Lewis was actually rolling around the Emerging Technologies area of SIGGRAPH this year and I got to talk quite a bit with some of the folks that were following him around to make sure he didn't get into any trouble and explain how it worked. (Which is good, because it's just this big red column looking thing and doesn't look particularly friendly)
The photos it "composed" were actually quite good as it would use the rule of thirds when trying to set up a photo. The only real problems I saw with it from a tech standpoint was that the lighting in that area of the convention center was a bit yellow so their white balance was off and the robot had the embarasing habit of totally ignoring anyone with very dark skin. At the time I was talking to a student from a local school who was there who happend to be black and we let the robot take a few pictures of us... when we went to look at the pics every single one of her was cut off as she was basically being ignored as "background".
The other problem were the batteries - I saw them change the batteries on the 'bot once and there were a *LOT* of what appeared to be very heavy lead -based batteries - they looked like motorcycle batteries, but I'm not sure. Apparently the bot lasts for a few hours on a single charge, but then you have to swap out all of its batteries (I think there were at least 5 of them)
Just to help keep this clear, because some people *still* don't get it...
Flash is Flash. Just Flash, that's it. The most recent version of the authoring tool is Flash MX and the most recent version of the plugin is Flash 6.
Shockwave is the 'net export version of an app made with Director - an entirely different product.
Shockwave games/files as a whole tend to be larger and more bloated than Flash movies because Flash is vector based rather than raster based like Director.
Flash movies aren't automatically big/slow/ugly - it all depends on the skill of the developer. Most of the Flash stuff that I do comes in at under 40k.
If you want specifics - I've had the machine 2 years. I've had to wipe it a total of 5 times. So thats once every 4-6 months. I've been running OS X for well over 8 months now and I haven't run into any issues. I'm running Apache, PostreSQL, NFS, SSHD, Tomcat, etc. (so I'm sure the services add up well beyond 30) and yes, I'm running the entire MX suite (Flash, Dreamweaver, Firewords) the Office X suite. It's real code and it's real stable - I just can't say that for the PC.
I agree - I loved IRIX - too bad it was swiss cheese security wise.
As for Windows, yes with 2000 things got a lot better - but it's still not there. You are right about the garbage-in, garbage-out argument, but I also don't know what magical world you live in eitehr. I am typing this on a Dell laptop which was, a few years back top of the line (Inspiron 7500). Other than weighting way too much it's a good, solid machine - but I've had to wipe win2k twice now because of growing instabilities. I don't install junk hardware or software for that matter - I mainly use Outlook, Editplus, Flash, PuTTy and Word. However after a few months the whole system starts to feel slow and explorer starts dying and locking up left and right. I have never had eitehr happen on my Mac at home, not once.
A bit problem is that the number of apps really doesn't make a huge difference to me. The quality of the apps that I have does. Most open source apps have some really rough edges that make working with them a real pain. This brings up another point actually - usability - something that Apple has really done right in OSX. I had never used it before and was immediately able to start working with it. Literally in minutes I had found the app I needed and was comfortably working in it (OmniGraffle - a really nice chart drawing app)
One of my best friends just got his degree in HCI from UMich and he and I have spent a lot of time discussing the usability of OSs and both of us agree that until open source OSs start to really look at usability - real world usability not geek usability - their OSs will only grace the desktops of geeks. Even as a geek who *wanted* to like Linux as a desktop though I couldn't - it was just simply too unpolished.
When it gets down it, to be honest, I don't mind paying more for exactly what I want - a stable OS that lets me run my required business apps hand in hand with my loved unix apps. Apple will have my business for some time to come.
Sounds like a really old powerbook - not exactly a great comparison. Besides, I hate OS9 with a passion (I wan't a mac user until OSX)
As for the apps not working together, I've had issue with the damn clipboard in Linux not working between apps (no, I can't remember exactly what apps they were - it's been over a year since I ditched Linux back to just being a server OS)
As for the hardware being expensive - that's really *not* the case. Yes the initial cost is higher, but Macs are cheaper to own. This is fact - I don't have the URL of the study about this handy, but do a google search and I'm sure you will pull it up.
Apparently you haven't *used* a Mac. I've been trying literally for *years* to move to Linux as my primary desktop OS and it just is not there. Period. Apps don't work together - it's aweful.
