how much media hype has there been about this iPad? Not just in commercials, but in the news and how this unknown (at the time) device will be completely revolutionary and change the way anyone lives.In reality, after all the buzz, it's just an iTouch XL. And at the moment it can literally only do the exact same things, but everyone is still in the 'wow' phase of the marketing campaign speaking about all the things that it MIGHT do, allowing their imaginations run wild about all the possibilities and things they will supposedly do. People see this and think it will improve their lives, forgetting that their laptop/smartphone already does all these things just as easy or possibly even more easier without spending hundreds of more dollars. Just like how people by all sorts of junk items that they swear they will use and either never do or only use minimally. Look around yourself and be honest, how much stuff around you do you see that when you bought you swore you would use and it will change your life for the better, and now its sitting there either disused or no where near to the full extent you had imagined it would before you had it. While most people love to claim that they can't be swayed by a marketing campaign, the reality is different. Its the 'wow' effect that a good marketing campaign causes to sell an item. Think of every fad that came and went. It didn't take an amazing item, it took a slick marketing with the biggest example of this being the Pet Rock from the 70's. If I remember right it was a challenge to see how what marketing can do to sell an item and the Pet Rock was born.
Want a better example? Think of the biggest 'must have' items YOU want. A fancy car is typical, but why? So you can spend your entire paycheck on gas that it will burn since most fancy cars are horrible on gas? Or to mentally look like James Bond/Hugh Hefner with all the ladies/ect, or those fantasy drives in the wilderness surrounded by nature you see in those Jeep/ect commercials? Big house maybe? So you can spend 24/7 cleaning that much space? Or to live the fantasy high life in the movies of beautiful designed rooms (that you can't afford) with a family that is sickly sweet and never fights? Or throwing house parties that would pack a small town in so everyone knows your name and you know everyone and having the ultimate time of your life?
The basics of any marketing campaign are to create a demand by making the object either improve your life, wonder how you ever survived without this object, or wow your imagination to make you fantasize of the endless uses of the product (regardless of what it's true limitations are).
And a quick check of Ubuntu Forums should convince anyone that Linux has long since joined the party. If posts on /. don't.
How is this a troll? He's right. Not everyone who uses Linux is a computer expert. Hell, when I started using Linux I was a beginner with Linux and just took a blind plunge. Wasn't hard with Ubuntu and thats why the forums are there, to help beginners and solve problems. It's the online FOSS version of Apple's Genius Bar in there stores and Microsoft store's Guru Bar. OSX and Linux are gaining speed with all users, not just the hardcore users.
Malware is malware, regardless of what version of windows you are running.
Let me fix that for you.
Malware is malware, regardless of what OS your running.
And as for assuming anything, assumptions are where the biggest screw ups happen. If you just assume you know the problem with having little to no information to the problem then you are more likely to make a bigger problem. Lets assume then that we all give this person sites upon sites, a literal gold mine of sites for Windows machines. The person then spends hours upon hours combing through these sites and finds nothing. They then declare that everything listed was a complete waste of time, effort and use leaving them to assume that there is no such place that this information exists. The problem is they are the 6-8% of people using a Mac. And your assumption made this whole problem worse because they are still no closer to a solution for a place to learn this information but are now worse off thinking it's a lost cause. The question is also where to find legitimate software, not just ones that are malware. Maybe software that is free and not demanding money, or isn't known to conflict with other common software. Maybe they are worried that the site is hosting a pirated copy and not being noted. Or maybe the software is now abandoned and there are bigger better kinds like it.
Seen as "somewhat computer illiterate," read as "Windows."
I know a lot of OSX users that fit that description.
That will help in figuring out where to go.
And all of these reasons of what makes an iPhone so amazing are why so many people jailbreak their iPhone? I hear more complaints about iPhone's and their programs going crazy (the twitter ones seem to be a issue lately) and the simple problems like not being able to read and reply to a text message without having to quit the game/app they are using then any other phone. If you need to modify your phone to a point that isn't factory standard/approved then it isn't the greatest ideas.
In what way is the DRM in Windows 7 harming me?
Tthe glitch where it thinks it's been pirated and down grades you to changing to a black background and nags you to buy a real copy (even though you are using one)
Considering that id Software was able to successfully port every game from Doom 1 to Enemy Territories Quake Wars to Linux makes me call your bluff. I remember Quake 3 having a sticker mentioning it as able to be played on Linux as a selling point when it was released 10 years ago when the Linux market was much smaller then today. It might not be as simple as a Windows game, but it still is very doable with id Software being able to show this.
If someone gave me the car for free...
No one is "giving" you anything, they are allowing you to test drive it, that is all. So, for the car analogy, you go to the Ford dealership to test drive a car. After the first mile, it won't go over 30. After 3 miles, it won't go over 20. After 5 miles, it will only idle, forcing you to pull over. Then a salesman drives up in his demo model and offers you a ride back if you promise to buy the car. Yea, thats a good idea. Does that make you want to buy it? I didn't think so.
Yeah, but the problem with this is that when your car there dies your left in a real bind and more or less need to spend money or call up a friend to help you (pick you up). With a game demo your back to where started, no better or worse then before (maybe with the difference of you might want to pay for the game). You are not backed into a corner with a sales man giving you the option of 'pay me money or be stuck here with something that won't work and get you back to at least where you started'.
I read a FAQ about this DRM scheme on Ubisoft's website. They said they would release a patch if they ever shut down the game servers that lets you play offline.
This is also in consideration that they legally can do something like that. Ubisoft is both a developer and a publisher. Any game they develop can have the DRM like that removed (games like Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5) but games they were just the publisher and they don't own the actual game is another story, I'm pretty sure they'd need the makers permission to do that (games like Settlers 7 (made by Blue Byte), Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (made by Techland) and R.U.S.E. Art of Deception (made by Eugen Systems).
It's entirely possible that your hospital signed a deal with Microsoft...by exclusively using their products, they would get a discount.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time...
Its also likely that they are using special software programs that only run on Windows that generate html pages using IE only tags. If I was using a program that did that I would make it mandatory for everyone to use Windows and IE since this can save lives or kill. This is a hospital that needs to be as exact as possible. Using something like OSX or Linux and running the program through something like Wine may cause the program to get unstable and/or crash. Imagine having to tell the family that their 9 year old son just went into cardiac arrest and you need to re-boot the program because you wanted to run it through your prefered OS and you need to know what medication the child is on to make sure there shouldn't be any complications. Or by using Firefox and the IE only tags in the html file caused a medical graph to be out of sync, this could cause dosage issues and other problems. Not to mention one mistake that can be attributed to this would turn into the lawsuit of hell.