You may not miss Flash, but we prefer to choose for ourselves, thank you very much. You keep stating your personal preferences as justification for taking everyone else's choice away.
If iOS devices were the only computing devices around you'd have a point, but they aren't. You or anyone can buy other devices. I am telling you why a choice without Flash works well for myself and so many others.
That's exactly the kind of bullshit argument I'd expect to hear straight from Jobs' mouth to justify false limitations. Let's not forget the real reason for holding back Flash: competition with the Apple Store.
Now, the real issue here is the fact that Adobe was willing to put in 300% work load to get Flash on Apple devices. Users everywhere DEMANDED they at least are allowed to install Flash (maybe from the Apple Store, not by default?), but they were denied that choice. They already had the product. Many probably didn't even know they couldn't run Flash. They were just told "full browser and full internet", which to them means "Sweet! I can visit any damn site I want! I wonder how my photography site looks on this thing.... HEY!!!!".
Switching devices at that point is a false choice. Let's not forget what it costs publishers to build special "Apple friendly" editions if they want their site to be viewable on Apple mobile devices. Take the above example: photographers. I know a few photographers. They don't make all that much money. Hell, they lost an arm and leg just to buy the current edition of their website. These are not techies. They just thought "hey, everyone can see this and it's using this other thing that makes it all REALLY COOL to look at my galleries!". Should they be expected to make all these special editions for all these different mobile devices simply because Jobs is (in my opinion) a complete childish dick?
The ONLY point everyone's trying to make here is: if users want it, publishers want it, and it doesn't cost Apple a damn thing... why not? The big publishers will still make special Apple-only versions of their websites (this happens with or without Flash), and the small publishers don't have to shell out thousands for something special for one fucking company who happens to own a brand of mobile devices that is a big leader in the current market. Jobs' bullshit doesn't expand choices, as you say. That's utterly ridiculous. It forces people into certain positions, and that's not choice.
And I'll end on the note that when the best endorsement for a technology is that you can turn it off, its time has passed.
Wanting to turn ads off is not the same thing. Also, it's not the "best endorsement" for the tech as you put it (what??). There's tons of people who want to use Flash because of what it offers them. Publishers love it too for the same reason. That's why it has such a high market penetration. If Flash will die, it will die, and it should die because people stop using it, not because you're shutting them out for bullshit reasons (who gets to decide what plugins to allow and which ones not to allow?). But I don't see it dying for quite a long time yet. HTML5 does NOT replace Flash, no matter what someone might tell you, because it's not technically capable of the same kinds of things, PERIOD.
I'd post a video here if I could for demonstration, but at least on my Evo, it runs perfectly smooth. One thing that may help is to get an ad blocker. Having a billion flash ads doesn't help. And no, that has nothing to do with Flash so much as it has to do with the fact that each one is an individual application. It's just like running a ton of applications on your Desktop.
But anyway, that's how my experience is. Running the video in full screen I've seen has made it run fine on those without flash 10.1 (non-hardware accelerated). For everything else it should be fine. And, this should demonstrate that if it works on my Evo, it should work on the iPhone4 and the iPad since they're comparable in power.
What version of Flash is on your Droid? Since you're overclocked, I would assume you're rooted, and thus I can't comment on the stability you're experiencing. My browser has only ever crashed twice, and that was with Android 2.1, and wasn't even Flash pages.
I disagree. People are upset, but for those who purchase iPods and iPads, it may not be enough to deter them from making the purchase. How the market is doing is not an indicator of what people want on the product they purchased. I know TONS of people who own Apple devices that wish they could choose to use Flash. Most of them feel like it insults their intelligence that they're not given these kinds of choices, as if they're too stupid to make them.
Furthermore, nobody's asking anybody to disable anything. The option is simply there, and it's PLENTY user-friendly. What the hell is your definition of user-friendly? Playing too stupid to know any better, being walled in, or not given any choice in life? Really?
And if it wasn't for Apple doing away with Flash, you wouldn't even be able to to "disable the plugin" without being able to use half the web.
