Exactly - it's a way of the company saying thanks and that they appreciate the efforts of the bug hunters, which is a refreshing change to the attitudes of most companies who just want to pretend bugs don't exist because fixes cost money. They could probably get plenty more goodwill than those other companies just by sending out a hamper of beer and gaming snacks, or a few free pizzas, so the fact that they're paying out a grand is a very nice thank you. It's a reward for regular people, not an incentive for criminals to change their ways.
Facebook, notorious for not respecting people's privacy, suddenly starts logging into user's email accounts... how do you think that one will play in the popular press - great new security feature or massive invasion of privacy?
Damn, "Qi" is one of those words that's incredibly useful for disposing of an awkward "Q" at the end of a game of Scrabble - I don't want it to become a widely used household word.
On the bunch of plugs point, I think the agreed standard was micro-USB, rather than just USB in general, so theoretically I never need to buy another phone charger for the foreseeable future, and hopefully this will roll out across the various other devices I infrequently have to use (and dig out archaic chargers for).
Normal chargers are in theory meant to be standardised now, although manufacturers have until 2012 to actually implement this across the board. I think you're right in that this isn't really solving a problem that exists or needs to be solved, however I think it'll sell because a) people like to show off new gadgets and despite there being no real need for this, you have to admit it's kind of cool and b) people are incredibly lazy and if this means they don't have to remember to plug their phone in to charge they'll go for it (especially with more power hungry smartphones being as popular as they are right now).
In my equally unscientific test, I went from 11% power on my HTC Desire to dead in 2.5 hours of HD Flash video, which anecdotally seems even better than your 15% drop over two hours. Maybe we had different apps running concurrently or different lighting levels, but for a phone that lots of users claim has a poor battery life, I think that was a pretty good run and I'm overall reasonably happy with battery drain for Flash, considering my usage is pretty limited.
Unfortunately while we have more users on most sites with IE than with iOS it's just not financially viable in most cases to create two versions of everything. Even when IE does eventually catch up with HTML5, we'll be stuck supporting older versions for years to come. Let's be clear, this is nothing to do with "being lazy" - it's all about what clients are willing to pay for. Try telling a client that a site will cost 25% more to develop if they want to target the 0.4% of users they have on iOS and see how suddenly they're not so keen on supporting it. That work isn't going to happen by itself, for free.
Is it really beyond the capabilities of the browser developer to allow plugins to be enabled or disabled with a single click from a menu option? Turn off Flash everywhere, enjoy a speedy web. Hit a site that absolutely needs Flash, temporarily enable it then turn it off when you're done. Are you honestly saying the plugin has to be made in such a way that once you install it you have to accept that it's always running, warts and all?
Well this is Adobe's opportunity to show that Flash can work on mobile devices. Either they'll pull something spectacular out of the bag, or else they'll do as horrible a job as they have for years on the desktop - either way if they're not currently pouring money into the Android version of Flash in order to try and get a solid implementation, I'd be incredibly surprised. In the past it pretty much didn't matter if they produced something bloated and prone to crashing - people had zero options other than Flash, but now they must sense that with HTML5 getting closer to reality, they've got to try to make people want Flash - hopefully we can benefit from that, if not I'll continue to use it until we have something better and not mourn its passing.
That's because they're over-engineered, because the consequences are far worse. Don't equate a browser crashing with a car crashing, it's a gross overstatement - if your browser crashes while you're looking at videos of lolcats, generally nobody dies. This is more like Ford providing sun visors - you might get annoyed at having to close them up occasionally when they're blocking your view or it's overcast, but without them it would be near impossible to drive around on a really sunny day.
Ditto - I use it for HD flash (720p) with no problems whatsoever. It does sometimes seem like it takes a while to buffer, but doing anything web related seems to take a while on handsets (and it probably feels longer than it is because the view switches to a full screen blank screen with a loading symbol, whereas in the browser there's lots of distracting information on the screen), but once they're playing they look great.
The difference is that Flash, while definitely shitty, isn't a "little browser plugin". It's pretty much a ubiquitous standard on the desktop, even on Apple's desktops, most research gives a percentage of users with flash enabled at the mid to high 90's, and it enjoys massive usage on the web to the extent that there are thousands of sites for which it's an absolute requirement (whether that's right or wrong is another issue). What you're suggesting is more akin to not allowing CSS or JavaScript because, if you do, you may as well allow "every single little shitty browser plugin and halfass web standard in the world."
