I’ve always been a hater of Macromedia/Adobe Flash. Now that the entire Apple-Adobe controversy has rekindled the debate of whether the web is a better or worse place because of Flash, I realized why it is I don’t like Flash.
Also, I realized most technically-inclined people dislike Flash too, because they recognize a lot of its shortcomings, unlike the layperson who only cares about the web being pretty, full of animations and beeps and stuff.
Now, before I begin, let me state this: I’m griping about Flash as a web content creation platform/tool. I couldn’t care less about its use as a mobile development tool. A lot of bloggers have expressed more informed opinions on this topic.
For me, a true flash hater, what Flash does is take control away from the end-user, the consumer of content, and give it to the content creator, the designer.
If you’re the designer this is all fine and dandy; you can control exactly what the user sees, you can tell your application to be exactly this many pixels wide, this many pixels high, and how to look and behave down to the pixel and the microsecond. This is why designers love Flash; it not only lets them work in a familiar environment and with familiar tools, but it also gives them complete control about how and what the user sees and can do.
By the way, don’t be fooled; a designer that claims to know web design but uses only Flash is not a web designer. Flash was created to allow designers (Adobe’s primary clientele) to be able to say (untruthfully) they can design web sites.
The problem is, the web wasn’t meant to be this way. Fundamentally, the kind of content the web was created for, was meant to empower the user. This is why the web browser was designed from the very beginning to not impose those very parameters (width, height, fonts, and so on); the content should adjust to whatever the user’s agent can display. So web content reflows to adapt to your browser; it should degrade for those systems that for any reason lack a certain capability (think Lynx and visually-impaired users). It should also allow me, the user, to alter how it looks and is rendered. This is why I can disable cookies, javascript, replace or even remove altogether the CSS used to format my content, decide not to display images, and so on. Even the most complex non-flash web page consists of text and images; and with a bit of cleverness I can get both the text and the images and incorporate them in the rest of my workflow; paste them into a document, translate them, email them to someone else, the possibilities are limitless since web content is delivered to me as-is, as bytes I can not only look at, but also manipulate as I would any other kind of information on my computer.
This freedom is lost on a Flash-only (or mostly) website. What’s worse, instead of the content being, well, content, stuff I can get out of the browser and process and manipulate in other ways, it becomes merely an image, a photograph or a movie trapped in the clutches of the Flash plugin. I can’t copy the text, I can’t scroll except through the provisions the designer made for me, I can’t easily extract the audio or the images, and I’m basically limited, not by the constraints of my browser, but by those set forth by both Adobe through its display plugin, and the designer. And let’s face it, most designers are also clueless about user interfaces and ease-of-use, unlike the people who designed my web browser, which is rendered mostly useless on a Flash site.
It is this loss of freedom that makes Flash so dangerous, and why I think it would be a good thing for Flash to disappear eventually.
Flash adds nothing of true value to the Web, as we could all live happy without all the animations, all the desktop-apps-masquerading-as-web-apps made in Flash (write a Web app from the ground up, it’s not that hard), all the stupid content that forces me to work its way instead of my way, and luckily, thanks to the advent of HTML5, the one thing for which Flash has proven to be indispensible (web video) we won’t need it even for that. Because, let’s face it, web video was Flash’s killer application; everything else that could once be done only in Flash is now doable in AJAX, CSS and Javascript. And honestly, if Flash had been such a good technology for those things, we would have stayed with it and not bothered with anything else.
If anything, the existence of so many alternatives to Flash and whatever it can do, is evidence that the world at large truly does not like Flash.
Update: It appears Amazon is indeed listening; I was able to preorder Robert J. Sawyer’s latest for Kindle delivery, and most of the titles I talk about in this post are alerady available in my region. Thanks Amazon!
Like (according to Amazon.com) millions of people, I own a Kindle e-book reader. However, I’m a bit irked by the fact that Amazon is treating Kindle users as second-class citizens. As early adopters who paid a hefty sum for Amazon’s flagship product, I think we deserve better.
I’ve been a fan of e-ink technology since I first learned about the early, clumsy prototypes. When the original Kindle came out, I nearly jumped at the chance to get one. However I decided that the hassle of having a Kindle in a non-supported country (Mexico), meaning I’d have to jump through hoops to get content into the kindle, was not worth being an early adopter.
So patiently I waited, until, in late 2009, Amazon finally started selling the Kindle, complete with wireless content delivery, in Mexico and a host of other countries. “Great”, I thought. “I get to have my nice gadget, save on shipping costs and delivery time, and I still get to read a lot”.
