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Ah, hate to wake you up, but that already exists in most libraries that lend ebooks.

Most of the use Adobe Digital Editions, and the OverDrive servers, which assures that the library lends only as many copies as they have paid for, and ebooks are "returned" automatically at the end of the lend period.

Ebook readers already enforce the rules, and you can also read on your computer. Usually this all costs the reader zero money.

You have re-invented what is already in common usage all across north america.
http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

Flash is a problem because it is a vendor standard that doesn't need to compete to survive.

Um, no

It fails to take advantage of hardware acceleration when EVERY OTHER SOLUTION does.

Um, no.

Why am I defending Adobe? Actually, I'm not. I'm fighting laziness.

There's nothing closed and proprietary about the format. There already are open source groups rewriting it.

Adobe is doing significant rewrites. Take a look at the upcoming 10.1 release. Under the hood, it's a huge set of changes.

It is in Adobe's economic interest to do so as they have a huge investment in the technology. They have competition in the form of Silverlight, HTML5, etc, and said open source.

One of those Javascript engines you speak of was contributed to open source by Adobe.

As politicians like to say, everyone is entitled to their opinion, just not their own facts.

Larger/Better Graph

Original Article it came from

And it looks like hardware decoded video on Linux is going the same way

Larger/Better Graph

Original Article it came from

And it looks like hardware decoded video on Linux is going the same way

Larger/Better Graph

Original Article it came from

And it looks like hardware decoded video on Linux is going the same way

The Flash SWF format is open, and Adobe has a better track record than MS on open formats (PDF).

Linux is no-longer negligible in terms of market share. Its difficult to get numbers, but Ubuntu alone passed 8m users back in 2008 and has been growing since. Add users who are not counted thanks to multiple installs plus apt caching, then add the other distros (with similar adjustments), and you get a total comparable to MacOS,

I can think of a few reasons that matter to me. I'm sure some people can think of a few other reasons.

Steve Jobs has been reported as saying that Flash sucks, is too slow and unstable, and takes up battery life. This is true.

You might want to ask all those other smartphone manufacturers why they're happily planning to support the upcoming release of Flash, then. Or could it be possible that Steve has other motives for keeping Flash out of the iPhone ecosystem?

on OSX, Flash is a disaster

Adobe has said in the past that API limitations in Mac-based browsers prevent them from bringing performance up to par with Windows. Someone just below in this thread posted a link to one of the Flash engineers explaining how Adobe and Apple are actually working together to fix this.

Mint is your hands-down best out-of-the-box choice. The reason is simple -- it comes with a Flash player already installed.

So, by this definition, any other distribution that ships flash player would also be "hands-down best out-of-the-box"?

However, I wonder, does Mint have a license for redistribution of Flash Player? According the the Adobe Flash Player EULA, you may not re-distribute without a license. Nowhere on the Mint site can I find any details about whether Mint has such a license.

As far as I know, Mandriva does have a license, which is why they include Flash on One and Powerpack distributions (but not "Free", which is composed only of free software, and not in the non-free online repo ... apparently this is not allowed by the license terms they got from Adobe), so I guess that would make Mandriva "hands-down best out-of-the-box", but then again, I already knew that ...

(BTW, apparently Adobe isn't allowing redistribution of the the Flash 10 alpha - which is desirable for x86_64 systems)

Now, according to the Mint site, Mint doesn't include proprietary drivers, and I wonder how it can then be the best out-of-the-box distro.

Is there a framework that makes writing HTML5/Javascript apps as easy as writing Flash apps? How about Cocoa apps? Not really. That's why people use Flash in spite of the existing stability and performance problems.

If Flash has an analogue as a development tool, it's Visual Basic - it shouldn't be used in production environments because it's trash, and yet here it is, everywhere we look. Why? Because any idiot can write something - anything - in it in minutes.

