I'm summarizing what I learned from the German c't computer magazine, which has tested the various new technologies like ReadyDrive and others in Vista and also tested Flashdrives and Flash memory in general. Read the current issue of this magazine for in-depth analysis.
1) Pure Flash disks have only ONE advantage over harddisks: they are less sensitive to mechanical stress. In real-life scenarios, they don't safe power, and they are most definitely not faster than 2.5 inch drives. They ARE faster than 1.8 inch ones often used in ultra-mobile PCs, so there they indeed provide a benefit. For everyone else: especially write performance sucks compared to modern 2.5 inch disks, and read performance is at most en par. True, they don't need to position any heads so random access should save time - but according to the real-world tests made by c't that benefit isn't noticeable.
2) c't testers were very suspicious about how long Flash memory could survive as HD replacement where writing happens all the time, and yes, Flash cells have a limited lifetime, one cannot write too often. That's the theory. In practice c't testers were unable to make even the cheapest Flash USB stick show any sign of memory loss even after something like 16 million write cycles, when they gave up further testing because that's many many years of real-work usage. (pg. 104 of c't 21/2007)
3) Intel TurboMemory or MS Vista SuperFetch, ReadyBoost or ReadyDrive were shown to provide no measurable benefit AT ALL.
Suspicion of Hitachi and others seems to be that the current implementation in Vista isn't quite finished and SP1 should provide an update, and second the amount of Flash memory is waaaaaay too small.
Yes. I was wrong - according to Wikipedia. But it does not change the underlying Psychology IMHO. They conclude they cannot get any improvement using other means. For a poor person that would be their own life, for an educated person it might be larger issues since they don't need to concerned with their own life (Maslov's hierarchy of needs). But however I twist it in retrospect, I was wrong;-)
I don't take offense in this statement. I *DO* take offense when such stupid bully statement gets modded up. The worst part is not that it's arrogant - I'm arrogant myself often enough. But it's stupid - and I can accept arrogance only in conjunction with intelligence. So if your intention was to get me mad - and I'm sure that's what it was rather than the deep desire to make a lasting contribution to mankind in form of a well thought-out statement - you succeeded, with the help of someone with mod points (you alone could not have done it).
The problem *I* have (so take all I say with an added "IMHO") with ANY of those strategies is that in the end they don't work. Well, of course they do and that's why they don't... what I mean is displayed (rather unscientifically) in a (60s? 70s?) movie where some kid breaks into the military super computer they had just turned over all control of their nukes to and starts a game, without knowing what kind of machine he's connected to. The end scene of that movie is that when they cannot turn that thing off they let it play tic-tac-toe and the computer finds out there is no winning strategy.
That's what game strategy tells us too: there is no winning strategy, there's ALWAYS another one that beats whatever your playing - without necessarily being better, because it's a circle and not an eternal buildup of strategy.
What I mean is that yes, you CAN continue building more and more and bigger and bigger arms and "new" strategies. In the end all you achieve is making the accidental extinction of humans as a species more likely, because the earth is somewhat limited as to how big a catastrophe is survivable. And all for what? The risk of war is too high, because it CAN'T be controlled once started. So war IS a feasible "solution" only as long as at least one of the parties involved has weapons that are too small to risk the earth itself.
On the other hand, if current trends continue, more and more players are inevitably going to acquire the ability to mass-destruct ourselves, with more and more technologies getting smaller, cheaper and more readily available. You can't eternally prevent most everyone else from getting certain chemicals, germs or Uranium.
But if you keep using strategies and thinking of an age when war was small-scale this WILL lead to catastrophe. I don't say it must, but you know... imagine 200 years from now, when even more incredible tech. is available then today. All it takes is ONE nut case, one depressed individual, rejected lover, whatever... oh my god.
I don't see it as very likely scenario - to say the least - that Japan is going to go back to WWII behavior, and I'm a very practical human being without scruples to eat the horse I'd been riding just the other day or (too many) illusions about the world....;-)
I *love* to be corrected and take no offense - it is the only way to learn after all! I'll be eternally grateful to a colleague who taught me the correct "th" because at some point he couldn't stand it any more:-) NOT to say anything is what's bad.