When I first got my HTC Desire, I wanted to fully drain the battery as I'd read it helped the software to properly guage power levels - it was pretty late at night on a work night so I thought watching HD Flash video would be the absolute fastest way to drain the battery so I could get to bed - it still took me about two and a half hours of constantly streaming HD video to go from 11% to dead, and this on a device that's notoriously battery hungry.
Nonsense, most of HTML5 was laid down long before the iPhone came to be. There would still be people who'd used Flash, I'm sure - and there no doubt still will be in the future even when there are alternatives - but the fact is we were already going down the route of providing developers the tools they need to offer better solutions before Apple made their mark on the smartphone market. All they did was highlight to the average user what the people working towards the new standards had already discovered years before and were already working on fixing. I don't doubt that it was a slick piece of marketing to tap into that oncoming sea change, but I don't think you can directly attribute it to anything Apple did, it would have happened with or without them.
As a web developer I long to embrace non-crappy web standards. Unfortunately IE is the elephant in the room - since our users with IE vastly outnumber our users on the iPhone, we have to support them somehow. Where possible we'll find workarounds to do this using JavaScript and HTML, but when it comes to video we pretty much have no choice but to use Flash if we want a consistent experience. In most cases it's not economically viable (i.e. the client doesn't care enough to pay) to put out two solutions (not to mention codec issues in the various browsers that do support HTML 5 complicates things still further).
I suspect the author has an agenda to promote if they're claiming to be shocked by how bad Flash is. Actually I watch flash videos on my phone all the time, there's a lot of up-front buffering, but that's the same for everything web based on the phone (just visiting sites is incredibly slow even though theoretically the connection is blazing fast - and this is a truism on my HTC and my GF's iPhone), once it's loaded it generally plays fine for all that it maxes out the processor. We all know Flash is a horrible workaround and the sooner it's replaced the better, but until it's replaced it's sometimes the only option, in which case I'd still say it's better to have a rubbish option than no option at all. Plenty of people would love a shiny new BMW as their first car but that doesn't mean that they refuse to drive around in an old banger if that's the only option. If you are unfortunate enough to occasionally have to access Flash content for work rather than entertainment purposes, as I am, then lack of Flash would pretty much be a deal breaker (I don't care if it's a flawless experience so long as I don't have to go log into a machine somewhere).
They don't need to gain subscribers. Gaining users is a different matter - if people don't find this useful or think it adds nothing to the experience, they'll just not use it and a social networking system with 160million idle users is no better off than one with no users. Having said that, unless they screw it up in a big way I think it will be reasonably successful - whether it will displace FB (without some serious changes to allow participation from people not subscribed to their music services) is another matter.
But it's also reliant on people continuing to use their paid service (as an aside, I tried to install iTunes recently when I was having issues with WMP not fetching me the album art and meta data, only to learn iTunes would only give me that functionality if I first gave them my credit card details, even though I had no intention of buying music on iTunes and just wanted it to manage my collection - needless to say I uninstalled immediately). If the popularity of said service ever wanes, are people going to stick with their social networking aspects or choose the flavour of the day free replacement? Not to mention if they limit functionality here, as elsewhere, to paying customers they'll stunt their growth rate.
The issue is having the jurors and the accused even in the same physical location. Seriously, if we're expecting people to make judgments based on voice modulation and body language, we should get experts in body language and voice analysis to sit on juries. If we're expecting a judgment on the vanilla facts without any prejudice on the appearance of the accused, remove the accused and leave the facts. People will still make up their minds before all the evidence is heard of course, but at least it will be on the basis of some kind of evidence, not just that "I don't like the look of him".
Indeed it's preferred if a juror doesn't know the law - and if a lawyer is called to jury service I think they have the right or possibly even the duty to refuse simply because their advanced knowledge of law may prejudice the views of the other jurors.
Slashdot Mirror
In [ad] 2101... war was beginning!
It was inspired by Pulp Fiction.
Maybe his time is important and he's planning on paying out a bounty to anyone who can deliver the information to him.
