Adobe working to sabotage HTML5 - Page 4

Who says the content is only going to be stored in RAM? If the stream is unencrypted or if I have the decryption key, I can do whatever I want with the stream, including saving it.

You do realize that eventually, the encrypted stream has to be decrypted in order for you to, um, watch it, right? That's the difference between DRM and regular encryption. DRM tries to hide the decryption key and limit where the decrypted stream goes, in order to prevent you from accessing the decrypted stream directly. With an open standard, even if the stream is encrypted, the user can just grab the decryption key once authenticated and do whatever he/she wants with the stream.

What an open standards body is supposed to do and what actually happens in real life are two different thing. Open standards commonly get held up by competing corporate agendas. They usually work best when there is clear leadership. Take Open CL for example.

On the other hand you have OpenGL where its behind since nobody can agree on anything or 802.11n where the board moved so slowly that devices were in widespread use years before the standard was ratified.


Remove the flash plugin and observe how many times you get a plugin dialog box. Flash may suck, but its very much alive and well. You don't notice how widespread it actually is and how many websites plain do not work at all until you don't have. Its far from ideal, but its the current reality of things.


Microsoft has its own proprietary flash competitor in silverlight.

Do you realize that DRM has to be unlocked and the content sent unencrypted, too. Do you also realize that there is nothing stopping Hulu from making an app that allows for DRM to be appended to each file that is then unlocked for each user based on account credentials. I have absolutely no idea why people think Flash is a secure safe haven for content and anything Apple does is a travesty. The content owners will have control, just like they do now.

You don't know how DRM works. The only way you can have DRM is by having a closed source client to playback the media. The closed client is supposed to contain the decrypted content so the user can't access it in ways not specified by the content owner. The client has to be closed because it needs to hide its decryption mechanism from the user. Open standards just can't do this. In order to allow any client to use the platform they specify openly how to decrypt the stream, so anyone can just decrypt it and do anything with the decrypted media. This is why Flash can offer DRM and RTP/RTSP and HTTP Live Streaming can't. Flash allows content creators to use a closed client to playback the stream and limit the playback to within just that client by using a hidden decryption mechanism. Until someone cracks open the closed client's decryption mechanism, there's no way to get the decrypted stream out of the client.

What part of this is so hard to understand? HTTP Live Streaming allows for encryption and authentication. This is a lighter, more versatile option than Flash. It's already being used and it does absolutely nothing to prevent DRM from being used by any and all content providers that choose to use it.

Whether you want to believe it or not, this is the beginning of the end for Flash as the de facto for streaming video.

What's so hard to understand about You Can't Add DRM to HTTP Live Streaming? I mean, you could modify the protocol to only stream to a specified, closed-source client. But then it would no longer be HTTP Live Streaming. It would just be another proprietary protocol.

Jesus Fucking Christ! As I stated earlier, adding DRM to an open standard is pointless. I never said you could add DRM to HTTP Live Streaming, I said the content could be sent with DRM and unlocked on the user's end. I even used Hulu making an app that would allow for this process in the exact same way I can use 128-bit AES encryption to buy iTunes Store content that is packaged and sent to me with DRM. Stop confusing the protocols and what they are designed to do!

Flash for streaming has reached it's peak, it's all downhill from here on out.

This makes no sense either. If Hulu feels the need to keep using DRM and puts out a proprietary client for that purpose, why would they then support HTTP Live Streaming, which doesn't protect their content in the way they want to (I'm not saying I support the use of DRM, this is just to illustrate the point)? Logically, if they choose to keep using DRM with a proprietary client of their own, then they wouldn't at the same time allow that content to be accessed without DRM. But then why would they make the proprietary client? They could then just keep using Flash and achieve the same effect.

1) They likely aren't going to use an app specifically for DRM when there are web-based options available to them.

2) Read up on HTTP Live Streaming. It's designed to be light and versatile, which Flash is not.

3) This is the future so hating on it for besting Flash isn't going to do you any good.

Hating it? Quite to the contrary I would like to see this happen. I'm merely disputing your claim that HTTP Live Streaming offers the kind of content protection that Hulu currently gets with Flash. Of course I would prefer that Hulu doesn't use that kind of DRM at all. But I'm just arguing the facts here: HTTP Live Streaming doesn't support DRM and Hulu won't use it if they want to keep using DRM. I'm aware of what HTTP Live Streaming does. I'm not a big fan, I would rather see RTP/RTSP being used because streaming stuff over HTTP/TCP is silly. But I must admit that practically, using HTTP does have the benefits of bypassing stupid firewall rules in place.

so true. but they will live; they bought so much other useless crap from us, like seo.

anyhow, this thread is an amazing read for the stupidity of most apple ass kissing fanboys around. like adobe = flash; or open standards blah-blah whatever... meanwhile they support the company that has the most closed platform (app store) that will be extended to every software on the OSX and apple computers sooner or later. now that will be be open heaven.

