He is talking about a file write followed by the rename because he is discussing the real problem here, that Ext4 allows those to have the order reversed, making the write-replace idiom for atomic updates of files fail, which is discussed in TFA.
I agree that the filesystem should try harder to maintain order of operations, but ultimately it can't decide if you prefer to rollback all metadata updates after the first lost data update or if you prefer to have metadata updates without the corresponding data.
Why should this be the case? Why should a metadata change ever be written to disk before a data change that preceded it in time? If the ordering were strictly enforced, the write-replace idiom would always work to ensure atomic updates of files. The metadata journaling would still endure the integrity of the filesystem data structures, and all would be good.
The write-replace idiom is a common way to ensure an atomic update to a file. One writes a new copy of the file to the disk, and then renames it. If the rename is atomic (and since it is metadata it is atomic on a journaling filesystem) then this will ensure the file will have either the old contents or the new contents. However, this does require that the metadata be written after the data. If the metadata is written before the real data, the write-replace idiom fails, and can result in an old file being replaced before the new file is on disk.
So we end up with a zero byte file, when the old file contents would be far preferred.
The Ext3 5 seconds thing is true, but that is not the important difference.
On Ext3, with the default mount options, if one writes a file to disk, and then renames the file the write is guarantee to come before the rename. This can be used to ensure atomic updates to files, by writing a temporary copy of the file with the desired changes, and then renaming the file.
On Ext4, if one writes a file to the disk, and then renames the file, the rename can happen first. The result of this is that it is not possible to ensure atomic updates to files unless one uses fsync between the writing and the renaming. However, that would hurt performance, since fsync will force the file to be committed to disk right now, when all that is really important is that it is committed to disk before the rename is.
Thankfully the Ext4 module will be gaining a new mount option that will ensure that a file is written to disk before the renaming occurs. This mount option should have no real impact on performance, but will ensure the atomic update idiom that works on Ext3 will also work on Ext4.
On Ext3 with "data=ordered" (a default mount option), if one writes the file to disk, and then renames the file, ext3 will not allow the rename to take place until after the file has been written to disk.
Therefore if an application that wants to change a file uses the common pattern of writing to a temporary file and then renaming (the renaming is atomic on journaling file systems), if the system crashes at any point, when it reboots the file is guaranteed to be either the old version or the new version.
With Ext4, if you write a file and then rename it, the rename can happen before the write. Thus if the computer crashes between the rename and the write, on reboot the result will be a zero byte file.
The fact that the new version of the file may be lost is not the issue. The issue is that both versions of the file may be lost.
The end result is the write and rename method of ensuring atomic updates to files does not work under Ext4.
A new mount option that forces the rename to come after the data is written to disk is being added. Once that is available, the problem will be gone if you use that mount option. Hopefully it will be made a default mount option.
I'm guessing those numbers are based on rough estimates of the difference in the levels of neural activity when conscious versus fuly unconcious (comatose), or a non-dream sleep state.
(It goes without saying that in any sleep state with dreams involves some level of consciousness. In some cases nearly complete consciousness, namely lucid dreams, or quasi-lucid dreams (Those in which you consciously make decisions, etc, as opposed to those where you are just along for the ride)).
True. It also sounds like a server reboot will result in score reset, which should presumably result in re-listing. As long as it is not a bad server, it should regain a reasonable score. If it is a lying server, it will quickly drop down to de-listing levels again, or so I would expect.
But the price at IPO is not really that relevant. Within a little over a year of the IPO The stock price was under $10, and it has consistently stayed below it ever since. Averaging around $3 for much of the time.
I wont dispute that the current trend does not look good, but your first line makes it sound far worse than it really is.
Yes, exactly. That is the connection between Java and JavaScript. (It is also a literal connection between the two too, hence the name LiveConnect!). But because pretty much only Netscape family browsers implement JavaScript, rather than some other extended version of ECMAscript+DOM, that is not seen in the other batteries.
That was the case up until IE 7, but I things changed more there. And iexplore.exe and explorer.exe have always had separate process spaces, even back in the IE6 days. (Very important since an explorer.exe browser crashing requires restarting all of explorer.exe including the desktop. That gets very annoying, so using IE processes to browse the web have always been a good idea.)
And technically, IE6 was still a seperate program that just ran the same code as explorer.exe did for both browser and file modes.
