See the history of MPEG2, WMV, Quicktime and RealMedia if you want to know more. Are you new to the internet or what?
Oh, right. So you're saying, "back before the HTML5 and the 'video' tag, Flash was better than other methods of embedding videos"? Yeah, that's why there's the new tag.
If your concept of a "generic video player" is the Microsoft Zune, you're obviously too out-of-touch with reality to comment
You implied that I was assuming everyone had iPods. The point is, a wide variety of vendors and manufacturers support H264.
Do you also believe when we speak of a 'generic PC', we mean a Sony Vaio?
If you ask me, "Can I do this on a generic PC?" and you can do it on a computer from Dell, Sony, HP, and many other major hardware manufacturers, then I'd say "Yes." You might have some computer from some manufacturer that can't run Linux, but if you asked, "Can I run Linux on a generic PC?" then I'd say "Yes."
The fact that most people are happy with committing blantant patent infringement is no reason to declare a patented format an official standard for the entirety of the web.
Ok... but what format do you put on your portable music player? You might use ogg, and you'd kind of have me there, but really... come on... most people use patent-encumbered formats. If you're going to say that we can't realistically put video into H264, then how is it that we've put almost all audio into MP3?
the fact that a non-zero percentage of DVD players supports DivX and zero of them support h.264 is enough proof
Even ignoring examples like the PS3, XBox360, and other set-top boxes which include DVD drives, I don't know for sure that there aren't DVD players that have support for H264. I see lots of DVD players saying they support MPEG-4, and I don't know which, if any, support H264 as a subset of that. They might for all I know.
But the reason I don't know that is because I'm not silly enough to go burning each of my movies to DVD so I can play them in a DVD player. Next you'll be complaining that your VHS player doesn't support H264.
Right, so what's the point? One encumbered ubiquitous, well supported spec with excellent development tools already on the market vs another encumbered spec without those things.
Not quite. It's one encumbered semi-ubiquitous spec that's well supported on a variety of platforms (H264), or the same spec (H264) but you're forced into playing it through a particular media player (Flash) that only works well on 1 platform (Windows). It has worked as a stop-gap measure, but it's a really dumb solution.
Is there one? How many people have it?
I believe there is a VLC plugin available for Firefox already, though I'm not sure whether it works with the video tag yet. In either case, it can be done so that it is no harder for a Firefox user to get the H264 plugin than it is to install Flash. *Because Firefox doesn't come with Flash support either*
What good is a standard with gaps so large you can't even provide a single version of a function that runs on all platforms implementing the standard?
It *can* be done. It hasn't been done yet, because as you keep pointing out, it's not a mature technology yet. IE support for the video tag isn't even out yet (but it's supposed to be part of IE9, which is due out soon), so yes, it may take a little while for everyone to get their ducks in a row. However, it can be done and is being done.
And yes, the relevance of Flash will greatly diminish when this is done. Right now, aside from niche uses, Flash is good for two things: Games and embedded video. The "embedded video" use is (fingers crossed) going away.
We tried that before, and it sucked so much we welcomed flash with open arms afterwards.
???
Most generic video players only support DivX as well, and contrary to the average Slashdotter's opinion iPods are anything but 'ubiquitous' in that large area we call 'the rest of the world that's not the US'.
I call BS on the "most generic video players only support DivX." Zunes, Archos players, and even WD set-top boxes, PS3s, XBoxes all play h264. Maybe you have some old tech that doesn't support it, but it's not as though it's an iPod-only format.
Which is why we've never based an actual standard on it. Most people also pirate Photoshop, but that doesn't mean we're gonna pass a law requiring a copy of it to enter high-school, are we?
Again: ??? Are you trolling? Who's talking about forcing anyone to buy anything to enter high school? And anyway, MP3 *is* a standard, and for years it was *the* de facto standard for audio. What format are you using for your portable player?
And (c) people who are aware that DivX has far, *FAR* better penetration rates than h.264 and find the difference in size negligible compared to it.
Citation needed. And don't give me stats like, "X people own DVD players, and lots of DVD players have DivX support." Yeah, lots of players have DivX support, but how many people are burning DivX movies to DVD for that purpose? And if you can come up with that stat, tell me how many of them are pirates anyway, and why they don't use a more sensible method for watching movies.
