OpenTangent

It's been said that the hype around HTML5 and CSS3 has been exaggerated and even abused for marketing purposes . It's certainly true that HTML5 is evolutionary rather than revolutionary but it addresses so many obstacles for web development that i believe the impact will warrant the hype. There are some major technological advances such as HTML5 WebSockets and the popular  video and canvas elements but i think the real advantages will come from CSS3 (the style sheet mark-up language that accompanies HTML5). CSS3 will allow designers to make very rich interfaces with relatively little effort and without the need for any third party plugins like Flash. With these two standards specifications in place, web applications rather than  legacy PC applications  (as Google calls them) should become a very viable option. There was another bottle neck for web apps however and that was the inability of web browser's of the time to rend...

Just another iteration in the web codec saga; Google's WebM project and the included  VP8 codec  has been released under the unadulterated open source BSD license . For me this is the turning point in the open vs proprietary battle as video is arguably a prominent aspect of computing. With previously dispersed standards and licensing, video support in computers and devices like smart phones and DVD players was difficult and expensive. We now have the ability to serve the best possible video to even the cheapest of devices and now that it's open, thanks to the BSD license there's a good chance that digital video as a whole will stay open. As can be expected; Google once again takes an active approach to open standards . Initially they amended the BSD license with patent clauses that would deter patent pirates like Microsoft from entering into lawsuits against Google. Those clauses would effectively disallow the use of WebM and the VP8 codec by the suing party if a lawsuit ...

For thousands of years people have subscribed to culturally accepted actions and beliefs in order to achieve a sense of belonging . This is a natural desire in a social species but we now face a fork in our evolution since the information age has forced the emergence of global culture and at the same time has forced us to accept rationality through readily available information. It's community versus rationality and i'm sure everyone reading this knows that community will always win but there's hope in the fact that the community of rational thinkers is growing strong. The inspiration for this post was an article by Muhammad Karim  which was written as a reaction to Zapiro 's recent comic strip depicting Muhammad . That was of course a reaction to the "Everybody draw Muhammad day" group on Facebook which has since disappeared with no explanation but  censorship is another debate. I support "Everybody draw Muhammad day" because of my stance on f...

At TED 2010 , moot pointed out that anonymity was increasingly important in this big brother age we live in . Being anonymous certainly removes the responsibility of one's actions but it also has the lesser acknowledged effect of removing pride for one's actions. This lack of social restraints on opposite ends produces honesty, without the need to gain credit for your work nor the fear of being pilloried for it, a meme factory is born. 4chan dramatically reinstates art as a mirror of society but for the first time portraying global culture, uncensored. It may not always be pretty but the beauty is that it's real. 4chan is attracting increasing numbers of the elusive " unique visitors " because it offers something few other social sites do; accountless involvement - the ability to contribute without the need to provide any personal information. Posted threads also only live as long as their popularity holds out, so eventually everything is deleted. This feature...

As i've mentioned before; Microsoft has quite an impressive patent portfolio but instead of being a safeguard against devious copycats, those patents contribute to an aggressive anti-competitive strategy . I am aware of three agreements that have recently been entered into regarding Linux and it's "infringements" on Microsoft's intellectual property. Firstly; after a couple of sessions in the courtroom TomTom gave into to pressure and signed an agreement with Microsoft and effectively paid them to use Linux on it's devices. Amazon runs Linux on it's Kindles and agreed to pay Microsoft for it before any lawyers got involved. HTC has also agreed to pay royalties to Microsoft for the use of Google Android on some of it's phones. It's a win/win situation for Microsoft because the companies that are willing to use Linux instead of Windows will be forced to pay Microsoft anyway. It seems Google has woken up the the fact that Linux is slowly becom...

As predicted , Google is actively ensuring the openness of the web by open sourcing the VP8 video codec developed by On2 Technologies  which Google bought for $124.6 million .  Ogg Theora was the codec that open source advocates pushed to use as the standard for HTML5 but it was noticibly inferior in performance compared to the proprietary H.264 codec which was backed by Apple and more recently Microsoft. If claims are true that VP8 can save up to 50% bandwidth usage over H.264 then VP8 will be the clear performance champion and since it is going to be open souced and therefore free to be used by anyone and in any browser, H.264 no longer puts up much of a fight. All web browsers and devices will soon have high quality streaming video without the unnecessary royalties.

Eugène Terre'Blanche  was murdered on the 3rd of April in his home just outside Ventersdorp . He went from a nobody to a martyr virtually overnight through an act of mindless brutality that is all too familiar with the people of South Africa. I now suggest that the Cape be made independent of South Africa so that whites, coloureds and indians have a place where they can live in safety and the ANC can have the unchallenged dominance in South Africa they desperately desire. We cannot fight the ANC led mass hatred so it appears that the only solution to the growing racism in South Africa is to divide the country. We shouldn't have to do this but the rainbow nation is clearly crumbling and if we are going to avoid a civil war the minorities need to be separated so that the black dictators can maim their followers without interference. I am an idealist but time and time again i am reminded that we are not in an ideal world and we must face the facts; we are not welcome in...