Silverlight 3.0 Released, Allows Apps Outside the Browser 335
Many different sources are reporting that Microsoft has unleashed the third major version of Silverlight to the masses. With 3.0 we see things like better 3D graphics support, the ability to offload tasks to a GPU, and the ability to run apps outside of the browser. "Silverlight's video capabilities have always been impressive when compared to Flash, and the new version boasts some new features that should keep the competition with Flash hot. It uses a media broadcasting technology Microsoft calls Smooth Streaming, an adaptive technology for playing the same H.264 video stream at the highest bitrate the device and its bandwidth limitations will allow. So if you've got a fast computer with an HD monitor and a wide open pipe, you'll see super high quality video at up to full 1080p HD. If you've got a dinky smartphone with mid-level data service, you'll see a constrained version of the same video."
And where exactly is moonlight? (Score:5, Insightful)
Security problems with a MS product? nah. (Score:5, Insightful)
and the ability to run apps outside of the browser.
It seems to me like this offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious vulnerabilities if it is not handled very very carefully.
Linux? Microsoft anti-competitive move? (Score:1, Insightful)
Does it run under Linux (not Moonlight) and if so is it not a trash port that is wonky with poor performance?
If it does not run under Linux could this be considered an anti-competitive move by Microsoft to keep Linux out of the desktop or netbook market?
Inquiring minds want to know
RLH
DirectX on WebApps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you want a security atrocity like DirectX? Aren't there enough security holes already? If anything, we should think about banning DirectX from the Web? We should also ban ActiveX.
Re:Why won't Adobe open source Flash? (Score:4, Insightful)
What would open sourcing Flash do for them? There are really two possibilities. First, it could attract contributions from external developers. The chance of this is slim, and most of the contributions would probably be poor, so this would just add administrative overhead on Adobe's side for accepting patches. Second, it could lead to forks of Flash. This would be devastating for Flash - the whole premise of Flash, and the reason it's so popular, is that It Just Works (tm) consistently across platforms.
H.264 licensing (Score:4, Insightful)
It is interesting that Moonlight is not currently pursuing H.264, which makes me wonder if MS is purposely gimping their linux/unix implementation.
Re:3D graphics support (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad "we" doesn't include "me." My linux-based PVR can't run Netflix on demand because it's silverlight-based, so that's my main association with the technology. Hulu is also linking out to broadcaster's own incompatible streaming sites rather than hosting stuff itself. I fear we are returning to the bad old days of a few years ago when a lot of multimedia on the web was incompatible with linux. Poor linux users, under-represented minority that we are :)
Re:DirectX on WebApps? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never heard of any exploits targeting DirectX or someone breaking in via GPU. In a same way someone could exploit Windows sound driver via flash applet to break in. I dont think I've used any ActiveX objects for 10 years, and times have changed. Obviously security has also come up too.
Re:DirectX on WebApps? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And where exactly is moonlight? (Score:1, Insightful)
If my memory serves me right, Flash 10 had 64-bit Linux support right out of the box. Did Windows users enjoy 64-bit support for Flash 10 right away?
I'm honestly asking, I never checked.
Re:Security problems with a MS product? nah. (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me like this offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious vulnerabilities if it is not handled very very carefully.
Like... what?
If I download a SWF file to my desktop, and run it by double-clicking it, is it somehow less secure than if I run it in a browser?
Re:I would call it a hypercompetitive move (Score:5, Insightful)
Silverlight can only be "thought of as a sort of HTML 5" if you also sort of thought of Win32 as HTML 4.
Jesus Christ, it's just a clone of Flash that attempts to make Vista's .Net as a binary substitute for the open web.
And yes, Microsoft is desperately trying to compete with Chrome/Chrome OS/HTML 5, just like the company successfully killed Client-side Java and non-IE browsers as a threat to the Win32 monopoly, then sat back and let IE go rotten once it ruled the roost.