I still use Linux and other *nices as my server OSs (that's not changing - ever) but on my desktop OSX is soon going to rule to roost. I've bought my last PC.
Seriously, *try* a mac. Try to do everyday things - it just works - not all the time granted, but most of the time - which is a huge improvement over every other OS out there.
I found out about Sampo players thanks to a post in another story and I have to pass on the love...
I've used Apex players and frankly, they are trash. Spend a bit more and get an easily hacked player that has a lot more features and is a *lot* better built... a Sampo!
There is one particularly cool player they seem to like there that has a CF slot in it - and you can swap out that slot for a IDE hard drive if you'd like (to play back MPEGs, MP3s or JPEGS!) I didn't need that so I got the DVE661 for all of $160 pre-moded! (Gene Callahan rules! - see the pricing page on Area 450s site, he premod's players and sends them to you quite cheap!)
"To what, I ask? How should they update it? and where else are they going to get their revenue?"
I don't really care. That's their business not mine.
"paid for by these entertainment co's, but everyone's complaining that they're trying to make a buck."
No, more like $12 bucks. It costs pennies on the dollar to make a CD and the actual artist gets a few more pennies. It's all a very simple concept known as price fixing, which happens to be illegal.
"and don't give me that "they're so rich it doens't matter" crap, this is capitalism, not charity"
The problem is that it *isn't* capitalism when the rich can write the laws. (which you know is the case unless you are deluding yourself)
"Or even worse, forcing production companies and studios out of business so that it then narrows who is producing content. Which as we all know would suck."
No, it wouldn't. Suddenly content would matter again... what a concept.
Hmmm... so Flash is a bad evil tool of the devil (as spouted here at Slashdot) but when the EFF uses it, no problem? Come on.
The toon simply proves the point that the SWF format is the best way to do such cartoons and interactivity on the web. Why won't the open source community embrace it and make a good GUI editor for it? While cool and all, I'm simply not able to make such a cartoon with free software. Unless the EFF is hiding some cool new tool from us they are using some non-free proprietary software to make that SWF, period.
Yes, I have thought about some great ways of using this technology and I'll be speaking about them with another developer at SIGGRAPH this year.:-) (No, I'm not kidding)
First off if you are concerned about Flash security, read the whitepaper about it before spouting off about it: http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/flash/whi tepap ers/security.pdf
Everything is set to deny by default. The plugin can see your mic and camera because its on your computer! It can't send that information unless you give it permission to. Again, read the security white paper.
The new camera and mic abilities of Flash allow you to do some really powerful things that you simply can't do any other way. In fact there was a story about someone trying to build custom web conferencing software last week and I told them to wait a couple months for the server that uses these features of the Flash plugin... I was modded up to 4!
This kind of thing is going to push the web to new places. Technology is driven by innovation which later turn into standards, not the other way around.
I've been hearing about some new technology from Macromedia that might make your life a *lot* easier. Apparently the Flash 6 plugin supports hooking into both webcams and mics (after the user OKs it) as well as special socket-based connections to a new piece of server software codenamed TinCan. In addition they've talked about the server supporting shared objects as well.
From what it seems you're able to put code on both the client and server and both are based on ECMAscript. This would let you do a lot more than nearly every other solution I've ever seen. I don't know when the server is supposed to be released, but if you check up on the recent interviews with MMs CTO Jeremy Allaire on C|Net or The Register you'll see that they seem to be hinting that it will be available later this year.
The simple fact of the matter is that the 4000 series is absolutely kick ass. I recently got one for my wife and I don't know how I watched TV without it!
This past weekend I sat down with Replayer (a Java app that sucks shows off of a 4000 unit), a MPEG-2 to MPEG-1 converter, a small video editor, and Nero (the *best* CD burning software for win32) and made VCDs of all of my recorded Good Eats episodes (a great cooking show on Food Network).
It took me about 1/2 the day to figure out the process, but now that I've got it sorted out I only have to invest about 10 minutes in burning a VCD (the process takes about 3 hours in total but that's mostly in the sucking the show off of the Replay and converting it to MPEG-1)
The other thing that I haven't heard mentioned much is that people have figured out quite a bit about how the Replay's network stuff works... I know you can suck the guide off now, and I wouldn't be suprised if someone already has way to set the guide too.
