I've always referred to this as a "reverse tunnel". It's awesome if you have a shell somewhere and you want to be able to get back into a machine at your house that's behind a firewall.
If you seriously haven't figured it out yet, InfoWorld is obviously paying slashdot editors to post articles. I don't know how it could possibly be any more obvious.
Lol, too funny. I'm done with you. If you can't support your own assertion with actual facts, I honestly don't care what you think. Enjoy your iPad -- It's a shame that you're missing out on so much, but if that makes you happy, so be it.
Again, I'm not missing anything, I own several computers.
McDonald's sells the most hamburgers and is the most successful hamburger joint on the planet. They must be the best, right?
Microsoft would be McDonald's in your analogy, they still sell the most computers, and they HAVE flash.
Yeah, Apple can sell a half-baked product missing essential features and their customers will happily apologize for them or even tell other how not being able to do x,y and z is totally awesome. Q. E. D.
Yes the iPad is "half baked". What an absurd argument. I'm done here. Keep on believing that flash is relevant all you want. The rest of the world has already moved on.
What are these sites that don't work? Yahoo's web player and Newgrounds is all you've got? I can browse any major website, anything in the Alexa top 100 will work fine on an iPad. Please list these websites (other than flash games) that any reasonable fraction of the world cares about that REQUIRE flash.
And you still failed to prove your analysis excludes sites that a) just had swf ads and b) didn't degrade gracefully to html if the flash plugin wasn't present.
Your real problem is your absolutist view that a device is useless for web browsing without flash, and that any device that browses the web without flash is useless. You don't understand there is room for a device that can browse the 95% of the web the world actually uses (facebook, twitter, gmail, cnn, espn, etc).
All they're doing is looking for EMBED tags that contain a ".swf" file. Feel free to look at how they perform their analysis. No where in there does it say they comb through each site and confirm that flash is used in some critical fashion, like delivering content or navigation elements. If you think 1 in 4 sites doesn't work without flash you're absolutely insane.
You're missing the point - not having a filesystem doesn't limit anything that I want to do with an iPad. And yes, NOT having certain things makes a device less complicated and easier to use. So sometimes not having certain "features" is a very good thing. In fact, in my life I've seen many "bugs" that were actually called "features". Personally I don't care if I have a filesystem or not on an iPad, because for what I do with it, I don't need one.
Anyhow, let me know if you find something to support your parroted assertion that flash is irrelevant to the web today.
Sure, take a look at iPhone and iPad sales. Apple is the largest company on the planet and most of their revenue comes from selling mobile computing devices that don't support flash. I'll wait patiently for your counterpoint as to how flash is critical and these devices aren't successful and useful.
Yahoo still exists? There is literally nothing in this world I could care less about than Yahoo's "webplayer". What are these websites with built-in audio players that are flash only? Even Soundcloud works on the iPad now. Zillions of games? Zillions of terrible games that I don't play. If I want to play games I can play one of the thousand titles available from the App Store. I could just as easily sit here and tell you you're "missing out on gaming because you don't have access to iOS games" but that would be equally ridiculous.
The problem with your argument is the empirical evidence that TENS OF MILLIONS of people continue to buy iOS devices that do not have flash. You can argue all you want but you cannot argue with facts. We're all getting by just fine without flash on our iPads and iPhones. For the occasional thing that requires flash we can use our computers. Personally, I don't run into anything that uses Flash. It's just not as big of a deal as you make it out to be. Having Flash on an iPad is not critical. Maybe if it was your only computing device? But not for those of us in the real world.
You can continue to dismiss my point, but if you look at the site you linked, the first item on the list of major sites using flash is "Google". I can promise you that 1 in 4 sites I visit on the iPad doesn't fail to load. Feel free to turn off flash in your browser and test for yourself. If you think 1 in 4 sites use Flash for content you are seriously delusional.
What exactly am I doing on an iPad that I need a filesystem for?
Flash isn't irrelevant, it's just that I don't need it on an iPad. Somehow tens of millions of iOS device owners seem to get by without Flash just fine.
And I'm not missing anything. I'm posting this from my desktop running Fedora 16 (with dwm). If I want to play flash games I'll play flash games. I don't play flash games from my Galaxy Nexus, why should I be so concerned that I can't play them from my iPad? What are these videos that I don't have access to? All of youtube works on the iPad, every major video site supports the iPad, I can listen to anything on Pandora or Grooveshark because I installed a "useless app" that was totally free. What are these podcasts that I don't have access to? Please, list so examples of what I'm missing out on. What is it, maybe 1% of the web that I actually CARE about that I'm missing? Ok I guess I'll just access that from one of my desktop computers or my laptop? Big deal?
