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Wow, you sure have a passion in hating Flash.

First of all, the article is, in typical slashdot manner, not just misleading, but plain wrong. Laptops are PCs, not embedded devices, so you're not prohibited in using Flash on them. You may dislike MM, but they are not stupid (unlike a part of the crowd)

Second, Flash does not suck resources unless there's heavy animation involved. It certainly doesn't use huge amounts of RAM.

Third, the parent poster uses the lowest form of FUD: he's lying. By default, a flash movie does NOT have access to microphone or webcam - you have to explicitly enable this, and this is a per-site setting. I won't even discuss the cookie nonsense.

Fourth, it's proprietary, because MM wants to stay in control, but the specs are readily available, as is the source code of the player.
There is nothing to stop you from making your own Flash content generator or player. Have a look at OSFlash.org for a list of Flash-related Open Source projects.

Finally, whether you like it or not, Flash is the best way to create modern web applications, a lot easier than AJAX, more widespread than XUL.

As to SVG standard, read and weep: SVG Rendering Comparison. Also, have you seen Adobe's SVG plugin for example? It makes Acrobat look small and snappy in comparison. It will take at least 5 more years until you'll be able to use SVG across browsers and platforms.

And, come on, this is Slashdot, you may hate flash, but can you resist the girls of Virtual Bartender? :-) Cheers!

Wow, a hot webcam chick! But the subservient bartender is hotter, and serves beer!

I need one of these caps. Typing commands to this chick just ruins the moment.

I would think that beer, remote controls and la-z-boy could claim prior art pretty easily.

In order not to recieve spam on my primary account, I registered for some accounts to use whenever I had to give an email to a questionable entity. In order to support these free accounts, they tell you in advance that they're sponsors will send you emails. Some example of these are yourmom.com, beer.com, and rock.com.

In Other news today Molson and Labbat both changed long standing policies and decided to give away their recipes in every two-fer purchased

Canadian Geeks everywhere cheered Free.. as in Beer

Beer 3.2 is still a beta, and will be released when it's content reaches version 5.0.

In the long-standing tradition of Microsoft code-naming upcoming software after city names, rumour has it that Beer 3.2 and 5.0 are code named "Milwaukee" and "Montreal", respectively.

Among other features, such as an improved product image, Beer 5.0 will eliminate bugs such as "tastes like sh*t".

Beer 5.0 is also much more user friendly, allowing users with as much as three years less experience to legally use the product.

S

As a proud Canadian (in the original, true, and untrademarked sense) I find Molson's exclusive claim to the word "Canadian" especially ironic when they don't even seem to own the rights to canadian.com or canadian.ca.

Of course, the fact that the apparent technical error (Hex garbage like %2%2 showing up in the registrar's file) played such an important part of this case makes the decision extend beyond IP ownership issues by holding registrants liable for mistakes by their registrars while also raising concern about ICANN's lack of technical competence. Molson deliberately played up this angle to the "judge" by doing a business name search for %2%2 and proposing that since any such business (obviously) doesn't exist, the original owner must be a cybersquatter - even though the registrar seems to admit to the mistake with their database.

I will be actively protesting this decision by drinking my share of some real (although sadly, no longer Canadian owned) Canadian beer along with some pints from our many fine Canadian microbreweries.