[...] but none of these would have overcome IE's big advantage: being the default browser on the desktop OS that owns 90% of its market. The only thing that could have overcome that advantage is not the advantages of the competition, but the extreme crappiness of IE itself.
Isn't Win7 shipping without a default browser (in Europe at least I expect)?
[...] every single video gets transcoded to ogg. That is the goal after all, right? All video in an open format so you don't have to worry about lockdown?
I don't think that is the goal, the goal from where I'm observing is to allow people to encode video unencumbered by license restrictions, then allow that single video file to be viewed in any browser that meets the standards (again without IP shenanigans).
Why is one single format not realistic? Greedy corporations aside.
If Ogg Theora (or whatever, MPEG LA could open up H264;0)>, I'm not bothered about which FOSS format is used) were the format can you imagine how quickly it would get optimised? How quickly it would get full hardware acceleration? Then the time and money saved in having only one (eventually) winning format to encode, store, cache and render?
There is no law against me walking up to your mother and calling her a cunt,
In the UK you would possibly be cautioned under Public Order Act 1986, Section 4:
" (1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he:
(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting
thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.".
You'd be charged if my mum was rich or a celebrity, but she isn't. You'd get a good negative cred in the press as she just got awarded by the Queen for long service to the community. I suppose being employed isn't important to you? Employers tend to dislike this sort of threatening behaviour, especially towards elderly females.
In many jurisdictions if you are a different skin colour to my mother then you'd be prosecuted under racial discrimination laws (yes, I think that's wrong).
Also if I then batter the hell out of you with my tyre iron (which I just happened to be holding) I think I'd get let off with a warning due to the extreme nature of your provocation. Worth a chance anyway. That said, I don't find "cunt" to be an offensive word, just that I know my mother would.
Court audio would have to be free-libre and gratis to listen to?
Can Nesson put as evidence the tunes in question and have them played and thus recorded in open court (eg to establish if the defendant was familiar with the tunes alleged to be infringingly copied) - then the RIAA couldn't block the distribution of those tunes?
Except video for everybody is not _a_ video for everybody it is different videos for different people. It is a lie. It's like advertising a "food that everyone likes" and serving different food to each person depending on what they like - you don't get to make one dish, you make lots of different ones, require lots of different preparation and cooking sessions, lots of different storage containers.
The implementation of the code to serve the video is not in question (in my analogy that's just the plate you serve the food on). It is the need for multiple formats and thus multiple transcoding and storage efforts. "video for everybody" requires (roughly) twice the storage and twice the transcoding of a plays-everywhere standard. If that's the best we can do then Flash wins.
The guy who wrote "video for everybody" (http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody#video-encode) admits that the encoding issues are so complex that he won't offer advice about encoding the files that he can say will work (perhaps he's worried about contributory patent infringement?). It shouldn't be that hard.
Also, can we please stop whining about this in relation to the HTML5 spec? HTML has never specified file formats for media/objects (<img>, <object>) and it should *not* start now.
You feel that the whole GIF debacle and the years of wait (nearly over) for MS to properly implement PNG were the optimal solution that should be chosen again?
Storage is a major issue (imagine running a video site and the W3C suddenly changing tack and meaning you'll need at least twice the storage) but we mustn't forget transcoding is also a major resource drain.
Except IE, which doesn't support, and has not announced plans to support, anything. Until they decide what they're going to do, it really doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.
This time around the content providers (YouTube/Google) have a lot more say in things. If MS forced the spec to exclude the Ogg Vorbis provision and YouTube decided to keep it and serve all their content in O-V then MS would either lose out hugely or implement it.
Mind you it took them 12 years to implement PNG right (and it's technically still not quite there, OK it's right, just not consistent - very MS).
As FF, Op and Saf get more share and as other devices are more often used to access the web (Smart Phones particularly) then people are slowly coming around to the idea that you don't need "the blue e" to "get the internet". That takes the power away from MS and I think away from any particular browser (if you can change from MSIE you can change from FF, etc.).
Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing?
Apple is one of the companies pushing HTML5 and already implements it in Safari. They aren't holding back progress so much as trying to push it in a different way than what Mozilla and Opera want.
Apple is a media distributor as well as a browser maker (OK it may be technically financially split) - presumably they're worried about losing some control over the distributed media (not enough DRM) ?
So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.
I think you've missed the point. The point is to be able to serve one video and know that all standards compliant browsers _can_ show it. We know you can serve different video to different browsers.