Sigh... Give you facts, you ignore them. Oh, well.
And you ignore my counterpoint. Oh, well.
(I don't need a useless app, thanks)
So you know the same functionality is available, but you plug your ears and ignore it. Ok.
It's also sad that you can't take advantage of all the sites that use flash to make up for deficiencies in current web standards or otherwise improve the user experience when doing things like uploading files.
Darn, I'm really missing out on all that sweet file uploading. Oh wait just file uploading being "easier" ? I don't really upload a lot of files from my iPad, so I guess I'll survive.
It takes some serious denial to believe that Flash is irrelevant today
It takes even more denial to look at Adobe killing mobile flash and Apple selling about a hundred million iOS devices and STILL think that Flash is a necessity.
Unfortunately by looking at the trajectory of iPad and iPhone sales, along with the Adobe announcement that they're killing mobile flash, I don't think we'll be "moving on" to a future with flash on mobile devices.
But what have sites switched to for vector animation?
I don't know, because I don't watch/use anything that uses flash, so I couldn't tell you. All I know is everything I visit works? Try turning off flash in your browser sometime. I think you'll be amazed to learn that the vast majority of the web still works just fine. The dominance of the iPad, iPhone and Android devices (even though they "support" flash, albeit poorly. I carry a Galaxy Nexus and using flash on it is awful) have basically forced everyone to migrate off of flash. I realize in theory it seems like a dealbreaker, and I used to think the same thing until I used it. Two years ago it was FAR worse than today. I can honestly say in the last 6 months I've run into 1 site that required flash. But me and about a hundred million other people browse the web just fine on iOS devices.
I haven't watched Homestar Runner videos in probably 7-10 years. But I'm pretty sure all of those old Homestar Runner videos are available on youtube via html5.
How much time do you spend playing flash games? I don't really know how well flash games designed to be used with a mouse really translate to an iPad's touch based interface anyway. You can of course just use your computer or laptop when you want to play flash games, I certainly don't think an iPad replaces a general purpose computer.
It isn't strictly for reading. Personally I use it to browse the web, email/calendering, read books, take notes at meetings, facebook/twitter, watch videos, sketch out ideas (Notes Plus is amazing), zipping through RSS feeds, facetime with family and gaming. I've also attended a number of WebEx and GoToMeeting webinars on it. The new version of WebEx on the iPad is amazing.
I was like most "tech people", I never knew what I needed an iPad for until I got one. I already had a laptop and a multiple desktops and I didn't "get it". But they gave me one at work and next thing I knew it was my favorite gadget.
You're thinking of it as a general purpose computer. The iPad is great for what it is. You don't like it because it isn't want you WANT it to be. If you use it how it's intended it's still a great device for reading and casual web browsing, among other things.
There aren't any lifeboats, we're jumping from the ship right onto land (html5 video and canvas elements). Pretty much every major site has switched to html5 for video. I don't ever run into any sites that require flash anymore. I completely forgot the iPad didn't support flash until I started reading these comments.
It also has young employees, where suicide rates are the highest, the same as any culture. You realize there were like 8 suicides? You know that Foxconn employs over a million employees? The fact that you call me an Apple apologist and not a Foxconn apologist (or one of the dozens of other tech companies that contract Foxconn) is very telling. You just don't like Apple.
Would it be "nice" to have flash on iOS? Absolutely. Does it make any remote sense whatsoever to invest the effort in developing Flash for iOS? No, definitely not. It makes more sense for all of us to jump of the sinking ship.
Also your sig is interesting. Some games solve this by (eg - Age of Zombies) making the left and right controls appear wherever you place your thumbs or by using motion control by tilting the device. And obviously it doesn't really apply to the massively popular puzzle games that are hugely successful (eg - Cut the Rope, Draw Something!, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
I've always referred to this as a "reverse tunnel". It's awesome if you have a shell somewhere and you want to be able to get back into a machine at your house that's behind a firewall.
holy shit how have I never heard of this? and why don't I have mod points today! damn you slashdot commenting system!
If you seriously haven't figured it out yet, InfoWorld is obviously paying slashdot editors to post articles. I don't know how it could possibly be any more obvious.