I'm not a native speaker and after having lived in the US for 7 years I *still* make many HORRIBLE errors - that is why I have given up learning more than one other language (Russian) at all (and without plans to learn it WELL). At least I didn't mix up "their" and "there" for a couple of years, or at least no one pointed it out to me:-)
Come on, you're joking? The US isn't threatened by Afghanistan? When was the last time you listened to Bush - but others too would probably tell you the old stories about 9/11 and how that came from that country and that was why it had to be invaded? Or what else are US soldiers doing there? Just helping out in a friendly neighborly way without any benefit for the US?
(replying to this thread in general and not so much to the parent post...)
"Stealth" does NOT mean "stealth". It means "hardER to detect", not "impossible". You still cannot fly on a straight path without knowing the enemy defenses at all. You have to know where the enemy radar is and keep that in mind when planning the flight path of the "stealth" aircraft. The technology provides a way to find holes in the defenses, it doesn't provide you with invincibility or real "stealth". The other part of finding such holes is intelligence, see above, like the actual location of the radar sites you want to get around...
Your comment sounded great and I would have given a mod point had I not already posted to this thread - until I got to the last sentence, which doesn't make sense (to me) whatsoever...
Wrong. The best defense is to make sure the other guy actually has something to loose.
That means the best defense is to make sure your enemy is rich - because THEN he/they WILL fear airstrikes. The poorer they are the less they fear your attack, because it's only the life - a miserable one - which they've to loose. It's *mostly* the poor guys who're recruited as suicide bombers...
So how does all of this expensive and incredible technology that only the US can (and wants to) afford help you in Afgnanistan and Iraq?
Calm down please. I know tech. is impressive. I LOVED my time in the (German) army. The best pictures I keep in my head are from a group battle tank attack at night, really nice. Given the choice I'd prefer not to see such a display again, thinking about the 1700 DM (the price now in Euro is probably higher) spent on every single shot.
Couldn't we build an impressive space ship instead of impressive weaponry that's only useful against RICH countries anyway, since the poor fight with other means and don't care about destroyed infrastructure nearly as much as some contry that actually got something to loose?
Like what happens so many times - I took your posting as a starting point for my reply but wanted to make a point not directly pointed at it at all, but more general. Just like tiny pieces of dirt in the atmosphere serve as condensation points for water:-) I have no quarrel with your statement, I should have made that clear;-(
I forgot to mention that I like being able to use various pixel based content like videos or images in different resolutions and handled independently of one another, and vector based content. Plus, the link between everything is loose - made by Flash code (even if you produce an animation in the Flash authoring environment it is saved as code in the end).
If I wanted to produce one big (learning) video that would not matter, right, but even there I have an argument to keep the various content pieces separate: To put vector content into a video AND then use a highly compressing video codec *greatly* reduces quality. By keeping vectors as vectors I get the perfect quality on any device.
Second, for MY project I like to keep things seperate, because in the end I would like to have a platform for shared development of content. So the individual pieces like videos, audio, images, small animations, small quizes, etc., stay separate and can be individually reused in other contexts. My course player takes a behavior description of what/when/where to display the various pieces as one piece of learning content, keeping flexibility (it is possible to provide several versions of the same course simply by changing the behavior description, instead of having to recompile (into a monolithic video) the whole thing) and the greatest quality for each piece (a video is a given resolution and that's it for all times)!
I would like to add my opinion this time. Some time ago I started a new idea: building *multimedia* learning content. Sounds easy enough, only that I had some more goals. Among them was to build a community-based platform - as in "OWNED by the community", not a "web 2.0" startup.
By the way, the current state is at http://letexa.com/ - I'm giving the URL because you can see what I'm going to talk about next in real-life examples.
So, I tried with HTML/Javascript. I always knew I had to use Flash vor the Video and/or Audio in any case. See the Change-Blog of the site for how it went. I ended up with an all-Flash solution.