There's reasons why Adobe is as active in W3C and HTML5 development as Google and Apple - if they don't adapt to it, they die. They know this. CS5 will output Canvas and "Flash CS6" will probably just use that interface to become a framework to output AIR for desktops or AJAX for everyone else.

This whole Apple/Adobe fight over Flash is the same as IBM rooting for OSS against Microsoft - pissing on Apple makes Apple-haters pull for Adobe, even when Adobe is as guilty of manipulating open standards to their favor as Apple. And Apple antagonizing Adobe serves the same purpose for them. It's rallying cries for their bases, with Adobe's Larry Masinter playing stay-the-course old-fart McCain to Steve Jobs's "change hope change change hope" over glossy reflective textures, and Hixie is out fumbling around with WHATWG notes scribbled on his hand, winning over only the dumbest kids with his Alaskan Swiss accent, too much makeup and lively Twitter updates.

In other words, we're all fucked and anyone picking any of these self-serving "advocates" to improve open web standards is a moron. We shouldn't be asking why Flash doesn't work on some gimmick that'll be obsolete two year from now - we should be asking why we're letting corporations - specifically, these corporations, Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM - determine the shape of the next decade of the web.

Even more to the point, there has been a flash based touchscreen device widely available for over half a decade.

The Leapster by Leapfrog is a Flash only device. You can buy it in any Toys R Us, and has been very successful. It works just fine.

Well, Adobe and Leapfrog detail exactly why they would use flash to produce a very successful touch screen device. Given that the device has been on the market for over half a decade, works perfectly fine, and has made them plenty of money, I am inclined to believe they made the right choice.

More to the point. The author is not only an idiot because he isn't smart enough to think of how to make flash work with a touch screen... He is an idiot because there has already been a very successful touchscreen device that is 100% flash. The Leapster by Leapfrog is a Flash only device. You can buy it in any Toys R Us, and has been very successful. It works just fine.

It seems that the current trend by Apple fanboys is to claim that Apple engineers are completely incompetent. Not long ago, it was the claim that Apple engineers were too incompetent to fit a microSD and battery door in an iPod sized device, while basement budget Emprex could fit them in a device half the iPod's size. Obviously this not extends to the iPad. At 50x the size, the Apple fanboys must still believe the Apple engineers are even too incompetent to fit them in that huge device.

Now, we get an article claiming that Apple engineers are so incompetent that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for them to accomplish a task that has been widely available in a child's toy for over half a decade.

Flash player is open source, companies can make it work with their devices ... and have been doing so. Flash on Apple won't cost them money, but will take away from their app store when people can play games online. http://www.cultofmac.com/adobe-theres-no-flash-on-ipad-because-apple-is-protecting-content-revenue/28564 Also Flash CS5 can export to iPhone app, so I guess there will be Flash running on the iPad. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/mobile_demos_fp10.1.html Research your topic before you post ...

No, you wrote up a bunch of crap to whore your blog and included the link in that.

How about just posting the link to the adobe kb instead?

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404813.html

Yep; therefore you should download Acrobat Reader from ftp.adobe.com. Flash player for Firefox is here, though you need to save the file and extract files manually because Firefox no longer supports installing extensions via install.js. Replace with -mac/-linux as appropriate.

Parent, link is just some un-useful text, then this link:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404813.html

Just follow this link instead.

That's two strikes now for Adobe. As TFA says, Adobe also uses the Akamai Download Manager for downloads from the Adobe Store. This thing installs itself and runs *forever*, not just for the download you paid for in the store.

It has a P2P mode where client machines (that's *you*, sucker) distribute the downloaded software using your bandwidth in the background. Is there an icon in the taskbar letting you know? Nope, it runs silent and deep (it does show up as Akamai something-or-other in Process Explorer).

It's like running BitTorrent and donating your bandwidth to Akamai and their friends. Except not on purpose.

But hey, you probably clicked through a EULA that you didn't read, so it's all on you right?

Oh, they've done that already. I thought they did it before Google.

