I wrote about this a while ago, but.. long story short… I’m getting ready to record an epic screen-recording of my Macro-Recorder developed in JavaScript.
It was clear that I needed the practice after the first test run.
So here is a screen recording of me demonstrating the MetaWrap logging class.
Short and sweet.
Sad news for the ex-poster-child of everything that was cool about computers and the internet in the 90s. SGI Invented the OpenGL standard, which drove the development of the graphic card industry. That same industry made SGI’s expensive technology obsolete. And it was all downhill from there.
Silicon Graphics announced on Monday that it has reached an agreement with all of its Senior Secured bank lenders and with holders of a significant amount of its Senior Secured debt on the terms of a reorganization plan that will reduce its debt by approximately $250 million.
As part of this agreement with many of its major stakeholders, and as the next step in its previously announced plan to reorganize its businesses, the company and its U.S. subsidiaries have filed voluntary petitions under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. SGI’s non-U.S. subsidiaries, including European, Canadian, Mexican, South American and Asia Pacific subsidiaries were not included in the filing; will continue their business operations without supervision from the U.S. courts; and will not be subject to the requirements of chapter 11. The company expects to file its Plan of Reorganization reflecting the agreement shortly, and to emerge from Chapter 11 within six months.“We want to assure our customers, our employees and our communities that SGI is operating — business as usual,” said Dennis P. McKenna, the recently appointed, Chairman and CEO of SGI. “Our customers can continue to rely on SGI for its mission-critical products, services, and support.”
I played a little while with Google Trends.
Seems that “sex” is a popular search term, especially where its hard to get
http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all
Go figure.
This post with video from the Make blog makes me feel like the future is here already π
“I really like the new Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP – you can record videos and add live video effects and also use avatars. I’m going to poke around the files that they use to see if I can make my own. The camera is motorized, so it’ll do face tracking too – when I get back from Interop I’ll post up some projects with it once I take it apart…”
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/04/logitech_quickcam_orbit_mp_1.html
As you now probably know, Microsoft has released a patch to IE6 because they have failed on appeal to overturn the Eolas patent on browser plug-ins, despite much back and forth and valiant efforts from the W3C.
The effects of this patch are replicated in the latest IE7 browser which is part of Windows Vista.
This is going to primarily affect Flash, Windows Media Player and Java Applets.
AJAX is not affected (You can go back to reading “Getting Real” now π ).
The symptom of this patch is that a user is unable to interact with an embedded object without first acknowledging a tool-tip prompt with a mouse click or key press anywhere to the embedded object.
So, your embedded object (Flash/Windows Media Player etc..) will play and animate, but a user will not be able to click any buttons, enter any text, or activate any rollovers until that first acknowledgement occurs.
Perhaps every time you click, someone at Eolas gets a penny π
The prompt for acknowledgement is a small and subtle tool-tip and a highlighted border around the embedded object, both of which are easily missed. You may just notice that you need to click a flash button twice instead of once before you realise what is going on.
Guidance has been provided by Microsoft and Macromedia on how to bypass this problem.
Here is my summary.
Luckily the patent is so specific on how an embedded object is added to a HTML page and activated, it can be easily coded around.
The patch will only affect plug-ins that are
1) Embedded via explicit <embed, <object or <applet elements in a HTML page
2) Written into the page via JavaScript declared in the HTML page
If your elements are written into the page by an external function (a function declared in an included JavaScript file eg. “my_functions.js”) and the function writes this content into the page via a document.write() or some DOM manipulation, then you wonΒt trigger the patch.
If you have pages that are affected by this patch then the solution is as follows..
1) Any explicitly embedded <embed <object or <applet elements should be moved into a function in a .js file that gets included by the main page.
2) Any JavaScript in the page that is adding <embed <object or <applet should be wrapped in a function and moved to a .js file that gets included by the main page.
As long as the document.write() is performed in an external function, then your embedded elements will work.
You can generate a string containing the elements in the main page and pass it into an external function that simply does the document.write() for you..
function write_string(p_string)
{
document.write(p_string);
}
And it will not trigger the prompt.
In the future..
I as I posted previously, Went to observe Cory Doctorow‘s talk tonight.
It was much as I expected.
He is real. I did not touch him – so you can’t be too sure. Xeni could have been hiding behind the drapes with a holographic projector.
He is a very good presenter. He has his faults but is several orders of magnitude better than I at it.
