The HTML5 video tag natively supports multiple codecs, so all the IE team really did was implement that half correctly. They did not provide the WebM/VP8 technology from Microsoft.com for download.

<video width="320" height="240" controls="controls">
  <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
  <source src="movie.ogg" type="video/ogg" />
  Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>

What they did is similar to what MPlayer did in Linux with the non-free packages where MPlayer was often bundled separately and the non-free packages containing proprietary codecs for ASF, Real, ect... sans license, were an extra download.

But here WebM is actively being used by Microsoft and WebM encoded videos are being officially provided by Microsoft Corporation on a Microsoft website.

Allowing multiple video codecs under HTML5, be it WebM or not, is not the same as providing the technology in whatever form.

So that's the difference. I am going to shoot an email to MPEG LA with a link to this post and see what they have to say about it.

But consider this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/16/html5-video-update-webm-for-ie9.aspx

As an industry, we still face many legitimate, unanswered questions about liability, risks, and support for WebM, such as:

• Who bears the liability and risk for consumers, businesses, and developers until the legal system resolves the intellectual property issues?

It's one thing to allow Google to create a 3rd party plugin to do whatever in IE. They've been doing that for years with various technologies in IE regardless of IP rights.

It's another to host files they encoded with that technology on their servers(or better yet Akamai). Google's not doing that, Microsoft is.

Microsoft is now the Agent of WebM in this case, not Google.

The status of VP8 has apparently, at least reportedly, not been settled yet with MPEG LA. So by using WebM encoding for videos on this website Microsoft is sort of undermining their own interests and those of the other MPEG LA licensors.

Here's what the late Steve Jobs said about it:

VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be "H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder". Though I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot believe that they will be able to get away with this, especially in today's overly litigious day and age. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn't manage to escape the clutches of software patents. Until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be extremely cautious.

Yet Microsoft is throwing caution to the wind on Channel 9.

The WebM plugin for IE is published by Google: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/webmmf

I have not heard of plans for HTML5 video tag support for webm in IE. Has anybody else?

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx
Microsoft Corporation

and yet is actively using WebM which is currently not under the protection of those same patents under VP8

http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/vp8/default.aspx

(DENVER, CO, US – 10 February 2011) – MPEG LA, LLC, world leader in alternative one-stop patent licenses, announces a call for patents essential to the VP8 video codec specification used to deliver video images. The VP8 video codec is defined by the WebM Project at httpwww.webmproject.org.

on this website Microsoft is setting a precedent that their own video patent portfolio along with the other MPEG LA licensors is invalid.

That is the hypocrisy.

Google has not updated it's Javascript client side XSLT library in 4 years

With all the security holes, people actually prefer to use sh1tty libraries like PHP/smarty which absolutely leave your server to be rooted if permissions aren't set up perfectly.

As for Java/Spring/Beans, JSTL is way better because you can define directives and all the default JSTL directives are open.

If somebody is using XSLT, it's because it's a years old application and supporting those types of apps is no fun at all. It's usually sh1tty work a lead developer assigns people who he or she doesn't like from my exp. As a developer you want to do something new and challenging and that will affect a lot of people.

They already did that.

1 day ago, ZippyV wrote

*snip*

Which company is so crazy to give their employees VS Ultimate?

1 day ago, blowdart wrote

*snip*

Mine. Oh. Wait. Umm I don't count do I?

Not that we ever use it (No Java Wahahhhhhhhhhhaaahhahhhaahahhh.....), but:

No Java, whahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........................................

Visual Studio would be super great if it had Java, and turned purple and looked and functioned exactly like Eclipse.

All the really useful plugins that the bleeding edge web companies such as Adobe, Google, Zend and other companies release don't work in Visual Studio.

The plugin ecosystem on Visual Studio vs. Eclipse is comparable to the plugin ecosystem on Internet Explorer vs. the plugin system on Firefox. Very few participate in the Microsoft dev IDE ecosystem.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lennpryor

Nobody who's really, really good wants to work at a company that's 99.9999% diluted.

If you're a really good MBA or developer you deserve to get rich, and you will never get that rich on level 64 bonuses. Meanwhile you will see your colleagues that took the chance move way past you in the game of life.

Lenn probably has huge stock vested at Facebook waiting to sell it by now. Meanwhile where are his old colleagues?

That's why huge companies become old. You can only divide the pie so many ways. Microsoft is a shadow of it's former self.

Level 65 which is directly below the executive class is only 130k/y.

http://salaryquest.com/job-privacy-strategist-level-65-at-microsoft-corporation-salary/

You can almost make that much at some no name ad agency as a lead programmer.

The most expensive part of Kinect for Windows is paying the person who is going to develop an experimental technology, not the $250.

That being the case, this should have been priced closer to free than $250 since there are no software titles for this unit at all.

