* Posts by Penti

50 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Dec 2009

Mozilla takes Windows 8-friendly Firefox out back ... two shots heard

Penti

Re: 1000 Users!

It's not actually a Windows Store-app (WinRT) but a regular desktop Win32-process that has to emulate the Modern-behavior inside Mozilla's XUL. It installs via the regular installer on the desktop. Their own built in apps aren't really Windows Store/startscreen apps either, like the store itself and their own browser. The Store is actually a win32 process that can't install win32 programs. It makes zero sense, and already with 8.1 update 1 or whatever they want to call it, the spiritual SP2 you get startscreen apps that behaves more sane and can be accessed from the desktop. The split that they tried to force will fall apart.

AMD bites bullet, slashes chip orders

Penti

Strategy

Couldn't they just move some of their chipset and gpu designs over to GloFo to use more capacity in Dresden and Singapore? I know they couldn't produce enough chips a little over a year ago when demand was high, but spread over all GLOBALFOUNDIRES plants including the soon opened NY plant, just outside of Albany which makes it three 300mm plants in all. It's not a solution to all their problems but it's starting to feel like they need to make up their minds, their CPU, APU and ARM chips will be on GloFo process. Many already design against them. Feels like they need the flexibility to fab some of their other products there when they need to, capacity is available or whatever.

At least AMD see's that Piledriver plus AMD gpu isn't good enough for the mainstream notebook market where they really need to get a foothold in. Hopefully they use the cash flow for development for products that can compete we will see soon enough. The books doesn't like that quiet awful yet.

Android Jelly Bean won't get Flash Player

Penti

Re: Because...

They come from DVD and Blu-ray and unprotected TV (broadcast) streams because they offer better quality. Webrips are around too, and all the built in DRM's in the Adobe platform is circumventable. There are tools for most services to circumvent the protection. Standard bodies of the web can't and will not standardize and implement DRM, it's up to others. They can't implement stuff that aren't royalty free. Make such a DRM free to implement and any one can do it, to save those streams. That is how they work. So the alternative for Flash player on cell phones is reasonably only apps that uses DRM-protected stuff. Closed code. Instead of air we will see other attempts of creating and packing apps for online content. Less platforms will have them. It simply will not be available in the video tag and a lot of the business it self has missed that and hopes for some DRM-solution that will never come. It's still years away for all the technology to take hold so Adobe is to early here. DRM and black boxes solves nothing by it self.

Those that can't think in other terms will loose out of course, others are powerful enough to be able to have those sought after apps, and services, integrate into your home cinema/living room and be on dedicated devices for 70 bucks or whatever. As of yet those services that actually has more to offer then services with physical media is however only available in USA. Content always get out and always has, I have free and legal access to newspapers, magazines and books at the library foreign authors don't even get any money for it. Yet people pay for media and will continue to. Neither are any content in my country available in the Zune video marketplace so there is nothing to rip. HDCP is easy enough to strip so that is no problem either, every tv does it. Even if you don't bother to write a software that can break into and rip streams from their services. Stuff is always available in other ways too. Ripping will occur at the ones of highest quality and earliest release. Netflix expanded and became big in online videos despite that you could rip all their content. Despite that when you make decisions based on DRM-platforms you run into other problems, their VC-1 powered service runs into problems even though it's quite easy to decode because their silverlight solution won't hardware accelerate VC-1. They will probably switch to more standard approach later because of that. The problem is that there still will be a big divide between their approach kinda standardized and the open web. You will even on PC's probably need to install separate software applications to be able to use those services at all in the future, it's however not the webs fault that companies is turning away and turning to a black box approach. DRM's will always be broken, and it's only based on business not technical decisions they will choose to corner of from the web. Not that you couldn't run a business with content that is rippable, everybody does so today. Studios might not like it,yet they put up plenty of stuff at youtube which offers zero protection and host their stuff with pure http (progressively downloading the MP4 files while playing.).

Apple MacBook Air 11in 2012

Penti

Re: ethernet

@Anon Coward

Apple sells a 29 USD / 25 British Pound Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter now, so you get the full 1 Gigabit Ethernet speed without going for a third party USB 3 to Ethernet adapter. As easy as the USB Adapter, not included but at the same price as the slower adapter and it doesn't need that 49 GBP Thunderbolt cable :) PC Ultrabooks have it tougher as USB 3 to Ethernet adapters aren't as common. They aren't included either. The option of Gigabit ethernet for 25 GBP is really a pretty good one here. At a desk you would probably prefer it connected to a Apple Thunderbolt display for convenience (it only got one Thunderbolt/Displayport port) or through those adapters that will come in September.

Belkin will be 399 dollars for the Thunderbolt Express Dock though. The Belkin is designed to also be compatible with Thunderbolt-enabled PC's too though, so it will be certified and have drivers for everything. Something the Thunderbolt Display won't. However if you want to dock it (or them) you can, it's only a modest hike over a ~250 USD docking station and those are usually for 1500 USD laptops. Plus there is always the possibility of doing it the cheap way with a screen that takes DP input (or any other input with cheap cables), and a USB-to-ethernet adapter if you need screen, ethernet, keyboard etc connected at once. Ultrabooks and other light ultraportables have enough power for most. The only thing you really can fault them for is lack of discrete graphics, though that is a fault for most notebooks if you actually like to have any power there.

Comet 'sold 94,000 pirate Windows CDs', claims Microsoft

Penti

Obviously they where doing a service which they aren't allow to do. If you loose your self made recovery discs or find them not to work, you can ask the OEM for one and your not allowed to use another media with your license (serial). Only the OEM's media is valid. That's actually a problem many times. Here they were offering a copy of the recovery disc instead of saying call the OEM. Other stores obviously offer this service for free at request because they don't want to anger or deal with the customer in some war over it. It's just a fact of life that this type of copying happens.

You can get media with some systems, if you specifically asks/specifies it when you order it before they deliver it. But not on all systems, where you then have to ask for the original media from the OEM if you got none when you need it or say sell the system. Which nobody does for that matter making it illegal to use any license on the chassi without requesting a legal disc any way.

Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos

Penti

Real email apps

TouchDown runs on Kindle fire if you need enterprise features like EAS support, exchange tasks, S/MIME encrypted emails, proper calendaring with all the meeting functions and all that, remote wipe, on-device encryption, a user interface for tablets and just a good email application, but it will only work on Exchange and other compatible servers though. If you want gmail you will have to hack in the Google market which would allow you to run the gmail app.

