Except that h.264 is licensed by MPEG; it's not a proprietary Apple technology like Flash is for Adobe. Pushing for standard formats over proprietary ones is ideal behavior.
Could our administration possibly act in a more corrupt manner on this issue? It seems unlikely. At least this removes all question of whose interests the Obama administration has at heart. I only good I can hope to see from this is that the DNC will lose significant goodwill with people who get their news online, harming their electability in November as people choose to stay home, or cast their vote with a 3rd party. Personally, I refuse to give my vote to a political party that could promote this kind of legislation. I don't care how "bad" their opponents are; the DNC can go to hell.
Looking at actual app sales and revenue for the Android Marketplace relative to the App Store's, I'd say it's a far cry from the amount of sunlight shining on the App Store. You're certainly right about the other factors that make the Android platform attractive to developers, but if there's no sunlight (i.e. money changing hands), then you still might be worse off.
Unless that other forest is in the shadow of the South-facing forest-covered mountain you're trying to escape, and only gets 1% as much sunlight. The possibility of capturing a significant amount of the well-exposed forest's sunlight proves to be difficult to ignore for most.
That may be, but a good number would stay behind using old versions of Adobe CS and dumping money into emerging competitors to Adobe. Not to mention that most of Apple's customers wouldn't be affected in the slightest. The harm to Apple would be minimal, but the harm to Adobe if competitors gain a foothold could be disastrous.
License h.264 for a really awesome native HTML5 playback somehow.
Re:Apple has made Microsoft look "open".
on
The Apple Two
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· Score: 2, Informative
That may have been true before MS announced Windows Phone 7 Series, complete with locked down app distribution limited to what MS approves, no multitasking, no filesystem access, etc. It looks like MS is vigorously following Apple down this path of artificially restricted devices. Apple and MS both look like petty control freaks with totalitarian aspirations.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
on
iPad Review
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· Score: 1
I'm just giving my assessment from personal use. Take it as you will. May you and your iPad be very happy together, and may your children have strong arms, that they might not be bothered by the iPad's weight.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 1
I'm not saying that 1.5lbs is a lot of weight. I'm saying that 1.5lbs is a lot of weight for some of the applications the iPad is marketed for, such as using it as a giant game controller with tilt sensors. This is not a very practical application, because even for such a fit and well-toned person as yourself, it gets very tiring to gyrate the thing in mid-air for extended periods. I'll just say that the iPad is not very suitable to high-action games, and this is primarily due to the weight of the device. It makes a great eBook reader, a fantastic web browser, and it's good for board games, but a giant PSP or DS this is not.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
on
iPad Review
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· Score: 1
Two words: Gorilla Arms.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
on
iPad Review
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· Score: 1
The Stand also doesn't entice you to be held in both hands and gyrated in mid-air to control a race car for hours on end.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 1
It's really the density that gets you; the thing is surprisingly heavy for its size. If you can use it with an edge resting on a surface, it's not too bad, but if you are playing a game that needs you to hold the device like a controller in both hands and use accelerometers for motion detecting, then even you will get tired very quickly.
So here's the story; Google releases a new Chromium build that does three things: 1) A copy of the Flash plugin gets installed when Chrome/Chromium is installed, regardless of whether you already have it. 2) Chrome/Chromium now runs its copy of the Flash plugin in a sandbox, so that malicious Flash content can't access your computer. 3) Chrome/Chromium will now auto-scan for updates to the Flash plugin and install them in an automated fashion upon launch.
So basically, the real story is that this is a security update for Chromium, mitigating many of the vulnerabilities with the current setup of having the Flash runtime be run with user privileges from a central location for all browsers, and managed by no one at all.
There's also an announcement of a partnership between Google, Mozilla and Adobe to work on a new API for browser plugins, presumably involving browsers taking a more active role in managing their plugins, and allowing certain features like sandboxing and implementation of some type of common interface standards.
What we get instead is reporting of Google thwarting Apple's putative war on Flash, somehow breathing new life into the beleaguered standard, where Apple would surely do the opposite of whatever Google is doing. I'd not be surprised to see Safari adopt some very similar features in the near future, as they all make pretty good sense, at least for their desktop browser. If only these "journalists" knew enough about what they were reporting to recognize their need to eat crow at that point.
