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Flash has an open spec available: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/, silverlight does not.

Except that it does. C# and CLI are both ISO standards. The general XAML spec, and the Silverlight vocabulary, are both available from Microsoft under the "Open Specification Promise".

Flash has an open spec available: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/, silverlight does not.
Flash is available for linux, silverlight is not
Flash is available for PPC macs, silverlight is not
Flash is already installed on most systems, silverlight is not (i have an intel mac and never even thought about installing it)
Flash is a tried and tested, mature technology with years of usage and any large websites using it, silverlight is not and does not.
Flash is available for some embedded devices such as nokia internet tablets and the nintendo wii, silverlight is not

So Flash is clearly a better option than silverlight on so many levels, even if it isn't an ideal option. If you have to make tradeoffs, why make unnecessary ones?

Youtube uses flash, making it like youtube would be far preferable as flash is far more accessible and widely supported than silverlight.
Flash also has an open specification available for anyone to implement at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

So i would consider using flash, just like youtube, to be a perfectly valid way to stream the video, which would support far more users than silverlight.

As title says, Real has a nice streaming server called Real Helix and a producer (tool that creates the stream and sends it to the server for other people to view from server) called Real Producer.

There is a free version for both Real Server and Real Producer Basic.

Here's the page:
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/free_trial.html.

I believe you're not allowed to use the software commercially. As you use it for school and for noncommercial purposes you should be fine.
It may also be worth to send an email to Real because they may have discounts for educational licenses.
Anyway, Real Producer is about 100$

You just have to install the server on any computer with good network card because that's the computer that all classrooms will download the stream from. Your stream will be about 200-300KB/s for each user but you can change it as you want, for better or lower quality.

You install Real Producer on a somewhat powerful (a Core2Duo will be enough) computer with a TV tuner. Start the software, select the tv tuner as video and audio input, configure where to upload the stream and the bitrate and you're all set.

There are tutorials to help you on Real's website.

I've done this broadcasting football games at 80+ people in a college dormitory, on a 100mbps network so it definitely works.

Another alternative (though I didn't test this) would be to use an open source Flash streaming server like Red5 ( http://osflash.org/red5 ) and use the free Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3 ( http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder/ ) to record and send the stream to the Flash server.

flash in Linux closely resembles that of video drivers about five years ago

Um No. Not only has flash progessed in leaps and bounds on the Linux front, Linux is ahead supporting 64 bit Flash. Windows is playing catch-up here not Linux http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

(why oh why by the way is PDF proprietary format ANY better than Microsoft's proprietary format ?)

Because it's not proprietary?

This post is TOTALLY offtopic. Really you need to split these up and file them as bug reports over on launchpad. I'll post a couple of comments answers but I'm not going to follow up on any of this (even if you answer any questions I ask).

- switching from dual display to presentation (clone) and back totally messes up x config, I have to uninstall and reinstall nvidea drivers

Talk to NVIDIA (Linux web forum) about this. It's their code you're running and they are probably the only ones who are willing to fix it.

- in dual screen mode, nautilus opens on the first display. I have to open terminal and run nautilus& to lunch it on the second display

You can't drag it? I don't quite understand...

- in dual screen mode, keyboard keeps focus in the previous screen. I have to minimize/maximize a windows on the "new" screen to move keyboard focus

Are you using desktop effects? (Do windows fade and slide etc?) If so this sounds like a bug in compiz...

- RDP client crashes X windows in some cases (it does not close the drop down list of used servers... and bang)

Hmm. I'm really curious now as to whether you are using compiz. Regardless your best bet with this one would be to be to see if you can capture a backtrace of the crash with debug symbols and to file a bug report against the RDP client (I'm guessing you're using tsclient) in launchpad.

- oh and NO it's not AN ERROR if I close the RDP window. If I want to reconnect, I will, don't hide under my active windows and bring RDP windows back in 30 seconds. That's just plain stupid.

I guess file an enhancement request on tsclient in launchpad.

