"Now that I think about it, since Adobe is insisting on how "open" FLash is because they've published the file format specs, it's conceivable that almost any dev could implement this."
Yeah, you'd think, hey? Except there seems to be only one third party Flash player in the wild and that one doesn't work so well.
I've heard the reason is that although Adobe has "published the file format specs" they did it in such a way that it's not exactly easy to implement a proper player. Kind of like MS did with their XML document format.
Adobe wants us all to use their "open" format with their player, on platforms they choose to support. And they always have.
Even worse. There's nothing blocking them, but Adobe just couldn't be bothered until now. Sounds like an excellent reason to use a published standard instead of Flash.
Release Flash as an open standard? Sure, that might work. Hey, if they did that, Apple might even build Flash right into the OS... like they did with PDF.
Production or development? Adobe has been dragging it's feet on CS for OS X for years. Until recently it was still using Carbon, a bandaid solution to getting OS 9 apps running on OS X. Was it CS4 that didn't have 64-bit support on the Mac?
Maybe Apple has just realized how crappy Adobe is at keeping their Mac code up to date and doesn't really want to see that acting as middleman on the app store.
Apple doesn't want to have to support Adobe. Whenever Apple releases an OS update they document the changes that might affect apps, and release developer tools and betas of the OS before hand so developers can keep up. How does that work when your app is "written" in Flash? Oh yeah, you have to wait until Adobe gets around to updating their development tools, THEN you can go ahead and fix your own app. And Adobe is always so quick and on the ball about releasing timely updates. Particularly for the Mac.
Yeah, there definitely aren't any iPhone apps that have made it to other app stores (or vice versa). Nope, nopenope.
Apple supports both C and C++. If you design your app properly the porting isn't so bad in either direction. Yes, it's a bit harder than making your crappy Flash animation play on whatever. So sad.
Cancerous cells aren't just regular ones that have gone bad, they're new cells that don't belong wherever they are. With most tumor forming cancers it's the mass effect that gets you - the tumor gets big enough that it just won't fit and either ruptures something or presses on something too hard.
You do not want to "fix" cancer cells. You want to kill them and have the body's naturally housekeeping equipment break them down and remove the debris.
Since you mentioned Fink I'm assuming you're on a Mac?
On any Unix it's a good idea to do a Python install in someplace other than the system Python location. Particularly on the Mac. Some system scripts are written in Python and it's a good idea not to mess with the Python they depend on.
The standard way to do an install on the Mac is as a framework. If you're building Python from scratch, you use the flag --framework-install. I haven't done that for a while since the binaries available from python.org are excellent and it's much easier just to double click the installer.
The resulting Python environment will be completely self contained, in/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework. You can tar this up and send it to someone (or drag and drop it). So long as they untar it in the same place they'll have a duplicate of your Python environment. OS X actually treats Python.framework as a file in many cases, just as a.app is actually a folder, but gets treated like a file.
Making your framework Python run as default can be a little bit tricky. You've basically got two choices. You can alias "python" to/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin/pythonw or you can change the/usr/local/bin python to a link that points there. I think some installers might do the latter for you. I prefer the latter method since it works for all users.
You do just have to keep track of some of the other things that a given Python module might depend on. For example, if you're using LaTeX in matplotlib you'll need to have LaTeX installed. Unfortunately there isn't really any way around that, but external dependencies in Python modules are usually kept to a minimum.
To answer your Fink question, don't use Fink. At least not for Python. The native compiled version is MUCH nicer, and easier to get along with. For example, non-Fink matplotlib includes a Cocoa backend, so your graphs appear in native cocoa windows, rather than Tk rendered under X when using Fink.
Yes, I have. The math stuff is just fine. The hardest part is usually installing LaTeX. The 3D stuff is unmaintained. There was some initial interest in it a few years ago and then it sort of died because there are other, better ways to plot in 3D. Even so, I believe the VTK integration still works reasonably well, and it just requires installing VTK and one other package. You might have a point that the third-party 3D addons to matplotlib are dead, but matplotlib itself certainly isn't.
The best way to distribute a Python environment is to tar the whole thing up and send it to whomever. An alternative is just to tar up the site-packages directory. For a long time I had a separate, easily accessible site-packages that could be packaged and distributed to everyone in the lab on a regular basis. On OS X you can even make a pretty double click installer in about five minutes.
