Slashdotters hate Flash. Period. Try posting anything in favour of Flash anytime the subject comes up and you'll see what I mean. I even saw one guy go as far as to say that 'Flash can only be used for evil.' Gawd! Tell us how you really feel!

Here are the criticisms that they come up with:

1. Flash is bad because it is used for annoying animations that get in the way of website usability
2. Flash is bad because it is used to spring music on people without warning
3. Flash is bad because it hogs the processor

Let's take criticism 1.

The web is full of websites that have annoying popup and popunder ads. I find popunders to be the most annoying thing in all creation. What happens is an ad pops up and blocks my view of what I'm reading. I go Ctrl+w or Apple+w to close the popup. Just before my command makes it, javascript kicks in and puts the popup under the window I'm reading from, and I lose the window I was reading only to be left with an ad for Netflix that I don't need to read because I already subscribe to them!

I'm sorry, but that is the most annoying thing on the web today, not Flash. So where is the chorus of anti-javascript hatred? Where are the claims that javascript 'can only be used for evil?' Nowhere.

Why?

Because javascript is something that slashdotters feel more comfortable with. It fits in with their way of doing things. It's a programmer's language. Programming-types use it, therefore it must be good, regardless of how much it is abused and badly-used. But Flash is a whole different matter. Flash was initially used by graphic-design type people. And of course those bozos don't know what they're doing, not like us geniuses, eh?

So what happens is we have two technologies, both of them used well and abused in roughly equal amounts. One is used by programmes, the other is (supposedly) used by artists. Well programmers are better than artists, therefore 'our' technology is okay but 'their' technology sucks. Stands to reason doesn't it? Never mind the fact that it's not the technology's fault that it gets abused, let's blame the technology anyway while saying nothing about the people on our own side of the fence who abuse javascript.

Moreover, Flash has moved on from the days of animations. In fact, go to any Macromedia user group and confess to creating animations and the response will be 'shame on you!' Flash is nowadays used for querying databases and displaying data without refreshing a whole page of HTML. For example, e-Trade used to have a little Flash app on their website that let you query prices of a particular stock. You type in the ticker symbol, press the button, and after a second or two the price would appear in the swf without having reloaded a single byte of HTML. A bit more efficient than redisplaying the whole page for the sake of updating one little string of characters. This is a whole different approach to web-based applications. The metaphor of the 'page' is inefficient for complex interactive sites like Travelocity or Netflix etc.

Oh, and Flash is also the most sophisticated web-based video-playback platform yet developed.

Criticism 2: "Flash is bad because it springs music on people without warning."

Well Flash isn't the only technology capable of doing that. I seem to remember java applets doing that to me in years gone by. Once again, I didn't hear any complaints from slashdotters about the evils of Java. The fallacy behind this criticism is the same as that behind criticism 1 above. It's not the technology's fault that it gets abused from time to time.

Criticism 3: "It hogs the processor."

Okay, I'll give you that. But for Joe Consumer surfing the net in his living-room, I don't think he's gonna be aware of any problem unless he's doing a bit of finite element analysis in the background.

Bottom line: Don't blame the technology. Flash has moved on from creating animations. In fact a lot of Flash stuff is now being done without making any use of the timeline. I've seen some people create apps in which they never show the stage. The developer tools are getting more powerful with each release, it has evolved into a fully-fledged software development environment. If you're a programming type and you had doubts about Flash before, I invite you to look again and get into it. You might actually like it if you opened your mind and gave it a chance!

Government of the people, by the people, for the people is a great idea. However it starts to fall down a bit if the people are as thick as two short planks. Take California's voters micromanaging the budget for example. Who are the voters to tell legislators how to handle the complex financial issues of the day? What's the point in electing people to the assembly on the one hand, if we just turn around and tie their hands and prevent them from doing their job on the other?

Voters yesterday voted down Proposition 56. This would have reduced the required majority to raise taxes from 67% to 55%. In effect, one of the worst effects of Prop 13 is still in force: an anti-tax minority effectively has the final say over whether or not taxes should be raised. What's so democratic about that?

I hate when you know someone for a while and give them a certain standing in your mind, and then all of a sudden they say something which sends your high view of them free-falling. such as when you find out someone is a racist :-(

At 1110 UT this morning, the third largest solar flare on record erupted from the Sun, sending a coronal mass ejection directly towards Earth at 5 Million MPH (picture, animation), and starting a solar radiation storm. We may see bright auroral activity tonight. Passengers on high-altitude airplane flights may receive chest-x-ray-level dosages of radiation.

The Democratic and Republican parties have 158 and 165 Million voters in their databases, "DataMart" and "Voter Vault", respectively. They track how you vote, what issues you're concerned about, demographics about your home and family, and who you associate with. From it they mount door-to-door, telemarketing, spam, and junk mail campaigns offering customized versions of the political party to appeal to your passions, while avoiding issues that might offend you.

Ok im sitting right now in a net caffe in the loft of a shopping center and its actually FULL (about 50 machines) there are about 10 people waiting to use machines. WTF?
Im trying to kill time before i go and see 'Goodbye lennin' for the second time :)

My freind ben has just baught his first car and has been driving it around for the last few weeks.
Its very comfortable and he got it ostensibly beacuse he disliked public transport.His points ranged from it being too crowded to feeling unsafe using it sometimes.True, it is nice to be able to get places at (compared to the bus) lightning speed but what are you missing when your in a car?
Yesterday i was returning home from helping at our sixth form's open day on the bus i started talking to a man called james who had recently moved to birmingham from telford. He was complaining about birmingham city centre's lack of toilets, at one point so desperate he was about to take a wizz at the back of the bus but i managed to persuade him to get off and find a tree.A month or so back i had just left the cinema after watching bowling for columbine on the big screen - again. I started chatting to a guy who had just gotten off his shift working for central trains, a thouroughly interesting guy and after the bus arrived we chatted until i got off the bus near my house.
I don't chat with many people on the bus, usually people who first say something to me or who make a broadcast comment (My phrase for something said for everyone to hear but not neccesarily requiring a response - such as someone uttering "Typical" when a bus zooomes past and doesent stop.) but i still like occasional banter between the bus riding public.
Car users miss these kind of things, they speak with the people they know at work and go directly home and speak to the same people they know there, sure they meet other people but usually at set locations and people who are similar to them. On the bus it's all random today you may meet a teacher tomorow a drunk 22 year old comming home from clubbing,

but people you never meet are car people and they never meet you....