"...there are new applications in the works that could lead to a warning if we're driving with a cell phone in our hand"
Uh, I think the driver already knew they were driving with a cell phone in their hand; a warning seems superfluous.
Re:Internet on TV? Really?
on
I Want My GTV
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· Score: 1
You still have to overcome the fact that the user is sitting ten feet away from the screen, and using an extremely basic and imprecise input device. Besides going to Hulu.com, or hopefully even more cohesive set-and-forget streaming video services, access to the web brings little value to your TV set. This is a domain where native device-specific apps, even if they were to be built using web APIs, would bring significantly more value than access to the www.
Re:Internet on TV? Really?
on
I Want My GTV
·
· Score: 1
We'll see. Google has been entirely focused on cloud and streaming services, not leveraging local content, so we'll see just how capable this thing will be for managing your own media library in standard formats and integrating with various devices on your network. I'm betting on a complete market failure here, personally, possibly even making the AppleTV look successful by comparison.
Well, that's about 29.5 miles further than other "jetpacks" can fly. 30 miles in a straight line covers a great many people's daily commutes, and it uses regular gasoline, not 90+% hydrogen peroxide, which you can't buy anywhere.
How about if I, as a Firefox user, could pay $0.20 for a license to play back h.264, maybe gaining access to some h.264 playback add-on from Mozilla.org? $0.20 to get rid of Flash playback is certainly worth it for me. It would sure beat the current option of "Tough shit, use Safari or Chrome for decent non-crashy web video playback!" I want a web browser with Firefox's extensibility, and the ability to play h.264 tags. Of those two features, playing the h.264 content without crashing is the more important one. I have rough equivalents to the FF add-ons I use on other browsers. Mozilla's current position, while ideologically respectable, is not practically acceptable. Unless someone somehow enables HTML5 h.264 playback in FireFox, it will be sad to have to give up such a nice browser over this issue, but that's exactly what I'll be doing.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because MS has become irrelevant in mobile.
Except that h.264 is licensed by MPEG; it's not a proprietary Apple technology like Flash is for Adobe. Pushing for standard formats over proprietary ones is ideal behavior.
Ohhhhh, so that's where the ho's at...
Could our administration possibly act in a more corrupt manner on this issue? It seems unlikely. At least this removes all question of whose interests the Obama administration has at heart. I only good I can hope to see from this is that the DNC will lose significant goodwill with people who get their news online, harming their electability in November as people choose to stay home, or cast their vote with a 3rd party. Personally, I refuse to give my vote to a political party that could promote this kind of legislation. I don't care how "bad" their opponents are; the DNC can go to hell.
Looking at actual app sales and revenue for the Android Marketplace relative to the App Store's, I'd say it's a far cry from the amount of sunlight shining on the App Store. You're certainly right about the other factors that make the Android platform attractive to developers, but if there's no sunlight (i.e. money changing hands), then you still might be worse off.
Unless that other forest is in the shadow of the South-facing forest-covered mountain you're trying to escape, and only gets 1% as much sunlight. The possibility of capturing a significant amount of the well-exposed forest's sunlight proves to be difficult to ignore for most.
That may be, but a good number would stay behind using old versions of Adobe CS and dumping money into emerging competitors to Adobe. Not to mention that most of Apple's customers wouldn't be affected in the slightest. The harm to Apple would be minimal, but the harm to Adobe if competitors gain a foothold could be disastrous.
License h.264 for a really awesome native HTML5 playback somehow.
That may have been true before MS announced Windows Phone 7 Series, complete with locked down app distribution limited to what MS approves, no multitasking, no filesystem access, etc. It looks like MS is vigorously following Apple down this path of artificially restricted devices. Apple and MS both look like petty control freaks with totalitarian aspirations.
I'm just giving my assessment from personal use. Take it as you will. May you and your iPad be very happy together, and may your children have strong arms, that they might not be bothered by the iPad's weight.
