Thank you. Now that the legal stuff is out of the way, the onus lies on Newgrounds to find SWFs that don't survive conversion with existing tools such as Shumway.
Either build a Flash decompiler to translate it to HTML5
Which would need permission from each uploader, and I'm not sure whether the submission agreement that was in effect at the time of each upload already granted this permission. I imagine it's not like YouTube, where transcoding is mentioned from day one as an expected part of video delivery. If not, how will Newgrounds manage to contact all authors of uploaded SWFs to seek permission to convert to HTML5?
How will Newgrounds manage to contact all authors of uploaded SWFs to get them to reupload as HTML5? How many authors even still have the original FLA and an up-to-date Creative Cloud subscription to make an HTML5 version?
There isn't much advantage to a 64-bit browser anyway
There is if all tabs are running in one process, as opposed to one process per tab like in present-day Chrome or the experimental Electrolysis feature of Firefox.
the 10 inch 2-in-1s such as ASUS Transformer Book don't seem to work well with any X11/Linux distribution that I'm aware of.
have you looked at some modern PC tablets?
Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "modern". I looked at the ASUS Transformer Book, and all sorts of things are broken in Linux.
and yes you can put Linux on it.
Do Wi-Fi and suspend work? They do on my current machine, and I want them to work on any replacement once my current machine suffers inevitable hardware failure. I haven't seen one web browser whose capability to restore the previous session after a PC restart includes the content, not just the URL, of web pages open in tabs.
From the linked article by David Elner about dual-booting Ubuntu on a Surface Pro 3: "Sleeping the system while running Ubuntu does not work. (Instantly wakes up.)" In a Disqus comment to that article, Emre Erenoglu called lack of suspend a "deal breaker." It is also a deal breaker for me. I want my session to be restored when I come back to the machine after having taken my seat on the bus, and I want pages open in tabs in the web browser to still be open and loaded even if I have no network connection. Shutting down in a desktop environment that supports session restoration and starting the computer once I have taken my seat is not a substitute, even if it is faster on SSD than on an HDD, because tabs open in the web browser reload to "Problem opening page: You are offline". The buses in my city do not provide Wi-Fi to riders. Has suspend on the Surface Pro 3 improved since December 2014 when the article was published?
In particular, what to do if you become the victim of an accident, crime or natural disaster is beyond the scope of my previous post.
All I wanted to do is to give a few tips on how not to fall on the debt trap by yourself, things that are within your reach.
Thanks for the initial tips. They sound a lot like what Dave Ramsey recommends, and someone who doesn't already listen to Dave Ramsey's show could learn something. But as of right now, the largest cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is health care costs and lost wages due to serious health problems.
And what is the market for mod making pc's? Hundreds of millions potential mod makers?
It's not only the thousands of mod makers but also many millions of mod users. Unlike PCs, locked down platforms such as iOS and video game consoles have cryptographic mechanisms to prevent the owner of a machine from installing and using mods created by other dedicated amateurs.
A desktop is slowly becoming a niche product, and in a market of niche products the race to the bottom doesn't exist. Those who really need a desktop spend money for good quality and support.
In this respect, is a laptop "desktop" or "mobile"? It's battery-powered like a mobile device, but it runs desktop applications on a desktop operating system. And a lot of these desktop applications are used by millions of university students on millions of laptops. For example, good luck finishing "Intro to programming and problem solving with C++14" on an iPad.
It's like, when toasters first came out, everyone had to have one, and growth was steep. But now, everyone already has a toaster, and we only replace them when they stop working.
But in this market, even replacements can often be hard to find. I have a 10 inch Dell laptop running Xubuntu that I use to work on hobby coding projects while riding public transit to and from my day job. But since December 2012, it's hard to find a 10 inch laptop. With what should I replace it once it stops working? I looked around, and unfortunately, the 10 inch 2-in-1s such as ASUS Transformer Book don't seem to work well with any X11/Linux distribution that I'm aware of.
