Not clear to me from either article how exactly the Times knows that this file does in fact exist? Is it from a document from that same whistleblower.
"But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file."
If the Times claims they have that document, I tend to believe it. Owned by Murdoch or not, it's still one of the most respectable newspapers in the world -- and in this case, that they print it despite being owned by NewsCorp even adds some extra credibility to the story.:)
There's also Aviary. Adobe itself announced they're working on Photoshop Express, after announcing Premiere Express, both on the web. A few weeks ago they bought Buzzword after hinting on an online office suite. Those all run in the Flashplayer, and Hydra will let developers write pixel shaders for Flashplayer 10.
With all those new dev tools (Flex Builder, Thermo) and that C/C++ to Actionscript 3 converter, one might get the impression they're moving away from banners. But maybe that's just me.
To answer the obvious question, total direct financial costs are more than $450bn, so that's about 4000 miles. However, if you use the Iraq example for a projection of the actual costs versus the estimate, it will only pay for a quick ride to the suburbs.
That's why DVD players come pre-assembled, so you just have to plug them in. If DVD players would typically come in parts that would take the average person two hours to put together, then somebody would have the ingenious idea to sell a pre-assembled "plug-in ready" player with great success.
Similarly, competition would ensure OSs would become very easy to install. Actually, they already are. You have to give the Ubuntu guys some credit -- if you are OK with the HDD being wiped (like you would be with a new computer), then coming up with a name is the most difficult part. It only takes a few minutes to go through the dialogs, the rest is done automatically. Besides, competition among stores would turn OS installation into a free service.
I can already hear them say it: "Would you like an OS with that?"
In all fairness, it's not really socialism - none of the countries mentioned (Netherlands, Canada, Scandinavian countries, etc.) have command economies, state ownership of property, and so forth. A lot of Americans seem to think that a national health care system automatically equals gray concrete walls and red stars, but it's not so.
Thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes I get the impression Americans use 'Socialism' as a synonym for 'non-US', and really have no idea what the term actually means. They seem to use it for pretty much everything.
Telecommunication markets in Europe, generally, are completely open and privatized, just regulated. Usually that means that the former state-monopolist corporation must make infrastructure available to competitors at fixed prices.
On the other hand, the U.S. is still the best place to go and start a business, thanks in no small part to their labour mobility (easier to hire and fire).
AFAIK, that's pretty easy in the Netherlands, too. In any case, workers at small companies don't have the same kind of protection those at larger ones have.
Also, as a company in the Netherlands, you pay about 10% less taxes than you would in the US. (Yes, that surprised me, too.)
Americans simply don't know that these things are free or a flat fee in the rest of the world. For them, a text message has always been 10-15 cents each. A ringtone has always been $1-$2. The cost per each one isn't that much, so they pay it. The same thing happened the other way around with landline telephone service in the U.S. vs. Europe. Most Americans (whose phone industry was deregulated in the 80s) pay a flat fee for unlimited calls. Most Europeans (with nationalized phone monopolies) pay per phone call. That's just the way "it's always been" and people don't know to ask for more.
Only that SMS messages used to be billed on a per-message basis in Europe but nowadays typically are included (I have a contingent of 200/month, of which I use only maybe 3), and most people I know (in Germany, which isn't anywhere near the top in European telecommunications) have unlimited nation-wide calls to fixed lines. This is also becoming increasingly common for mobile phone contracts -- good in combination with having a fixed-line number for your mobile as long as you are in a certain area (practically the whole city for me). Because European providers don't charge you for calls you receive, most calls I receive are covered by some kind of flat rate. No, I don't use fixed line phones at all.
My wife and I have been sharing a phone for years, and it's about time I got a new one. But I hate shopping for one, because I know all that stupid lock-in sales tactics I'm going to find. Yes, even online.
If you shop online anyway, why not just order a phone from Europe or even Japan?
Afri Cola - a popular German caffeinated beverage has 250mg/l (~89mg/12oz)...
...and there's an open bottle right next to me. As always.