The story has been a bit different. And it has more to do with politics and commercial interests than with technology. Let’s get this out of the way right now: I have only ONE complaint about the tech side of the Kindle, and it doesn’t even have anything to do with the product itself. More about that later.
So I got my shiny new kindle and went online to get some books for it. I naturally searched for my favorite Sci-fi author, Canadian writer Robert J. Sawyer.
To my dismay, there’s very little from him available as Kindle content. None of the books I was interested in were available: nor Calculating God, the first RJS book I read; neither Factoring Humanity, my all-time RJS favorite; I can’t get the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, one of the very few RJS titles I haven’t read. They’re simply not available for the Kindle.
Titles are being “kindlefied” all the time. However selection is still quite shallow.
Sometimes I do find the title I’m looking for, only to be greeted by the message “not available in your region”. Amazon, if you CAN send physical books to my region, why can’t you deliver them to my Kindle? I know you’re going to say it’s not the same, but to me, that doesn’t cut it.
A few days ago I received a notification for Dan Simmons’ latest book. Black Hills was to come out in a few days, and I was offered a nice pre-order discount. However, it didn’t apply to the Kindle edition. So you mean to tell me that, even though I’d click on “buy now” this minute AND wait for the book to actually come out and be delivered to my Kindle, I can’t? and that the only way to take advantage of the discount is to wait for the dead-tree version to actually come out? well, never mind, because the book is for sale right now and there’s no Kindle edition in sight. So anyway I have to either get the hardcover or wait until the publisher decides it’s OK to let the Kindle edition out. It’s ridiculous that a hardcover book delivery will actually have me reading it sooner than the instantly-delivered electronic version.
Amazon, this is one area where you have to work with publishers and let them see what a big market they’re missing, and help them reach it. Because all these artificial restrictions, stemming from the irrational fear they have of electronic distribution, will only end up hurting their bottom line. I’m able (and more than willing) to purchase books. Look at my past history if you don’t believe me: even with a 50% delivery overcharge (the joys of not being in the United States) I routinely spent over $500 a year on books. Now I’m a bit weary of ordering physical books, since I’d prefer to offset the delivery cost with my Kindle; however, many of the titles that interest me aren’t available for the Kindle.
Interestingly, I find myself loading mostly classic literature on the Kindle; from Wilkie Collins to Jules Verne, these wonderful titles are available for free in Kindle-compatible formats. This is a consequence of the titles I want not being available on the Kindle; so if I have to choose between Jack London’s Call of the Wild (old book, I’ve read it 1000 times, I can get it for free at mobipocket.com) and Robert Sawyer’s Starplex (haven’t read it, but is not available for the Kindle), guess what, I’ll get the former.
Now for my one technical quip: What’s this about “optimized for large screens” books? so now I need a Kindle DX to read content? That just sucks.
So Amazon, you have the clout, but also the flexibility to work with publishers and stop (both you and them) treating us like second-class citizens, just because we find the convenience of the e-book reader worth the high admission price. A lack of reasonably-priced content shouldn’t be part of that price.
For a long time the Internet was a veritable treasure trove of howtos and tutorials; this is people (mostly) selflessly sharing the stuff that’d taken them a lot to learn, in order to benefit the crowds. Philosophically, this has a lot to do with the Free Software movement. Most people wouldn’t realize it, but the “share freely” idea is what has propelled pieces of software such as Linux or Firefox to their current positions.
I digress. However, at some point, someone decided that a) the Internet was now fast enough to carry video, and b) people were too stupid to read and follow instructions. This brought about the unfortunate appearance of video tutorials. I usually rant against these, as I can still read faster than I can watch a video, where some random dude takes me step by step at their own pace (intead of at mine). Video tutorials also suck when you need some quick, compact piece of reference material to “refresh” your knowledge about a procedure, which would be better served by a 2-kb piece of text, instead of a 10-mb, 5-minute video.
Still, I must admit there are instances where a video tutorial makes the most sense; some steps in procedures are, indeed, better explained by following the actual action (and perhaps having a narrator telling you what the hell is going on).
I recently found myself needing to learn how to tie a bowtie. None of the text tutorials helped, no matter how well-written or illustrated they were. There is ONE crucial step that basically necessitates a video for you to understand it. I spent 40 minutes wrestling with the text-and-pictures instructions. The video made it clear in under a minute.
So, without further ado, if you EVER need to learn how to tie a bow tie, don’t bother with anything else: these three videos will show you how it’s done.
The first is the one that best explains the CRUCIAL step of “finding the hole”.
The second one goes into a bit more detail, I hate this guy who says “go ahead and” all the time, but his explanations are good.