In the past few years, I've come to see Adobe as a lazy and Windows-centric developer.
Don't get me wrong, their applications are good, but they were all pretty good 10 years ago. In the intervening 10 years, computers have gotten faster while their applications have gotten slower, and without really adding *that much* functionality. As far as I can tell, they've been relying on hardware/OS upgrades to push Apple users to upgrade rather than performance improvements or new features.
I think it's a sign of the current Adobe mentality that, instead of making Acrobat Reader into a lean mean PDF viewing machine, they've added Flash support into PDFs.
Yeah, maybe. I think VLC also might be based in... France? I don't remember.
One possibility I thought about is that they might be operating from a country where patent laws are different.
Regardless, there are decoders available, so all Mozilla really needs to do is figure out how to point people to an appropriate decoder plugin without opening themselves to a lawsuit.
You're writing as though you have a horse in this race.
HTML5 isn't mature, but it's extremely new. It's a standard which is still under development, and the first browsers to support it have only been released very recently. If you're running a website, should you immediately drop all Flash support and use only HTML5? No. AFAIK, IE doesn't even support the video tag yet. On the other hand, if you run a video site and you aren't even working on an HTML5 version yet, I think you're betting on the wrong horse.
As far as H264 being patent encumbered, yes that's true. So is MP3. So what? I mean, yes, if you want to argue ideologically that we should be using completely free codecs, I might very well agree with you, but in that case, Flash is just as guilty as everyone else who supports H264.
But anyway, you're not making an ideological argument. You seem to be trying to mount a practical argument that most computers and devices don't have and/or can't easily get H264 support for free. That's not really true. Even if you're using Firefox, there's no reason you couldn't have a h264 plugin. Right now, when I install Firefox and go to Youtube, it basically tells me, "You need Flash. Go here to install it." There's no reason they couldn't just as easily say, "You need the VLC plugin. Go here to install it." It's really no worse, unless your point is that you just want everyone to be forced to install Flash.
If you want Ogg support, it's already supported in Chrome. Support can be added to Safari with a quick download from Xiph. There's no real problem.
You keep saying it's "immature" as though that's sufficient to dismiss the whole thing. Most technologies are a bit immature when they start out. It's progressing quickly, and most video sites (e.g. Youtube) are already working on migrating to HTML5. The problems are being worked out.
I'm also speaking beyond just video (which seems to be the only significant discussion for many people RE HTML5-v-Flash), and also functionality Flash provides that HTML5 doesn't even have a draft for yet.
Yes, it's true, HTML5 doesn't quite do everything Flash does. Games seem to be the chief example. You can make Flash games much more easily and get better performance than trying to create them in HTML. But everything else? Meh.
I believe both VLC and Mplayer (and many other FOSS projects) make use of x264, a GPLed H264 encoder/decoder. It works great, no problem. The problem hasn't been coming up with an implementation, but rather finding a way to sidestep patent licensing fees.
LAME had similar problems, and for years they didn't offer compiled versions of their encoder, claiming to be "for educational purposes". I don't know how LAME and VLC get around patents now, but apparently Mozilla and many Linux distros can't get around them as easily, and so they don't offer support by default.
So we have a GPLed decoder which can be installed in Linux/Unix, and OSX and Windows both ship with H264 decoders installed right now. Many portable devices and set-top boxes also come with H264 hardware decoders. It's a well supported codec.
In the mean time, Mozilla has stated that they're unable to ship H.264 as part of Firefox [mozillazine.org]. H.264 has patent and licensing issues associated with it.
Why not just kick H264 over to a media player (VLC/Quicktime/WMP) instead of trying to include codecs in browsers? That's an option, at least, since most media players will decode h264.
Here's the main problem I have with this complaint: Ultimately, Flash is just being used as a 3rd party H264 media player anyway. By saying people should stay on Flash, you're basically saying, "Mozilla can't distribute H264 decoders and we can't ask people to install any 3rd party H264 decoders, so instead we're going to force everyone to install a particular 3rd party H264 decoder which is included in a sprawling 3rd-party plugin that only works well in Windows."
