If I'm not mistaken he said from the get go that it would only be a year long experiment. He finished his year and rather than being a liar he stuck to what he said and ended it.
The opening of Adobe's own site discussing the PDF reference makes it clear that it is intended for individual's looking to develop applications that create as well as modify PDF documents.
"The PDF Reference provides a description of the Portable Document Format and is intended for application developers wishing to develop applications that create PDF files directly, as well as read or modify PDF document content."
What if Kathryn Harris is the only alternative?
I did write my Senator (Bill Nelson, FL) regarding the Military Commissions Act of 2006, both before and after (he voted "yes", asshole). His seat is up for grabs in November but even though he voted to pass this bill I cannot in conscience vote for his opposition. Kathryn Harris would have done no less than Bill Nelson in supporting the President's ambition of transforming the United States of America into an enfeebled Theoden King, and if anything, she would do a lot more.
There are apparantly multiple NTSC standards, 720x486 only being one of them. According to that site, the 4:3 aspect ratio is the preferred normal resolution standard and comes in at 648x486.
Try Flex Builder 2. It's a much better Flash IDE for application development than Flash 8 is.
Flash 8 strikes me as more for content and multimedia development. Flex, on the other hand, is geared towards web developers for web applications.
We've started using it here at work for some smaller scale applications and really enjoy working in it. It's consistent, stable, and you can put together some really kick ass apps with it.
I would agree that early the iTunes tv section suffered from lack of variety, however, I checked it out again the other day after a haitus of several months and was pleasantly surprised. There is now quite a bit of content on there and not just from the big 3. There are even some pilot episodes on there for shows that haven't gotten picked up (ie. Aquaman) which ought to be an interesting experiment- see how well pilots do on iTunes then possibly pick them up if there is enough interest.
As an aside, the Aquaman pilot was actually pretty decent. For those of you who like Smallville you should enjoy it.
Re:Flash as an Application Development Platform? N
on
The Future of Flash
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· Score: 1
As a Coldfusion developer who's moving into the realm of Flex I couldn't agree more. RIA development using Flex is a joy compared to trying to develop something similar in Flash MX or even a typical AJAX environment. I had next to no experience coming into Flex and was amazed at how quickly I could get my applications up and running and talking to our database servers. What people don't seem to quite understand is that Flex is intended as a front-end development environment while back end processing is handled by CFCs (at least with a CF backend) or whatever back end solution your company is using. Since the player is cross platform there are no issues with javascript compatibility across browsers and when used tastefully it can be used to create some incredibly kick ass products. Check out ASFusion for some real world examples.
Warren Ellis is one of the premier writers in today's comic book scene. He's worked for pretty much every major comic book publisher and in the comic book world his name carries a lot of weight.
Look at the history of NeXT. Look at the history of Apple. In neither case did your last statement hold true. One brought the company to it's knees, the other would've possibly faded into obscurity if Apple hadn't bought them up and been transformed from within. Jobs has been there and done that. It DOES NOT work without a) a broad monopoly and/or b) a cash cow to lock people into your platform and keep your company afloat. Look at all the former integrated systems vendors: SGI, Sun, as well as the desktop providers (Be, Commodore, NeXT, etc...). How many of them are still around? How many of them are still insanely profitable and not struggling for survival? Be did exactly what you wanted of Apple, they opened up to generic x86 hardware and floundered into nothingness.
All you need to do is look to history and to see how successful that strategy is. I just don't understand why you people don't get that.
Look at the clone situation from the 90's if you want to see a similar, though not indentical situation. You had hardware vendors that were authorized to use the MacOS to produce cheap, and sometimes inferior, "Macs". The original intent was for these cloners to go after the low-end market that Apple has typically avoided. That's not what happened. What happened is that the cloners ended up cannibalizing existing Mac sales to the point that it was actually financially impacting Apple. Sure, their hardware quality or designs might not have been as good as it is now, but if things had kept up Apple would not have been able to stay in business. They were expending money doing R&D on motherboard designs and internal architecture, processor development, etc... and the cloners didn't have to spend a dime on any of that.
