No, you should boycott the MPAA, who forced Apple (and nVidia, and ATI) to put HDCP into their products.

What are you talking about? There's not a ninja in si

Steam's DRM, in my opinion, is much less intrusive than SecuROM. Sure, it requires an authentication server. Sure, it runs in the background while you're playing the game. But it's much less intrusive and much more transparent than installing a device driver (or something along the lines of that) that's hard to remove and putting a hard limit on the number of times a game can be authenticated.

Think of it as a "gateway drug" to what I hope will be a DRM-free future, like what iTunes did with its less restrictive DRMing (and eventually, the lack of DRMing) of music downloads (yes, I know that iTunes still DRMs a majority of their content, but that's because Apple's deal with the RIAA restricts them from DRM-free sales).

As a language (i.e. not including the libraries), ActionScript is really just JavaScript in disguise. In fact, it is JavaScript; ActionScript is a variant of the ECMAscript language. As such, the core features of the langauges don't differ much. AS does appear to be more "enterprisey", though.

First off: You're conflating the language with the library, so I'll assume that by JavaScript you actually meant the HTML DOM, and by ActionScript, you actually meant Flash. Now, to answer your question: No, the HTML DOM does not have capabilities for rendering 3D. I'll have to argue that it doesn't need 3D rendering capabilities. Do you need 3D rendering capabilities to read email or post comments to Slashdot? Both use JavaScript and the HTML DOM, and you didn't need to install anything fancy other than your browser to do it.

No, the HTML DOM cannot. This is a problem, but I think the HTML 5 standard includes a model for "pushing" data to the user agent, so this need will be fulfilled in a later version.

Again, conflating the language with the HTML DOM. The answer is, again, no. The new HTML 5, however, will include a standard for playing multimedia.

No, and it will never happen. You may be thinking: With so many "no"s, aren't you winning the argument? No, you aren't. You've been so drawn into the "cool" factor of Flash taht you're forgetting what HTML is used for - to display web pages. Not 3D virtual worlds, but web pages. The HTML DOM + JavaScript should work to enhance web pages - you can use Flash/Java/Silverlight/whatever for everything else. I have admitted a few flaws of the HTML DOM, but it will be fixed, eventually. What I'm trying to say this whole time is that developers should use the right tool for the job. The obligatory car analogy is obvious here - an SUV (Flash) can go anywhere (those "virtual worlds" you talked about), but for navigating the city (web pages), a sedan (JavaScript and the HTML DOM) will beat Flash at its own game.

The mark of an inexperienced developer. First off, JavaScript is OO - it uses prototypal inheritance, which is more lightweight than the classful inheritance of ActionScript - lightweight being the key word here. Remember that the languages are being used for different purposes.

The canvas element also works, to an extent, on Internet Explorer. All developers need to do is use the ExplorerCanvas JavaScript library.

Sure, if you need to be on the "edge". For everyone else, JavaScript and the HTML DOM are just fine. Finally, what's with your... "exotic" use of the semicolon? You need to use the period while you're programming as well, you know.

I take it that you haven't heard of the Canvas element yet?

You assume that Apple can't announce conferences at any time other than the MacWorld expo or WWDC. Look at all the "Special Events" that Apple have been doing recently. Expect more of those in 2009. Apple have gotten so good at this thing that they can hype things up not just twice a year, but all year round.

Not really; they're just so good at it, they've developed a very high reputation, but they've never presented themselves as authoritative. In fact, they noticed this problem themselves, and created The Repository of Lost Legends [*]. It includes articles written in their usual style, but false. The idea was to teach the moral that you should never take any information at face value, regardless of whoever says it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked. Common sense isn't all that common these days, is it? [**] [*] Yes, the acronym for "The Repository Of Lost Legends" spells TROLL. Eat your heart out, GNAA. [**] Speaking of common sense, you think they would've killed that stupid 90s-era JavaScript hack to "disable" right-clicking already. Anybody with half a brain and the keys Ctrl, A, and C on their keyboard (or the "Edit" menu on their browser window) can easily circumvent this. </rant>.

Because the phone (well, at least, my phone, a Sony Ericsson W810i) has horrible sound quality. The hissing off that thing when using even a pair of $30 earphones is ridiculous. My iPod touch, by comparison, has almost no hissing (even if you listen to it at maximum volume, there's still less hiss than my phone). My phone also has horrible music management capabilities. The names of the songs, albums, and artists are all cut off at, like, 16 characters; you can't search by genre; when searching by album, sometimes the track order is reversed; there's no album art; and the phone, for some reason, includes its horrible ringtones into the music library. There exist only two good things about my phone's music player: It has this really awesome bass boost that I like to turn on for fun to pretend I'm sitting in some tricked-out ride; and it doesn't require iTunes.