Basically, if you want to get a Replay but are afraid of them getting sued into oblivion, don't worry, I am certain someone will come up with a way to read guide info... there are just too many Replay hackers out there for it *not* to happen.
Also, yes, the are expensive, but I have a real problem with subscription based services for information that I believe ought to be free. I had no problem shelling out th $800 I spent on my Replay to both get the time and space shifting I wanted and to support a company thats fighting *for* fair use.
Why this is cool...
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm currently working on a MAME cabinet and when I was first setting up the software I determined that DOS was going to be my best bet (most stable, and I have a lot of DOS experience). It made sense to keep what is essentially going to be an embedded solution as simple as possible...
Anyways, I eventually found my old DOS 6.2 disks (took me the greater part of a week) but one of them had gone bad. After another week I found an image of that disk online and finally was able to get the system running. Of course *after* all of that I find out about FreeDOS and I'm currently in the process of moving everything over to it.
But there's an even bigger benefit! I've had such a good time building this system I'm seriously looking into starting a small business building custom MAME cocktail cabinets (people send the old computers and I do the conversion) and now the only software that I can't legally include with the system is the game ROMs. W00t! I might yet be able to make a business out of this!
Jon, I think I finally need to just tell you that need to learn a bit about, oh, say JOURNALISM!
I usually don't touch your articles because frankly, the usually suck. Occasionly you make a good point, but I mostly attribute that to "even a broken clock is right twice a day" syndrome.
If you are going to write articles about online retailing you really need to do a lot more than check out two sites that do it well in your opinion and then make broad unsupported claims about the "software and hardware companies".
Do some actual... oh I don't know, research! One of your sister sites, ThinkGeek does an *excellent* job with their site as does Crucial Memory.
Also, I know you must be an uber-geek and build your own rigs, but even so, you really should check out DELL or the Apple store to see some big name hardware retailers that really do get it.
If you are going to use Slashdot as your personal soapbox, that's fine. Just have something to say rather than just talking out of your ass.
It works because Flash, when played using the standalone projector that ships with the Flash authoring tool, has additional "rights" beyond what the plugin has. The plugin can't do jack.
So, basically, this virus can really only hurt particularly stupid Flash developers.
Anyways, how it works: first of all, the user created a little.COM file that would find and "infect" SWFs on the users system. Then, they wrote a small program that would walk through that COM file and from it produce a the ActionScript needed to recreate the file, character by character. i.e.
virus = chr(208) + chr(25) + chr(2);
Then, they opened up the Flash evironment and started making the actual "virus"... The whole thing is based around the special FScommand action that is mostly unused in normal web-based SWFs. FScommand is used to "talk to" what ever environment the SWF is embedded in, whether that be a web page, VB app, whatever (remember Flash is an activeX control). There happens to be couple of special FScommand options that are only available to the standalone player, namely, in our case, "exec". "exec" allows you run aribitrary executables directly from Flash. The virus it's self simply calls up an instance of command.com and has it echo the virus string to a file. In our case, V.COM. Then, it runs FSCommand again and runs the virus.
All in all, it's a cheap hack that requires waaay to much to work. It's a proof of concept that really can't get very far in the wild.
I downloaded the demo and while the idea is interesting actual gameplay *sucks*. The interface is clunky and slow and would have been much better done had it just been done in NCURSES or something. I mean seriously, it's neat and all, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay $25 for it.
* In exchange for these drawbacks you're not gaining anything.
This is false. If used correctly Flash can add quite a bit to a page. No, I'm not talking about random stupid animations or intros, I am talking about applications and applets. Pieces that both draw the user in and give them interactive tools.
* It makes download times longer, often much longer for modem users.
Again, false. The same could be said about JPEGs! Just like you wouldn't put a 200K JPEG on a page, a good Flash developer wouldn't think of making a Flash piece that large. If designed correctly Flash can load and start running *immediately* with all of it's additional loading happening behind the scenes.
Shockwave is the web player for movies created in Macromedia Director, which is bitmap based. Flash is created in the Flash authoring environment, which is vector base. Flash was made for the web, while Shockwave was made to be able to play Director movies on the web.
