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Internet Explorer 9 and Ogg Theora

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Kintaro:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/30/internet_explorer_9_closed_video/

Apparently the Redmond Beast are refusing to support Ogg Theora. Before some of you go off on a tangent about Microsoft doing their usual thing, I believe Microsoft are as much a victim in this as the guys over at Ogg. H264 costs Microsoft money in licencing and Ogg Theora does not. Microsoft's old prime directive to adapt, expand, and extinguish is completely vanquished with H264 as Microsoft did not make it. Theora could be forked on the other hand.

This is a good example of the innovation stifling evils of software patents. As Ayn Rand said "All Government power is physical coercion," and that is exactly the nature of patent law. Contrary to the belief that it secures technological growth by securing investment, it simply puts producers in a ball and chain. No matter what a developers bottom line is (profit or fun) patents destroy both.

piratePenguin:
MS are not "as much a victim" as the guys in Ogg. Xiph are having FUD* spread about them that will cost them their business. Microsoft is paying an extremely worthwhile fee to ship h264 support with all of their products (eventually).

The other victims are Mozilla and Opera, who ultimately cant afford to pay the fee for h264. (And I suppose all free operating systems too)

Software patents are dreadful (I wont speak about other types). When they came into existence they were about making innovators share the details of their inventions in the public domain (in return their invention would be protected for a period of time), but software patents (id like to add particularly apples, but thats only because those are the only ones ive looked at) you dont need to read the patent to learn a damn thing.


* and it appears this fud is being spread by apple and not only microsoft? this isnt a shock to me, but gives apple fanboys something to think about. If Ogg/Theora violates patents, FILE A LAWSUIT, this "oh, we think they violate patents" scaremongering is fucking disgusting. Btw, xiph make an active effort to ensure details do not violate MPEG/etc patents last time i check (just as MPEG ensures they patent every detail), of course youd expect apple and the rest to open their traps not even when the codec is released, but well after and during a war for the standard video codec of the web.

btw and offtopic, i think video codecs are a very interesting subject and since i study maths i intend to spend time studying video codecs during the summer. I'm an amateur on the topic, but i have some things I want to see about.

Kintaro:
Apple pulled the same cunt moves on Palm over WebOS.

Adobe's FLV seems to be all that matters on the web, and Xvid is the only thing that matters in the area of piracy.

At the end of the day it is just a codec, I am sure someone will make a Theora hack for IE9.

I wonder how the guys at Opera deal with all this BS in the browser world anyway, though, I'd personally be really happy to pay for Opera.

piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Basil Fawlty on  3 May 2010, 01:41 ---Apple pulled the same cunt moves on Palm over WebOS.

Adobe's FLV seems to be all that matters on the web, and Xvid is the only thing that matters in the area of piracy.

At the end of the day it is just a codec, I am sure someone will make a Theora hack for IE9.

I wonder how the guys at Opera deal with all this BS in the browser world anyway, though, I'd personally be really happy to pay for Opera.

--- End quote ---
"It is just a browser" is what normal people were saying when Netscape and IE were fighting to the death.

worker201:
I read somewhere recently that h264 can actually be decoded by hardware, whereas ogg/theora has to be decoded by software.  On a desktop computer, that means fuck all.  But on a mobile platform, that's important.  Supposedly, mobile phone battery life doubles when all decoding is done on a chip, as opposed to an OS process that eats RAM.  I don't think it's necessarily a good thing for mobile technology to control the direction of the industry - I just wanted to point out that there might be other factors involved besides openness.

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