6 ms·

An Open Letter from the President of the United States of Google

65 points by hardik988 16y ago

rubyrescue 16y ago
title doesn't really match the article content
- ot 16y ago
  It does, look at the links. It's tongue-in-cheek.
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  As usual, the devil is in the details. Check where his links actually go, he's not really talking about Esperanto...
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
joakin 16y ago
Childish? Suddently reminded me to the web page that criticizes Mac apps from the store
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dmaz 16y ago
Not equivalent; HTML5 video is still being defined and is not yet in the mainstream.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- polynomial 16y ago
  While the standard isn't yet finished, a recent survey indicated around 50% of web users are on a browser that supports HTML5: http://j.mp/HTML5_50 http://j.mp/HTML5_50
bad_user 16y ago
English is free even for commercial use.
- mahmud 16y ago
  كما هي اللغة العربية التي لا تقدر بثمن، مع انها لا تكلف قرشاً
  - dhimes 16y ago
    Upvoted in hopes of translation...
    - hsuresh 16y ago
      "The language is Arabic, which are invaluable, even though it does not cost a penny" - according to google translate.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - mahmud 16y ago
      "So is the Arabic language; which is priceless, even though it doesn't cost a penny". Trouble is, I can only say that in formal Arabic, not any particular dialect. I must be the only native Arabic speaker without a native dialect (imagine a native English speaker who speaks only in Shakespearean)
      - Technophilis 16y ago
        You must have exclusively learnt Arabic at school then.
      - Vivtek 16y ago
        Child of an international marriage, growing up overseas?
        16y ago
Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
I grew up with Esperanto, and I don't really see a reason to use it as a pun in this context. It's a nice and useful language and everybody has the option to use it or leave it. The parallels (to VP8) with the blog post pretty much end there, as you don't actually have to pay your pants off with royalties to some group, just because you are teaching English (h264). I really like ironic humor, but this one didn't get to me.
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  >You don't actually have to pay your pants off with royalties to some group Really? How is paying a few cents a user 'paying your pants off' ? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-they-really-cost/2122 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-they...
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    $6.5 million per year buys a lot of pants where I come from.
    - anonymous246 16y ago
      This reminds me about the scare tactics adopted about Congress's earmarks, where a large number was thrown around without context to obfuscate the issue. You need to put the 6.5 million in perspective. The 6.5 million is for developers of encoders/decoders, not websites (it's capped at 100k for video sites). If you sell a million copies of an encoder, your royalty will be $0.20 times 900k = $180k (first 100k is free). Is it really too much to ask $0.20 for developing most of the technology on which you are basing your business? For 250K subscribers to a SUBSCRIPTION video site, big bad MPEG-LA wants $25k, CAPPED at 100k for users >1M. I'm pretty sure this is a negligible amount for a subscription site. And remember, free sites don't pay.
      - jbri 16y ago
        Right. Because the current price they're charging is going to be all that they're ever going to charge until the patents expire. Or, you know, what's actually going to happen is the price being kept low until H.264 is well-entrenched, and then being jacked up when there's no competition.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Kylekramer 16y ago
If English was as only developed and entrenched as H.264 is currently when Esperanto was introduced, I know I would be willing to take the very minor setback.
tomjen3 16y ago
Nice parodi, but besides the (huge) costs of switching, Esperanto (with an Ascii character set rather than the the current (Polish?) letters) would properly be better by far than English. At least we would have no more grammar fights - the entirety of Esperanto grammar is significantly shorter than the linked article. And don't worry, you would still have Wikipedia [http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/]. As for Klingon, well I guess that remains a pipedream.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  Good luck with the whole poetry thing in a language with no ambiguity to it.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure I've seen poetry in Lojban which is specifically design for lack of ambiguity. YMMV, but it's possible to have poetry without ambiguity in my opinion.
  - marteno 16y ago
    As a matter of fact, there is a lot of poetry in Esperanto. "but no grammar fights" --- not so; a lot of grammar fights as well :P
SmokenJoe 16y ago
It is a good analogy but it would be more appropriate to use a theocracy or a benovelonet dictatorship that wants to take over the world. It cam free everyone of dangerous choices that way.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
English -> Chinese might have been a more apt analogy, particularly as China are pushing heavily for royalty free standards (and will simply take your patent if you try to hold up the standard) as part of their plans for world domination.
EGreg 16y ago
Brilliant, I like how this is a spoof of what Google is doing with h264 . Of course, facebook's been doing this the whole time and it's been pissing people off, but most of those people were developers who signed on to this ever-changing environment. Deprecating a format that most people use is a little harsh. On the other hand, it is once again a symptom of intellectual monopoly protected by the government. Apple can charge people for the codec, and google won't have it. Makes sense. I would like to highlight this fact. A lot of the problems we are encountering are symptoms of intellectual monopolies (as Thomas Jefferson preferred to call it) granted by the government. The activities of the RIAA, Interval Licensing, pharma companies, and Disney may grab headlines, but they are perfectly viable in a system that is set up to grant, and then go to great lengths to enforce, copyright and patent protection. How can we in the west criticize China's "zi-lu" laws, discount Baidu and Tencent for following their country's laws (see http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Facebook-get-so-much-more-hype-than-Tencent-when-Tencent-is-bigger-in-terms-of-market-cap-usage-and-reach http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Facebook-get-so-much-more-hype...) but at the same time pass laws like this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/u-k-passes-internet-disconnection-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/u-k-passes-internet-di... and this: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91378/feds-seize-domain-names-of-counterfeiters-and-pirates/ http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91378/feds-seize-domain-names-o... Seems due process goes out the window when copyright is involved. The same western nations that are against censorship of the internet in China, censor the internet as soon as copyright comes up. I am not sure this situation is very stable -- something has to change.