Also third party apps such as K-9 mail, Enhanced Email and MailDroid is available albeit not tablet versions and I'm sure many more will come and eventually be optimized for it too.

Of course it is not Honeycomb or the like though. But it is the best selling Android tablet software, so more optimized stuff will come.

Galaxy Tab 7.7 pulled from IFA after new Apple moves

Penti

Not queit

Apple fabs their Apple A4 and A5 ARM SoC (application processor) directly at and tight partnering with Samsung, without them currently no Apple products on mobile ARM architecture would come out of the factory. They can't switch for standard Samsung parts from a distributor / Foxconn / other third party, directly and it's still some time off before they can produce chips at TSMC, they still supply a large share of the NAND in these devices as well as the new flash drive (controller and NAND-flash memory) in MBAir as well as possibly other components (HDD's for Macbooks and so on, think they are currently on Hitachi though). Screens are LG all the way from phones to 27" iMac and Cinema Display though. LG sure won't be happy if Apple goes after their customers though.

Penti

Retarded much?

Are you totally retarded? HP's TouchPad looks way more like the iPad then any of the competitors in form. But they also made rectangular Slate PC's with rounded corners before Apples design registration application.... Neither did Apple go after any (other) Slate Tablet PC-makers that have had products around on the market before the design registration yet it claims it owns the design for. Side by side there is no confusion between the two (Galaxy tab/iPad 2) http://i2.phonearena.com/images/reviews/93385-image/Galaxy-Tab-10.1-vs-iPad-2-Design-17.jpg Heres a 2003 HP TC1100 btw, http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/gallery/hptr1105/Image00021_small.jpg Compaq TC1000 is basically the same and won several design awards before Apples application for registration. This: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/20/Cybook_gen1.jpeg is how a 98/2003 era ebook-reader with 4:3 10" touchscreen and a browser looked like too. On PowerPC-hardware. Plenty of prior art and no confusion makes your claim ridiculous, it's not about copying or coming to close, btw also look at how the Archos worked before the release of the iPad (they had already moved to android on the 5 inch before ipad was announced, they moved the 7" to Android in May 2010 following that). You could use their 2008 era design (like the 7") just fine without the stylus.

Penti

varsas

They should just overturn it since other companies already had "mobile computing devices" around before the design registration, with slate form factor including those free of rows of buttons and with rounded corners. Its nothing new or distinguishable about it. Not even that it had mobile hardware and embedded/mobile OS. They just released it when the hardware was good and software had converged from being a lot of custom rolled mess. They should have credit as LG as well for producing nice screens in the seizes suitable for tablets though. First mass market success doesn't make you king of squares though. But neither is there any confusion between Apple's products and Samsung's which makes it ridiculous to sue for the looks.

MobileMe drove Steve Jobs to foul-mouthed fury

Penti

Failure

Apple has failed such online services again and again and continue creating new ones. (Rebranding)

Sure MobileMe syncs your calendar, address book and storage but why does it even cost for those services? I've never got what it's good for. There should at least be a free version otherwise it's not what it was supposed to be. From Google or Microsoft etc you do get your calendaring, contacts, mailboxes and documents storage without paying a penny.

Apple reportedly plans ARM shift for laptops

Penti

Huh

Huh? Apple laptops are workstations and ARM 64-bit are still years away, maybe around 2014-15. Are you serious? Would people really run FCP, Avid etc on a ARM laptop in just years? Why would Apple benefit from another split of architectures? Would make no sense in keeping desktops and workstations on x86 if that happened, you could simply build bigger ARM-chips with more I/O, cache and memory bandwidth and more cores. But that would simply return them to the PowerPC-days of getting the tech developed and on par with Intel.

Nokia touted Meego to rivals, but nobody wanted to know

Penti

Nokia

Nokia's potential of releasing this with Symbian for lower power devices (they share the same software layer and SDK) wasn't enough when they had a chance to release it for a couple of hundred million devices? Elop is just retarded. No other platform then Symbian/MeeGo was wide enough for Nokia to survive as a company. All other platform are quite bluntly for different companies, not even tiny Motorola could survive on the Windows Phone market share. The software framework was already there, it actually was Symbian driving it on. Losing that means losing the drive to develop the Qt/QtMobility toolkit. It definitively was more enterprise and consumer ready then WP7 is gonna be for quite some time. Since October we still haven't got much of a Exchange support, IPSec VPN, on-device encryption, sockets in .NET CF, Silverlight or Flash in the browser, native code, multitasking for third party apps or stuff like just god damn Spotify client. Even when they fix that, Nokia might be able to sell 20 million smarts phones a year on WP7 and that's just funny they sold about 110 million Symbiandevices last year.

A company that sold 460 million devices a year and made profit will probably sell something like 150 - 200 million phones in a couple of years and will have had to sell their manufacturing capacity to their competitors, given Microsoft and their WP7 phone competitors navigation software and data for nothing and have to get rid of more then half of it's 60 000 employees. Their will be nothing left like in any typical American downsizing, the odd thing is that it happens on a profitable company and kills all development of mobile operating systems in Europe.

Air Video 2.4.6

Penti

MKV

MKV is partly so popular because it's a better container format with better support for stuff like subtitles and supports using AC-3, DTS-MA, TrueHD and so on. Which will fail in a MP4 or M4V container. You can always remux files that will play though. (They have started to support AC3 kinda, but it's recently and MKV was already established and used with all three formats by then).

Google's 'clean' Linux headers: Are they really that dirty?

Penti

Are you kidding?

Are you kidding? GNU/Linux already had a established base in ARM embedded devices and cell phones when bionic was cocked. NetBSD isn't exactly a large embedded OS platform. Other libraries does the same thing for their headers for that matter. And they would be dependent on the GNU toolchain for building apps either way. Your perfectly fine for building drivers for proprietary hardware in Linux so why would they stay away, it works perfectly wonderful in a commercial environment, certianly better then a blob detesting *BSD community. Which don't like to have their kernels forked any more. Working upstream is the advantage too.