Best comment to date!

I've hated flash for years, making websites heavy. I hope Flash dies after HTML5 implementation and i hope Apple's standing on the matter accelerates that change

Are you the "Thought Police"? Where did his post go anyway?? Censored!?!? Just because his point was emphasized by a miniscule reference to current political issues? Please.

Regarding the article, Adobe simply needs to innovate Flash... both in the runtime environment as well as the developer tools. It's always been one of the most difficult and unintuitive programs out there. They won't continue to have 90%+ market-share, but can still co-exist with HTML5. What they should really do is make Flash easier to use/more intuitive and then enable it to create HTML5 files. Make Flash the premier tool for creating interactive web graphics.

Fix the process AND denounce Adobe. Morally wrong is morally wrong. Abusing the process to promote Flash deserves to be mocked and ridiculed.

Political crap belongs in the PoliticalOutsider forum. Period. Where it belongs. Where it has special rules for all the people who want to constantly rant and rave about politics and devolve every intelligent disagreement into which political party is responsible for the impending end of the world. <sheesh>

You (and everyone else) agreed to this in the AI ToS. Abide by the agreement or GTFO and start your own board. The rest of us appreciate that Jeff and company do a good job of keeping that crap out of the main discussions.

Never forget that freedom of the press means you can buy and operate your own press (or forum or blog or bulletin board), and that censorship refers to government actions preventing you from self-publishing your work. Neither of which is happening here.

So, in your words: "you fools are a bunch of mindless miscreants delighted to be let out of your cages for a few minutes" (which OBTW is a personal attack).

But you can only reply with someone else's response? Where is your independent and original thought? All you did was to reply with someone else's viewpoint. How does that make you different than the "unthinking herd" you just criticized?

Right, you are. Flash has long demonstrated that it doesn't work. And since technology advances exponentially, not incrementally, we'll the death of Flash far sooner than it took for it to amass sheer total dominance. Give it a short while. Apple is leaning heavy against and with Google being a powerhouse (perhaps more so than Apple itself here, as they firmly embrace open platforms), I'd say Adobe should truly be worried. If they aren't then they have about as much brains as I give them credit having.

At any rate, I've been running without Flash for about two weeks now, and love it. YouTube videos coming in in HTML5, just fabulous. No more annoying ads or invasive marketing campaigns. If this is the future, then I'm hella on board!

Frankly, the future of software is in open source. Let people who love to code contribute and create products that better everyone's lives. The wisest thing Apple did was use the Unix foundation in their OS. And they keep with that standard in Webkit. It doesn't mean everything needs to go OSS, but when a piece of software becomes ubiquitous, it probably should be opened up and allowed to progress on it's own volition. It just makes more sense and ensures a better use of the technology.

I hate flash because it is buggy and it is slow even on wicked fast machines. Sometimes I get an error window that lists about two dozen concurrent flash errors. HTML5 and Canvas are very exciting. I went through the list of Canvas examples that another poster suggested and not one error and very snappy performance.

Until several weeks ago I used a P4 machine running XP. I had no such experience with Flash.

Maybe you mean it is slow on Macs.

I've never personally liked Flash... at least the annoying Flash ads. And after reading about Apple (Jobs) and Flash, I sold my Adobe stock that I've accumulated for the past ten years.

I think it will end badly for Flash. Hey, at least Adobe got Dreamweaver out of the Macromedia deal.

Note to Adobe: don't block new technology (HTML5). We don't like that.

Note to animation makers... I don't like flashing, irritating ads.

I'm waiting for a retraction from AppleInsider:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02...ing_html5.html

Most of this article, "Adobe working to sabotage HTML5," are by and large completely false.

w00master

I agree. If you are an stock owner in a company and you write articles that continually pump them, your stock ownership needs to be disclosed every time you post.

See below...

And pickles... especially pickles!

Quote from Update: "Masinter also added, "There are some things that are wrong with the spec I'd like to see fixed. There are some things that are really, really, wrong with the process that I'd like to improve." "

I don't take much comfort from these comments. These "fixes" and "improvements" could take years if they play their cards right.

Don't worry, HTML5 isn't expected to fully become a standard until 2022 anyway.
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#When...be_finished.3F

That timeframe is irrelevant.

You call a blogger quoting two posts from this thread a response? Summary of a couple points maybe, but nothing there that constitutes new information needed for it to be a response.

