Mad Ramblings

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adobegripes: Adobe gets bitchy over the iPhone and Flash, bit of an insight from the reddit thread : About six months ago, a friend who was working closely along side adobe’s flash application development team told me that they received a prototype of Flash for iPhone. The prototype allowed the iPhone to have less than half an hour of battery life using flash. They then sent the prototype to apple and suggested incorporating this prototype iPhone flash into the iPhone OS in the next update. Apparently apple sent this letter back thanking them for being interested in developing a working version of flash for the iphone but because the prototype is so processor intensive, and awful for battery life, they would not include it with their OS because it is just not good enough. They suggested using the gpu instead of the processor to render flash. Then they suggested building a seperate app for flash and web browsing because there was no way apple could endorse flash integration on the iphone in its current state. Adobe apparently didn’t want to release the app under their name either and it never showed up in the app store. A long story in short: Adobe sucks at programming, then apple told them they sucked at programming. If they want to release that shit under the name adobe so be it, but it sure isn’t going to be endorsed by Apple. That was the last they saw of that prototype. And people wonder why I think no Flash on the iPhone is a feature.

adobegripes:

Adobe gets bitchy over the iPhone and Flash, bit of an insight from the reddit thread :

About six months ago, a friend who was working closely along side adobe’s flash application development team told me that they received a prototype of Flash for iPhone. The prototype allowed the iPhone to have less than half an hour of battery life using flash. They then sent the prototype to apple and suggested incorporating this prototype iPhone flash into the iPhone OS in the next update.

Apparently apple sent this letter back thanking them for being interested in developing a working version of flash for the iphone but because the prototype is so processor intensive, and awful for battery life, they would not include it with their OS because it is just not good enough. They suggested using the gpu instead of the processor to render flash. Then they suggested building a seperate app for flash and web browsing because there was no way apple could endorse flash integration on the iphone in its current state.

Adobe apparently didn’t want to release the app under their name either and it never showed up in the app store.

A long story in short: Adobe sucks at programming, then apple told them they sucked at programming. If they want to release that shit under the name adobe so be it, but it sure isn’t going to be endorsed by Apple.

That was the last they saw of that prototype.

And people wonder why I think no Flash on the iPhone is a feature.

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Good Ruby Times

Some interesting stuff here on good and bad things to do with Ruby.  Perhaps someday I will be proficient enough that I can worry about these.  ;)

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What Batman can teach startups

nabeel:

A little while ago Brad Feld turned me on to the book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Basically, it’s a book, about comic books, that is about entrepreneurship.

I have no idea if this passage is going to translate for those that have not read the book, but it is as good a piece of startup advice at the early idea stage as you’ll hear. The context is that the two main characters, Joe & Sammy, are discussing what kind of superhero to create in the heady days just following the launch of Superman. To translate, think about that energy around creating a social network a few years ago, or a social game right now.

“And no matter what we come up with, and how we dress him, some other character with the same shtick, with the same style of boots and the same little doodad on his chest, is already out there, or is coming out tomorrow, or is going to be knocked off from our guy inside a week and a half.”
“So…” Sammy said. “So…”
“How? is not the question. What? is not the question,” Sammy said.
“The question is why?” Joe asked.
“The question is why.” Sammy said, ”Why is he dressing up like a monkey, or an ice cube, or a can of fucking corn.”
“To fight crime, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, to fight crime. To fight evil. But that’s all any of these guys are doing. That’s as far as they ever go. It’s the right thing to do, how interesting is that?”
“I see”
“Only Batman, you know… see, yeah, that’s good. That’s what makes Batman good, not dull at all, even though he’s just a guy who dresses up like a bat and beats people up.”
“What is the reason for Batman? The why?”
“His parents were killed, see? In cold blood. Right in front of his eyes, when he was a kid. By a robber.”
“It’s revenge.”
“That’s interesting.” Sammy said, “see?”
“So we need to figure out the why.”
” ‘What is the why.’ ” Sammy agreed.

It’s not the how. What is the why.

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The whole VS package is rapidly turning .NET programmers into a hide-bound society of technicians trapped in an endless cycle of adaptation to new MS approaches, instead of helping them become ever more skillful and productive in design, architecture, and implementation…. I totally agree with Steve Forte [who voted for one version of Visual Studio] — MS is losing its appeal fast, and won’t capture new generations of excited and productive developers by pricing them out of the game with idiotically complicated packaging schemes.
Redmond Developer News

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This is why we’ve hit the limit with industrialization. Industrial IT assumes people are automatons performing specialist tasks in a repetitive fashion. That assumption is diametrically opposed to our business partners’ perceptions of IT as a source of innovation. An industrial approach that values specialization and repetitiveness implicitly stifles innovation, invention, initiative and leadership. It bleeds out creativity. I had a colleague tell me the other day that two people on a team he was working with would sit and stare at the wall until told exactly what to do. Once done, they’d go back to staring at the wall. That’s industrial IT in action, and it’s devoid of innovation.

The Agile Manager

This is why I never want to work in a big corporate IT setting again.

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You know you’re out in left field on climate denial when even the energy companies are disavowing you.

Exelon Corp. CEO John Rowe dropped the news in a speech before the annual meeting of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). “Exelon is so committed to climate legislation that Rowe announced during today’s speech that Exelon will not be renewing its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to the organization’s opposition to climate legislation,” the group said in a press release this morning.

This marks the third major departure from the Chamber over climate policy in just over a week, following the exit of California utility PG&E and New Mexico utility PNM. Exelon is a member of the US Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of environmental and business leaders advocating for a climate bill in Congress.

(Courtesy of Mother Jones)

I’m somewhat gratified to see that even energy companies are starting to come to their senses.

Edited: So much for “you can format your email posts using MarkDown!”

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When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result, his men were well-motivated.
Captain Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October