Not just because of the caffeine, it's also probably the best cola of them all, and I've tasted quite a few.
we have to *always* carry our passports or other state ID with us at all time
I think you're misunderstanding "Ausweispflicht". We are required to possess a national ID card or a passport, not to carry it with us (which would be "Mitführpflicht"). There is a Mitführpflicht for drivers licenses, but only while driving.
i predict this will become a success since we can use it while lying in bed like a paper magazine and look at photos and stuff, unlike current monitors:thumbsup:
I happen to be in my bed with my laptop right now. What I want is to take it to the park.
Imagine it's a beautiful day, and you can just grab your notebook and sit in the sun. There are batteries/solar panels, UMTS flat rates and eskies, but I still can't read my screen in the sun.
The real problem for subminis in the U.S. is interstate/highway driving: there's a much more limited market for vehicles that can't do high-speed interstate driving in the U.S. than in Europe, and I suspect that what there is could be saturated pretty quickly. A vehicle with a top speed of 70mph might be salable, if it can really handle at the upper end of the range comfortably, but something that's not designed to do more than 45-50mph is going to be a tough sell. (I don't know where the Smart cars fall into this, so I'm not singling them out, just speaking generally.)
There are plenty of cars that go around 50mpg on European roads, many in Germany where there is no general speed limit. I'd say that if it goes fast enough for the autobahn, it goes fast enough for a highway. The VW Lupo 3L TDI has a top speed of slightly more than 100mph and gets 78mpg. Oh, and it's safe, too.
So that raises a few questions:
1) Can reverse-engineering the file format give enough information to make a fully-featured flash decoder/player?
2) Will Adobe try to stop such reverse-engineering efforts?
3) Is it worth it to continue along the Flash route, or should supporters of Open Standards promote an alternate vector-based animation/movie format?
1) What is it you're missing? Google SWF spec and the first hit will be the specs without the restriction. It seems to be a copy of the original specs, though, so better stick with Alexis' reference. You could also read the sources of various tools, or the existing OS player. For the opcodes of the new VM, you could read the sources of a compiler or the VM itself.
2) Apparently they didn't. Neither did they try to stop the OS streaming server.
3) Both would make sense, depending on how you plan to use it. For the web, SWF will stay the king, IMHO. Users don't like installing additional plugins, but that wouldn't be a problem for standalone apps.
The bigger problem is content creation, both for a new format and for SWF. There are very good OS tools for making SWFs already, but they are focussed on programmers. If you want to write code and maybe include some assets like graphics and fonts that you then use with it, I'd say you're better off with the OS tools. But for graphical work like animations or layout, there isn't really a way around Adobe products for professional work (just that you can do animations and layout without them doesn't mean your designer will consider it an efficient, comfortable workflow, and he's right). This is where work needs to be done. Better SVG import for the tools, or direct SWF output for Inkspace or even a specialized app.
This doesn't affect only UK citizens, but those from other EU countries like myself, too. They're also not the only ones 'bitching' about it, but they are those who's newspaper articles you can understand the easiest.
Plans to travel to the US any time soon? Not if I can avoid it.
... is a boolean search engine, "à la" altavista. I _loved_ that one.
You can do boolean searches with Google/SearchMash. By default everything is AND, but you can use OR (all caps) if you like.
Just because typing in words into the search field is so intuitive doesn't mean there isn't useful information in Google's help, you know...
I wouldn't be so sure, there will be many more working on Tamarin then on the Neko VM.
But who cares which one will be first, haXe can be compiled for both.:)
In my personal tests, Actionscript is over 100 times slower than Quickbasic. Why the hell is that the case? Both are interpreted languages. Actionscript even compiles to bytecode before it's executed, and I think Quickbasic does something similar as well. Does static typing alone really cause a language to run faster? Or is it just what happens when you design interpreters for high vs. low-specification processors?
With which version of the FlashPlayer did you do that test?