Picasa was Ok until I started working with RAW files. Adobe Lightroom 3 is still in a free Beta and has been for awhile. I'm not sure what they'll ask me to pony up for it, but at this point it might be worth it. Just checked, looks like it expires April 30th 2010. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

Shared objects actually provide a bunch of stuff that the bare-bones browser APIs don't. See here: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/net/SharedObject.html

Also, shared objects can store far more than 100k of data if the user grants permission to the app. Storage limits are set on a per-domain basis.

I wouldn't be so sure if I were you, this guy http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/ seems to know what he is talking about (or maybe it's just me ...)

He does seem to be pretty much alone though ...

When will Flash 10.1 be available for my Android G1 phone?

AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices. Adobe has been showing demo videos of Flash running on Android phones since last year. This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, they showed Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.0 running on a whole number of devices. It's running on the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One and other new Android phones like the HTC Desire & Legend.

They've also got it running for Blackberry and Palm Pre. Symbian has been running Flash Lite for some time now, so you'll also see Flash 10.1 and AIR coming to it. Browser Flash has running on Maemo for some time too, so no problem there.

Yes, Adobe's reluctance to support any platform other than a PC is the main reason why I think Flash should die a horrible (but quick) death

On the contrary, Adobe has been making a major effort to provide Flash for every single device and modern OS out there (The Open Screen Project). The fruits of this can now be seen at the Mobile World Congress where they're showing Flash 10.1 and AIR running on a whole bunch of mobile and internet devices. Check out the list of Adobe Open Screen partners (the only one missing is Apple who refuses to have Flash run on the iPhone and iPad, so Adobe got around that by providing export to native iPhone apps with Flash CS5)

When will Flash 10.1 be available for my Android G1 phone?

AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices. Adobe has been showing demo videos of Flash running on Android phones since last year. This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, they showed Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.0 running on a whole number of devices. It's running on the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One and other new Android phones like the HTC Desire & Legend.

They've also got it running for Blackberry and Palm Pre. Symbian has been running Flash Lite for some time now, so you'll also see Flash 10.1 and AIR coming to it. Browser Flash has running on Maemo for some time too, so no problem there.

Yes, Adobe's reluctance to support any platform other than a PC is the main reason why I think Flash should die a horrible (but quick) death

On the contrary, Adobe has been making a major effort to provide Flash for every single device and modern OS out there (The Open Screen Project). The fruits of this can now be seen at the Mobile World Congress where they're showing Flash 10.1 and AIR running on a whole bunch of mobile and internet devices. Check out the list of Adobe Open Screen partners (the only one missing is Apple who refuses to have Flash run on the iPhone and iPad, so Adobe got around that by providing export to native iPhone apps with Flash CS5)

That really adds unnecessary complexity. There are tons of those flash games sites and they would all need to generate same kind of database scheme or make a standard on how you pass the data between the site and flash applet.

Instead more controls about it is the way to go. Personally I would also like an option to globally disallow all cookies, but let it ask me if I want to save data.

I noticed earlier today that theres beta of 10.1 out and interestingly it also supports hardware accelerated video with NVidia cards. Lowered dramatically CPU usage when playing video in full-screen. Seems that this private browsing thing isn't included yet tho.

The Adobe Linux guys wrote a blog post explaining why Adobe Flash is so slow. It seems that because Flash needs to mix the video image with other flash controls, it can't accelerate video like a typical player does. It seems that the HTML5 people have the same problem.

"The key point here is that the decoded video frames need to be accessible by the Player which needs to do its thing before the data can be presented to the user. As of this writing, none of these drivers in Linux allow retrieval of the decoded video data. Their counterpart Windows drivers do allow this which is why this feature is supported in Windows.

That's for Linux. What about Mac? I'm not sure but my Mac colleagues have mentioned something about Apple not making their hardware decoding APIs available to applications (if the APIs exist at all, which I'm not sure they do)"

Please stop spreading FUD about Adobe blocking HTML5.

