You have to wonder, maybe the copyright cartel likes piracy? It would be the best explanation for all the pushes and pushes for making piracy easier while making using the legal thing harder.. I for one, think piracy benefits these guys, it gives them the best excuse for their movies/music/games not selling as well as their stock holders think they should.
You are right, "open standard" != "open source". It seems anyone and his cat seems to be able to turn any proprietary, royalty-requiring thing an open standard. But note that the H.264 "open standard" is one for how to reproduce H.264 video. Most mainstream formats have been standardized in how to open them. And just because something is an open standard, it has no relation with it having a legitimate right to becoming a web standard. Because the web, demands more than just being an open standard. By that logic, websites should all move from HTML markup to PDF, because PDF is an open standard.
So, Stop it with the "open standard" giberish. Neither webm or H.264 are web standards. H.264 is proprietary and requires royalties for implementation. That disqualifies it completely for the job of being a web standard. So we are in a standards war.
literally going to render hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, etc. with H.264 hardware support obsolete.
Oh come on, that's an incredibly silly argument. Those tablets will still be able to play H.264, even in the web with a plugin, it just won't be usable with video, which means that you won't have to pay royalties to support HTML5, and that's great, isn't it?. The idea itself is also pretty bonkers. Why should those "millions" of tablets be immune to obsolescence? Technology marches on, and they are not entitled not to become obsolete.
The accusation that this "sucks for users " is ridiculous. It seems that they (all browser makers) are just taking a position in a war to see what format becomes the HTML5 standard. For some reason, google is being accused of being the devil for giving less choice where : a) Apple and Microsoft both support H.264 and NOT WebM in their browsers and b) Firefox and opera support WebM and not H.264.
You seem concerned that this will slow down transition from flash. Well, I got news , we do not want to transition from flash just for transition's sake. If we transition from flash, it better be to something better, and that includes concerns about royalties. It is clear that we all obediently adopting MS and Apple's defacto standard will benefit them, but making developers required to pay royalties to implement support for standard HTML5 is just lame. It is also incompatible with the GPL.
Your 'expert opinion' also misses the whole point. All software is probably patent-encumbered in one way or another. And that WebM may or may not be patent encumbered does not instantly turn it into an as undesirable candidate for web as H.264 already is. Case in point is, that WebM is royalty free and H.264 isn't.
Google may be manipulating the market for selfish reasons, but you are foolish to think that's not exactly what Apple and Microsoft are doing. And overall, Google's intentions with this are irrelevant in comparison to what this will accomplish. If Apple and Microsoft don't get away with H.264 it will make the web more open by default. WebM is an open source project and soon will be an open standard. And anyway, a triumvirate of the three best browsers is standing for it. Unlike the other two guys - known software patent bullies, with a story of liking closedness and ruining the web with defacto standards.
I guess goog were hoping a lot more people to jump to the Go bandwagon just because they announced it. Yet it really didn't happen... I don't think bashing other languages is really going to improve on it.
Both c++ and Java have their strengths and uses. Java is IMHO HORRIBLY ANNOYING TO CODE IN, but that's actually its strength, it just won't let cowboys get away with doing the things they love to do. Sure, it has been lacking in things, but they update it around, the following update will have some very nice syntax for some data structures (it will get more complex).
The C's also have the advantage of being closer to the hardware, sure you don't need that most of the times, but when you do, they become a great tool in your box, really. It has improved a lot over the years (also known as getting more complex).
Interpreted languages cover for their downfalls when you don't need performance or want to do fancy things with paralel programming. Which is good. Python goes around also improving and getting more complex.
And there lies Go. Its main advantage over other langauges is exactly that. As it is basically undeveloped, it is much closer to what its creators originally wanted it to be. The thing is, that once it starts getting used, and users notice that for example it is pretty necessary for a compiled language to have say generics or exception handling... it will forcefully have to end getting modified and improved and thus it WILL become complex. I do not think that advertising it as "simpler" will work out as since it is a langauge that is intended to be used it is basically doomed to become more complex and thus this selling point will necessarily die. They should advertize it for its superior parallel computing and fast compiler speed, but simplicity... is just a bad idea.
