It is all about regulation and numbers. You must get it certified which costs big money. Then you will only sell a tiny number of them compared to cars or cell phones. To give you an idea there are probably around 1000 light airplanes produced in the US each year on a good year. Some years it is less then 100. So how many widgets are you going to sell? You can also look at your local airport and count the airplanes. Then think about how many cars are in your town. Take it from there...
Actually no you are wrong. In many places like Alaska private aircraft are the only effective way of transport. They are also used a lot for air ambulances and other such things. BTW avgas is NOT cheap even by EU standards. Those that fly for a hobbie pay dearly for it and it is no worse than people that have a private boat. Private planes are very rare in the US and as far as their carbon footprint they are not even on the map.
The thing is that none of the exploits are as simple as putting a paperclip in the lock. So no it is a lot more complex of an issue than you are supposing. And a zero day exploit just means a bad guy found it first. As I said if you don't like just pick a different company or go with a FOSS solution. It is as simple as that.
"If the article thinks that movies and albums will switch to SSD based distribution, I just don't see it happening real soon or even now." Oh no you are right. No one will ever download or stream music and or movies. And nobody will ever sell music on SD cards. Actually I think we will see HDDs for some years yet but I actually think CDs and DVDs may have an even shorter lifespan.
SSDs will replace all the small hard drives. When you get down to small enough drive SSDs will be cheaper per Gig than HDs. Right now you can buy a 1TB drive for right around $90. But you can not buy a 5ooGB drive for $45 or a 250GB drive for $22.50. There is a limit to how cheap you can make a harddrive. At some point SSDs in the 120Gb range will be cheaper than spinning platters. It is probably close right now. When that happens you will see SSDs replace HDs in that range. That range will keep creeping up and up. So HDDs will be what you get when you need a lot of storage. Maybe they will eventually be used only for externals and NASs. Eventually 1 TB SSDs will be cheaper than HDDs but for all I know we will have 100TB HDs for $90. BTW as someone that paid several hundred dollars for a 30MB HD in 1984 the idea of a sub hundred dollar 100TB HDD just seems like a matter of time.
Not really. Nothing is perfect including security. If you bought a lock and three years later someone found a way to pick it would you expect the company to give you a new lock? I am not a FOSS zealot but if you buy a closed source OS that comes with a support system then you are silly if you expect updates for free for anything. Even if the company you bought from does provide free security patches eventually the OS will be EOL and those will stop. It takes money to patch security issues and issue updates that money has to come from somewhere. So if you do not like it use FOSS and deal with it's issues or pick closed source and deal with it's issues. You have the freedom to pick your problems.
Now if could just kill software patents because they are as dumb as patenting a story, song, movie, or equation.
Well Toshiba bought Westinghouse when the US stopped building nuclear power plants. Rather than letting all that know how go to waste and allowing mindless fear to control their energy policy Japan kept building nuclear power plants. GE also builds reactors for the Navy.
More coal than oil. Oil fired power plants are few and far between coal and natural gas are the big ones right now. I have seen all sorts of plans about how to store off peak power but I wonder if any one has every though of using it to split water into hydrogen and making natural gas with it? Use your nuclear. wind, and or solar off peak excess to produce CH4 and then burn that in peaking plants. "BTW yes you can make natural gas from water and co2 if you have enough cheap power" And the reason why I say make natural gas and not hydrogen is that we already have the infrastructure to handle it.
About upgrading older systems. I have a friend that just retired from flying B52s. While he was flying he bought an XM radio enabled GPS system to bring on his B52 for training missions. Why? Well the off the shelf system gave him better weather data and navigation than the systems on the B52. When is commanding officer saw it he fit until he saw what it could do. He took some petty cash and to them for the rest of the squadron. Of course they are only to be used as none critical backups since they are not mil-spec.