The final one is hilarious from the way the woman “handles” his male-model, but it’s also instructional and explains the crucial step adequately.
Enjoy!
“To its devotees the bow tie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrarian point of view. The bow tie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. Bow ties are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think.”
”
—Warren St John, The New York Times
So my iPhone fell and got damaged. To its credit I have to say I did hit it pretty hard several times in the past, and it’d survived. However this time it didn’t, and I had to get a replacement. I had to pay for it since it was out of warranty. However the truly painful thing was spending one week without the perks of the modern smartphone.
I had to dig out my trusty 5-year-old Nokia 7210 (not the SuperNova, I mean the original funky-buttoned 7210), a stylish and compact phone which, however, is pretty featureless by modern standards. You can talk on the phone, send SMS (barely; I don’t know how I sent messages without a full QWERTY keyboard) and that’s about it. It has no camera, no network access, the screen is only 128-color and uploading stuff requires a tedious conversion process, and it only supports 4-voice MIDI polyphonic tones.
This was due in no small part to the death of my Blackberry’s lame battery; the ‘berry would have been a decent temporary replacement for the iPhone,even though it’s not compatible with my data plan. So here’s a tip: when your phone is about to be left indefinitely in a drawer, remove the battery.
Being without the iPhone, what I missed the most was:
The QWERTY keyboard, without a doubt, is the most-missed feature. Whether virtual or real, it’s a necessity if you plan on composing a lot of text.
The camera, believe it or not, is really useful for a lot of purposes.
Synchronization with my computer’s address book. A lesser phone can do it but the Nokia lacked connectivity (only infrared).
The browser, being able to access the internet anywhere, anytime has become a true necessity.
E-mail. Yes, also not being able to receive emails periodically or, at least, on demand, is crippling and makes me feel out of touch and claustrophobic.
Music, I guess it’s a case of “if you have it, you will use it”. Somehow carrying the iPod around in addition to the Nokia didn’t seem like a good idea.
What I didn’t miss:
Ringtones. However weak the Nokia’s ringtone support is, it’s very loud and adequate, and my favorite ringtone ever (acceleration.mid) was available. I like it so much, I made an MP3 of it and loaded it on the iPhone.
GPS. It’s cool to have it but I really don’t use it all that often.
Most of my games. I don’t play on the iPhone that often. I must point out that neither the Nokia nor the iPhone had the “snakes” game from older (and newer) Nokia phones. I guess this 7210 got stuck in the past.
Also in case you hadn’t noticed, the entire point of this rant was so that I could have a new post before the 12th and thus keeping my blog updated “more than once every 6 months”.
BerryUnitConverter has been released. Featuring conversions for pennyweight, micrometers and millimeter (can’t believe I’d forgotten that one). Get it at the usual place.
Risk is a constant for today’s companies. Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM (well, maybe not so much with IBM), Toyota… they all take risks developing and testing new technologies. The risk lies in the amount of money and resources they devote to creating new technology. When said technology involves keeping a team to upgrade, fix and evolve it, the risk multiplies. The risk is mitigated if the technology is successful and provides a reasonable return on investment. Indeed, the whole point of “risking” your resources is so that created technology might prove a commercial success and yield the company many times the investment.
However there are times when things don’t go quite right and a company has to “cut its losses” and scrap a project or product altogether. Google has done it, IBM has done it (PS/2), Apple has done it (the Lisa). Microsoft has done it many times, and in doing it yet again they help me make my point today.
“Users of Microsoft’s 3D simulation platform have been rocked by news that the company has laid off off or reassigned most of the of the platform’s developers“, reads an article at thestandard.com. Microsoft has a 3D simulation platform? Well yes, as part of their venerable Flight Simulator product (has the honor of being the first piece of commercial software I bought, circa 1988), it seems they had spawned off a 3D simulation product. Microsoft’s announced enhancements to the platform meant it was going to be targeted at markets such as real estate, city planning, and law enforcement. And developers for these industries were thrilled, and had already begun work on applications using Microsoft’s ESP technology.
Maybe the reason is the current economical climate; whatever, Microsoft seems to be shedding a lot of “non-essential” teams, among them the Flight Simulator team, followed closely by the ESP team. Streamlining seems like a sensible tactic for a profit-oriented business, right?
Users don’t seem to think that way.
“As a commercial developer who is currently working on two major ESP projects I can’t begin to express the concern I have hearing this news. I look forward to hearing from Microsoft as to the future plans for ESP”
“I’m gutted that this is probably no longer going to see the light of day. It looks like there were a lot of people working really hard to build a revolutionary product. It must be totally crushing for them to see all that work go to waste.”
