What I suspect Google is up to with Native Client

Post by ootachi » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 3:31 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #77

petegrif wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. And I still don't understand Mozilla's problem with NaCl. They argue that js is now nearly as fast as native. Well...even if that were true it ignores the fact that as you point out there is huge investment in legacy code that NaCl unlocks AND it ignores the fact that js makes it easy to copy what may be valuable IP.

Mozilla's problem with NaCl is that Mozilla believes in open access to the web for everyone, while NaCl at the moment is tied to particular hardware architectures. The two seem to be fundamentally incompatible. If PNaCl ever happens, that might change the situation, maybe. As far as legacy code, emscripten unlocks it as well. Not with the performance of NaCl (and unlikely to get there), but it has the benefit of runn…

Post by fuzzix » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 3:57 PM UTC

est wrote: post #53

What's more interesting is the Chrome Remoting technology. It allows you to render webpage/webapp in a desktop chrome process but display it on another remote device, even mobile device. It's like Microsoft 3389 RDP without fullscreen but each individual window.

Post by freehunter » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 4:23 PM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #66

nl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, from the footnotes: I'm strongly of the belief that Google's internal strategy has long surpassed "organising the world's information", and is now something like "become the world's biggest private intelligence agency.", but that's a paranoid side-note.. ask me more on this at your peril. ;) http://www.hackerspews.com/

Well, they certainly have become the world's largest adware vendor, and that is hard to deny. The problem is that they want to aggregate more and more information from each of us in order to sell more ads. This makes them the world's largest spyware vendor too. So I think that comment is just a little over the top, it's not that far beyond what the undisputed reality is.

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

nknight wrote: post #45

ootachi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not a single company in history that failed to get away with malicious behavior due to being "full of hackers that would instantly revolt". Engineers do not have executive power within companies. Executives do. Engineers "revolt" by quitting, and at Google they are easy to replace.

You're right, they do revolt by quitting. I don't see a big exodus. I have several friends there I know would be out the door in a heartbeat, and 5 years ago I knew one of the guys who is now one of the most senior on the Chrome team. Unless his character has been very fundamentally altered, there's not a snowball's chance in hell he would aid such an effort.

Post by nooneelse » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

forgotusername wrote: post #30

rst wrote: post #26

There's some real confusion about Android here. Android already has its own bytecode format (Dalvik), and it's unlikely that NaCL would replace it, if only because NaCL is tightly tied to the underlying processor instruction set, while Android has already shipped on at least two (ARM, MIPS), and been ported to at least one more (x86). It's also already the case that a third-party app which requests appropriate permis…

I think you're focusing too much on the underlying technology, Dalvik is ultimately little more than a layer of indirection, that could easily disappear deeply beneath the covers of a 22nd century OS, hidden by a simple click of a 'Build' button in an IDE, much like Win32 did. Similarly, Contacts was only used as an example, as it is prominent and simple to understand. The main reference made there was to the data th…