Read the full story about what really happened here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02/adobe_is_sabotaging_html5.html

It was about Larry Masinter, Adobe's representative at W3C proposing that progress of HTML5 in W3C could be faster if the subsections on graphics and metadata could (if not now, then eventually) be moved to separate subgroups focused on those topics.

Read more at Larry Masinter's blog.
http://masinter.blogspot.com

Flash is also (mostly) an open standard http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/. It's just there is lots of it to implement, so the OSS versions are incomplete.

Unless all the mobile phone makers settle on one GUI toolkit such as GTK, Qt, etc., there is no easy way for one app developer to target all the phones out there.

Say hello to Adobe AIR 2.0 on mobile. Flash/Flex/Javascript developers will soon be able to deploy their apps everywhere
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Adobe-Unveils-AIR-on-Mobile-bw-730511059.html?x=0&.v=1

All major phone manufacturers & platforms except for Apple will be supporting it by late 2010.
http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/current_partners.html

For iPhone and iPad, you can use Flash CS5 to build native iPhone apps, so your project can easily be published for iPhone OS too.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

Can we at least get the Linux Foundation to support Ogg/Theora as a supported format to upload videos in. Ideally they would accept only Ogg and use HTML5 to show the videos instead of Flash..

The Flash player delivers H.264 video to 99% of the potential market. Flash Player Version Penetration

Hardware accelerated in Flash 10.

The browser with Ogg/Theora support has about 22% of the market. Browser market share

What it does not have is YouTube. What it does not it have is the potent backing of 759 corporate licensees - the biggest names in broadcasting and consumer tech. AVC/H.264 Licensees

The Flash Player has to do a little bit more. In addition to decoding the data, it has to convert YUV data to the RGB colorspace and combine the image with other Flash elements. Then it has to cooperate with another application (web browser) to present the video to the user.

So the dedicated media player solves a problem: Generally, it plays linear media files from start to finish while allowing user interaction in the form of random seeking along the timeline. That's the most basic, trained monkey-type of labor in video playback. At most, the player might handle DVD menus.

Flash Player solves a different problem: It plays linear media files from start to finish while combining the video with a wide array of graphical and interactive elements (buttons, bitmaps, vector graphics, filters), as well as providing network, webcam, and microphone facilities, all programmable via a full-featured scripting language, and all easily accessible via a web browser using a plugin that most of the browsing population already has installed.

You seem to forget that video is not the only thing people use Flash for.

Now regarding performance, given identical hardware, Flash Player on Windows has historically been faster than the Mac, and it is for the most part the same code running in Flash for each operating system. We have and continue to invest significant effort to make Mac OS optimizations to close this gap, and Apple has been helpful in working with us on this. Vector graphics rendering in Flash Player 10 now runs almost exactly the same in terms of CPU usage across Mac and Windows, which is due to this work. In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to CoreAnimation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering.

Video rendering is an area we are focusing more attention on -- for example, today a 480p video on a 1.8 Ghz Mac Mini in Safari uses about 34% of CPU on Mac versus 16% on Windows (running in BootCamp on same hardware). With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.

The same is true for iPhone games. Further, the overwhelming majority of Flash games will be unplayable on a multitouch device. They just aren't designed to be played by nothing more than clicking the mouse.

Huh? You obviously haven't been playing much Flash games, have you? Mouse-only Flash games have been around since forever. They constitute quite a significant portion of Flash games and would have no problems running on a stylus/tablet device. Try visiting Ferry Halim's awards-winning Orisinal games. Tapping on touch devices/tablets is no problem too since those are just normal mouse calls on Flash. No problem with em running on multi-touch too since since the upcoming Flash Player 10.1 (coming out on both desktop and mobile devices) has multi-touch support.

