DO NOT LET THE ████, ████ OR THE GOV ██████ OUR ████████.!

Why are Opera & Mozilla/Firefox against implementing the H.264 codec in their browsers? If it’s a question of licensing H.264 or losing the HTML5 tag, you would think they’d choose to save HTML5. What am I missing?

Since the beginning of the Web, individuals and companies, commercial and non-commercial, have been able to produce and distribute content in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and text on the Web without paying licensing fees for the use of any of those amazing technologies.

Since the beginning of the Web, individuals and companies, commercial and non-commercial, have been able to create tools that helped content producers make and distribute HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and text on the Web without paying licensing fees for the use of those amazing technologies.

Since the beginning of the Web, individuals and companies, commercial and non-commercial, have been able to make clients (like Web browsers) that display HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and text on the Web without paying licensing fees for the use of those amazing technologies.

This is the critical feature of the Web that makes it different from all other media and communication tools that have come before it. This is what makes it possible for tiny little start-ups to become a Facebook or a Google or a Mozilla.

Simply put, this freedom from licensing requirements is what makes the Web great. We, the community of people who make the Web what it is, should not be so quick to toss that all important foundation aside just because some hardware or OS vendors think it’s the easy or most profitable path.

Asa’s blog post can be found here.

In the Firefox 4 nightly builds, and in Firefox 4 Beta 1, we are changing the default tab position so that tabs are on top. This is a preference that users can change by right clicking on any of their toolbars. Moving the default tab position is obviously a significant and to some extent controversial change to the Firefox UI, which is why we made the video above to help explain our rationale.

Contributors who are active in the Mozilla community will know that this debate literally goes back for years. So in some respects this video will serve as quick summary of all of the different arguments both for an against the change. But the more interesting part isn’t about looking back, it’s about looking forward. Recently modern browsers have been transitioning to placing tops on top, and that decision isn’t arbitrary, it isn’t about fashion. The change to placing tabs on top isn’t about one browser versus another browser, it’s about the evolution of the Web as a platform. Read the rest at Alex Faaborg’s Blog.

I could easily sit in my chair and watch the movies on our Macbook. The problem is what if I wanted to watch a movie with my family or friends? We couldn’t all huddle around the Macbook’s 15″ display. I wanted the movies streamed to the living room tv. Before some of you get ahead of me I know very well I could use a computer to stream these movies to my tv and I happen to have a late model dell that would do it well. But, I do not have a new tv with a PC/RGB input. Our tv is a 27″ CRT with composite and component inputs. We have bought our first house this year and have had our first child so more important things need to be purchased before a $500 televison.

However, I wanted to take advantage of the streaming movies so I put the Roku XR in my amazon.com wish-list. A $129.00 device that can save you money on entertainment is a justifiable purchase to us. More so than a $500 tv.

The Roku XR is small and has component, composite, s-video and HDMI outputs. So when we finally get that glorious HD TV the Roku will be ready for it. The XR has 802.11n networking so when the day comes that I can upgrade the trusty Linksys WRT54G to an N-router of some sort it will be ready for that as well. I have an 8Mb download speed from my Internet Service Provider so the movies are of quality resolution and play smoothly. I like the additional channels that are available through the device such as Revision3 and Twit. I am sure the few channels they have are just the beginning of what is to come.

I give the device two thumbs up. It works, gets the job done, low power consumption (6 watts) and it’s small form factor is a big plus. Need a Netflix device? Check out the Roku.