When you stop and think about it, it doesn't really make a ton of sense. Flash has worked as a stop-gap measure, but it really has never been a good way to handle things.
create content once for a ubiquitous platform available absolutely everywhere except Apple embedded devices
*sigh* If only it were that simple. Flash isn't on absolutely everything except Apple devices. It works pretty well in Windows. You can get it on Linux/BSD/etc, but some distros don't have it installed by default. Even on OSX, Flash is a buggy resource hog that crashes constantly, which is at least part of the reason why Jobs doesn't want it on his low-power devices. Non-Apple phones and embedded devices may or may not have Flash support.
Adobe tried to blame Apple for the poor performance of Flash on OSX, but if you read their description of the situation, it basically comes down to, "We chose to stick with Carbon (an old framework which Apple has basically been trying to obsolete, but keeping around for compatibility's sake) instead of switching to Cocoa (the new framework), and Carbon doesn't have as direct access to the GPU."
There isn't a single ubiquitous codec even when your users support the fledgling standard otherwise.
H264 is getting to be pretty darned ubiquitous, close to how MP3 was for audio back in the heyday of Napster. Sure, you still had Real Media files and Windows Media files, but mostly people used MP3. Also, technically you're supposed to pay a patent licensing fee for distributing MP3 encoders, MP3 decoders, and even MP3 files, so it really isn't that different.
So who doesn't use H264 to encode their movies? In my experience, it's mostly (a) people who use Ogg for ideological reasons rather than practical reasons; and (b) pirates who are under the mistaken impression that the old DivX encoder provides better compression than H264, or believe that H264 is a proprietary Apple format. Yes, I know there are other reasons to use other formats, but I think the two I mentioned probably take care of most of the normal consumer uses (ignoring legacy devices).
Maybe it's more like saying, "Despite everyone wearing seat belts, people still die in head-on collisions. Clearly we should be considering more public transportation."?
The security industry will always be unable to protect everyone 100% of the time. It is impossible to protect the clueless from anything.
There's definitely some truth to that. However, I think the security industry is still open to criticism specifically because they're telling the clueless, "Without us you're screwed, but if you buy our product, then you don't need to worry. We have you covered."
The problem is, if you're careful and know what you're doing, you don't really need all of these products on your computer. If you're careless and don't know what you're doing, then this products don't quite solve the problem. In most cases, it's a nugget of real product being sold in a 10 gallon drum of snake oil.
Well, aicrules seems to be engaged in an act of deception in order to distort public information for the purpose of furthering his personal political agenda. Maybe Walter Williams has a clever quip justifying that sort of thing?
Wow, that's kind of strange. I came up one result that's basically right in my neighborhood but doesn't seem to be me. I came up with another result that, as far as I can tell, is an amalgam of me and my father.
No real apparent record of me, though. I'm happy about that.
Yeah, I don't think this sort of thing bothers me. I think it will probably hurt their sales in some ways, but whatever.... as long as they sell it DRM-free and don't try to negotiate weird/strict licensing deals and stuff like that.
I know we like to live in a black and white world where every action is either evil or terrific based purely on the action itself, but the motivations really do matter. I think it sucks when a record label picks out the couple of songs that you really want on an album and says they're "Album only", i.e. when every other song on some compilation album is available for purchase on its own, but the 1 big hit song on the album in unavailable for purchase by itself. That's annoying.
But the artist himself saying, "I developed this to be a whole album, and I don't want people purchasing parts"...? Meh. I can live with it.
I think the idea is that the X-Files borrowed some of the cinematic tricks which Silence of the Lambs used to make it so creepy. Granted, that's not the example I would have chosen, but I think it's a real problem in trying to introduce people to some kinds of art. If part of what was impressive about them at the time was that they were ground-breaking, and the ground that they broke is now well trodden, then new viewers are unlikely to be impressed.
As one of the questioners quoted, I'm a little disappointed by the answer to my question. But then, of course, there are three problems that weren't really his fault:
They edited my question down. It's understandable, since my question was long, but I think they lost some of the sense of what I was trying to ask.
He's acting in a PR capacity, and so is kind of stuck trying to give positive-sounding answers
I probably just wouldn't like the real answer to the question anyway.