Google: Oracle doctored that 'copied Java code'

Penti

Yes

It's obviously somewhat based on the reference implementation of Java (Hotspot) but that's legal since it's the reference version which licensees are aloud to create their own class libraries and JVM from, which is what IBM did with Harmony/J9, wrote their own version/implementation, they are also a company that developed much of the reference implementation! Hotspot is GPL though, but even so IBM would have no problem analyzing the reference implementation since they have their own licenses rules for the code, binary and java itself. It's obviously legal, not needed and not anything Google did. Without IBM you don't have Java. Without all the other partners contributing to Hotspot and JCP you wouldn't either. Obviously JCP is set up so you are actually allowed to implement your own version of Java, based on the reference or otherwise. Anything that passes the TCK is certified Java (Android isn't). Java isn't in the hands of just one company. It isn't the IPR of Oracle. And Android just uses third party class libraries originally from IBM. One of the biggest contributers to Java.

Apple threatens Java with death on the Mac

Penti

There is none

It's the JDK <and> the JRE thats closed down and canceled since Apple is the one releasing it. Not only that but the ones porting it. Only one with at tinpot is you. Please have a clue before posting. Get a grip. You can't install something that aren't offered. Apple is booting their port of JRE7 to the mac.

Penti

They weren't

IBM supplies their own Hotspot based JVM to their Power servers with IBM i (i5/OS), to their Z/OS z-series mainframes or Z systems, for AIX, for linux, even did for Windows actually. Before they sold of their pc lineup. Oracle did produce their own JRockit JVM which they will merge with Hotspot, and companies like Azul systems have their own Hotspot based implementations and hardware support/acceleration. And there is SAP too, and a few other really. Linux users go to IcedTea or depending on what environment they run may run JVMs from IBM, maybe even SAP or Oracles BEA buy JRockit besides the old Sun JVM. Oh yeah HP supplies their own JVM to their Unix-platforms too. HP-UX, OpenVMS and Reliant/Nonstop that is.

Penti

Already gone since long time

Oh huh? Apple deprecated the Java-Cocoa bridge along time ago, people have been using third party alternative, i.e. open source. Like rococoa. And yes OpenJDK is available for OS X, but it's not perfect yet. And is probably a pain to build. Who codes Swing apps with Apples tools any way? I know Eclipse uses it but I'm sure they will solve it. You haven't been able to use java from apples tools in a real long time. Besides why would they be without, Without Java, Eclipse, RCP etc they would be without IBM's Lotus Notes client and so on too. Most enterprise apps that is. But that's not anything they need to worry about till 10.7 any way. Looks like they will give it up to OpenJDK ports to make it run though, but they only needs to release their own code in GPL to speed it up. But of course they can also be stupid.

Oracle would also loose out not developing the JVM for OS X, as would IBM both developers of the JVM basically, with their backing of NetBeans and Eclipse IDE respectively. But yes Jobs is wrong about Oracle/Sun being the ones releasing Java everywhere, there's plenty of licensees other then Apple of Hotspot, like IBM, Oracle before the acquisition and lots of others too. But why include Python, Perl, Ruby an not Java? Just sound like they want less to do.

Google cools data center with bottom of Baltic Sea

Penti

No Stalin

Stalingrad is actually Volgograd.

EU laws are probably as cumbersome as Russian law, fines instead of bribes otherwise not much different, but hey you can't escape them. And you have access to all the fiber optics you need. Which would be the case in Siberia :)

Office for Mac finally breaks out of Microsoft

Penti

Surprising

I'm quite glad they seem to have picked up Apple development of the Office suit, it needs to be compatible, fully compatible or else it's no use and Office 2008 weren't so your really had to use a Windows image / VM or terminal server to run Office 2007/10 on before in an enterprise or serious environment. Go-OO offered better compatibility with office files. However that's an alternative office suit, not really that good if you work together with others on MS Office. Hence the need to run it on Windows. I also hope IBM Symphony picks up though. There no reason for everybody in the world to be on MS Office. A drop in replacement just won't happen, so not having to run a Windows image for working in Office is a good thing, not that Windows is that expensive. But it should be a nicer experience for any one needing Office now, and saves memory, or the hassle of running a RDP session. Good thing the format is documented now though, and there's cloud services that should work good with Go-OO too. Good thing the field has move forward.

Jobs moves to the heavens with Apple TV

Penti

Well

It saves Apple 30-60 dollars per unit, so of course they won't do storage on streaming hardware like this, it doesn't even have a SATA-controller to begin with, it takes up time, energy and space. And of course money. Why would you need it when the competitors don't? They just follow the same track here. It's simply not an HTPC with storage, because that track is too expensive. Add in TV-tuners, recording etc and it's up to 400-800 dollar. Have one that's kinda a HTPC and people will complain or ignore it because it isn't a full featured HTPC. While this one they have no problem with, it's cheap and easy to tuck away.

However it's worthless outside of the US. As we don't need more media extenders with format limitations here and usually has no decent access to streaming services. But so is every other streaming services (with boxes) like Amazon VOD and the included capability to use Netflix. The world of immaterial rights is awful.

OpenSolaris axed by Ellison

Penti

@Matt

Like runnings on standard x86 computers from other vendors? They did that in the mid 90's. Now they don't any more. Isn't that exclusion?

Corporations are free to be egoistic, but they can still contribute. Sun crashed but not because they were giving everything away for free. Now making sure your users can't use your products aren't going to net you any new business from them exactly.

Solaris has always had IP from others. Especially in the early AT&T based days. Their proprietaryness isn't was what getting them business. Transparency isn't about being a freetard. If you don't see a way forward with Oracle why would you choose it. Attacking others because of the IP which was shared to them certainly don't born well for Java, Solaris etc..

Penti

@kebabbert

It's not a rebrand if I can't use it the same way as OpenSolaris. Which I just can't. If I download Solaris 10 now, I can just use it as trail. If I download 11 express later I can just use it for development. No production use, personal or otherwise. I could also before use it on none Sun-hardware. Solaris 10 Express was updated every three months before it was canceled.

Because nobody uses HP-UX? Just few ten thousands of those systems are sold every year and you can't use those software on other systems.

The world changes and you can no longer use Solaris on (new) COTS hardware thats a fact. Something that was possible while they where one of the largest. I.e. before the dot com crash and before the disappearance of Unix/SPARC workstations. They have reverse course not just renamed stuff.

Penti

@Matt Bryant

Well you can't build a product on an EOLed platform.

OpenSolaris did provide support for a few laptops, thats lost now. And kinda worked on a few others. Did HP-UX gain more developers from having no developer-systems? No.

Solaris will stagnate too, and open source project will stop supporting it.

No Solaris desktop means basically no commercial vendor with Gnome and that is supporting Gnome. Redhat might support it, but apart from Fedora Redhat WS isn't exactly bleeding edge. Canonical still seems to struggle with basic stuff.