- java and window decorations don't play well together (popups without buttons etc.)

I really would like to know whether you are using compiz. If you are I have a feeling this was a known "bug" in the Java bug database for a long time but the fix is not yet in Ubuntu.

- How about opening a connection to a new server in a new tab, not in a new nautilus window?

Hmm probably best to file an enhancement request over on the GNOME bugzilla.

- Flash stops working. I just see a gray square where flash is supposed to be.

64 bit Firefox using 32 bit Flash via nspluginwrapper I'm guessing. There is a 64bit Linux Flash plugin that is in very early beta that MAY work better for you (I've heard mixed things mind). Also make sure you're using Flash 10 whatever route you are taking.

- Firefox is not very stable.

Might be because of extensions or plugins or you may have found a problem page or your memory might be faulty or Firefox might be buggy or... You are going to have to sit down and capture the issue in Firefox this then file a bug report in launchpad.

- Windows would become gray and unresponsive when there's a lot of disk activity.

You're using compiz aren't you? The greying is compiz telling you that the window HAS become unresponsive! As to why this is happening on I/O it probably varies from program to program. Too little information to many possibilities to say more.

- I've seen ubuntu crash on my much more times than I've seen BSOD on the same HW.

Quite possible. I've seen Linux stable on some computers and fla

Nearly everyone else working on it is a volunteer doing it in their spare time. We're working on it, I assure you. If a bug report exists, that's important to know. If there's a workaround, it may still be that there's a usability issue and that's valid. If it's a problem with your hardware, what on earth do you expect them to do about it? If you can live without your shiny 3D eye-candy (or buying an Intel graphics card), you don't run into the evil-hardware-company issue.

And lastly, the quickest way to fix an issue is to provide a patch. That's not really fair, but, given that you're not paying anyone for the software, that's the way it is. (That doesn't mean that someone who tells you that the only reason you're not a happy user is that you haven't written enough patches isn't a tremendous jerk.) I've gone from filing bugs, to confirming and testing them, to writing my own patches and testcases. It's rewarding, in its own way, to make the system better, bit by bit.

Honestly, the situation on the Ubuntu tracker isn't that bad. Yes, there are still people who drop into ignored bug reports, ask "Is it still present?" and set the bug to expire if someone doesn't write back that, yes, the bug is still present in the current version, as (in plenty of cases) the owner could see if they just took five minutes to test it. Yes, there's no good way to escalate a bug or get it triaged with a quickness, even if it's something that's really damned important. Given how bad things are at the GNOME bugzilla (bugs wait forever there), I'm pleased in comparison.

Given all this, it's understandable that Linux isn't for everyone. Hell, look at the state of audio support. It's a damned tragedy. You have to really love it at this point. I'm motivated by the fact that it's worlds better than it was only a few years ago: suspend/resume actually works sometimes, a major vendor (Intel) actually maintains bleeding-edge open-source video drivers as part of the X.org distribution, and there's a lot more polish on things--all the little usability details that sound like nitpicking when you enumerate them, but add up to a good or bad user experience, in the final evaluation. You may have left Linux--and, really, if you're not willing to put up with quite a bit at this point, it's not for you--but it's not a failure.

Yes, let's all move in the same direction on the same projects, thereby destroying that which makes Linux so successful.

Linux works BECAUSE of the fracturing, not in spite of it. Yes, there are downsides to that where applications and such aren't terribly cohesive. But there are upsides, where you get the source to everything and no one can ever take it away from you. You don't get that benefit with your beloved OS X. It may look shinier, but OS X still has a ton of UI inconsistencies. Don't kid yourself... no OS has the consistency thing down, and I'd rather take the more stark inconsistency of Linux for the benefits it provides than pay through the nose for OS X + hardware, then all the little nickel and dime utilities you need for OS X.

For what it's worth, both Adobe[1] and Microsoft[2] work on a variety of Open Source projects (for some definition of open source), which I'm sure they could convince the relevant people are worthy of funding under whatever scheme might be proposed. And if they get government money to fund their open source labs, I guess they can potentially divert more of their open source lab money into closed source projects.

