VLC, Mplayer, etc can do video and subtitles without a lot of overhead. Most video on the internet is not doing more than that. so if flash can't compete, flash should not be used for normal web video. (also, CSS3 animations, javascript, and such make rotating, scaling, and other modifications of video work without a lot of additional overhead.)
Those who are blessing Flash only because Apple is hating it are quite annoying. They are almost as bad as those who hated tablets for years, and now want a non-Apple tablet because Apple made people fogret how much they hate tablets. There are plenty of good reasons to hate Apple, so I don't see a point in defending Adobe.
I sort of like this 'war' myself, since I want Flash gone and only Apple users and Flash devs suffer, and I'm not part of either group.
My hatred was more directed at AT&T's horrid land service, although as I understand it, Verizon has more customers and apparently less trouble with congestion. It would be interesting to see what they are doing differently, as well as perhaps what other countries that handle this better are doing. Those femtocells could probably help quite a bit if they wee sold to a mainstream market.
Lastly, I don't think there's a serious NIMBY problem with cell phone towers. While you can get the benefits from a coal or nuclear plant without it being in close proximity, the usefulness of a cell tower is directly related to proximity. If you buying off someone, it'll probably be a handful of individuals where the tower is literally in their back yard, and Joe Johnson and Mary Doe are a lot cheaper than City Hall
It's pretty obvious that Adobe added SWF support because it's another Adobe product, not because it was what modern documents really need. It's also pretty obvious that this is one of the biggest things you can do to make PDFs even more insecure. I recall the first time I read about this feature, and how I immediately thought of how stupid it was and that it begged for an Xzibit style comment: "Yo dawg, I heard you hate security, so we put Flash in your PDF so you can get exploited while you get exploited"
Some people are capable of hating Adobe and Apple, even without hats. In fact, a lot of the criticisms of one apply to the other. Both companies have been proponents of open systems while not being that open themselves.
I'm not sure I've ever heard that one, unless perhaps you are speaking solely of mobile and allocated frequencies. Even within those limits, I suspect that the telecoms could make serious improvements.
Yes, transitions to HTML5 will not be inherently safer, but just about everyone moves faster than Adobe in security fixes, and the browser market is more diverse than the Flash player market. Both of these things suggest that it would almost certainly be a net improvement to security even if HTML5 has all of the same design flaws as flash
Yes, there is 64-bit software for Windows, but it is still in the minority. You may find a 64-bit version of software, but you'll find plenty of software without a 64-bit port and it's not feasible for many Windows users to go all 64-bit. Most GNU/Linux distros often only have a handful of software without a native 64-bit port. I think it's basically Flash, WINE (although I know a 64-bit version is in development), and a SNES emulator that's written in assembly. Almost all of this software also has ARM and MIPS ports as well, but I've got a limited amount of hope for Adobe bothering with those.
Windows users don't expect 64-bit versions, and I don't think you can get Windows without the 32-bit libraries. GNU/Linux users may find the only thing holding them back from a completely 64-bit system is flash. Thus, they were the loudest voices complaining about the lack of 64-bit support. It seems odd, though, as I seem to recall parts of CS5 being 64-bit only.
I don't know if airlines are the best examples to use in regards to customer service. As for how growth would be stifled, people would have incentives to use the internet less because not using it is cheaper than using it. If you really want the internet to grow, take it out of the hands of Comcast and AT&T, whose other businesses compete with heavy internet usage, and give it to Sandisk and Western Digital, whose other businesses benefit from lots of downloading. In this case, you may get letters from WD telling you that you aren't downloading enough.
Doesn't anyone remember AOL and paying by the hour? That model was probably closer to actual costs than this AT&T plan, and we were all happy to get rid of that headache. If an ISP wants more money from me, then they can offer me more speed at a higher price and maybe even offer some services themselves that can utilize high speed internet, for both home and mobile users.
I think you are overplaying the role of government, but you are right that not playing along has at least some short term benefits. That's why I say 'should'. It's a bit idealistic, but good research organizations should be more focused on research than profit.
As for who benefits, it's the conglomerates AND the small and FOSS developers. Yes, taxpayers fund it, but that's how it goes with most government research anyway.
I'm saying that I suspect that practically everyone ends up at a net disadvantage, and that we would all be statistically better off if none of our government funded research organizations bothered with patents. If the end result is that you as an individual are paying more money for getting the same products, then why would you support it?