But that is the problem with aviation class electronics. They must be certified and they are not built in huge volume so the are expensive. A GPS for your car can cost as little as $80 A handheld GPS for a light plane starts at around $390 for a VFR only bare bones model. A panel mounted GPS for light planes run around $3000 When you get to the airline level I don't even want to think about it. When you get to the Military stuff I am guessing it is even more expensive. It is all about the numbers. I know that U2 and B-1 Crews when they where waiting to get their GPS systems bought hand held GPSs as navigation backups and "SAR" tools. Just like some bought car radar detectors in the 70s and 80s as cheap upgrades to their RWR systems.
So it this no personal electronics going to effect private pilots as well? What about VFR pilots? I know of CAP folks that have used HAM radios to help with disaster relief work? Will you be banned for plugging you mp3 player into the sound system for VFR flight? "Before anybody freaks out listening to music while flying VFR is safer than listening to music while driving. When you are flying other planes don't honk their horns and air ambulances don't have sirens." Also any radio transmissions override the music. If you have a radio. It is legal to fly without a radio in clear weather and uncontrolled airports.
Well lets look at the benefits. 1. More accurate. GPS can produce a more accurate position fixes than radar can. 2. More reliable. The ATC radar system is big expensive and is a point of failure. With GPS transponders you can replace the radar with a few simple and redundant data links. 3. Can provide more coverage. Every aircraft in the system can transit it's location even when out of radar range. Radar is limited by line of site. "ATC radar we will not get into back scatter systems as they are not used for ATC" Downsides. 1. If the GPS system goes down we are in a world of hurt. To be honest if the GPS system goes down we are already in a world of hurt. 2. If you turn of your GPS beacon you are invisible. Not that big of a change really. If you turn your transponder off you may also be invisible to some ATCs 3, Dangers from jamming, How hard will it be to jam the GPS signal or worse spoof it near an airport?
The ATC system and air navigation system in the US has been in need of an overhaul for a long time. VOR/DME systems where very useful in the day but GPS is much more accurate. Most communications are still using analog voice systems that have changed very little since the 40s and 50s. Of course there is a huge problem with any massive upgrade. That is simply cost. There are thousands of small Mom and Pop airports and FBOs that are just barley staying in business as it is. They can not afford spending thousands of dollars to get new radios. Then you have all the private pilots that also really can not afford the cost of upgrading. It is a myth that all private pilots are rich. A lot of them just have a passion for flying. They tend to be no more rich than must boat owners. That and people tend to forget that General Aviation also provides lots of jobs as well. Not as much as it used to but still a good number. I fear that unless these beacons are really cheap we will see a lot of aircraft grounded or restricted to none controlled airports.
But what you contribute could be crap. If you send a bug report with data then yes that is part of testing so I covered that. If you put a in a suggestion that they buttons should be on the right like windows and not the left and file it as a bug? Not so much. So not not all feedback is contributing to a project. Sometimes it is actually detracting from a project.
It happens everywhere. The thing is that you only ever get to hear from maybe 1% of the users of any program. I also fear that it is human nature to put more effort into complaining than saying thanks.
A good example is Slashcode. I wish that when you click on log in and Slashdot opens the log in window that it would give the user name focus. "No on the left side of Slashdot but on the log in pop up window" I could always check out the source in GIT make the change and submit it. The thing is that I don't really want to take the time set up Slashcode on my dev system and test it. So I live with it because I have not made the effort to fix it myself. If they do fix it great but if not I just have to live with it and frankly it isn't that big of an issue.
No not everyone is. But you could pay a programmer to fix it for you. I find it amusing that FOSS users seem to think that they can dictate what a programmer must due when they are not paying the programmer a single cent. If you do not like you have several choices. 1. Learn to program and fix it yourself. 2. Pay a programmer to fix it for you. 3. Convince the maintainer to fix it the way you like it. 4. Find a project that works the way you want it to and use that. 5. Start your own project and get others that agree with you to contribute code.
The only option that you don't have is the option to enforce your will on a project maintainer that you do not pay. You can not treat FOSS programmers as your personal code slaves.
