I'm not so sure, Google has to pay a licensing fee for the codecs that handle the encoding and decoding process. Also, didn't they dump the codec only to have MS provide a workaround on Windows computers?
I assume you mean prohibiting teachers from using a non-work related site that might allow for one on one contact with students. And, I'd have to agree that it goes too far, most of the rest of the provisions seem reasonable, and likely will be as protective of the teachers as the students. But barring the teachers from using other sites because of a possibility, is going over board, especially without requiring any motivation to skirt the requirements on the teacher's part.
H.264 requires people to pay a licensing fee to use. They have magnanimously agreed to allow people to stream H.264 for free, knowing that they've been paid for the software to encode the stream and for the software to decode the stream. That's enough to prevent the software from being freely available and shouldn't be the case with an open standard.
Patents on software is one thing, patents on standards is quite another thing. It's completely unacceptable for a standard to require a party to license the patent to use the standard. You can sort of get away with it, when it's a standard solely for interacting with a particular software package, but otherwise it's obnoxious and has no place in a standard.
Just look at the headaches with GIF and JPEG, if you don't believe me.
They haven't finished converting the videos. Last I heard, they hadn't managed to ad advertising to their WebM selection. But, I can attest to the fact that there are plenty of WebM videos on Youtube, they just haven't gotten around to converting the whole site.
FFMPEG, which works until folks get sued for infringing the patent. It doesn't really matter who is doing the infringing ultimately, if you're having to either infringe or pay a fee to use a standard. For years the main headache I had from running FreeBSD as my primary desktop was no Flash, which meant no Youtube and same for dozens of other poorly designed sites.
Kill WebM, extort money for using WebM, it goes the same way ultimately. As long as people are required to pay for the use of the codec, it can't be in Firefox or any other free browser without somebody infringing on the patent. Which is the problem.
I was referring to the patent pool that MPEG LA was trying to put together, although in retrospect that was probably not at all clear.
And, hopefully FUD is what it will remain. But, as long as they're unwilling to sign over royalty free use for the h.264 pool, then we need to be using something else. It's not acceptable, IMHO, for standards like this to be pay for play.
Oh, so that's what happened. I noticed that the inhaler I got about that time didn't seem to be doing anything. At least not during inhalation. I remember back during the 80s that it was a lot more obvious that I was getting medicine than it is these days.
I also noticed that the inhalers don't seem to last as long as they used to. Not sure if that's at all related, but I find lately that invariably when I need an inhaler it's gone bad because I haven't used it in a few months. Which was never a case when I was a kid.
Right, because asthma is so trendy that we've all gone out and gotten it.
It's one thing to charge people for the side effects of their own decisions and quite another to charge people for something they were born with. Ultimately, I'd be more than happy to subsidize these for other people, because I wouldn't need it myself.
Well, that's easily enough solved, they just need gorillas, those will naturally freeze to death when the power gets shut off at corporate their headquarters.
Seriously, MPEG LA is going to create a new pool to try and kill WebM, I'm sure they're already working on it. The question is whether or not we're going to let a bunch of patent trolls control future development of the web. Standardizing around a standard that requires licensing fees is the wrong way to go.
What I'm saying is that it's incredibly dangerous to give a web application direct access to the hardware in that fashion. There will always be bugs and there will always be exploits, which is why web apps are supposed to be separated from the hardware in their own sandbox.
This is a lesson that people should have learned years ago. Sure, with a sandbox bad things can still happen, but suggesting that it's as big of a deal for a javascript exploit as one that accesses the hardware is odd.
My mother probably would have subscribed to MLB and ditched the satellite if not for the obnoxious licensing requirements. Basically she could get a stream, but only after the game was over and subject to various restrictions.
Probably the same reason my parents don't subscribe to Netflix streaming, bad selection and for some series they'd have to get some of the episodes on disc as they aren't available for streaming.
You might want to go back and read my post before you try to bullshit me. It doesn't matter who owns the wires. As long as they have to cross the right of way or use tax payer funds, they lose a lot of rights that they would otherwise have. It's a moot point whether you want to say it's because it's interstate communication or because it makes use of the public right of way, either way they are a regulated utility.
It doesn't matter what the contractual issues are between companies, they still have to be in compliance with the laws governing them. It doesn't matter if Company A agrees to something with Company B if there's a regulation that says they can't do it, then they can't do it. Same goes for contractual obligations that violate the law. They would have the option of suing the agency or renegotiating the contract. In neither case does a contract supersede the regulatory powers of the government.
