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How the iPad Is Already Reshaping the Internet (Sans Flash) 532

Posted by timothy from the all-3-flavors-of-ice-cream dept.
The Internet's already starting to look different, says Gizmodo, in a piece of interest not only to everyone with an iPad floating around the UPS system, but also those of us thinking about some other kind of tablet in the medium-term future. As they put it, "The iPad doesn't run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won't play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad." And an anonymous reader adds this snippet from Webmonkey: "In anticipation of Saturday's release of the iPad — which doesn't run Flash — Apple has published a list of 'iPad Ready' websites. The sites are all big league sluggers like CNN, The New York Times, People Magazine and MLB.com. Surprisingly, there are also a few video-heavy sites in the mix (Vimeo, Flickr, and TED) which would traditionally rely on Flash Player for video playback."

Comment Re:reality distortion field (Score 1) 1010

by AxelBoldt (#31274514) Attached to: iPad Will Beat Netbooks With "Magic"

That power-consuming proprietary product that will be superseded by HTML 5? Websites relying on Flash aren't powered by them but drained by them.

Remember the target audience for the ipad is idiots. Idiots don't care about technical arguments like that, however true they may be. Idiots want to surf youporn and play flash games on the web. Once they realize that their favorite sites don't work anymore, they won't be happy.

Comment Re:Using a monopoly to destroy competing technolog (Score 1) 165

by AxelBoldt (#28399009) Attached to: Wikipedia To Add Video

unless the consistent goal is "always maximise the use of open source and minimise the use of anything else"?

That's indeed one of the goals of the Wikimedia foundation, it's in their charter. They are a 100% open source shop. After all, it's a "free encyclopedia", and the word "free" has many senses, all of which apply here.

Comment Re:Rather not. (Score 1) 165

by AxelBoldt (#28398925) Attached to: Wikipedia To Add Video

There is nothing in the idea or structure of a corporation that makes them innately evil.

Maybe not innately evil, but certainly innately amoral. By law, a corporation may only perform actions that directly or indirectly increase profits. It cannot do things just because they are "right" or "good", it must always maximize profits, using all legally available means. Otherwise the shareholders can sue.

Comment Adobe Reader 9.1.1 not installed by default! (Score 5, Interesting) 136

by AxelBoldt (#28011953) Attached to: Drive-By Download Poisons Google Search Results
In their security alert, Adobe urges people to upgrade from Adobe Reader 9.1.0 to 9.1.1. If you install Reader from their main download site, they still give you 9.1.0. The 9.1.1 update is available only if you follow the links at the bottom of the security alert. Insecurity through obscurity!

Comment Re:Interesting... (Score 1) 242

by AxelBoldt (#26876037) Attached to: Acquired Characteristics May Be Inheritable

Lamarck is one of those guys who's name is generally synonymous with bad science (he's about as villified as Darwin is deified).

Let's not forget that Darwin himself believed in Lamarckism; genetics wasn't known at the time.

That being said, the article is rather short in one important area: a suggested mechanism for this sort of inheritance. Without that, it's bound to be mired in controversy for some time.

The whole phenomenon isn't that new; it's called epigenetics and is transmitted most likely by the methylation pattern of the DNA, histone modification, and RNA interference. It's not stable and doesn't last beyond a few generations though, so it won't give a new mechanism for natural selection.

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