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Yeah its totally understandable why firefox implemented support for it, all the other major browsers already have, so firefox taking a stand and not implementing it wouldn't actually accomplish anything, other than losing firefox users, gotta pick their battles.

 

It is kind of sad how we've come full circle though... killing flash just to end up with another adobe plugin.

Apparently everybody, Microsoft and Google pushed for the W3C to accept it, and Apple implemented support for it in Yosemite. And since Netflix required it, people were upset that Chrome didn't support it under Linux, something which has "recently" (last year) been fixed.

It's not something they wanted to do, but since users/sites/competitors wanted it there wasn't much they could do to stop it. At least they heavily sandbox the plugin from the system to prevent it doing anything odd.

Edit: And DRM support is limited to MSE video playback, something which is still limited to YouTube only because of some pretty big limitations in the support Firefox provides (exactly enough for YouTube to work and that's it).

Are we talking about DRM (Digital Rights Management)? 

Yep, the W3C spec about it is called "Encrypted Media Extensions", and the actual DRM modules themselves are called "Content Decryption Modules" (Specifically unspecified, security through obscurity and all that)

The EME spec just details how a page can request playback of DRM locked material, and a example DRM module called "Clearkey" (Which is actually completely specified and is something like plain AES encryption, so nobody minds it), all communication with the actual DRM module is left up to the browser, and every browser does it differently with a different DRM backend.

Edit: How's this for fragmentation, Chrome supports the "Widevine" DRM scheme, IE11 uses "PlayReady", Firefox uses "Primetime" and Safari exposes "Fairplay", and content providers wanted this mess.

New Nightly not only shows you Mozilla sponsors, but targeted Mozilla sponsors, in the new tab page. Basically, now they track your browsing history and give you personalized tab ads, instead of just showing the same links for everyone.

This is unacceptable.

Edit: How's this for fragmentation, Chrome supports the "Widevine" DRM scheme, IE11 uses "PlayReady", Firefox uses "Primetime" and Safari exposes "Fairplay", and content providers wanted this mess.

Sounds like a headache.

This is unacceptable.

Disabled by default, but probably just for nightly just so we aren't ###### off.

 

 

Yep, the W3C spec about it is called "Encrypted Media Extensions", and the actual DRM modules themselves are called "Content Decryption Modules" (Specifically unspecified, security through obscurity and all that)

How do you implement it if you don't know how it works?

Yep, the W3C spec about it is called "Encrypted Media Extensions", and the actual DRM modules themselves are called "Content Decryption Modules" (Specifically unspecified, security through obscurity and all that)

The EME spec just details how a page can request playback of DRM locked material, and a example DRM module called "Clearkey" (Which is actually completely specified and is something like plain AES encryption, so nobody minds it), all communication with the actual DRM module is left up to the browser, and every browser does it differently with a different DRM backend.

Edit: How's this for fragmentation, Chrome supports the "Widevine" DRM scheme, IE11 uses "PlayReady", Firefox uses "Primetime" and Safari exposes "Fairplay", and content providers wanted this mess.

Well, more power to them if they get it to work but the problem with DRM has always been that it punished the honest person while the dishonest person just went about their business.

 

Hopefully it will be better. 

...

How do you implement it if you don't know how it works?

You don't, that's the point. If you want to support the DRM modules you need to enter into a business agreement with the DRM provider. There is Clearkey, but the usefulness of that is very limited, and nobody actually wants it (Too weak for content providers, and doesn't actually lock down the file in any way)

The point of Clearkey is that you can serve your video over a public CDN, while then transferring the decryption key to the end user over a secure (TLS) channel. Problem is you either need to share the key between all users (Making Clearkey useless), or re-encode the file for each user, defeating the point of caching servers, and basically re-implementing what TLS does. It might be useful for live broadcasts, but that's about it really.

Well, more power to them if they get it to work but the problem with DRM has always been that it punished the honest person while the dishonest person just went about their business.

 

Hopefully it will be better.

The Adobe provided modules is fairly standard as DRM modules go, what's different is that Mozilla sandboxes the system from it, basically treats it like a untrusted plugin and greatly limits what it can do.

I mean, it still sucks, but at least they're trying to minimize the harm and impact, they didn't rush into supporting it like Google did.

You don't, that's the point. If you want to support the DRM modules you need to enter into a business agreement with the DRM provider. There is Clearkey, but the usefulness of that is very limited, and nobody actually wants it (Too weak for content providers, and doesn't actually lock down the file in any way)

The point of Clearkey is that you can serve your video over a public CDN, while then transferring the decryption key to the end user over a secure (TLS) channel. Problem is you either need to share the key between all users (Making Clearkey useless), or re-encode the file for each user, defeating the point of caching servers, and basically re-implementing what TLS does. It might be useful for live broadcasts, but that's about it really.

What about this? https://github.com/fraunhoferfokus/open-content-decryption-module I don't know what this uses

Interesting project, but apart from letting Firefox use PlayReady (or such), it doesn't offer much.

It's still reliant on the DRM module providers to release a module for the platform, won't let Firefox on Linux use PlayReady, etc.

Edit: And technically Firefox already supports something like this, their CDM API is "agnostic" and can actually be used to provide support for any codec (Was first used for OpenH264 support for WebRTC), they're also looking at extending it to JavaScript so that web pages could provide their own video decoders for things.

  • 2 weeks later...

No crash reports have been submitted.
 

:D

 

No crashes for me in Firefox or Nightly. In the latter I'm running the e10s dev build of LastPass and that's it, no other extensions.

But the point on Nightly builds is to find bugs & attempt to crash it, so Mozilla can fix it. :p

I haven't seen a X.1.X release in a long time. However 38.0.1 was already released - we're like three weeks away from 39's release anyways.

3 weeks from a 39 release , dunno what the release schedule is for 38.1.0 an so on with that esr branch

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Then place the DWARF mini outside, make sure your smartphone or tablet is connected to it, and then head back inside, because you can manage it from the comfort of your home. Simply enter the Atlas tab in the app and search for what you want to capture, and then tap on the camera icon; the DWARF mini will then attempt to track the object and give you a live view right on your connected device. Results I've had the DWARF mini since April, but even though my garden is south-facing, I had a lot of trouble trying to capture a good image of the moon. In the end, it was possible after I took it with me on a trip to my parents in Southend, UK, at the end of May. Here is a capture of the moon, resulting from 20 stacked images over a 90-second exposure. What you are seeing here is not AI-assisted. 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The bad Some issues I came across while operating the DWARF mini were that it sometimes failed to connect unless I held my smartphone right next to it, and finding and tracking sometimes took several attempts to get it calibrated. I discovered that it helped if I sort of positioned and pointed the telescope in the general area it was supposed to detect, but this obviously wouldn't work with objects you can't see with the naked eye; more testing is required for that. Another bit of advice is to ensure that the lens is clean. While making the examples of live zooming on the sun, I discovered that the telescope lens and sun filter were not completely clean, and only after cleaning with a microfiber cloth was I able to get a decent shot of the sun. Where to buy and a coupon Okay, $399 is not cheap for a side hobby, but nor is a $1,500 smartphone flagship that you'll most likely have for a couple of years. This is a one-time entrance into astrology, and it won't become obsolete in one year like a smartphone. It's a thumbs up from me. The DWARF mini is available to buy right now in the U.S. and U.K. at the links below. DWARF mini for $399 on the official site DWARF mini for $399 on Amazon U.S. Use the NEOWIN5OFF coupon code for an additional 5% off at checkout (expires June 21) As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
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