Exactly my thoughts. He basically came up and said, "no we aren't." No evidence. No correction. No clarification. Left me wanting more that's for sure... but I'm just a lay person when it comes to implementing new standards... what the hell do I know...

I'm a Software Analyst/Trainer here in NYC and i remember when I worked at Y&R advertising in NY back in 1999/2000/2001 when Adumbe decided that they would leave the Mac crowd behind on the Photoshop releases because Windoze users were more important (financially speaking probably) so they would always release a PC Windoze version with all the bells and whistles and make US Apple Mac users wait until the next version release to get what the PC crowd was getting first, never mind that the entire creative dept at the Ad agency i worked at and probably ALL the Ad agencies creative dept's use MAC's for creating ads and magazines but Adumbe just left the Macs out in the cold and now they are paying for it APPLE is single handily KILLING FLASH by not using it on the iphone or on the ipad and now HTML5 with be non-FLASH dependent... serves them RIGHT!!!! can't wait until APPLE makes a PHOTOSHOP KILLER!!!! dammit a CS5/CS6/CS7/CS8 KILLER TOO... screw adobe- they tried to KILL FLASH in its origins remember?? (boy how soon we forget!!) when FLASH PAPER came out and was going to replace ADOBE ACROBAT as a better alternative to Adobe's PDF reader- and when Macromedia had SHOCKWAVE and DREAMWEAVER was making in roads and taking market share away from PAGEMAKER-- so Adumbe just decided to BUY OUT MACROMEDIA then kill FLASH PAPER well I cannot wait until APPLE and THE INTERNET KILLS FLASH....AND ADUMBE

You may well be right in your ranting, but stuff like this doesn't help your case. Really.

Sounds like you're running the debug version of the Flash Player which is not meant for normal day to day use, but for debugging. This reveals shoddy Flash work and runtime errors which you'll see all over the web including YouTube. This isn't Adobe's fault, but the developers. Flash can run light and efficiently, its just common that people with no CS background create Flash content which runs horribly (especially in Mac OS X, which is Adobe's fault). It's not a perfect platform, but there are few that are. I think Flash a the video standard will be the start of its decline, but until IE supports Canvas (doesn't look likely), don't expect sans-Flash ubiquity.

It's posters (and too many) like this which keep me from coming back regularly to the AI boards.

Flash is inherently heavy. Good devs can make it lighter but it's still an issue that several areas of open source code are better at.

At this point, Canvas is not one of them for many heavy tasks but that may very well change as it evolves.

I have doubts he's running the debug version of Flash. In SL, when a process crashes there is usually an error window that pops up to get sent to Apple. I had the Flash plug-in crash on me twice yesterday, which is odd because it usually doesn't do that, but I am retesting 10.1 Beta (no debug).

I agree that Canvas won't be that common without IE's support. Canvas is just too processor heavy for any "Flashy" usage and like Flash it's just not a good fit for a mobile device at this point.

From reading this article it sounds to me that there is an internal fight with respect to the scope and ability of HTML5.

From the goals and scope of the WHATWG and it supporters, they do want HTML5 to completely replace Flash. While the W3C has members who would prefer to limit the scope of HTML5 so that it does not so directly compete with their services.


Ideally, I'd like to see the W3C take its consensus-based process seriously, and the WHATWG agree to abide by that.

Realistically, I just can't see either part of that happening. The W3C is too willing to bend; the WHATWG too unwilling. That seems to leave two options:

1)The W3C continues its wobbly HTML5 process, lending its imprimatur to a specification over which it has little real control, or

2)The WHATWG decides that the W3C's imprimatur isn't worth the effort of the process, drops the cooperation with the W3C, and fractures the HTML world severely.

I suspect that in the end, the WHATWG will take choice #2, likely because W3C members (like Adobe) rightly insist that the W3C behave like the organization it's claimed to be all these years.

The Widening HTML5 Chasm

It never ceases to amaze me here that so many have the "Apple can do no wrong" mindset.

Does nobody stop to ask why Flash works fine 99.999% of the time in Windows XP on 5 year old computers, as well as in Windows 7 on brand new computers, but is so frequently unusable on modern Apple computers with similar configurations, and totally unusable on iPhones, iPads, etc?

Could Apple not be involved in the problems?

Does the fact that Apple doesn't even attempt to make Flash work on its new devices, or the fiasco with CS4 when Apple waited until the last possible moment to tell Adobe there wouldn't be 64-bit Carbon after all (thus killing the possibility of 64-bit CS4 on the Apple platform while it exists on the Windows side) not make you think that Apple itself is maybe a large part of the problem?