When IE 7 is installed the explorer.exe is prevented from entering a web-browser mode. While the trident engine remains in the Windows core, the UI engine that IE7 uses is completely different. With IE7 and an old copy of IE6's iexplore.exe one can load the old IE 6 UI, but the IE 7 version of the trident engine is still used. The fact that the iexplore.exe of ie 6 can use browser mode, but explorer.exe cannot after the installation of IE7 does show that iexplore.exe has always been more than a stub.
Correct, though strangely in Vista the web browser is still used in the process of upgrading to Microsoft Update. (A service is more or less Windows Update+Office Update, at least on the a Home machine. On servers, it may also include updates for more products, such as SQL Server IIRC.) Once you upgrade, the control panel applets handels it all just like with regular Windows Update.
Very true. With the top text to speech software available, plus additional annotations amnually added to the ebook, a very pleasent experience could be had.
Consider the addition of a pronunciation key for text-specific words that the automatic pronunciation deduction gets wrong, along with per sentence (or group of words) metadata to indicate things like tempo, word spacing, pitch, etc. Combine this with a sufficiently configurable TTS engine, and the result could be remarkable similar to an audiobook. Character dialog could be differentiated to the point of giving each character a unique voice, along with the appropriate variations in dialog as per context. An annoyed character may end up talking lower and deeper with a more monotonic quality to the voice, for example.
Perhaps that sounds like a lot of work. But with some software a person could define the narrator and character voices, along with names, and have the software run through thhe text, and attempt to attch the metadata to text with a variety of algorithms, which can be slightly agressive, since mistakes will be corrected. It should be reasonably possible for software to fairly accurately determine which character is speaking each line of dialog from the text, and mark those, and even look for adverbs on the associated sentence ("1.21 Gigawatts", he correctly quickly.) and attach modifieres to the dialog.
Then the person would just listen to the book, stopping it wherever there is a problem (mispronounced word, attributed dialog, etc.) and making corrections. I'd imagine the time for the read-through and corrections for many works would be not much more than 5-10 times the final length of the work. Initial setup, especially crafting character voices may add some significant time to the beginning though.
So it sounds feasible with today's technology to have a near audiobook quality TTS-based reading, although it make take a similar amount of time as recording an audiobook to construct each.
Of course, if Kindle had such features, the tts-related complaints would probably be valid.
But that is all a far cry from the TTS accurately inferring all of that from the text on the fly, which of course would be far more desirable.
First note that ECMA script is the core language. Add a few fewtures and you have the cross browser script base. The (cross browser script base)+DOM is what is portable between browsers.
I use the term cross browser script base, because unfortunately there really is no name for this language.
Everybody implements something that is basically an extended version of the cross-browser base script.
Microsoft calls their implementation JScript.
Netscape (and now Mozilla) call their implementation Javascript.
Pretty much nobody else named their implementations, so they are generally also called javascript, although strictly speaking that is incorrect.
One of the features of Mozilla's ECMAscript implementation which is what can rightfully be called Javascript is a specific binding for java objects, allowing them to be manipulated by javascript must as though they were native Javascript objects.
The original poster intended operator to be the casino. Is your message in reference to that too? That the machines are designed to be fair even when the Casino wants to meddle with it? My understanding is that many machines, especially video-slot (and relatives including video poker) give the owners a fair bit of leeway, and allow the owners to do things as designate some machines as loss-leaders for some time period. Thus the expected winnings on those machines is positive. I believe the owner also has the ability to change the payout ratio for various events, etc. I suppose it is possible that the owner is treated as untrusted though, and has only a limited level of control over the machines.
That could even work to protect the casino. Allegations that a game was rigged by the casino could be easily dismissed if it can be shown that the casino is unable to rig the machines.
No, I doubt it, but one or both may be agents of Google, who has sided with Dell and Intel here. And I say that for more reasons then just the odd use of Google hosting service for the domain. One of the blogs had Google as a rather frequent keyword.
I argre. If I really cared about quality I would not watch the torrents. Heck I've been known to watch youtube quality streaming in the rare cases that a torrent was not available. (The first releases was broken, and no propers yet made.)
I tend to doubt it. It has the name of two Australian individuals on it, neither with any apparent connections to either organization, both of which have substantial blogs, and mention the domain in recent postings.