Now equate that to running OS X for Intel on white box hardware. Not only do you run into the matter of stability issues with off the shelf, crap hardware that isn't officially supported, you have cheap boxes that once again will have the potential to cannibalize Apple sales. OS X is the result of a lot of research and development which obviously costs money. Apple, more so than any PC manufacturer, invests a significant amount of money into continued R & D. Where do you think this money comes from? If their profits take a hit from whitebox PC sales then revenue dries up. Sales of OS X don't have near the margin of their hardware. They don't have an Office software package / monopoly to help keep them afloat. Apple is an integrated systems sales company, like the PC companies of old. They sell a solution, an integrated product. So don't look at them as just a hardware company or just a software company. They are unique in the home PC market and it is their continued success that helps to push the envelope. For anybody to take a self-righteous attitude about what they can and can't do with OS X (which for Intel is not for sale as a stand alone product) you need to take into consideration the entire web of how something would impact their bottom line. Things are rarely that simple.
I know from my experience where I work, any Board videos that are offered online are done so through a third party company. They have a turn-key solution that integrates the printed Board agendas with the video and allows you to navigate through the video playback based on linkages within the Agenda (html format).
When I first viewed the demo I wasn't thrilled because it utilized functionality that at the time was unique to WMP for Windows and that wasn't yet supported within WMP for Mac. As far as I know there were no similar products (somebody else was lead on the project) that used Quicktime. Several months after the demo MS finally updated WMP for Mac to have some level of feature parity with the Windows version so the turn-key solution became cross platform. Not to mention that there's a pretty heavy bias towards Windows and such within the IT department here.
My case, prior to the WMP update was that since we are a local government entity, bound by Florida Sunshine laws and such, that if we were going to make something like that available we should at least do what we can to make it available to everyone and not limit it to Windows users.
I've used the Flip4Mac plug-in and it works, to a degree. It's been kind of hit and miss with the media files I've opened and if it doesn't include the scripting functionality that is available within current and future versions of WMP for Windows, then solutions such as the one we use for our online Board meetings will never be cross platform.
I only read the stuff modded 3 and up and didn't see this mentioned as an option. Why not set it up as a disk image and sell it via an e-commerce solution to we US-ians? Or some other method of internet distribution? Maybe bit-torrent it and have a front end attached to the software that allows you to purchase it once it's launched. Given, then you're limiting your distro to broadband users but isn't that who primarly plays PC games anyways? Just a few thoughts.
Except that by all account Nintendo was actually making a damn fine profit on its hardware whereas Microsoft lost money on every XBox sold. Nintendo may not currently be the top console seller, but it certainly makes enough off the hardware to subsidize further console development. Plus the GC was the perfect secondary home console for a lot of families with its low cost and relatively fun line-up of games.
I read through the +5 comments and didn't see anything about Flash memory. Is it any more reliable than a CD for long term data storage and if so, why not use that for the really important and/or sentimental things?
Surprisingly enough, here in the Orlando, FL market ClearChannel runs a very successful talk radio station called RealRadio 104.1. It's not the same top 40 wacky morning DJ crap that you hear day in and day out. The hosts are mostly liberal to moderate and the topics are nearly always interesting. From what I understand the line-up is also available now via XM Radio on channel 15x something. Not sure exactly which station since I don't have an XM receiver.
Actually, KeenSpot is a print publisher as well. I have several comics that were published as comic books under the KeenSpot tag including the first couple issues of Black Plague by Paul Southworth and Cool Cat Studio by Gisele Lagace. They also opened up their own physical comic book store as an additional source of revenue. Just thought you'd like to be informed.
Actually, it's not entirely fair as it sounds. I could be wrong, but to my understanding Adobe is basically double Quartzing under OS X. What I mean by that is that Adobe coded in its own rendering display system for the Windows version of Photoshop to make it look slick, but never removed this rendering layer from the OS X version of it. That means the Mac OS X version has to both render it through Photoshop's screen rendering as well as Aqua. Talk about pulling double duty. Considering that it has to do that much extra work I think that the Mac hardware does an excellent job. It's Adobe's fault for not optimizing it under OS X. I don't know how and if that affects any raw image processing, but I thought it was a worthy knowledge nugget.
Agreed. If you have a programmer's background then PHP should be absolute cake since it seems to have a very Perl-esque syntax. But I started as an art major and moved into web graphic design right out of college. However, for someone with more of a graphic art/web design background I found CFML far more intuitive to use and learn. As a result I found that I had a better understanding of how PHP works when I took a second look at it.
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If I'm not mistaken he said from the get go that it would only be a year long experiment. He finished his year and rather than being a liar he stuck to what he said and ended it.
What's up with the Mod Gnomes today? How is a funny pop-culture reference is marked as "Insightful".