The use of the loaded terms "content", "consumer", and "creator" is slightly confusing. I prefer "users who create works" ("authors") for short and "users who view works created by others" ("viewers" for short). But terminology aside:
So these two [author and viewer] camps want very different things, and we're seeing the start of a market split into those camps. It is inevitable that when the PC market falls down below a point, economies of scale won't be there and the prices will rise
At first, I sort of agreed with your core sentiment that the economies of scale for devices for creating works may evaporate as walled garden mobile devices continue to gain popularity among pure viewers. But there will still be a need for devices on which university students can prepare homework, and a locked-down walled-garden device such as an iPad isn't quite ideal for a freshman computer science course. On the one hand, this means that at least university students will form a market for PCs. On the other hand, it could justify overcharging for PCs the way publishers overcharge for textbooks.
Slashdot users' opinion on this issue appears split. Some users, such as betterunixthanunix and one Anonymous Coward, think children will be harmed by lack of access to devices designed for creating works. Others, such as geekoid and another Anonymous Coward, think used laptops and Raspberry Pi single-board computers ought to be enough for anyone.
And Microsoft has an ARM version of the NT Kernel. The problem is never the OS, its the fact that the software for x86 can't run on ARM
And apparently nobody has ever ported a compiler to the ARM platform?
It appears that it's harder than it looks. Even Microsoft never got around to porting Visual Studio to Windows RT, an operating system based on NT for ARM architecture. And the legacy APIs on which free compilers such as MinGW (GCC for Windows) rely are restricted on Windows RT. There isn't even a concept of "current working directory", for cricket's sake.
How so? I thought to run anything but stock Chrome OS, you had to put it into developer mode. And every time someone turns the machine on in developer mode, it encourages the user to accidentally wipe the whole hard drive by pressing space to reinstall stock Chrome OS.
So what should somebody who is temporarily disabled or laid off do?
Never lose your job while indebted.
What steps ought one to take to guarantee this, especially before being in the workforce long enough to build enough net worth to self-insure for unemployment?
How about looking for an apprenticeship?
I did, but I had already graduated before I learned that apprenticeships/internships in my area were intended for current undergraduate college students. What's the next step for someone in my position?
If you're not ready to have children, you're not ready to have sex.
What steps ought one to take to guarantee that one will not be forcibly raped? Or is it common for rape victims to sue rapists in civil court for child support, win, and collect? A convicted rapist serving a prison sentence for rape can't pay child support, as far as I can tell.
virtually ALL mobile devices using UEFI-SecureBoot WITH NO option to support legacy BIOS
Secure Boot is a UEFI feature that requires bootloaders to be digitally signed with a certificate stored in the PC's firmware. But there are two ways to implement it: normal or forced. With normal Secure Boot, the owner of a PC can replace the certificate or turn off the feature entirely. Forced Secure Boot, sometimes called Restricted Boot, cannot be disabled, much as in iOS devices and major video game consoles. In the Windows 8 (x86 and x86-64) era, Microsoft required normal Secure Boot for logo certification; it forbade Restricted Boot. As of Windows 10 (x86 and x86-64), Microsoft has changed the policy to allow either normal or forced Secure Boot. In theory, PC buyers could just avoid PCs with Restricted Boot, so long as they don't greatly outnumber PCs with normal Secure Boot. Have x86-64 PC manufacturers actually started to implement Restricted Boot widely?
If you want to type anything longer than a paragraph, you need to add a keyboard, which turns your tablet right back into (yes) a laptop.
Gaming has moved from the desktop to the laptop or game console. And at some point, it will be in the domain of the tablet/console.
Let me know when tablet or console games have (legit) mod support nearly as thorough as that in PC games. If your answer is Super Mario Maker, let me know when it has tools to create new block types or new enemy types.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you. Now that the legal stuff is out of the way, the onus lies on Newgrounds to find SWFs that don't survive conversion with existing tools such as Shumway.
Either build a Flash decompiler to translate it to HTML5
Which would need permission from each uploader, and I'm not sure whether the submission agreement that was in effect at the time of each upload already granted this permission. I imagine it's not like YouTube, where transcoding is mentioned from day one as an expected part of video delivery. If not, how will Newgrounds manage to contact all authors of uploaded SWFs to seek permission to convert to HTML5?