Tamarin is the VM introduced for FlashPlayer 9, aka. AVM2. The above sounds like you tested on AVM1, which is included in FP9 for backwards compatibility. AVM2/Tamarin is JIT compiled, and significantly faster than AVM1. If you want to test, you will need to specifically compile for it, either by using Adobe's free as in beer Flex SDK if you like to use ActionScript 3, or haXe for an open source alternative that has some aditional features.
The ActionScript compiler isn't open source (but available for free as in beer), but haXe is. It's not ECMA262 v4, but a relative with some additional goodies, like its type system. It can compile for FlashPlayer 9, among other platforms, which uses the VM now known as Tamarin.
Note that the Maginot line was indeed a success. The Germans did not invade France through the Maginot line.The mistake of French military was to believe the Germans wouldn't try to go around this line.
No, the problem was that it wouldn't have been diplomatically feasible to continue it along the Belgian border. It's not exactly polite to build a series of underground fortresses along the border to a friendly neighbour.
But you're right, as far as I remember not a single one of those fortresses had been conquered until the French central command, assuming otherwise, ordered them to be surrendered. I don't know for how long they could have sustained, but I think they had supplies for months. They had air filters in case of a chemical attack, and the gun turrets could be risen manually in case the section with the power generator would have been conquered and had to be sealed off -- the fortresses were deep underground (minimum 18m, the deepest bombs at the time could go, plus a few meters of concrete), consisting of several modules that could function independently, connected by tunnels with explosives in place. At the end of each tunnel was a hole with a machine gunner behind, and the tunnels were long and straight. If you ever played Enemy Territory you know what that means.
At least that's how I remember it, I've been down to a few as a kid. Very impressive, huge fortresses. Some even had a cinema, I think a tour for a soldier lasted two months. When you're in the area, go and visit one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also a gentoo-sources-2.6.24-r1 ebuild already.
Not clear to me from either article how exactly the Times knows that this file does in fact exist? Is it from a document from that same whistleblower.
"But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file."
If the Times claims they have that document, I tend to believe it. Owned by Murdoch or not, it's still one of the most respectable newspapers in the world -- and in this case, that they print it despite being owned by NewsCorp even adds some extra credibility to the story. :)
You probably mean Type 212 A U-Boats. Watch a video or read the Wikipedia article.
Thank you, kind Anon!
There's also Aviary. Adobe itself announced they're working on Photoshop Express, after announcing Premiere Express, both on the web. A few weeks ago they bought Buzzword after hinting on an online office suite. Those all run in the Flashplayer, and Hydra will let developers write pixel shaders for Flashplayer 10.
With all those new dev tools (Flex Builder, Thermo) and that C/C++ to Actionscript 3 converter, one might get the impression they're moving away from banners. But maybe that's just me.
To answer the obvious question, total direct financial costs are more than $450bn, so that's about 4000 miles. However, if you use the Iraq example for a projection of the actual costs versus the estimate, it will only pay for a quick ride to the suburbs.
That's why DVD players come pre-assembled, so you just have to plug them in. If DVD players would typically come in parts that would take the average person two hours to put together, then somebody would have the ingenious idea to sell a pre-assembled "plug-in ready" player with great success.
Similarly, competition would ensure OSs would become very easy to install. Actually, they already are. You have to give the Ubuntu guys some credit -- if you are OK with the HDD being wiped (like you would be with a new computer), then coming up with a name is the most difficult part. It only takes a few minutes to go through the dialogs, the rest is done automatically. Besides, competition among stores would turn OS installation into a free service.
I can already hear them say it: "Would you like an OS with that?"
In all fairness, it's not really socialism - none of the countries mentioned (Netherlands, Canada, Scandinavian countries, etc.) have command economies, state ownership of property, and so forth. A lot of Americans seem to think that a national health care system automatically equals gray concrete walls and red stars, but it's not so.
Thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes I get the impression Americans use 'Socialism' as a synonym for 'non-US', and really have no idea what the term actually means. They seem to use it for pretty much everything.