As a developer I don't ever want to go back to the methods of catering for broken browsers (IE6) and working around patent encumbered media formats (GIF). It would be better to be able to use the better format (PNG vs GIF later) if the browser makers (MS) can get the implementation right.
I suspect most web designers and developers would prefer a system of a working (supported!) cross-browser base with possibility for progressive enhancement - eg you _can_ send Ogg Theora to all compliant browsers but sending H.264 to some and Dirac, say, to others gives better quality. Those who can't afford to, or are unlicensed to, create video in non-open formats then can still participate fully in the web.
(...) to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant with all of the required parts of the mandatory provisions of that specification ("Covered Implementation") [...]
Interesting. I was already wondering wth a "covered implementation" might be.
I'm guessing one of the provisions is "source code includes a full decimal expansion of pi within the comments, wherein comments must not exceed 1024 bytes in length". Of course that provision is written in a lesser used dialect of Klingon in a Microdot using white pigment on a white background.
tl;dr they can't sue you, ever, unless you sue them over patents.
Does that meant that if you pee them off they sue you for some patent infringement in a cunning way in which you can only win by countersuing? I've never heard of such a mechanism but I can only imagine their must be one... this _is_ Microsoft.
It' not intractable in IE8, it's just quite obscure so people started seeing there PNG background looking the wrong brightness (gamma) in IE8 and it was pretty well hidden as to why. MS may not have technically done things wrong, just inconsistently with how they rendered hex colours and how the other browsers do it (ignore gAMA tags).
I'd take IE8 over any previous IE browser any day.
Simple: view source --> use your "The Matrix" vision to render everthing in your brain. Every serious developer knows how to run code in his brain, that's how I run all my unit tests!
He's right I run all my unit testing in his brain too.
Still waiting to get back something without a dirty picture pasted over where the results should be.
Under the current draft, browsers choose what set of codecs/container-formats they support.
Yes, and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this is how support for the two leading hi-def formats is right now:
Chrome 2: Supports both Theora and H.264 Safari 4: Supports H.264 Firefox 3.5: Supports Theora IE 8: Supports neither.
Who'd have thought it hey. Never mind IE9 will support some proprietary windows format somehow made so that it appears to be Theora and breaks any possibility of providing Ogg Theora and supporting MS's internet browser...
It tells us that Microsoft's IE6 team need to suffer unimaginable torment for ruining the internet. Again.
If IE6 was able to cope with application/xhtml+xml and properly render XHTML sent like that then the majority of websites would have upgraded from HTML 4.01 and served proper XML that was easier to parse and render without having to allow for all the relative inconsistencies of HTML. We'd have had faster browsers, possibly better SVG support sooner and marshmallows would grow on trees.
OK maybe not that last one.
We'd probably already have XHTML2, HTML would have died and no-one would have mourned the loss.
Of course we get to try all of this again with XHTML5. I wonder which browser won't render it properly without making web designers jump through hoops... hmmm?!!
It's been in the design phase for four years, before netbooks even took off. This device will now have to compete with hardware that didn't exist at the time of its conception, because other corporations moved faster.
I take it you didn't notice the evolution in the prototype design to incorporate changes in the market?
If you can show me a touch screen laptop/tablet with the same (or better!) screen size and weight then I'll be a happy man.
Since we have no sentient computers yet, and since the markup diarrhea these people produce would be challenging even for a human to decrypt, the task is hopeless, and the websites that result will break in fascinating ways with each new browser version, or whenever whoever visits them has a different screen resolution than the "designer", or the stars are not just right.
Do you think we could organise a crack team of standards enforcers to run pages through the W3C validators and swoop in and give atomic wedgies to any "designer" whose markup doesn't validate.
The mixture doesn't need to remain for long, nor am i bothered about penetrating more than a metre or so into the nest. 95% destruction will be fine. If I had the money I'd be out buying a cutting torch and some large sheets of glass to make an ant farm with - the proof of the pudding and all that.
Slashdot Mirror
[...] but none of these would have overcome IE's big advantage: being the default browser on the desktop OS that owns 90% of its market. The only thing that could have overcome that advantage is not the advantages of the competition, but the extreme crappiness of IE itself.
Isn't Win7 shipping without a default browser (in Europe at least I expect)?
No I can't be bothered to Google it.
Why would you make such an assumption?
Not sure, but I know why I'd ask such a question.
I'm more or less convinced the hardware issue is a red herring, no codec has hardware acceleration until it is adopted for use.
