It don't think this patent debacle stifles innovation or startups, I think it does so in the US because of a broken patent system and borked legal system. Incubate your startup company somewhere where it can either fail, or grow large enough to stand up to the patent trolls before they ever find themselves in that situation.

If I started a company in the US, an attorney or patent advisor would be person #3 involved. In europe I'd be confident to run a much larger innvoation-heavy a startup with without legal advise. I'm not shitting you: you can run a company for years with dozens of employees and not even have a business card from a lawyer in your office.

So it has little in common with "Windows". This won't be what you use to run "Windows" on your new arm ultraportable. This is what you use when you run some metro-esque OS on a tablet.

The difference between Win8-ARM on a device/appliance is to Windows on a laptop/desktop what iOS on an iPad is to MacOS on a macintosh laptop. All this talk about walled gardens aside, I can see the point of having a very protected environment for computers that are appliances more related to my toaster than they are to my old desktop computer. I don't want to care about device drivers when Win8 runs in my TV, phone or tablet. It must just work, even if it means I can't install my old applications. If I want a computer where I can do anything I want, I get a computer. In this case that happens to mean my computer has to be x86 and my appliances have to be ARM. So be it. It almost certainly was going to be that way for the foreseeable future anyway.

I can't really blame microsoft for making this decision. They don't want to wall in windows users, they want to win over some iOS users with iPad. Maybe on Win9 or Win10 we'll do all our computing in the walled garden. But lets cross that bridge when we get ther.

No law like this will be passed on EU level unless it is absolutely certain that the core countries will adapt it without fuss.

To me the big step in camera sizes is "pocketable" and "not pocketable". All interchangeable lens cameras with 4/3 size sensors or larger are squarely in the "not pocketable" segment. And if you get a camera that you can't pocket, I suggest you simply get the best one for the money which is probably a dslr.

That said, if you can live with an extremely compact zoom (there is only one model that I know of that telescopes and has motorized zoom) or even a fixed focal pancake lens, then you actually can pocket an interchangeable lens camera. Nikon also makes their 1-series cameras with smaller sensors and interchangeable lenses, but I feel they have the worse of both worlds (sensor of a compact and price of a slr).

As usual here on the internet I'm going to recommend something different than what you asked for: a dslr. Go with Nikon D5100 or canon 600D as an entry level camera. Keep your phone or a good compact camera for snapshots.

Honestly all web platforms have drawbacks, and all of them will have supporters claiming they dont.

• python: pros: easy, decent tools, good frameworks. cons: syntax is difficult to check for correctness (non-compiled).
• perl: pros: it's free: cons: Its perl
• .net: pros: techincally bloody excellent, good tools. cons: practically win-only, no free server software
• javascript (e.g. node.js): pros: it is the same on the client if you want one. Cons: it is still bloody javascript.
• java: pros: widespread, good servers. cons: a million frameworks to choose from and none is great, next year all will be obsolete and 100 new ones will come. Slow language development (java 8 is .net from about 2005)
• php: pros: easy, straightforward, multiplatform cons: practically web-only

They all suck, which one sucks the least depends on the circumstances of your project (time, budget, techincal aspects, what you already know, what you would like to learn, performance requirements, scalability requirements).

I agree that it isnt exactly the same as images. Still, I don't think you will find a lot of people that miss the days of having to watch videos in a popup real player. Having everything in the browser (separate tab: fine) is probably what people want. And lets not forget, this is mainly a business problem not a technical one. The video needs to be protected, and the video needs to be displayed with the appropriate ads and branding surrounding it

So you agree that there is a niche for live streaming of DRM:ed content? Even with streming you could just buffer the whole move or whatever (that is the same as downloading). The important bit is that the user can't be bothered to manage a file or a video player app in 2011. No sir. I think people in the US approach the whole SL debate from another agle, as hey probably met it through Netflix (which I have never used for georaphical reasons). Over here SL is used for most if not all live internet TV services (i.e. the web versions of pay-per-view sports basically). They will never serve anything but streaming content, and they will never use anything that doesn't have good DRM, and of course it will always be streamed as it is live

Of course I am assuming the value of the content is zero once the game is over. So offline cracking/uploading etc. is not relevant for live streams. Of course there is a motivation for cracking the drm also for live streams, as long as you can redistribute the cracked streams live.

You cleverly removed the bit about DRM from the quote of the parent post. So when I implement my client side part, to be able to have the drm bits I'll probably make it native rather than js. That also means it is now a plugin. Oh wait I can see what ms did here...

I know and MS implementation (IIS media) is one implementation of this. Of course the one that is actually used isn't the http live streaming but the silverlight client smooth streaming which adds the drm capability. Video delivery without drm just won't be interesting for those who sell content. Not anytime soon. If http live streaming just added drm capability then we wouldn't need silverlight smooth streaming.