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Firefox 38 released

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51–60 of 133 posts

Re: Firefox 38 released

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. Yes, w…

> I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. I do…

If their only option is to produce content without "safeguards", they'll produce it without safeguards. Content will be pirated regardless of whether browsers have DRM.

Re: Firefox 38 released

#52
Can someone explain why Mozilla is not signing gmpopenh264.dll and now eme-adobe.dll? These are executed from AppData (a folder with read/write permissions). Executing dll's from AppData is generally a bad idea but if I'm going to allow it I at least want a Publisher rule attached. Google signs their CDM (WideVine) dll delivered with Chrome that executes from AppData, why isn't Mozilla?

Re: Firefox 38 released

#53
post #6

Anyone have any insight on why they removed autocomplete from username & password fields?

Presumably this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=956906 I think it means that sites can't overrule the browser's inclination to store passwords. The argument seems to be the browser makers will store passwords safely.

> The argument seems to be the browser makers will store passwords safely.

Not quite. Unless you set a master password, whoever owns your computer will own the passwords stored by your browser.

The argument is that disabling autocomplete makes users choose poor passwords that are easy to remember, or write passwords down somewhere, which is at least as bad as having passwords stored in your browser profile.

Re: Firefox 38 released

#54
Honest question to Firefox dev's:

I want to keep using firefox, but not the DRM thingy. I'd rather not see any video on the web, to be forced to use DRM technology.

Do you plan to support a DRM-free version?

Re: Firefox 38 released

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. Yes, w…

> I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. I do…

Pretty much everything under the sun is already being pirated, and yet content produces are producing content without any guarantees or safeguards.

Re: Firefox 38 released

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does EME being implemented finally mean that I can uninstall Silverlight for watching Netflix in Firefox in the near future?

Don't do it. I've been using the non-silverlight Netflix in Safari and it's such a nightmare I switched back. Constantly fails to load content.

Comparing HTML5 Netflix playback using Safari on OS X vs Firefox on Windows is not really an apples-to-apples comparison.

Re: Firefox 38 released

#57
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What video could you watch before that you cannot watch now? I also wish we lived in a world which didn't need EME but it's not like the status quo was video which played for everyone. It just meant that everyone had to download monthly updates to avoid security problems with the massive plugin they used to play video and Linux, etc. users were largely still screwed.

There's a big difference - before these moves, DRM delivery of video had to be done using shitty nonstandard plugins or native apps, right? Whenever this happens, usability suffers as well. And we had a real opportunity here to give users an open and non-broken standard as an alternative, on top of which alternative platforms for content delivery could be built, alternatives that could have won simply because of the…

I'll second Silhouette's comments that the desirable world you'd like to live in was never an option. The problem is simple: the major copyright owners insist on DRM and the inconvenience has not been enough to get many people to stop buying all but the most encumbered content.

Sure, the usability was worse. That didn't stop many people from doing whatever they needed to play the video — it just trained a generation of web users to blindly install binaries when some random site told them too, much to the delight of malware authors. The only difference is that now people don't need to a traditional installer, the DRM code is sandboxed, updates are handled by the top-notch browser security teams rather than Adobe's also-rans, and every other component in the system uses open standards rather than being controlled by whatever Adobe/Microsoft decided should happen in Flash/Silverlight.

Mozilla is at least making this obvious by telling you when it happens and giving you the option to disable it or even download a version of Firefox without it should you prefer:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/05/12/update-on-digital-r...

> we had a real opportunity here to give users an open and non-broken standard as an alternative

You still have as much opportunity as you did before: nothing prevents you from signing up people who don't believe in DRM to offer their videos on your service. However, the odds of getting Sony, et al. on board remain as close to zero as they were before. If you want to do more than rant about this on the internet, focus on the economic side and ask what will get the average user to stop paying for DRMed content. That's the only thing which can change the status quo.

Re: Firefox 38 released

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. I do…

If their only option is to produce content without "safeguards", they'll produce it without safeguards. Content will be pirated regardless of whether browsers have DRM.

It's not a question about the reality of the piracy situation, because that hasn't changed since the VHS copy protection days. Simply having some sort of protection there - no matter how ineffective - gives them legally-effective leverage to go after those bypassing it. You cannot, as a stakeholder (content producer, actor, etc), argue in good conscience for no protection whatsoever in a commercial venture.

Yes, there is a major distribution, availability, region and device-lockdown issue to be solved. But removing all protection is just the brute-force, blanket solution that is understandably one-sided and thus unworkable.

Re: Firefox 38 released

#59

The broadcast channel support looks promising. Does anyone know if Chrome plans to support it in the future?

Could this be abused on iframed ad network domains / facebook like buttons / tweet buttons to track real time browser state and acitivity across all active tabs?

Re: Firefox 38 released

#60

Anyone else having issues with the bookmarks toolbar in 38? Mine draws blank when you open a window. I have to hide/show it before it draws correctly. This occurs each time a window is opened.

My menu button on the right of the address/search bar doesn't work anymore either. (OSX 10.10.2) Gonna uninstall/reinstall

Was still doing it on a clean install, it didn't like something in my profile... renamed it, and re-installed my addons in a new profile and it's fine now.

Unamused.

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