Lol, too funny. I'm done with you. If you can't support your own assertion with actual facts, I honestly don't care what you think. Enjoy your iPad -- It's a shame that you're missing out on so much, but if that makes you happy, so be it.
Again, I'm not missing anything, I own several computers.
McDonald's sells the most hamburgers and is the most successful hamburger joint on the planet. They must be the best, right?
Microsoft would be McDonald's in your analogy, they still sell the most computers, and they HAVE flash.
Yeah, Apple can sell a half-baked product missing essential features and their customers will happily apologize for them or even tell other how not being able to do x,y and z is totally awesome. Q. E. D.
Yes the iPad is "half baked". What an absurd argument. I'm done here. Keep on believing that flash is relevant all you want. The rest of the world has already moved on.
Yeah sorry the MC5 are actually noise-isolating not noise-cancelling. The Klipsch were my second option, the MC5s were a recommendation from a friend.
What are these sites that don't work? Yahoo's web player and Newgrounds is all you've got? I can browse any major website, anything in the Alexa top 100 will work fine on an iPad. Please list these websites (other than flash games) that any reasonable fraction of the world cares about that REQUIRE flash.
And you still failed to prove your analysis excludes sites that a) just had swf ads and b) didn't degrade gracefully to html if the flash plugin wasn't present.
Your real problem is your absolutist view that a device is useless for web browsing without flash, and that any device that browses the web without flash is useless. You don't understand there is room for a device that can browse the 95% of the web the world actually uses (facebook, twitter, gmail, cnn, espn, etc).
I don't have any monthly data cap, and you're really reaching now. Any game that requires dragging won't work. No one is going to stop making laptops.
You're missing the point - not having a filesystem doesn't limit anything that I want to do with an iPad. And yes, NOT having certain things makes a device less complicated and easier to use. So sometimes not having certain "features" is a very good thing. In fact, in my life I've seen many "bugs" that were actually called "features". Personally I don't care if I have a filesystem or not on an iPad, because for what I do with it, I don't need one.
Anyhow, let me know if you find something to support your parroted assertion that flash is irrelevant to the web today.
Sure, take a look at iPhone and iPad sales. Apple is the largest company on the planet and most of their revenue comes from selling mobile computing devices that don't support flash. I'll wait patiently for your counterpoint as to how flash is critical and these devices aren't successful and useful.
Yahoo still exists? There is literally nothing in this world I could care less about than Yahoo's "webplayer". What are these websites with built-in audio players that are flash only? Even Soundcloud works on the iPad now. Zillions of games? Zillions of terrible games that I don't play. If I want to play games I can play one of the thousand titles available from the App Store. I could just as easily sit here and tell you you're "missing out on gaming because you don't have access to iOS games" but that would be equally ridiculous.
The problem with your argument is the empirical evidence that TENS OF MILLIONS of people continue to buy iOS devices that do not have flash. You can argue all you want but you cannot argue with facts. We're all getting by just fine without flash on our iPads and iPhones. For the occasional thing that requires flash we can use our computers. Personally, I don't run into anything that uses Flash. It's just not as big of a deal as you make it out to be. Having Flash on an iPad is not critical. Maybe if it was your only computing device? But not for those of us in the real world.
You're right, they're really just "noise isolating".
You can continue to dismiss my point, but if you look at the site you linked, the first item on the list of major sites using flash is "Google". I can promise you that 1 in 4 sites I visit on the iPad doesn't fail to load. Feel free to turn off flash in your browser and test for yourself. If you think 1 in 4 sites use Flash for content you are seriously delusional.
What exactly am I doing on an iPad that I need a filesystem for?
Flash isn't irrelevant, it's just that I don't need it on an iPad. Somehow tens of millions of iOS device owners seem to get by without Flash just fine.
And I'm not missing anything. I'm posting this from my desktop running Fedora 16 (with dwm). If I want to play flash games I'll play flash games. I don't play flash games from my Galaxy Nexus, why should I be so concerned that I can't play them from my iPad? What are these videos that I don't have access to? All of youtube works on the iPad, every major video site supports the iPad, I can listen to anything on Pandora or Grooveshark because I installed a "useless app" that was totally free. What are these podcasts that I don't have access to? Please, list so examples of what I'm missing out on. What is it, maybe 1% of the web that I actually CARE about that I'm missing? Ok I guess I'll just access that from one of my desktop computers or my laptop? Big deal?