For one thing, people tend to value convenience. The idea here is video-on-demand. If you were aware ahead of time that you would want to watch a particular show at a given time, that works well. But it does not work so well if I have an hour before I need to leave to go someplace, having nothing downloaded but not watched, and want to watch something. Streaming works very well there. Torrents don't, since there is a good chance that the download would take more than 18 minutes (which for a 42 minute show is all the time you have left.)
IT is a broadcast network, and assuming you have a decent signal, and a local affiliate that does not regularly preempt the mandatory network programming with something else, be it a storm warning, or urgent news, or even completely different programming, it is a good idea.
I'll also admit that those conditions hold for the vast majority of the public. That said some people have problem with that, or having taken that advice has issues with a particular captured episode, or want to see something that aired before they set such a system up.
It is cases like those that online streaming is nice. Of course, this is assuming the individual in question would rather not use a torrent if a reasonable alternative is offered by the rights holder. Those who don't care would probably not even bother with the antenna, and just torrent everything.
You are partially correct, I seem to have misremembered. the so called HD episodes atre ~1100 MB.
But they do exist,
Heck I just checked and Battlestar Galactica's most recent ep has a ~350 MB version and a ~1100 MB version. It seems the standards have been raised.
Also consider that 700 MB could not possibly be enough for a perfect quality movie rip. DVD's compression is weak by today's standards, but not that weak.
Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal (NBC) and News Corporation (Fox), although other "content providers" can make their shows available on the service if they so desire (this is mostly the case where the production company of the executive producer owns the rights, as opposed to a network or the network owned production company. (Almost all shows have two or more production companies these days.))
NBC and Fox will make some money on the advertisements no matter whose show is being watched (Although they obviously make more money when a show they own is the one in question).
I'm confused how you can consider the 350 MB releases HD. The 700 MB releases are the ones usually labeled HD, and even they often don't reach the quality of regular DVDs.
(I'm assuming of course, that you are talking about standard 42 minute programs, rather than 21 minute programs like sitcoms, and old programming.)
Interestingly if you have a supported OS, and a sufficiently fast internet connection, it may be worth trying ABC's streaming service for Lost.
I was shocked to find that if you choose the HD stream and have a sufficent bandwidth the quality is really at true DVD level. Sure thats not really HD, but for web streaming services that is unheard of. The quality definitely exceeds the 350 MB per episode divx torrents, and I find is still better than the 700 MB divx torrents.
It is not always at quite DVD quality, but after watching 10 episodes of Lost on the service, I am positive that the amount of compression artifacts in some scenes is equal or less than the amount on the fairly standard 5 EP/DVD format, and in most are not too significantly worse. At all points the quality was better than 350MB/Ep divx torrents.
(The bitrate is changed dynamically to minimize the possibility of stuttering, or buffering pauses, with the side effect that the best quality does require one to have a fast connection.)
Downsides: Advertisements. Each episode of lost contains 6 advertisements, mostly 30 second advertisements, but at least one 15 second one. The advertisements all come from the same company, except that one will always advertise an ABC show. (Currently, every episode is advertising the upcoming ABC show Castle). The advertisements are flash based, and almost invariably include a video, although most of the time a pause button is provided, so you can stop the video, and just wait for the 30 seconds to end.
After advertisements, the show does not continue automatically, but you need to push the play button to continue it. This is minor.
If you were using the full screen feature, the advertisements will yank you back to non-fullscreen mode, but when you continue, it will return to full screen.
A change that seems to have been made just today, appears to make it no longer possible to pause the video or view the progress of the show while in full screen. Hopefully they will fix that, but I suspect this is currently deliberate. (The controls are flash based, and could even be using a different version of flash than was being used in the web browser, which I suspect was causing problems. [My browser was using Flash 9, but the full screen display's controls were using Flash 7. I suspect my IE flash plug-in must be out-of-date.])
The video is not flash based, but use a separate plugin, however, the controls are flash based.
Overall I'm fairly impressed, although some of the things listed in the the disadvantages are a definite drawback.
Oh, and I'm really only posting this, because I've been wanting to write down how I felt about ABC's streaming service, and your post provided an excuse.
Artificial life on an ASIC? How quaint a notion. Artificial life would work better in an FPGA so as to be able to reconfigure large portions of itself. (Although I will of course grant that a custom FPGA may be used, perhaps with some special hard coded logic, which may make it an ASIC if the result is not sufficently general purpose.)
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He is talking about a file write followed by the rename because he is discussing the real problem here, that Ext4 allows those to have the order reversed, making the write-replace idiom for atomic updates of files fail, which is discussed in TFA.
