Because then you don't need to give MPEG-LA any of your money in license fees?
LMAO.
Do you honestly think companies are going to start removing h264 support from products and replacing it with WebM support because of a piddly licensing fee? The cost of the licensing fee is simply passed on to consumers and is justified with the bullet point on the product features list of "Plays back h264". Given the choice between a product and another one of similar specs that includes native playback of it I'll gladly pay a few extra dollars.
This idea that hardware companies and consumers only support a format because a non-free alternative doesn't exist is just Open Source Fanatic delusion. It's the content that drives these decisions, and that includes content already in existence. H264 already has a lot of momentum as there's already a bunch of content out there in the format. Yeah, maybe Google will switch to WebM for YouTube, and that start the ball rolling on a lot of (lousy) content in WebM... eventually. And this will drive hardware makers to add WebM to their DSPs. But it will be an also-ran format at best.
Even if Google converted all their existing site to WebM (which they aren't going to do, especially so soon after converting stuff to h264 for iPhone compatibility), there's buckets full of content other places in h264.
Because the comments of new stories on Yahoo are all the same to start with!
Half will directly hold the current sitting President responsible for the article's topic. Some will hold the political party with majority in Congress (yes, this includes articles about Acts of God -- see articles about Hurrican Katrina blaming the Right Wing). Then there will be all the responses to the first two groups that instead blame the other party or previous President. There will be a few that comment on terrorism. And there will be a few hardcore environmentalist-written ones.
Technicallly it's not a huge hurdle, it's getting companies to do it that's the hard part. Why give consumers a firmware upgrade that adds features when you can make them buy a newer product to get the ability? (See Android on mobiles, etc...)
Many business magazines include ticker symbols for the companies they mention in articles, even if the article is a serious piece that is critical of the company. So I think this assumption of yours that a ticker symbol is some sort of flag that something is an advertisement is plainly wrong.
People could just as easily organize into a "buying circle". Everyone goes and buys a a phone or three, then they all get together and swap the sealed packages back and forth a few times, or even ship them after organizing on the Internet. It's not much different than when people swap "loyalty keycards" for grocery stores so their buying habits can't be reliably tracked.
I agree it's the phone manufacturer's fault. But this isn't about carriers wanting to "improve" the Android experience, it's because Google's goals and the handset maker's goals are at odds with each other. Google is trying to create a hardware-independent OS that can run on multiple handsets and offer an experience similar to the iPhone without Apple's "walled garden" restrictions on apps. Part of the iPhone experience is that the OS is upgradeable and bugs can be quashed and capabilities added down the line, increasing the value of the handset overall.
But this goes against handset maker's wishes that the software and the hardware be considered a package deal. Handset makers don't want an upgradeable experience, they want the customer to come back and buy a newer phone to get those new features. This upcoming iPhone OS update will be the first that will explicitly not work on all models of the iPhone (IIRC the last one could be added to all iPhones, but not all features were enabled on older 1G iPhones due to hardware differences between the models).
The reason there are five different versions of Android market is because handset makers are not upgrading the software that ships on phones as new versions of Android come out or making them available as official upgrades to already purchased handsets. The reason why is they gain nothing from it. Once the handset is sold they have their money from the purchase, and even offering a paid upgrade fee (like the iPod Touch's OS updates) would be very small compared with the purchase of a new handset to gain the features of newer Android features.
Android is fragmenting and will eventually fail, because Google gave too loose of licensing terms to their partners. They should have specified stricter control over usage of the OS and updating. But if they had, many handset manufactures would have never signed on because they want to maintain more control over what consumers can do with their phones to protect their added-services revenue streams.
Apple is not a wireless company itself and has dictated these stricter controls in their agreement AT&T because they had the upper hand in negotiations. That and the more direct control Apple has over iPhone (owning and operating the sole means of updating the OS) is why the iPhone succeeds where Android fails.
--- Note: I do not own an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Apple stock, and do not do business with AT&T for phone/wireless/TV/or Data services in protest of the company's cooperation with the NSA Wiretapping program.
Not to mention that the video quality on Hulu isn't worth ripping to start with. If you're going to pirate content might as well go to the Net where someone encoded the 1080p broadcast from cable.
