Adobe Rants Over Linux Video Acceleration APIs

[Hoodlum]

And usually large corporations are full of educated people. Food for thought.

A large majority of the most tyrannical dictators through history have been of great intelligence too but this is just getting side-tracked now.

I guess you could see it this way:

Knowledge is power.
Too much power corrupts.
The internet equalises the access to knowledge (and thus, power).

[Apopas]

And usually large corporations are full of educated people. Food for thought.

True, but even the educated one lose his personage inside a faceless company.
Education except knoweledge, builds and a certain character. On the contrary, large corporations care just for the first part and neglect/delete the second one. So, finally, large corporations act like single entities with knowledge but without education most of the times.

[deanjo]

I am only explaining the intention. Knowledge gives power. You cannot control how people use it. Educated people more often make better choices

And usually large corporations are full of educated people. Food for thought.

[Hoodlum]

Hoodlum, I find it interesting how your examples only show the positives of "the leveling effect" but none of the negative effects it has as well with those same societies.

I am only explaining the intention. Knowledge gives power. You cannot control how people use it. Educated people more often make better choices, but if you want you can learn how to create a bomb online too. This would not have been easily found knowledge for the general public previously.

Knowledge sets you free. Both for good and bad purposes.

[Hoodlum]

Too many stuff to reply to individually, so I'll just sum it up:

HTML5 draft spec states Theora as a standard codec: wrong. It did in the past, then got removed.

Theora will be put back in the draft spec: It's unlikely to come back. Of course "unlikely" doesn't mean "impossible," but still.

The Internet should only use non-patented formats: My personal opinion is "no, the Internet should use whatever it wants to." And if the HTML 5 draft will stay as-is, it's going to.

It's in the best interests of Mozilla to not support H.264 when the spec finalizes: Nope. It's in the best interests of Google, not Mozilla.

It's in the best interests of Mozilla to fight for re-introduction of Theora in HTML 5: Yes. But it's unlikely to happen. Apple and M$ have veto powers. See mailing list posting above.

No one really expects theora to come back, though I guess it could. Google is the only one that can decide the codec, even if something else is chosen. Google are trying to stop using h264 this year because of the huge royalties they will have to pay for sub-12 minute videos soon. Whatever they pick will be the standard, official or otherwise.

Using Theora will not result in royalties: Apple disagrees. Are they telling the truth? No idea, but that's what they're saying.

This was debunked ages ago. This is just their reason for voting against it - the risk of submarine patents - something you can neither prove nor disprove. They will benefit from h264 being chosen, their motives are obvious.

Firefox should enforce a "Philosophy of Freedom": Enforce? No. Support? Yes.

This sounds like BSD VS GPL to me. Fact is, this idea that people will contribute out of kindness has proven to be less effective.

[I]W3C themselves say: "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential." Translation: "M$, Apple, Mozilla, Google and a crapload of other companies/organizations come to us and get their stuff in the spec so web developers have something they can rely on."

What exactly does "universally accessible information" mean here? No idea, the poster didn't elaborate.

Notice it said "and the public" there too? Yep, you missed that in your "translation".

This is why I said you did not understand the web. Your "translation" just proves you do not even know the history of its existence. When I said "universally accessible information" as the principle on which the web is based I expected you to know at least the basic history. Really, it is not my job to educate you.

My last post gives you a brief history of the web that explains why it exists. (A system to access information anywhere). Tbh I just cannot be bothered trying to teach you its entire history, Wikipedia exists - at least until less informed people push so much patent-laden crap into html we can't use it anymore

All hail our patent-troll gods eh?

[Apopas]

That's because people are immature to use the knowledge they are able to get, in the right way. I's just that they don't get the true deep knowledge, just the skin-deep, easily accessible one.
How can help them? By giving them even more knowledge.

[deanjo]

Hoodlum, I find it interesting how your examples only show the positives of "the leveling effect" but none of the negative effects it has as well with those same societies.

[Hoodlum]

What exactly does "universally accessible information" mean here? No idea, the poster didn't elaborate.

....I would have thought that was pretty obvious as long as you know what the words mean.

The best way to explain this is with the history of the web:
The web began as a proposal by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN as a way to share information across the various incompatible systems (documents could not be shared easily) used at the time. The basic premise is a universally accessible system, he developed HTML for the task. This is the web's purpose and the cornerstone of it's existence today. Available everywhere, for everyone with a computer.