It doesn't matter I'd you grasp basic code design or not, Matlab et al simply don't support that sort I thing, or have support poorly grafted on afterward because they were never designed for real coding. I say this as a scientist who uses everything from assembler to Python and has had the unenviable task of figuring out what someone else's thousand line long matlab programs were doing.
If your chosen python packager doesn't do an adequate job of including matplotlib then install it yourself. It's a double click (or equivalent) on the major platforms. Certainly not dead.
"chemosynthetic communities occur in isolated areas with thin veneers of sediment only a few meters thick."
I said more desolate and void of life than a desert, not completely so. Deserts have quite a bit of life, but less than, say, a rainforest. The bottoms of oceans have some life, but not as much as the shallows or land.
We've nuked quite a few deserts, and some very nice Pacific atolls too.
Pile up enough conventional explosives to equal the blast from even a small nuke. It's a BIG pile. Now, do you know what the byproducts of those explosives are? Usually they're pretty nasty.
Well designed nukes make good use of their fuel and don't cause nearly as much fallout. You're also talking about pounds of byproducts, rather than thousands of tonnes.
"Why on earth would you want to use an iPad to browse the internet"
Why on Earth would you need a keyboard to browse the Internet? Maybe you want to type a quick message like this one? That's not browsing, but a virtual keyboard is fine for that.
Why would you not want to use a full size notebook? It's hot, heavy, hard to use in many relaxed positions, short battery life....
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They could play videos. Flash games, probably not. Videos, no problem.
There are lots of other video player apps for the iPhone.
"Now that I think about it, since Adobe is insisting on how "open" FLash is because they've published the file format specs, it's conceivable that almost any dev could implement this."
Yeah, you'd think, hey? Except there seems to be only one third party Flash player in the wild and that one doesn't work so well.
I've heard the reason is that although Adobe has "published the file format specs" they did it in such a way that it's not exactly easy to implement a proper player. Kind of like MS did with their XML document format.
Adobe wants us all to use their "open" format with their player, on platforms they choose to support. And they always have.
Yeah, if you want high quality DRM, Flash seems to be the best.
What ever made you think they were?
But now that you mention it, I can't run Flash on my Motorola RAZR either, and they ARE blocking it, along with all other third party apps.
Even worse. There's nothing blocking them, but Adobe just couldn't be bothered until now. Sounds like an excellent reason to use a published standard instead of Flash.
Release Flash as an open standard? Sure, that might work. Hey, if they did that, Apple might even build Flash right into the OS... like they did with PDF.
Production or development? Adobe has been dragging it's feet on CS for OS X for years. Until recently it was still using Carbon, a bandaid solution to getting OS 9 apps running on OS X. Was it CS4 that didn't have 64-bit support on the Mac?
Maybe Apple has just realized how crappy Adobe is at keeping their Mac code up to date and doesn't really want to see that acting as middleman on the app store.
Since it's not "2nd half 2010" his statement is precisely correct. Also, the Blackberry has been around for quite a while.
Interesting. How about this video of Flash crashing on an Android tablet?
Apple doesn't want to have to support Adobe. Whenever Apple releases an OS update they document the changes that might affect apps, and release developer tools and betas of the OS before hand so developers can keep up. How does that work when your app is "written" in Flash? Oh yeah, you have to wait until Adobe gets around to updating their development tools, THEN you can go ahead and fix your own app. And Adobe is always so quick and on the ball about releasing timely updates. Particularly for the Mac.
Yeah, there definitely aren't any iPhone apps that have made it to other app stores (or vice versa). Nope, nope nope.
Apple supports both C and C++. If you design your app properly the porting isn't so bad in either direction. Yes, it's a bit harder than making your crappy Flash animation play on whatever. So sad.
Uh, HP has made or sold several devices that can only run "manufacturer approved applications." Dell as well.
For example: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=ca&category_id=6882&cs=cabsdt1&l=en&s=bsd
Those are sales results for one quarter. There were a few other quarters that happened before that one.
Cancerous cells aren't just regular ones that have gone bad, they're new cells that don't belong wherever they are. With most tumor forming cancers it's the mass effect that gets you - the tumor gets big enough that it just won't fit and either ruptures something or presses on something too hard.