Both come in two flavors - netscape plugin and activeX control
Flash runs as an activeX control under Windows IE only. On all other platforms you have to use the netscape plugin. That plugin is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. The Shockwave plugin only works on PC and Mac. MM never ported it to Linux.
Well written Flash files are *small*
Flash is a *vector* format stored in binary form. This makes it *tiny*. If you know what you are doing you can do an insane amount in less than 20k.
Flash content is currently viewable by more net users than Java is
This is why you are starting to see Flash ads all over the place...
As someone who does a lot of Java development work, I have to say I whole heartedly agree. Java has changed *SO* much for the better since the versions that most browser JVMs use. Applets suffer from a *lot* of problems, and from an "open source" standpoint, Flash is actually must closer than Java is. The SWF spec was released by MM quite some time ago, and enough reverse engineering of it has occured that you don't even have to really deal with MM anymore at all (Look at the Ming library for PHP for example)
What this all gets down to really is feature bloat. The web was not made for, nor can it handle true CD-ROM style interactivity. It just can't. A new protocol from the ground up needs to be built. Period.
Flash, and Shockwave, and even Java are cool, and can do some neat stuff, but why in the HELL should that kind of user experience require a "plugin" of any sort in this day and age? HTTP is great for what it was made for, HTML. Even basic LAYOUT required a whole new spec though (CSS) I really hope someone else sees how much the web resembles a ball of duct tape right now, and starts working on the next generator protocol and "browser" soon... The closest thing I've seen so far is Curl, which has the worst licensing agreement I have *ever* seen.
As a regular speaker for the Flash Forward 2001 conferences, I have to point you to the winners of the Flash Film Festival. These folks do AMAZING stuff!
The site for the current winners: http://www.flashfilmfestival.com
And here's one that I *coded* (I'm a programmer, not a designer) for a company I used to work for... it's won a few awards and was all done in Flash 4. Rand Interactive
The company I work for also has a Flash web page, but I wasn't as involved in it: Fig Leaf Software
Slashdot Mirror
Lewis was actually rolling around the Emerging Technologies area of SIGGRAPH this year and I got to talk quite a bit with some of the folks that were following him around to make sure he didn't get into any trouble and explain how it worked. (Which is good, because it's just this big red column looking thing and doesn't look particularly friendly)
The photos it "composed" were actually quite good as it would use the rule of thirds when trying to set up a photo. The only real problems I saw with it from a tech standpoint was that the lighting in that area of the convention center was a bit yellow so their white balance was off and the robot had the embarasing habit of totally ignoring anyone with very dark skin. At the time I was talking to a student from a local school who was there who happend to be black and we let the robot take a few pictures of us... when we went to look at the pics every single one of her was cut off as she was basically being ignored as "background".
The other problem were the batteries - I saw them change the batteries on the 'bot once and there were a *LOT* of what appeared to be very heavy lead -based batteries - they looked like motorcycle batteries, but I'm not sure. Apparently the bot lasts for a few hours on a single charge, but then you have to swap out all of its batteries (I think there were at least 5 of them)
Just to help keep this clear, because some people *still* don't get it...
Flash is Flash. Just Flash, that's it. The most recent version of the authoring tool is Flash MX and the most recent version of the plugin is Flash 6.
Shockwave is the 'net export version of an app made with Director - an entirely different product.
Shockwave games/files as a whole tend to be larger and more bloated than Flash movies because Flash is vector based rather than raster based like Director.
Flash movies aren't automatically big/slow/ugly - it all depends on the skill of the developer. Most of the Flash stuff that I do comes in at under 40k.
If you want specifics - I've had the machine 2 years. I've had to wipe it a total of 5 times. So thats once every 4-6 months. I've been running OS X for well over 8 months now and I haven't run into any issues. I'm running Apache, PostreSQL, NFS, SSHD, Tomcat, etc. (so I'm sure the services add up well beyond 30) and yes, I'm running the entire MX suite (Flash, Dreamweaver, Firewords) the Office X suite. It's real code and it's real stable - I just can't say that for the PC.
I agree - I loved IRIX - too bad it was swiss cheese security wise.