Exactly - it's a way of the company saying thanks and that they appreciate the efforts of the bug hunters, which is a refreshing change to the attitudes of most companies who just want to pretend bugs don't exist because fixes cost money. They could probably get plenty more goodwill than those other companies just by sending out a hamper of beer and gaming snacks, or a few free pizzas, so the fact that they're paying out a grand is a very nice thank you. It's a reward for regular people, not an incentive for criminals to change their ways.
With any luck the spam bots will be so busy maintaining their farms and poking each other that they won't even have time to send out spam.
Facebook, notorious for not respecting people's privacy, suddenly starts logging into user's email accounts... how do you think that one will play in the popular press - great new security feature or massive invasion of privacy?
Damn, "Qi" is one of those words that's incredibly useful for disposing of an awkward "Q" at the end of a game of Scrabble - I don't want it to become a widely used household word.
Not to mention batteries.
On the bunch of plugs point, I think the agreed standard was micro-USB, rather than just USB in general, so theoretically I never need to buy another phone charger for the foreseeable future, and hopefully this will roll out across the various other devices I infrequently have to use (and dig out archaic chargers for).
Normal chargers are in theory meant to be standardised now, although manufacturers have until 2012 to actually implement this across the board. I think you're right in that this isn't really solving a problem that exists or needs to be solved, however I think it'll sell because a) people like to show off new gadgets and despite there being no real need for this, you have to admit it's kind of cool and b) people are incredibly lazy and if this means they don't have to remember to plug their phone in to charge they'll go for it (especially with more power hungry smartphones being as popular as they are right now).
In my equally unscientific test, I went from 11% power on my HTC Desire to dead in 2.5 hours of HD Flash video, which anecdotally seems even better than your 15% drop over two hours. Maybe we had different apps running concurrently or different lighting levels, but for a phone that lots of users claim has a poor battery life, I think that was a pretty good run and I'm overall reasonably happy with battery drain for Flash, considering my usage is pretty limited.
Unfortunately while we have more users on most sites with IE than with iOS it's just not financially viable in most cases to create two versions of everything. Even when IE does eventually catch up with HTML5, we'll be stuck supporting older versions for years to come. Let's be clear, this is nothing to do with "being lazy" - it's all about what clients are willing to pay for. Try telling a client that a site will cost 25% more to develop if they want to target the 0.4% of users they have on iOS and see how suddenly they're not so keen on supporting it. That work isn't going to happen by itself, for free.
Is it really beyond the capabilities of the browser developer to allow plugins to be enabled or disabled with a single click from a menu option? Turn off Flash everywhere, enjoy a speedy web. Hit a site that absolutely needs Flash, temporarily enable it then turn it off when you're done. Are you honestly saying the plugin has to be made in such a way that once you install it you have to accept that it's always running, warts and all?
Well this is Adobe's opportunity to show that Flash can work on mobile devices. Either they'll pull something spectacular out of the bag, or else they'll do as horrible a job as they have for years on the desktop - either way if they're not currently pouring money into the Android version of Flash in order to try and get a solid implementation, I'd be incredibly surprised. In the past it pretty much didn't matter if they produced something bloated and prone to crashing - people had zero options other than Flash, but now they must sense that with HTML5 getting closer to reality, they've got to try to make people want Flash - hopefully we can benefit from that, if not I'll continue to use it until we have something better and not mourn its passing.
That's because they're over-engineered, because the consequences are far worse. Don't equate a browser crashing with a car crashing, it's a gross overstatement - if your browser crashes while you're looking at videos of lolcats, generally nobody dies. This is more like Ford providing sun visors - you might get annoyed at having to close them up occasionally when they're blocking your view or it's overcast, but without them it would be near impossible to drive around on a really sunny day.
Ditto - I use it for HD flash (720p) with no problems whatsoever. It does sometimes seem like it takes a while to buffer, but doing anything web related seems to take a while on handsets (and it probably feels longer than it is because the view switches to a full screen blank screen with a loading symbol, whereas in the browser there's lots of distracting information on the screen), but once they're playing they look great.
