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Comment EI/EO is all that matters (Score 1) 141

Most people do not understand that Hydrogen, due to it's inherent instability and desire to chemically change in a volatile manner, is simply an anergy storing devices. Hydrogen is not very energy dense. Understanding it's role is important to determining whether or not to us it as it essentially acts as a battery. If you have X units of energy (electricity), the key question is how many units will you get back out of the hydrogen. So far most the most advanced systems have show that Energy in (Ei) has an Energy out (Eo) roughly equal to Eo = Ei/10. Not anywhere near as efficient as a lithium ion battery. Even lead acid batteries have better performance.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Slashdot RSS Monitor for Android Mobile (Open Source) 1

So I was tasked with writing an open source Android application for mobile and decided to write a Slashdot RSS monitor to keep updated with the latest from Slashdot. The app is in the Android marketplace and the complete source code and video tutorials are available (Just hit the info button on the application). So far no bugs and it has 5/5 star rating. Size = 768 kb which includes 450 kb of graphics so if you want a leaner app, you can take the source and pare it down yourself. Open license

Comment Only in Canada eh? Pity! (Score 5, Funny) 277

I guess people are worried that our state of the art igloo geometric designs, dogsled aerodymanics and maple syrup chemistry are in danger if poltical decisions are made without the benefit of science. Luckily there are only 78 of us in the whole country. We can probably sort it out in about a fortnight over a few Molson's beers while watching ice hockey. duane "Who won the damn gold medals at the last Olympics anyways?"

Comment Re:Why does linux get this? (Score 5, Interesting) 240

Because there are lots of us who work at Adobe who have been very vocal internally about ensuring that Linux is a first class O/S and released at the same time as the other O/S's. That is why Linux is getting the 64 bit Flash Player. More and more of us are using Ubuntu and RHEL on the server (our enterprise ESB uses RHEL/(WebSphere || Weblogic || JBoss) as a reference implementation!). Now if we could only talk our bosses into CS5 for Linux.....

Comment Re:I do not want this (Score 1) 273

Agreed. We have been moving in this direction with the open screen project. My goal is to have the SWF format as open as PDF one day but there are a few hurdles. If we did it today, it would break backwards compatibility (bad). Many of us at Adobe believe we should not be a standards development org as we really don't own it (the community owns it). We just filter feature requests and build the reference implementation. Some of the components we open sourced (Tamarin) and many of the specs are published such as RTMP, AMF. I hope we get there one day. THanks for the input. We actually do listen and appreciate this type of feedback.

Comment Re:I do not want this (Score 1) 273

YOu could say you are also forced to use a browser then. You have a choice. If you want to see certain sites in their entirety, you can choose flash. If you want to experience only the text, use wget. If you want to see something in between, use a browser. your choice. There are still some old guys who don't even like to load images and only read the alt text. Can't make everyone happy so giving people choice is the only path we can take.

Comment Re:Back to Linux dev please? (Score 2, Interesting) 273

I am lighting fires under the PM's for this every day (I work for Adobe). There are many of us here that want support for 64 bit linux. You guys have every right to be whiny about this. I bitch about it myself. THere are Duane Nickull dartboards on more than one Flash Player engineers door. Keep up the pressure. - DN

Comment Re:I do not want this (Score 1) 273

Kenja is correct. You do not have to have it. YOu can choose other technologies. Adobe (which I work for) is all about choice. Anyways, I posted a couple of videos showing some of the experiences of Flash on the Android powered Nexus 1 phone. The experience is actually quite amazing.

http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2010/06/comparison-full-screen-h264-video-on.html

http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2010_06_06_archive.html

Duane (Disclaimer: I must disclose I do work for Adobe)

Comment I work for Adobe and.... (Score 1) 272

you are right. The way Flash (the swf format only, not the whole platform) was written circa 2003, it wasn't optimized to go to mobile devices. There were some issues and technical hurdles to get around. Some of them were simple (like stopping FP instances that are not in the visible part of the screen) or simply reducing the frame rates of flash applications that are using battery power when they are not in focus). Some required much more thinking such as form fields receiving focus when the tab is hit from an HTML form element above a flash form element). To scale to mobile was a challenge which has been met with the Flash PLayer 10.1. The Google Nexus 1 phone (which I own) does a great job of running the full version of Flash (not Flash Lite). The FP 10.1 has *huge* technical improvements from previous versions Adobe is full on excited about HTML 5 too. There are some really cool possibilities about using HTML 5 features side by side with Flash. Serge Jespers did a great job of showing this on his blog late last week: http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/03/05/the-html5-flash-marriage-geolocation/ The fact is that HTML being updated is not something everyone asked for, but in it's execution, there are some obvious features that I am glad to see such as the Video element. I do share some concerns about how more advanced API's get implemented (such as the document.evaluate(); API) for complex XSLT processing but hope the industry will figure it out. DN " any technology can be used for good or for evil. The only question is how you decide to use your coding time in between " - Gandalf

Comment Canada Conference Board Found Plagiarizing Copyrig (Score 1) 232

An anonymous reader writes "There is a storm brewing in Canada as the prestigious Conference Board of Canada has been caught plagiarizing US copyright lobby group documents in a report on copyright reform. The report was funded by the Canadian copyright lobby as well as by the Ontario government. The Conference Board has acknowledged some errors, but stands by the report, while the Ontario government admits spending thousands of dollars and it now wants some answers."

Oh dang it!! I'm Canadian and I just did it again...
Spam

Journal Journal: Finally - an Anti-SPAM law with real teeth 1

The Tyee reports that Electronic Consumer Protection Act, the Canadian government's anti-spam bill, has just passed a second reading in Ottawa. This bill has real teeth and includes remedies for immediate action against spammers. "The CRTC has been given a wide range of investigatory powers, including the power to compel Internet service providers to preserve transmission d
Government

Journal Journal: Vancouver city to be "Open Source/Open Standards" based! 3

Vancouver City Council has put forth a motion (PDF format) on "Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source" as written by Councillor Andrea Reimer. According to the motion, the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:
  • Open and Accessible Data - the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and securi

Comment After using Ubuntu to get rid of Vista... (Score 1) 545

I can see why. Vista sucks. It is the operating system of the mentally deficient. I now have XP installed (I have to have at least one Win machine for work) and refuse to even try Win 7 due to a complete lack of trust with Redmond. It is their own doing and when you stir up a hornets nest, you get stung.

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