There is another side. The side of the companies being sued. Furthermore, they act as if CSIRO did basically everything that goes into wifi. That's about as close as saying Bell Labs invented Windows 7 because they wrote C. CSIRO made part of the the technology that goes into wifi, and it seems some of the patent's claims are for signals of 10 GHz and above, which isn't used by 802.11, Intel is calling the patent into question, and that Buffalo won their appeal, but eventually settled. Don't say revolutionized loosely, you don't look good in black turtlenecks.
But you really don't know what kind of benefit you get. Also, you seem to be missing that you have to pay for everyone else's government funded research and their legal fees. Fraunhofer owns patents on mp3 and many other codecs. In this case, you are losing because you aren't German. In order for you to have a net benefit from government researchers holding patents, your country has to make more than citizens pay out on these things, and make up for the legal fees and the hurdles these patents cause.
Yes, I do expect public research to subsidize the benefit of the entire world.
Regarding he policy you are advocating, do you think that you get a net benefit from it, though? You get money from one patent, but lose money from says 10 other patents by other countries (Germany's Fraunhofer, for example, is similar to CSIRO owns a lot of patents as well) , plus the overhead from patent applications to various countries, and the legal fees induced anybody who fights it.
That's a very pro-CSIRO viewpoint. It could very well be that CSIRO got a trivial and obvious patent, others developed the 802.11 tech independently, and CSIRO started bitching, and nobody wanted to pay them. The truth probably lines up somewhere in between these two. I'd say the technology or something equivalent certainly would have been eventually developed. It might have taken 10 years longer, but we'd get probably still get there.
Part of the argument of those defending CSIRO was that they had allegedely made agreements with these big companies, and then got shafted because the companies in question didn't deliver their end of the agreement.
As I recall, these companies had an agreement with the CSIRO to implement their technology into the wifi standard in return for royalties. Everyone was happy with this, it was duly noted, etc.
If there was no agreement or they are seeking revenge from the companies that breached this alleged contract, this part of the defense falls apart.
They would probably fit under a non-practicing entity. I don't think you can buy a CSIRO wireless card. They better be careful, as I think there is at least one patent on the non-practicing entity business method.
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VLC, Mplayer, etc can do video and subtitles without a lot of overhead. Most video on the internet is not doing more than that. so if flash can't compete, flash should not be used for normal web video. (also, CSS3 animations, javascript, and such make rotating, scaling, and other modifications of video work without a lot of additional overhead.)
Those who are blessing Flash only because Apple is hating it are quite annoying. They are almost as bad as those who hated tablets for years, and now want a non-Apple tablet because Apple made people fogret how much they hate tablets. There are plenty of good reasons to hate Apple, so I don't see a point in defending Adobe. I sort of like this 'war' myself, since I want Flash gone and only Apple users and Flash devs suffer, and I'm not part of either group.
My hatred was more directed at AT&T's horrid land service, although as I understand it, Verizon has more customers and apparently less trouble with congestion. It would be interesting to see what they are doing differently, as well as perhaps what other countries that handle this better are doing. Those femtocells could probably help quite a bit if they wee sold to a mainstream market. Lastly, I don't think there's a serious NIMBY problem with cell phone towers. While you can get the benefits from a coal or nuclear plant without it being in close proximity, the usefulness of a cell tower is directly related to proximity. If you buying off someone, it'll probably be a handful of individuals where the tower is literally in their back yard, and Joe Johnson and Mary Doe are a lot cheaper than City Hall
It's pretty obvious that Adobe added SWF support because it's another Adobe product, not because it was what modern documents really need. It's also pretty obvious that this is one of the biggest things you can do to make PDFs even more insecure. I recall the first time I read about this feature, and how I immediately thought of how stupid it was and that it begged for an Xzibit style comment: "Yo dawg, I heard you hate security, so we put Flash in your PDF so you can get exploited while you get exploited"
Some people are capable of hating Adobe and Apple, even without hats. In fact, a lot of the criticisms of one apply to the other. Both companies have been proponents of open systems while not being that open themselves.
I'm not sure I've ever heard that one, unless perhaps you are speaking solely of mobile and allocated frequencies. Even within those limits, I suspect that the telecoms could make serious improvements.
Yes, transitions to HTML5 will not be inherently safer, but just about everyone moves faster than Adobe in security fixes, and the browser market is more diverse than the Flash player market. Both of these things suggest that it would almost certainly be a net improvement to security even if HTML5 has all of the same design flaws as flash
There is at least a workaround for other platforms. I suppose I could try nspluginwrapper, but I really don't want to have to use that again.