Regarding Mac performance, from what I know, there's an certain class & method needed by Adobe engineers to do certain acceleration on OSX, but access isn't being given by Apple's APIs. With Linux acceleration (Flash has now been using the GPU for acceleration for a while), there's quite a number of complications like incompatibility with Compiz Fusion enabled (See this entry by Penguin.swf, one of the lead Flash engineers working on Linux -> http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gpu.html.

Check out John Gruber's excellent post at http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash:
I've been hard on Flash Player for Mac OS X, but this performance situation is not entirely in Adobe's hands. On Windows, Flash makes use of hardware decoding for H.264, if available. On Mac OS X, it does not. This is one reason why Flash video playback performs better on Windows than Mac OS X, and also why H.264 playback on Mac OS X is better through QuickTime (which does use hardware decoding).

According to Adobe, though, this is because they can't. Heres an entry from their Flash Player FAQ:

Q. Why is hardware decoding of H.264 only supported on the Windows platform?

A. In Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate when to support this feature on Mac and Linux platforms in future releases.

Adobe platform evangelist Lee Brimelow posted a weblog entry addressing this:

But let's talk more about the Flash Player on the Mac. If it is not 100% on par with the Windows player people assume that it is all our fault. The facts show that this is simply not the case. Let's take for example the question of hardware acceleration for H.264 video that we released with Flash Player 10.1. Here you can see some published results for how much the situation has improved on Windows. Unfortunately we could not add this acceleration to the Mac player because Apple does not provide a public API to make this happen. You can easily verify that by asking Apple. Im happy to say that we still made some improvements for the Mac player when it comes to video playback, but we simply could not implement the hardware acceleration. This is but one example of stumbling blocks we face when it comes to Apple.

Flash Player 10.1 hardware acceleration for video and graphics

Flash is proprietary I'd like to see it fade into oblivion.

It isn't going to happen any time soon.

Flash has supported H.264 since Flash Player 9 in 2007.

Flash Player 10.1 supports H.264 video hardware decoding on desktop and mobile devices and hardware (GPU) graphics rendering on mobile devices
  Flash Player 10.1 hardware acceleration for video and graphics, Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 - Downloads

Freescale is bringing Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to its ARM based i.MX platforms, enabling the creation of consumer products running either the Linux or Android operating systems.
Smartbooks, smartphones, netbooks and other Internet-centric consumer products based on the i.MX51 family of processors will be able to access full H.264 video playback when accessing rich content built with the Flash Platform, including HD and SD video from sites such as YouTube. Collaboration For Flash Player 10.1 on Freescale i.MX

Flash is proprietary I'd like to see it fade into oblivion.

It isn't going to happen any time soon.

Flash has supported H.264 since Flash Player 9 in 2007.

Flash Player 10.1 supports H.264 video hardware decoding on desktop and mobile devices and hardware (GPU) graphics rendering on mobile devices
  Flash Player 10.1 hardware acceleration for video and graphics, Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 - Downloads

Freescale is bringing Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to its ARM based i.MX platforms, enabling the creation of consumer products running either the Linux or Android operating systems.
Smartbooks, smartphones, netbooks and other Internet-centric consumer products based on the i.MX51 family of processors will be able to access full H.264 video playback when accessing rich content built with the Flash Platform, including HD and SD video from sites such as YouTube. Collaboration For Flash Player 10.1 on Freescale i.MX

see the big screen size, and expect to browse the web just like they do on their laptop.

Big screen? While I like the price, to me the screen is too small. I'd rather keep my 17" MBP and get a 12" Cintiq 12WX.

And they're going to be disappointed...

I am now, not at Apple or Adobe but at web developers. Too often I come across a webpage that tells me I need to update my Flash player to the latest version. I have 10,0,42,34 which is the latest version.

Falcon

Adobe showed Flash 10 running full speed on other devices. Apple most likely wants to lock out Flash because it steals away from their revenue. Apple would no longer get a 30% + $100/yr take on selling them in the Apple App store.