Well sort of. Some people must run Windows apps. I recommend that all machines be behind a firewall for starters. Second that you do not run them as Administrators. Third I would run Chrome, Opera, or Safari as the browser. They are rarer and get targeted less. Fourth I would ban ActiveX(if possible), Flash(if possible), and Adobe PDF reader. For PDF use Foxit or some other PDF reader. Finally keep them updated and running anti virus. The final step would be to keep a Linux partion on them. That way you can boot into Linux and run Clam or some other anitvirus from the Linux partion on the Windows partion. That makes cleaning them a lot easier. Another option is to make a Windows 7 USB key with antivirus in it handy. If all the machines are the same you can use that to quickly clean an infected machine.
Here is something I was wondering. Does anybody make a program that will monitor a network and dectect botnet activity on it? Something easy to use that doesn't require any in depth knowlege?
And yes some of my suggestions are security through obscurity but botnets do depend on numbers. There are benefits for making yourself less of a target.
"China tries to control it's own Internet. USA tries to control the whole Internet. Which one is worse?" Interesting comparison. I don't like the DMCA or the new treaty that Hollywood is getting the US government to push through. I think in this case the US government is putting the interests of certain companies over the rights of it's citizens. See the difference? I can criticize the US government without fear of them coming to my house.
Yes the DMCA is crap law and needs to be repealed. Not because I think copyrighted material should be free to copy but because it throws the idea of due process out the window. That and it also throws the idea of fair use out the window. Frankly I think that if the law prevents me from making copies than it should FORCE the companies to replace at no cost the media forever if it fails.
I do think that China has a right to have it's own laws and if Google is going to do business in China then it must follow those laws. So if they can not live with those laws it should leave. I don't think I would be happy doing business in China. Now the question is. Is Google doing this out of morality or not? I an skeptical about why Google is pulling out. I think they see doing business in China as more trouble than it is worth. I fear if Google had a %40 market share of Chinese search that they would be a little less out raged but I could be wrong.
For the average person it probably doesn't really matter. FireFox and Chrome are my favorites because of the plugins and because Chrome feels faster. IE I keep just in case nothing else will work. Thankfully IE only sites seem to be getting very rare. Thanks Firefox and Safari. I keep Opera and Safari around for testing on my PC. I know people love Opera but it just doesn't fit me well. The thing is that even IE doesn't really suck and they all work. If you are not into tweaking then any of them will probably work just fine for you.
But it does matter to people trying to keep Kosher. It is in many ways like Organically certified foods. To get Organic certification you must have all sorts of inspections. Why? because there is no tests available that can prove that food is organically grown. Yes you might detect pesticides and such but you can not really tell if the farmer used "organic" or standard fertilizers. But it matters to the people buying it. The difference is that the right to practice your religion is absolutely protected by the constitution. There for the right of churches to put on restrictions based on what ones believe is also protected. You may not like that but until you get the Constitution changed it is the law.
Well getting Safari and IE to default support Theora isn't possible right now. Sites like wikipedia and others that use Theora could link to the codec and then people could install it. The real issue is that the W3C did not declare that the Theora is the the standard codec for web video. The other real issue is that Mozilla is digging in their heals and refusing to support H.264 which makes going to HTML5 difficult at best. IE and Safari are only going to support H.264 Firefox is only going to support Theora. Google Chrome is going to support both. And I think Opera is going to support both. That leaves web developers with a choice. They can support H.264 and leave Mozilla users out in the cold. They can support Theora and leave IE and Safari users out in the cold. They could do a browser detection hack and have two copies of each video. Or they can keep using Flash. None of these options are optimal. Others have suggested that Mozilla can not support H.264 because of licensing costs which it not true.
Your statment was "The problem is that Quicktime and DirectShow don't support theora or vorbis by default, so hopefully Mozilla/Wikipedia/anyone else who cares can get them popular enough that Microsoft and Apple have to finally support some free codecs." Well lack of native support isn't an issue because Firefox can just install the codec when you install the brownser. There is no technical problem with Firefox using the OS video subsystem for Video Codec support. But Firefox NOT supporting H.264 will not force Microsoft and Apple to support Theora. All it will do is hurt the adoption rate of HTML 5 Video and help keep Flash as the standard for web based video. And in the end hurt end users all for taking a political stand.
