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Comment Re:APNG/MNG (Score 1) 129

I think a better idea would just to allow embedding theora, webm or mp4 video clips as img sources. While APNGs are pretty cool in that they're lossless and support transparency, it still suffers from the same fundamental problem as animated gifs which is that there's no interframe compression, leading to insanely large files for anything but the shortest throbber icon loop (which should probably better be done with css transitions anyway). HTML already has some tag weirdness with the fact audio is technically equivalent to video, making img join the party wouldn't be bad and it'll certainly save lots of bandwidth and improve visual quality for those memes.
Censorship

The Companies Who Support Censoring the Internet 299

RichiH writes "From Techdirt: 'A group of companies sent a letter to to Attorney General Eric Holder and ICE boss John Morton (with cc's to VP Joe Biden, Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, IP Czar Victoria Espinel, Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. John Conyers, Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley), supporting the continued seizure of domain names they don't like, as well as the new COICA censorship bill, despite the serious Constitutional questions raised about how such seizures violate due process and free speech principles.' A full list of companies who you might want to avoid buying from is included, as well."
Google

Submission + - The Ambiguity of "Open" and VP8 vs. H.264 (antimatter15.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add "plugins" for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free.
Security

Submission + - Cookies: how not to design a protocol (blogspot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Google security researcher Michael Zalewski posted a cautionary tale for software engineers: amusing historical overview of all the security problems with HTTP cookies, including an impressive collection of issues we won't be able to fix. Pretty amazing that modern web commerce uses a mechanism so hacky that does not even have a proper specification.

Comment Re:4096 cpu machines (Score 2, Insightful) 333

Last part: Thanks to the guys in irc.oftc.net #ck for inspiration to work on this and early testing! Many of them sat idle in that channel for years while nothing happened. The xkcd comic supported_features also helped motivate this work. Yes I know you probably still can't watch full screen videos on youtube, but that's not entirely the scheduler's fault.
Education

Followup To "When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux" 626

An couple of anonymous readers wrote in to let us know about a followup to last Wednesday's story of the teacher who didn't believe in free software. The Linux advocate who posted the original piece has cooled off and graciously apologized for going off half-cocked (even though the teacher had done the same), and provided a little more background which, while not excusing the teacher's ignorance, does make her actions somewhat more understandable. Ken Starks has talked with the teacher, who has received a crash education in technology over the last few days — Starks is installing Linux on her computer tomorrow. He retracts his insinuations about Microsoft money and the NEA. All in all he demonstrates what a little honest communication can do, a lesson that all of us who advocate for free software can take to heart. "The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube. She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness free software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping. In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too."
Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 8 Delayed Until 2009 204

Barence writes "Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 8 will not be officially released until 2009. According to a blog posting on the Internet Explorer 8 development site, a release candidate of the browser will be released in the first quarter of next year, to be followed by a final release at an unspecified date. This news comes on the same day that Google is considering bundling its Chrome browser with new PCs. Will the IE delay and Google's tactics help to steer users in Chrome's direction?"
Communications

Adobe Releases Preview of 64-bit Flash For Linux 329

Rinisari writes "Finally, the day has come. Adobe has released a pre-release version of the 64-bit Flash player. It is available at the Adobe Labs Flash Player 10 download site immediately. Where are the Windows and Mac versions? 'Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering upon Adobe's commitment to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. Until this pre-release, use of 32-bit Flash Player on Linux has required the use of a plugin wrapper, which prevents full compatibility with 64-bit browsers. With this pre-release, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions.' Windows and Mac OS X 64-bit versions will follow, and the final versions all will be released simultaneously. Tamarin, the JIT compiler in Flash, is now capable of producing 64-bit code and nspluginwrapper is no longer required. There are, however, no plans to release a debugger version of the 64-bit plugin."

Comment using email as login (Score 2, Interesting) 316

I don't know too much about OpenID, but in my understanding, you login with your website URL. It seems google is letting you use your email address, which makes more sense (or would make more sense to normal users anyway, as people are used to being forced to enter an email in posting comments in blogs anyway).

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