You do not want to "fix" cancer cells. You want to kill them and have the body's naturally housekeeping equipment break them down and remove the debris.
Since you mentioned Fink I'm assuming you're on a Mac?
On any Unix it's a good idea to do a Python install in someplace other than the system Python location. Particularly on the Mac. Some system scripts are written in Python and it's a good idea not to mess with the Python they depend on.
The standard way to do an install on the Mac is as a framework. If you're building Python from scratch, you use the flag --framework-install. I haven't done that for a while since the binaries available from python.org are excellent and it's much easier just to double click the installer.
The resulting Python environment will be completely self contained, in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework. You can tar this up and send it to someone (or drag and drop it). So long as they untar it in the same place they'll have a duplicate of your Python environment. OS X actually treats Python.framework as a file in many cases, just as a .app is actually a folder, but gets treated like a file.
Making your framework Python run as default can be a little bit tricky. You've basically got two choices. You can alias "python" to /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin/pythonw or you can change the /usr/local/bin python to a link that points there. I think some installers might do the latter for you. I prefer the latter method since it works for all users.
You do just have to keep track of some of the other things that a given Python module might depend on. For example, if you're using LaTeX in matplotlib you'll need to have LaTeX installed. Unfortunately there isn't really any way around that, but external dependencies in Python modules are usually kept to a minimum.
To answer your Fink question, don't use Fink. At least not for Python. The native compiled version is MUCH nicer, and easier to get along with. For example, non-Fink matplotlib includes a Cocoa backend, so your graphs appear in native cocoa windows, rather than Tk rendered under X when using Fink.
Yes, I have. The math stuff is just fine. The hardest part is usually installing LaTeX. The 3D stuff is unmaintained. There was some initial interest in it a few years ago and then it sort of died because there are other, better ways to plot in 3D. Even so, I believe the VTK integration still works reasonably well, and it just requires installing VTK and one other package. You might have a point that the third-party 3D addons to matplotlib are dead, but matplotlib itself certainly isn't.
The best way to distribute a Python environment is to tar the whole thing up and send it to whomever. An alternative is just to tar up the site-packages directory. For a long time I had a separate, easily accessible site-packages that could be packaged and distributed to everyone in the lab on a regular basis. On OS X you can even make a pretty double click installer in about five minutes.
It doesn't matter I'd you grasp basic code design or not, Matlab et al simply don't support that sort I thing, or have support poorly grafted on afterward because they were never designed for real coding. I say this as a scientist who uses everything from assembler to Python and has had the unenviable task of figuring out what someone else's thousand line long matlab programs were doing.
If your chosen python packager doesn't do an adequate job of including matplotlib then install it yourself. It's a double click (or equivalent) on the major platforms. Certainly not dead.
"chemosynthetic communities occur in isolated areas with thin veneers of sediment only a few meters thick."
I said more desolate and void of life than a desert, not completely so. Deserts have quite a bit of life, but less than, say, a rainforest. The bottoms of oceans have some life, but not as much as the shallows or land.
We've nuked quite a few deserts, and some very nice Pacific atolls too.
The bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is a lot more desolate and void of life than any desert you can find.
Pile up enough conventional explosives to equal the blast from even a small nuke. It's a BIG pile. Now, do you know what the byproducts of those explosives are? Usually they're pretty nasty.
Well designed nukes make good use of their fuel and don't cause nearly as much fallout. You're also talking about pounds of byproducts, rather than thousands of tonnes.
You can sign up for the developer program for more than ten years for the price of a copy of CS4 to make Flash programs with.
I thought Slashdot these days was mostly composed of cranky, entitled children.
Oh, I guess they could be the new generation of IT admins, "programmers" and "engineers" too.
If your jeans are loose enough they won't let you into an Apple store you might want to watch out for cops and indecent exposure charges.
"Why on earth would you want to use an iPad to browse the internet"
Why on Earth would you need a keyboard to browse the Internet? Maybe you want to type a quick message like this one? That's not browsing, but a virtual keyboard is fine for that.
Why would you not want to use a full size notebook? It's hot, heavy, hard to use in many relaxed positions, short battery life....