Sigh... Give you facts, you ignore them. Oh, well.
And you ignore my counterpoint. Oh, well.
(I don't need a useless app, thanks)
So you know the same functionality is available, but you plug your ears and ignore it. Ok.
It's also sad that you can't take advantage of all the sites that use flash to make up for deficiencies in current web standards or otherwise improve the user experience when doing things like uploading files.
Darn, I'm really missing out on all that sweet file uploading. Oh wait just file uploading being "easier" ? I don't really upload a lot of files from my iPad, so I guess I'll survive.
It takes some serious denial to believe that Flash is irrelevant today
It takes even more denial to look at Adobe killing mobile flash and Apple selling about a hundred million iOS devices and STILL think that Flash is a necessity.
Unfortunately by looking at the trajectory of iPad and iPhone sales, along with the Adobe announcement that they're killing mobile flash, I don't think we'll be "moving on" to a future with flash on mobile devices.
But what have sites switched to for vector animation?
I don't know, because I don't watch/use anything that uses flash, so I couldn't tell you. All I know is everything I visit works? Try turning off flash in your browser sometime. I think you'll be amazed to learn that the vast majority of the web still works just fine. The dominance of the iPad, iPhone and Android devices (even though they "support" flash, albeit poorly. I carry a Galaxy Nexus and using flash on it is awful) have basically forced everyone to migrate off of flash. I realize in theory it seems like a dealbreaker, and I used to think the same thing until I used it. Two years ago it was FAR worse than today. I can honestly say in the last 6 months I've run into 1 site that required flash. But me and about a hundred million other people browse the web just fine on iOS devices.
I haven't watched Homestar Runner videos in probably 7-10 years. But I'm pretty sure all of those old Homestar Runner videos are available on youtube via html5.
How much time do you spend playing flash games? I don't really know how well flash games designed to be used with a mouse really translate to an iPad's touch based interface anyway. You can of course just use your computer or laptop when you want to play flash games, I certainly don't think an iPad replaces a general purpose computer.
It isn't strictly for reading. Personally I use it to browse the web, email/calendering, read books, take notes at meetings, facebook/twitter, watch videos, sketch out ideas (Notes Plus is amazing), zipping through RSS feeds, facetime with family and gaming. I've also attended a number of WebEx and GoToMeeting webinars on it. The new version of WebEx on the iPad is amazing.
I was like most "tech people", I never knew what I needed an iPad for until I got one. I already had a laptop and a multiple desktops and I didn't "get it". But they gave me one at work and next thing I knew it was my favorite gadget.
The best noise cancelling under $100, period, end of discussion: http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/mc5.html
http://www.amazon.com/Etymotic-Research-Isolating-In-Ear-Earphones/dp/B003S3RFIQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1332724721&sr=8-2
I recommend the Etymotic MC5. Noise cancelling, amazing reproduction and you can get them for around $50-$60 on Amazon.
You mean 1 in 4 websites has a flash ad (which gracefully degrades to an image, unfortunately).
What large chunk is that? Because in the last year I've probably run into 5 websites that were still using flash, and probably 1 in the last 6 months.
You're thinking of it as a general purpose computer. The iPad is great for what it is. You don't like it because it isn't want you WANT it to be. If you use it how it's intended it's still a great device for reading and casual web browsing, among other things.
There aren't any lifeboats, we're jumping from the ship right onto land (html5 video and canvas elements). Pretty much every major site has switched to html5 for video. I don't ever run into any sites that require flash anymore. I completely forgot the iPad didn't support flash until I started reading these comments.
It doesn't cost $99 a year to own and use a wifi iPad.
It also has young employees, where suicide rates are the highest, the same as any culture. You realize there were like 8 suicides? You know that Foxconn employs over a million employees? The fact that you call me an Apple apologist and not a Foxconn apologist (or one of the dozens of other tech companies that contract Foxconn) is very telling. You just don't like Apple.
Would it be "nice" to have flash on iOS? Absolutely. Does it make any remote sense whatsoever to invest the effort in developing Flash for iOS? No, definitely not. It makes more sense for all of us to jump of the sinking ship.
Also your sig is interesting. Some games solve this by (eg - Age of Zombies) making the left and right controls appear wherever you place your thumbs or by using motion control by tilting the device. And obviously it doesn't really apply to the massively popular puzzle games that are hugely successful (eg - Cut the Rope, Draw Something!, etc).