They don't have to use Ogg Vorbis encodings, just enable their browsers for displaying it.
[...] every single video gets transcoded to ogg. That is the goal after all, right? All video in an open format so you don't have to worry about lockdown?
I don't think that is the goal, the goal from where I'm observing is to allow people to encode video unencumbered by license restrictions, then allow that single video file to be viewed in any browser that meets the standards (again without IP shenanigans).
Why is one single format not realistic? Greedy corporations aside.
If Ogg Theora (or whatever, MPEG LA could open up H264 ;0)>, I'm not bothered about which FOSS format is used) were the format can you imagine how quickly it would get optimised? How quickly it would get full hardware acceleration? Then the time and money saved in having only one (eventually) winning format to encode, store, cache and render?
How do you play baseball by yourself?
There is no law against me walking up to your mother and calling her a cunt,
In the UK you would possibly be cautioned under Public Order Act 1986, Section 4:
" (1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he:
(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting
thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.".
You'd be charged if my mum was rich or a celebrity, but she isn't. You'd get a good negative cred in the press as she just got awarded by the Queen for long service to the community. I suppose being employed isn't important to you? Employers tend to dislike this sort of threatening behaviour, especially towards elderly females.
In many jurisdictions if you are a different skin colour to my mother then you'd be prosecuted under racial discrimination laws (yes, I think that's wrong).
Also if I then batter the hell out of you with my tyre iron (which I just happened to be holding) I think I'd get let off with a warning due to the extreme nature of your provocation. Worth a chance anyway.
That said, I don't find "cunt" to be an offensive word, just that I know my mother would.
Court audio would have to be free-libre and gratis to listen to?
Can Nesson put as evidence the tunes in question and have them played and thus recorded in open court (eg to establish if the defendant was familiar with the tunes alleged to be infringingly copied) - then the RIAA couldn't block the distribution of those tunes?
Just a delicious little daydream.
You can use a single block of HTML below to provide video for everyone using the new tag:
Video For Everybody
Except video for everybody is not _a_ video for everybody it is different videos for different people. It is a lie. It's like advertising a "food that everyone likes" and serving different food to each person depending on what they like - you don't get to make one dish, you make lots of different ones, require lots of different preparation and cooking sessions, lots of different storage containers.
The implementation of the code to serve the video is not in question (in my analogy that's just the plate you serve the food on). It is the need for multiple formats and thus multiple transcoding and storage efforts. "video for everybody" requires (roughly) twice the storage and twice the transcoding of a plays-everywhere standard. If that's the best we can do then Flash wins.
The guy who wrote "video for everybody" (http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody#video-encode) admits that the encoding issues are so complex that he won't offer advice about encoding the files that he can say will work (perhaps he's worried about contributory patent infringement?). It shouldn't be that hard.
Also, can we please stop whining about this in relation to the HTML5 spec? HTML has never specified file formats for media/objects (<img>, <object>) and it should *not* start now.
You feel that the whole GIF debacle and the years of wait (nearly over) for MS to properly implement PNG were the optimal solution that should be chosen again?
Storage is a major issue (imagine running a video site and the W3C suddenly changing tack and meaning you'll need at least twice the storage) but we mustn't forget transcoding is also a major resource drain.
Except IE, which doesn't support, and has not announced plans to support, anything. Until they decide what they're going to do, it really doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.
This time around the content providers (YouTube/Google) have a lot more say in things. If MS forced the spec to exclude the Ogg Vorbis provision and YouTube decided to keep it and serve all their content in O-V then MS would either lose out hugely or implement it.
Mind you it took them 12 years to implement PNG right (and it's technically still not quite there, OK it's right, just not consistent - very MS).
As FF, Op and Saf get more share and as other devices are more often used to access the web (Smart Phones particularly) then people are slowly coming around to the idea that you don't need "the blue e" to "get the internet". That takes the power away from MS and I think away from any particular browser (if you can change from MSIE you can change from FF, etc.).
Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing?
Apple is one of the companies pushing HTML5 and already implements it in Safari. They aren't holding back progress so much as trying to push it in a different way than what Mozilla and Opera want.
Apple is a media distributor as well as a browser maker (OK it may be technically financially split) - presumably they're worried about losing some control over the distributed media (not enough DRM) ?
So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.
I think you've missed the point. The point is to be able to serve one video and know that all standards compliant browsers _can_ show it. We know you can serve different video to different browsers.