‘my company used it for a solution and invested time and money into getting it approved and purchased. Microsoft sure handed us a raw deal for taking a gamble on their platform.’
Anyway, my point with all this is that proprietary software is a bad idea. Microsoft is the embodiment of all we loathe in a software company; however much they talk about being business partners, the current schism is a sample, a reminder that, should your business no longer be profitable to them, Microsoft won’t hesitate to hang you out to dry. The bottom line is all that matters to them. And their use and selling of proprietary technologies means that, should the worst happen, you’re left with no recourse but to throw all your investment away and start anew with some other product, hoping that that other company won’t do the same to you.
Rather than risking this, why not go free software? Things would be very different if Microsoft opened up ESP; it’s not like they’re going to profit from that anymore. That way companies with a reasonably talented developer pool might take the project forward, as has happened with many open-sourced, formerly-commercial products (Blender comes to mind). That’s a company that protects your investment. Microsoft just ripped them off, plain and simple.
For all those companies developing products using ESP, it’s likely their business is not primarily software development. Thus they chose to go with a commercial, specialized software vendor. And look what happened to them! Even if they don’t have the in-house expertise to develop something like ESP, a pooling of resources or funding a non-profit tasked with developing and freely releasing an ESP substitute would make sense. A law enforcement organization sees no competition from a real estate, architecture or urban planning company, so what’s it to them if they use the same, freely-developed product on which to base their custom offerings? (look at Unreal Engine and what ID Software does with their Quake FPS engines; also, ID software has open-sourced their old releases, which rings true with what I’m ranting about here). Again, as long as it’s not their core business, there’s no problem with them cooperating in the creation of a component for their main project.
Misery loves company and at least, through heated discussion in MSDN, those users who were wronged by Microsoft have come in contact with each other and might, if they have the vision to venture into the world of free software, have an opportunity to make sure this never happens again to them or others wanting similar technologies.
OK, so I happily hack away on my Rails application on a Debian box with Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.1.0, and then deploy to a Fedora 8 server with Ruby 1.8.6 and Rails 2.2.2. All of a sudden a particular release causes Passenger to spit an error page on application startup. The key error was:
undefined method \`empty?’ for nil:NilClass
Now I’m combing all over my code to find where I’m using “empty?” but I’m sure it’s somewhere that gets run on application startup, otherwise it wouldn’t show up when Passenger tries to start the application. But I find nothing and I’m about to shoot myself.
Following the trace I end up hacking Ruby’s erb.rb file, as there appear to be some bugs in this; indeed, this one from 1.8.6 is different from what I have in 1.8.7, so the app runs fine here. I try to fix instances where empty? might get called on a nil object, but after fixing 3 of these the app stops responding altogether. Hmm, so something, somewhere, depends on erb.rb’s buggy behavior. Best to leave it alone.
HOWEVER, on the deployment server, running with script/server works fine; it’s only when using Passenger that things blow up.
Finally I find this thread that points me in the right direction:
One of the users dropped some JPEG files into the /app/views/static directory, and that seems to be jamming up the works with 2.2.2.
Indeed, as part of my last set of revisions, I’d left several samples of static content I was converting into dynamically generated pages; sure enough, they included JPGs and whatnot. Just to be safe, I decided to move the entire directory into public to avoid any problems.
Now the app runs just peachy and I only wasted 2 hours chasing down this bug. Thanks to the guys at Nabble!
Eventually it all boils down to this Rails bug reported at Lighthouse. So hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. In the meanwhile, keep binary files out of your views subtree.
I’m attaching the entire Passenger error page, in case it’s useful to anyone. Mainly so that Google can find it faster for other people with this problem.
There may be a syntax error in the application’s code. Please check for such errors and fix them.
A required library may not installed. Please install all libraries that this application requires.
The application may not be properly configured. Please check whether all configuration files are written correctly, fix any incorrect configurations, and restart this application.
A service that the application relies on (such as the database server or the Ferret search engine server) may not have been started. Please start that service.
Further information about the error may have been written to the application’s log file. Please check it in order to analyse the problem.
A note on Slashdot says “[Nintendo] has requested help in dealing with piracy overseas, both from the US government and from several other countries in particular. China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and Paraguay are listed as the greatest contributing nations to piracy of the company’s products.”
Nintendo needs to realize that there’s no way piracy will stop in Mexico unless they lower their prices. A Wii is almost twice as much in Mexico as it is in the USA, costing the equivalent of over 350 dollars here. Games aren’t much cheaper. And Wii Points cards are also twice as expensive here.