As for Windows, yes with 2000 things got a lot better - but it's still not there. You are right about the garbage-in, garbage-out argument, but I also don't know what magical world you live in eitehr. I am typing this on a Dell laptop which was, a few years back top of the line (Inspiron 7500). Other than weighting way too much it's a good, solid machine - but I've had to wipe win2k twice now because of growing instabilities. I don't install junk hardware or software for that matter - I mainly use Outlook, Editplus, Flash, PuTTy and Word. However after a few months the whole system starts to feel slow and explorer starts dying and locking up left and right. I have never had eitehr happen on my Mac at home, not once.
A bit problem is that the number of apps really doesn't make a huge difference to me. The quality of the apps that I have does. Most open source apps have some really rough edges that make working with them a real pain. This brings up another point actually - usability - something that Apple has really done right in OSX. I had never used it before and was immediately able to start working with it. Literally in minutes I had found the app I needed and was comfortably working in it (OmniGraffle - a really nice chart drawing app)
One of my best friends just got his degree in HCI from UMich and he and I have spent a lot of time discussing the usability of OSs and both of us agree that until open source OSs start to really look at usability - real world usability not geek usability - their OSs will only grace the desktops of geeks. Even as a geek who *wanted* to like Linux as a desktop though I couldn't - it was just simply too unpolished.
When it gets down it, to be honest, I don't mind paying more for exactly what I want - a stable OS that lets me run my required business apps hand in hand with my loved unix apps. Apple will have my business for some time to come.
Sounds like a really old powerbook - not exactly a great comparison. Besides, I hate OS9 with a passion (I wan't a mac user until OSX)
As for the apps not working together, I've had issue with the damn clipboard in Linux not working between apps (no, I can't remember exactly what apps they were - it's been over a year since I ditched Linux back to just being a server OS)
As for the hardware being expensive - that's really *not* the case. Yes the initial cost is higher, but Macs are cheaper to own. This is fact - I don't have the URL of the study about this handy, but do a google search and I'm sure you will pull it up.
Apparently you haven't *used* a Mac. I've been trying literally for *years* to move to Linux as my primary desktop OS and it just is not there. Period. Apps don't work together - it's aweful.
I still use Linux and other *nices as my server OSs (that's not changing - ever) but on my desktop OSX is soon going to rule to roost. I've bought my last PC.
Seriously, *try* a mac. Try to do everyday things - it just works - not all the time granted, but most of the time - which is a huge improvement over every other OS out there.
I found out about Sampo players thanks to a post in another story and I have to pass on the love...
I've used Apex players and frankly, they are trash. Spend a bit more and get an easily hacked player that has a lot more features and is a *lot* better built... a Sampo!
All the info you need is at Area 450
There is one particularly cool player they seem to like there that has a CF slot in it - and you can swap out that slot for a IDE hard drive if you'd like (to play back MPEGs, MP3s or JPEGS!) I didn't need that so I got the DVE661 for all of $160 pre-moded! (Gene Callahan rules! - see the pricing page on Area 450s site, he premod's players and sends them to you quite cheap!)
I guess that's the government for ya... why in the *hell* would you use DTDs when XML Schemas are so much better???
Oh well... at least it's a step forward - I'll applaud them for that.
"To what, I ask? How should they update it? and where else are they going to get their revenue?"
I don't really care. That's their business not mine.
"paid for by these entertainment co's, but everyone's complaining that they're trying to make a buck."
No, more like $12 bucks. It costs pennies on the dollar to make a CD and the actual artist gets a few more pennies. It's all a very simple concept known as price fixing, which happens to be illegal.
"and don't give me that "they're so rich it doens't matter" crap, this is capitalism, not charity"
The problem is that it *isn't* capitalism when the rich can write the laws. (which you know is the case unless you are deluding yourself)
"Or even worse, forcing production companies and studios out of business so that it then narrows who is producing content. Which as we all know would suck."
No, it wouldn't. Suddenly content would matter again... what a concept.
Hmmm... so Flash is a bad evil tool of the devil (as spouted here at Slashdot) but when the EFF uses it, no problem? Come on.
The toon simply proves the point that the SWF format is the best way to do such cartoons and interactivity on the web. Why won't the open source community embrace it and make a good GUI editor for it? While cool and all, I'm simply not able to make such a cartoon with free software. Unless the EFF is hiding some cool new tool from us they are using some non-free proprietary software to make that SWF, period.