BREAK - for those asking me why I want video/audio and that this is a huge waste: I want MULTIMEDIA, as I already said... yes, I add closed captioning but I'm iin the "MM" business. I don't want to join a discussion "everything should be text", you can sell your TV and radio if you like (I don't have a TV at home at all) and go all-newspaper if you like. I *like* producing MM content.
So how can I produce content for worldwide delivery, that I can distribute not only on the web but as standalone software too? Produce Videos, like it's done so often? No way. I want to add interactivity (I admit to having just two interactive examples on my page, of the few that are there in the first place, and only one of them is actually *really* interactive content and not just "if you click here another video starts"),.avi.mp4 or whatever don't help at all. Also, other advantages of Flash:
- It scales. Not just the vector contents, the pixel-contents scales too! That sounds strange, but what I mean is this: You can add pictures (and videos) to Flash that have way more pixels than needed at the chosen resolution. This is NOT useless, because if the user resizes the viewer (which you as the author have to allow in the code and which youtube and co don't do) the additional pixels are used!
- When I create multimedia content and not a technical manual or a news article I like being able to position all content at exact places and sizes (and have them scale all together, see above). Flash does that. To do the same in HTML I need to add LOTS of Javascript and recalculate positions, add hidden divs for resizing detection, etc. HTML was made for Universities and tech. TEXT articles/content, and trying to create all kinds of stuff like user interfaces with it is just a huge horrible hack. The JS libraries that exist are fine (YUI is my choice, etxjs(.com) seems great too (originally it was a YUI extension) but is for web-based apps only - while YUI takes care of "normal" websites too). However, the complexity is enormous, and has anyone ever thought about where all those GIGA(!)-hertz are going? I used to have a 486DX33 and that machine was FAST! Do we really get THAT much more today for all the additional power of PCs, or isn't it true most power is needed to power the many many many code and library layers?
- So to come back to Flash, what I also like about it that the Player is pretty lean compared to what it does.
- the integration Javascript-Flash (Actionsccript) is VERY good (and Actionscript is ECMA script like Javascript, but they try to hide the prototypipcal inheritance and make it appear to be a "classical" inheritance language... oh well.
- What is BAD about Flash: Adobe is a BIG company and VERY bad at reacting to individual problems. Instead of bugfixes you get a completely new release 8and have to pay them again, big time - I had to purchase Creative Suites 1, 2 and 3 so far... but I must admit I'm quite happy with it overall)
So to finish my long but somewhat confused comment (my problem is I always start way too may thoughts and then get lost - don't tell me you didn't notice:-) ), for *my* problem of producing multimedia content I still cannot think of anything else but Flash! I obviously *have* to use "multimedia", and webbrowsers don't do
I mean free as in freedom, although the few things there are free as in beer too right now.
I started a project to build multimedia learning content. I'm actually overreaching, as you can see when reading the "About" section... anyway, here's the link: http://letexa.com/
Not sure I want any comments, there are only few courses right now and I think I have to create some more stuff for others to see what I truly want. The idea is to jointly create multimedia content, so far so good, but where it gets a little crazy is that I wish I could build an actual BUSINESS the open source way. That means we don't just produce content but also sell it, and also build (and sell, by maintaining it) a platform for other people to build and sell their content. Well, I do feel ready to get started and could use serious help, and I know it would work (if the ambitious goal doesn't one can always go back to less ambitious ones easily), but I don't feel equally ready presenting my case in short words and easy to understand terms;-)
Anyway, one could argue that self-extinction movement has already been successful - many times over. Throughout all time those creatures who didn't reproduce have been extinguishing themselves, always and all the time.
Therefore, all those who are left who do value life and reproduction, and those genetic variations who don't continue to take themselves out of the genetic pool. That means this movement, while successful from one point of view (they continually succeed with themselves), can by definition never be globally successful, unless they manage to destroy the whole planet to prevent all who disagree and love life and reproduction from doing so. Of course, this doesn't sound very logical (killing someone in order to save them)...
Last point, to live or not is not a question of right/wrong, it's a question of choice, just as if someone likes vanilla ice cream and loathes chocolate or vice versa. So I'm all for continuing the way we've done throughout all history: those who don't want to live, please go ahead, and those who do, please do so too - and all without trying to convince each other from your own point of view, if possible, because that can be a little aggravating to have to endure it. Thanks.