It’s also pretty hypocritical of Nintendo. Wiis are plentiful in Mexico, even at times when news of shortages elsewhere were common. The reason is that, since the Wii is so heavily marked up, Nintendo does profit more by selling here in Mexico than in the USA (similar to how they diverted shipments to Europe because higher prices there gave them more profits). However, while there are those mexicans (like me, sadly) who would indeed pay twice the price for the console, which is very convenient for Nintendo, the vast majority of the population can’t afford those prices. So they resort to piracy in order to get their games; buying stolen for their consoles; and (worst of all) buying an XBox instead, because the XBox is 60% the price of a Wii here in Mexico.
This will continue, however hard Nintendo tries to push mexican authorities, because they don’t care; Mexico is a land of impunity, where drug dealers get away with murdering and torturing, often in broad daylight. Obviously the authorities have their hands full and no time for a game company crying wolf because their products are getting pirated. And anyway, it’s too easy for the “pirates” to bribe the police officers who come to seize their goods and try to arrest them; they, too, are starving and would welcome a few thousand pesos in bribes (or, why not, a shiny new stolen Wii for their kids).
So if Nintendo wants to reduce pirating of their products in Mexico (they can’t stop it altogether), they need to make sure their prices are more in line with what they charge internationally (The USA, specifically). That way more people can afford them legitimately, and there will be less incentive for piracy. However, culturally, legally and politically, the complete erradication of piracy in Mexico is an impossibility. Just ask Microsoft.
I’ve written before about how people in Mexico have zero road culture, which leads to a complete breakdown of road infrastructure. A lot of this infrastructure’s correct operation depends on people abiding by the law. Yet most people do not. Usually the consequences are from nil (parking in a handicapped space for a moment, leaving your car double-parked, parking in front of a house’s garage) to a relatively minor fine (parking illegally and THEN getting towed because the tow truck happened to be nearby).
However, when physical security of moving vehicles is dependent on the assumption that people will respect the law, things do indeed break down.
The metrobús is a Bus Rapid Transit system, which opened in 2005 in one important Mexico City avenue, and has enjoyed (in my opinion) great success, reducing transport times, improving traffic flow for private vehicles, and getting rid of dangerous Peseros along Insurgentes avenue. Everybody in Mexico knows Peseros are the worst offenders when it comes to traffic violations, where they blatantly run red lights, invade lanes, and generally do what they please without regard for others. So their sole disappearance was a blessing.
The price to be paid for this was that, since the metrobus runs on central lanes, left turns are forbidden along the avenue’s 26-km length. The reason is obvious: at the very least a significant disruption of traffic might occur if the bus has to stop for a car that’s trying to left-turn. At worst, the metrobus, a double-length behemoth, might hit another car with deadly consequences.
It’s been 3 years of the Metrobus operating, and this year a second line (running along eje 4 sur) was opened. This has caused an uproar because it appears this line has been misdesigned, creating several “death traps” and spots where, due to lack of space, cars and pedestrians have a tough time getting through. This has led to 18 accidents since the new line opened.
Some asshole in the government who needs urgent math lessons said that “98% of accidents involving the metrobus are due to private car driver’s imprudence”. For starters, 98% of 18 is 17.64, and assigning partial blames is absurd.
Anyway, what’s indeed clear is that most of the accidents are due to lack of culture by drivers. The all-too-common notion that “nobody wants to have an accident and if I just swerve violently in front of someone they’ll stop and swear at me but I’ll get my way” fails when the “someone” is a 15-ton monster traveling at 60 km/h with 30-meter stopping distances.
Sometimes, then, images are worth a thousand words, so I’ll leave you with the conclusion that while it’s necessary to guarantee that people operating a car need to have a minimum of road education, it’s also not going to happen because the “it’s ok just this one time” mentality rules, and as long as we’re giving driving licenses to anyone without a driving test (right, in Mexico there are no driving tests, you just pay for your license and you get it) things like this are going to happen. I also leave you with an eye-opening video of exactly whose fault it was for the accident, a picture of which is at the top of this message.
Like (according to 
So my iPhone fell and got damaged. To its credit I have to say I did hit it pretty hard several times in the past, and it’d survived. However this time it didn’t, and I had to get a replacement. I had to pay for it since it was out of warranty. However the truly painful thing was spending one week without the perks of the modern smartphone.
This was due in no small part to the death of my Blackberry’s lame battery; the ‘berry would have been a decent temporary replacement for the iPhone,even though it’s not compatible with my data plan. So here’s a tip: when your phone is about to be left indefinitely in a drawer, remove the battery.
BerryUnitConverter has been released. Featuring conversions for pennyweight, micrometers and millimeter (can’t believe I’d forgotten that one). 