Telecommunication markets in Europe, generally, are completely open and privatized, just regulated. Usually that means that the former state-monopolist corporation must make infrastructure available to competitors at fixed prices.
On the other hand, the U.S. is still the best place to go and start a business, thanks in no small part to their labour mobility (easier to hire and fire).
AFAIK, that's pretty easy in the Netherlands, too. In any case, workers at small companies don't have the same kind of protection those at larger ones have.
Also, as a company in the Netherlands, you pay about 10% less taxes than you would in the US. (Yes, that surprised me, too.)
Americans simply don't know that these things are free or a flat fee in the rest of the world. For them, a text message has always been 10-15 cents each. A ringtone has always been $1-$2. The cost per each one isn't that much, so they pay it. The same thing happened the other way around with landline telephone service in the U.S. vs. Europe. Most Americans (whose phone industry was deregulated in the 80s) pay a flat fee for unlimited calls. Most Europeans (with nationalized phone monopolies) pay per phone call. That's just the way "it's always been" and people don't know to ask for more.
Only that SMS messages used to be billed on a per-message basis in Europe but nowadays typically are included (I have a contingent of 200/month, of which I use only maybe 3), and most people I know (in Germany, which isn't anywhere near the top in European telecommunications) have unlimited nation-wide calls to fixed lines. This is also becoming increasingly common for mobile phone contracts -- good in combination with having a fixed-line number for your mobile as long as you are in a certain area (practically the whole city for me). Because European providers don't charge you for calls you receive, most calls I receive are covered by some kind of flat rate. No, I don't use fixed line phones at all.
My wife and I have been sharing a phone for years, and it's about time I got a new one. But I hate shopping for one, because I know all that stupid lock-in sales tactics I'm going to find. Yes, even online.
If you shop online anyway, why not just order a phone from Europe or even Japan?
on digg the headline would have been, "BREAKING CONFIRMED: Bush tells american public to FUCK OFF"
Actually, it was So, as of yesterday, If you protest the war, the Prez can take your stuff and has >4500 diggs, but yours comes close enough.
Afri Cola - a popular German caffeinated beverage has 250mg/l (~89mg/12oz) ...
Not just because of the caffeine, it's also probably the best cola of them all, and I've tasted quite a few.
we have to *always* carry our passports or other state ID with us at all time
I think you're misunderstanding "Ausweispflicht". We are required to possess a national ID card or a passport, not to carry it with us (which would be "Mitführpflicht"). There is a Mitführpflicht for drivers licenses, but only while driving.i predict this will become a success since we can use it while lying in bed like a paper magazine and look at photos and stuff, unlike current monitors :thumbsup:
I happen to be in my bed with my laptop right now. What I want is to take it to the park.
Imagine it's a beautiful day, and you can just grab your notebook and sit in the sun. There are batteries/solar panels, UMTS flat rates and eskies, but I still can't read my screen in the sun.
BTW, anything about the resolution somewhere?
The real problem for subminis in the U.S. is interstate/highway driving: there's a much more limited market for vehicles that can't do high-speed interstate driving in the U.S. than in Europe, and I suspect that what there is could be saturated pretty quickly. A vehicle with a top speed of 70mph might be salable, if it can really handle at the upper end of the range comfortably, but something that's not designed to do more than 45-50mph is going to be a tough sell. (I don't know where the Smart cars fall into this, so I'm not singling them out, just speaking generally.)
There are plenty of cars that go around 50mpg on European roads, many in Germany where there is no general speed limit. I'd say that if it goes fast enough for the autobahn, it goes fast enough for a highway. The VW Lupo 3L TDI has a top speed of slightly more than 100mph and gets 78mpg. Oh, and it's safe, too.
So that raises a few questions:
1) Can reverse-engineering the file format give enough information to make a fully-featured flash decoder/player?
2) Will Adobe try to stop such reverse-engineering efforts?
3) Is it worth it to continue along the Flash route, or should supporters of Open Standards promote an alternate vector-based animation/movie format?
