A Man and his Penguin

Google Chrome uses the Webkit rendering engine. Unfortunately, it used an old version that had a slightly silly security flaw in it.

Webkit is first and foremost an Apple project, and like all Apple software it’s full of lame-brain security flaws and god-awful-ugly hacks. Surely Google knows Apple’s track record for security? Yes I know Webkit is now an open-source engine, but Apple does introduce new problems faster than the community can fix them; and Apple doesn’t always integrate fixes upstream.

Google’s engineers made their bed, now they can lie in it.

KDE has already adopted Webkit as the default KDE 4 web rendering engine… oh gawd, I dread to see the security implications of this. Epiphany Browser for Gnome has just incorporated Webkit as the only rendering engine (switching from Gecko), and word has it that Evolution will follow within a matter of months. Evolution currently uses GtkHTML, which is a simple engine that does just enough to read HTML e-mails and as a result has no known security flaws.

We’re looking at security nightmare on Linux. My message to Google, KDE and Gnome is that you should stop treating Webkit as an open-source project. It’s Apple’s project, which means it’s full of quick-and-dirty hacks and no sense of secure design. (I would say “No sense of intelligent design”, but remember I’ve resolved to be nicer in this blog).

Switch back to KHTML or Gecko now, before it’s too late.

There were a couple of issues at work that I was worried about all through the week, but they’ve become peacefully resolved and now I’m relieved.

I just want to thank Hugh, because I know he’s helped the situation.

I *really* want to build a computer now - an AMD triple-core. But it all depends on if I can sell it.

Tonight as I was watching Cheers, I related the following to my Dad:

“A number of years ago, I was watching this show. Then I changed the channel and saw the World Trade Centre on fire.”

He replied “That was seven years ago tomorrow”.

True. And I’ve only just made the mental connection: David Angell, who co-wrote many episodes of Cheers, died that day. It makes me sad.

I’ve seen lots of literature saying that you need a 3GHz processor to decode 1080p H.264 in real-time. I’ve even supported that theory by seeing my CPU jump up to 50% (1x 3GHz core) when playing 1080p videos on my computer.

Well, it looks like Nvidia has sneakily implemented support for video decoding on their GPUs, or ffmpeg has gotten more efficient. On Hardy, I can watch a 1080p video with a maximum of 30% CPU usage, which means that a mid-range Pentium D should be able to handle things.

BTW, this week’s episode of Doctor Who on UKTV was excellent, and I must admit that I agree with my father. The Martha episodes are better than the Rose and Donna episodes. I do prefer Donna as the companion, because she’s quite funny, and no matter how much she’d deny it she’s got a lot of chemistry with The Doctor.

Here’s a quote from him recently in an IRC chat that makes him look either delusional or like the world’s biggest bullshitter:

01:01 <@schestowitz> Vista is not secure. It’s a Big Lie. It was proven by scientists.

I laughed, but I’m ashamed of myself for it. You shouldn’t laugh at someone with mental illness.

Friendster is shifting over to a new version of their blogging system, so I imagine we’ll see a new look and new features to this blog too. Just thought I’d give you some warning.

Also, I sold a Blu-ray player with a full-HD TV! Cool!

Full HD. Most TV-buyers want Full HD TVs, but in conversation to them they have no plans to buy Blu-Ray players - or they don’t know what Blu-Ray is.

To me, it’s absolutely crazy to buy a full HD TV without a Blu-ray player or PS3, because otherwise you simply won’t get the full quality that your TV can handle! If a regular HD TV can be bought for $1500 and a full HD TV can be bought for $2000, then without Blu-ray you’re paying an extra $500 for picture quality that you simply won’t see!

I’d rather not hear whinging about "Blu-ray discs are really expensive" either; they are about the same price that DVDs were when they went mainstream. Plus, a Blu-ray player will upscale your DVDs, although I’m sometimes doubtful whether "upscaling" actually helps at all (mostly because the Yanks insist that their no-name-brand upscaling DVD players make them look like 1080p, and the TVs in America are so crap).

Not buying a Blu-ray player or PS3, or heck an Xbox 360; is like buying a quad-core processor to use for Microsoft Word, or a computer with 4 gigabytes of RAM and a 1gb graphics card to use with 32-bit Windows. The extra performance simply won’t be noticable because what you’re doing with your TV/computer does not take advantage of its extra capability.

If you’re looking at getting a Blu-ray player down the track, then that’s okay. But so many people are insisting they need Full-HD and then looking blank when I mention Blu-ray. A study conducted by the BD consortium backs me up on this. Blu-ray also provides benefits for regular HD TVs, but it’s not *essential* as regular HD is transmitted on free-to-air and now Foxtel.

One problem that TV retailers have is that they do the realistic thing and showcase their Full HD TVs by playing a Blu-ray disc through them. Then the customer walks in the store and wants you to switch the TV over to free-to-air broadcasts. As it’s 1pm, you can’t find any high definition TV on any of the stations - even Ten HD is showing bloody Oprah in standard definition 4:3. The customer has already seen some TVs at another store earlier, when 9am with David and Kim was on - widescreen 1080i. Result: They think the TVs you’re selling are crap.

I tried to find a solution to this conundrum - I phoned the TV networks to see if they could provide me with a Blu-ray disc of some high definition station promos or TV shows. Channel 9 told me that they couldn’t give out such a disc due to copyrights; I was going to ask "What about shows that you produce yourselves", and then remembered that they don’t produce anything worth watching. The ABC told me that I’d have to get in touch with their Program Sales department, which I gather means that I’d need to pay a big fee for such a disc.

Seven hasn’t gotten back to me. Channel 10 has been the most helpful so far, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I’m Chris from  <electrical retailer>.  I’m ringing because I’d like a Blu-ray disc of some Channel 10 promos or TV shows to play on the full-HD TVs here.
Her: I’m not sure what you mean.
Me: Well, at the moment Oprah is on Ten HD, which is just a standard definition, square-screen show, and it doesn’t look good on the full-HD TVs. We really need some full-HD content to properly showcase our TVs.
Her: That’s a matter you’d need to speak to Program Scheduling about.
Me: No, I don’t expect you to change your schedule, I just need some full HD footage or something on a Blu-ray disc, you know, something to promote your shows with.
Her: 9am with David and Kim is produced in HD, and we have discs that we give out to journalists of this, but I’d need to speak to Sydney to see if we can provide you with one.
Me: That would be great. So this would be on Blu-ray?
Her: No, it’s a DVD.
Me: I really need it in Blu-ray, otherwise there’s not any point - DVDs are standard definition. Otherwise I might as well just record it myself on the DVD recorders we’ve got here.
Her: We don’t have any facilities for Blu-ray in Perth; I need to speak to Sydney to see if they can do it, and then get back to you.

I don’t have much hope, but I do know that MCG Technology has some Full HD footage of Huey’s Cooking Adventures that they run on a Sharp LCD from a media-centre PC.

I’m unsure whether it’s worthwhile getting a Blu-ray burner either, as it seems that most stores don’t stock blank BDs. And no standalone Blu-ray players support high definition DivX! (fuck that, they don’t even support any DivX yet). And, er, my experiment to try high definition DivX on an ordinary DVD player failed

So basically, I’m waiting for the world to catch up!