There are actually various ways you can create Flash presentations for free. Macromedia themselves even have an SDK (free as in cost, not Free Software) you can use to generate Flash files without having to buy the full Flash application.
The real question is where are the *easy to use, end-user* Flash-making apps...And that question sort of answers itself. Most OSS developers aren't interested in end-user, easy-to-use, GUI-heavy tools. I mean, OSS is just now getting to the point where there are halfway decent Office-style applications...And Flash, while somewhat widely used, is much more niche than Office apps.
To pose a question back at the original author -- why are you looking to Flash for this functionality? I'm not anti-Flash as like 95% of Slashdot seems to be, but for what you're doing it seems like you could do it in browser-neutral DHTML and still have a really slick interactive tool. What is Flash bringing to the table for you?
Sorry, but Joe Sixpack wants to share his broadband connection across multiple computers. Home LANs are huge business these days. WiFi is a small segment of that because its too expensive for Joe Sixpack..However, these cards will be much cheaper, that's the whole point. They will be dirt cheap and a lot more convienent for Joe than plugging all the computers into the "linksys router thingy" he bought at CompUSA for $50. These will get made, and they will sell. Believe it.
Not too late... Microsoft's WinWiFi is perfectly compatible with other WiFi devices so there's not really an inertia holding device manufacturers back from making these..And they will make them, just as they made WinModems...
Personally I think software-based WinWiFi is a great idea...The vast majority of users buying new computers are just wasting a mammoth amount of CPU anyway that might get put to some use if they do wireless networking. Don't get me wrong, its not for everybody and I know there are benefits to a hardware solution, but for a certain segment, these will work just fine, as WinModems did. I wish the software were based on something more open than what Microsoft is offering, but since nobody else but Apple has stepped up to the plate on software WiFi (and their solution is also closed) then we can't really whine about it.
Well your second statement proves your first statement wrong. The fact that Java has primitive types to appease the C/C++ programmers (FYI, I'm a C++ programmer by trade, so I'm not deriding C/C++ programmers) makes it non-'Pure OO'. To be Pure-OO, everything must be an object and derived from one single base type -- that is not the case in Java because of the primitives (int, byte, etc).
The HUGE question is if Microsoft will try and pull some patent / IP protection / royalty stunt with C#. We need to have some lawyer go over the C# license, standards doc, patent agreement to see if Microsoft has given up it's rights to sue for patent infrignment if people develop competing implementations.
Well, for all of their shady business practices, Microsoft is fairly reasonable when it comes to patent/IP issues. And in any case, they aren't in much of a position now to go suing people for writing competing products, even if they technically own patents, etc, because they're going to need to lay low for a few years while this anti-trust business blows over.
C# is a pretty great language for what it is..Sure it borrows a ton from Java but Java borrowed a ton from C++, Smalltalk and other languages..That's how language evolution works. I think the bigger problem for Sun, though, is Microsoft's CLR technology is a lot more language neutral than Java VMs are, so its not just C# they need to worry about, but every language with a CLR implemention -- which is like 20 languages currently, and growing.
I've always thought Sun's push to keep you from locking into a operating system platform was rather funny considering it consists of locking you into a language platform, which generally is much harder to get out of. (Easier to port a Win32 C++ program to Solaris than it is to port a C++ program to Java or vis versa). If we're going to have cross platform computing, make it cross-language too -- Microsoft is doing that, Sun isn't.
(PS. Yes, I know you can get various languages to run on the JVM, ie. JPython, et al, but there's no denying that the JVM is very oriented towards Java as a language and won't let you stray too much from it without major kludge-work).
I guarantee that my Java applications will out perform your VB, with the exception on Win32, on every other platform.
I guarantee that my VB or C# applications will out-perform your Java on the vast majority (90+%) of installed non-server (since we're talking GUI apps) computers worldwide.
Sun doesn't have to Open Source Java for alternate GUIs to become available...There are already various 3rd party toolkits, such as IBM's SWT that either use native widgets or run in pure Java (which for obvious reasons tends to be slower)...
The problem is its hard to get people to adopt these other toolkits with Sun standing firmly behind Swing, which as the article mentioned is almost so slow as to be unusable on every Java implementation except the OS X one.
I have to admit that it will be good to be on this side of the fence during a brute force conversion of browsers (AOL to Netscape/Mozilla). I would love for some of these sites that use IE specific features of CSS or DHTML (or god forbid ActiveX) having 35 million screaming AOL users at their doors.