Except .vag is taken by ADPCM audio on the PlayStation 1 and 2.
How will Newgrounds manage to contact all authors of uploaded SWFs to get them to reupload as HTML5? How many authors even still have the original FLA and an up-to-date Creative Cloud subscription to make an HTML5 version?
What would replace Flash Player for viewing Newgrounds?
There isn't much advantage to a 64-bit browser anyway
There is if all tabs are running in one process, as opposed to one process per tab like in present-day Chrome or the experimental Electrolysis feature of Firefox.
This page says they're exclusive to Japan. I don't live in Japan. Is the warranty valid outside Japan?
the 10 inch 2-in-1s such as ASUS Transformer Book don't seem to work well with any X11/Linux distribution that I'm aware of.
have you looked at some modern PC tablets?
Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "modern". I looked at the ASUS Transformer Book, and all sorts of things are broken in Linux.
and yes you can put Linux on it.
Do Wi-Fi and suspend work? They do on my current machine, and I want them to work on any replacement once my current machine suffers inevitable hardware failure. I haven't seen one web browser whose capability to restore the previous session after a PC restart includes the content, not just the URL, of web pages open in tabs.
From the linked article by David Elner about dual-booting Ubuntu on a Surface Pro 3: "Sleeping the system while running Ubuntu does not work. (Instantly wakes up.)" In a Disqus comment to that article, Emre Erenoglu called lack of suspend a "deal breaker." It is also a deal breaker for me. I want my session to be restored when I come back to the machine after having taken my seat on the bus, and I want pages open in tabs in the web browser to still be open and loaded even if I have no network connection. Shutting down in a desktop environment that supports session restoration and starting the computer once I have taken my seat is not a substitute, even if it is faster on SSD than on an HDD, because tabs open in the web browser reload to "Problem opening page: You are offline". The buses in my city do not provide Wi-Fi to riders. Has suspend on the Surface Pro 3 improved since December 2014 when the article was published?
In particular, what to do if you become the victim of an accident, crime or natural disaster is beyond the scope of my previous post.
All I wanted to do is to give a few tips on how not to fall on the debt trap by yourself, things that are within your reach.
Thanks for the initial tips. They sound a lot like what Dave Ramsey recommends, and someone who doesn't already listen to Dave Ramsey's show could learn something. But as of right now, the largest cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is health care costs and lost wages due to serious health problems.
And what is the market for mod making pc's? Hundreds of millions potential mod makers?
It's not only the thousands of mod makers but also many millions of mod users. Unlike PCs, locked down platforms such as iOS and video game consoles have cryptographic mechanisms to prevent the owner of a machine from installing and using mods created by other dedicated amateurs.
A desktop is slowly becoming a niche product, and in a market of niche products the race to the bottom doesn't exist. Those who really need a desktop spend money for good quality and support.
In this respect, is a laptop "desktop" or "mobile"? It's battery-powered like a mobile device, but it runs desktop applications on a desktop operating system. And a lot of these desktop applications are used by millions of university students on millions of laptops. For example, good luck finishing "Intro to programming and problem solving with C++14" on an iPad.
It's like, when toasters first came out, everyone had to have one, and growth was steep. But now, everyone already has a toaster, and we only replace them when they stop working.
But in this market, even replacements can often be hard to find. I have a 10 inch Dell laptop running Xubuntu that I use to work on hobby coding projects while riding public transit to and from my day job. But since December 2012, it's hard to find a 10 inch laptop. With what should I replace it once it stops working? I looked around, and unfortunately, the 10 inch 2-in-1s such as ASUS Transformer Book don't seem to work well with any X11/Linux distribution that I'm aware of.
content creators and content consumers
The use of the loaded terms "content", "consumer", and "creator" is slightly confusing. I prefer "users who create works" ("authors") for short and "users who view works created by others" ("viewers" for short). But terminology aside:
So these two [author and viewer] camps want very different things, and we're seeing the start of a market split into those camps. It is inevitable that when the PC market falls down below a point, economies of scale won't be there and the prices will rise
At first, I sort of agreed with your core sentiment that the economies of scale for devices for creating works may evaporate as walled garden mobile devices continue to gain popularity among pure viewers. But there will still be a need for devices on which university students can prepare homework, and a locked-down walled-garden device such as an iPad isn't quite ideal for a freshman computer science course. On the one hand, this means that at least university students will form a market for PCs. On the other hand, it could justify overcharging for PCs the way publishers overcharge for textbooks.
