perlow tips his blog entry over at ZDNet on why the Internet didn't melt when millions of users streamed 480i video for a week. The short answer is Limelight Networks of Tempe, Arizona. "[W]hy the Internet didn't 'melt' is quite simple — [Limelight is] completely 'off the cloud.' In other words, unlike Akamai and similar content caching providers, their system isn't deployed over the public Internet... Limelight has partnered with over 800 broadband Internet providers worldwide... so that the content is either co-located in the same facility as your ISP's main communications infrastructure, or it leases a dedicated Optical Carrier line so that it actually appears as part of your ISP's internal network. In most cases, you're never even leaving your Tier 1 provider to get the video."

A commonplace of cosmologists who argue the anthropic principle is the assumption that if any or a few of the constants of nature took on an even slightly different value, life could not have evolved — perhaps even stars and galaxies would not form. Science News reports on a new calculation showing that, to the contrary, star formation could happen in up to one-quarter of universes with different values of three important constants. "In fact, all universes can support the existence of stars, provided that the definition of star is interpreted broadly," said the researcher, Fred Adams. "...calculations suggest that, contrary to some previous claims, stars are not only common in our cosmos but are also ablaze in myriad other universes, where the laws of physics may be drastically different... Had Adams found that the range of parameters that allowed for stars was very small, that would have suggested that the laws of physics in our universe have been 'fine-tuned' to allow for star formation... Instead, Adams' study shows that our universe doesn't seem particularly special in that regard."

mwilliamson writes "As I sit reading my morning paper online I still cannot view the embedded videos due to auto-detection of my Flash player not working. One in every three or four YouTube videos crashes the browser. I remember sometime back reading that Adobe has a very small development team (possibly only one) working on the Linux port of Flash. It has occurred to me that Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system. No matter how stably, smoothly, efficiently, and correctly Linux runs on a machine, the public will continue to view it as second-rate if Flash keeps crashing. This is the worst example of being tied down and bound by a crappy 3rd-party product over which no Linux distribution has any control. GNASH is nice, but it just isn't there 100%. I really do have to suspect Adobe's motivation for keeping Flash on Linux in such a deplorable state."

QuakeMaster33 writes "The first public footage of id Software's upcoming Quake Live title comes in the form of a collection of high definition videos from tournament matches held at QuakeCon 2008. The event held a 1v1 and CTF tournament with prize money totaling $25,000. Included in the video set is the finals match between the 17-year-old Belarusian Alexey "cypher" Yushanevsky and the American John "ZeRo4" Hill. All of the videos are available for download or streaming via Flash video. QuakeLive, which is currently in the public beta testing phase, is a free, web-based version of Quake III Arena which includes updated graphics and gameplay. On the developer front for QuakeLive, id has plans for custom maps, but mod support is far behind. On the Linux front, id Software's resident Linux guru Timothee Bisset is working on the project, so we can only hope that if the game becomes popular, a Linux client is also made available."