... and by the way, the YUI is at version 2.2.2. Prototype is 1.5.1. I don't know about current versions of the others, but it seems to me that this review is VERY OLD and hardly newsworthy!
Object Oriented concepts we take for granted in Java (interfaces, abstract classes,
private methods, final assignments, etc.) are not enforceable in vanilla Javascript.
Maybe you should have a look at Douglas Crockfords excellent courses on Javascript and the DOM at http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/
After viewing his presentations I decided to use the Yahoo library (YUI) without having actually tried it (by now I have) - simply because of the power of the presentations (which are all about JS, not the YUI in particular). I've been programming with Javascript on and off for a decade, but after Crockford I knew I never knew a thing about Javascript.
Anyone who claims JS doesn't have powerful object orientation should go and see the Crockford videos!
A support contract is useless if you don't get helped! I have seen this myself several times (see my other post for why I think I'm "qualified" to count), and the often-used (here on./ especially) argument "one can get support from IBM/Oracle/Novell/RedHat/etc. for Linux" is STUPID. Okay that's too strong, let's just say not well thought-through, or it comes from people with little real-world experience.
Are you just quoting marketing material, or have you ever worked on the customer or on the support side of such "enterprise level support agreements"? If yes, there's a very good chance you experienced the frustration of either not getting help or not being able to provide it - support contract or not, solutions don't magically appear just because your waving a piece of paper. Someone has to do the actual work and DELIVER on the promise. That is A LOT harder than designing and making those contracts.
Of course, newspapers, magazines, and discussion websites like./ are going to concentrate on the easier things like saying "but there is support!" instead of looking at the hard details of reality.
> If there system was unstable it was probably their system design and not the OS.
I don't see why a moderator has the gust to mod this to "insightful". This is one lousy *opinion* sentence, and nothing shows any special "insight" that its author might have meant.
I certainly don't blame the author for using his free speech rights, I question the *moderator* about his/her motives for the moderation.
Anyway...
Having worked for one of the major Linux vendors for 5 years in a responsible "enterprise apps position" (I was repsonsible for a well-known database vendors apps on this Linux vendors platform, and worked at that database vendors site since 1999 - basically almost since they first first released a Linux version), I can attest to the difficulty in ensuring that such a stack (db, Linux, hardware and everything in between, like the many different drivers) works reliably not just "most of the time" but "always".
Okay, it's clear that "always" is not a realistic goal for anyone, but then at least the "enterprise level support" should be able to sort it out, especially when a large customer has an issue, and especially when those issues are not that hard to reproduce? Well turned out - and reading the old mailinglists I once created for this topic when I was still employed I see not much has changed - that that assumption (or hope?) wasn't always true. Sometimes some customers were left in the cold. Oh, and that's not just my old employer, it's true for all Linux vendors - and for others too, because sometimes the complexity is just too high. Oh no, not the complexity of the one case in question, the complexity about managing all those little and larger many problems that show up on ones desk every single day, leaving no time to spend too much time on any one of them... so yes, proprietary vendors have an advantage, since there's simply MUCH less hardware, drivers, software combinations.
Anyway, to come back to my point, as a real insider (my claim, at least I *was* one, not any more since 2004) when seeing this story immediately I understood their position because I had seen it before, frustrated not to be able to help such customers (who used my old employers Linux). Even today I see mailinglist messages from (paying) customers with kernel crashes, and NO ONE is able (or tries?) to help them. (Of course, they opened support tickets with the database and the Linux vendor and didn't try to use the mailinglist as "enterprice level support hotline", it's just they never got anywhere).
So sure, when it works it's great to have Linux, but please leave those customers who decide they've had enough because in THEIR case it didn't work alone and don't try to be a smarta... and repeat stupid sentences like the one quoted above without knowing ANYTHING about the specific case.
Slashdot Mirror
What is ReadyDrive:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/performance.mspx
I'm summarizing what I learned from the German c't computer magazine, which has tested the various new technologies like ReadyDrive and others in Vista and also tested Flashdrives and Flash memory in general. Read the current issue of this magazine for in-depth analysis.