Bullshit. People aren't making HTML5 capable websites because of the mighty holiness that is Apple? Give me a break. People ARE however creating various forms of websites geared towards specific devices, flash-enabled or not. I fail to see how you came to this conclusion.
They're also buying millions of Android devices, but certainly not because of Flash.
How do you know what reasons people have for purchasing one device over another? One of the reasons I was personally so excited for my Android phone is because I was using a touch before, and it was really, really annoying that Flash never worked on it. In this case it may not have been THE determining factor, but it most definitely was an important factor to consider.
Wanting to be able to use half the web doesn't classify one as an "Adobe astroturfer" as you put it. It simply makes them people who want to be able to make their own damn choice, no matter what holy thou art Jobs says.
Flash is a piece of shit on mobile.
Which version of Flash, and is it hardware accelerated? I'm using it perfectly fine on my android phone (fully hardware-accelerated 10.1), and I don't see it using much more of my battery at all. I'm going to go ahead and say it: you're full of shit. If people can treat their damn phones as a wifi AP for 4 hours or more, you can run something flash for a helluva lot longer than a half hour, not to mention that's in sharp contrast with my own experience.
Thank you, good sir (maam?), for that wonderful post. That was the most sane thing I've read on this entire thread, and explains so simply what TFA so gloriously ignored.
Anyone ever heard of "marketing". I didn't even know this damn movie existed until way late in the game. It was actually in theatres? I don't consider myself living under a rock, but maybe the underperformance of the film should be blamed on the tools who were supposed to be marketing it.
What're you expecting here? Google to pay out bigger? I imagine that people would submit these flaws with or without the bounties. Nobody's forcing them to search them out. I'm amazed by the fact they're willing to pay anything at all.
Deep linking isn't tied to AJAX, it's just a concept, and since Javascript is able to read the URL, it can do whatever the damn hell it wants to based on that, AJAX or no AJAX. Deep linking concepts have been available to Flash for a long while now. If Flash apps don't include that feature now or any time in the somewhat recent past, that's no reason to hate on Flash. That's a reason to hate on the people developing for it.
And I'd also prefer that a single company not dictate the language of web content, thanks.
So then let users choose what they want to see and publishers will soon follow. That shouldn't be up to one man (Jobs). I'm with you that I don't want a single company to dictate all that, but in order to do that variety is key. People won't view Flash if they really don't want to.
You're basing HTML5's success based on what happened to floppy disks? How is that even remotely relevant? For one, HTML5 is the successor of HTML4, not Flash. It's not replacing Flash, it's replacing HTML4. CDs replaced floppies. There's an important difference there.
The truth of the matter is Flash if fucking everywhere. HTML5 isn't. Therefore, it isn't a viable alternative right now because most sites don't have an HTML5 version yet. In the future, fine, but that's also beyond the point. The point is that anything that can't run flash is experiencing a crippled Internet, simply because it's on so many sites. That's fine if you don't mind missing a bunch of content, but that shit doesn't fly with me or millions of other users, and that's why the big uproar.
Furthemore, flash ads can be blocked. Or, you can tell the browser to load plugins on-demand in android, which means that all Flash applications show up as a big box with a giant green arrow. Tap the arrow to load and run. No flash ads, but still run Flash when you want to. Works great. What's even better is that I'm presented with the choice.
But logic went out the door when it was easier just to bash Apple for not having it.
No it didn't. People have more of a problem that Jobs wouldn't allow them the freedom of choice. Who is he to dictate what would be available and what would not? If people have a poor experience with it, they'll simply turn it off. And that's a big part of why people are upset.
But now that other players are having the same problems except in this case its directly effecting their users, perhaps its the last nail, finally.
Not really. I love that my Evo can do full 10.1 Flash. I've used it TONS of times, and I've never personally had a problem with it myself. You're basing that claim on one 1 person's experience with older hardware on very bloated sites. Not exactly a great representation of actual users, especially since hardware only gets better as time goes on.
