Actually, to my surprise, I encountered quite a few cases lately where searching for more obscure stuff (non-English phrases, names of friends, etc.) I got significantly better results with live.com than with Google.
Adobe publishes quarterly reports on market penetration for all versions of flash, so that developers can target the right version. As of September'08, Flash player 9 was on 97.7% of the computers worldwide (they include methodology and details).
Can anyone provide any kind of information regarding Silverlight penetration? MS has been begging and paying companies and devlopers to use use Silverlight, yet users prefer to go elsewhere.
I will say the exact opposite. We made a large enterprise application for a UK health insurer. All interface and logic was flash (not even Flex) with custom-built components. It was a lot better than the alternatives (the initial plan was to use ASPX for the interface). It was nice and fast too (the bottlenecks were on the server). By my last count there were over 200K lines of AS code.
I also made a chess game in AS3. It's not Deep Blue but after optimizations it's fast enough to have fun with (and strong enough to beat you if you're not careful).
Some of the parent poster's comments are valid, but I could bitch and moan the same about PHP, Java or.NET.
Yes, any European city with some history behind it looks "organic" rather than designed.
Think about it. I'm living in a small city that was founded in 1190 and that for centuries had to withhold attacks from the Turks.
This doesn't mean that you can't generate cities using some fractal procedures though, it's just that depending on the setting, it might be more difficult.
I know comics may be considered "news for nerds" but this is pushing it - Editors, if I want to read Digg, I go to Digg.
I mean, after countless complains, jokes and accusations, Adobe FINALLY releases the the 64bit flash plugin (for Linux first nonetheless) and what gets published is a lame list that amounts to little more than blog spam?
Compared to most other piece of software, Flash had very few security issues. I can remember 3 or 4 issues, all of them proof-of-concept. I think just one vulnerability has been used 'in the wild' and even there its success is debatable.
Actionscript is similar to javascript, although in version 3, with strong typing, it starting to feel more like Java.
Some people - me included - like its flexibility, while others loathe the same thing.
The only thing I don't like about it is the new syntax for Vector data type (Flash 10) C#, Java: int list[] = new int[100]; AS3: var list:Vector. = new Vector.(100);
A good algorithm is important, obviously, but ultimately chess is done by brute force.
I wrote a chess game myself in flash (AS3) and it's no picnic.
The language itself is at least 10 times slower than C. Even with optimizations is about half the speed of Java. Then the execution time is limited to 15 seconds. Also, transposition tables, opening and closing databases are just huge and no one would tolerate a browser game to allocate 200Mb of RAM for internal caching.
I assume the situation is about the same for small devices, where computing power and memory are scarce resource.
"Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled "
Even Digg managed to find a more appropriate headline: "Microsoft's New Ad:Seinfeld and Gates out, Hodgman Lookalike" linking to the NYTimes article "Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine 'I'm a PC'"
To those who actually think the Gates/Seinfeld got canceled: the commercials played for one week each. Now in the third week and today we get the 'new' style. Do you honestly think they scrambled to get something done within a week?
I know the Slashdot crowd hates MS with a passion but don't let your hate cloud your judgement.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the management of a company seems determined to undermine their position and drive their company to the ground...... or maybe the EA execs never played a game in their life.
Take Red Alerts' main competitor: Starcraft. There are people still playing it, now, more than 12 years after its release (and I understand there'sa huge community). I still have Red Alert 1 on a shelf and I actually played it a little last year, just for the good time's sake.
I have many games I cherish, despite not having a lot of time to play. Last month I replayed Lucas Arts' Full Throttle (through Dos Box).
Limiting a game to 5 installs is more idiotic than limiting a movie to 5 viewings (I don't watch again 90% of the movies, and there are only 1 or 2 I saw 5 times) and I doubt that those who actually bought Spore were fully aware of the implications. Not to worry, they will learn. And when they do, EA will have less customers...
You're either a true expert in the field, who does film-grade compositing every day, or you're a troll.
I've done some chroma-key compositing over background plates myself, albeit for TV. I can honestly say I did not see any artifacts in LoTR - although I admit I haven't checked frame-by-frame.