I won't disagree that Flash is a rather bloated system, but there's no denying a major part of the web currently uses it, and will continue using it for a long time. There's also no reason to believe Adobe won't be making improvements on Flash in the future, either. For Microsoft to stick it's head in the sand and bar Flash from their mobiles in order to push Silverlight is counterproductive, as is Apple's decision to do the same and cross their fingers that HTML5 replaces all web programming before the iPad launches. (Remember when XHTML was expected to largely replace HTML 4.01 about 10 years ago? Hasn't happened yet. Does anyone really think that all of the millions of people who code and program in HTML 4.01 and Flash are going to switch to HTML 5 and ditch all of their previous experience to learn the new format? How long will that take?).

Anyways, this is an Apple fansite, so I guess I can't expect any other point of view, but if I could change 2 things about Apple, it would be having them improve their system's compatibility with Flash, which is practically a web standard now, and start supporting FLAC rather than the shit audio it pushes through the iTunes ecosystem...

How would you know? You're not on the private mailing list.

"Since w3c-archive is Member-confidential, I'm not sure if I can convey
any more information than that on a public list. It is up to the
persons involved to decide whether to post any information publicly."

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/...0Feb/0351.html


And they told you on the mailing list that this issue was already addressed by the WG chairs:

"Larry,

the scope of the charter says:
"This group will maintain and produce incremental revisions to the HTML
specification"
and the deliverables indicates:
"a language evolved from HTML4 for describing the semantics of documents
and applications on the World Wide Web."

I don't think it sets boundaries on what ought to be part of the HTML
specification. Whether the figure, video, or data-* is inside the HTML5
specification or in an adjunct doesn't make a difference. We've been
encourage on several occasion to modularize the HTML specification
itself in fact. The Context 2D API was part of the HTML5 specification
even before the creation of the charter and was accepted as such by the
Working Group. One can argue that the scope of the working group is too
broad or too vague, but that's the scope that has been approved by the
W3C and its Director. The charter itself is up for renewal (or extension
by the Director) at the end of the year. That's an opportunity we can
take to refine it.

Regards,

Philippe"

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/...0Feb/0016.html


And this assertion is rebutted:

"I cannot comment on the contents of the mails in the private lists,
but that mail from Larry Masinter is not the entire story. There are
further relevant details that are hidden in a member-only list, which
is what I explicitly disapprove of in my last email.

~TJ"

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/...0Feb/0358.html


I would say the same of you. You accused the Google and Opera reps as essentially lying and creating FUD while you have zero visibility into the private mailing list.

If Larry has been making problems for HTML5 (and related specs that the chairs believe are part of the charter) in private emails it's pretty hinky from the get go and not at all defensible.

"I would like to register my strong disapproval of this entire affair.
This was an abuse of the member-only lists. Any Objection, potential
or not, should *always* take place on the public list. I am
disappointed in the author of the private emails for their actions.

I am glad that the Chairs are pretending that it doesn't exist until
it becomes public. It should never have *not* been public, however.
This is not conducive to open standards development. Such actions
should be condemned by all responsible parties in this working group.

~TJ"

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/...0Feb/0356.html

Or are you calling TJ a liar and FUDster as well? Because from where I sit, with the same access to info that you do (ie the public mailing list) you look like an Adobe shill. Especially given that has bothered to run around to random forums to defend Adobe which no other WG folks have bothered to do and attempt to squelch external discussion based on your "authority" on the matter.

Calm down boy. Adobe realized that the Mac market is just too small to justify its best efforts. Just because YOU use a Mac doesn't mean that companies should use their scarce resouces for YOUR benefit, when there's so many other folks that they could be addressing.

Since when has the Mac EVER had the newest and best software? That comes with market share, which Apple has never been able to capture.

First of all, CPU usage on my Mac was really not all that bad when messing with some of the canvas demos, especially considering the graphics were all smooth for me with canvas apps but a simple flash animation might spike my CPU to like 80% with choppy graphics. The apps were also very snappy for me.

I also like the fact that if the animation is not occuring it isn't still hogging up CPU. Flash just seems to hog CPU like crazy for no explainable reason.

Like many others though our main frustration with Flash is that it is over used & everywhere. Even most banner ads are flash! Add to that how crappy flash video is & how it crashes the browser half the time I think we've all just had enough of the excuses.

Here is a better link for testing canvas apps, a lot more to choose from.
http://www.phpguru.org/static/html5-canvas-examples

Flash is GPU-accelerated on PCs, it is not on Macs.

Adobe has had a long time to fix this issue, but they haven't done it.