How about I'm reading the Kindle edition of the [insert religious/philosophical text here] and make notes comparing passages/figures in the book to certain nations/political figures. Will the CIA come knocking if take a passage in a religious text referring to "an evil that has to be expunged" and make a note that this area is referring to the United States, or Capitalists?
The fact they're going to a "video game camp" is strong evidence they wouldn't have gone to a "normal" summer camp to start with. So rather than spend those hours alone in their houses playing video games, at least here they have more opportunity to interact with others... which may lead to doing more things besides playing video games at home alone.
More likely they were aware of it but the people doing the downloading were the same ones who sign the IT departments paychecks and wrote the very policy about company computer usage.
[blockquote]Yeah. The computer hardware is mostly fine. Mostly it's the software that sucks - and I say this speaking as a software developer. Some software sucks less than others though (we're sick of O/S and tools flamewars so please don't start). Some software still has crappy short-sighted design after twenty years...[/blockquote]
I hate that this software is able to exist after so long because it's not forced out of he marketplace for being crappy. It seems the primary reason is purchasing decisions for large companies made by people who don't personally have to use the product. The software company comes in an dazzles them with their marketing team and afterwards it's the rank and file employees who get stuck with it.
The summary says they mention adding this restriction to keep people from sharing a PSN account to share a game. But it also means that hacked or Linux-enabled PS3's wont be able to play it either, as those machines are not running the most recent firmware and are banned from the PSN.
The group recently questioned the reasons why Google stopped censoring search results in China, and criticized Google's privacy Dashboard as inadequate, Kovacevich said.
Jeeze Louie! You can't satisfy anyone anymore. Filter search results and people complain you're cooperating with oppressive governments, then unblock them and someone still finds a reason to complain.
Slashdot Mirror
LMAO.
Do you honestly think companies are going to start removing h264 support from products and replacing it with WebM support because of a piddly licensing fee? The cost of the licensing fee is simply passed on to consumers and is justified with the bullet point on the product features list of "Plays back h264". Given the choice between a product and another one of similar specs that includes native playback of it I'll gladly pay a few extra dollars.
This idea that hardware companies and consumers only support a format because a non-free alternative doesn't exist is just Open Source Fanatic delusion. It's the content that drives these decisions, and that includes content already in existence. H264 already has a lot of momentum as there's already a bunch of content out there in the format. Yeah, maybe Google will switch to WebM for YouTube, and that start the ball rolling on a lot of (lousy) content in WebM... eventually. And this will drive hardware makers to add WebM to their DSPs. But it will be an also-ran format at best.
Even if Google converted all their existing site to WebM (which they aren't going to do, especially so soon after converting stuff to h264 for iPhone compatibility), there's buckets full of content other places in h264.
H264 (and it's licensing fees) is here to stay.
Because the comments of new stories on Yahoo are all the same to start with!
Half will directly hold the current sitting President responsible for the article's topic. Some will hold the political party with majority in Congress (yes, this includes articles about Acts of God -- see articles about Hurrican Katrina blaming the Right Wing). Then there will be all the responses to the first two groups that instead blame the other party or previous President. There will be a few that comment on terrorism. And there will be a few hardcore environmentalist-written ones.
Technicallly it's not a huge hurdle, it's getting companies to do it that's the hard part. Why give consumers a firmware upgrade that adds features when you can make them buy a newer product to get the ability? (See Android on mobiles, etc...)
Many business magazines include ticker symbols for the companies they mention in articles, even if the article is a serious piece that is critical of the company. So I think this assumption of yours that a ticker symbol is some sort of flag that something is an advertisement is plainly wrong.
It looks like a narrow ditch on the other side to me.
Interesting: In your shot it's overcast. Walk across the street, it's suddenly sunny.
Or they can just issue a DMCA notice to all the repositories and claim Linux is a "circumvention device".
People could just as easily organize into a "buying circle". Everyone goes and buys a a phone or three, then they all get together and swap the sealed packages back and forth a few times, or even ship them after organizing on the Internet. It's not much different than when people swap "loyalty keycards" for grocery stores so their buying habits can't be reliably tracked.
Nice pun in the title there, kdawson.
