Google Chrome 31 Is Out: Web Payments, Portable Native Client 123
An anonymous reader writes "Google today released Chrome version 31 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version includes support for Web payments, Portable Native Client, and 25 security fixes. 'Under the hood, PNaCl works by compiling native C and C++ code to an intermediate representation, rather than architecture-specific representations as in Native Client. The LLVM-style bytecode is wrapped into a portable executable, which can be hosted on a web server like any other website asset. When the site is accessed, Chrome fetches and translates the portable executable into an architecture-specific machine code optimized directly for the underlying device. This translation approach means developers don’t need to recompile their applications multiple times to run across x86, ARM or MIPS devices.' You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome."
Security? (Score:2, Interesting)
How they maintain security with C and C++ applets?
-- hendrik
I am hereby calling for a boycott of active-x v2 (Score:0, Interesting)
We tried this with java, we tried this with active-x, and we tried this with adobe flash...
Ick. End it already. It leaves us with nothing but messes all around and gaping security holes.
Not to mention it forces non-free code down our throats that is as intrusive as hell and destructive to our freedoms.
It has come to this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly browser wars turned into the race to rebuild AOL. Why so much bloat? Browser should do one, and only one thing well - render web pages. Native client? Web Payments? Why not throw in TurboTax, because more the merrier, right?
Viability (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a small group of people that see a problem in this and I personally think their arguments are valid. The thing is, over 90% of people just use technology like a supermarket. Milk comes from supermarkets, it tastes the way the supermarket makes it taste and they know what taste of milk is best for you. The whole thing about starting your own diary farm and breeding cows and such is totally lost to these people. Once the nations largest supermarket starts adding bath salts to the milk, to keep people coming back for more groceries, those 90% will not complain and even actively defend the super market, because they like bath salts added to the milk and you should get your own cow and sell the excess milk if you don't like it.
I might be slightly exaggerating here, but you're defending a company that is trying to pull "a MicroSoft" on us all. Once Google has control of the UI we all use and the API, they get to say what applications run on it, who makes the money and who gets all the juicy information about the users of these products. Don't forget that currently, all NaCL applications are approved by Google and are exclusively distributed by "Google Play". You may say there are alternative markets, but those are fragmented and most are riddled with malware and pirated software. Anything commercially viable, apart from maybe Cydia is run and/or controlled by Google.
People that own an official Android device will in the near future have the ability to use all their Android apps on all their devices, providing they run Google's Chrome, not some other browser that just happens to support NaCl. This will mean a very large domination of the application market for Google, rendering all other web browsers and end-user operating systems insignificant. With Google being the only party to effectively censor what applications we get to use and who gets what slice of the pie, I think we have a right to be worried here. It's not about the ability, but the viability of a fork. Even if it were technically superior, it'd still lose.