Re: emulating the Flash player in Java applets
Yes, indeed - crazy times.
166 posts • joined 30 Jan 2009
I was heavily involved in emulating the Flash player in Java applets for several years (because a single now-despised platform just wasn't enough). I'm interested to see any "replacement" standards based web technology that come close to the Flash's .swf file format efficiency at delivering rich content. It was efficient and fast - and Actionscript 3 was far superior to the abject mess that is Javascript. The player should have just been open sourced, let people fix the security issues.
Programming requires abstraction - the ability to step back from concepts and see them in logical terms. Getting upset over terms like master & slave - when they're clearly nothing to do with human subjugation in a programming context - implies a lack of ability in that regard.
Their usual method of security in such projects seems to consist of deploying machines so slow that they take 20 minutes to open up an application. So even if the terrorists do try to steal your data, they'll only get a few bytes of it before the server crashes from the overload. Phew!
Such half-baked measures will never be effective enough! No - I propose the whole citizenry be fitted with tracking ankle bracelets immediately! Also electric shock collars ("Enhanced feedback mechanisms") Purely to enforce social distancing. You'll all be thankful when you don't die of the virus!
Sounds like one of Louis CK's "Of course but maybe" bits.
Of COURSE we throw away the reverse model that removes the bikinis from the women - it has to be deleted, the hard drive set on fire, and all copies hunted down and destroyed, to preserve the sanctity of the female body outside the confines of marriage. Of course... of course.
This will sound like a silly nitpick, but I dislike the phrase "It turns out that..." - especially when used in science articles. A few years ago it "turned out that" black holes were doughnut shaped, now it "turns out" they're like a fountain. Both times, the phrase implies that now we've finally got it right, and the job is done. It's not done, science is never done, and it's extra definitely not done when studying something like black holes.
(Not to take anything away from the actual research discussed here, which is excellent and fascinating).
"ESPECIALLY nauseating when the aforementioned SCHLOCK contains all of those 'parental lessons' embedded within them. [cartoons are supposed to be FUN, not an attempt at Disney doing parents' jobs for them]."
Inspector Gadget springs to mind. As a young'un I felt personally insulted by that programme. It's creators must have considered me especially dim, if they thought I wouldn't notice the plodding do-gooder messages sprinkled throughout it.
"He also came up with some stupid ideas: like trying to make diamonds by heating graphite, designing a glass razor (which shattered) and inventing a pair of pneumatic shoes whose internal balloons burst."
How are any of those things stupid ideas? Okay, they didn't pan out - but they all seem plausible enough to me, and precisely the sort of ideas a creative, inventive mind might come up with.
"Alexa, informed by this model, could in theory hear if you left the water running in your kitchen and might, given the appropriate Alexa Skill, take some action in response, like turning off your smart faucet."
If the only way of telling that a smart faucet is on, is listening for the sound of running water, it doesn't sound terribly smart. Please give us some more brilliant reasons why we should welcome 24/7 audio monitoring of our private living space.
"I'd occasionally still see DC-3s flying overhead, often on their way in to Stansted, in the early sixties."
At least one of them was a regular visitor to Hurn airport in the late 70's early 80's, when my mum would take me there plane spotting. It, along with the Handley page Herald,ran freight to the Channel Islands, if I recall.
A much rarer visitor was the Vickers Vanguard. I saw it at Hurn one time, parked far away, and apparently it was not due to leave for several days. The next week I was playing on the green outside our house when I heard an unfamiliar aircraft noise (I could recognise the "regulars" by their sound) and over it flew, nice and low, as if just for me.
All ghosts now, these memories.
"I was literally this morning staring at this with a blank look of complete stupidity, wondering where or when I'd ended up. I was deep in a WH Smith store, mind, which didn't help."
I read as far as "deep in a WH",and I thought it was an acronym for White House - so I looked again at your username, but the uncertainty remained. ;-)
The media does not need to be organised by a cabal into operating in a particular way - it will self-organise. In the internet age, news is an efficient, liquid market, with thousands of providers available, all of whom have (mostly) the same information. So how to differentiate oneself? Sensationalism. The rewards for making mountains out of molehills are clear, so, even if certain scrupulous publications resist, many others will not, and soon this elevated sensationalism becomes the new normal. Then, even more sensationalism is required to stand out from the crowd, and the exaggerations escalate, feeding off each other.
The best, most driven people aren't always the most well behaved (hello Mr Torvalds) - but the same passion that makes them volatile on message boards, can also drive a project to greatness. This is especially true in software, whose best practitioners tend to eschew the subtleties of social politics. Of course, as soon as a project comes to be seen as "established", the niceness police kick the door in, and, like a rocket when the main booster cuts off, the project begins to coast.
Russian troll accounts on Reddit? Please stop it, it's embarrassing now. Someone powerful is hell bent on having a scrap with Russia, come what may. They will throw anything and everything at us until they find something we'll get angry enough about to let them do what they're so clearly desperate to do.
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