Slashdot users' opinion on this issue appears split. Some users, such as betterunixthanunix and one Anonymous Coward, think children will be harmed by lack of access to devices designed for creating works. Others, such as geekoid and another Anonymous Coward, think used laptops and Raspberry Pi single-board computers ought to be enough for anyone.
And Microsoft has an ARM version of the NT Kernel. The problem is never the OS, its the fact that the software for x86 can't run on ARM
And apparently nobody has ever ported a compiler to the ARM platform?
It appears that it's harder than it looks. Even Microsoft never got around to porting Visual Studio to Windows RT, an operating system based on NT for ARM architecture. And the legacy APIs on which free compilers such as MinGW (GCC for Windows) rely are restricted on Windows RT. There isn't even a concept of "current working directory", for cricket's sake.
The iPad Pro hits stores in November.
How so? I thought to run anything but stock Chrome OS, you had to put it into developer mode. And every time someone turns the machine on in developer mode, it encourages the user to accidentally wipe the whole hard drive by pressing space to reinstall stock Chrome OS.
When Ubuntu gets rid of Unity, I'll use Ubuntu again
Once I discovered that Unity is short for Unusability, I did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and never looked back.
Maybe you accidentally your keyboard.
The whole keyboard?
Never spend more than what you can earn.
So what should somebody who is temporarily disabled or laid off do?
Never lose your job while indebted.
What steps ought one to take to guarantee this, especially before being in the workforce long enough to build enough net worth to self-insure for unemployment?
How about looking for an apprenticeship?
I did, but I had already graduated before I learned that apprenticeships/internships in my area were intended for current undergraduate college students. What's the next step for someone in my position?
If you're not ready to have children, you're not ready to have sex.
What steps ought one to take to guarantee that one will not be forcibly raped? Or is it common for rape victims to sue rapists in civil court for child support, win, and collect? A convicted rapist serving a prison sentence for rape can't pay child support, as far as I can tell.
virtually ALL mobile devices using UEFI-SecureBoot WITH NO option to support legacy BIOS
Secure Boot is a UEFI feature that requires bootloaders to be digitally signed with a certificate stored in the PC's firmware. But there are two ways to implement it: normal or forced. With normal Secure Boot, the owner of a PC can replace the certificate or turn off the feature entirely. Forced Secure Boot, sometimes called Restricted Boot, cannot be disabled, much as in iOS devices and major video game consoles. In the Windows 8 (x86 and x86-64) era, Microsoft required normal Secure Boot for logo certification; it forbade Restricted Boot. As of Windows 10 (x86 and x86-64), Microsoft has changed the policy to allow either normal or forced Secure Boot. In theory, PC buyers could just avoid PCs with Restricted Boot, so long as they don't greatly outnumber PCs with normal Secure Boot. Have x86-64 PC manufacturers actually started to implement Restricted Boot widely?
Even the laptops are giving way to tablets
If you want to type anything longer than a paragraph, you need to add a keyboard, which turns your tablet right back into (yes) a laptop.
Gaming has moved from the desktop to the laptop or game console. And at some point, it will be in the domain of the tablet/console.
Let me know when tablet or console games have (legit) mod support nearly as thorough as that in PC games. If your answer is Super Mario Maker, let me know when it has tools to create new block types or new enemy types.
I think Drakonblayde meant "I haven't actually used physical media that I did not record myself in quite a long time."
A creature with four legs is still at a disadvantage when it comes to industrialization.
Would the same be true of a creature with two arms that double as legs?
If OS X is locked down, on what OS will Apple allow people to run Xcode?
Huawei? Those shape-shifting squid things
As opposed to shape-shifting kid things?