And fighting FUD with creation of FUD isn't exactly a good business plan. They will only sink themselves with the "use and licensing of IP". Not even the doc-format is proprietary any more. HP as EOLed all PA-RISC hardware now and how well did the switch to Itanium go? O well that was a huge failure. Nobody has asked to bring back sparc based desktops, but not having a solaris desktop certianly isn't good. As tech was moving away from being based on Win32 APIs and architecture it had actually become an alternative. And it was vital for supporting Sun-ray that's dependent on running stuff at solaris hosts. Developers was kinda tied in to Sun studio. Now there's no real platform for development.

Penti

Retarded

Retarded thats just a retarded statement, selling your open source derived products and offer support and solutions isn't bad business, killing everything Sun was about and alienating it's customers is. You can't sell something which nobody wants. Staroffice would be dead already if they hadn't open sourced it, Solaris would have lost all interest from developers and admins if they hadn't their inclusive posture. It has nothing to do with giving away stuff for free but about shutting your customers out. Java wouldn't be used by Linux distros themselves if it weren't available free. Oracle has killed the Sun Solaris workstation/desktop and any ambition of having developers on the platform. Being an enterprise only tool which nobody has any insight into will not gain them any new customers.

Developer platforms like Eclipse and Netbeans would be nothing without a model of contribution and customization. Nobody would be using them. It has nothing to do with software freedoms and everything about reaching out to customers and being used and customized by developers. It's not anti-capitalistic. Companies join together all the time to do things collaboratively. Proprietary tools for a proprietary environment will stay that way, and when people don't use that proprietary environment they won't be using those tools either. With customers fleeing Oracle they are the ones being an example. Greed just isn't always the best motivation. You must also balance it.

Penti

Failing misserbly

They will fail, just as HP's HP-UX did and all the HP-UX business, with no workstations, no developers using the system for personal needs, no sysadmins using it desk side, not much happening enterprise side as they try to push it on "new exciting" enterprise hardware which doesn't even keep up with the latest advancements of x86.

But at least IBM and HP as a consulting business can sell in complete solutions which they host on their proprietary hardware, while every body else has gone COTS including the Solaris Unix-people. Oracle can't sell it in that way, and they loose all the "none-customers" which would eventually move on to bigger and licensed stuff. If companies bought Solaris server from Dell because of Suns stiff North American style business and lack off good customer connection and sales channels why would an even stiffer organization sell the hardware better and gain back all the Sun shops who went to third party server-hardware providers? They won't. They will be migrating to RHEL and figure out a long term plan to migrate from Oracle, which will land them on commodity x86 servers and Power systems. With PostgreSQL/EnterpriseDB, DB2, MSSQL and so on instead. Oracle isn't really a complete "solutions company". Alienating it's users and customers won't getting people running to them.

Penti

It isn't

It isn't good for Solaris, they don't even sell Solaris workstations or desktops any more. No OpenSolaris mean no modern hardware support, no laptop support, no desktop support. You'll be lucky if the developer version is a VirtualBox image I guess.

Sun is only for their existing enterprise customers now, before it was for everybody. Startups, mid-sized companies, developers and students. Now it's just moving to become some obscure enterprise product which many will not ever see or use. Every involvement with Xorg, Gnome etc will be lost. Why support a company that doesn't support the software of your choice? Their database offerings with bundled hardware hasn't even been well received they have destroyed or alienated any customers they might have had, and they clearly don't want Java to be everywhere, which is anti-competitive and dishonest and betraying past promises. And goes against Javas ambition itself. And is battle which they will loose. Hotspot is already out there free and open source, licensed to the like of IBM, HP, Azul systems etc which have contributed greatly to it. Iron rule will fail. We will simply move to competitors systems. They are a company set to leverage the "IP" to it's full extent which means not prohibit any unlicensed use. Which would be retarded. Even by MS standards. Sparc is cool but most doesn't run their software on it and Rock is dead. It doesn't help them a bit. It won't turn them into IBM. Or a "complete" company.

Penti

No they won't

You don't get it AC, it won't be possible to just replace it with S11 Express, SXCE will not allow any commercial use.

Current Solaris 10 downloads only permit evaluation use, not development or personal/individual use, that's certainly a step back which visualizes and displays their intent and the future. If Express would be like the old Solaris Express why back down from using Solaris 10 without support, access to repository. And develop things away from sight is definitively not in line with what Sun was doing. They are basically many more times more closed then IBM now. Which also builds products on open source projects like the geronimo application server, other apache projects, open office and so on. And also providing it for free. Why drop community versions and gratis use for individual use, developers, technicians and so on, when everybody else is moving there even the not open source using players. It's just idiocy and will destroy every value it had. The express/free releases needs to be valuable and usable. It isn't if they are locked down too much or the licensing restrict one from doing anything. It doesn't rob them from providing the none free supported enterprise version or product. It helps them creating a user base which might want to move their when they grow, and they will grow with something/someone else if that's not a possibility. Which will also risk those current users migrating to the platforms the others are moving too.

So it's not for anybody. And that's the problem.

Java daddy says Sun engineers ran 'goofiest patent' contest

Penti

No not really

Oracle has made it clear that they will sue and license code and IP which they have released as open source. They have released Solaris and tech as open source, they have released Java and the Hotspot VM as open source, they have released Glassfish as open source and so on. It's not about proprietary code it's about being evil. Sun allowed unlicensed JVMs since before Java was a widely used platform. The reason for the MS suit is because they broke the agreement they made, not because of competition and splitting per say, they would have been fine with it if it wasn't called Java. But that was also based off Sun code. The agreement was that it would be compatible it wasn't. OpenJDK for example is compatible and Dalvik doesn't claim compatibility, neither is anything stopping Oracle from releasing a Java ME environment and JVM programmed via the NDK. Or stopping the phone makers from putting a third party JVM in there. Dalvik doesn't claim to be a JVM or Java runtime only a proprietary virtual machine.

Open source infringes on patents just as much as other software licenses does. There's open source code in Android which you explicitly can't use without a patent license. Source and IP isn't the same thing and open source isn't public domain.

Lucky Macs get Flash speed bump

Penti

Re: Lou

It doesn't supporting DXVA and blu-ray doesn't mean you support Flash Player because flash player needs low level access not provided and not used by the DirectShow or Media Foundation framework DXVA is designed to work against. And talking to the drivers APIs aren't talking directly to the hardware, it isn't bad practice even at Windows. Cuda is implemented in driver + library on both Windows and OS X without either vendors involvement. There's no real difference to provide an API to the nVidia VP3 interface.