Either way, show some examples if you want to be taken seriously.
Reading the posts, you'd say that each and every one is a successful business[man|woman].
Well, guess what, until you try to develop a commercial product, you won't know how tricky it is, especially subscription-based.
For version-based products that ship in a box or are downloaded, you invest some money (yours or loaned), work and release Version 1.0. If it's successful enough (e.g. you get some profit), you gather feedback and use some of the profit to make version 2.
With subscription-based services, you need to guess: how many potential subscribers? what's the optimal fee to maximize profit? How many will cancel after one month?
In the end, as much as we hate to say it, luck plays a major role. There are so many products out there and one a few "sell by themselves" to to brand recognition (WoW, anything LoTR or Star Wars/Trek).
I thought I was the only one who saw this. Ten years ago Discovery was truly awesome. I loved some of their history stuff, the science was pretty solid too.
Myth Busters was good in the beginning but the science/entertainment ratio is dropping. I used to like Scrapheap Challenge too.
Now most shows are the same dreaded "reality" kind, with nothing you can actually learn...
In case you're wondering, I still remember how MTV was in 1989.
"Choice" can mean a lot of things. If everyone adheres to the standards, they can still compete on quality&price. For the customer is a double win.
All USB mouses (mice?) are based on the same standards. It's up to the customer to choose a plain vanilla one or the latest laser-assisted one with 9 buttons.
How would installing a different OS help in any way?
I now, some memes are popular here, but it's getting tiresome.
Short version of the story: users are tricked into installing malicious software.
No vulnerability is exploited; the fact that it's Windows and not Linux-distro-of-the-month is irrelevant (remember, once installed, if the software can read your home directory and send passwords and CC details, it achieved its goal - it may not need full system access). The fact that Flash is involved is irrelevant too - it could be a "special" video codec, or java or whatever.
You had some credibility until you mentioned "VirtualPC". Virtual PC is for homes, maybe small offices where you need to test an older OS. I have a virtualized WinXP to test suspicious software on and generally play with without caring of consequences.
If you want to look at enterprise-level stuff, google for HyperV.
I'd venture to say that you haven't seen The Dark Knight. Judging from the media hype, I thought that it's all because Ledger's help too.
However, having seen the movie, I can safely say that Heath Ledger outshines everyone else in the movie. Maybe they (the producers) have altered the music or the editing or whatever, but the movie seems to be about the Joker rather than about Batman.
Health's Joker puts Nicholson's (and Burton's) version to shame and it deserves all the accolade. It's an intense, scary character.
Ah, you're so out of time... Adobe has Open sourced the SWF file format, the Flex framework (for building.net-style flash apps) and donated the Tamarin (look it up) project to Mozilla. I'd say your worries are unfounded.
Also, pull the plug on flash? One of their crown jewel? The plugin present on 98% of all computers? You got to be joking. They pulled the plug on SVG because no one wanted it. At the time, Adobe tried SVG as a possible competition to Macromedia (the owners of Flash); in the end, they figured it'd be easier to buy Macromedia than sell SVG as a viable alternative...
Oh, and I know most slashdotters think flash==evil_ads, but you can build some very cool stuff with it; I am working on a chess game in AS3 (actionscript 3) and it's very rewarding; it makes me feel like when I was 13 and was playing with my ZX Spectrum...
The GP was referring to Logan, which is a reasonable car in terms of safety. It doesn't have GPS or park assistance, but it did score 3* on European safety tests.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, to my surprise, I encountered quite a few cases lately where searching for more obscure stuff (non-English phrases, names of friends, etc.) I got significantly better results with live.com than with Google.
Flash has native blur, glow, displacement, etc. and you can also program your own effects that can be applied on images and video: check Pixel Bender
Shouldn't come to any surprise.
Adobe publishes quarterly reports on market penetration for all versions of flash, so that developers can target the right version. As of September'08, Flash player 9 was on 97.7% of the computers worldwide (they include methodology and details).