Someone was interested in this, so I decided to post it here instead of clogging up the article with too many OT posts. Enjoy, or something.

The point of copywriting is to make it as easy on the reader as possible, because they have to keep track of a lot of stuff.

The most important thing to know when you're writing is: You are writing something that will be spoken aloud! Things that work written will not work when you say them! PM should be in the afternoon or at night. Numbers should be rounded as far as practical, 4,827,243 becomes almost five (m) million. Et cetera. Speak it aloud as you write it. If it sounds good, use it. If it sounds awkward, even if it looks good on paper, rephrase it. Punctuation is important. Woman, without her man, is nothing. Woman, without her, man is nothing! So put your commas and periods in the right places to make sure the meaning you intend gets across.

Broadcast copy IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, even though I personally find proper English capitalization easier to read. It is double-spaced on the page. In television, video notes (such as what camera is live, always a good thing to know) are indicated on the left half of the page, and audio on the right.

Hyphenation: When each letter of an abbreviation is pronounced, you put hyphens between each letter to indicate that. Example, R-I-A-A, K-D-E. This also includes sequences of numbers, such as phone numbers. 5-5-5-4-3-2-1. Abbreviations pronounced phoenetically are put down verbatim, GNOME, SCO.

Numbers: No more than three digits consecutively, and all single digit numbers spelled out. All ?illions have the first letter in parentheses before the word to make doubly sure. Five (b) billion 482 (m) million 326 thousand 384. Dollars is written out after the number, never ever use a dollar sign, the reader might forget there was a dollar sign on it by the time (s)he hits the end of the number. It happens!

Shorthand in general: Don't use it. 9:00 becomes nine o'clock. PM becomes in the afternoon or at night. Inc. becomes Incorporated, unless it's actually pronounced "Inc".

Tricky words: Avoid them, but if you've gotta put them in, write out a phoenetic pronounciation afterward. Kazaa (kuh-ZAH). I hate these, 'cause unless you go over the copy beforehand, it'll make you pause a little bit anyway. But it's better than a couple seconds of dead air while you stare blankly at the paper/prompter. =D

Well, there you go. What I paid a couple hundred dollars to learn. Man, I just realized I've been ripped off.

The first of the problems that eventually cascaded into the blackout began at 1 p.m on August 14th. "The inability of critical control data to be exchanged quickly across the grid could have hampered the operators' ability to prevent the cascading effect of the blackout," said Gary Seifert, of DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. "It didn't affect the [control] systems internally, but it most certainly affected the timeliness of the data they were receiving from other networks. A former Bush administration adviser who has consulted with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the power grid issue said the Blaster worm also hampered the ability of utilities in the New York region to restore power in a more timely manner because some of those companies were running Windows-based control systems with Port 135 open. The control systems ... are often based on Windows 2000 or XP operating systems and rely on commercial data links, including the Internet and wireless systems, for exchanging information.

Lately, I've been noticing a disturbing trend: When people write an acronym, they will write what it stands for right next to it, so they will say "IANAP (I am not a physicist)"

The net result of this is that the person ends up writing a piece of text that is LONGER than what they would have written if they had just written out "I am not a physicist," thus defeating the whole point of using an acronym in the first place.

Does anyone have any insight into this disturbing trend? I realize that this is not going to cause the eventual bloating death of the slashdot comment database (we can thank trolls who post 12-chapter-long narratives for that), it just strikes me as extremely stupid.

PISCBWAOMPAATWWIMNTT (Perhaps I shuld compensate by writing all of my posts as acronyms then writing what I meant next to them.)

I hate this, my mind has so many good/cool/brillient ideas . Things i want to make or draw or paint but i just cant. Im absolutely crap at anything like that, my drawings look poor , my paintings suck and everything i make is never how i want it- usually doesent even fit togeather properly. and it frustrates me beacue i have all the information up there but my hands dont translate that into anything like what i wanted.

Ok im sure this entry will be swiftly deleted when i get home tomorow but ive got to go in to pick up my exam results, i will get what i deserve :-S

Digging through some old stuff in my attick i found a scruffy peice of paper with my (even scruffyer) handwriting on it from the first time i used a computer and had written down instructions on how to run a program. It read

"get A> tipe basic
pres spas Bar tipe Menu then pres
enter"

braught a tear to my eye :-)

Ok, that was weird, i was looking through some backups and i found IRC logs of Tuesday september the eleventh 2001. Reading through them i thaught how odd it was that what i said could be recalled with 100% accuracy and what people were saying on the day.Its not important that it was *that* day but that i could see how i was two years ago, - time for more reading.....

Saw two films, first blue velvet
at the end i thaught "O...K - i didnt quite get it a little weird. Anyone care to help me out?

Then second bill Donnie Darko, i found it to be a great film, and by the end i gaped in awe at its brillience. It just all clicked into place in a split second , kind of like the last 5 minutes of pulp fiction where you hear in the background "Garscon.... Coffee"--- WOW