I for one hate flash for this very reason ( well, that and security reasons ). If it could be cleaned up, great, but as it is implemented now its terrible.
If there's anything to hate Flash for, it's for making it too damned easy to develop for. This results in ass clowns making very poorly developed applications, thus you perceiving Flash to be the shitty thing instead of the application. They just make it really, really easy to make bloated and non-optimized applications.
For example, I recently took over a project where a Flash application was running pretty poorly. I rasterized all the graphics I could (except the logo), custom programmed the different controls and UI elements (instead of using components), stopped different timelines from playing where they weren't needed, and also removed elements on the page as they weren't needed (instead of just hiding them on the same timeline). It resulted in an application that was smaller than most logo jpegs, and it hardly made a blip on the CPU.
Properly developing an application, no matter what platform, goes a LONG way. Making it easy for a well-intentioned but poorly trained graphic designer to fuck up a perfectly fine application is the bane of Flash's existence.
Exactly. This is a problem with touch-based devices, not Flash. Until someone finally comes up with an intuitive control that's persistent while in a web browser for touch devices, this will continue to be a problem. You'll run into the same thing with draggable DHTML elements.
If there's a significant difference, you can contribute that to a poorly written player (using bloated components doesn't help), or you can contribute that to your good media player using hardware acceleration and the flash player not using it. What version of Flash were you running and on what OS? Which site/flash player was being used?
It's called deep linking. But that would require very light research to find that out, or any real experience in using flash. Oh wait, the same thing has to be done with javascript-based applications too (like Gmail).
If there isn't any deep linking, it's the developer's fault. If you are dissing flash for that, then you have to diss anything javascript-based as well.
Not that HTML5 is any better. I tried to run a new "test" movie that Google created with HTML5, and it too ran like a snail.
For video HTML5 is significantly better. For vector and bitmap animations, Flash is probably better in all non-WebKit browsers.
For video, it really, really, really depends on the player being used (HTML5 players are dead simple). For vector and bitmap animations, Flash is leap years better in ALL browsers. Seriously. Compare javascript-driven (or canvas-driven) persistent animation in both. Flash easily takes the cake in terms of resource usage.
Now, in regards to TFA, it's a horrible "review". The Nexus One is not exactly up to par for playing "hi-def" video, period. Furthermore, you have to take into account other hardware factors, such as very limited RAM. Saying Jobs is somehow right in restricting users' choice in the matter is completely off-base and has nothing to do with whether or not I'll be able to watch "hi-def" video on a few select sites. Flash is used for more than video for pete's sake. For every one site that works so-so because of over-use of Flash and bloated Flash applications, which is because of poor development, not necessarily a poor platform, there are a dozen other flash sites that work perfectly fine.
On my Evo, I haven't tried ABC.com or anything like that yet, but for what I HAVE played (Jon Stewart), it seems to be fine. I've played Flash games just fine too (light-bot FTW!). And I know the new iPhones have plenty of power to do the same stuff.
Sorry for not explaining more properly. At least this is my personal experience...
From what I've experienced, I've had issues with certain video formats, and as I said in the last comment, I found I couldn't skip around the video. To solve the video format issues, I attempted to use PS3 Media Server (http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/) which happens to handle the 360 as well, but my source machine didn't quite have enough juice for transcoding on the fly for HD media. For the files that ushare worked with, it worked fine, but the limitations between this and my hardware for realtime transcoding eventually motivated me enough to buy a little atom nettop box to do my media. I'll never turn back.
I have a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo, circa 2008) connected to an SMB share on a Windows 7 box (1055t/8GB ram) over wireless-n (~300mbit) and 1080p STILL gets the jitters
You realize running a serious stream over wifi is asking for trouble, right? You can't just say "oh it's 300mbit" and expect everything to arrive on time. There's a difference between bandwidth and latency, and every time the wifi has some freak drop in signal you're going to see problems. You would have to specifically configure a huge playback buffer software side.