You can play media files in Quicktime with Quciktime demuxers and decoders, and you can play media files in WMP/MF/DShow with MF/DShow demuxers and decoders in Core Video/Quartz/CA (OS X) overlay and VMR (XP)/EVR (Vista/7 D3D accelerated) overlay. You can write your own quicktime decoders or your own DirectShow Filters/MF transform for files that there aren't a suitable decoder and demuxer for on OS X you can accelerate those third party QT components with VDADecoder headerfile/API on nVidia hardware, on Windows (7/Vista) you can use DXVA together with the EVR renderer only. But Adobe does neither here. So providing stuff they don't use wont help them. The hardware and software just isn't meant to be used as Adobe does it, rendering it out into the software compositor and blending RGB-overlays in the CPU. The frameworks are meant to use the native API and hardware feature for that, within the framework itself, which just doesn't fit Adobe Flash's work flow. If they would just have went with properly encoded H.264/AVC videos in MP4 on HTTP streaming (which also works with Flash), then even the files would play with the native QT decoders on the Mac with hardware acceleration even on ATi hardware. Microsoft didn't supply them with this low-level access needed, Apple kinda did by exposing nVidias VP3 stuff. It wasn't designed to work that way, so the drivers manufacturers is fully responsible to work with Adobe to implement the flash support. Not all DXVA/H.264 capable hardware is therefor capable of accelerating the H.264 flash videos. It just wasn't apart of in supporting the standard API and because of the way it operates also needs more performance between the GPU and the CPU/memory then playing back blu-rays with 10 times higher bitrate.

So Adobe is just using a small part of the video framework and API on Windows, and none of Apples own framworks on OS X. Expect for Core Animation/OpenGL/Quartz/Quickdraw. Which QT also has to deal with and any other video player plugin too.

That's also why ION-NG doesn't work properly with Flash player but handles blu-rays just fine, there's not enough bandwidth between the GPU and CPU to supply it because of it's none standard approach. It isn't just a Mac problem, and nVidia and ATI/AMD Mac driver teams and Apple can do nothing if Adobe doesn't even communicate what they need. They can't design stuff for none-standards. For none-specified use.

Apples own QT decoders does utilize the hardware vendors internal API's directly, just because they haven't formulated a standard API for them to support to abstract all that. But said abstraction wouldn't really been made to supply a none QT work flow any way just as DXVA isn't meant to be used without DirectShow decoders/Media Foundation transforms and VMR/EVR renderer, as you just doesn't render video overlay in software. It needs to be hardware accelerated, and is within the native APIs. Third party media acceleration isn't really supplied for either platform, not for normal video cards at least, the Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator has it's own API. You aren't meant to output video that way. As Adobe does it, on neither of the platforms. This is http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC15450.gif how Microsoft intended it to be used and it isn't used in a fashion even close to that. It's more like software > hardware > software > custom surface on GPU/hardware, while DXVA, EVR, D3D is all in hardware when you do it properly as a video player should. That's not Apples or Microsofts fault, however that's no excuse for Apple, they should be able to do this and meet their requirements more eloquently even if Microsoft didn't need too. As they still doesn't have a good system for third party decoders they should implement that even if VDADecoder was enough to shut up Adobe. But Adobe will complain as soon as they have created that even if they can't use it. But the standard accelerated interface on Windows didn't work with Adobes flash player, Microsoft wasn't blamed for it or any claim of no API was launched against it. Adobe can't get custom stuff if they don't ask for it. Sorry for long post.

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@Volker

Of course Quicktime does, but it can't demux the FLVs or the wrongly encoded files. QTKit provides everything Quciktime provides within your own app, if you need a video player that is, which Flash just isn't. QTX only support VP3 and only does HW-acceleration with VP3-based nVidia cards.

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@Lou

It's simply a case of them not having an internal/unexposed API, thus creating a poorly fitting custom one just for Adobe. Apple uses the APIs the graphic drivers provides and opening up quicktime wouldn't be much use to Adobe, as they don't use it any way. Just as they don't use DirectShow/Media Foundation on Windows. It wouldn't have been anything stopping Adobe from talking to the drivers directly. (Provided Nvidia helped them. Which they did on Windows any way.). There's really no alternative to DXVA/MediaFoundation/DirectShow on Windows either, so it would be odd to expect it to be different on OS X. I'm not sure if not providing access to undocumented driver features that are vendor specific is the same as using/not sharing private OS APIs for which they have the source for.

Microsoft digs Macs in back-to-school ads

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The problem was what?

Buy a external blu-ray player, tv-stick/receiver/tuner, USB memory stick reader (Who uses Sony M2's?), and use the modem supplied by the wireless provider, and Windows and you have BD playback, it's what people does on their pcs mostly (excluding BD) and a BD-player external that for connecting to the TV costs from $70 dollars now days.

And I thought Microsoft in MS Office 2011 would fix all the compatibility problems and work fine for collaborating over sharepoint.

PVR-software is included with the El gato TV-tuner. Also Roxio has some other features, so you can stream your eyetv recordings, or like supporting tivo2go. It's acceptable even if Microsoft's WMC is really good. You can also convert them for viewing on your iPhone/Pod if you got one of those. (Probably compatible with most other phones too).

Flash finally finagled onto iPhone

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Re: DrXym

Flash still doesn't use any systems overlay on any platform for video. It wouldn't help (completely) as they still need to composite it in software. Windows didn't provide the low-level access needed, they needed to work with the hardware vendors getting specific and debugged drivers from them. Just supporting DXVA and full blu-ray support isn't enough, and the new API on OS X doesn't allow them to read back RGB-data it only does bitstream decoding. Same that's handled with VDPAU on Linux. Again they don't use a work flow akin to a video player.

A h/w accelerated video browser plugin works fine even on Linux. On OS X they have the same APIs for displaying the video data as QT plugin has. But those don't composite controls and other functions in software.

NPAPI needs rework, on Windows too, but for whole other reasons. VDADecoder isn't what Adobe needs, it isn't the low level RGB-supplying API. It's worse then VDPAU on Linux. Of course bitstream acceleration will work even with QuickDraw display. Color conversion and scaling can be done with OpenGL on both Linux and OS X. I.e. hardware accelerated, it's just not implemented. (Only partly). Allowing h/w bitstream acceleration on Linux for VDPAU and VA-API wouldn't be harder then on OS X. Which is still in beta/preview.