I agree it's the phone manufacturer's fault. But this isn't about carriers wanting to "improve" the Android experience, it's because Google's goals and the handset maker's goals are at odds with each other. Google is trying to create a hardware-independent OS that can run on multiple handsets and offer an experience similar to the iPhone without Apple's "walled garden" restrictions on apps. Part of the iPhone experience is that the OS is upgradeable and bugs can be quashed and capabilities added down the line, increasing the value of the handset overall.
But this goes against handset maker's wishes that the software and the hardware be considered a package deal. Handset makers don't want an upgradeable experience, they want the customer to come back and buy a newer phone to get those new features. This upcoming iPhone OS update will be the first that will explicitly not work on all models of the iPhone (IIRC the last one could be added to all iPhones, but not all features were enabled on older 1G iPhones due to hardware differences between the models).
The reason there are five different versions of Android market is because handset makers are not upgrading the software that ships on phones as new versions of Android come out or making them available as official upgrades to already purchased handsets. The reason why is they gain nothing from it. Once the handset is sold they have their money from the purchase, and even offering a paid upgrade fee (like the iPod Touch's OS updates) would be very small compared with the purchase of a new handset to gain the features of newer Android features.
Android is fragmenting and will eventually fail, because Google gave too loose of licensing terms to their partners. They should have specified stricter control over usage of the OS and updating. But if they had, many handset manufactures would have never signed on because they want to maintain more control over what consumers can do with their phones to protect their added-services revenue streams.
Apple is not a wireless company itself and has dictated these stricter controls in their agreement AT&T because they had the upper hand in negotiations. That and the more direct control Apple has over iPhone (owning and operating the sole means of updating the OS) is why the iPhone succeeds where Android fails.
---
Note: I do not own an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Apple stock, and do not do business with AT&T for phone/wireless/TV/or Data services in protest of the company's cooperation with the NSA Wiretapping program.
I was actually thinking "Just what we need, MORE pollution in the ocean, and the American taxpayer is funding it."
I thought he meant HP, which can now mean Heifer Power!
Not to mention that the video quality on Hulu isn't worth ripping to start with. If you're going to pirate content might as well go to the Net where someone encoded the 1080p broadcast from cable.
Read the article, and enlightenment will hit you like a bolt out of the blue.
I don't think I want to go on a Martian vacation if John Carmack is planning it.
How about I'm reading the Kindle edition of the [insert religious/philosophical text here] and make notes comparing passages/figures in the book to certain nations/political figures. Will the CIA come knocking if take a passage in a religious text referring to "an evil that has to be expunged" and make a note that this area is referring to the United States, or Capitalists?
It could have been an hour and a half playing Major League Baseball 2K10 after having spent years with earlier-year versions of the game.
http://xkcd.com/144/
The fact they're going to a "video game camp" is strong evidence they wouldn't have gone to a "normal" summer camp to start with. So rather than spend those hours alone in their houses playing video games, at least here they have more opportunity to interact with others... which may lead to doing more things besides playing video games at home alone.
At least we'll be able to outrun them when they come for us!
Well then, I salute you and the other guy for your moral fiber. :-D
More likely they were aware of it but the people doing the downloading were the same ones who sign the IT departments paychecks and wrote the very policy about company computer usage.
[blockquote]Yeah. The computer hardware is mostly fine. Mostly it's the software that sucks - and I say this speaking as a software developer. Some software sucks less than others though (we're sick of O/S and tools flamewars so please don't start). Some software still has crappy short-sighted design after twenty years...[/blockquote]
I hate that this software is able to exist after so long because it's not forced out of he marketplace for being crappy. It seems the primary reason is purchasing decisions for large companies made by people who don't personally have to use the product. The software company comes in an dazzles them with their marketing team and afterwards it's the rank and file employees who get stuck with it.
The summary says they mention adding this restriction to keep people from sharing a PSN account to share a game. But it also means that hacked or Linux-enabled PS3's wont be able to play it either, as those machines are not running the most recent firmware and are banned from the PSN.
Jeeze Louie! You can't satisfy anyone anymore. Filter search results and people complain you're cooperating with oppressive governments, then unblock them and someone still finds a reason to complain.
All your tweet belong to us!