Saturday, March 27, 2010


I have commented about Theora and H264 in my blog post before. The above OSNews story is pretty good and it's true why should firefox and Opera support Theora when most people would use H264 on their machines? Imagine 98% would be using H264 and 2% using Theora as the article states as an example.Admittingly Theora is a very good as I have tried a HTML 5 powered by Theora and it is just isn't as good (smooth) as H264. I thought of another solution to this H264 and Theora tug-of-war, which is to get all browsers to have both H264 and Theora implemented. This would solve the problem for everyone in the near future and people (content providers, end users, uploaders...) would get to choose to support H264 or Theora. It's going to be a bloat admittingly but if you want a 'peaceful' HTML 5 in an attempt to break away from Flash, this is the best temporary solution I have thought of up till now.

Friday, March 19, 2010

MP3 taxation in Canada being over turned


Imagine taxing for MP3s and portable media players. What craziness is it ?

How about taxing everyone for owning a headphone or earphone too ?

It's lucky that oppositions have over turned this absurb bill.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

H.264 or OGG for HTML 5

It's a tough decision to choose between using H.264 or OGG as the next HTML 5 standards. Both side have their pros and cons. H.264's main weakness is it's patents despite it being free for use. OGG is not encumbered by patents and is ope source and really free but it's not as high quality and capable as H.264.

I think here's some way to settle the problem.
  1. Just keep using Flash and remove the notion of HTML 5 video tag for now (I really hate it but it's the most practical one)
  2. H.264 to open up and change it's patents or remove it  (It ain't gonna happen for a million years)
  3. Get more brains together and help develop and better OGG to the point it's ready (Very possible but how many are willing to spend hours doing so ?)
  4. Get the Standards body to create a patent free and truely free and open source video format combining the good points of H.264 and OGG (It's not very practical since you are going to build from the ground up again...but a good idea) 
Either way, I doubt using HTML 5 video 'goodies' would actually kill Flash as it has more practical functions. You can build an entire web using Flash (which H.264 nor OGG) could do. I think let's face it, it's a very steep uphill battle since Flash have been integrated so deeply into our lives. It's sad that Flash is encumbered by all the patents and closed up but that's a fact of life we have to get used to as long as there's no solution for HTML 5 video 'goodies'.

Apple's anti-open source true colours

Apple may seem to be friendly in the open source world but no, it's true colours are leaking so badly, especially it's recent spat againts HTC's Android phone.

It seems like Apple couldn't fight Android because it's a vast and wide open source project where if it needs to trace and put people down, it's going to be endless... so what better to take down then HTC, one of the main smartphone manufacturers that uses Android heavily ?

Apple's ugly side is rearing up again, not for the first time but for many times. How can we trust Apple in the open source community ?