1) Pure Flash disks have only ONE advantage over harddisks: they are less sensitive to mechanical stress. In real-life scenarios, they don't safe power, and they are most definitely not faster than 2.5 inch drives. They ARE faster than 1.8 inch ones often used in ultra-mobile PCs, so there they indeed provide a benefit. For everyone else: especially write performance sucks compared to modern 2.5 inch disks, and read performance is at most en par. True, they don't need to position any heads so random access should save time - but according to the real-world tests made by c't that benefit isn't noticeable.
2) c't testers were very suspicious about how long Flash memory could survive as HD replacement where writing happens all the time, and yes, Flash cells have a limited lifetime, one cannot write too often. That's the theory. In practice c't testers were unable to make even the cheapest Flash USB stick show any sign of memory loss even after something like 16 million write cycles, when they gave up further testing because that's many many years of real-work usage. (pg. 104 of c't 21/2007)
3) Intel TurboMemory or MS Vista SuperFetch, ReadyBoost or ReadyDrive were shown to provide no measurable benefit AT ALL.
Suspicion of Hitachi and others seems to be that the current implementation in Vista isn't quite finished and SP1 should provide an update, and second the amount of Flash memory is waaaaaay too small.
Original article (German): http://www.heise.de/ct/07/21/100/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bomb#Profile_of_a_bomber
;-)
Yes. I was wrong - according to Wikipedia. But it does not change the underlying Psychology IMHO. They conclude they cannot get any improvement using other means. For a poor person that would be their own life, for an educated person it might be larger issues since they don't need to concerned with their own life (Maslov's hierarchy of needs). But however I twist it in retrospect, I was wrong
I don't take offense in this statement.
I *DO* take offense when such stupid bully statement gets modded up. The worst part is not that it's arrogant - I'm arrogant myself often enough. But it's stupid - and I can accept arrogance only in conjunction with intelligence. So if your intention was to get me mad - and I'm sure that's what it was rather than the deep desire to make a lasting contribution to mankind in form of a well thought-out statement - you succeeded, with the help of someone with mod points (you alone could not have done it).
The problem *I* have (so take all I say with an added "IMHO") with ANY of those strategies is that in the end they don't work. Well, of course they do and that's why they don't... what I mean is displayed (rather unscientifically) in a (60s? 70s?) movie where some kid breaks into the military super computer they had just turned over all control of their nukes to and starts a game, without knowing what kind of machine he's connected to. The end scene of that movie is that when they cannot turn that thing off they let it play tic-tac-toe and the computer finds out there is no winning strategy.
That's what game strategy tells us too: there is no winning strategy, there's ALWAYS another one that beats whatever your playing - without necessarily being better, because it's a circle and not an eternal buildup of strategy.
What I mean is that yes, you CAN continue building more and more and bigger and bigger arms and "new" strategies. In the end all you achieve is making the accidental extinction of humans as a species more likely, because the earth is somewhat limited as to how big a catastrophe is survivable. And all for what? The risk of war is too high, because it CAN'T be controlled once started. So war IS a feasible "solution" only as long as at least one of the parties involved has weapons that are too small to risk the earth itself.
On the other hand, if current trends continue, more and more players are inevitably going to acquire the ability to mass-destruct ourselves, with more and more technologies getting smaller, cheaper and more readily available. You can't eternally prevent most everyone else from getting certain chemicals, germs or Uranium.
But if you keep using strategies and thinking of an age when war was small-scale this WILL lead to catastrophe. I don't say it must, but you know... imagine 200 years from now, when even more incredible tech. is available then today. All it takes is ONE nut case, one depressed individual, rejected lover, whatever... oh my god.
I don't see it as very likely scenario - to say the least - that Japan is going to go back to WWII behavior, and I'm a very practical human being without scruples to eat the horse I'd been riding just the other day or (too many) illusions about the world.... ;-)
I *love* to be corrected and take no offense - it is the only way to learn after all! I'll be eternally grateful to a colleague who taught me the correct "th" because at some point he couldn't stand it any more :-) NOT to say anything is what's bad.