Can anyone provide any kind of information regarding Silverlight penetration? MS has been begging and paying companies and devlopers to use use Silverlight, yet users prefer to go elsewhere.
I will say the exact opposite. We made a large enterprise application for a UK health insurer. All interface and logic was flash (not even Flex) with custom-built components. It was a lot better than the alternatives (the initial plan was to use ASPX for the interface). It was nice and fast too (the bottlenecks were on the server). By my last count there were over 200K lines of AS code.
I also made a chess game in AS3. It's not Deep Blue but after optimizations it's fast enough to have fun with (and strong enough to beat you if you're not careful).
Some of the parent poster's comments are valid, but I could bitch and moan the same about PHP, Java or .NET.
Yes, any European city with some history behind it looks "organic" rather than designed.
Think about it. I'm living in a small city that was founded in 1190 and that for centuries had to withhold attacks from the Turks.
This doesn't mean that you can't generate cities using some fractal procedures though, it's just that depending on the setting, it might be more difficult.
Don't worry, someone probably already has a patent on it.
I know comics may be considered "news for nerds" but this is pushing it - Editors, if I want to read Digg, I go to Digg.
I mean, after countless complains, jokes and accusations, Adobe FINALLY releases the the 64bit flash plugin (for Linux first nonetheless) and what gets published is a lame list that amounts to little more than blog spam?
Compared to most other piece of software, Flash had very few security issues. I can remember 3 or 4 issues, all of them proof-of-concept. I think just one vulnerability has been used 'in the wild' and even there its success is debatable.
Actionscript is similar to javascript, although in version 3, with strong typing, it starting to feel more like Java.
Some people - me included - like its flexibility, while others loathe the same thing.
The only thing I don't like about it is the new syntax for Vector data type (Flash 10)
C#, Java: int list[] = new int[100];
AS3: var list:Vector. = new Vector.(100);
Actually you can build flash apps without Flash.
Flex SDK is free and allows you to compile Flash, Flex and AIR apps.
FDT is not free but it's very very good (uses Flex). If you think it's not worth the money, you can write your own Eclipse plugin.
There are a number of other options, like FlasDevelop or MTASC, which although not Eclipse-based, are free alternatives.
A good algorithm is important, obviously, but ultimately chess is done by brute force.
I wrote a chess game myself in flash (AS3) and it's no picnic.
The language itself is at least 10 times slower than C. Even with optimizations is about half the speed of Java. Then the execution time is limited to 15 seconds. Also, transposition tables, opening and closing databases are just huge and no one would tolerate a browser game to allocate 200Mb of RAM for internal caching.
I assume the situation is about the same for small devices, where computing power and memory are scarce resource.
"Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled "
Even Digg managed to find a more appropriate headline:
"Microsoft's New Ad:Seinfeld and Gates out, Hodgman Lookalike"
linking to the NYTimes article "Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine 'I'm a PC'"
To those who actually think the Gates/Seinfeld got canceled: the commercials played for one week each. Now in the third week and today we get the 'new' style. Do you honestly think they scrambled to get something done within a week?
I know the Slashdot crowd hates MS with a passion but don't let your hate cloud your judgement.
XP style activation? Limited number of activations?
At least you can reinstall XP/Vista as many times as you want. I know I did.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the management of a company seems determined to undermine their position and drive their company to the ground... ... or maybe the EA execs never played a game in their life.
Take Red Alerts' main competitor: Starcraft. There are people still playing it, now, more than 12 years after its release (and I understand there'sa huge community). I still have Red Alert 1 on a shelf and I actually played it a little last year, just for the good time's sake.
I have many games I cherish, despite not having a lot of time to play. Last month I replayed Lucas Arts' Full Throttle (through Dos Box).
Limiting a game to 5 installs is more idiotic than limiting a movie to 5 viewings (I don't watch again 90% of the movies, and there are only 1 or 2 I saw 5 times) and I doubt that those who actually bought Spore were fully aware of the implications. Not to worry, they will learn. And when they do, EA will have less customers...
You're either a true expert in the field, who does film-grade compositing every day, or you're a troll.