I agree that the filesystem should try harder to maintain order of operations, but ultimately it can't decide if you prefer to rollback all metadata updates after the first lost data update or if you prefer to have metadata updates without the corresponding data.
Why should this be the case? Why should a metadata change ever be written to disk before a data change that preceded it in time? If the ordering were strictly enforced, the write-replace idiom would always work to ensure atomic updates of files. The metadata journaling would still endure the integrity of the filesystem data structures, and all would be good.
Close.
The write-replace idiom is a common way to ensure an atomic update to a file. One writes a new copy of the file to the disk, and then renames it. If the rename is atomic (and since it is metadata it is atomic on a journaling filesystem) then this will ensure the file will have either the old contents or the new contents. However, this does require that the metadata be written after the data. If the metadata is written before the real data, the write-replace idiom fails, and can result in an old file being replaced before the new file is on disk.
So we end up with a zero byte file, when the old file contents would be far preferred.
The Ext3 5 seconds thing is true, but that is not the important difference.
On Ext3, with the default mount options, if one writes a file to disk, and then renames the file the write is guarantee to come before the rename. This can be used to ensure atomic updates to files, by writing a temporary copy of the file with the desired changes, and then renaming the file.
On Ext4, if one writes a file to the disk, and then renames the file, the rename can happen first. The result of this is that it is not possible to ensure atomic updates to files unless one uses fsync between the writing and the renaming. However, that would hurt performance, since fsync will force the file to be committed to disk right now, when all that is really important is that it is committed to disk before the rename is.
Thankfully the Ext4 module will be gaining a new mount option that will ensure that a file is written to disk before the renaming occurs. This mount option should have no real impact on performance, but will ensure the atomic update idiom that works on Ext3 will also work on Ext4.
I don't think you have it right.
On Ext3 with "data=ordered" (a default mount option), if one writes the file to disk, and then renames the file, ext3 will not allow the rename to take place until after the file has been written to disk.
Therefore if an application that wants to change a file uses the common pattern of writing to a temporary file and then renaming (the renaming is atomic on journaling file systems), if the system crashes at any point, when it reboots the file is guaranteed to be either the old version or the new version.
With Ext4, if you write a file and then rename it, the rename can happen before the write. Thus if the computer crashes between the rename and the write, on reboot the result will be a zero byte file.
The fact that the new version of the file may be lost is not the issue. The issue is that both versions of the file may be lost.
The end result is the write and rename method of ensuring atomic updates to files does not work under Ext4.
A new mount option that forces the rename to come after the data is written to disk is being added. Once that is available, the problem will be gone if you use that mount option. Hopefully it will be made a default mount option.
I'm guessing those numbers are based on rough estimates of the difference in the levels of neural activity when conscious versus fuly unconcious (comatose), or a non-dream sleep state.
(It goes without saying that in any sleep state with dreams involves some level of consciousness. In some cases nearly complete consciousness, namely lucid dreams, or quasi-lucid dreams (Those in which you consciously make decisions, etc, as opposed to those where you are just along for the ride)).
True. It also sounds like a server reboot will result in score reset, which should presumably result in re-listing. As long as it is not a bad server, it should regain a reasonable score. If it is a lying server, it will quickly drop down to de-listing levels again, or so I would expect.
But the price at IPO is not really that relevant. Within a little over a year of the IPO The stock price was under $10, and it has consistently stayed below it ever since. Averaging around $3 for much of the time.
I wont dispute that the current trend does not look good, but your first line makes it sound far worse than it really is.
Yes, exactly. That is the connection between Java and JavaScript. (It is also a literal connection between the two too, hence the name LiveConnect!). But because pretty much only Netscape family browsers implement JavaScript, rather than some other extended version of ECMAscript+DOM, that is not seen in the other batteries.
That was the case up until IE 7, but I things changed more there. And iexplore.exe and explorer.exe have always had separate process spaces, even back in the IE6 days. (Very important since an explorer.exe browser crashing requires restarting all of explorer.exe including the desktop. That gets very annoying, so using IE processes to browse the web have always been a good idea.)
And technically, IE6 was still a seperate program that just ran the same code as explorer.exe did for both browser and file modes.