65 points by hardik988 16y ago

rubyrescue 16y ago

title doesn't really match the article content

ot 16y ago
It does, look at the links. It's tongue-in-cheek.
henrikschroder 16y ago
As usual, the devil is in the details. Check where his links actually go, he's not really talking about Esperanto...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

joakin 16y ago

Childish? Suddently reminded me to the web page that criticizes Mac apps from the store

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

dmaz 16y ago

Not equivalent; HTML5 video is still being defined and is not yet in the mainstream.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
polynomial 16y ago
While the standard isn't yet finished, a recent survey indicated around 50% of web users are on a browser that supports HTML5: http://j.mp/HTML5_50 http://j.mp/HTML5_50

bad_user 16y ago

English is free even for commercial use.

mahmud 16y ago
كما هي اللغة العربية التي لا تقدر بثمن، مع انها لا تكلف قرشاً
- dhimes 16y ago
  Upvoted in hopes of translation...
  - hsuresh 16y ago
    "The language is Arabic, which are invaluable, even though it does not cost a penny" - according to google translate.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - mahmud 16y ago
    "So is the Arabic language; which is priceless, even though it doesn't cost a penny". Trouble is, I can only say that in formal Arabic, not any particular dialect. I must be the only native Arabic speaker without a native dialect (imagine a native English speaker who speaks only in Shakespearean)
    - Technophilis 16y ago
      You must have exclusively learnt Arabic at school then.
    - Vivtek 16y ago
      Child of an international marriage, growing up overseas?
      - 16y ago

Seth_Kriticos 16y ago

I grew up with Esperanto, and I don't really see a reason to use it as a pun in this context. It's a nice and useful language and everybody has the option to use it or leave it. The parallels (to VP8) with the blog post pretty much end there, as you don't actually have to pay your pants off with royalties to some group, just because you are teaching English (h264). I really like ironic humor, but this one didn't get to me.