He realised the impact this would have on society - Knowledge is Power. As books gave people power in the past the internet would give it on a scale not seen before. No longer would the best information be limited to only a handful of people. It would create a levelling effect.

Comment:
History has shown this to be true. The values in a country are no longer dictated by its tradition alone. People with access to the web get access to culture from around the world. This is the levelling effect.

Example of an equalising technology:
A similar effect is that of Satellite TV on Indian women. Having access to American TV shows provided them with a view of an alternative lifestyle - They saw it was possible to be treated as equals and wanted that for themselves. In the years directly after widespread Satellite TV was introduced to Indian homes the cases of wife abuse had reduced massively.*

*Source: Superfreakonomics (book)

Comment:
The internet of course has a much greater effect on society than TV. This is why the web is often known as "The Great Equaliser" because it levels the playing field. Everyone has freedom to use the information and everyone has a voice, not just the wealthy elite.

Content Restriction & Mozilla:
Restricting access to information creates a "walled garden" effect. You end up with incompatible parts of the web - much like the old infrastructure before the web existed. Mozilla does not want this to happen because it is bad for everyone. We got past this in the 90s, this is going backwards. People who understand the history of the web understand this and want it to move forward, not back.

The extreme "If everything is patented" outcome:
Let's assume we continue down this route of using patented codecs and do the same for images, sound etc etc. At some point it is likely that only commercial entities will be able to afford the numerous licences. "The Great Equalising" effect of the internet is now gone. The point of it, is gone. Information is not freely available anymore, you have to pay - a lot.

Subsection: Example of "real world" impact:
People are beginning to use the web in Africa as they are finally getting access. Many use it to find out how to grow crops effectively. If no browser is available for free? Sorry, you can't - starve.

[RealNC]

Too many stuff to reply to individually, so I'll just sum it up:

HTML5 draft spec states Theora as a standard codec: wrong. It did in the past, then got removed.

Theora will be put back in the draft spec: It's unlikely to come back. Of course "unlikely" doesn't mean "impossible," but still.

The Internet should only use non-patented formats: My personal opinion is "no, the Internet should use whatever it wants to." And if the HTML 5 draft will stay as-is, it's going to.

It's in the best interests of Mozilla to not support H.264 when the spec finalizes: Nope. It's in the best interests of Google, not Mozilla.

It's in the best interests of Mozilla to fight for re-introduction of Theora in HTML 5: Yes. But it's unlikely to happen. Apple and M$ have veto powers. See mailing list posting above.

Mozilla would have to pay royalties if they support H.264 in their own code: Most probably yes. I think the group responsible for patent licensing stated that by "January 2010" they would come up with a final statement of whether they will require royalties for Internet use of H.264 or keep it royalty-free forever, but I didn't look up any news about it. I doubt they will pass on the opportunity to make some major amounts of money here.

Mozilla would have to pay royalties if they allow third-parties to add support for H.264: Nope. And I think that's obvious.

Using Theora will not result in royalties: Apple disagrees. Are they telling the truth? No idea, but that's what they're saying.

Firefox does not, and should not support proprietary formats: People tend to forget that H.264 is not a proprietary format (DivX, WMV, RealVideo, etc. are, H.264 is not). It's much like JPEG image support in Firefox; it's not proprietary either, but there are patents around it.

Firefox should enforce a "Philosophy of Freedom": Enforce? No. Support? Yes. What does that mean? For me, it would mean Mozilla should still provide a way to get H.264 playback in their browser but keep trying to push for Theora. Trying to force the issue by not allowing any means for H.264 would be like closing their eyes and shouting "H.264 doesn't exist." And if the majority of the Internet ends up using H.264 it would be like shouting "the Internet doesn't exist" instead, which for an organization that offers an Internet browser isn't exactly a good thing. But we're not there yet, that's just speculation.

An "overruling concept on which the internet is based" is "universally accessible information": W3C themselves say: "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential." Translation: "M$, Apple, Mozilla, Google and a crapload of other companies/organizations come to us and get their stuff in the spec so web developers have something they can rely on."

What exactly does "universally accessible information" mean here? No idea, the poster didn't elaborate.

Anyway, that's about it from someone who showed that he did not understand the Internet as a whole and should therefore not be discussing something he does not understand.

[Kano]

I think a Firefox source code mod should be possible, then you just have to compile the browser on your own