I'm not a native speaker and after having lived in the US for 7 years I *still* make many HORRIBLE errors - that is why I have given up learning more than one other language (Russian) at all (and without plans to learn it WELL). At least I didn't mix up "their" and "there" for a couple of years, or at least no one pointed it out to me :-)
Come on, you're joking? The US isn't threatened by Afghanistan? When was the last time you listened to Bush - but others too would probably tell you the old stories about 9/11 and how that came from that country and that was why it had to be invaded? Or what else are US soldiers doing there? Just helping out in a friendly neighborly way without any benefit for the US?
(replying to this thread in general and not so much to the parent post...)
"Stealth" does NOT mean "stealth". It means "hardER to detect", not "impossible". You still cannot fly on a straight path without knowing the enemy defenses at all. You have to know where the enemy radar is and keep that in mind when planning the flight path of the "stealth" aircraft. The technology provides a way to find holes in the defenses, it doesn't provide you with invincibility or real "stealth". The other part of finding such holes is intelligence, see above, like the actual location of the radar sites you want to get around...
Your comment sounded great and I would have given a mod point had I not already posted to this thread - until I got to the last sentence, which doesn't make sense (to me) whatsoever...
> ...fear airstrikes...
make that "fear war"
Wrong. The best defense is to make sure the other guy actually has something to loose.
That means the best defense is to make sure your enemy is rich - because THEN he/they WILL fear airstrikes. The poorer they are the less they fear your attack, because it's only the life - a miserable one - which they've to loose. It's *mostly* the poor guys who're recruited as suicide bombers...
So how does all of this expensive and incredible technology that only the US can (and wants to) afford help you in Afgnanistan and Iraq?
Calm down please. I know tech. is impressive. I LOVED my time in the (German) army. The best pictures I keep in my head are from a group battle tank attack at night, really nice. Given the choice I'd prefer not to see such a display again, thinking about the 1700 DM (the price now in Euro is probably higher) spent on every single shot.
Couldn't we build an impressive space ship instead of impressive weaponry that's only useful against RICH countries anyway, since the poor fight with other means and don't care about destroyed infrastructure nearly as much as some contry that actually got something to loose?
Slightly off- but still right on-topic... and I'm promoting my own project (whenever appropriate and here it is IMHO).
http://letexa.com/
There isn't much, but a few first impressions of 3-7 minute multimedia courses. Working on more...
Like what happens so many times - I took your posting as a starting point for my reply but wanted to make a point not directly pointed at it at all, but more general. Just like tiny pieces of dirt in the atmosphere serve as condensation points for water :-) I have no quarrel with your statement, I should have made that clear ;-(
I forgot to mention that I like being able to use various pixel based content like videos or images in different resolutions and handled independently of one another, and vector based content. Plus, the link between everything is loose - made by Flash code (even if you produce an animation in the Flash authoring environment it is saved as code in the end).
If I wanted to produce one big (learning) video that would not matter, right, but even there I have an argument to keep the various content pieces separate: To put vector content into a video AND then use a highly compressing video codec *greatly* reduces quality. By keeping vectors as vectors I get the perfect quality on any device.
Second, for MY project I like to keep things seperate, because in the end I would like to have a platform for shared development of content. So the individual pieces like videos, audio, images, small animations, small quizes, etc., stay separate and can be individually reused in other contexts. My course player takes a behavior description of what/when/where to display the various pieces as one piece of learning content, keeping flexibility (it is possible to provide several versions of the same course simply by changing the behavior description, instead of having to recompile (into a monolithic video) the whole thing) and the greatest quality for each piece (a video is a given resolution and that's it for all times)!
Michael
Hi,
.avi .mp4 or whatever don't help at all. Also, other advantages of Flash:
:-) ), for *my* problem of producing multimedia content I still cannot think of anything else but Flash! I obviously *have* to use "multimedia", and webbrowsers don't do
I would like to add my opinion this time. Some time ago I started a new idea: building *multimedia* learning content. Sounds easy enough, only that I had some more goals. Among them was to build a community-based platform - as in "OWNED by the community", not a "web 2.0" startup.