What revenue and sell? Flash is a free download. Right now I have Abode's latest version of Flash Player installed on my MacBook Pro, 10,0,42,34. Apple's own downloads, Quicktime for instance, is free too. Apple even has links to other free downloads. Though Apple sells MS Word and Office as well as it's own office suite, Apple also as a link to NeoOffice, which I use, the native Mac port of Open Office. And though I have XCode installed, it comes free with Macs, I use Eclipse. Though not Eclipse itself Apple has the link for EasyEclipse which is based on Eclipse.

Falcon

I don't know how many tymes I've run into this on my MBP. I frequently land on pages saying I need the latest Flash player yet when I go to Adobe's test page it says I have the latest player. Right now that's 10.0.42.34 for Linux, OS X, Solaris, and Windows. The only thing I can think of is that these pages test for Windows as well.

Falcon

That's Apple's fault for not exposing the relevant APIs, according to Adobe:

In Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under either Linux or Mac OS X. [...] Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. The Flash Player team will continue to evaluate adding hardware acceleration to Linux and Mac OS X in future releases.

Seems like anti-competitive behavior coming from Apple, there.

Sometimes I think the entire "Buy this ringtone and customize your phone to represent YOU" scam is one of the telecom industry's biggest worthless marketing success.

It is. But then again, you don't have to support it to still "personalize" your phone. Most phones have bluetooth. Bluetooth adapters are cheap for computers that don't already have it. Combine with a copy of Adobe Audition or (for the FOSS crowd) Audacity and a bit of time learning, it's ridiculously easy to make your own ringtones. Why pay USD $2 or more for a 30 second clip from a song when you can make the same clip from your personal collection for free? 40+ ringtones on my phone (although I rarely change it) and I've cut and transferred them all myself. And a lot of them are things you simply won't find on your provider's website. Alice Nine, Indica, Oomph, and my personal favorite, The Protomen.

Oh, and since I agree with you about people's ringtones blaring, I keep my volume set to a reasonable level. Loud enough that I can hear it, but not so loud you can hear it across the lobby in a movie theater.

Currently, most of the web (Flash excluded) is free to generate.

Err, SWF *is* completely free to generate, aside from the patent-encumbered video codec parts (H.264 and Sorenson) and maybe the MP3/AAC audio codecs. Here's the spec, go to it:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/pdf/swf_file_format_spec_v10.pdf

Here's a website full of open-source tools for it:

http://osflash.org/

(And about the "yeah-but-audio-video-patents" exceptions -- hey, don't blame Adobe for that. They don't even hold those patents, they have to pay big bucks for 'em too!)

It is rather telling that the same type of buffer trouble is showing up in other peoples software. I am just wondering if the flood "Gates" are about to open and we will wind up seeing multiple trouble with things like WMP, Silverlight ...there was already the same update happening for RealPlayer

Just maybe there is a system xml call that is easily exploited in all versions of Windows....I can just see it now some lazy MS exec using old legacy system xml that is written using the gets and puts function. I would not put it past Microsoft to use old garbage code without even checking the old source then including the pre-compiled executable

It is rather telling that the same type of buffer trouble is showing up in other peoples software. I am just wondering if the flood "Gates" are about to open and we will wind up seeing multiple trouble with things like WMP, Silverlight ...there was already the same update happening for RealPlayer

Just maybe there is a system xml call that is easily exploited in all versions of Windows....I can just see it now some lazy MS exec using old legacy system xml that is written using the gets and puts function. I would not put it past Microsoft to use old garbage code without even checking the old source then including the pre-compiled executable

Why worry about smooth equatorial tracking? Rig your camera using the cheapest tracking solution you have or move it by hand if you have to. Who cares if it jitters. It just can't jitter during the exposure. Merge the photos into 1 frame by removing the jitter and combining exposures.