If you still live in the late 90s and think Microsoft is invincible and can decree standards by fiat with its monopoly share of the PC desktop and the web browser, let me welcome you to the 2000s, where:
- Microsoft's WMA/WMV-VC-1 codecs failed to kill or even matter in the face of MPEG H.264/ACC.
- Microsoft's HD-DVD + HDi [roughlydrafted.com] failed against Blu-Ray and H.264 content in iTunes.
- Microsoft's ASF/AAF container files failed to win against QuickTime/MPEG-4 (with even MS now using MP4 in Smooth Streaming).
- Efforts to push Zune and PlaysForSure DRM and MS-DRM music subscriptions failed against the iPod and iTunes.
- Efforts to push Windows Mobile as a brand have collapsed in the face of the iPhone.
- Microsoft's IE monopoly over the web has shrunk down to 60% and continues a rapid decline as Firefox, Chrome and Safari eat up share.
- Microsoft's Windows monopoly is facing a global shrinking PC market, mass rejection of a heavyweight Vista/Win7 type operating system as systems move toward netbooks and ultra cheap PCs and laptops that can't support a fat OS, and the loss of the premium PC market for higher end systems to Apple.
Microsoft might be all you know, but it's time to start learning about alternatives or you'll be stuck with the dinosaurs.
Apple launches HTTP Live Streaming standard in iPhone 3.0 [appleinsider.com]
Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble [roughlydrafted.com]
Why Windows 7 is Microsoft's next Zune [roughlydrafted.com]
Why Windows 7 on Netbooks Won't Save Microsoft [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:Ogg was supposed to do this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Light (Score:2, Insightful)
Again, MS is building something better than the people who built it first. (OS, GUI, Office Tools, Chat, Browser, now Flash)
Wow! It's really getting deep in here. *dons waders*. Let's look at comparatively at contemporary examples for the first item in your list.
Microsoft's first OS was MS-DOS. Sure, it compared favorably to the operating system it sought to compete with, CP/M, but what about other contemporary OSes? I mean, it had no multitasking, no decent scripting language, no real memory management support. No, MS-DOS was pretty much a program loader with a very small API (Int 21h) that provided access to the filesystem.
Microsoft's second "OS" was a graphical shell with a 16-bit DOS extender, later partially upgraded to a 32-bit DOS extender called "Windows". The DOS extender was necessary because their first OS was such a schlock piece of crap, it couldn't access any memory beyond 640K, which ought to have been enough for anybody. It crashed more often than not, and in doing so, left its most lasting legacy, the term 'Blue Screen of Death.'
Then, after finally realizing their current crop of programmers couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, they hired a real operating system architect from away from Digital Equipment Corp. named David Cutler, who had written VMS for his former employer, to write them a real OS. He named his new OS after the old one, adding 1 to each letter (V=W, M=N, S=T, WNT) and so Microsoft marketroids found this out and called it Windows NT.
After releasing it to a corporate market that pretty much ignored it at first, Microsoft then proceeds to add a bunch of crap from their other "operating systems" to make NT more "user friendly". Cutler throws his hands up and walks out the door because he just can't take that sh*t no more. As time marches on, Microsoft "new" operating system starts looking more and more like their old "operating system," gaining more and more destabilization. And the Internet proves that Microsoft still has no idea how to write a secure Internet-worthy operating system. None of the successive releases become useful until Service Pack 2.
Finally, just when they start getting something actually workable (Windows XP SP2), they release the bloated, annoying, and somewhat incompatible horrid piece of flopping crap known as Vista. Everyone hates it, no one buys it, and Microsoft's stock subsequently drops, sending the rest of the tech sector down the toilet with it.
Yep. That sounds like an improvement alright.
Should I continue ripping apart the rest of your festering pile of bullshit?
Re:Sounds nice, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be how the Internet looks to the geek.
But there are a growing number of "gated communities" that simply use the net as a connecting link:
Steam. Netflix. YouTube, MySpace, WoW and so on.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.
Until your boss gives you your marching orders.
Market share matters to him because that is what keeps his company and his clients in business.
If he needs Flash or Silverlight to remain competitive so be it.