But still, I'm not too happy that most of his answer seemed to imply, "If you think you can't use Ubuntu to do your work, you're probably just ignorant. If you're happy to stick with Windows, then good for you. Do that."
The fact is that I *do* use Ubuntu (just not on my main work desktop) and I pretty well know what I can and can't do. I'd also love to switch my whole company over to using Linux, but I *can't*. I am not happy paying the Microsoft Tax. I have no viable alternative.
The real thrust of my quoted question was, "I believe that Ubuntu has done a lot of good work making a good general desktop experience, but lots of people are still *stuck* on Windows or OSX because of applications, and not because of OS features. Do you think Canonical should have a role in trying to improve the situation, and if so, what do you think Canonical can do?"
I gather from his post that the answer is, "No, Canonical isn't going to do anything about it." Well... ok, fine. I would have thought he'd at least have some BS about "maybe as WINE improves..." or "we'd like to do everything we can to attract developers," or something.
Instead it seems like he's saying, "No, you're wrong. You're just ignorant. Current applications are good enough." Easy for him to say.
Why should anyone care what he has to say about people who did what he couldn't?
... because success in business is the be-all and end-all of human value?
For one thing, success in business has a lot to do with luck and the situation you're dropped into. It's well known that Gates lucked into a deal with IBM, without which Microsoft would not be in the position it's in now. Granted, he made some savvy decisions along the way, but Microsoft's success isn't all his doing.
But besides all that, even if we assume that Jobs and Gates are the most brilliant minds in business today, that doesn't mean that they're the most insightful and wise people to listen to. It certainly doesn't mean that it's not worth listening to anyone else.
Even if we stipulated that Schwartz was a crappy businessman, he still might have a lot of knowledge and understanding about the realities of the world of software development. He might know some things that Gates and Jobs don't, and he'll certainly be willing to tell you things that Gates and Jobs aren't.
(I don't really know much about Schwartz or care if you listen to him. I just find your dismissiveness misguided.)
No beef. It's just that I saw the possibility that lots of people were taking you seriously, and so I thought I'd point out that it was most likely a joke.
Sure, it looks legit, but it's not as though stuff can't be faked or ripped from elsewhere, or that semi-legitimate software has never included any kind of problematic adware.
And like he said, he checked WOT and got negative results. So he's asking, "Do you know someplace where I can get a definitive answer on issues like these?"
I'm guessing you're being funny, but since you're modded "insightful"...
I think what the OP was saying is, "I Googled it with 'malware' and other key words, but [no information about it being malware] turned up, though my suspicion remained..." So the problem wasn't that he couldn't find information about PDF Suite at all, but rather he couldn't find enough information to determine whether the program was legitimate.
Why in the world would I want to share cycles with apps from other developers on a task oriented portable device?
Well certainly part of the problem is that people hear "no background apps" and they have an averse response without even thinking about it. I mean, really, do you need your PDF viewer to continue to run and eat up system resources while you're *not* looking at the PDF?
There are certain things you want to be able to "run in the background", such as email and IM clients, because they sit around and wait for something to happen and then notify you. Of course, it's not really that you want them to run in the background, but more that you want them to notify you of things. If you can have some kind of system for notifications that can run in the background, then background applications aren't really necessary for that.
Second is the problem of "losing your place". If you have an ebook reader, for example, you don't want to have to quit and then go find the page you were on again. This sort of problem can be addressed by allowing applications to save their state before quitting.
And then finally, you have applications where you actually want them to continue to do things while you work on something else. For example, if I have a bittorrent client, I don't want to sit and watch the bittorrent progress bar. I want to leave it downloading and get on with my work. This is the only case where you really need background applications.
So the real question for the iPhone and iPad is, for what purposes do you need the last kind of background applications on a phone/mini-tablet form-factor? Is there really no sensible solution for those cases for the iPhone?
There are a bunch of possible uses, but I don't know how many that people are actually looking for. More often, it seems like people are just saying, "I've heard that I can't have background applications, and that sounds bad, so I'm going to claim it's a deal-breaker without thinking any more about it."
Slashdot Mirror
Incidentally, does your DVD player support Flash movies?