Wishful thinking. These AOL users will still have Internet Explorer on their machines. A good majority of them will just change their AOL options to use IE instead of Netscape once they upgrade to a version that defaults to Netscape. They may not be completely computer literate, but they aren't morons...
At any rate, neither DHTML nor CSS are IE specific features, so you have no idea what you're talking about to begin with..How did your post get moderated up?
MS has perhaps the best research team (at least nowadays) when it comes to HCI stuff.
Though somehwat offtopic of the original HCI article, Microsoft also has the best research team in the world on 3D graphics, natural language processing, and a few other fields. Billions of dollars can rent an awful lot of talent.
Anime is like Linux. People think that if they pretend to like it, they will get some hipness cred because its non-mainstream. However in both cases, they are eating shit sandwiches just to prove how 'hip' they are. Watch REAL cartoons and use real Operating Systems like Windows 2000 or XP..Don't try to be 'cool'...Also lose weight and shave that beard...A shower wouldn't hurt either you tubby fuck.
That's the big difference. If you try and remove IE from Windows, Microsoft gets pissed off because that's a big bad no-no, so you have no choice but to have that software whether you want it or not. It was put on to keep their monopoly - not because they thought they had a better browser.
A big part of the reason Microsoft claims that IE can't be removed is that the actual IEXPLORER.EXE is a very thin wrapper over a bunch of COM components that together form a web browser. If you remove those underlying components, it will indeed break a lot of things because a LOT of software, and not just Microsoft's, relies on those components to operate. This whole business is very silly -- Netscape, et al spent about 3 years proclaiming how the operating system was obsolete and how they were going to crush Microsoft with the web browser paradigm, yada yada yada...Microsoft responds to this very public and open threat by making their own browser (or, rather, licensing a browser, at first) and then they get reamed for it? Bah.
(Whether it became a better browser is not for debate here - that happened after Netscape basically was dried up.)
So Microsoft built a better browser and kept it free even after its 'competition' was gone? Isn't that a pretty good argument that their monopoly isn't harmful to consumers? Sure, it may be harmful to a handful of companies that can't compete, but anti-trust laws are supposed to exist for the benefit of the end consumer, not Scott McNealy, et al.
I thought Panic Room was fairly boring myself...Despite being a David Fincher fan.
However, Jon Katz is clearly still a ranting idiot...
Why would there be a NET connection in the panic room, even if it were built today? What emergency services does being on the net give you access to that a phone doesn't?
Furthermore, it was explained in the movie almost to the point of being annoying (I guess to try to appease would-be-nitpickers who just cant figure things out like Katz?) that the panic room did indeed have a phoneline out...But it wasn't yet connected. This makes pretty good sense, they had only moved into the house that day..Ever move, Katz?
Lastly, there was nothing in this movie to suggest that it had anything to do with technological hubris. It was just a thriller where shit went wrong to hasten the plot.
I can't believe people actually pay you to write, Katz.. I mean, you seem to be functionally retarded.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PNG designed to work with images that have large monochromatic blocks, things like cartoons? Again, I might have no idea what I'm talking about, but that was always what I had understood about PNG and GIF. Therefore, it makes sense that it would blow away someting like "target," while performing less well on something like "cafe."
You're correct. PNG was created primarily to replace GIF, and as such it uses fairly standard compression techniques. It doesn't have a native lossy mode, though unlike GIF it does support high color images, and a full alpha layer (not just a colorkey, which is really all that GIF supports).
Seems that the reference source code implementation of DjVu is GPL (full GPL, not LGPL). I'm not looking to start a debate on the merits of "Free" software, but this situation is the kiss of death for any potential file format. I'm sure if the reference implementation were released under a BSD style license (as is the case with JPG, PNG, etc), the format would be much more widely supported....
In the real world, companies don't want to either GPL their software (required if they use this GPL library), or reinvent all the code from scratch based on the spec, unless there's huge demand for it (which there won't be due to chicken & egg scenerio)... So, don't expect to see any support for DjVu anytime soon.
of course buying a palm just for the games at this point is silly....... but if you haven't checked, LOTS of people ALREADY own a palm. Maybe they'd like to buy a game or two?
Try reading the post to which I was replying before making an ass of yourself on a public forum again. The original poster claimed quite clearly that he was interested in looking at a Palm for the games and wasn't interested in normal PDA functions.
Its build for gaming and has plenty of "old school" titles, including many Sega games.