I can tell you from experience that unless you got a crap signal, you'll most likely be just fine streaming over wifi-n, especially if it's only 1 device connected to wifi or you have other problems.
Of course, I'm also running XBMC on Linux with the shares over NFS. So, that may play a part too.
I have an Asus Eee EB1012, which is a 1.66ghz atom with ION graphics, and it runs fantastic. XBMC is on it, and I have no problem streaming full 1080p over wireless-N to my TV. Plus, the entire thing only cost me $350 total. You can do it for cheaper since all your storage is on the network and you don't need anything of a hard drive to speak of. Before I got my hard drive, I was running it off of a flash thumb drive, and that was working perfectly well.
Furthermore, and I can only speak of this particular Atom+ION solution, but it's nearly completely silent. I have it sitting right next to my TV (it's REALLY small), and even with all volume off, I can't hear it unless my ear is right next to it and it's doing something heavy.
A word from the wise: don't waste your money on the new ION2 systems with the Atom D510's. They cost more, but won't deliver you much more at all, and nothing more for just simple viewing purposes.
A whole universe can literally appear out of nothing
No. Anything worth studying still deems something to be responsible, in this case it's gravity/dimensions/membranes, but those responsible still gotta come from somewhere. It's not "nothing", even if this bogus theory based on a long string (no pun intended) of hypotheticals is correct.
Besides, the stuff I'm objecting to is neither complete nor proven. You want to subscribe to something that includes 11 dimensions? Be my guest. I mean, really now... theorizing these hypothetical membranes colliding into each other (oh, btw, where did these dimensions/membranes even come from??) is just as insane as any religious nutter.
Adequately covering hypotheticals in a few physics classes is required because those are some running theories in the field. It does not, however, make them FACT, make them PROVEN, or even make them MATHEMATICALLY SOUND (supposedly this magical 11th dimension was supposed to eliminate the anomalies, so I'm waiting until they make up a 12th dimension to cover their asses again). It's utterly ridiculous.
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The option of disabling Flash on mobile devices is just as irrelevant as the option of disabling images on mobile devices;
Only if you care nothing whatsoever for the user.
Didn't you just... prove GP's point? Unless I'm misunderstanding something here...
You may not miss Flash, but we prefer to choose for ourselves, thank you very much. You keep stating your personal preferences as justification for taking everyone else's choice away.
If iOS devices were the only computing devices around you'd have a point, but they aren't. You or anyone can buy other devices. I am telling you why a choice without Flash works well for myself and so many others.
That's exactly the kind of bullshit argument I'd expect to hear straight from Jobs' mouth to justify false limitations. Let's not forget the real reason for holding back Flash: competition with the Apple Store.
Now, the real issue here is the fact that Adobe was willing to put in 300% work load to get Flash on Apple devices. Users everywhere DEMANDED they at least are allowed to install Flash (maybe from the Apple Store, not by default?), but they were denied that choice. They already had the product. Many probably didn't even know they couldn't run Flash. They were just told "full browser and full internet", which to them means "Sweet! I can visit any damn site I want! I wonder how my photography site looks on this thing.... HEY!!!!".
Switching devices at that point is a false choice. Let's not forget what it costs publishers to build special "Apple friendly" editions if they want their site to be viewable on Apple mobile devices. Take the above example: photographers. I know a few photographers. They don't make all that much money. Hell, they lost an arm and leg just to buy the current edition of their website. These are not techies. They just thought "hey, everyone can see this and it's using this other thing that makes it all REALLY COOL to look at my galleries!". Should they be expected to make all these special editions for all these different mobile devices simply because Jobs is (in my opinion) a complete childish dick?
The ONLY point everyone's trying to make here is: if users want it, publishers want it, and it doesn't cost Apple a damn thing... why not? The big publishers will still make special Apple-only versions of their websites (this happens with or without Flash), and the small publishers don't have to shell out thousands for something special for one fucking company who happens to own a brand of mobile devices that is a big leader in the current market. Jobs' bullshit doesn't expand choices, as you say. That's utterly ridiculous. It forces people into certain positions, and that's not choice.