See the history of MPEG2, WMV, Quicktime and RealMedia if you want to know more. Are you new to the internet or what?
Oh, right. So you're saying, "back before the HTML5 and the 'video' tag, Flash was better than other methods of embedding videos"? Yeah, that's why there's the new tag.
If your concept of a "generic video player" is the Microsoft Zune, you're obviously too out-of-touch with reality to comment
You implied that I was assuming everyone had iPods. The point is, a wide variety of vendors and manufacturers support H264.
Do you also believe when we speak of a 'generic PC', we mean a Sony Vaio?
If you ask me, "Can I do this on a generic PC?" and you can do it on a computer from Dell, Sony, HP, and many other major hardware manufacturers, then I'd say "Yes." You might have some computer from some manufacturer that can't run Linux, but if you asked, "Can I run Linux on a generic PC?" then I'd say "Yes."
The fact that most people are happy with committing blantant patent infringement is no reason to declare a patented format an official standard for the entirety of the web.
Ok... but what format do you put on your portable music player? You might use ogg, and you'd kind of have me there, but really... come on... most people use patent-encumbered formats. If you're going to say that we can't realistically put video into H264, then how is it that we've put almost all audio into MP3?
the fact that a non-zero percentage of DVD players supports DivX and zero of them support h.264 is enough proof
Even ignoring examples like the PS3, XBox360, and other set-top boxes which include DVD drives, I don't know for sure that there aren't DVD players that have support for H264. I see lots of DVD players saying they support MPEG-4, and I don't know which, if any, support H264 as a subset of that. They might for all I know.
But the reason I don't know that is because I'm not silly enough to go burning each of my movies to DVD so I can play them in a DVD player. Next you'll be complaining that your VHS player doesn't support H264.
Right, so what's the point? One encumbered ubiquitous, well supported spec with excellent development tools already on the market vs another encumbered spec without those things.
Not quite. It's one encumbered semi-ubiquitous spec that's well supported on a variety of platforms (H264), or the same spec (H264) but you're forced into playing it through a particular media player (Flash) that only works well on 1 platform (Windows). It has worked as a stop-gap measure, but it's a really dumb solution.
Is there one? How many people have it?
I believe there is a VLC plugin available for Firefox already, though I'm not sure whether it works with the video tag yet. In either case, it can be done so that it is no harder for a Firefox user to get the H264 plugin than it is to install Flash. *Because Firefox doesn't come with Flash support either*
What good is a standard with gaps so large you can't even provide a single version of a function that runs on all platforms implementing the standard?
It *can* be done. It hasn't been done yet, because as you keep pointing out, it's not a mature technology yet. IE support for the video tag isn't even out yet (but it's supposed to be part of IE9, which is due out soon), so yes, it may take a little while for everyone to get their ducks in a row. However, it can be done and is being done.
And yes, the relevance of Flash will greatly diminish when this is done. Right now, aside from niche uses, Flash is good for two things: Games and embedded video. The "embedded video" use is (fingers crossed) going away.
We tried that before, and it sucked so much we welcomed flash with open arms afterwards.
???
Most generic video players only support DivX as well, and contrary to the average Slashdotter's opinion iPods are anything but 'ubiquitous' in that large area we call 'the rest of the world that's not the US'.
I call BS on the "most generic video players only support DivX." Zunes, Archos players, and even WD set-top boxes, PS3s, XBoxes all play h264. Maybe you have some old tech that doesn't support it, but it's not as though it's an iPod-only format.
Which is why we've never based an actual standard on it. Most people also pirate Photoshop, but that doesn't mean we're gonna pass a law requiring a copy of it to enter high-school, are we?
Again: ??? Are you trolling? Who's talking about forcing anyone to buy anything to enter high school? And anyway, MP3 *is* a standard, and for years it was *the* de facto standard for audio. What format are you using for your portable player?
And (c) people who are aware that DivX has far, *FAR* better penetration rates than h.264 and find the difference in size negligible compared to it.
Citation needed. And don't give me stats like, "X people own DVD players, and lots of DVD players have DivX support." Yeah, lots of players have DivX support, but how many people are burning DivX movies to DVD for that purpose? And if you can come up with that stat, tell me how many of them are pirates anyway, and why they don't use a more sensible method for watching movies.