The opening of Adobe's own site discussing the PDF reference makes it clear that it is intended for individual's looking to develop applications that create as well as modify PDF documents.
What if Kathryn Harris is the only alternative? I did write my Senator (Bill Nelson, FL) regarding the Military Commissions Act of 2006, both before and after (he voted "yes", asshole). His seat is up for grabs in November but even though he voted to pass this bill I cannot in conscience vote for his opposition. Kathryn Harris would have done no less than Bill Nelson in supporting the President's ambition of transforming the United States of America into an enfeebled Theoden King, and if anything, she would do a lot more.
There are apparantly multiple NTSC standards, 720x486 only being one of them. According to that site, the 4:3 aspect ratio is the preferred normal resolution standard and comes in at 648x486.
All movies and TV shows are now 640x480.
Oh, and as a follow-up for an example of a real world, non-web type of application that was built using Flash and Actionscript 3, check out FlashVNC.
I'm not going to link it because I don't want to blow-up the poor guys web host, but if you are interested google it.
Try Flex Builder 2. It's a much better Flash IDE for application development than Flash 8 is.
Flash 8 strikes me as more for content and multimedia development. Flex, on the other hand, is geared towards web developers for web applications.
We've started using it here at work for some smaller scale applications and really enjoy working in it. It's consistent, stable, and you can put together some really kick ass apps with it.
I would agree that early the iTunes tv section suffered from lack of variety, however, I checked it out again the other day after a haitus of several months and was pleasantly surprised. There is now quite a bit of content on there and not just from the big 3. There are even some pilot episodes on there for shows that haven't gotten picked up (ie. Aquaman) which ought to be an interesting experiment- see how well pilots do on iTunes then possibly pick them up if there is enough interest.
As an aside, the Aquaman pilot was actually pretty decent. For those of you who like Smallville you should enjoy it.
As a Coldfusion developer who's moving into the realm of Flex I couldn't agree more. RIA development using Flex is a joy compared to trying to develop something similar in Flash MX or even a typical AJAX environment. I had next to no experience coming into Flex and was amazed at how quickly I could get my applications up and running and talking to our database servers. What people don't seem to quite understand is that Flex is intended as a front-end development environment while back end processing is handled by CFCs (at least with a CF backend) or whatever back end solution your company is using. Since the player is cross platform there are no issues with javascript compatibility across browsers and when used tastefully it can be used to create some incredibly kick ass products. Check out ASFusion for some real world examples.
Warren Ellis is one of the premier writers in today's comic book scene. He's worked for pretty much every major comic book publisher and in the comic book world his name carries a lot of weight.
Obligatory PA reference: It's not for you.
The great thing about Nintendo naming their console "Wii" is the endless variety of jokes, each more witty and original than the last.
To a 12 year old.
Look at the history of NeXT. Look at the history of Apple. In neither case did your last statement hold true. One brought the company to it's knees, the other would've possibly faded into obscurity if Apple hadn't bought them up and been transformed from within. Jobs has been there and done that. It DOES NOT work without a) a broad monopoly and/or b) a cash cow to lock people into your platform and keep your company afloat. Look at all the former integrated systems vendors: SGI, Sun, as well as the desktop providers (Be, Commodore, NeXT, etc...). How many of them are still around? How many of them are still insanely profitable and not struggling for survival? Be did exactly what you wanted of Apple, they opened up to generic x86 hardware and floundered into nothingness. All you need to do is look to history and to see how successful that strategy is. I just don't understand why you people don't get that.
Look at the clone situation from the 90's if you want to see a similar, though not indentical situation. You had hardware vendors that were authorized to use the MacOS to produce cheap, and sometimes inferior, "Macs". The original intent was for these cloners to go after the low-end market that Apple has typically avoided. That's not what happened. What happened is that the cloners ended up cannibalizing existing Mac sales to the point that it was actually financially impacting Apple. Sure, their hardware quality or designs might not have been as good as it is now, but if things had kept up Apple would not have been able to stay in business. They were expending money doing R&D on motherboard designs and internal architecture, processor development, etc... and the cloners didn't have to spend a dime on any of that.