I've done some chroma-key compositing over background plates myself, albeit for TV. I can honestly say I did not see any artifacts in LoTR - although I admit I haven't checked frame-by-frame.
Either way, show some examples if you want to be taken seriously.
You're trolling big time.
Two year warranty is minimum required by law. Lots of items sell with longer warranties.
You may be right, but you got the wrong examples.
I don't know CodeIgniter, so I can't comment on it.
PHPMyAdmin is an useful app, but if you ever used MSSQl admin tools, you'd know it doesn't come anywhere near.
As for OSCommerce... LOL. Have you looked at the code? It's the very definition of dirty.
Reading the posts, you'd say that each and every one is a successful business[man|woman].
Well, guess what, until you try to develop a commercial product, you won't know how tricky it is, especially subscription-based.
For version-based products that ship in a box or are downloaded, you invest some money (yours or loaned), work and release Version 1.0. If it's successful enough (e.g. you get some profit), you gather feedback and use some of the profit to make version 2.
With subscription-based services, you need to guess: how many potential subscribers? what's the optimal fee to maximize profit? How many will cancel after one month?
In the end, as much as we hate to say it, luck plays a major role. There are so many products out there and one a few "sell by themselves" to to brand recognition (WoW, anything LoTR or Star Wars/Trek).
I thought I was the only one who saw this.
Ten years ago Discovery was truly awesome. I loved some of their history stuff, the science was pretty solid too.
Myth Busters was good in the beginning but the science/entertainment ratio is dropping. I used to like Scrapheap Challenge too.
Now most shows are the same dreaded "reality" kind, with nothing you can actually learn...
In case you're wondering, I still remember how MTV was in 1989.
You're trolling and you know it.
"Choice" can mean a lot of things. If everyone adheres to the standards, they can still compete on quality&price. For the customer is a double win.
All USB mouses (mice?) are based on the same standards. It's up to the customer to choose a plain vanilla one or the latest laser-assisted one with 9 buttons.
How would installing a different OS help in any way?
I now, some memes are popular here, but it's getting tiresome.
Short version of the story: users are tricked into installing malicious software.
No vulnerability is exploited; the fact that it's Windows and not Linux-distro-of-the-month is irrelevant (remember, once installed, if the software can read your home directory and send passwords and CC details, it achieved its goal - it may not need full system access). The fact that Flash is involved is irrelevant too - it could be a "special" video codec, or java or whatever.
You had some credibility until you mentioned "VirtualPC". Virtual PC is for homes, maybe small offices where you need to test an older OS. I have a virtualized WinXP to test suspicious software on and generally play with without caring of consequences.
If you want to look at enterprise-level stuff, google for HyperV.
Not fair.
I'd venture to say that you haven't seen The Dark Knight. Judging from the media hype, I thought that it's all because Ledger's help too.
However, having seen the movie, I can safely say that Heath Ledger outshines everyone else in the movie. Maybe they (the producers) have altered the music or the editing or whatever, but the movie seems to be about the Joker rather than about Batman.
Health's Joker puts Nicholson's (and Burton's) version to shame and it deserves all the accolade. It's an intense, scary character.
Ah, you're so out of time... .net-style flash apps) and donated the Tamarin (look it up) project to Mozilla. I'd say your worries are unfounded.
Adobe has Open sourced the SWF file format, the Flex framework (for building
Also, pull the plug on flash? One of their crown jewel? The plugin present on 98% of all computers? You got to be joking. They pulled the plug on SVG because no one wanted it. At the time, Adobe tried SVG as a possible competition to Macromedia (the owners of Flash); in the end, they figured it'd be easier to buy Macromedia than sell SVG as a viable alternative...
Oh, and I know most slashdotters think flash==evil_ads, but you can build some very cool stuff with it; I am working on a chess game in AS3 (actionscript 3) and it's very rewarding; it makes me feel like when I was 13 and was playing with my ZX Spectrum...
The GP was referring to Logan, which is a reasonable car in terms of safety. It doesn't have GPS or park assistance, but it did score 3* on European safety tests.