In the past few years, I've come to see Adobe as a lazy and Windows-centric developer.
Don't get me wrong, their applications are good, but they were all pretty good 10 years ago. In the intervening 10 years, computers have gotten faster while their applications have gotten slower, and without really adding *that much* functionality. As far as I can tell, they've been relying on hardware/OS upgrades to push Apple users to upgrade rather than performance improvements or new features.
I think it's a sign of the current Adobe mentality that, instead of making Acrobat Reader into a lean mean PDF viewing machine, they've added Flash support into PDFs.
Yeah, maybe. I think VLC also might be based in... France? I don't remember.
One possibility I thought about is that they might be operating from a country where patent laws are different.
Regardless, there are decoders available, so all Mozilla really needs to do is figure out how to point people to an appropriate decoder plugin without opening themselves to a lawsuit.
You're writing as though you have a horse in this race.
HTML5 isn't mature, but it's extremely new. It's a standard which is still under development, and the first browsers to support it have only been released very recently. If you're running a website, should you immediately drop all Flash support and use only HTML5? No. AFAIK, IE doesn't even support the video tag yet. On the other hand, if you run a video site and you aren't even working on an HTML5 version yet, I think you're betting on the wrong horse.
As far as H264 being patent encumbered, yes that's true. So is MP3. So what? I mean, yes, if you want to argue ideologically that we should be using completely free codecs, I might very well agree with you, but in that case, Flash is just as guilty as everyone else who supports H264.
But anyway, you're not making an ideological argument. You seem to be trying to mount a practical argument that most computers and devices don't have and/or can't easily get H264 support for free. That's not really true. Even if you're using Firefox, there's no reason you couldn't have a h264 plugin. Right now, when I install Firefox and go to Youtube, it basically tells me, "You need Flash. Go here to install it." There's no reason they couldn't just as easily say, "You need the VLC plugin. Go here to install it." It's really no worse, unless your point is that you just want everyone to be forced to install Flash.
If you want Ogg support, it's already supported in Chrome. Support can be added to Safari with a quick download from Xiph. There's no real problem.
You keep saying it's "immature" as though that's sufficient to dismiss the whole thing. Most technologies are a bit immature when they start out. It's progressing quickly, and most video sites (e.g. Youtube) are already working on migrating to HTML5. The problems are being worked out.
I'm also speaking beyond just video (which seems to be the only significant discussion for many people RE HTML5-v-Flash), and also functionality Flash provides that HTML5 doesn't even have a draft for yet.
Yes, it's true, HTML5 doesn't quite do everything Flash does. Games seem to be the chief example. You can make Flash games much more easily and get better performance than trying to create them in HTML. But everything else? Meh.
I believe both VLC and Mplayer (and many other FOSS projects) make use of x264, a GPLed H264 encoder/decoder. It works great, no problem. The problem hasn't been coming up with an implementation, but rather finding a way to sidestep patent licensing fees.
LAME had similar problems, and for years they didn't offer compiled versions of their encoder, claiming to be "for educational purposes". I don't know how LAME and VLC get around patents now, but apparently Mozilla and many Linux distros can't get around them as easily, and so they don't offer support by default.
So we have a GPLed decoder which can be installed in Linux/Unix, and OSX and Windows both ship with H264 decoders installed right now. Many portable devices and set-top boxes also come with H264 hardware decoders. It's a well supported codec.
In the mean time, Mozilla has stated that they're unable to ship H.264 as part of Firefox [mozillazine.org]. H.264 has patent and licensing issues associated with it.
Why not just kick H264 over to a media player (VLC/Quicktime/WMP) instead of trying to include codecs in browsers? That's an option, at least, since most media players will decode h264.
Here's the main problem I have with this complaint: Ultimately, Flash is just being used as a 3rd party H264 media player anyway. By saying people should stay on Flash, you're basically saying, "Mozilla can't distribute H264 decoders and we can't ask people to install any 3rd party H264 decoders, so instead we're going to force everyone to install a particular 3rd party H264 decoder which is included in a sprawling 3rd-party plugin that only works well in Windows."