I can think of some befits. 1. The money be spent on in house staff and or local consultants instead of on Microsoft Software. That money will say in country and flow through the economy and not be exported out of country. 2. Long term savings. Once the migration is done there will be no need to purchase new versions of Office, Windows, and other proprietary software. 3. Enhanced expandability. To add a news server or clients do not require purchasing more CALs. also if you have spent the money on in house talent then you have more development staff to implement new projects.
Really? I mean are you trying to say that the risk that somebody may not update a codec is worth not using the OSs modular codec system? The same system that every video player already uses? And as you have pointed out that on Linux it really isn't an issue unless the end user goes out of their way to install from an iffy repository.
"The problem is that Quicktime and DirectShow don't support theora or vorbis by default, so hopefully Mozilla/Wikipedia/anyone else who cares can get them popular enough that Microsoft and Apple have to finally support some free codecs." They don't need to. Directshow and Quicktime are expendable. Microsoft doesn't need to support Theora. Mozilla could just include these codecs in their installs. http://www.xiph.org/dshow/ And for Mac http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/ So it is an none problem Next issue?
Well I in the EU I believe it is but most people will be using it on Linux and most Linux users will have no problem using the Restricted sources and being Rebels. Of course if you are Mac or Windows you are already not using a 100 percent free stack. And to be honest Unless you are using LinuxBios even with Linux you not using a 100% free stack. So it is all a matter of degrees. The result if this doesn't change is that many people that currently use a FOSS browser will stop using it and go with a closed source browser like IE, Opera, Safari, and or Chrome.... Even on Linux so the result looks likely to be a more closed browsing stack.
Slashdot Mirror
It is all about regulation and numbers.
You must get it certified which costs big money.
Then you will only sell a tiny number of them compared to cars or cell phones.
To give you an idea there are probably around 1000 light airplanes produced in the US each year on a good year. Some years it is less then 100.
So how many widgets are you going to sell?
You can also look at your local airport and count the airplanes. Then think about how many cars are in your town.
Take it from there...
Actually no you are wrong.
In many places like Alaska private aircraft are the only effective way of transport. They are also used a lot for air ambulances and other such things.
BTW avgas is NOT cheap even by EU standards. Those that fly for a hobbie pay dearly for it and it is no worse than people that have a private boat. Private planes are very rare in the US and as far as their carbon footprint they are not even on the map.
The thing is that none of the exploits are as simple as putting a paperclip in the lock.
So no it is a lot more complex of an issue than you are supposing. And a zero day exploit just means a bad guy found it first.
As I said if you don't like just pick a different company or go with a FOSS solution. It is as simple as that.
"If the article thinks that movies and albums will switch to SSD based distribution, I just don't see it happening real soon or even now."
Oh no you are right. No one will ever download or stream music and or movies. And nobody will ever sell music on SD cards.
Actually I think we will see HDDs for some years yet but I actually think CDs and DVDs may have an even shorter lifespan.
SSDs will replace all the small hard drives.
When you get down to small enough drive SSDs will be cheaper per Gig than HDs.
Right now you can buy a 1TB drive for right around $90.
But you can not buy a 5ooGB drive for $45 or a 250GB drive for $22.50. There is a limit to how cheap you can make a harddrive.
At some point SSDs in the 120Gb range will be cheaper than spinning platters. It is probably close right now.
When that happens you will see SSDs replace HDs in that range. That range will keep creeping up and up.
So HDDs will be what you get when you need a lot of storage. Maybe they will eventually be used only for externals and NASs.
Eventually 1 TB SSDs will be cheaper than HDDs but for all I know we will have 100TB HDs for $90.
BTW as someone that paid several hundred dollars for a 30MB HD in 1984 the idea of a sub hundred dollar 100TB HDD just seems like a matter of time.
Not really.
Nothing is perfect including security. If you bought a lock and three years later someone found a way to pick it would you expect the company to give you a new lock?