The stability concern was more about it being rooted, not necessarily to being overclocked.
And I'll end on the note that when the best endorsement for a technology is that you can turn it off, its time has passed.
Wanting to turn ads off is not the same thing. Also, it's not the "best endorsement" for the tech as you put it (what??). There's tons of people who want to use Flash because of what it offers them. Publishers love it too for the same reason. That's why it has such a high market penetration. If Flash will die, it will die, and it should die because people stop using it, not because you're shutting them out for bullshit reasons (who gets to decide what plugins to allow and which ones not to allow?). But I don't see it dying for quite a long time yet. HTML5 does NOT replace Flash, no matter what someone might tell you, because it's not technically capable of the same kinds of things, PERIOD.
I'd post a video here if I could for demonstration, but at least on my Evo, it runs perfectly smooth. One thing that may help is to get an ad blocker. Having a billion flash ads doesn't help. And no, that has nothing to do with Flash so much as it has to do with the fact that each one is an individual application. It's just like running a ton of applications on your Desktop.
But anyway, that's how my experience is. Running the video in full screen I've seen has made it run fine on those without flash 10.1 (non-hardware accelerated). For everything else it should be fine. And, this should demonstrate that if it works on my Evo, it should work on the iPhone4 and the iPad since they're comparable in power.
What version of Flash is on your Droid? Since you're overclocked, I would assume you're rooted, and thus I can't comment on the stability you're experiencing. My browser has only ever crashed twice, and that was with Android 2.1, and wasn't even Flash pages.
Furthermore, nobody's asking anybody to disable anything. The option is simply there, and it's PLENTY user-friendly. What the hell is your definition of user-friendly? Playing too stupid to know any better, being walled in, or not given any choice in life? Really?
And if it wasn't for Apple doing away with Flash, you wouldn't even be able to to "disable the plugin" without being able to use half the web.
Bullshit. People aren't making HTML5 capable websites because of the mighty holiness that is Apple? Give me a break. People ARE however creating various forms of websites geared towards specific devices, flash-enabled or not. I fail to see how you came to this conclusion.
They're also buying millions of Android devices, but certainly not because of Flash.
How do you know what reasons people have for purchasing one device over another? One of the reasons I was personally so excited for my Android phone is because I was using a touch before, and it was really, really annoying that Flash never worked on it. In this case it may not have been THE determining factor, but it most definitely was an important factor to consider.
Wanting to be able to use half the web doesn't classify one as an "Adobe astroturfer" as you put it. It simply makes them people who want to be able to make their own damn choice, no matter what holy thou art Jobs says.
Flash is a piece of shit on mobile.
Which version of Flash, and is it hardware accelerated? I'm using it perfectly fine on my android phone (fully hardware-accelerated 10.1), and I don't see it using much more of my battery at all. I'm going to go ahead and say it: you're full of shit. If people can treat their damn phones as a wifi AP for 4 hours or more, you can run something flash for a helluva lot longer than a half hour, not to mention that's in sharp contrast with my own experience.
Thank you, good sir (maam?), for that wonderful post. That was the most sane thing I've read on this entire thread, and explains so simply what TFA so gloriously ignored.
Anyone ever heard of "marketing". I didn't even know this damn movie existed until way late in the game. It was actually in theatres? I don't consider myself living under a rock, but maybe the underperformance of the film should be blamed on the tools who were supposed to be marketing it.
What're you expecting here? Google to pay out bigger? I imagine that people would submit these flaws with or without the bounties. Nobody's forcing them to search them out. I'm amazed by the fact they're willing to pay anything at all.
And I'd also prefer that a single company not dictate the language of web content, thanks.
So then let users choose what they want to see and publishers will soon follow. That shouldn't be up to one man (Jobs). I'm with you that I don't want a single company to dictate all that, but in order to do that variety is key. People won't view Flash if they really don't want to.