By the way, the current state is at http://letexa.com/ - I'm giving the URL because you can see what I'm going to talk about next in real-life examples.
So, I tried with HTML/Javascript. I always knew I had to use Flash vor the Video and/or Audio in any case. See the Change-Blog of the site for how it went. I ended up with an all-Flash solution.
BREAK - for those asking me why I want video/audio and that this is a huge waste: I want MULTIMEDIA, as I already said... yes, I add closed captioning but I'm iin the "MM" business. I don't want to join a discussion "everything should be text", you can sell your TV and radio if you like (I don't have a TV at home at all) and go all-newspaper if you like. I *like* producing MM content.
So how can I produce content for worldwide delivery, that I can distribute not only on the web but as standalone software too? Produce Videos, like it's done so often? No way. I want to add interactivity (I admit to having just two interactive examples on my page, of the few that are there in the first place, and only one of them is actually *really* interactive content and not just "if you click here another video starts"),
- It scales. Not just the vector contents, the pixel-contents scales too! That sounds strange, but what I mean is this: You can add pictures (and videos) to Flash that have way more pixels than needed at the chosen resolution. This is NOT useless, because if the user resizes the viewer (which you as the author have to allow in the code and which youtube and co don't do) the additional pixels are used!
- When I create multimedia content and not a technical manual or a news article I like being able to position all content at exact places and sizes (and have them scale all together, see above). Flash does that. To do the same in HTML I need to add LOTS of Javascript and recalculate positions, add hidden divs for resizing detection, etc. HTML was made for Universities and tech. TEXT articles/content, and trying to create all kinds of stuff like user interfaces with it is just a huge horrible hack. The JS libraries that exist are fine (YUI is my choice, etxjs(.com) seems great too (originally it was a YUI extension) but is for web-based apps only - while YUI takes care of "normal" websites too). However, the complexity is enormous, and has anyone ever thought about where all those GIGA(!)-hertz are going? I used to have a 486DX33 and that machine was FAST! Do we really get THAT much more today for all the additional power of PCs, or isn't it true most power is needed to power the many many many code and library layers?
- So to come back to Flash, what I also like about it that the Player is pretty lean compared to what it does.
- the integration Javascript-Flash (Actionsccript) is VERY good (and Actionscript is ECMA script like Javascript, but they try to hide the prototypipcal inheritance and make it appear to be a "classical" inheritance language... oh well.
- What is BAD about Flash: Adobe is a BIG company and VERY bad at reacting to individual problems. Instead of bugfixes you get a completely new release 8and have to pay them again, big time - I had to purchase Creative Suites 1, 2 and 3 so far... but I must admit I'm quite happy with it overall)
So to finish my long but somewhat confused comment (my problem is I always start way too may thoughts and then get lost - don't tell me you didn't notice
By doing this you use CSS for content rather than style! What a great "solution" - count me out.
I mean free as in freedom, although the few things there are free as in beer too right now.
;-)
I started a project to build multimedia learning content. I'm actually overreaching, as you can see when reading the "About" section... anyway, here's the link: http://letexa.com/
Not sure I want any comments, there are only few courses right now and I think I have to create some more stuff for others to see what I truly want. The idea is to jointly create multimedia content, so far so good, but where it gets a little crazy is that I wish I could build an actual BUSINESS the open source way. That means we don't just produce content but also sell it, and also build (and sell, by maintaining it) a platform for other people to build and sell their content. Well, I do feel ready to get started and could use serious help, and I know it would work (if the ambitious goal doesn't one can always go back to less ambitious ones easily), but I don't feel equally ready presenting my case in short words and easy to understand terms
Excuse me - save the planet for WHOM?
Anyway, one could argue that self-extinction movement has already been successful - many times over. Throughout all time those creatures who didn't reproduce have been extinguishing themselves, always and all the time.