I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).
It interests me that the geek who trumpets the least show of innovation and experimentation elsewhere expects Microsoft to remain static.
Re:3D graphics support (Score:3, Insightful)
This tears away the primary need for Flash or MS Flash (Silverlight), paving the way open for HTML 5 to push compliant browsers (FireFox, Opera, Safari, other WebKit browsers) into the forefront and leave a dwindling minority on IE 6/7/8 with Silverlight/Flash.
Streaming MPEG and HTML 5 don't play games, unless you can run a server farm and stream the game image, or you want to make something horribly convoluted and possibly unstable. Either way - Silverlight would have made a great grab at Macromedia's market share...which was what, 5 years ago?
Re:Lets learn it all over again..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Icebike asked: What could Possibly go wrong with that?!?
You tell me.
It's in the same security sandbox as when it's running in the browser - it doesn't have the ability to read or write the file system outside of it's own size-limited isolated storage bin, it can't take keyboard input when full-screen, has no access to webcams and mikes, and it can't send or receive data at websites that it didn't download from unless they opt in.
Maybe you had something specific in mind that nobody else had thought of in the last few years?
Re:3D graphics support (Score:1, Insightful)
I just read the spec for the canvas element. It's 25 of the HTML5 spec's 1000 pages, and it's nothing but a bitmap drawing API (like Windows GDI). There's no support for things like sprites, animation, click detection, or double-buffering. Any effect more complicated than alpha blending has to be implemented in Javascript. The 3D support is still theoretical at this point.
There's no way HTML5 can compete with Flash, let alone Silverlight 3! I mean HTML5 will be great for making video player UIs to replace Flash, but there's no way you can do games with it.
dom
Re:H.264 licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
> barely any sites used Silverlight 1.0.
Barely any sites use Silverlight, period. Pretty much the only ones doing at are being paid to do so, thus it is fairly safe to say they will all be showcasing the very most recent features.
> Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux:
There is one more. A major PR campaign to induce Microsoft to cooperate with more early information. They need Silverlight to be thought of as cross platform a lot more than we currently need them. This should be leveraged; Especially if the other choice is to always be stuck with a version that isn't very useful. Witness the results of the RMS open letter on the Mono issue.
There is also a downside to option c you might not be thinking of. An always broken Moonlight offers the worst of all options. They can use it's existence to blow cross platform sunshine up the wazoos of pointy haired bosses who don't know better and still get the lock in of forcing people who want to access the actual content to buy a Windows license.
> But Silverlight is a large project, and we are a small team compared to the task at hand,
Yes, we have seen this scenario many times and if you expect to do the same things over and over and expect a different result........ Lets review:
1) Linux & *BSD reimplemented POSIX. Success. POSIX is an open spec that changes slowly.
2) DOSEMU. Achieved 1.0 then vanished. More an emulation of the x86 PC than DOS, but as it only really ran DOS. DOS was dead when they started. By the time they finished nobody cared. RedHat packaged dosemu-1.0 for exactly one release before dropping the package.
3) FREEDOS cloned DOS. Finally achieved 1.0, a few in the embedded space cared as it was the only option left. Another long stern chase that finally managed to catch a dead product after most people forgot it existed.
4) WINE is trying to implement WIN{16|32|64} on Linux/UNIX. After fifteen years they can run a fair number of five year old applications, usually with 'minor' issues. Some more recent games run, especially with the commercial fork. IE 6 still isn't fully supported.
5) ReactOS is trying to clone Windows. No practical use is known for this project after a decade of effort.
The only way I see to get the large volume of developers you acknowledge you will need to be able to keep up is to demonstrate a reasonable chance of having a useful product in a reasonable timeframe. If you can't start on the current version until flagship websites are already deployed on it that isn't going to be an easy pitch to make. While a WINE that only runs Office 2003 is useful to enough people CodeWeavers can make a living from it, that doesn't work in the web space where sites don't keep an old version of their content posted. If you can't view the current release NOW, it isn't useful later.