All of this would depend upon the terms of which a grant is given out, though, and none of the detail has really been specified here. If something like this ever happened, don't be surprised if, by the end of it, there were clauses to either channel most of the money to corporates through some kind of absurd requirements, or to make sure that nothing being funded would directly hurt corporates.

And now that DivX is throwing its weight behind the Matroska container, MKV support should increasingly find its way on a range of non-PC devices, such as Blu-ray players, HD digital televisions and set-top boxes.

I don't know man, I think both DivX & Adobe have hidden costs even if both like you to view them as "open." I would put my money on Adobe coming through with better player/container support & marketing. On top of that, I don't know of any plans for DRM in Matroska.

So while this is great news for the people who want to put their home videos out there with software that doesn't support DRM (is the average user really going to care though?), I think that the MPAA & porn industry are going to be the deciders here (as they usually are).

My prediction: Flash 9 will become so pervasive that everyone will use that as a container instead of asking their users to download & install a DivX codec.

You're not "excluded," you are choosing not to use a de facto standard. Yes, there are de facto standards apart from the de jure ones. Life sucks. Get a helmet.

And to put more holes in your stupid, stupid whine, the Adobe SWF (Flash file) specification is available, no strings attached. (It's missing RTMP, but Gnash has reverse engineered it and published their findings.)

Actually for Flash you should take a look at these instructions which will work cross-platform.

Adobe also offers some DRM with their Adobe Acrobat / Acrobat Reader Suite

For a customer of mine, I called Adobe for a price quote for their Content Server. It's actually a suite of multiple products, of which the topic starter will need to pick several. Price range is in the 10K-20K at the very least. It was pretty difficult to get hold of a rep who knew something about this product by the way.

EMC IRM (Formerly Authentica (yes, there is a typo in the summary))

Oracle IRM (Formerly SealedMedia)

Liquid Machines

Adobe LifeCycle Rights Management

I do believe you are wrong, it is about how they've been going about policing it in the first place. By not having defended it until now, they may not have much of a defense anymore. Everyone uses Photoshopped or shopped to talk about a manipulated image, but adobe has trademark on proper use of their product PhotoShop...

Trademarks are not verbs.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

Trademarks are not nouns.

CORRECT: The image pokes fun at the Senator.
INCORRECT: The photoshop pokes fun at the Senator.

Always capitalize and use trademarks in their correct form.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.
INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.
INCORRECT: The image was Photoshopped.
INCORRECT: The image was Adobe® Photoshopped.
Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.

CORRECT: Those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images as a hobby see their work as an art form.
INCORRECT: A photoshopper sees his hobby as an art form. INCORRECT: My hobby is photoshopping.

And it continues

I see JavaFX coming to linux sooner and in a better position than silverlight and AIR.

Do you have a link to the release date for javafx for linux or solaris?

Do you have a release date for Silverlight or AIR for linux or solaris that's up to date with Windows?

So the answer is NO, you don't have a release date for javafx for linux or solaris. Until then, both silverlight and AIR are in a better position than javafx on linux.

The only reason I'm interested at all in Adobe is because they, unlike Sun, have released an SDK for linux.

I've installed AIR and the iPlayer downloader, and so far neither have really worked.

Granted this is probably because I'm using 64-bit Linux, and they don't seem to support it yet (not that I was told this at any stage of the installation process, or the website where I downloaded the installer.

To get the thing installed on 64-bit I followed these instructions, and then proceeded to the BBC website to download something. Nothing seemed to work, no download links appeared. I then followed the links to an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks that other people reported was working. This time a download link appeared, but clicking it took me to install the program again.

To figure out why it wasn't working, I ran the downloader from the command line. It was printing the following: "Unkown desktop manager((null)), only Gnome and KDE are supported". Aha... I'm using XFCE, yet it must use the inter-process communication of either one of those desktops...