The difference is that Flash, while definitely shitty, isn't a "little browser plugin". It's pretty much a ubiquitous standard on the desktop, even on Apple's desktops, most research gives a percentage of users with flash enabled at the mid to high 90's, and it enjoys massive usage on the web to the extent that there are thousands of sites for which it's an absolute requirement (whether that's right or wrong is another issue). What you're suggesting is more akin to not allowing CSS or JavaScript because, if you do, you may as well allow "every single little shitty browser plugin and halfass web standard in the world."
When I first got my HTC Desire, I wanted to fully drain the battery as I'd read it helped the software to properly guage power levels - it was pretty late at night on a work night so I thought watching HD Flash video would be the absolute fastest way to drain the battery so I could get to bed - it still took me about two and a half hours of constantly streaming HD video to go from 11% to dead, and this on a device that's notoriously battery hungry.
Nonsense, most of HTML5 was laid down long before the iPhone came to be. There would still be people who'd used Flash, I'm sure - and there no doubt still will be in the future even when there are alternatives - but the fact is we were already going down the route of providing developers the tools they need to offer better solutions before Apple made their mark on the smartphone market. All they did was highlight to the average user what the people working towards the new standards had already discovered years before and were already working on fixing. I don't doubt that it was a slick piece of marketing to tap into that oncoming sea change, but I don't think you can directly attribute it to anything Apple did, it would have happened with or without them.
As a web developer I long to embrace non-crappy web standards. Unfortunately IE is the elephant in the room - since our users with IE vastly outnumber our users on the iPhone, we have to support them somehow. Where possible we'll find workarounds to do this using JavaScript and HTML, but when it comes to video we pretty much have no choice but to use Flash if we want a consistent experience. In most cases it's not economically viable (i.e. the client doesn't care enough to pay) to put out two solutions (not to mention codec issues in the various browsers that do support HTML 5 complicates things still further).
I suspect the author has an agenda to promote if they're claiming to be shocked by how bad Flash is. Actually I watch flash videos on my phone all the time, there's a lot of up-front buffering, but that's the same for everything web based on the phone (just visiting sites is incredibly slow even though theoretically the connection is blazing fast - and this is a truism on my HTC and my GF's iPhone), once it's loaded it generally plays fine for all that it maxes out the processor. We all know Flash is a horrible workaround and the sooner it's replaced the better, but until it's replaced it's sometimes the only option, in which case I'd still say it's better to have a rubbish option than no option at all. Plenty of people would love a shiny new BMW as their first car but that doesn't mean that they refuse to drive around in an old banger if that's the only option. If you are unfortunate enough to occasionally have to access Flash content for work rather than entertainment purposes, as I am, then lack of Flash would pretty much be a deal breaker (I don't care if it's a flawless experience so long as I don't have to go log into a machine somewhere).
They don't need to gain subscribers. Gaining users is a different matter - if people don't find this useful or think it adds nothing to the experience, they'll just not use it and a social networking system with 160million idle users is no better off than one with no users. Having said that, unless they screw it up in a big way I think it will be reasonably successful - whether it will displace FB (without some serious changes to allow participation from people not subscribed to their music services) is another matter.
But it's also reliant on people continuing to use their paid service (as an aside, I tried to install iTunes recently when I was having issues with WMP not fetching me the album art and meta data, only to learn iTunes would only give me that functionality if I first gave them my credit card details, even though I had no intention of buying music on iTunes and just wanted it to manage my collection - needless to say I uninstalled immediately). If the popularity of said service ever wanes, are people going to stick with their social networking aspects or choose the flavour of the day free replacement? Not to mention if they limit functionality here, as elsewhere, to paying customers they'll stunt their growth rate.
The issue is having the jurors and the accused even in the same physical location. Seriously, if we're expecting people to make judgments based on voice modulation and body language, we should get experts in body language and voice analysis to sit on juries. If we're expecting a judgment on the vanilla facts without any prejudice on the appearance of the accused, remove the accused and leave the facts. People will still make up their minds before all the evidence is heard of course, but at least it will be on the basis of some kind of evidence, not just that "I don't like the look of him".
Indeed it's preferred if a juror doesn't know the law - and if a lawyer is called to jury service I think they have the right or possibly even the duty to refuse simply because their advanced knowledge of law may prejudice the views of the other jurors.