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flash flash flash

@DrXym, Adobe has the same APIs as Quicktime player has in the browser. QT hasn't the same problem because it's a video player that behaves like a video player. On Windows you actually has a boatload of drawing APIs recently Direct2D, DirectWrite (fonts) that came with W7 and Vista platform update, deprecated DirectDraw, Direct3D, GDI+, OpenGL, and briefly another deprecated API DirectAnimation was available.

CA and Flash 10.1 (in Safari) is capable of detecting when something is off screen, but that's not why their work flow works so bad for video. It's the same apis as Quicktime player plugin has in the browsers. And they manage hardware accelerated video even in Quartz 2D/QuickDraw only Firefox. VDA Decoder has the same flaw Adobe gives as a reason for not implementing hardware acceleration on Linux too, it's not accelerating YUV>RGB conversion and scaling. That's still done partly or completely in software. Flash doesn't use the native video overlay on either Windows or OS X. Fixing video overlay in X/drivers won't benefit software which won't utilize it. Of course not working with the hardware vendors won't materialize anything.

OS X isn't as chaotic as some wants to portray, Windows has gone from DX8 to 11 and DirectDraw, Direct3D8-8.1-9.0x-10-10.1-11 to Direct2D in the same time OS X has gone from DirectDraw to Quartz 2D to CoreAnimation. On Windows they still need to deal with the limits of NPAPI on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Too. However as far as video go QT has had it working with h/w acceleration for quite a bit now. If your not working with hardware vendors you won't be getting anything from them.

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Blocked

@AC

Nothing is blocked, VDADecoder is not what Apple uses and it's exceptionally bad at Adobes awkward work flow. 3D support blocked? Access to video drivers blocked? No, it's just Adobe not working with the Nvidia and AMD/ATI OS X driver teams. Not communicating what they need at all. Not filing bug reports etc. Microsoft didn't help them get it running on Windows. The driver/device makers are free to put in support for anything, nVidia has CUDA and Elementals support on the Mac without Apple involved and as a third party download. (Or bundled with the card).

Nvidias VDADecoder APIs implementation means there's no support for ATI cards, also means they still need to do cpu based RGB conversion, it still does cpu/software compositing on both Windows and OS X. So it only offloads the bitstream decoding-bit still heavy lifting to be done and only works on the notebooks. Both iMac and Mac Pro uses ATI cards only currently. Which still means theres plenty of stuff that doesn't even work on a mac pro. Apple hasn't backtracked a bit, OS X is not a closed system, driver makers are free to implement whatever feature they like, third party or otherwise. It's simply that Adobe never communicated with the people who's responsibility it is, Microsoft didn't provide them with an API suitable to their needs. It's implemented in the drivers and in an awkward way no other video based software does it like that with all their quirks. DXVA > RGB stream from driver > software compositing > gpu isn't exactly what Microsoft had in mind. And VDADecoder > YCbCr stream isn't what they needed any way. Actually that was the reason for not implementing video acceleration on Linux on Nvidia systems. OS X isn't iPhone. Bullshit is bullshit. FUD is FUD. The explanation is simply that Adobe had no engineers working on the platform working with Apple, Nvidia and ATI/AMD. Not communicating means they won't get any thing. They said no APIs while no body worked on it any way. On Windows it wasn't working, the APIs didn't work for them and they didn't complain, neither did they complain on the phones where more work needed to be done. Both in software and drivers. Why? Because they actually communicated and wrote code there. There's no pleasing Adobe. Software rendering of HD video is what were at with Adobe. With hardware decoding for the software renderer at it's best. No EVR-mixer, and so on.

Liberal Google, Yahoo!, Apple hurting America claims Reagan

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Dell

Of course M. Dell is a republican his from Texas after all, stereotypes are fun, when they are true.... But any way, would be odd for a Texas republican to give money to democrats.

RIM answers Apple iPad with...The BlackPad*

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Innovations

Notepad Not moving further away then notebook in terms of innovative names, they have already done the iBook.

Google: Flash stays on YouTube, and here's why

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Flash

Actually it's just about Ads, youtube doesn't use any DRM-scheme and doesn't use RTMP for streaming, it's normal HTTP MP4 with streaming / sequential download support just as HTML 5 / QT / WMP-IE / Chrome-ffmpeg. Granted the flash player / player app has more streaming and buffering features but most of those aren't used by google and DRM just isn't a argument for a site which hosts on-demand videos on HTTP.

You actually don't need HTML5 to play back the videos encoded by Youtube/Google at all, QT and HTML4/XHTML works fine for that. Blip.tv already does it like that with mov's. Not that QT on Windows is much better then the awfully engineered flash player. And the Safari HTML5 demo weren't actually a true HTML5 demo at all as it was mostly just a bunch of CSS3 and javascript tied in with Safari. Why didn't they just use the audio-tag, etc? Oh wait webkit didn't support that. The video-tag demo could have been made to support IE9 beta and chrome though. But too bad they didn't go for a more standard approach.

Flash will be around because of it's flawed DRM-scheme which is cracked any way, ability to integrate ads and easily overlay stuff and so on, even though some of the solutions doesn't really work on any computer :) And the ability to play WebM will be used in IE for playing back at sites that only supports that. Creating a flash player app to play videos is free, all the codecs are in the Flash Player plugin and you don't even need to buy Adobe flash pro to compile it, requiring not a single cent to Adobe :) RTMP streaming is kinda dead outside the DRM or CDN services which uses it.

And I do argue and agree that the Chrome ffmpeg implementation is awful lacking full screen, good overlay and hw-acceleration. Safari, QT / Mac is good in that regard though, with no problem with full screen playing and plays back most youtube videos - those without encoding errors. But of course QT wouldn't handle flv encapsulated stuff. They should just scrap the Chrome implementation and buy in a commercial codec really ffmpeg can be tweaked to work good but you shouldn't really encourage third parties building ffmpeg stuff when they aren't licensed too. Neither is it really up to date.

@Anonymous Coward, you can hide the url the same way youtube does it for the flash player. They don't use any DRM, it's just a JS scheme and should be considered clear text. Obfuscation isn't DRM. Obfuscation works for HTML5 or even 4 for that matter.