Now equate that to running OS X for Intel on white box hardware. Not only do you run into the matter of stability issues with off the shelf, crap hardware that isn't officially supported, you have cheap boxes that once again will have the potential to cannibalize Apple sales. OS X is the result of a lot of research and development which obviously costs money. Apple, more so than any PC manufacturer, invests a significant amount of money into continued R & D. Where do you think this money comes from? If their profits take a hit from whitebox PC sales then revenue dries up. Sales of OS X don't have near the margin of their hardware. They don't have an Office software package / monopoly to help keep them afloat. Apple is an integrated systems sales company, like the PC companies of old. They sell a solution, an integrated product. So don't look at them as just a hardware company or just a software company. They are unique in the home PC market and it is their continued success that helps to push the envelope. For anybody to take a self-righteous attitude about what they can and can't do with OS X (which for Intel is not for sale as a stand alone product) you need to take into consideration the entire web of how something would impact their bottom line. Things are rarely that simple.
I know from my experience where I work, any Board videos that are offered online are done so through a third party company. They have a turn-key solution that integrates the printed Board agendas with the video and allows you to navigate through the video playback based on linkages within the Agenda (html format).
When I first viewed the demo I wasn't thrilled because it utilized functionality that at the time was unique to WMP for Windows and that wasn't yet supported within WMP for Mac. As far as I know there were no similar products (somebody else was lead on the project) that used Quicktime. Several months after the demo MS finally updated WMP for Mac to have some level of feature parity with the Windows version so the turn-key solution became cross platform. Not to mention that there's a pretty heavy bias towards Windows and such within the IT department here.
My case, prior to the WMP update was that since we are a local government entity, bound by Florida Sunshine laws and such, that if we were going to make something like that available we should at least do what we can to make it available to everyone and not limit it to Windows users.
I've used the Flip4Mac plug-in and it works, to a degree. It's been kind of hit and miss with the media files I've opened and if it doesn't include the scripting functionality that is available within current and future versions of WMP for Windows, then solutions such as the one we use for our online Board meetings will never be cross platform.
Indeed. Have a good weekend. Cheers!
I only read the stuff modded 3 and up and didn't see this mentioned as an option. Why not set it up as a disk image and sell it via an e-commerce solution to we US-ians? Or some other method of internet distribution? Maybe bit-torrent it and have a front end attached to the software that allows you to purchase it once it's launched. Given, then you're limiting your distro to broadband users but isn't that who primarly plays PC games anyways? Just a few thoughts.
Except that by all account Nintendo was actually making a damn fine profit on its hardware whereas Microsoft lost money on every XBox sold. Nintendo may not currently be the top console seller, but it certainly makes enough off the hardware to subsidize further console development. Plus the GC was the perfect secondary home console for a lot of families with its low cost and relatively fun line-up of games.
I read through the +5 comments and didn't see anything about Flash memory. Is it any more reliable than a CD for long term data storage and if so, why not use that for the really important and/or sentimental things?
Surprisingly enough, here in the Orlando, FL market ClearChannel runs a very successful talk radio station called RealRadio 104.1. It's not the same top 40 wacky morning DJ crap that you hear day in and day out. The hosts are mostly liberal to moderate and the topics are nearly always interesting. From what I understand the line-up is also available now via XM Radio on channel 15x something. Not sure exactly which station since I don't have an XM receiver.
Actually, KeenSpot is a print publisher as well. I have several comics that were published as comic books under the KeenSpot tag including the first couple issues of Black Plague by Paul Southworth and Cool Cat Studio by Gisele Lagace. They also opened up their own physical comic book store as an additional source of revenue. Just thought you'd like to be informed.
Not so much shooting their own foot as gnawing it off at the ankle.
Actually, it's not entirely fair as it sounds. I could be wrong, but to my understanding Adobe is basically double Quartzing under OS X. What I mean by that is that Adobe coded in its own rendering display system for the Windows version of Photoshop to make it look slick, but never removed this rendering layer from the OS X version of it. That means the Mac OS X version has to both render it through Photoshop's screen rendering as well as Aqua. Talk about pulling double duty. Considering that it has to do that much extra work I think that the Mac hardware does an excellent job. It's Adobe's fault for not optimizing it under OS X. I don't know how and if that affects any raw image processing, but I thought it was a worthy knowledge nugget.
Agreed. If you have a programmer's background then PHP should be absolute cake since it seems to have a very Perl-esque syntax. But I started as an art major and moved into web graphic design right out of college. However, for someone with more of a graphic art/web design background I found CFML far more intuitive to use and learn. As a result I found that I had a better understanding of how PHP works when I took a second look at it.