I am not a FOSS zealot but if you buy a closed source OS that comes with a support system then you are silly if you expect updates for free for anything.
Even if the company you bought from does provide free security patches eventually the OS will be EOL and those will stop.
It takes money to patch security issues and issue updates that money has to come from somewhere.
So if you do not like it use FOSS and deal with it's issues or pick closed source and deal with it's issues. You have the freedom to pick your problems.
Now if could just kill software patents because they are as dumb as patenting a story, song, movie, or equation.
Well Toshiba bought Westinghouse when the US stopped building nuclear power plants. Rather than letting all that know how go to waste and allowing mindless fear to control their energy policy Japan kept building nuclear power plants.
GE also builds reactors for the Navy.
More coal than oil. Oil fired power plants are few and far between coal and natural gas are the big ones right now.
I have seen all sorts of plans about how to store off peak power but I wonder if any one has every though of using it to split water into hydrogen and making natural gas with it?
Use your nuclear. wind, and or solar off peak excess to produce CH4 and then burn that in peaking plants.
"BTW yes you can make natural gas from water and co2 if you have enough cheap power"
And the reason why I say make natural gas and not hydrogen is that we already have the infrastructure to handle it.
About upgrading older systems.
I have a friend that just retired from flying B52s. While he was flying he bought an XM radio enabled GPS system to bring on his B52 for training missions.
Why?
Well the off the shelf system gave him better weather data and navigation than the systems on the B52. When is commanding officer saw it he fit until he saw what it could do. He took some petty cash and to them for the rest of the squadron. Of course they are only to be used as none critical backups since they are not mil-spec.
But that is the problem with aviation class electronics. They must be certified and they are not built in huge volume so the are expensive.
A GPS for your car can cost as little as $80
A handheld GPS for a light plane starts at around $390 for a VFR only bare bones model.
A panel mounted GPS for light planes run around $3000
When you get to the airline level I don't even want to think about it.
When you get to the Military stuff I am guessing it is even more expensive.
It is all about the numbers.
I know that U2 and B-1 Crews when they where waiting to get their GPS systems bought hand held GPSs as navigation backups and "SAR" tools. Just like some bought car radar detectors in the 70s and 80s as cheap upgrades to their RWR systems.
So it this no personal electronics going to effect private pilots as well? What about VFR pilots?
I know of CAP folks that have used HAM radios to help with disaster relief work? Will you be banned for plugging you mp3 player into the sound system for VFR flight?
"Before anybody freaks out listening to music while flying VFR is safer than listening to music while driving. When you are flying other planes don't honk their horns and air ambulances don't have sirens." Also any radio transmissions override the music. If you have a radio. It is legal to fly without a radio in clear weather and uncontrolled airports.
Well lets look at the benefits.
1. More accurate. GPS can produce a more accurate position fixes than radar can.
2. More reliable. The ATC radar system is big expensive and is a point of failure. With GPS transponders you can replace the radar with a few simple and redundant data links.
3. Can provide more coverage. Every aircraft in the system can transit it's location even when out of radar range. Radar is limited by line of site. "ATC radar we will not get into back scatter systems as they are not used for ATC"
Downsides.
1. If the GPS system goes down we are in a world of hurt. To be honest if the GPS system goes down we are already in a world of hurt.
2. If you turn of your GPS beacon you are invisible. Not that big of a change really. If you turn your transponder off you may also be invisible to some ATCs
3, Dangers from jamming, How hard will it be to jam the GPS signal or worse spoof it near an airport?
The ATC system and air navigation system in the US has been in need of an overhaul for a long time.
VOR/DME systems where very useful in the day but GPS is much more accurate.
Most communications are still using analog voice systems that have changed very little since the 40s and 50s.
Of course there is a huge problem with any massive upgrade.
That is simply cost.
There are thousands of small Mom and Pop airports and FBOs that are just barley staying in business as it is. They can not afford spending thousands of dollars to get new radios.