And your point about the sidewalk company is another straw man. These are pathways that are paid in part by subsidies and they cross public right of ways. Now, if they want to turn down the subsidies then they can claim ownership over it, but as long as they accept the money they have to accept that it is in part public property.
The thing is that it's legal precedent that private companies can't do whatever they want just because they own the property involved. If it were unconstitutional then you'd expect for anti-discrimination, environmental protection and workplace safety legislation to be unenforceable.
Which is a moot point anyways, considering that there are subsidies and that the wires cross public property in getting to their final destination.
That's FUD. Congress has tried to do that many times in the past and has routinely been swatted down by the courts for doing it. Rarely do they manage to get away with it. I don't personally see any reason to believe that it's more likely to change than corporate nature.
OTOH, there is no constitutional restrictions on what corporate interests can do and as a result the only court decisions that can stop it are ones in response to violating regulation or law. As a result, it's far less likely that anybody is going to be able to stop it as you'd need to create a new regulation or law in order to prevent such abuses.
All in all, the corporatist FUD is more than a little counterproductive.
For servers that would possibly be worthwhile, but I'm not sure why a home user would need 64GB of cache. 2GB would probably more than enough. Folks needing more than that would probably just opt for a 64GB SSD and be done with it.
QoS would presumably fall under the unreasonable discrimination clause. As dropping or delaying packets would be discrimination. Now, the specifics and court cases would determine when that is and is not reasonable.
Sure they have, one single valid justification for it is that the ISPs are using public resources to run their business and as such should be required to engage in neutral policies.
I love how you slipped in the word "valid" as if it allows you to ignore the fact that ISPs make use of the public right of way to conduct their business. As long as they're using easements on public land or publicly owned spectrum, the government has the right to expect that they maintain their businesses in a way that is neutral to the various parties that wish to do business with the consumers.
It's not rocket science, but by the same token, with enough motivation it can be hard to detect. Even for those that aren't trying to cheat, but have good memory, the charts they typically use are somewhat less than helpful.
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I'm not so sure, Google has to pay a licensing fee for the codecs that handle the encoding and decoding process. Also, didn't they dump the codec only to have MS provide a workaround on Windows computers?
I assume you mean prohibiting teachers from using a non-work related site that might allow for one on one contact with students. And, I'd have to agree that it goes too far, most of the rest of the provisions seem reasonable, and likely will be as protective of the teachers as the students. But barring the teachers from using other sites because of a possibility, is going over board, especially without requiring any motivation to skirt the requirements on the teacher's part.
I thought the concern that sparked this was teachers thinking of the children.
H.264 requires people to pay a licensing fee to use. They have magnanimously agreed to allow people to stream H.264 for free, knowing that they've been paid for the software to encode the stream and for the software to decode the stream. That's enough to prevent the software from being freely available and shouldn't be the case with an open standard.
Patents on software is one thing, patents on standards is quite another thing. It's completely unacceptable for a standard to require a party to license the patent to use the standard. You can sort of get away with it, when it's a standard solely for interacting with a particular software package, but otherwise it's obnoxious and has no place in a standard.
Just look at the headaches with GIF and JPEG, if you don't believe me.
They haven't finished converting the videos. Last I heard, they hadn't managed to ad advertising to their WebM selection. But, I can attest to the fact that there are plenty of WebM videos on Youtube, they just haven't gotten around to converting the whole site.
FFMPEG, which works until folks get sued for infringing the patent. It doesn't really matter who is doing the infringing ultimately, if you're having to either infringe or pay a fee to use a standard. For years the main headache I had from running FreeBSD as my primary desktop was no Flash, which meant no Youtube and same for dozens of other poorly designed sites.
Which is the way that this is likely to end up.
Kill WebM, extort money for using WebM, it goes the same way ultimately. As long as people are required to pay for the use of the codec, it can't be in Firefox or any other free browser without somebody infringing on the patent. Which is the problem.
I was referring to the patent pool that MPEG LA was trying to put together, although in retrospect that was probably not at all clear.
And, hopefully FUD is what it will remain. But, as long as they're unwilling to sign over royalty free use for the h.264 pool, then we need to be using something else. It's not acceptable, IMHO, for standards like this to be pay for play.
Oh, so that's what happened. I noticed that the inhaler I got about that time didn't seem to be doing anything. At least not during inhalation. I remember back during the 80s that it was a lot more obvious that I was getting medicine than it is these days.