Booted into Gnome, and tried again. This time it tells me that it wants libgnome-keyring.so - I realise that no preferences are savable - it must be saving prefs with the keyring. I think that's a bit odd - what's wrong with ~/.Adobe/AIR?

After installing 32-bit libraries for gnome-keyring, the thing still doesn't work, and still won't download anything.

The problem with this application, or rather with Adobe AIR, is the series of arbitrary choices the designers seem to have made. Linux is not a platform where you can assume many things - and it would have probably made more sense to pick some generic ways of getting things done (there's a reason that text-files have always been used for config!) rather than relying upon fairly specific libraries for basic tasks and then not even falling back to a sane alternative. Perhaps a 64-bit version will fix all of this, I certainly hope so!

I found this video interesting: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/nasdaq_story.html About to try out the Market Replay app myself.

At least the story could have linked to the AIR download page. Sure it's a simple URL and it auto detects your OS, but a link would have been nice instead of forcing people through wikipedia or the lame article.

Additionally, Air and Flash have some hefty licensing restrictions. From Adobe:

For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, Distributor shall not distribute any Adobe Runtime for use on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet or Tablet PC (other than Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, internet appliance or other internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtimes for use or distribution on devices see http://www.adobe.com/licensing.

So, they can call it "free" all they want, but it isn't even free-as-in-beer free.

But full support from Adobe for for Linux for Flash, Air, and PDF Reader are a big sign that the slow march of Desktop Linux is on track.

How's this for 2008 as the year of the linux desktop: Here's Adobe's page for a 64-bit flash player. Basically, it says, you must run a 32 bit browser, no 64 bits for you! Now, here's the announcement from adobe labs for the release of the alpha of the native 64 bit LINUX flash 10 player. Yes, that's right...linux actually got some badly needed mainstream software BEFORE windows and os x. I think that's just awesome! I have no idea if it was incidental or intentional or what, but thank you Adobe.

But full support from Adobe for for Linux for Flash, Air, and PDF Reader are a big sign that the slow march of Desktop Linux is on track.

How's this for 2008 as the year of the linux desktop: Here's Adobe's page for a 64-bit flash player. Basically, it says, you must run a 32 bit browser, no 64 bits for you! Now, here's the announcement from adobe labs for the release of the alpha of the native 64 bit LINUX flash 10 player. Yes, that's right...linux actually got some badly needed mainstream software BEFORE windows and os x. I think that's just awesome! I have no idea if it was incidental or intentional or what, but thank you Adobe.

64-bit flash did fix those issues. You can download the alpha version here. I've been running it on Gentoo for a few weeks without issues.

I'm pretty sure Adobe has produced absolutely no Free Software (Free as in Freedom, not free as in purchase price).

Free (as in speech) software produced by Adobe: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home

Adobe does publish open source software.

http://opensource.adobe.com/

Not that the rest of what you said isn't true.

I think it's easier to learn a language by having things you want to talk about than by forced reading. You should pick a project, then a language that lends itself to the task. Something entertaining. Perhaps a video game? Something easy. Whack a mole?

You could take pictures of all the kids (Setup a web cam, form a line, and you've got ~25 jpegs of little faces at about the same size / resolution.) Make a 2 layer stage to create the illusion of coming out of a mole hole between the foreground and background layers. Assemble the script so that every few seconds a timer signals a function to pick a random hole, position a random kids face below it, and slide the image up and down. Add a script to position a hammer over the cursor. Add a mouse down script to change the image of a hammer to one striking. Add a mouse up script to increase the players scores and cue a sound effect if they hit someone.

I would suggest AS3 in Flex Builder.

Set aside a week...
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

Flash has native blur, glow, displacement, etc. and you can also program your own effects that can be applied on images and video: check Pixel Bender

Adobe Alchemy lets you compile C/C++ code into efficient bytecode for Flash.

Doesn't handle x86 ASM directly, but IMHO C/C++ is a much better target to start with in the first place.

The Alchemy toolchain is open-sourced, as is the Tamarin-backend that it uses. (Theoretically it doesn't require all of Flash to be deployed, just Tamarin.)