Then you have all the private pilots that also really can not afford the cost of upgrading. It is a myth that all private pilots are rich. A lot of them just have a passion for flying. They tend to be no more rich than must boat owners. That and people tend to forget that General Aviation also provides lots of jobs as well. Not as much as it used to but still a good number.
I fear that unless these beacons are really cheap we will see a lot of aircraft grounded or restricted to none controlled airports.
But what you contribute could be crap.
If you send a bug report with data then yes that is part of testing so I covered that. If you put a in a suggestion that they buttons should be on the right like windows and not the left and file it as a bug?
Not so much.
So not not all feedback is contributing to a project. Sometimes it is actually detracting from a project.
It already has skinning.
MP3? Never. Ogg is free as in speech. If you don't know that much it isn't worth my time to reply to you!
Just kidding folks.
It happens everywhere.
The thing is that you only ever get to hear from maybe 1% of the users of any program.
I also fear that it is human nature to put more effort into complaining than saying thanks.
A good example is Slashcode. I wish that when you click on log in and Slashdot opens the log in window that it would give the user name focus. "No on the left side of Slashdot but on the log in pop up window"
I could always check out the source in GIT make the change and submit it. The thing is that I don't really want to take the time set up Slashcode on my dev system and test it.
So I live with it because I have not made the effort to fix it myself.
If they do fix it great but if not I just have to live with it and frankly it isn't that big of an issue.
A contributed== some one that contributes
Code
Artwork
Testing
Documentation
Money
A contributor != user that does none of the above.
No not everyone is. But you could pay a programmer to fix it for you.
I find it amusing that FOSS users seem to think that they can dictate what a programmer must due when they are not paying the programmer a single cent.
If you do not like you have several choices.
1. Learn to program and fix it yourself.
2. Pay a programmer to fix it for you.
3. Convince the maintainer to fix it the way you like it.
4. Find a project that works the way you want it to and use that.
5. Start your own project and get others that agree with you to contribute code.
The only option that you don't have is the option to enforce your will on a project maintainer that you do not pay. You can not treat FOSS programmers as your personal code slaves.
Well sort of.
Some people must run Windows apps.
I recommend that all machines be behind a firewall for starters.
Second that you do not run them as Administrators.
Third I would run Chrome, Opera, or Safari as the browser. They are rarer and get targeted less.
Fourth I would ban ActiveX(if possible), Flash(if possible), and Adobe PDF reader. For PDF use Foxit or some other PDF reader.
Finally keep them updated and running anti virus.
The final step would be to keep a Linux partion on them. That way you can boot into Linux and run Clam or some other anitvirus from the Linux partion on the Windows partion. That makes cleaning them a lot easier.
Another option is to make a Windows 7 USB key with antivirus in it handy. If all the machines are the same you can use that to quickly clean an infected machine.
Here is something I was wondering. Does anybody make a program that will monitor a network and dectect botnet activity on it? Something easy to use that doesn't require any in depth knowlege?
And yes some of my suggestions are security through obscurity but botnets do depend on numbers. There are benefits for making yourself less of a target.
"China tries to control it's own Internet. USA tries to control the whole Internet. Which one is worse?"
Interesting comparison.
I don't like the DMCA or the new treaty that Hollywood is getting the US government to push through. I think in this case the US government is putting the interests of certain companies over the rights of it's citizens.
See the difference? I can criticize the US government without fear of them coming to my house.
Yes the DMCA is crap law and needs to be repealed. Not because I think copyrighted material should be free to copy but because it throws the idea of due process out the window.
That and it also throws the idea of fair use out the window. Frankly I think that if the law prevents me from making copies than it should FORCE the companies to replace at no cost the media forever if it fails.
I do think that China has a right to have it's own laws and if Google is going to do business in China then it must follow those laws. So if they can not live with those laws it should leave.
I don't think I would be happy doing business in China. Now the question is. Is Google doing this out of morality or not? I an skeptical about why Google is pulling out. I think they see doing business in China as more trouble than it is worth. I fear if Google had a %40 market share of Chinese search that they would be a little less out raged but I could be wrong.