I also noticed that the inhalers don't seem to last as long as they used to. Not sure if that's at all related, but I find lately that invariably when I need an inhaler it's gone bad because I haven't used it in a few months. Which was never a case when I was a kid.
Right, because asthma is so trendy that we've all gone out and gotten it.
It's one thing to charge people for the side effects of their own decisions and quite another to charge people for something they were born with. Ultimately, I'd be more than happy to subsidize these for other people, because I wouldn't need it myself.
Well, that's easily enough solved, they just need gorillas, those will naturally freeze to death when the power gets shut off at corporate their headquarters.
Seriously, MPEG LA is going to create a new pool to try and kill WebM, I'm sure they're already working on it. The question is whether or not we're going to let a bunch of patent trolls control future development of the web. Standardizing around a standard that requires licensing fees is the wrong way to go.
What I'm saying is that it's incredibly dangerous to give a web application direct access to the hardware in that fashion. There will always be bugs and there will always be exploits, which is why web apps are supposed to be separated from the hardware in their own sandbox.
This is a lesson that people should have learned years ago. Sure, with a sandbox bad things can still happen, but suggesting that it's as big of a deal for a javascript exploit as one that accesses the hardware is odd.
I agree, death to Flash. The last thing we need is more and better security vulnerabilities.
My mother probably would have subscribed to MLB and ditched the satellite if not for the obnoxious licensing requirements. Basically she could get a stream, but only after the game was over and subject to various restrictions.
Probably the same reason my parents don't subscribe to Netflix streaming, bad selection and for some series they'd have to get some of the episodes on disc as they aren't available for streaming.
Wow, you're a very dedicated troll.
You might want to go back and read my post before you try to bullshit me. It doesn't matter who owns the wires. As long as they have to cross the right of way or use tax payer funds, they lose a lot of rights that they would otherwise have. It's a moot point whether you want to say it's because it's interstate communication or because it makes use of the public right of way, either way they are a regulated utility.
It doesn't matter what the contractual issues are between companies, they still have to be in compliance with the laws governing them. It doesn't matter if Company A agrees to something with Company B if there's a regulation that says they can't do it, then they can't do it. Same goes for contractual obligations that violate the law. They would have the option of suing the agency or renegotiating the contract. In neither case does a contract supersede the regulatory powers of the government.
And your point about the sidewalk company is another straw man. These are pathways that are paid in part by subsidies and they cross public right of ways. Now, if they want to turn down the subsidies then they can claim ownership over it, but as long as they accept the money they have to accept that it is in part public property.
The thing is that it's legal precedent that private companies can't do whatever they want just because they own the property involved. If it were unconstitutional then you'd expect for anti-discrimination, environmental protection and workplace safety legislation to be unenforceable.
Which is a moot point anyways, considering that there are subsidies and that the wires cross public property in getting to their final destination.
That's FUD. Congress has tried to do that many times in the past and has routinely been swatted down by the courts for doing it. Rarely do they manage to get away with it. I don't personally see any reason to believe that it's more likely to change than corporate nature.
OTOH, there is no constitutional restrictions on what corporate interests can do and as a result the only court decisions that can stop it are ones in response to violating regulation or law. As a result, it's far less likely that anybody is going to be able to stop it as you'd need to create a new regulation or law in order to prevent such abuses.
All in all, the corporatist FUD is more than a little counterproductive.
For servers that would possibly be worthwhile, but I'm not sure why a home user would need 64GB of cache. 2GB would probably more than enough. Folks needing more than that would probably just opt for a 64GB SSD and be done with it.
QoS would presumably fall under the unreasonable discrimination clause. As dropping or delaying packets would be discrimination. Now, the specifics and court cases would determine when that is and is not reasonable.
Sure they have, one single valid justification for it is that the ISPs are using public resources to run their business and as such should be required to engage in neutral policies.
I love how you slipped in the word "valid" as if it allows you to ignore the fact that ISPs make use of the public right of way to conduct their business. As long as they're using easements on public land or publicly owned spectrum, the government has the right to expect that they maintain their businesses in a way that is neutral to the various parties that wish to do business with the consumers.
It's not rocket science, but by the same token, with enough motivation it can be hard to detect. Even for those that aren't trying to cheat, but have good memory, the charts they typically use are somewhat less than helpful.
That's definitely a possibility and one that's a known risk for people that spend too much time on their computer.