I've owned various Palms throughout the years and while they have uses, they are pretty crappy game platforms for the type of games that Sega is talking about -- fine for Solitare or Minesweeper type games, I guess... Its not even a very good Tetris machine because the controls were obviously not laid out with gaming in mind...
Buying a Palm just for games is...rather silly, IMO, where there are far superior dedicated systems for that purpose.
Keep in mind that there's no decent official driver support for Voodoo cards now that 3dfx is gone. There's already some games that are DirectX 8.1 only and the list keeps growing. Many of these games wont run properly on Voodoo cards because there are no updated drivers.
They do have PCI GeForce 2 boards though for obvious reasons they suffer a performance hit when compared to the AGP versions... That's your best bet until you upgrade your mobo.
Alright, I know tech workers tend to have absurdly high opinions of themselves, especially on slashdot, but EINSTEINS? That's going a bit far, don't you think?
Yes. In my 8 years of experience as a programmer the vast majority of people in high tech (especially programmers and IT people) seem to be functionally retarded. And even the best of the best (who are doing tech work professionally) are far from Einsteins.
Slashdot Mirror
To be quite honest, no.
I don't care either.
And what exactly do you think people mean by "Free Software" then?
Tends to depend on how long their beard is and often on the frequency in which they shower.
The real question is where are the *easy to use, end-user* Flash-making apps...And that question sort of answers itself. Most OSS developers aren't interested in end-user, easy-to-use, GUI-heavy tools. I mean, OSS is just now getting to the point where there are halfway decent Office-style applications...And Flash, while somewhat widely used, is much more niche than Office apps.
To pose a question back at the original author -- why are you looking to Flash for this functionality? I'm not anti-Flash as like 95% of Slashdot seems to be, but for what you're doing it seems like you could do it in browser-neutral DHTML and still have a really slick interactive tool. What is Flash bringing to the table for you?
Until they get slapped with a lawsuit from Real due to using their streaming format without permission? .. Sigh!
Sorry, but Joe Sixpack wants to share his broadband connection across multiple computers. Home LANs are huge business these days. WiFi is a small segment of that because its too expensive for Joe Sixpack..However, these cards will be much cheaper, that's the whole point. They will be dirt cheap and a lot more convienent for Joe than plugging all the computers into the "linksys router thingy" he bought at CompUSA for $50. These will get made, and they will sell. Believe it.
Personally I think software-based WinWiFi is a great idea...The vast majority of users buying new computers are just wasting a mammoth amount of CPU anyway that might get put to some use if they do wireless networking. Don't get me wrong, its not for everybody and I know there are benefits to a hardware solution, but for a certain segment, these will work just fine, as WinModems did. I wish the software were based on something more open than what Microsoft is offering, but since nobody else but Apple has stepped up to the plate on software WiFi (and their solution is also closed) then we can't really whine about it.
Well your second statement proves your first statement wrong. The fact that Java has primitive types to appease the C/C++ programmers (FYI, I'm a C++ programmer by trade, so I'm not deriding C/C++ programmers) makes it non-'Pure OO'. To be Pure-OO, everything must be an object and derived from one single base type -- that is not the case in Java because of the primitives (int, byte, etc).
Well, for all of their shady business practices, Microsoft is fairly reasonable when it comes to patent/IP issues. And in any case, they aren't in much of a position now to go suing people for writing competing products, even if they technically own patents, etc, because they're going to need to lay low for a few years while this anti-trust business blows over.
C# is a pretty great language for what it is..Sure it borrows a ton from Java but Java borrowed a ton from C++, Smalltalk and other languages..That's how language evolution works. I think the bigger problem for Sun, though, is Microsoft's CLR technology is a lot more language neutral than Java VMs are, so its not just C# they need to worry about, but every language with a CLR implemention -- which is like 20 languages currently, and growing.
I've always thought Sun's push to keep you from locking into a operating system platform was rather funny considering it consists of locking you into a language platform, which generally is much harder to get out of. (Easier to port a Win32 C++ program to Solaris than it is to port a C++ program to Java or vis versa). If we're going to have cross platform computing, make it cross-language too -- Microsoft is doing that, Sun isn't.
(PS. Yes, I know you can get various languages to run on the JVM, ie. JPython, et al, but there's no denying that the JVM is very oriented towards Java as a language and won't let you stray too much from it without major kludge-work).
I guarantee that my VB or C# applications will out-perform your Java on the vast majority (90+%) of installed non-server (since we're talking GUI apps) computers worldwide.