Ah really? Informed patients are one thing. But there are topics in which google is just an easy , easy way to get utterly, and catastrophically misinformed. Also, the disinformation is hard to distinguish for most people. Say you are a science geek that can at least recognize conspiracy bull from actual information, good for you. But what about the other people that don't enjoy of this benefit? Most of them just end up falling pray to complete BS.
Ok, this is a dejavu, but let me put it again: The article is about the kernel.- You will have to deal with C and pointers, and even ASM if you are coding the linux kernel (or any other kernel for that matter). Regarding apps, it is not just C++ anymore, things like python and Java are very suitable for development of linux applications and are already used extensively by young developers interested in such. There is also the travesty that is Mono and many other languages. There are a lot more options than C/C++ now.
It seems almost as if the slashdot post intentionally got a misleading title... Please note: The stuff about "Linux not attracting young developers" is about the Linux KERNEL. KERNEL. This got nothing to do about the remaining parts of the OS. So please don't bring bull about how windows7 is now stable and that's the reason developers don't make apps for linux anymore, because it is not true that young devs are less attracted now into making APPLICATIONS that run on linux-based systems. APPLICATIONS used in Linux-based OS are as healthy as ever if not more healthy. This is related to the KERNEL not being attractive to young developers anymore.
Aren't there excellent programmers that started in any language? Heck, I started with mIRC scripts and even THAT was enough for me to develop logic... Whether there are excellent programmers that started with Basic or not, there would be no easy way they are 'excellent' because of BASIC and not despite that...
There's nothing you can earn with doing the "hard stuff" when it is already done correctly, unless you think real programmers are those who can constantly reinvent the wheel... Reusing wheels is not THE problem. I think the real problem is that there is another extreme. There are too many wheels and some times, programmers don't bother to stop and think whether it would sometimes be more convenient to invent a wheel when the only available wheels just do not fit with the rest of your car or are all square.
It was way easier to skip it, just do it at the word "balanced". Reporters think balance is to give the same attention to both sides of the discussion. But scientific issues work differently, science requires you to be biased towards the theory that is actually supported by evidence. Using journalism's balance in science is the Arkansas school board approach...
Hehe, you know a game that requires you to be connected 100% of the time to be played? WoW. You know what game has been in the the many piracy streets of my beloved La Paz Bolivia for years including expansions? WoW. I have stopped doing piracy when I grew up and just moved to open source, but I am fairy sure there are a lot of wow players in here that are not paying blizzard for the game. Then again, I have no idea how it works, most likely they are just using a pirate server...
It is naive to think the method described can work as well as the article claims, they assume it is actually hard to get rid of this form of DRM, but really.... Does the game use public key encryption? hack the game so that it does not use it!, simple! Or you thought they were gonna try to bruteforce the key? lol... my bet is that the pirates will get to play the game it even before the release date. (it is gonna be leaked, gratz!) Mean while, true costumers won't be able to play when internet goes down. Good work.
Considering this: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_mob_cel_percap-telephones-mobile-cellular-per-capita The global average number of functioning cell phones per person is 0.6~... I am surprised 50% of all of us have not gotten cancer yet. In fact, countries like the US take the number to the extreme, with 1000 cell phones per person! With these numbers I can safely claim that there is not even a correlation between cell phone use and cancer:/
Also consider that just as there are companies with economical interests in cell phone signals being healthy there are also companies with interests in them being hazardous. The more reasons you have to sell those "protection" systems that you are supposed to use with your cell phone to protect you from the harmful signals, the better.