Yes, there is 64-bit software for Windows, but it is still in the minority. You may find a 64-bit version of software, but you'll find plenty of software without a 64-bit port and it's not feasible for many Windows users to go all 64-bit. Most GNU/Linux distros often only have a handful of software without a native 64-bit port. I think it's basically Flash, WINE (although I know a 64-bit version is in development), and a SNES emulator that's written in assembly. Almost all of this software also has ARM and MIPS ports as well, but I've got a limited amount of hope for Adobe bothering with those.
Windows users don't expect 64-bit versions, and I don't think you can get Windows without the 32-bit libraries. GNU/Linux users may find the only thing holding them back from a completely 64-bit system is flash. Thus, they were the loudest voices complaining about the lack of 64-bit support. It seems odd, though, as I seem to recall parts of CS5 being 64-bit only.
Perhaps because it appears to be a half-assed gesture to make GNU/Linux users shut up about lack of 64-bit support.
I doubt anyone using flashblock will use an Adobe PDF reader, and I don't think any other readers have implemented SWF playback
How exactly is an Adobe exploit news? This happens all the time.
I don't know if airlines are the best examples to use in regards to customer service. As for how growth would be stifled, people would have incentives to use the internet less because not using it is cheaper than using it. If you really want the internet to grow, take it out of the hands of Comcast and AT&T, whose other businesses compete with heavy internet usage, and give it to Sandisk and Western Digital, whose other businesses benefit from lots of downloading. In this case, you may get letters from WD telling you that you aren't downloading enough.
Doesn't anyone remember AOL and paying by the hour? That model was probably closer to actual costs than this AT&T plan, and we were all happy to get rid of that headache. If an ISP wants more money from me, then they can offer me more speed at a higher price and maybe even offer some services themselves that can utilize high speed internet, for both home and mobile users.
I think you are overplaying the role of government, but you are right that not playing along has at least some short term benefits. That's why I say 'should'. It's a bit idealistic, but good research organizations should be more focused on research than profit. As for who benefits, it's the conglomerates AND the small and FOSS developers. Yes, taxpayers fund it, but that's how it goes with most government research anyway.
I'm saying that I suspect that practically everyone ends up at a net disadvantage, and that we would all be statistically better off if none of our government funded research organizations bothered with patents. If the end result is that you as an individual are paying more money for getting the same products, then why would you support it?
There is another side. The side of the companies being sued. Furthermore, they act as if CSIRO did basically everything that goes into wifi. That's about as close as saying Bell Labs invented Windows 7 because they wrote C. CSIRO made part of the the technology that goes into wifi, and it seems some of the patent's claims are for signals of 10 GHz and above, which isn't used by 802.11, Intel is calling the patent into question, and that Buffalo won their appeal, but eventually settled. Don't say revolutionized loosely, you don't look good in black turtlenecks.
But you really don't know what kind of benefit you get. Also, you seem to be missing that you have to pay for everyone else's government funded research and their legal fees. Fraunhofer owns patents on mp3 and many other codecs. In this case, you are losing because you aren't German. In order for you to have a net benefit from government researchers holding patents, your country has to make more than citizens pay out on these things, and make up for the legal fees and the hurdles these patents cause.
That's not a particularly objective video. It looks like they didn't even try to show the other side.
Yes, I do expect public research to subsidize the benefit of the entire world. Regarding he policy you are advocating, do you think that you get a net benefit from it, though? You get money from one patent, but lose money from says 10 other patents by other countries (Germany's Fraunhofer, for example, is similar to CSIRO owns a lot of patents as well) , plus the overhead from patent applications to various countries, and the legal fees induced anybody who fights it.
That's a very pro-CSIRO viewpoint. It could very well be that CSIRO got a trivial and obvious patent, others developed the 802.11 tech independently, and CSIRO started bitching, and nobody wanted to pay them. The truth probably lines up somewhere in between these two. I'd say the technology or something equivalent certainly would have been eventually developed. It might have taken 10 years longer, but we'd get probably still get there.
As I recall, these companies had an agreement with the CSIRO to implement their technology into the wifi standard in return for royalties. Everyone was happy with this, it was duly noted, etc.
If there was no agreement or they are seeking revenge from the companies that breached this alleged contract, this part of the defense falls apart.
I'm not arguing legality. I'm arguing ethics.
They would probably fit under a non-practicing entity. I don't think you can buy a CSIRO wireless card. They better be careful, as I think there is at least one patent on the non-practicing entity business method.