Yes, I have thought about some great ways of using this technology and I'll be speaking about them with another developer at SIGGRAPH this year. :-) (No, I'm not kidding)
No, these features are new to the Flash 6 plugin.
They got a custom video codec built by Sorenson built to do this. That's what Apple is suing Sorenson over.
The thing is that it's a full video code and weighs in around 75k. Pretty impressive really. Audio is MP3 encoded.
First off if you are concerned about Flash security, read the whitepaper about it before spouting off about it:i tepap ers/security.pdf
http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/flash/wh
Everything is set to deny by default. The plugin can see your mic and camera because its on your computer! It can't send that information unless you give it permission to. Again, read the security white paper.
The new camera and mic abilities of Flash allow you to do some really powerful things that you simply can't do any other way. In fact there was a story about someone trying to build custom web conferencing software last week and I told them to wait a couple months for the server that uses these features of the Flash plugin... I was modded up to 4!
This kind of thing is going to push the web to new places. Technology is driven by innovation which later turn into standards, not the other way around.
Oh yeah, and duh, it supports echo cancelation there in the Flash plugin.
I've been hearing about some new technology from Macromedia that might make your life a *lot* easier. Apparently the Flash 6 plugin supports hooking into both webcams and mics (after the user OKs it) as well as special socket-based connections to a new piece of server software codenamed TinCan. In addition they've talked about the server supporting shared objects as well.
From what it seems you're able to put code on both the client and server and both are based on ECMAscript. This would let you do a lot more than nearly every other solution I've ever seen. I don't know when the server is supposed to be released, but if you check up on the recent interviews with MMs CTO Jeremy Allaire on C|Net or The Register you'll see that they seem to be hinting that it will be available later this year.
The simple fact of the matter is that the 4000 series is absolutely kick ass. I recently got one for my wife and I don't know how I watched TV without it!
This past weekend I sat down with Replayer (a Java app that sucks shows off of a 4000 unit), a MPEG-2 to MPEG-1 converter, a small video editor, and Nero (the *best* CD burning software for win32) and made VCDs of all of my recorded Good Eats episodes (a great cooking show on Food Network).
It took me about 1/2 the day to figure out the process, but now that I've got it sorted out I only have to invest about 10 minutes in burning a VCD (the process takes about 3 hours in total but that's mostly in the sucking the show off of the Replay and converting it to MPEG-1)
The other thing that I haven't heard mentioned much is that people have figured out quite a bit about how the Replay's network stuff works... I know you can suck the guide off now, and I wouldn't be suprised if someone already has way to set the guide too.
Basically, if you want to get a Replay but are afraid of them getting sued into oblivion, don't worry, I am certain someone will come up with a way to read guide info... there are just too many Replay hackers out there for it *not* to happen.
Also, yes, the are expensive, but I have a real problem with subscription based services for information that I believe ought to be free. I had no problem shelling out th $800 I spent on my Replay to both get the time and space shifting I wanted and to support a company thats fighting *for* fair use.
I'm currently working on a MAME cabinet and when I was first setting up the software I determined that DOS was going to be my best bet (most stable, and I have a lot of DOS experience). It made sense to keep what is essentially going to be an embedded solution as simple as possible...
Anyways, I eventually found my old DOS 6.2 disks (took me the greater part of a week) but one of them had gone bad. After another week I found an image of that disk online and finally was able to get the system running. Of course *after* all of that I find out about FreeDOS and I'm currently in the process of moving everything over to it.
But there's an even bigger benefit! I've had such a good time building this system I'm seriously looking into starting a small business building custom MAME cocktail cabinets (people send the old computers and I do the conversion) and now the only software that I can't legally include with the system is the game ROMs. W00t! I might yet be able to make a business out of this!
Jon, I think I finally need to just tell you that need to learn a bit about, oh, say JOURNALISM!
I usually don't touch your articles because frankly, the usually suck. Occasionly you make a good point, but I mostly attribute that to "even a broken clock is right twice a day" syndrome.
If you are going to write articles about online retailing you really need to do a lot more than check out two sites that do it well in your opinion and then make broad unsupported claims about the "software and hardware companies".
Do some actual... oh I don't know, research! One of your sister sites, ThinkGeek does an *excellent* job with their site as does Crucial Memory.
