I work in the Adult Industry on a Content Management System for paysites. We just demonstrated support for the iPad at the recent Xbiz show using H.264.

It's fine and dandy that one company has proclaimed that they'd get rid of Flash given the chance. That doesn't say much for the rest of the industry, now, does it?

I know there are a lot of Open Source Advocates on Slashdot, but let's face it: Paysite operators are in the game to maximize their profits. This is done by:

a) Reaching as many people and devices as possible.
b) Decreasing bandwidth
c) Minimizing disk space and hardware.

They don't care about the war between WebM and H.264. They only care about having their sites work with as many people as possible. In this case, HTML5 brings iPad support to their sites.

The problem here ultimately is that the codec war with HTML5 is still undecided. If you're going to use HTML5's video element exclusively, you're going to end up being FORCED to use two formats of video for all the browsers - one for WebM and one for H.264.

That's all well and good, but multiple formats takes up space. Granted a lot of pay sites offer multiple download options like WMV, DivX and Quicktime, but when it comes to watching a full movie in a browser, only one format is needed here - H.264. Let the browsers that support H.264 use the video tag. Let browsers that don't use a Flash player backup.

This still won't change after WebM has support within Flash because of the iPhone and iPad. As the mobile arena heats up, WebM will start to appear lacking without Apple support. Even though the iPhone is a small percentage of the total phone market, it says a lot when the CEO has one and wants his websites to work on it.

So in sum - flash isn't going anywhere. It will remain as a backup player for 5 years mininum.

Speaking as someone who works in the adult industry, I don't even know why this matters all that much.
It's not as if there's a browser within the damn iPhone and iPad. It's not as if it isn't possible to create an interface for your website that matches or surpasses what you can get out of an app. For my adult product, I've already done that.

All people want to do here is to view pictures and videos. It's nothing that requires native coding.

So you can't use Apple's payment processing system to sell porn to people? So cunting what? It's Apple's choice whether or not they want to have it on their store.

And while we're at it, a large percentage of the apps (my guess is over 40% of them) that are on the app store *can* be done via the web with the same level of effectiveness. The app store is an easy way to advertise and an easy way to bill for the functionality you're offering.

In fact, I wish there was *less* of the kind of apps that could have been done via the web.

As someone who a) sells software that's porn related and b) owns an iPhone, I'm not crying over this. There's still plenty of money to be made.

That is all.

iCantBelieveItsNotButter?

How about calling for reform of the DMCA system on YouTube?

Currently, it's possible for a content creator to have his or her video taken down for copyright infringement from what is functionally an anonymous party. While YouTube's DMCA claim form DOES ask for name, phone number and address, none of these items are verified before YouTube goes ahead and takes these videos down.

Because of this, there's a lot of False DMCA action on the site from people who are only interested in suppressing others viewpoints.

Since people on slashdot for the most part care about Freedom of Speech, I urge you all to upvote the DMCA reform issue on there.

Thank you.

Easy:
Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris :)

What I don't understand is why these high resolution apps can't be for the next generation iPhone...

Compared to the Droid, the screen on the iPhone is lacking. Apple might be looking to compete with them.

Ugh, first I'm surrounded by assholes, and now I find they're trying to copy my behavior.

Now say goodbye to your two best friends...

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to replacing email. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can still use the service, so it has no benefit over email.
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for messaging
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(X) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

I could not disagree with you more in this post.

Right now, the majority of newspapers out there are running stories that aren't even being written within their own organization. They basically take stories posted by Associated Press and broadly publish it across several hundred newspapers.

The issue isn't that the newspapers are overstaffed. The issue is that they are not getting enough money to justify having *real* reporters doing *real* journalism, which takes *real* time and money.

Look ... when I buy a product, I expect it to come in its original packaging straight from the factory. When its out of its packaging, I have no idea where the product has been. Sure, it could have been safely stowed in drawer, but seeing the assholes who work at my local gamestop, I can only assume the game has been used as a coaster for a cigarette stuffed bottle of stale miller light. How am I to know otherwise?

Because, if it's not sealed in its original case, you can look at it, you know, with your eyes, and then choose not to buy it if it's scratched or if there are tracces of cigarette ash or beer stains on it. Or you can tell the manager that you want one that wasn't a "display copy" and if they only have "display copies", then you can either buy it, or not buy it, or try to Intimidate the manager, or just wander around and level up for a while and collect more gil, or whatever. It's really up to you. But let's dispense with the drama. It's not like the store is replacing the sticker on the top of the case (that's such a pain to remove) and then re-plastic wrapping it and pretending that it's never been opened. Sheesh.

Just in case anyone is wondering, I finally broke down and bought one of those CD/DVD buffing/repair kits (with the hand crank, haven't tried the automatic things) and it works great. I got a lot of games and DVD's that my kids had scratched working again with it.