Any way Flash will be the only way to play AVC/H.264 MP4s or WebM/MKV videos in XP with a Microsoft browser as MS won't release it for XP SP3 as they are engineering it only for Direct2D which doesn't exist for XP. So it shouldn't and won't disappear. But besides you have to do ads differently theres no reason why not to do browser integrated player / HTML5 playback support on sites that use HTTP streaming and encodes videos to standard MP4 containers and QT/commercial codec compatible encodes -- or WebM. However sites like Hulu etc needs the broken Adobe DRM and RTMP streaming, otherwise they are not allowed to stream the videos and that's actually partly the music biz fault as they have more say about how to use their works then the movie industry has about their own where there is no copyright royalty collecting societies. Licensing a movie for download rather then streaming is something wholly different because of that. And if you license for streaming you must have a technical protection mechanism to unsuccessfully but illegal to circumvent the copying or downloading or unauthorized view of the material. In short they don't allow the use of unprotected streaming in the form of QT encoded content on HTTP streaming, HTML5 WebM or the flash model Youtube uses.

Microsoft closes door on 64-bit development for Office 2011

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RE: RE: Useless

Well if you want to migrate more advanced documents utilizing Macros then Go-OO and derivatives will be a better choice. Not making the product compatible with it self is just retarded and means any professional Mac users need to run the same Office as the ones he works against either in a Virtual Machine (this is allowed through volume licensing) or via a terminal server / TS / Remote desktop services / RDP session. It's really the only feasible way. Though the Microsoft RDP client was horrible, forced to run in rosetta and hasn't become much better in it's new iteration. Microsoft also looses money not having a product like Virtual PC with a Windows license included. No private person will buy the retail copy of Windows in order to run it in Fusion / Parallels. They will simply run a pirated copy.

Running a Windows virtual machine volume licensed is acceptable in a corporate environment though. But they fail there too not allowing better usage of TS/RDS and let the users run the software on a centralized system instead. Making the environment awkward, they should be able to setup a single-sign on mac environment that works with RDP/RDS services.

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Useless

Office for Mac is just a sad joke for complying with the deal they have with Apple. Apple should cancel it and stop selling it, as any business user must have Office under Windows/Virtual machine any way on a mac. It's less compatible with Office then Go-OO and other derivatives are. Fooling people that it's Office is just retarded.

This just shows that they still hasn't the development resources to pull it off. Just let some third party do it like what happened with WMV support and flip4mac. Develop components that they can use to import documents properly or something instead.

Google open video codec may face patent clash

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MPEG-LA turn patent troll

Seriously MPEG-LA together with it's CEO Lawrence A. Horn which is already a troll, turns patent troll now with this bullshit, they need to fire him immediately. MPEG-LA has no mandate to do this, it's suppose to be a RAND patent pool for MPEG-related technologies not trolling against competing tech. It undermines their own licensing effort, large licensors might just grow tired of them and move elsewhere like VA Licensing or form a another pool. And licensees won't trust them a bit.

Just destroy Larry Horn, his trolling business on the side (MobileMedia Ideas LLC) or you're destroying your chance of having licensees have a good trust and standing, or of trusting MPEG-LA altogether. They will lose any faith in you. Conflicts will arise everywhere but the main people behind it won't like nothing to do with it as it hurts them too. MPEG has themselves made moves towards creating a royalty free codec, they will condemn them and speak against them for their actions.

Microsoft's Linux patent bingo hits Google's Android

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Patents

It's starting to look like SCO. Sure Microsoft probably owns patents recovering parts of Linux systems (they do own several multimedia patents, but those are licensed from mpeg-la, which official andriod phone makers license), but this none disclosure and ambiguous policy just is bullshit. Microsoft themselves have contributed Linux kernel code (for hyper-V), validating the project. Why would they give code and help to something infringing their property.

TomTom where never convicted of infringing the FAT-patents either way. And with Microsofts involvement in the SCO affair this just reeks a revisit.

Intellectual property is a bitch, and MS themselves known that, having gotten verdicts of billions of dollars against them, though successfully overturned them. The XML deal they had no option but to comply though. Either clearly state and reach out (like through licensing pools) or shut up and let them produce compatible software which is allowed by the copyright under the compatibility clause every country has. And if you produce ("open") documentation for technology you better damn well clearly state whatever terms comply for them. Any widely used patents need to be available through a none-discriminatory manner (RAND). Otherwise they are useless. And they are useless for open source projects if they can't be freely used without fees. Either let the community (which is IBM, Redhat, Novell etc) produce compatible software or state every patent which is infringed so it can be challenged. And any code which they themselves or through proxys (Novell or other contracted companies) has contributed should not be legally allowed to be claimed intellectual property by them if it was released under a open source license, not stating any restrictions, it then should be considered royalty free for any use if it's included in a project where there's no need to buy patent licenses, otherwise it's easy to stop free distribution of software by just putting in a vital piece of code which can't easily be replaced. And later claim infringement, by their own actions...

Google (finally) nabs On2 video codecs

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Hardly

On2 doesn't just do codecs, they also do the On2 Flix engine which powers Youtube.

With regard to open sourceing the codecs so they could be used with HTML5, sure but there's still the problem of "lacking hardware support" which locks out Theora even though Theora does perform good enough in pure ARM implementation without video decoding hardware and it wouldn't be harder to add support in hardware for Theora then VP8/6 or whatever they wish to use. (Note that Chrome doesn't support VP6, neither does it include any other commercial codecs it's all homebrew + patent license). Google often buy up small businesses to use their tech, doesn't mean a revolution is going on. Or even that they will use the tech to it's full potential.

Mozilla buries heels on un-YouTube open video

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Problem

The problem is Tony Paulazzo, that Mozilla isn't just Mozilla Firefox, It's Camino, It's Fennec, It's integrated in Boxee, Miro, It's the Maemo browser, It's the engine for Songbird, it's the engine for Thunderbird/Lightning/Sunbird. Flickr uploader, Lotus Notes and so on.

Even Acrobat reader has mozilla tech integrated. So the problem is that it couldn't be used freely. The whole point is to generate tech which can be implemented by anyone freely. Adobe pays to use their decoders. Of course they can release it separately from source but that won't really solve anything. If Video are gonna be a part of the browser it needs to be freely implementable.

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US is not the problem

Actually the US is not the problem here. All major codecs (MPEG-2, MPEG-4 VISUAL, AVC/H264, VC1) are even patented in Sweden with the Swedish patent office, then there's european patents, patents in other european nations, patents in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and so on. The notion of, that software patents not existing outside of the US is just wrong and any physical product can get a ban from being sold/imported to the US. So it's doesn't help just because you don't have US's retarded lawyers in your own country. Homebrew projects get by because they are homebrew.

