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Submission + - Royalty-Free MPEG Video Proposals Announced (robglidden.com)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: Rob Glidden notes on his blog that MPEG has recently 'announced it has received proposals for a royalty-free MPEG standard and has settled on a deliberation process to consider them.' There two tracks towards royalty-free video currently under consideration by MPEG. The first track is IVC, a new 'standard based on MPEG-1 technology which is believed a safe royalty-free baseline that can be enhanced by additional unencumbered technology described in MPEG-2, JPEG, research publications and innovative technologies which are promised to be subject to royalty-free licenses.' The second proposed track is WebVC, an attempt to get the constrained baseline profile of H.264 licensed under royalty-free terms. Rob Glidden offers an analysis of both proposals. Also of interest is Rob's short history of why royalty-free H.264 failed last time.

Comment Re:Microsoft (Score 1) 644

by theweatherelectric (#38285840) Attached to: Will Firefox Lose Google Funding?

It may not be endorsed by W3C, but that does not mean it is not an open standard.

Initially you said "I'm not seeing how they are trying to push developers away from W3C standards" and now you agree that the audio and video formats that Apple deem suitable for the Web are incompatible with W3C standards. Good. We are in agreement. As I said and as you now agree, it would be nice if Apple showed more commitment to an open web.

Comment Re:Microsoft (Score 1) 644

by theweatherelectric (#38278536) Attached to: Will Firefox Lose Google Funding?

No, they really don't.

Yes, they really do. Please, this is beyond tedious. Here is the W3C's patent policy:

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/

Have a read. Note that the W3C insists on standards that can be implemented on a royalty-free basis. Anything that does not meet that test cannot be considered a web standard.

Comment Re:Microsoft (Score 1) 644

by theweatherelectric (#38276056) Attached to: Will Firefox Lose Google Funding?

You can't simply redefine the word "open" when it suits.

Sorry, but that's precisely what you're doing. There's no value in arguing semantics here. In the context of the Web when someone describes something as being "open" they always mean both open and royalty-free. I know that's what they mean. You know that's what they mean. We all know that's what they mean.

TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS, JPG, PNG and now even GIF are all both open and royalty-free. There's nothing so special about audio and video that they can't be the same and the troubled history of GIF is the only cautionary tale required. The MPEG LA could contribute to a better Web tomorrow by making H.264 royalty-free but they won't. They are only interested in the Web insofar as it offers them profit by the proliferation of formats they manage the license for. That kind of mentality is bad for everyone on the Web.

Comment Re:Microsoft (Score 1) 644

by theweatherelectric (#38271462) Attached to: Will Firefox Lose Google Funding?

I'm not seeing how they are trying to push developers away from W3C standards given the work that has gone into getting Webkit to support those very standards you accuse them of trying to suppress.

One example is that Apple doesn't support open, royalty-free video and audio formats in Safari out of the box. This is quite amusing given that Siri uses Ogg Speex. It'd be nice if Apple showed more commitment to an open web. Even if Apple is still scared of WebM, there's no reason in the world why Safari couldn't have Ogg Vorbis support by default on the desktop and in iOS.

Comment Re:Sad (Score 1) 644

by theweatherelectric (#38271252) Attached to: Will Firefox Lose Google Funding?

The problem is ultimately that Firefox was out-Firefoxed. Chrome is what Firefox was in its beginning

No. Chrome can't out-Firefox Firefox because it never has been and never will be what Firefox is. Firefox exists to promote the interests of Web users. Chrome, in contrast, exists to promote the interests of Google.

Corporations are only useful insofar as their interests coincide with your own. With Chrome, Google will decide that its interests trump the end user's. A simple example is Chrome's new in-browser advertising. In-browser advertising is only useful to Google and is utterly useless to me as a Web user. I prefer not to use adware so I don't use Chrome.

Comment Re:They screwed it with the new release process (Score 1) 511

by theweatherelectric (#38245364) Attached to: Chrome Becoming World's Second Most Popular Web Browser

So, from what I understood, we were going to have releases from often so that we could get more features more frequently. We got nothing! Or almost nothing.

There have been many features added between 6 and 10. If you want to know what those features are, look at the feature tracking pages: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking/Archives The two features I'm particularly looking forward to are type inference in Firefox 9 and OpenGL acceleration in Firefox Mobile 10.

Comment Re:Thank you (Score 1) 511

by theweatherelectric (#38245208) Attached to: Chrome Becoming World's Second Most Popular Web Browser
It was bundled with Skype updates a while back. I don't know if it still is. Adobe bundled it with Adobe Reader recently. I'd be interested to know how much of Chrome's growth can be attributed to deliberate and inadvertent installation when it gets delivered with other, perhaps more popular, software like Skype and Reader.

Comment Re:To bad it isn't 3.x (Score 1) 383

by theweatherelectric (#37997714) Attached to: Firefox 8.0 Released

I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the GP's post.

It was the only part of the GP's post.

True, but that's not an argument for updating your web browser today.

Luckily, I didn't advise him to update his web browser today. I advised him to update his web browser on the 20th of December i.e. around about when Firefox 9 will be released.

Submission + - Adobe starting to kill Flash (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
l_bratch
l_bratch writes: "Good news! Adobe is beginning to kill off Flash, starting with mobile support.

"Instead the company will focus on development around HTML5 technologies, which enable modern browsers to do essentially the same functions as Flash did but without relying on Adobe's proprietary technologies, and which can be implemented across platforms.""
The Internet

Submission + - Adobe to Stop Development of Flash for Mobile Brow

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Adobe to Stop Development of Flash for Mobile Browsers:

Sources close to Adobe that have been briefed on the company's future development plans have revealed this forthcoming announcement to ZDNet ( http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5/19226 ), "Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates."

Additionally, the e-mail briefing to Adobe's partners has been summed up as, Adobe stopping development on Flash Player for browsers on mobile and focusing their development efforts on applications for mobile, expressive content on the desktop (in and out of browser) and increasing their investments in HTML5 in general.

ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5/19226

Comment Re:To bad it isn't 3.x (Score 1) 383

by theweatherelectric (#37993192) Attached to: Firefox 8.0 Released

Does it show the URL in the status bar when you hover over a link to make sure it's not Goatse? (Oh, wait, the Fx UX team doesn't think I need a status bar.)

Yes. When you mouse over a link the URL pops up at the bottom of the window. This page may help you: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-happened-status-bar. Your complaint isn't a valid one.

Comment Re:To bad it isn't 3.x (Score 1) 383

by theweatherelectric (#37991762) Attached to: Firefox 8.0 Released

Yeah! It'll run that synthetic benchmark 5 nanoseconds faster! Rock on!

No. Comparing Firefox 9 to Firefox 7.0.1 on my system the SunSpider benchmark isn't much changed but Firefox 9 runs the V8 benchmark about 40% faster and the Kraken benchmark about 100% faster. Very much more than 5 nanoseconds. Broadway.js (an H.264 video decoder implemented in JavaScript) runs about 130% faster on my system in Firefox 9. Try the Broadway.js demo. It's interesting to consider that implementing video codecs in JavaScript may be practical sooner rather than later.

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