You cannot redistribute Flash, or use it in a whole host of applications without licensing it from Adobe.

Huh? You can't redistribute any application without a license unless it's public domain. That's copyright. GPL is a distribution license.

As far as Adobe's Flash, they have an easy website form to obtain a standard redistribution license:
http://www.adobe.com/products/players/fpsh_distribution1.html

It's suitable for distributing the player on installation media, for distributing the player on a whole network, or for distributing with other software through a website you manage. It pretty much covers the bases for intended uses of Flash Player for an end-user.

I'll meet you half way, I agree C++ is far faster than anything I've been paid to code in. Now you come the other half of the way and maybe we'll have a discussion here where useful information is exchanged.

It won't be long till some of you "young'uns" writes a C++ to bytecode compiler together with a corresponding browser plugin/VM... The problem isn't the language, it's the fact that a browser is a terrible *OS* for anything else than small, short-lived "applications" and I really hope it doesn't go half way to being a decent one.

As for the "browsers are so architecture neutral", it's not true and you know it. Nowdays it's easier to compile and run good C++ code on a large number of platforms than it is to get even a tiny Flash or JS app (or even HTML/CSS) to behave identically on all major browsers on 3 platforms (just today I encountered this persistent bug, a major PITA). All you get is a rudimentary cross-platform UI that is terrible for serious work (you know, when every mouse click gives you network latency and hitting backspace on the wrong spot ruins your work).

Give me a cross-platform language with stable UI and native code compilation and without the design issues of C/C++ (allowing me to write all over the stack/code/memory) over "Web 2.0" any day. ;-)

There is some open source actionscript called Flex, built by adobe, which provides a ton free data visualization components that are incorporated into the flash player.

A lot of these can probably provide the sort of visualizations you're looking for, and it's only a matter of plugging in the data.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=charts_types_11.html#227719

This also comes with a lot of tools for xml parsing and binary data transfers between client and server.

Most of them don't even have a current flash version installed, its whatever came with XP which is 6 or something.

Statistics collected by Adobe prove you wrong.

re: "If Gnash is too limited, stick to the minimum version of Flash that supports the feature you need...unless you're extremely advanced, that version should be available on all major platforms."

Actually, it's most practical to go with the H.264 version of Player 9, which 90% of consumers successfully installed into their browsers within its first nine months:
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

If you're going live in December, clientside support on "major platforms" should be up above 95% by then.

Last month's Player 10, with its pixel-manipulation and P2P and all, is already used on some early-adopter sites, but will be mainstream by next summer.

The interesting thing is mobile. Adobe Flash Player is now moving to a single coding profile across devices of all form-factors... there will still be profiles of device capability, but not of runtime codebase. The goal is predictable capability across all display screens. It will take time and work to get there, but it's a good goal.

jd/adobe

Shouldn't come to any surprise.

Adobe publishes quarterly reports on market penetration for all versions of flash, so that developers can target the right version. As of September'08, Flash player 9 was on 97.7% of the computers worldwide (they include methodology and details).

Can anyone provide any kind of information regarding Silverlight penetration? MS has been begging and paying companies and devlopers to use use Silverlight, yet users prefer to go elsewhere.

Actually, they are four now...

why didn't this make it onto slashdot then???

ADOBE MAX 2008, SAN FRANCISCO -- Nov. 17, 2008 -- MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, and Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a two-year agreement in which MLB.com has selected the Adobe® Flash® Platform to deliver all of its live and on-demand video offerings beginning in 2009. In addition, MLB.com will provide a downloadable rich Internet application (RIA) built using Adobe AIR(TM), so baseball fans can access additional features outside the Web browser.

Also, you could consider porting your game to Flash. Actionscript 3 syntax is very close to Java now so porting shouldn't be as painful as porting from Java to C/C++.

If you don't want to pony up for the Flash or Flex IDEs, you can use the free Flashdevelop AS Editor/IDE + JDK + free Flex SDK combo.