Mind you I work for huge mobile companies, and this is yet another pass after Windows 7 phone, because of a sticking point of some zealous executive. I literally have emails fly by my desk from execs at huge mobile companies saying how they're going to pass on Microsoft completely.

Microsoft is acting and pricing like they are on top, and they're not. 1995 == gone.

No reduced price for Bizspark either, plus the $60,000 of free Azure for Bizspark companies turned out to be a lie.

Is it time to have another funeral for the non-existent competitor to the Kinect? Funeral for the PS Move maybe?

No joking. The billing issue has nothing to do with operating systems. it has everything to do with the shitty attitude of Silicon Valley and the fact they think that business rules do not apply to them.

-----INSERT SELF DEFENSE HERE----

Please, continue with your script. 

Of course you could try just phoning them and having a chat about the situation.  This should be your first recourse.

This is America, people are bad here on purpose and have no shame. Even if they graduated from Harvard or Stanford. There are multi-millionaires here that won't tip a gym valet or owe 20 months of back pay to their pool man. Steve Jobs was a billionaire and wouldn't pay child support to his impoverished kid and ex for years. (god rest his soul)

That's just how America is. A British person would feel some shame. An American person congratulates themselves on the breadth and scope of their own crapulence.

Unfortunately graduates here from ivy league schools feel that they deserve some type of pass from society, and I think that these people we credited are the very same. 

I think that if any of this hypothetical situation continues, an attorney will file a complaint with the state and the court will relieve us and that we will also tell the world exactly how they do business in the blogosphere.

2-3 months is too much to keep doing payroll for a company that hypothetically stopped paying its bills.

If you still don't get anything, then it's time to get the lawyers involved. It's not your problem that they can't get any VC.

They're hypothetically on Series D VC money. There are only 2 hypothetical exits from a hypothetical series D situation, IPO and acquisition.

So hypothetically, they have the money, somewhere, unless they really are going bankrupt. I think that the problem, barring a cataclysmic bankruptcy, would be that they simply don't have their sh1t together, or that they are budgeted and they are blowing the budget on god knows what preppy bullshit that turtleneck sweater Stanford people hypothetically buy.

There may not be a magic bullet here, but I thought I would take a stab at it anyway.

These issues are supposed to be explicitly spelled out in the contract.  It seems you refer to progressive payments, as a product is developed and meets certain milestones, payments are made.

Hypothetically, the contract does not tie payments to milestones of any kind, and hypothetically the payments are structured and dated in the contract and those dates have hypothetically been missed by +1 Month.

In this case I wouldn't wait too long before sending a "letter of concern" about the delinquent payments.

Hypothetically this has already been done, and hypothetically, this is being put off or a response that accounts payable is on top of this is returned.

But be prepared to drop them and move on.

Getting VC funding is extremely hard, and the next best thing is getting the money from the people they did fund. It's not easy to put a business in the path of the flow of money from a VC as you would build a hydro-electric dam. I'm not talking angels like techcoast angels or whatever. I mean real VCs from Sand Hill Road, ect...

It's so hard as a matter of fact that it's worth crowd-sourcing an answer on.

Keep in mind this is all hypothetical and that any similarities to any real situation is purely coincidental.

In this hypothetical situation there is a signed agreement that the Silicon Valley VC backed company has violated the payment schedule part of on is what an increasingly growing level.

As stated, the reason for this dilemma is the publicly stated VC funding behind the company. Normally without that one would assume the company is insolvent and would start collections immediately.

The problem here is that any type of collections action may block 6 figures or more of potential revenue. This from a hypothetical team that really doesn't have their act together. Silicon Valley VCs don't exactly invest in the most qualified people though you would never know that unless you dealt with them. A lot of them are young adults and kids and their ideas are just plain stupid and have no chance at creating real value(of course you can't tell them that). They book first class tickets and buy sports cars just because. But VCs love them.

So these young people may be incompetent to a certain extent, but they may still be good for the money and then some. There is no legal way to get information on their financial situation as they are not a publicly traded company, and any invasive questioning will be seen badly.

So hypothetically, you can not be that terse with them for those reasons.

At what point do you say 6 figures of more income is not worth it on this account, lets grab what we can while we can?

If it hypothetically goes to bankruptcy, you would want first dibs on reimbursement as a creditor.

The catch 22 here is that if you do that, you won't be able to make any more money from that company or their Big Tree synonymic investment firm because the executive leadership will resent the actions taken to extract money from said company.

Generally speaking, how long should you wait after accounts receivable notifies them of the infringement before you sick the lawyer on them?

Keep in mind that people at your biz have the code base to something that's featured on tech blogs. The fact that they would risk something like that probably means that they're close to being suicidal business-wise, or worse they're fvcking insolvent or some sh1t like that.

How long is too long to be polite after lapses in payments occur?