Also, I know you must be an uber-geek and build your own rigs, but even so, you really should check out DELL or the Apple store to see some big name hardware retailers that really do get it.
If you are going to use Slashdot as your personal soapbox, that's fine. Just have something to say rather than just talking out of your ass.
First of all, this is a WINDOWS virus only!
.COM file that would find and "infect" SWFs on the users system. Then, they wrote a small program that would walk through that COM file and from it produce a the ActionScript needed to recreate the file, character by character. i.e.
It works because Flash, when played using the standalone projector that ships with the Flash authoring tool, has additional "rights" beyond what the plugin has. The plugin can't do jack.
So, basically, this virus can really only hurt particularly stupid Flash developers.
Anyways, how it works: first of all, the user created a little
virus = chr(208) + chr(25) + chr(2);
Then, they opened up the Flash evironment and started making the actual "virus"... The whole thing is based around the special FScommand action that is mostly unused in normal web-based SWFs. FScommand is used to "talk to" what ever environment the SWF is embedded in, whether that be a web page, VB app, whatever (remember Flash is an activeX control). There happens to be couple of special FScommand options that are only available to the standalone player, namely, in our case, "exec". "exec" allows you run aribitrary executables directly from Flash. The virus it's self simply calls up an instance of command.com and has it echo the virus string to a file. In our case, V.COM. Then, it runs FSCommand again and runs the virus.
All in all, it's a cheap hack that requires waaay to much to work. It's a proof of concept that really can't get very far in the wild.
I downloaded the demo and while the idea is interesting actual gameplay *sucks*. The interface is clunky and slow and would have been much better done had it just been done in NCURSES or something. I mean seriously, it's neat and all, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay $25 for it.
* In exchange for these drawbacks you're not gaining anything.
This is false. If used correctly Flash can add quite a bit to a page. No, I'm not talking about random stupid animations or intros, I am talking about applications and applets. Pieces that both draw the user in and give them interactive tools.
* It makes download times longer, often much longer for modem users.
Again, false. The same could be said about JPEGs! Just like you wouldn't put a 200K JPEG on a page, a good Flash developer wouldn't think of making a Flash piece that large. If designed correctly Flash can load and start running *immediately* with all of it's additional loading happening behind the scenes.
Shockwave is the web player for movies created in Macromedia Director, which is bitmap based. Flash is created in the Flash authoring environment, which is vector base. Flash was made for the web, while Shockwave was made to be able to play Director movies on the web.
Flash runs as an activeX control under Windows IE only. On all other platforms you have to use the netscape plugin. That plugin is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. The Shockwave plugin only works on PC and Mac. MM never ported it to Linux.
Flash is a *vector* format stored in binary form. This makes it *tiny*. If you know what you are doing you can do an insane amount in less than 20k.
This is why you are starting to see Flash ads all over the place...
As someone who does a lot of Java development work, I have to say I whole heartedly agree. Java has changed *SO* much for the better since the versions that most browser JVMs use. Applets suffer from a *lot* of problems, and from an "open source" standpoint, Flash is actually must closer than Java is. The SWF spec was released by MM quite some time ago, and enough reverse engineering of it has occured that you don't even have to really deal with MM anymore at all (Look at the Ming library for PHP for example)
What this all gets down to really is feature bloat. The web was not made for, nor can it handle true CD-ROM style interactivity. It just can't. A new protocol from the ground up needs to be built. Period.
Flash, and Shockwave, and even Java are cool, and can do some neat stuff, but why in the HELL should that kind of user experience require a "plugin" of any sort in this day and age? HTTP is great for what it was made for, HTML. Even basic LAYOUT required a whole new spec though (CSS) I really hope someone else sees how much the web resembles a ball of duct tape right now, and starts working on the next generator protocol and "browser" soon... The closest thing I've seen so far is Curl, which has the worst licensing agreement I have *ever* seen.
http://www.flashfilmfestival.com
Some of my personal favorites are:
And here's one that I *coded* (I'm a programmer, not a designer) for a company I used to work for... it's won a few awards and was all done in Flash 4.
Rand Interactive
The company I work for also has a Flash web page, but I wasn't as involved in it:
Fig Leaf Software