Visual Studio is hardly the only development IDE on Windows. Yes, it is good, but you cannot really say that "free desktop software development dead in Windows 8" just because gasp, MS wants you to buy the new version.
I agree. Ars Technica used an inflammatory title to drive traffic to their site. I used to like Ars but it has adopted a tabloid journalism flavour lately so I don't read it anymore. For me, Ars is a damaged brand.
Google acquired WebM only a couple of years ago and specs for it were released then. It takes YEARS before it'll start to come out.with hardware decoders. (I remember dealing with h.264 encoded files back in what, 2004? When practically nothing played it, and DivX was the popular codec of the day). WebM in hardware will probably start happening around 2013-2014 at the earliest (as in - you can buy devices with webm support).
I would say the years have passed and the hardware is coming out this year: http://blog.webmproject.org/2012/03/webm-gaining-momentum-in-hardware.html
This company did not raise prices for their older MPEG1, MPEG2, or MP3 standards, so why do you think they'll suddenly turn evil?
The MPEG LA has quite often raised the price for H.264. The MPEG LA's H.264 license summary talks about past license increases. The royalty cap has increased since 2005:
The maximum annual royalty (“cap”) for an Enterprise (commonly controlled Legal Entities) is $3.5 million per year 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year 2007-08, $5 million per year 2009-10, and $6.5 million per year in 2011-15.
The MPEG LA's H.264 license FAQ specifically addresses their approach to increasing license costs:
Q: Is there a limitation on the amount that royalty rates may increase at each renewal?
A: If royalty rates were to increase, they will not increase by more than 10% at each renewal for specific license grants.*
*Annual Royalty Caps are not subject to the 10% limitation
H.264 is not free-as-in-freedom nor free-as-in-beer, and patents are the reason. IP amounts to copyright, trade secrets and patents, but the first two don't apply here. It's a patent issue.
No. It's a licencing issue. H.264 is not an open, royalty-free standard and that's what makes it bad choice for the web. VP8 is covered by patents but it's licenced under royalty-free terms. If H.264 was licenced under royalty-free terms for all use cases then there would be no issue.
Phoronix never confirms anything. Phoronix makes shit up, or possibly, at best, speculates.
You should probably read the article. Michael Larabel went to Valve's offices in Bellevue, Washington and spoke to Gabe Newell among others. It isn't a question of confirmation. In this instance you're essentially claiming that either Michael Larabel is lying, or Gabe Newell and others at Valve are lying, or both. Do you have evidence of that or are you, at best, speculating?
from the let-the-dingos-eat-her dept.
The plural of dingo is dingoes, not dingos.
Mozilla forbids Add-on writers from putting it more than 2 major version numbers ahead. This policy worked fine when 2 major version numbers took years... but right now, that's 12 weeks.
Add-ons default to compatible since Firefox 10. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible and http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2012/01/05/default-compatibility-is-coming-and-your-help-is-needed/.
Because it's lightweight
In what sense is Chrome lightweight? Of the five major browsers, Chrome is the second biggest memory consumer and it comes bundled with Flash, which I personally don't have a use for.
"VP7 is used for versions prior to Skype 5.5. As of version 5.7 VP8 is used for both group and one on one standard definition video chat and H264 is used for 720p and 1080p high definition group and one on one video chat."
That's in the context of a particular piece of hardware which happens to produce an H.264 stream. The Skype blog post cited by Wikipedia doesn't say anything about H.264 being used preferentially for full high definition video calls and doesn't imply that a web cam which produces a full high definition VP8 stream wouldn't be supported. You're reading too much into it.
And finally some, like Skype are simply legacy users that were using this codec before it was open sourced (V7 in this case) and have since actually partially moved away from it (h.264 for HD chat).
Rather than moving away from it, Skype has been adding support for VP8 over the last year:
http://gigaom.com/video/skype-vp8-video-conferencing/
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/08/one-to-one-vp8-video-calling-now.html
If H.264 Baseline is not offered under a royalty-free licence before the 15th of March 2012, then VP8 will be the required video codec for WebRTC. See the the Video Codec Requirements section of the WebRTC IETF draft: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cbran-rtcweb-codec-01. This is why semiconductor companies are keen to promote their WebM support:
Of course, it's unlikely that H.264 Baseline will be royalty-free before the 15th so VP8 will likely be the required video codec. Still, it could happen and if it does then everyone can implement support for H.264 Baseline in their browsers without issue.
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
