Google x86 Native Browser Client Maybe Not So Crazy After All 332
GMGruman writes "Google's experimental technology to run native x86 binaries in the browser shows lots of potential, writes Neil McAllister. He's previously said it was a crazy idea, but a new version of Native Client (NaCl) caused McAllister to take a fresh look, which has led him to conclude the technology is crazy like a fox. McAllister explains what NaCl is useful for, how to use it, and why it's not a Java or a Flash or a JavaScript replacement, but something else."
ActiveX revisited? (Score:5, Insightful)
So a proprietary, but open SDK to run native binaries on one vendors browser. What could possibly go wrong?
I hope Google put a heck of a lot more effort into security/sandbox issues than Microsoft did or I'm going to have to start telling people to never install Chrome. ActiveX was the best attack vector for Windows for the longest time, and as far as I know it's still pretty effective against the great unwashed who will click anything to make a dialog go away.
I really wish... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish folks wouldn't intermix this crap with a web browser. I'm all for having some kind of a cloud browser for accessing Internet-based applications with the client running java or nacl or whatever. But when I'm surfing the web looking at untrusted sites, I don't want ANYTHING running browser-side. Not even javascript.
Re:Not Java, more like Active X (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how it could be made secure at all
This may have something to do with you not making any effort whatsoever to read up on what NaCl actually does.