The problem is its hard to get people to adopt these other toolkits with Sun standing firmly behind Swing, which as the article mentioned is almost so slow as to be unusable on every Java implementation except the OS X one.
Wishful thinking. These AOL users will still have Internet Explorer on their machines. A good majority of them will just change their AOL options to use IE instead of Netscape once they upgrade to a version that defaults to Netscape. They may not be completely computer literate, but they aren't morons...
At any rate, neither DHTML nor CSS are IE specific features, so you have no idea what you're talking about to begin with..How did your post get moderated up?
Though somehwat offtopic of the original HCI article, Microsoft also has the best research team in the world on 3D graphics, natural language processing, and a few other fields. Billions of dollars can rent an awful lot of talent.
Anime is like Linux. People think that if they pretend to like it, they will get some hipness cred because its non-mainstream. However in both cases, they are eating shit sandwiches just to prove how 'hip' they are. Watch REAL cartoons and use real Operating Systems like Windows 2000 or XP..Don't try to be 'cool'...Also lose weight and shave that beard...A shower wouldn't hurt either you tubby fuck.
"Best anime ever" is about the same as "best tasting shit" ever. Anime sucks, and so do you.
A big part of the reason Microsoft claims that IE can't be removed is that the actual IEXPLORER.EXE is a very thin wrapper over a bunch of COM components that together form a web browser. If you remove those underlying components, it will indeed break a lot of things because a LOT of software, and not just Microsoft's, relies on those components to operate. This whole business is very silly -- Netscape, et al spent about 3 years proclaiming how the operating system was obsolete and how they were going to crush Microsoft with the web browser paradigm, yada yada yada...Microsoft responds to this very public and open threat by making their own browser (or, rather, licensing a browser, at first) and then they get reamed for it? Bah.
(Whether it became a better browser is not for debate here - that happened after Netscape basically was dried up.)
So Microsoft built a better browser and kept it free even after its 'competition' was gone? Isn't that a pretty good argument that their monopoly isn't harmful to consumers? Sure, it may be harmful to a handful of companies that can't compete, but anti-trust laws are supposed to exist for the benefit of the end consumer, not Scott McNealy, et al.
However, Jon Katz is clearly still a ranting idiot...
Why would there be a NET connection in the panic room, even if it were built today? What emergency services does being on the net give you access to that a phone doesn't?
Furthermore, it was explained in the movie almost to the point of being annoying (I guess to try to appease would-be-nitpickers who just cant figure things out like Katz?) that the panic room did indeed have a phoneline out...But it wasn't yet connected. This makes pretty good sense, they had only moved into the house that day..Ever move, Katz?
Lastly, there was nothing in this movie to suggest that it had anything to do with technological hubris. It was just a thriller where shit went wrong to hasten the plot.
I can't believe people actually pay you to write, Katz.. I mean, you seem to be functionally retarded.
You're correct. PNG was created primarily to replace GIF, and as such it uses fairly standard compression techniques. It doesn't have a native lossy mode, though unlike GIF it does support high color images, and a full alpha layer (not just a colorkey, which is really all that GIF supports).
In the real world, companies don't want to either GPL their software (required if they use this GPL library), or reinvent all the code from scratch based on the spec, unless there's huge demand for it (which there won't be due to chicken & egg scenerio)... So, don't expect to see any support for DjVu anytime soon.
Try reading the post to which I was replying before making an ass of yourself on a public forum again. The original poster claimed quite clearly that he was interested in looking at a Palm for the games and wasn't interested in normal PDA functions.
Its build for gaming and has plenty of "old school" titles, including many Sega games.
I've owned various Palms throughout the years and while they have uses, they are pretty crappy game platforms for the type of games that Sega is talking about -- fine for Solitare or Minesweeper type games, I guess... Its not even a very good Tetris machine because the controls were obviously not laid out with gaming in mind...
Buying a Palm just for games is...rather silly, IMO, where there are far superior dedicated systems for that purpose.
They do have PCI GeForce 2 boards though for obvious reasons they suffer a performance hit when compared to the AGP versions... That's your best bet until you upgrade your mobo.
KISS MY ADIDAS!!! Sho' Nuff!
Bow before ZOD, SUCKAS!
Yes. In my 8 years of experience as a programmer the vast majority of people in high tech (especially programmers and IT people) seem to be functionally retarded. And even the best of the best (who are doing tech work professionally) are far from Einsteins.
This post is flamebait, moderate it as such, IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS, BOY!