You're basing HTML5's success based on what happened to floppy disks? How is that even remotely relevant? For one, HTML5 is the successor of HTML4, not Flash. It's not replacing Flash, it's replacing HTML4. CDs replaced floppies. There's an important difference there.
The truth of the matter is Flash if fucking everywhere. HTML5 isn't. Therefore, it isn't a viable alternative right now because most sites don't have an HTML5 version yet. In the future, fine, but that's also beyond the point. The point is that anything that can't run flash is experiencing a crippled Internet, simply because it's on so many sites. That's fine if you don't mind missing a bunch of content, but that shit doesn't fly with me or millions of other users, and that's why the big uproar.
Furthemore, flash ads can be blocked. Or, you can tell the browser to load plugins on-demand in android, which means that all Flash applications show up as a big box with a giant green arrow. Tap the arrow to load and run. No flash ads, but still run Flash when you want to. Works great. What's even better is that I'm presented with the choice.
But logic went out the door when it was easier just to bash Apple for not having it.
No it didn't. People have more of a problem that Jobs wouldn't allow them the freedom of choice. Who is he to dictate what would be available and what would not? If people have a poor experience with it, they'll simply turn it off. And that's a big part of why people are upset.
But now that other players are having the same problems except in this case its directly effecting their users, perhaps its the last nail, finally.
Not really. I love that my Evo can do full 10.1 Flash. I've used it TONS of times, and I've never personally had a problem with it myself. You're basing that claim on one 1 person's experience with older hardware on very bloated sites. Not exactly a great representation of actual users, especially since hardware only gets better as time goes on.
I for one hate flash for this very reason ( well, that and security reasons ). If it could be cleaned up, great, but as it is implemented now its terrible.
If there's anything to hate Flash for, it's for making it too damned easy to develop for. This results in ass clowns making very poorly developed applications, thus you perceiving Flash to be the shitty thing instead of the application. They just make it really, really easy to make bloated and non-optimized applications.
For example, I recently took over a project where a Flash application was running pretty poorly. I rasterized all the graphics I could (except the logo), custom programmed the different controls and UI elements (instead of using components), stopped different timelines from playing where they weren't needed, and also removed elements on the page as they weren't needed (instead of just hiding them on the same timeline). It resulted in an application that was smaller than most logo jpegs, and it hardly made a blip on the CPU.
Properly developing an application, no matter what platform, goes a LONG way. Making it easy for a well-intentioned but poorly trained graphic designer to fuck up a perfectly fine application is the bane of Flash's existence.
Exactly. This is a problem with touch-based devices, not Flash. Until someone finally comes up with an intuitive control that's persistent while in a web browser for touch devices, this will continue to be a problem. You'll run into the same thing with draggable DHTML elements.
If there's a significant difference, you can contribute that to a poorly written player (using bloated components doesn't help), or you can contribute that to your good media player using hardware acceleration and the flash player not using it. What version of Flash were you running and on what OS? Which site/flash player was being used?
It's called deep linking. But that would require very light research to find that out, or any real experience in using flash. Oh wait, the same thing has to be done with javascript-based applications too (like Gmail).
If there isn't any deep linking, it's the developer's fault. If you are dissing flash for that, then you have to diss anything javascript-based as well.
Mod DrYak up! Took the words right out of my mouth and then some. Thanks for such a short but very thorough explanation!
Not that HTML5 is any better. I tried to run a new "test" movie that Google created with HTML5, and it too ran like a snail.
For video HTML5 is significantly better. For vector and bitmap animations, Flash is probably better in all non-WebKit browsers.
For video, it really, really, really depends on the player being used (HTML5 players are dead simple). For vector and bitmap animations, Flash is leap years better in ALL browsers. Seriously. Compare javascript-driven (or canvas-driven) persistent animation in both. Flash easily takes the cake in terms of resource usage.