You won't be able to publish for older phones with that combo tho but it should run on Flash 10 which will be running on upcoming phones (I think it was demoed on T-Mobiles G1 Android phone at Adobe Max earlier this week. Nokia and Sony-Ericsson's pretty chummy too, so expect Flash 10 to appear on future handsets ;)

Now where's our Flash for the iPhone, Apple? :P

FYI, Linux is getting native 64-bit support of FP10 before Windows and Mac. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

FlexBuilder is available for Linux... http://labs.adobe.com/

I don't see products like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc being ported to Linux, well, because Linux folk just won't buy them. If it's not free, then people complain that it costs. If it is free, then they complain that it's not open source, if it is open source, then they complain they aren't doing it right. We've seen it time and time again...

As far as competing with Microsoft, personally, I think this is the best time TO compete with them. They are in a situation where they are spread dangerously thin, don't have a working business model to move them forward in the next 5 years, and their popularity is teetering.

While I salute to new possibilities, Adobe Flash is still unusable for anyone who wants to allow Linux users to input anything other than english in their application. How about fixing http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-40 bug?

More details here: http://www.llvm.org/devmtg/2008-08/ (Look for the topic - Flash C Compiler: Compiling C code to the Adobe Flash Virtual Machine)
You post your ideas for Adobe here: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/categories.cfm?forumid=72&catid=755&entercat=y These forums are closely watched by the flash player team.

I hate Mathematica - got so confused with the funny symbols in version 1 that I haven't been back. I'm a visual sort of guy, so I'm just glad that Photoshop is better. We're at 11.

Release the source, or at least an open API/documentation/something, and then let us do the work.

You mean the specs that have just been updated and aren't under any restrictions any more?

And the source for the VM that has been available for quite a while as well?

When you're done adding a renderer and so on, you'll probably need the compiler, too.

To be fair, it lacks the old VM, which the proprietary player contains for backwards compatibility, and some closed third-party codecs.

Release the source, or at least an open API/documentation/something, and then let us do the work.

You mean the specs that have just been updated and aren't under any restrictions any more?

And the source for the VM that has been available for quite a while as well?

When you're done adding a renderer and so on, you'll probably need the compiler, too.

To be fair, it lacks the old VM, which the proprietary player contains for backwards compatibility, and some closed third-party codecs.

Release the source, or at least an open API/documentation/something, and then let us do the work.

You mean the specs that have just been updated and aren't under any restrictions any more?

And the source for the VM that has been available for quite a while as well?

When you're done adding a renderer and so on, you'll probably need the compiler, too.

To be fair, it lacks the old VM, which the proprietary player contains for backwards compatibility, and some closed third-party codecs.

You can format it to be case-sensitive, just don't try and install Adobe Creative Suite 3, or you will sadly get this message.

PDF and SWF have exactly the same status at this point. both format are free with the specifications released but still under control of adobe.

No; the SWF spec is available but only under a license agreement that says you're not allowed to use it to write your own player. That's the difference.

Err...

you can download the specs from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ and it doesn't mention any license agreement one would need to agree to beforehand. On the contrary, the page specifically says:

The SWF file format is available as an open specification to create products and technology that implement the specification.

I'd be interested to know where you found the license agreement requirement.

After 2+ years of asking Adobe to finally acknowledge that people actually use 64-bit machines- they finally got it!

Something not clear from the download site or the article- the install instructions are here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes_64bit.html

I was giddy with excitement just to be able to wipe npviewer/nspluginwrapper from my system, hopefully forever.

And- I think it says a lot (despite what others seem to feel) that Adobe chose to do this for Linux first!

GPL is not only viral, it is weaponized, so you can use it to fuck over or shut down projects and companies you don't like. I doubt that is what most people have in mind when selecting their licence, but it seems to be all the licence is used for these days.

Amazingly enough, companies can avoid malcontents shutting them down but simply following the license. It's not that difficult. And if following the terms of the GPL does present issues... use something else.

Weaponized, indeed.