When you stop and think about it, it doesn't really make a ton of sense. Flash has worked as a stop-gap measure, but it really has never been a good way to handle things.
create content once for a ubiquitous platform available absolutely everywhere except Apple embedded devices
*sigh* If only it were that simple. Flash isn't on absolutely everything except Apple devices. It works pretty well in Windows. You can get it on Linux/BSD/etc, but some distros don't have it installed by default. Even on OSX, Flash is a buggy resource hog that crashes constantly, which is at least part of the reason why Jobs doesn't want it on his low-power devices. Non-Apple phones and embedded devices may or may not have Flash support.
Adobe tried to blame Apple for the poor performance of Flash on OSX, but if you read their description of the situation, it basically comes down to, "We chose to stick with Carbon (an old framework which Apple has basically been trying to obsolete, but keeping around for compatibility's sake) instead of switching to Cocoa (the new framework), and Carbon doesn't have as direct access to the GPU."
There isn't a single ubiquitous codec even when your users support the fledgling standard otherwise.
H264 is getting to be pretty darned ubiquitous, close to how MP3 was for audio back in the heyday of Napster. Sure, you still had Real Media files and Windows Media files, but mostly people used MP3. Also, technically you're supposed to pay a patent licensing fee for distributing MP3 encoders, MP3 decoders, and even MP3 files, so it really isn't that different.
So who doesn't use H264 to encode their movies? In my experience, it's mostly (a) people who use Ogg for ideological reasons rather than practical reasons; and (b) pirates who are under the mistaken impression that the old DivX encoder provides better compression than H264, or believe that H264 is a proprietary Apple format. Yes, I know there are other reasons to use other formats, but I think the two I mentioned probably take care of most of the normal consumer uses (ignoring legacy devices).
Maybe it's more like saying, "Despite everyone wearing seat belts, people still die in head-on collisions. Clearly we should be considering more public transportation."?
The security industry will always be unable to protect everyone 100% of the time. It is impossible to protect the clueless from anything.
There's definitely some truth to that. However, I think the security industry is still open to criticism specifically because they're telling the clueless, "Without us you're screwed, but if you buy our product, then you don't need to worry. We have you covered."
The problem is, if you're careful and know what you're doing, you don't really need all of these products on your computer. If you're careless and don't know what you're doing, then this products don't quite solve the problem. In most cases, it's a nugget of real product being sold in a 10 gallon drum of snake oil.
Well, aicrules seems to be engaged in an act of deception in order to distort public information for the purpose of furthering his personal political agenda. Maybe Walter Williams has a clever quip justifying that sort of thing?
You do know that people use the Internet for things other than entertainment, right?
Wow, that's kind of strange. I came up one result that's basically right in my neighborhood but doesn't seem to be me. I came up with another result that, as far as I can tell, is an amalgam of me and my father.
No real apparent record of me, though. I'm happy about that.
Well, you're nobody on "social networks like Facebook" if you don't have an account. Fair enough?
Yeah, I don't think this sort of thing bothers me. I think it will probably hurt their sales in some ways, but whatever.... as long as they sell it DRM-free and don't try to negotiate weird/strict licensing deals and stuff like that.
I know we like to live in a black and white world where every action is either evil or terrific based purely on the action itself, but the motivations really do matter. I think it sucks when a record label picks out the couple of songs that you really want on an album and says they're "Album only", i.e. when every other song on some compilation album is available for purchase on its own, but the 1 big hit song on the album in unavailable for purchase by itself. That's annoying.
But the artist himself saying, "I developed this to be a whole album, and I don't want people purchasing parts"...? Meh. I can live with it.
I think the idea is that the X-Files borrowed some of the cinematic tricks which Silence of the Lambs used to make it so creepy. Granted, that's not the example I would have chosen, but I think it's a real problem in trying to introduce people to some kinds of art. If part of what was impressive about them at the time was that they were ground-breaking, and the ground that they broke is now well trodden, then new viewers are unlikely to be impressed.
As one of the questioners quoted, I'm a little disappointed by the answer to my question. But then, of course, there are three problems that weren't really his fault:
But still, I'm not too happy that most of his answer seemed to imply, "If you think you can't use Ubuntu to do your work, you're probably just ignorant. If you're happy to stick with Windows, then good for you. Do that."