A 100 second exposure pic is equal to 100 one second exposure pics. The problem is in finding software to stitch the photos into 1 frame. The easiest to try is to just get PhotoShop. Stitch the photos into 1 with Photo Merge. You can also experiment with PhotoShop HDR merge. You may have to tweak the contrast/brightness and light levels before or after.

2nd option is using video stabilization software to remove the jitter. There are tons of software options for that but you want one will accept very large resolution pics with large dimensions. You want apps that will work on frames as individual photos instead of enforcing video formats on import and export. Off the shell software might be tuned for pics with normal daylight exposure, so look for options to fine tune the algorithm to work on dimly exposed pics.

If the software won't work on dimly exposed pics, perhaps you can experiment with batch processing the files to increase contrast and brightness or tweak the lighting levels. (Lots of software options.) Feed the result into the stabilization software. Batch process again to reverse the contrast/brightness increase.

The post-process step is to stitch and merge the photos into one as before. Plain stitching used to create panorama shots won't work. It needs to sum the exposure data. Photo apps solve these types of problems so there's a good chance it would work with PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro (with "HDR Photo Merge). You could shoot a series of fast exposures for the raw data and 1 long blurry exposure to use as a reference point for the HDR merge. Example.

"Linux can run on a 1024-core computer, but it can't play a Flash movie without stuttering" problem. At this rate, it'll never improve.

This have nothing to do with linux. If you have any complaint, post them to http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html . People are working on providing an alternative to the closed source adobe flash libraries, but i guess it is quite hard since they are closed source to begin with... and since i posted this, i can't even moderate you as troll or ignorant...

Adobe Acrobat Connect is an excellent tool that seemlessly combines what you seem to be asking for, including the ability to record sessions for later viewing. There's a free trial, but the full service costs $39/month.

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect/

Apple's own security update page (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4004) lists these six, where did Threatpost author get the number 12 from?:

Security Update 2010-001

*

CoreAudio

CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0036

Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.2, Mac OS X Server v10.6.2

Impact: Playing a maliciously crafted mp4 audio file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

Description: A buffer overflow exists in the handling of mp4 audio files. Playing a maliciously crafted mp4 audio file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking. Credit to Tobias Klein of trapkit.de for reporting this issue.

*

CUPS

CVE-ID: CVE-2009-3553

Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.2, Mac OS X Server v10.6.2

Impact: A remote attacker may cause an unexpected application termination of cupsd

Description: A use-after-free issue exists in cupsd. By issuing a maliciously crafted get-printer-jobs request, an attacker may cause a remote denial of service. This is mitigated through the automatic restart of cupsd after its termination. This issue is addressed through improved connection use tracking.

*

Flash Player plug-in

CVE-ID: CVE-2009-3794, CVE-2009-3796, CVE-2009-3797, CVE-2009-3798, CVE-2009-3799, CVE-2009-3800, CVE-2009-3951

Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.2, Mac OS X Server v10.6.2

Impact: Multiple vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player plug-in

Description: Multiple issues exist in the Adobe Flash Player plug-in, the most serious of which may lead to arbitrary code execution when viewing a maliciously crafted web site. The issues are addressed by updating the Flash Player plug-in to version 10.0.42. Further information is available via the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-19.html Credit to an anonymous researcher and Damian Put working with TippingPoints Zero Day Initiative, Bing Liu of Fortinet's FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, Will Dormann of CERT, Manuel Caballero and Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR).

*

ImageIO

CVE-ID: CVE-2009-2285

Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8

Impact: Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

Description: A buffer underflow exists in ImageIO's handling of TIFF images. Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking. For Mac OS X v10.6 systems, this issue is addressed in Mac OS X v10.6.2.

*

Image RAW

CVE-ID

h264 can compress a video much more for a given quality than the current flash video they use

Except, of course, that the flash plugin has supported H264 video for a while now and the 10.1 beta actually does accelerate H264 decoding via the graphics card (I'd say less than 5% CPU use when playing a HD trailer suggests it's being accelerated...)

np: Pink Floyd - Echoes (Meddle)