As a developer I don't ever want to go back to the methods of catering for broken browsers (IE6) and working around patent encumbered media formats (GIF). It would be better to be able to use the better format (PNG vs GIF later) if the browser makers (MS) can get the implementation right.
I suspect most web designers and developers would prefer a system of a working (supported!) cross-browser base with possibility for progressive enhancement - eg you _can_ send Ogg Theora to all compliant browsers but sending H.264 to some and Dirac, say, to others gives better quality. Those who can't afford to, or are unlicensed to, create video in non-open formats then can still participate fully in the web.
It's not that your analogy was too complex... it's that it was just flat wrong. Nowhere does it say he was "insulting" anyone.
I believe it said "taunt" and that takes some level of insult to be effective.
If you think "I could whup you at basketball" is insulting then you're right. That's a taunt.
Interesting. I was already wondering wth a "covered implementation" might be.
I'm guessing one of the provisions is "source code includes a full decimal expansion of pi within the comments, wherein comments must not exceed 1024 bytes in length". Of course that provision is written in a lesser used dialect of Klingon in a Microdot using white pigment on a white background.
tl;dr they can't sue you, ever, unless you sue them over patents.
Does that meant that if you pee them off they sue you for some patent infringement in a cunning way in which you can only win by countersuing? I've never heard of such a mechanism but I can only imagine their must be one ... this _is_ Microsoft.
According to the firm, a single Twitter follower could be worth $0.10 a month.
Dead or alive?
What's the difference?
You get less spam from the dead ones.
It' not intractable in IE8, it's just quite obscure so people started seeing there PNG background looking the wrong brightness (gamma) in IE8 and it was pretty well hidden as to why. MS may not have technically done things wrong, just inconsistently with how they rendered hex colours and how the other browsers do it (ignore gAMA tags).
I'd take IE8 over any previous IE browser any day.
Simple: view source --> use your "The Matrix" vision to render everthing in your brain.
Every serious developer knows how to run code in his brain, that's how I run all my unit tests!
He's right I run all my unit testing in his brain too.
Still waiting to get back something without a dirty picture pasted over where the results should be.
Yes, and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this is how support for the two leading hi-def formats is right now:
Chrome 2: Supports both Theora and H.264
Safari 4: Supports H.264
Firefox 3.5: Supports Theora
IE 8: Supports neither.
Who'd have thought it hey. Never mind IE9 will support some proprietary windows format somehow made so that it appears to be Theora and breaks any possibility of providing Ogg Theora and supporting MS's internet browser ...
It tells us that Microsoft's IE6 team need to suffer unimaginable torment for ruining the internet. Again.
If IE6 was able to cope with application/xhtml+xml and properly render XHTML sent like that then the majority of websites would have upgraded from HTML 4.01 and served proper XML that was easier to parse and render without having to allow for all the relative inconsistencies of HTML. We'd have had faster browsers, possibly better SVG support sooner and marshmallows would grow on trees.
OK maybe not that last one.
We'd probably already have XHTML2, HTML would have died and no-one would have mourned the loss.
Of course we get to try all of this again with XHTML5. I wonder which browser won't render it properly without making web designers jump through hoops ... hmmm?!!
It's been in the design phase for four years, before netbooks even took off. This device will now have to compete with hardware that didn't exist at the time of its conception, because other corporations moved faster.
I take it you didn't notice the evolution in the prototype design to incorporate changes in the market?
If you can show me a touch screen laptop/tablet with the same (or better!) screen size and weight then I'll be a happy man.
Since we have no sentient computers yet, and since the markup diarrhea these people produce would be challenging even for a human to decrypt, the task is hopeless, and the websites that result will break in fascinating ways with each new browser version, or whenever whoever visits them has a different screen resolution than the "designer", or the stars are not just right.
Do you think we could organise a crack team of standards enforcers to run pages through the W3C validators and swoop in and give atomic wedgies to any "designer" whose markup doesn't validate.
Pretty please?
The mixture doesn't need to remain for long, nor am i bothered about penetrating more than a metre or so into the nest. 95% destruction will be fine. If I had the money I'd be out buying a cutting torch and some large sheets of glass to make an ant farm with - the proof of the pudding and all that.
Nuke them from orbit then?
barely pocketizable, and has glitzy buttons
Why do you want to make it into a pocket? Perhaps if it were pocketable too, then you could keep a spare inside the "pocketizable" one?
A forklift? Or possibly Chuck Norris.