Submission + - Republicans Create Rider to Stop Net Neutrality (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF on Friday December 17, 2010 @04:21PM

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) submitted a rider yesterday to a bill on military and veterans construction projects. The Rider would, "prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based rules, protocols or standards." It is cosigned by six other, republican senators. We all knew this was coming after the last election removed most of the vocal supporters of net neutrality and supplanted them with pro-corporate republicans.

Submission + - No HTML5 Hulu Anytime Soon (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF on Thursday May 13, 2010 @06:50PM

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes: The Hulu Website briefly contained a comment the other day (since removed) explaining why they would not be implementing HTML5 video for their service:

"We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn’t yet meet all of our customers' needs... Our player doesn’t just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren't necessarily visible to the end user."

They plan to release a dedicated application for the iPad and iPhone instead, likely a paid subscription service. Perhaps this is a good sign for Web based television as it will move more users away from the single locked down channel from the networks and to more diverse options less interested in extracting subscription fees (like YouTube).

Submission + - Webkit2 (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF on Thursday April 08, 2010 @10:06PM

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes: Anders Carlsson and Sam Weinig over at Apple just announced Webkit2, a rework of the Webkit engine that powers Chrome and Safari. This new version of Webkit incorporates the same style of split process model that provides stability in Chrome, but built directly into the framework so all browsers based upon Webkit will be able to gain the same level of sandboxing and stability. Appleinsider has a writeup. Both Palm and the Epiphany team are going to be happy about this.

Submission + - Safari 3.2, quietly released (appleinsider.com) 1

Submitted by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF on Friday November 14, 2008 @11:10PM

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes: Yesterday Apple quietly slipped out an update to their Safari Web browser to version 3.2, notable in that it finally adds anti-phishing technology an area where it has lagged competitors. Aside from that, it provides some security fixes, improved javascript performance, and a slightly newer version of Webkit, pulling their Acid3 score up to 77. Appleinsider covers the update in a short article.

Submission + - Apple's SproutCore, OSS Javascript-based Web Apps (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF on Monday June 16, 2008 @09:50AM

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes: AppleInsider published an article about Apple's new SproutCore Web application development framework, utilizing Javascript and some nifty HTML 5 to create a "cocoa-inspired" way to create powerful Web applications. Apparently Apple built upon the OSS SproutIt framework developed for an online e-mail manager called 'Mailroom'.

Apple used this framework to build their new Web application suite (replacing .Mac) called MobileMe. Since SproutCore applications rely upon JavaScript, it seems Apple had good reason to focus on Squirrelfish for faster JavaScript interpretation in Webkit. Apple, reportedly, hosted a session last Friday at WWDC introducing SpoutCore to developers, but obviously NDAs prevent developers from revealing the details of that presentation. Perhaps Apple is getting serious about Web applications and services or perhaps they're just worried about the Web becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to make the Web application market built upon one proprietary format or another. Either way, this is a potential alternative, which should make the OSS crowd happy.

Submission + - Parallels 3.0 Announced, 3D graphics included (blogspot.com)

Submitted by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF on Friday June 01, 2007 @03:00PM

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes: For some time now a lot of us having been waiting to see who managed to bring 3D graphics to a Windows emulation/virtualization solution. It looks like Parallels is going to be the winner. They announced today an RC of Parallels 3.0, the final to be available "in a few weeks." For anyone else tired of bootcamp or rebooting to play a Windows game, it look like the answer is finally here.

I'm not counting out VMWare entirely. Obviously it will depend on how soon they can catch up and the relative quality of the solutions, but there is some serious first-mover advantage here. There is also some speculation on the forums that Parallels is rushing this out in order to sell product before Apple steals their thunder with virtualization support in Leopard (but I think that a bit unlikely). In any case, it looks like one more roadblock for switchers has just been knocked down.