Now, in regards to TFA, it's a horrible "review". The Nexus One is not exactly up to par for playing "hi-def" video, period. Furthermore, you have to take into account other hardware factors, such as very limited RAM. Saying Jobs is somehow right in restricting users' choice in the matter is completely off-base and has nothing to do with whether or not I'll be able to watch "hi-def" video on a few select sites. Flash is used for more than video for pete's sake. For every one site that works so-so because of over-use of Flash and bloated Flash applications, which is because of poor development, not necessarily a poor platform, there are a dozen other flash sites that work perfectly fine.
On my Evo, I haven't tried ABC.com or anything like that yet, but for what I HAVE played (Jon Stewart), it seems to be fine. I've played Flash games just fine too (light-bot FTW!). And I know the new iPhones have plenty of power to do the same stuff.
Sorry for not explaining more properly. At least this is my personal experience...
From what I've experienced, I've had issues with certain video formats, and as I said in the last comment, I found I couldn't skip around the video. To solve the video format issues, I attempted to use PS3 Media Server (http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/) which happens to handle the 360 as well, but my source machine didn't quite have enough juice for transcoding on the fly for HD media. For the files that ushare worked with, it worked fine, but the limitations between this and my hardware for realtime transcoding eventually motivated me enough to buy a little atom nettop box to do my media. I'll never turn back.
Well, as long as your server+frontend are both either at .21 and earlier or .22 and later. Those two versions are incompatible.
Just too bad that's iffy at best, not to mention that you'll have problems seeking to a different part of the video.
You realize running a serious stream over wifi is asking for trouble, right? You can't just say "oh it's 300mbit" and expect everything to arrive on time. There's a difference between bandwidth and latency, and every time the wifi has some freak drop in signal you're going to see problems. You would have to specifically configure a huge playback buffer software side.
I can tell you from experience that unless you got a crap signal, you'll most likely be just fine streaming over wifi-n, especially if it's only 1 device connected to wifi or you have other problems.
Of course, I'm also running XBMC on Linux with the shares over NFS. So, that may play a part too.
Not to mention significantly overpriced. May as well get a well-powered laptop for that cost.
I second this option.
I have an Asus Eee EB1012, which is a 1.66ghz atom with ION graphics, and it runs fantastic. XBMC is on it, and I have no problem streaming full 1080p over wireless-N to my TV. Plus, the entire thing only cost me $350 total. You can do it for cheaper since all your storage is on the network and you don't need anything of a hard drive to speak of. Before I got my hard drive, I was running it off of a flash thumb drive, and that was working perfectly well.
Furthermore, and I can only speak of this particular Atom+ION solution, but it's nearly completely silent. I have it sitting right next to my TV (it's REALLY small), and even with all volume off, I can't hear it unless my ear is right next to it and it's doing something heavy.
A word from the wise: don't waste your money on the new ION2 systems with the Atom D510's. They cost more, but won't deliver you much more at all, and nothing more for just simple viewing purposes.
A whole universe can literally appear out of nothing
No. Anything worth studying still deems something to be responsible, in this case it's gravity/dimensions/membranes, but those responsible still gotta come from somewhere. It's not "nothing", even if this bogus theory based on a long string (no pun intended) of hypotheticals is correct.
Besides, the stuff I'm objecting to is neither complete nor proven. You want to subscribe to something that includes 11 dimensions? Be my guest. I mean, really now... theorizing these hypothetical membranes colliding into each other (oh, btw, where did these dimensions/membranes even come from??) is just as insane as any religious nutter.
Adequately covering hypotheticals in a few physics classes is required because those are some running theories in the field. It does not, however, make them FACT, make them PROVEN, or even make them MATHEMATICALLY SOUND (supposedly this magical 11th dimension was supposed to eliminate the anomalies, so I'm waiting until they make up a 12th dimension to cover their asses again). It's utterly ridiculous.
Oh, so since he's "more credible than a random ./ poster", we're to take his every word as if he IS the flying spaghetti monster? No thanks.
Another reason to justly lose faith in the justice system. Even a trial by a jury of your peers isn't fair.