That's an excessively lame excuse. Ubuntu is continously losing functionality and replacing it with proprietary solutions just for disk space sake. You claim that it is no problem to have to install fundamental applications everybody uses manually, but you are missing something:
* What about the live cd/usb? In case of emergencies I would be able to use my flash disk/CD to boot into a version of ubuntu that has the tools I needed for my work (ie: you are using someone else's computer, your hd broke and no time to fix, etc). But without openoffice or the gimp I am now screwed.
* Besides of taking precious time from me and making it feel as cheap as windows, there is the little problem that it is not obvious to new users that these useful apps ever exist. New users would just assume UNR forcefully needs web connection to use that limited office service that google docs is...
UNR actually targets even heavier "netbooks". An Atom processor is on the requirements list and also the 1024x600 resolution. In those machines there is definitely no issues with ooo in my experience. In fact I didn't really have much issues on my old 701 either.
Honestly, I think it is just that the current ubuntu heads would just keep using disk space as an excuse to replace perfectly working apps with proprietary ones. I think we need a new flag distro...
Darn I was not aware of that statement Bradley made and now that I read it it is so true and it makes me so sad. Just every new ubuntu version comes with a new idiotic change that had no reason to happen, like ooo to google docs. GIMP to f-spot. Etc, etc,etc. I think it is because the current heads of the project (Mark is just the owner, not the ones controlling them) have complete disregard of the ubuntu manifesto. It was that manifesto what lead me to choose it, but now it is clear that it is not important at all for them. We need a new flag distro.
So, according to these -biased sources - DRM or the lack thereof does not change piracy rates. It is strange that the conclussion from such find is to continue doing it. If DRM does no effect whatsoever there is no point in adding it...
So, assuming the stats are all right, the conclussion is... well bullshit?. So, in fact google news users click HALF of the links they find... That's a lot of traffic. Since google news tends to show the same news multiple times. And since some news sites are not worth clicking. And since many users probably did not find the news they were looking for... 50% is actually a huge number.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to wonder, maybe the copyright cartel likes piracy? It would be the best explanation for all the pushes and pushes for making piracy easier while making using the legal thing harder.. I for one, think piracy benefits these guys, it gives them the best excuse for their movies/music/games not selling as well as their stock holders think they should.
So, Stop it with the "open standard" giberish. Neither webm or H.264 are web standards. H.264 is proprietary and requires royalties for implementation. That disqualifies it completely for the job of being a web standard. So we are in a standards war.
Oh come on, that's an incredibly silly argument. Those tablets will still be able to play H.264, even in the web with a plugin, it just won't be usable with video, which means that you won't have to pay royalties to support HTML5, and that's great, isn't it?. The idea itself is also pretty bonkers. Why should those "millions" of tablets be immune to obsolescence? Technology marches on, and they are not entitled not to become obsolete.
The accusation that this "sucks for users " is ridiculous. It seems that they (all browser makers) are just taking a position in a war to see what format becomes the HTML5 standard. For some reason, google is being accused of being the devil for giving less choice where : a) Apple and Microsoft both support H.264 and NOT WebM in their browsers and b) Firefox and opera support WebM and not H.264.
You seem concerned that this will slow down transition from flash. Well, I got news , we do not want to transition from flash just for transition's sake. If we transition from flash, it better be to something better, and that includes concerns about royalties. It is clear that we all obediently adopting MS and Apple's defacto standard will benefit them, but making developers required to pay royalties to implement support for standard HTML5 is just lame. It is also incompatible with the GPL.
Your 'expert opinion' also misses the whole point. All software is probably patent-encumbered in one way or another. And that WebM may or may not be patent encumbered does not instantly turn it into an as undesirable candidate for web as H.264 already is. Case in point is, that WebM is royalty free and H.264 isn't.
Google may be manipulating the market for selfish reasons, but you are foolish to think that's not exactly what Apple and Microsoft are doing. And overall, Google's intentions with this are irrelevant in comparison to what this will accomplish. If Apple and Microsoft don't get away with H.264 it will make the web more open by default. WebM is an open source project and soon will be an open standard. And anyway, a triumvirate of the three best browsers is standing for it. Unlike the other two guys - known software patent bullies, with a story of liking closedness and ruining the web with defacto standards.