For the average person it probably doesn't really matter.
FireFox and Chrome are my favorites because of the plugins and because Chrome feels faster.
IE I keep just in case nothing else will work. Thankfully IE only sites seem to be getting very rare. Thanks Firefox and Safari.
I keep Opera and Safari around for testing on my PC.
I know people love Opera but it just doesn't fit me well.
The thing is that even IE doesn't really suck and they all work. If you are not into tweaking then any of them will probably work just fine for you.
But it does matter to people trying to keep Kosher.
It is in many ways like Organically certified foods. To get Organic certification you must have all sorts of inspections. Why? because there is no tests available that can prove that food is organically grown.
Yes you might detect pesticides and such but you can not really tell if the farmer used "organic" or standard fertilizers.
But it matters to the people buying it.
The difference is that the right to practice your religion is absolutely protected by the constitution. There for the right of churches to put on restrictions based on what ones believe is also protected.
You may not like that but until you get the Constitution changed it is the law.
Well getting Safari and IE to default support Theora isn't possible right now.
Sites like wikipedia and others that use Theora could link to the codec and then people could install it.
The real issue is that the W3C did not declare that the Theora is the the standard codec for web video.
The other real issue is that Mozilla is digging in their heals and refusing to support H.264 which makes going to HTML5 difficult at best.
IE and Safari are only going to support H.264
Firefox is only going to support Theora.
Google Chrome is going to support both.
And I think Opera is going to support both.
That leaves web developers with a choice.
They can support H.264 and leave Mozilla users out in the cold.
They can support Theora and leave IE and Safari users out in the cold.
They could do a browser detection hack and have two copies of each video.
Or they can keep using Flash.
None of these options are optimal.
Others have suggested that Mozilla can not support H.264 because of licensing costs which it not true.
Your statment was "The problem is that Quicktime and DirectShow don't support theora or vorbis by default, so hopefully Mozilla/Wikipedia/anyone else who cares can get them popular enough that Microsoft and Apple have to finally support some free codecs."
Well lack of native support isn't an issue because Firefox can just install the codec when you install the brownser.
There is no technical problem with Firefox using the OS video subsystem for Video Codec support.
But Firefox NOT supporting H.264 will not force Microsoft and Apple to support Theora. All it will do is hurt the adoption rate of HTML 5 Video and help keep Flash as the standard for web based video.
And in the end hurt end users all for taking a political stand.
I can think of some befits.
1. The money be spent on in house staff and or local consultants instead of on Microsoft Software. That money will say in country and flow through the economy and not be exported out of country.
2. Long term savings. Once the migration is done there will be no need to purchase new versions of Office, Windows, and other proprietary software.
3. Enhanced expandability. To add a news server or clients do not require purchasing more CALs. also if you have spent the money on in house talent then you have more development staff to implement new projects.
Really? I mean are you trying to say that the risk that somebody may not update a codec is worth not using the OSs modular codec system? The same system that every video player already uses?
And as you have pointed out that on Linux it really isn't an issue unless the end user goes out of their way to install from an iffy repository.
"The problem is that Quicktime and DirectShow don't support theora or vorbis by default, so hopefully Mozilla/Wikipedia/anyone else who cares can get them popular enough that Microsoft and Apple have to finally support some free codecs."
They don't need to. Directshow and Quicktime are expendable. Microsoft doesn't need to support Theora.
Mozilla could just include these codecs in their installs.
http://www.xiph.org/dshow/
And for Mac
http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/
So it is an none problem
Next issue?
Well I in the EU I believe it is but most people will be using it on Linux and most Linux users will have no problem using the Restricted sources and being Rebels.
Of course if you are Mac or Windows you are already not using a 100 percent free stack. And to be honest Unless you are using LinuxBios even with Linux you not using a 100% free stack. So it is all a matter of degrees. The result if this doesn't change is that many people that currently use a FOSS browser will stop using it and go with a closed source browser like IE, Opera, Safari, and or Chrome.... Even on Linux so the result looks likely to be a more closed browsing stack.