Others have reviewed it already [update and here a review with mp3 of the Sydney talk] so I’m not going to do that. I will concentrate on what was relevant to me.
The talk started with someone from Popcornmedia asking “Who came to the conference because of a small yellow coupon”, which in a “Blues Clues” manner he failed to find under his clipboard despite it being plain view to the audience. From a non-show of hands It seems that nobody came to the talk because if this small yellow piece of paper. I wanted to yell out “Who came because they read Boing Boing” – but decided it would be a Bad Thing.
As a true believer most of what Cory said in his talk was not new to me but he raised some excellent points on the situation in Australia on DRM with respect to DVB.
I do a lot of work iTV, so this is of interest to me.
There is a standard called “Copy Protection and Content Management” (CPCM) which a DRM component for DVB. DVB-T is the standard that Australia uses for digital free to air broadcasts. The DVB scene in Australia is going to be a lot more interesting once the interactive component (MHP) becomes widely used. It would be a shame to see the platform screwed up with abusable restrictions.
At one point Cory mentioned that the well known mantra “Content Is King” is wrong, it should be “Communication is King”. Which is why the media industry measures its revenues in the billions, and the telecoms industry in the trillions.
As evidence of this as common sense he states that if you were asked “What do you want to take to a desert island, your record collection or your friends”, if you chose your record collection then you would be classed as a sociopath. My initial response I must admit was my record collection – not because I am a sociopath ( I think ), but for the reason that I would not want to doom my friends to live on a desert island.
Another important point he made was the concept of vendor lock in. You don’t want to move from an IPod to a Microsoft based device because there is no legal way to convert your media from Fairplay to WMDRM. This is relevant to other industries of course, I will talk more of this later. There is something afoot.
What he missed discussing, which would have been relevant to the audience was the shift in focus from Blockbuster movie, to TV series. From my observations, movies are not being pirated as fiercely as TV series are. I think this is relevant because people can communicate about a series. A series brings all the chatter we get from fandom. “What is going to happen next“. “S02E13 is soo much better than S03E03” etc.. A series is the point of focus for a community much more than a Movie can be. While a Movie generates “Buzz” before its launch. A series generates Buzz before, during and after it its lifecycle.
I was thinking what would happen if I put him in a room with Mark Pesce and it just so happens that just as I was getting out of my seat I bumped into Mark on his way down to the stage to talk to Cory. But I was a man on a mission and could tarry not, even for such a vast concentration of savvy on the New Media Topology. If Lawrence Lessig was there as well we all would have been sucked into a Gibsonian vortex of information screaming to be free.
Completely failed on my “Remember bring to recording equipment” roll but I manged to record most of the question and answer session, on my phone, but as I expected the sound is almost non-existent. So I present 4 blurry jittery videos of Cory Doctorow answering some fantastic questions, with virtually no sound.
If you concentrate so hard that your forehead splits, you might be able to make out what he says.
Dear Google,
Your Firefox start page ( http://www.google.com.au/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official ) may or may not have a CSS error.
I know I’m being picky, the page functions fine, but you see every time I open Firefox (1.5.0.2) and test some JavaScript code, I open the Firefox JavaScript Console to see if my code did anything bad, and I am presented with this.
And my poor little heart skips a beat.
Until I realise that its not me. Its you. I think.
Maybe its a Firefox Bug?
I’m sure you can get to the bottom of it, you are so big, strong and clever.
Thank-you.
#12) Avoid consuming any mind altering substances 72 hours before your presentation.
“..and of course one of the most important considerations in determining the latency and the data size to request frequency granularity is the…. OMG!!! LOOK AT THOSE GIANT WINGED SPIDER CATS!!!!! RUN!!!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!”
Interesting post from Rachel Dixon’s Blog
According to a recently released discussion paper on media reform, the Minister for Communications is considering introducing licenses for IPTV in Australia, to bring Internet video into line with broadcast video.
… .. .
Intriguingly, the discussion paper was released a day after the final report of the Industry Leaders Group of the Digital Content Action Agenda, which I was a contributor to. And it directly contradicts the intent of our report, which was to take advantage of the potential for innovation that technologies such as IPTV enable. Even small, niche operations can afford to distribute IPTV programming using relatively cheap hosting infrastructure and open-source software – but not if they need to pay for licenses! Thus, if the licensing proposal is allowed to stand, Australia will be isolated in the world, with minimal IPTV content.
James McParlane's Blog 