I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously.
I guess goog were hoping a lot more people to jump to the Go bandwagon just because they announced it. Yet it really didn't happen... I don't think bashing other languages is really going to improve on it.
Both c++ and Java have their strengths and uses. Java is IMHO HORRIBLY ANNOYING TO CODE IN, but that's actually its strength, it just won't let cowboys get away with doing the things they love to do. Sure, it has been lacking in things, but they update it around, the following update will have some very nice syntax for some data structures (it will get more complex).
The C's also have the advantage of being closer to the hardware, sure you don't need that most of the times, but when you do, they become a great tool in your box, really. It has improved a lot over the years (also known as getting more complex).
Interpreted languages cover for their downfalls when you don't need performance or want to do fancy things with paralel programming. Which is good. Python goes around also improving and getting more complex.
And there lies Go. Its main advantage over other langauges is exactly that. As it is basically undeveloped, it is much closer to what its creators originally wanted it to be. The thing is, that once it starts getting used, and users notice that for example it is pretty necessary for a compiled language to have say generics or exception handling... it will forcefully have to end getting modified and improved and thus it WILL become complex. I do not think that advertising it as "simpler" will work out as since it is a langauge that is intended to be used it is basically doomed to become more complex and thus this selling point will necessarily die. They should advertize it for its superior parallel computing and fast compiler speed, but simplicity... is just a bad idea.
I don't buy it.
I am afraid that chances are there is already a software patent for that.
Are you aware of any IQ tests mine could take?
Ah really? Informed patients are one thing. But there are topics in which google is just an easy , easy way to get utterly, and catastrophically misinformed. Also, the disinformation is hard to distinguish for most people. Say you are a science geek that can at least recognize conspiracy bull from actual information, good for you. But what about the other people that don't enjoy of this benefit? Most of them just end up falling pray to complete BS.
This is the sort of things you can learn at "Google U" : http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/jenny_mccarthy_shows_off_her_knowledge_o.php
This is not "empowerment" it is the opposite, it moves people back to the dark ages in a way.
Microsoft openly bragging about trying to enforce lock-in by making formats nearly impossible to implement! That's priceless.
Wake me up when I don't need a windows license to use MS' google docs alternative.
Ok, this is a dejavu, but let me put it again: The article is about the kernel.- You will have to deal with C and pointers, and even ASM if you are coding the linux kernel (or any other kernel for that matter). Regarding apps, it is not just C++ anymore, things like python and Java are very suitable for development of linux applications and are already used extensively by young developers interested in such. There is also the travesty that is Mono and many other languages. There are a lot more options than C/C++ now.
It seems almost as if the slashdot post intentionally got a misleading title... Please note: The stuff about "Linux not attracting young developers" is about the Linux KERNEL. KERNEL. This got nothing to do about the remaining parts of the OS. So please don't bring bull about how windows7 is now stable and that's the reason developers don't make apps for linux anymore, because it is not true that young devs are less attracted now into making APPLICATIONS that run on linux-based systems. APPLICATIONS used in Linux-based OS are as healthy as ever if not more healthy. This is related to the KERNEL not being attractive to young developers anymore.
You mean KIDS now play with gun-shaped toys? Oh no!
Under that logic remote controllers are as dangerous. Blaming it to the wii is complete non-sense.
Aren't there excellent programmers that started in any language? Heck, I started with mIRC scripts and even THAT was enough for me to develop logic... Whether there are excellent programmers that started with Basic or not, there would be no easy way they are 'excellent' because of BASIC and not despite that...
There's nothing you can earn with doing the "hard stuff" when it is already done correctly, unless you think real programmers are those who can constantly reinvent the wheel... Reusing wheels is not THE problem. I think the real problem is that there is another extreme. There are too many wheels and some times, programmers don't bother to stop and think whether it would sometimes be more convenient to invent a wheel when the only available wheels just do not fit with the rest of your car or are all square.