1) What is it you're missing? Google SWF spec and the first hit will be the specs without the restriction. It seems to be a copy of the original specs, though, so better stick with Alexis' reference. You could also read the sources of various tools, or the existing OS player. For the opcodes of the new VM, you could read the sources of a compiler or the VM itself.
2) Apparently they didn't. Neither did they try to stop the OS streaming server.
3) Both would make sense, depending on how you plan to use it. For the web, SWF will stay the king, IMHO. Users don't like installing additional plugins, but that wouldn't be a problem for standalone apps.
The bigger problem is content creation, both for a new format and for SWF. There are very good OS tools for making SWFs already, but they are focussed on programmers. If you want to write code and maybe include some assets like graphics and fonts that you then use with it, I'd say you're better off with the OS tools. But for graphical work like animations or layout, there isn't really a way around Adobe products for professional work (just that you can do animations and layout without them doesn't mean your designer will consider it an efficient, comfortable workflow, and he's right). This is where work needs to be done. Better SVG import for the tools, or direct SWF output for Inkspace or even a specialized app.
Hell, they even hired some of the same scientist...
This doesn't affect only UK citizens, but those from other EU countries like myself, too. They're also not the only ones 'bitching' about it, but they are those who's newspaper articles you can understand the easiest.
Plans to travel to the US any time soon? Not if I can avoid it.
I'm going over there for a year, next month.
Good luck, try to stay yourself and come home safe.
You can do boolean searches with Google/SearchMash. By default everything is AND, but you can use OR (all caps) if you like.
Just because typing in words into the search field is so intuitive doesn't mean there isn't useful information in Google's help, you know...
I bet on neko having AMD64 JIT first.
I wouldn't be so sure, there will be many more working on Tamarin then on the Neko VM. :)
But who cares which one will be first, haXe can be compiled for both.
Tamarin vs. SpiderMonkey 1.7.
In my personal tests, Actionscript is over 100 times slower than Quickbasic. Why the hell is that the case? Both are interpreted languages. Actionscript even compiles to bytecode before it's executed, and I think Quickbasic does something similar as well. Does static typing alone really cause a language to run faster? Or is it just what happens when you design interpreters for high vs. low-specification processors?
With which version of the FlashPlayer did you do that test?
Tamarin is the VM introduced for FlashPlayer 9, aka. AVM2. The above sounds like you tested on AVM1, which is included in FP9 for backwards compatibility. AVM2/Tamarin is JIT compiled, and significantly faster than AVM1. If you want to test, you will need to specifically compile for it, either by using Adobe's free as in beer Flex SDK if you like to use ActionScript 3, or haXe for an open source alternative that has some aditional features.
The ActionScript compiler isn't open source (but available for free as in beer), but haXe is. It's not ECMA262 v4, but a relative with some additional goodies, like its type system. It can compile for FlashPlayer 9, among other platforms, which uses the VM now known as Tamarin.
Note that the Maginot line was indeed a success. The Germans did not invade France through the Maginot line.The mistake of French military was to believe the Germans wouldn't try to go around this line.
No, the problem was that it wouldn't have been diplomatically feasible to continue it along the Belgian border. It's not exactly polite to build a series of underground fortresses along the border to a friendly neighbour.
But you're right, as far as I remember not a single one of those fortresses had been conquered until the French central command, assuming otherwise, ordered them to be surrendered. I don't know for how long they could have sustained, but I think they had supplies for months. They had air filters in case of a chemical attack, and the gun turrets could be risen manually in case the section with the power generator would have been conquered and had to be sealed off -- the fortresses were deep underground (minimum 18m, the deepest bombs at the time could go, plus a few meters of concrete), consisting of several modules that could function independently, connected by tunnels with explosives in place. At the end of each tunnel was a hole with a machine gunner behind, and the tunnels were long and straight. If you ever played Enemy Territory you know what that means.
At least that's how I remember it, I've been down to a few as a kid. Very impressive, huge fortresses. Some even had a cinema, I think a tour for a soldier lasted two months. When you're in the area, go and visit one of them.