When IE 7 is installed the explorer.exe is prevented from entering a web-browser mode. While the trident engine remains in the Windows core, the UI engine that IE7 uses is completely different. With IE7 and an old copy of IE6's iexplore.exe one can load the old IE 6 UI, but the IE 7 version of the trident engine is still used. The fact that the iexplore.exe of ie 6 can use browser mode, but explorer.exe cannot after the installation of IE7 does show that iexplore.exe has always been more than a stub.
I've used that very command on a family member's system whose IE had become too unreliable to use to even download Firefox.
Correct, though strangely in Vista the web browser is still used in the process of upgrading to Microsoft Update. (A service is more or less Windows Update+Office Update, at least on the a Home machine. On servers, it may also include updates for more products, such as SQL Server IIRC.) Once you upgrade, the control panel applets handels it all just like with regular Windows Update.
No idea if that is still true for Windows 7.
Very true. With the top text to speech software available, plus additional annotations amnually added to the ebook, a very pleasent experience could be had.
Consider the addition of a pronunciation key for text-specific words that the automatic pronunciation deduction gets wrong, along with per sentence (or group of words) metadata to indicate things like tempo, word spacing, pitch, etc. Combine this with a sufficiently configurable TTS engine, and the result could be remarkable similar to an audiobook. Character dialog could be differentiated to the point of giving each character a unique voice, along with the appropriate variations in dialog as per context. An annoyed character may end up talking lower and deeper with a more monotonic quality to the voice, for example.
Perhaps that sounds like a lot of work. But with some software a person could define the narrator and character voices, along with names, and have the software run through thhe text, and attempt to attch the metadata to text with a variety of algorithms, which can be slightly agressive, since mistakes will be corrected. It should be reasonably possible for software to fairly accurately determine which character is speaking each line of dialog from the text, and mark those, and even look for adverbs on the associated sentence ("1.21 Gigawatts", he correctly quickly.) and attach modifieres to the dialog.
Then the person would just listen to the book, stopping it wherever there is a problem (mispronounced word, attributed dialog, etc.) and making corrections. I'd imagine the time for the read-through and corrections for many works would be not much more than 5-10 times the final length of the work. Initial setup, especially crafting character voices may add some significant time to the beginning though.
So it sounds feasible with today's technology to have a near audiobook quality TTS-based reading, although it make take a similar amount of time as recording an audiobook to construct each.
Of course, if Kindle had such features, the tts-related complaints would probably be valid.
But that is all a far cry from the TTS accurately inferring all of that from the text on the fly, which of course would be far more desirable.
There is a very tenuous connection.
First note that ECMA script is the core language. Add a few fewtures and you have the cross browser script base. The (cross browser script base)+DOM is what is portable between browsers.
I use the term cross browser script base, because unfortunately there really is no name for this language.
Everybody implements something that is basically an extended version of the cross-browser base script.
Microsoft calls their implementation JScript.
Netscape (and now Mozilla) call their implementation Javascript.
Pretty much nobody else named their implementations, so they are generally also called javascript, although strictly speaking that is incorrect.
One of the features of Mozilla's ECMAscript implementation which is what can rightfully be called Javascript is a specific binding for java objects, allowing them to be manipulated by javascript must as though they were native Javascript objects.
See https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript for more information. Details of the Javascript Java binding can also be found on that wiki.
The original poster intended operator to be the casino. Is your message in reference to that too? That the machines are designed to be fair even when the Casino wants to meddle with it? My understanding is that many machines, especially video-slot (and relatives including video poker) give the owners a fair bit of leeway, and allow the owners to do things as designate some machines as loss-leaders for some time period. Thus the expected winnings on those machines is positive. I believe the owner also has the ability to change the payout ratio for various events, etc. I suppose it is possible that the owner is treated as untrusted though, and has only a limited level of control over the machines.
That could even work to protect the casino. Allegations that a game was rigged by the casino could be easily dismissed if it can be shown that the casino is unable to rig the machines.
No, I doubt it, but one or both may be agents of Google, who has sided with Dell and Intel here. And I say that for more reasons then just the odd use of Google hosting service for the domain. One of the blogs had Google as a rather frequent keyword.
I argre. If I really cared about quality I would not watch the torrents. Heck I've been known to watch youtube quality streaming in the rare cases that a torrent was not available. (The first releases was broken, and no propers yet made.)
I guess Intel or Dell own it.
I tend to doubt it. It has the name of two Australian individuals on it, neither with any apparent connections to either organization, both of which have substantial blogs, and mention the domain in recent postings.