I agree that H264 is what is needed for mobile devices now, but hey they are not gonna run the same bitrate and resolution as the desktop usage. They already has a licensed internal player/decoder that they should be able to use. You can accelerate Theora, you can accelerate Dirac, you can implement them in hardware and so on. Just begin to include it now and now phone will be without it in one or two years.

Apple's Tablet won't save Big Dumb Media

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Walled gardens

Walled gardens will always fail. However the paper business isn't as bad around the world as is it in the US.

It's enough that services such as IPTV are built walled garden. Information wants and needs to be free. Ffs I can read any paper the library stocks for free. Hindering access will just and always cause me and any one else to seek it else where. Most in the newspapers are just reprinted bureau telegrams and repackaged and the papers are the wrong guys to do aggregation on the internet. They survive fine here in Sweden by sticking to what they do best local reporting and local papers. The national dailies do fine too. But the political bias is just discussting.

Micropayments will never work in a global world. And should really kids under the legal age (those you can't get VISA-cards or whatever) be locked out from information sources? They are after all the future readers. Even most adults wouldn't want to deal with micropayments. They would just go elsewhere as it's less cumbersome. I wouldn't be interested to read an article in a english paper/site as a Swede if I would be required to register and pay for just that single article. I'm not required to do that in order to read a single article in a physical paper. If it's not release as PDFs free, then as said the god damn library got it. They are the wrong guys to do aggregation as content producers themselves. Aggregation must give extra value, the aggregators can pay whatever for it I don't care. There's just too many sites and walls around them won't solve a thing. The telegrams can I even get from the bureau's themselves.

It's important to note that they are not the same as the failing records companies and that this (records industry) was the only one to loose sales in this early digital age and that was mainly do to changing listening habits not downloading. We won't buy singles and collection CD's any more. We just doesn't listing to music in a way where that would make sense. Hasn't for a long time. The trend happened before napster and all the noobs filesharing services. The CDs reached a peak, something DVD-sales and movie theaters hasn't. And it won't as long they continue to supply an experience we want for the new content that's made. You can make boat loads of money there, and really only a few artists have really done it with music. And there's always TV for movie/series producers too. Which only gets better and betting in terms of quality of production. Why papers are dieing in the US? Maybe because they just has cut to many people and focus on the wrong things. Print circulates just fine here. It's another experience and people still buy it. E-ink devices might challenge it someday but it's off years till then. And if they can get aggregated in appropriate form people will still read them. However they won't pay for subscriptions to hundreds of potential news sources by subscribing to them one by one and they wont cough up micropayments for articles either.

Apple silences Psystar's rebel yell with injunction

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Who cares?

Who cares?

They don't even need to sue Psystar because informed users know that it is just a scam anyway. It baffeles me to see people who are willing to buy scam products and slow unsupported hardware that's no faster to run OS X on, costing as much as a mac. Psystar sold virtually no computers. If people want to run a unsupported hackintosh then they better do it themselves without no EFI-X, Rebel EFI or complete bullshit system. It's not just about implementing UEFI. Plenty of x86 products have UEFI firmware, in fact Phoenix/AWARD no longer develops their BIOS-firmware, AMI is moving to theirs EFI-firmware too. But you can't just install OS X on a UEFI-firmware PC. UEFI-firmwares has BIOS-support added on top of it just like bootcamp so it won't be much besides it soon.

Acer's first 'Pine Trail' netbook: details emerge

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Money

Maybe because there's no consumer Linux? The world isn't free from patents and producing a consumer Linux would cost more then simply license a Windows version for them. Canonicals endeavors have failed and they aren't free for a bit. They license proprietary codecs and dvd-players, Dell also surrenders support too (Win OEM requires them to support the damn thing) to Canoncial. There's no gain in offering them without Windows not for the consumer and not for Acer. Extra cost of having more models would be taken from your wallet. Linux is a poor choice anyway if all they do is surf the web and use it for multimedia. Codecs are lacking, hardware acceleration aren't good outside homebrew codecs and adobe flash sucks even more then on windows. Windows is just fine then. So there's no incentive. Of course it would be fun if a OEM started to support a community distribution and contributed to them to make it work smoothly. But OEMs are just interested to sell hardware. Not systems and software. Intel is heavily invested in Moblin though, but that's MID/Netbook size devices.

Media monsters float co-op ebook 'storefront'

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The Tech

The technology for something shown by sports illustrated isn't here by a long run.

Firstly you need to use a normal TFT-screen with an active backlight to do something like that, it doesn't only use large amount of energy but also is harder to read, don't give a book/paper like experience. Plus the hardware too pull it off would cost a huge mount compared to just subscribe to the magazine in paper form. It would never be something successful, the hardware much be as powerful as your full size laptop any way. Why not use that if you want the web-experience? Why buy several ~600 dollar devices? Isn't enough with cell phone, laptop and maybe a desktop or HTPC computer? Todays ebook readers are essentially the same parts as a cell phone plus a chip to use the EPD display. I.e. an ARM-processor like straight from a cell phone, a baseband/modem with an embedded ARM, a stripped down operating system and a li-ion/polymer battery. Why buy an ebook reader today then? Because it isn't the same as all the rest of the devices! It doesn't cost 600 dollars! It doesn't have a bright backlit display. If you take that away there will be zero mainstream interest. Who would want a reading device that dies after less then two hours of use?

Hell even today the low power devices becomes useless because of the high requirement for flash-content. Even though many low power devices have hardware H264 bitstream decoding and more Adobe don't utilize it. Why would an iTablet or something that sport illustrated - illustrated be any differently? Such devices much be able to use the normal internet-websites too. Hell even an Mac Pro has troubles with Adobe Flash. Even though you could write all the software to do all that, on low power hardware, if you can't even use it to view normal flash videos it feels awful and useless. Apple couldn't marry all this tech, and fiction, neither can any one else. And just look at Nokia N900, the surfpad or MID became a cell phone when technology allowed. Why wouldn't such a proposed product either move to be a full powered notebook or a normal netbook, instead of an e-reader? There's no middle ground here. A video playing device that don't fit in your pocket will want to become as much "real" computer as possible. A device that fits in your pocket will want to become a cell phone. A real ebook-reader will want the be like real paper, thus will have problem with videos and high resolution images. Batteries, hardware and screen tech limits.