I'm not saying that 1.5lbs is a lot of weight. I'm saying that 1.5lbs is a lot of weight for some of the applications the iPad is marketed for, such as using it as a giant game controller with tilt sensors. This is not a very practical application, because even for such a fit and well-toned person as yourself, it gets very tiring to gyrate the thing in mid-air for extended periods. I'll just say that the iPad is not very suitable to high-action games, and this is primarily due to the weight of the device. It makes a great eBook reader, a fantastic web browser, and it's good for board games, but a giant PSP or DS this is not.
Two words: Gorilla Arms.
The Stand also doesn't entice you to be held in both hands and gyrated in mid-air to control a race car for hours on end.
It's really the density that gets you; the thing is surprisingly heavy for its size. If you can use it with an edge resting on a surface, it's not too bad, but if you are playing a game that needs you to hold the device like a controller in both hands and use accelerometers for motion detecting, then even you will get tired very quickly.
BTW, I'm referring to shady link-baiting stories like these:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=32470
http://gizmodo.com/5505682/how-adobe-and-google-are-making-sure-flash-will-never-die
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2010/03/30/is-this-googles-sneak-attack-on-apple.aspx
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/chrome-os-flash/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/30/google_integrates_flash_with_chrome/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001429-264.html
So here's the story; Google releases a new Chromium build that does three things:
1) A copy of the Flash plugin gets installed when Chrome/Chromium is installed, regardless of whether you already have it.
2) Chrome/Chromium now runs its copy of the Flash plugin in a sandbox, so that malicious Flash content can't access your computer.
3) Chrome/Chromium will now auto-scan for updates to the Flash plugin and install them in an automated fashion upon launch.
So basically, the real story is that this is a security update for Chromium, mitigating many of the vulnerabilities with the current setup of having the Flash runtime be run with user privileges from a central location for all browsers, and managed by no one at all.
There's also an announcement of a partnership between Google, Mozilla and Adobe to work on a new API for browser plugins, presumably involving browsers taking a more active role in managing their plugins, and allowing certain features like sandboxing and implementation of some type of common interface standards.
What we get instead is reporting of Google thwarting Apple's putative war on Flash, somehow breathing new life into the beleaguered standard, where Apple would surely do the opposite of whatever Google is doing. I'd not be surprised to see Safari adopt some very similar features in the near future, as they all make pretty good sense, at least for their desktop browser. If only these "journalists" knew enough about what they were reporting to recognize their need to eat crow at that point.
"...there are new applications in the works that could lead to a warning if we're driving with a cell phone in our hand"
Uh, I think the driver already knew they were driving with a cell phone in their hand; a warning seems superfluous.
You still have to overcome the fact that the user is sitting ten feet away from the screen, and using an extremely basic and imprecise input device. Besides going to Hulu.com, or hopefully even more cohesive set-and-forget streaming video services, access to the web brings little value to your TV set. This is a domain where native device-specific apps, even if they were to be built using web APIs, would bring significantly more value than access to the www.
We'll see. Google has been entirely focused on cloud and streaming services, not leveraging local content, so we'll see just how capable this thing will be for managing your own media library in standard formats and integrating with various devices on your network. I'm betting on a complete market failure here, personally, possibly even making the AppleTV look successful by comparison.
It's easy because they've got film on their teeth... it's their own damn fault.
Well, that's about 29.5 miles further than other "jetpacks" can fly. 30 miles in a straight line covers a great many people's daily commutes, and it uses regular gasoline, not 90+% hydrogen peroxide, which you can't buy anywhere.
Maybe they wanted to be compatible with iPhones...
: P
Yes, with the default web browser and HTML5.
Oh, c'mon! At least give Jobs the chance to show you the Jesus pad before you start hatin'...
How about if I, as a Firefox user, could pay $0.20 for a license to play back h.264, maybe gaining access to some h.264 playback add-on from Mozilla.org? $0.20 to get rid of Flash playback is certainly worth it for me. It would sure beat the current option of "Tough shit, use Safari or Chrome for decent non-crashy web video playback!" I want a web browser with Firefox's extensibility, and the ability to play h.264 tags. Of those two features, playing the h.264 content without crashing is the more important one. I have rough equivalents to the FF add-ons I use on other browsers. Mozilla's current position, while ideologically respectable, is not practically acceptable. Unless someone somehow enables HTML5 h.264 playback in FireFox, it will be sad to have to give up such a nice browser over this issue, but that's exactly what I'll be doing.