recoiledsnake 16y ago
>You don't actually have to pay your pants off with royalties to some group Really? How is paying a few cents a user 'paying your pants off' ? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-they-really-cost/2122 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-they...
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  $6.5 million per year buys a lot of pants where I come from.
  - anonymous246 16y ago
    This reminds me about the scare tactics adopted about Congress's earmarks, where a large number was thrown around without context to obfuscate the issue. You need to put the 6.5 million in perspective. The 6.5 million is for developers of encoders/decoders, not websites (it's capped at 100k for video sites). If you sell a million copies of an encoder, your royalty will be $0.20 times 900k = $180k (first 100k is free). Is it really too much to ask $0.20 for developing most of the technology on which you are basing your business? For 250K subscribers to a SUBSCRIPTION video site, big bad MPEG-LA wants $25k, CAPPED at 100k for users >1M. I'm pretty sure this is a negligible amount for a subscription site. And remember, free sites don't pay.
    - jbri 16y ago
      Right. Because the current price they're charging is going to be all that they're ever going to charge until the patents expire. Or, you know, what's actually going to happen is the price being kept low until H.264 is well-entrenched, and then being jacked up when there's no competition.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Kylekramer 16y ago

If English was as only developed and entrenched as H.264 is currently when Esperanto was introduced, I know I would be willing to take the very minor setback.

tomjen3 16y ago

Nice parodi, but besides the (huge) costs of switching, Esperanto (with an Ascii character set rather than the the current (Polish?) letters) would properly be better by far than English. At least we would have no more grammar fights - the entirety of Esperanto grammar is significantly shorter than the linked article. And don't worry, you would still have Wikipedia [http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/]. As for Klingon, well I guess that remains a pipedream.

JonnieCache 16y ago
Good luck with the whole poetry thing in a language with no ambiguity to it.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure I've seen poetry in Lojban which is specifically design for lack of ambiguity. YMMV, but it's possible to have poetry without ambiguity in my opinion.
- marteno 16y ago
  As a matter of fact, there is a lot of poetry in Esperanto. "but no grammar fights" --- not so; a lot of grammar fights as well :P

SmokenJoe 16y ago

It is a good analogy but it would be more appropriate to use a theocracy or a benovelonet dictatorship that wants to take over the world. It cam free everyone of dangerous choices that way.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

English -> Chinese might have been a more apt analogy, particularly as China are pushing heavily for royalty free standards (and will simply take your patent if you try to hold up the standard) as part of their plans for world domination.

EGreg 16y ago

Brilliant, I like how this is a spoof of what Google is doing with h264 . Of course, facebook's been doing this the whole time and it's been pissing people off, but most of those people were developers who signed on to this ever-changing environment. Deprecating a format that most people use is a little harsh. On the other hand, it is once again a symptom of intellectual monopoly protected by the government. Apple can charge people for the codec, and google won't have it. Makes sense. I would like to highlight this fact. A lot of the problems we are encountering are symptoms of intellectual monopolies (as Thomas Jefferson preferred to call it) granted by the government. The activities of the RIAA, Interval Licensing, pharma companies, and Disney may grab headlines, but they are perfectly viable in a system that is set up to grant, and then go to great lengths to enforce, copyright and patent protection. How can we in the west criticize China's "zi-lu" laws, discount Baidu and Tencent for following their country's laws (see http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Facebook-get-so-much-more-hype-than-Tencent-when-Tencent-is-bigger-in-terms-of-market-cap-usage-and-reach http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Facebook-get-so-much-more-hype...) but at the same time pass laws like this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/u-k-passes-internet-disconnection-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/u-k-passes-internet-di... and this: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91378/feds-seize-domain-names-of-counterfeiters-and-pirates/ http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91378/feds-seize-domain-names-o... Seems due process goes out the window when copyright is involved. The same western nations that are against censorship of the internet in China, censor the internet as soon as copyright comes up. I am not sure this situation is very stable -- something has to change.