For one thing, people tend to value convenience. The idea here is video-on-demand. If you were aware ahead of time that you would want to watch a particular show at a given time, that works well. But it does not work so well if I have an hour before I need to leave to go someplace, having nothing downloaded but not watched, and want to watch something. Streaming works very well there. Torrents don't, since there is a good chance that the download would take more than 18 minutes (which for a 42 minute show is all the time you have left.)
IT is a broadcast network, and assuming you have a decent signal, and a local affiliate that does not regularly preempt the mandatory network programming with something else, be it a storm warning, or urgent news, or even completely different programming, it is a good idea.
I'll also admit that those conditions hold for the vast majority of the public. That said some people have problem with that, or having taken that advice has issues with a particular captured episode, or want to see something that aired before they set such a system up.
It is cases like those that online streaming is nice. Of course, this is assuming the individual in question would rather not use a torrent if a reasonable alternative is offered by the rights holder. Those who don't care would probably not even bother with the antenna, and just torrent everything.
You are partially correct, I seem to have misremembered. the so called HD episodes atre ~1100 MB.
But they do exist,
Heck I just checked and Battlestar Galactica's most recent ep has a ~350 MB version and a ~1100 MB version. It seems the standards have been raised.
Also consider that 700 MB could not possibly be enough for a perfect quality movie rip. DVD's compression is weak by today's standards, but not that weak.
Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal (NBC) and News Corporation (Fox), although other "content providers" can make their shows available on the service if they so desire (this is mostly the case where the production company of the executive producer owns the rights, as opposed to a network or the network owned production company. (Almost all shows have two or more production companies these days.))
NBC and Fox will make some money on the advertisements no matter whose show is being watched (Although they obviously make more money when a show they own is the one in question).
I'm confused how you can consider the 350 MB releases HD. The 700 MB releases are the ones usually labeled HD, and even they often don't reach the quality of regular DVDs.
(I'm assuming of course, that you are talking about standard 42 minute programs, rather than 21 minute programs like sitcoms, and old programming.)
Interestingly if you have a supported OS, and a sufficiently fast internet connection, it may be worth trying ABC's streaming service for Lost.
I was shocked to find that if you choose the HD stream and have a sufficent bandwidth the quality is really at true DVD level. Sure thats not really HD, but for web streaming services that is unheard of. The quality definitely exceeds the 350 MB per episode divx torrents, and I find is still better than the 700 MB divx torrents.
It is not always at quite DVD quality, but after watching 10 episodes of Lost on the service, I am positive that the amount of compression artifacts in some scenes is equal or less than the amount on the fairly standard 5 EP/DVD format, and in most are not too significantly worse. At all points the quality was better than 350MB/Ep divx torrents.
(The bitrate is changed dynamically to minimize the possibility of stuttering, or buffering pauses, with the side effect that the best quality does require one to have a fast connection.)
Downsides:
Advertisements. Each episode of lost contains 6 advertisements, mostly 30 second advertisements, but at least one 15 second one. The advertisements all come from the same company, except that one will always advertise an ABC show. (Currently, every episode is advertising the upcoming ABC show Castle). The advertisements are flash based, and almost invariably include a video, although most of the time a pause button is provided, so you can stop the video, and just wait for the 30 seconds to end.
After advertisements, the show does not continue automatically, but you need to push the play button to continue it. This is minor.
If you were using the full screen feature, the advertisements will yank you back to non-fullscreen mode, but when you continue, it will return to full screen.
A change that seems to have been made just today, appears to make it no longer possible to pause the video or view the progress of the show while in full screen. Hopefully they will fix that, but I suspect this is currently deliberate. (The controls are flash based, and could even be using a different version of flash than was being used in the web browser, which I suspect was causing problems. [My browser was using Flash 9, but the full screen display's controls were using Flash 7. I suspect my IE flash plug-in must be out-of-date.])
The video is not flash based, but use a separate plugin, however, the controls are flash based.
Overall I'm fairly impressed, although some of the things listed in the the disadvantages are a definite drawback.
Oh, and I'm really only posting this, because I've been wanting to write down how I felt about ABC's streaming service, and your post provided an excuse.
Artificial life on an ASIC? How quaint a notion. Artificial life would work better in an FPGA so as to be able to reconfigure large portions of itself. (Although I will of course grant that a custom FPGA may be used, perhaps with some special hard coded logic, which may make it an ASIC if the result is not sufficently general purpose.)