The fact is that I *do* use Ubuntu (just not on my main work desktop) and I pretty well know what I can and can't do. I'd also love to switch my whole company over to using Linux, but I *can't*. I am not happy paying the Microsoft Tax. I have no viable alternative.
The real thrust of my quoted question was, "I believe that Ubuntu has done a lot of good work making a good general desktop experience, but lots of people are still *stuck* on Windows or OSX because of applications, and not because of OS features. Do you think Canonical should have a role in trying to improve the situation, and if so, what do you think Canonical can do?"
I gather from his post that the answer is, "No, Canonical isn't going to do anything about it." Well... ok, fine. I would have thought he'd at least have some BS about "maybe as WINE improves..." or "we'd like to do everything we can to attract developers," or something.
Instead it seems like he's saying, "No, you're wrong. You're just ignorant. Current applications are good enough." Easy for him to say.
hey, I wonder why Disney and Pixar team up so often?
Because Disney owns Pixar?
Why should anyone care what he has to say about people who did what he couldn't?
... because success in business is the be-all and end-all of human value?
For one thing, success in business has a lot to do with luck and the situation you're dropped into. It's well known that Gates lucked into a deal with IBM, without which Microsoft would not be in the position it's in now. Granted, he made some savvy decisions along the way, but Microsoft's success isn't all his doing.
But besides all that, even if we assume that Jobs and Gates are the most brilliant minds in business today, that doesn't mean that they're the most insightful and wise people to listen to. It certainly doesn't mean that it's not worth listening to anyone else.
Even if we stipulated that Schwartz was a crappy businessman, he still might have a lot of knowledge and understanding about the realities of the world of software development. He might know some things that Gates and Jobs don't, and he'll certainly be willing to tell you things that Gates and Jobs aren't.
(I don't really know much about Schwartz or care if you listen to him. I just find your dismissiveness misguided.)
No beef. It's just that I saw the possibility that lots of people were taking you seriously, and so I thought I'd point out that it was most likely a joke.
Sure, it looks legit, but it's not as though stuff can't be faked or ripped from elsewhere, or that semi-legitimate software has never included any kind of problematic adware.
And like he said, he checked WOT and got negative results. So he's asking, "Do you know someplace where I can get a definitive answer on issues like these?"
I'm guessing you're being funny, but since you're modded "insightful"...
I think what the OP was saying is, "I Googled it with 'malware' and other key words, but [no information about it being malware] turned up, though my suspicion remained..." So the problem wasn't that he couldn't find information about PDF Suite at all, but rather he couldn't find enough information to determine whether the program was legitimate.
Why in the world would I want to share cycles with apps from other developers on a task oriented portable device?
Well certainly part of the problem is that people hear "no background apps" and they have an averse response without even thinking about it. I mean, really, do you need your PDF viewer to continue to run and eat up system resources while you're *not* looking at the PDF?
There are certain things you want to be able to "run in the background", such as email and IM clients, because they sit around and wait for something to happen and then notify you. Of course, it's not really that you want them to run in the background, but more that you want them to notify you of things. If you can have some kind of system for notifications that can run in the background, then background applications aren't really necessary for that.
Second is the problem of "losing your place". If you have an ebook reader, for example, you don't want to have to quit and then go find the page you were on again. This sort of problem can be addressed by allowing applications to save their state before quitting.
And then finally, you have applications where you actually want them to continue to do things while you work on something else. For example, if I have a bittorrent client, I don't want to sit and watch the bittorrent progress bar. I want to leave it downloading and get on with my work. This is the only case where you really need background applications.
So the real question for the iPhone and iPad is, for what purposes do you need the last kind of background applications on a phone/mini-tablet form-factor? Is there really no sensible solution for those cases for the iPhone?
There are a bunch of possible uses, but I don't know how many that people are actually looking for. More often, it seems like people are just saying, "I've heard that I can't have background applications, and that sounds bad, so I'm going to claim it's a deal-breaker without thinking any more about it."
Also, Jobs is known to occasionally reply to email sent to his personal address. It's not extraordinarily common, but it happens.