It was way easier to skip it, just do it at the word "balanced". Reporters think balance is to give the same attention to both sides of the discussion. But scientific issues work differently, science requires you to be biased towards the theory that is actually supported by evidence. Using journalism's balance in science is the Arkansas school board approach...
Hehe, you know a game that requires you to be connected 100% of the time to be played? WoW. You know what game has been in the the many piracy streets of my beloved La Paz Bolivia for years including expansions? WoW. I have stopped doing piracy when I grew up and just moved to open source, but I am fairy sure there are a lot of wow players in here that are not paying blizzard for the game. Then again, I have no idea how it works, most likely they are just using a pirate server...
It is naive to think the method described can work as well as the article claims, they assume it is actually hard to get rid of this form of DRM, but really.... Does the game use public key encryption? hack the game so that it does not use it!, simple! Or you thought they were gonna try to bruteforce the key? lol... my bet is that the pirates will get to play the game it even before the release date. (it is gonna be leaked, gratz!) Mean while, true costumers won't be able to play when internet goes down. Good work.
Considering this: :/
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_mob_cel_percap-telephones-mobile-cellular-per-capita
The global average number of functioning cell phones per person is 0.6~... I am surprised 50% of all of us have not gotten cancer yet. In fact, countries like the US take the number to the extreme, with 1000 cell phones per person! With these numbers I can safely claim that there is not even a correlation between cell phone use and cancer
Also consider that just as there are companies with economical interests in cell phone signals being healthy there are also companies with interests in them being hazardous. The more reasons you have to sell those "protection" systems that you are supposed to use with your cell phone to protect you from the harmful signals, the better.
At least the ubuntu 9.10 version of OOO runs just fine on my aspire one D250, and it also ran fine on my old 701 4G ASUS eee.
That's an excessively lame excuse. Ubuntu is continously losing functionality and replacing it with proprietary solutions just for disk space sake. You claim that it is no problem to have to install fundamental applications everybody uses manually, but you are missing something:
* What about the live cd/usb? In case of emergencies I would be able to use my flash disk/CD to boot into a version of ubuntu that has the tools I needed for my work (ie: you are using someone else's computer, your hd broke and no time to fix, etc). But without openoffice or the gimp I am now screwed.
* Besides of taking precious time from me and making it feel as cheap as windows, there is the little problem that it is not obvious to new users that these useful apps ever exist. New users would just assume UNR forcefully needs web connection to use that limited office service that google docs is...
UNR actually targets even heavier "netbooks". An Atom processor is on the requirements list and also the 1024x600 resolution. In those machines there is definitely no issues with ooo in my experience. In fact I didn't really have much issues on my old 701 either.
Honestly, I think it is just that the current ubuntu heads would just keep using disk space as an excuse to replace perfectly working apps with proprietary ones. I think we need a new flag distro...
Darn I was not aware of that statement Bradley made and now that I read it it is so true and it makes me so sad. Just every new ubuntu version comes with a new idiotic change that had no reason to happen, like ooo to google docs. GIMP to f-spot. Etc, etc ,etc. I think it is because the current heads of the project (Mark is just the owner, not the ones controlling them) have complete disregard of the ubuntu manifesto. It was that manifesto what lead me to choose it, but now it is clear that it is not important at all for them. We need a new flag distro.
So, according to these -biased sources - DRM or the lack thereof does not change piracy rates. It is strange that the conclussion from such find is to continue doing it. If DRM does no effect whatsoever there is no point in adding it...
So, assuming the stats are all right, the conclussion is... well bullshit?. So, in fact google news users click HALF of the links they find... That's a lot of traffic. Since google news tends to show the same news multiple times. And since some news sites are not worth clicking. And since many users probably did not find the news they were looking for... 50% is actually a huge number.