Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#2Yeah, sure. Silverlight is the future!
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#3Whatever. Whoever makes WebGL games will benefit from 50% of the total browser market share, and this market share will keep increasing as I doubt the new versions of IE (9/10) will replace the older IE browsers, especially since the new ones only work on certain Windows versions.
Whether Microsoft embraces WebGL or not, it's irrelevant, because they'd only add like 5% market share they have with IE9, anyway. I think WebGL developers can safely ignore the IE9/IE10 markets.
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#4For those who think that HTML/CSS/JS will replace native apps, just take a look at Microsoft, Apple and Google (yes, Google - no thanks for ditching the open standard h264 on Chrome).
Standards, when they threaten to disrupt existing powerful players, will be ignored, delayed or sabotaged.
Thus innovation that requires standards-based clients even with nimble outfits like Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Facebook pushing the envelope, will take much longer than with a cohesive, well-driven native app platform.
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#5Cue the chorus of people saying this is because Microsoft sucks etc etc.
Ignore the fact that Microsoft has spent more time and resources than any technology company in the world focusing on web related security. Mind you that is not an endorsement of their track record, but a statement with respect to the reality on the ground.
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#6This is why I'm absolutely terrible at security considerations. When I look at webGL, I think what's the problem? So what if you have direct access to the GPU?
My naive view of the graphic card is: shader instructions -> VIDEO CARD -> PIXEL DATA
Shader instructions are a limited to a specified function set directed at transforming and calculating numbers. What possible risk can a calculator represent?
Video Card is a hardware device that simply implements the calculator language. It only has access to the numbers and data it was supplied. It crunches the numbers, and then returns pixel data. The video card is a black box, numbers go in, numbers come out.
Pixel data is just a set of numbers that represent color. You take the pixel data and you send it to the monitor.
Honestly, what could possibly go wrong?
Seriously, I have a hard time comprehending the "surface" are of the attack. I'm familiar with ideas like memory buffer overflow attacks--but I mean video cards have their own dedicated memory, even if you manage to read some memory outside of your allocated block--you'd only be getting numbers from the video card memory which is just geometry definitions...
Actually, just now typing that last paragraph I think I figured out why gaining access to the GPU memory would represent a security concern. I suppose if that memory contained screen pixel data, it could be used to "read" what was on the screen via some form of OCR? Or, perhaps maybe depending on the OS implementation, more than just "pixel" data may reside in the GPU memory.
Gr, it's really quite frustrating that these stupid security issues keep getting in the way of forward progress--or more so that large company vendors are back pedaling simply because it's a "hard" problem to tackle.
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#7Cue the chorus of people saying this is because Microsoft sucks etc etc. Ignore the fact that Microsoft has spent more time and resources than any technology company in the world focusing on web related security. Mind you that is not an endorsement of their track record, but a statement with respect to the reality on the ground.
What? I'd love a citation on that. And I've spent a lot of time trying to make a baby by myself, but that doesn't mean I've been the least bit successful.
Seriously, come on. Where is this evidence that Microsoft has "spent more time on web security" than anyone else? Their track record sure doesn't support it. Is there a competition among the big-3 to compare amount of time spent on web security?
In fact, the fact that Microsoft supposedly spends so much time on web security and continues to fail so bad makes me feel much worse about their opinions on the security of WebGL. This is also the company, mind you, that introduced the decade-long nightmare of ActiveX.
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#8Wow. Could they be more transparent? This couldn't have anything to do with Direct X, could it?
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#9This is why I'm absolutely terrible at security considerations. When I look at webGL, I think what's the problem? So what if you have direct access to the GPU? My naive view of the graphic card is: shader instructions -> VIDEO CARD -> PIXEL DATA Shader instructions are a limited to a specified function set directed at transforming and calculating numbers. What possible risk can a calculator represent? Video Card is a…
I think their concern is that the hardware drivers have bugs in them that could lead to remote compromise, not that access to the GPU. Microsoft knows something about this, as the execution of untrusted/unsigned shader code allowed the Xbox 360 to run unsigned code back in the day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free60
Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’
#10My biggest question with webgl is who is it targeted at? Certainly it can't be game developers because javascript is still way to slow to manage a game world and vector logic. Pipelining assets is also a big problem in html and I just can't see many devs taking it seriously as a way to deliver 3d games.