Therefore, all those who are left who do value life and reproduction, and those genetic variations who don't continue to take themselves out of the genetic pool. That means this movement, while successful from one point of view (they continually succeed with themselves), can by definition never be globally successful, unless they manage to destroy the whole planet to prevent all who disagree and love life and reproduction from doing so. Of course, this doesn't sound very logical (killing someone in order to save them)...
Last point, to live or not is not a question of right/wrong, it's a question of choice, just as if someone likes vanilla ice cream and loathes chocolate or vice versa. So I'm all for continuing the way we've done throughout all history: those who don't want to live, please go ahead, and those who do, please do so too - and all without trying to convince each other from your own point of view, if possible, because that can be a little aggravating to have to endure it. Thanks.
... and by the way, the YUI is at version 2.2.2. Prototype is 1.5.1. I don't know about current versions of the others, but it seems to me that this review is VERY OLD and hardly newsworthy!
Also see my reply http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=232747&c id=18926099
./ especially) argument "one can get support from IBM/Oracle/Novell/RedHat/etc. for Linux" is STUPID. Okay that's too strong, let's just say not well thought-through, or it comes from people with little real-world experience.
./ are going to concentrate on the easier things like saying "but there is support!" instead of looking at the hard details of reality.
A support contract is useless if you don't get helped! I have seen this myself several times (see my other post for why I think I'm "qualified" to count), and the often-used (here on
Are you just quoting marketing material, or have you ever worked on the customer or on the support side of such "enterprise level support agreements"? If yes, there's a very good chance you experienced the frustration of either not getting help or not being able to provide it - support contract or not, solutions don't magically appear just because your waving a piece of paper. Someone has to do the actual work and DELIVER on the promise. That is A LOT harder than designing and making those contracts.
Of course, newspapers, magazines, and discussion websites like
> If there system was unstable it was probably their system design and not the OS.
I don't see why a moderator has the gust to mod this to "insightful". This is one lousy *opinion* sentence, and nothing shows any special "insight" that its author might have meant.
I certainly don't blame the author for using his free speech rights, I question the *moderator* about his/her motives for the moderation.
Anyway...
Having worked for one of the major Linux vendors for 5 years in a responsible "enterprise apps position" (I was repsonsible for a well-known database vendors apps on this Linux vendors platform, and worked at that database vendors site since 1999 - basically almost since they first first released a Linux version), I can attest to the difficulty in ensuring that such a stack (db, Linux, hardware and everything in between, like the many different drivers) works reliably not just "most of the time" but "always".
Okay, it's clear that "always" is not a realistic goal for anyone, but then at least the "enterprise level support" should be able to sort it out, especially when a large customer has an issue, and especially when those issues are not that hard to reproduce? Well turned out - and reading the old mailinglists I once created for this topic when I was still employed I see not much has changed - that that assumption (or hope?) wasn't always true. Sometimes some customers were left in the cold. Oh, and that's not just my old employer, it's true for all Linux vendors - and for others too, because sometimes the complexity is just too high. Oh no, not the complexity of the one case in question, the complexity about managing all those little and larger many problems that show up on ones desk every single day, leaving no time to spend too much time on any one of them... so yes, proprietary vendors have an advantage, since there's simply MUCH less hardware, drivers, software combinations.
Anyway, to come back to my point, as a real insider (my claim, at least I *was* one, not any more since 2004) when seeing this story immediately I understood their position because I had seen it before, frustrated not to be able to help such customers (who used my old employers Linux). Even today I see mailinglist messages from (paying) customers with kernel crashes, and NO ONE is able (or tries?) to help them. (Of course, they opened support tickets with the database and the Linux vendor and didn't try to use the mailinglist as "enterprice level support hotline", it's just they never got anywhere).
So sure, when it works it's great to have Linux, but please leave those customers who decide they've had enough because in THEIR case it didn't work alone and don't try to be a smarta... and repeat stupid sentences like the one quoted above without knowing ANYTHING about the specific case.
Thanks.
Here is the link to the original Spiegel article:, 00.html
g econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de% 2Fnetzwelt%2Ftech%2F0%2C1518%2C452899%2C00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,452899
Here is a link to read the *babelfish-translated* version of the above link:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pa