bporterfield

What almost everyone fails to realize is that Flash is already as open as it possibly can be. The SWF file specification and the player virtual machine are open and completely described here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264) and therefore have to protect those interests within their player. If there were a common open standard for video/audio, this would be a possibility.

(edit) http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail...

This framework was developed by my friend's brother, and was released this evening. He's been working on it for over a year and quit his job to focus on it. I think he is the single developer on the project - looks like quite an undertaking! I've not tried it out myself as he's kept it pretty close, but I'm glad to see it's now available.

Clay's surfing is simply incredible. For a more visual example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvZbUuwM4_w

As a surfer I already think waves are incredible...this just confirms it! Ocean waves are an amazing thing. Lots of untapped energy.

Not in my install, at least. I will admit the scanning is more obtrusive than I would like, but besides that there are no irregularities like that that make it an annoyance.

This is an old article. I also removed AVG after seeing this ridiculous behavior, but after updating it on a different machine I realized they had seen the error of their ways and fixed this issue. They have since removed the error sign when the link checker is disable, and as far as I can see remember they now allow (at least custom) installation w/out the link follower at all (as my installation doesn't even have it!).

I do notice issues when AVG does it's weekly scan - the computer runs quite a bit slower - but besides that I've got no problems. I was upset when they released the version with the noted problems, but since they quickly released an update with fixes I'm happy enough to continue to use AVG. Everybody makes mistakes!

I've always loved this one, great message and a really good speaker

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_ballard_on_explori...

"NASA's 1 year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years"

Really eye-opening talk about ocean exploration, or lack thereof. This guy has discovered some amazing things.

I've always loved this one, great message and a good speaker

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_ballard_on_explori...

"NASA's 1 year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years"

I've always loved this one, great message and a good speaker

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_ballard_on_explori...

"NASA's 1 year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years"

I've always loved this one, great message and a good speaker

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_ballard_on_explori...

"NASA's 1 year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years"

If you use iTunes, check out Genius. I only tried for the first time yesterday, but was amazed at the degree of interesting new music that matched my tastes.

edit: found your email in comments, so no need to contact! Again, great work. Think of how much you could accomplish for non-profits if half the visitors to this site spent 1 week working on a project instead of reading articles - amazing!

I've literally been talking about the same idea with friends for almost a month now! We'd met with quite a few non-profits with the intentions of providing some unique contributions using our technical/marketing skills, but soon realized that the barrier to entry for that kind of assistance was high and that we'd probably do better to reduce this barrier to entry and let anyone with design/marketing/programming/etc skills help for a few hours on an existing, managed project. Our plan is to reach out to non-profits to help them generate new ideas for promoting their cause, then break up tasks and provide an interface for those that want to contribute over the web - looks pretty close to what you're doing!

I think it's great that you've put this together. I'd love to speak with you directly about your experience and how we might be able to assist you or work together in the future. If you have a minute, could you contact me at ben @ widgetinvolved.org?

Again, great initiative and best of luck.

Nice, I'm in Santa Cruz but scored pretty decent OB the other day (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bporterfield/3087430163/)

Interestingly enough I was planning on emailing your company already! Don't see an email in the profile but you can reach me @ benporterfield on gmail. I'll try to send a mail to the contact us page and maybe I'll reach you - we should go surf!

oh yea? Where?

Where were you surfing?

do you surf, by chance?

honeyman, is your group still waiting on a response? Am I the only one left that can't find a response email?

Ok, but all jokes aside, we're still waiting for an email :(. I might have made a mistake, but I'm pretty sure I triple-checked my email address in the application, and I also have it in my profile. I know my application was submitted, since I received a question from pg himself.

Maybe something went awry with the mail script? I don't want to assume one way or another until I get an actual response...All I know is that productivity is going to suffer today! Is anyone else still waiting?

Perhaps providing responses through the HN profile could be a good fix to this problem and the spam folder issue for future cycles?

I'm still waiting on a response too...maybe it's some kind of YC startup challenge; none of the undecideds get notified, and the team that handles the pressure the best gets the final spot!

Interesting - thought i saw pg say only the main applicant would be contacted.

Only the main applicant will be contacted. I'm waiting on mine too! Is anyone else that applied still waiting for a response?

I remember a Discover magazine article on something similar from when I was just a little kid. I can't recall the exact thesis, but the basics was that researchers were using an algorithm to combine pictures of people into a single face.

The interesting thing was that the more pictures they combined into a face, the more attractive the face became! Of course, once they added enough faces, and the male and female pictures became almost the same androgynous face - still attractive but too average to be appealing in my (3rd grader at the time) opinion.

Beauty as an average seems like a strange concept at first, but I suppose it's true that people aren't usually attracted to sharp or surprising facial characteristics.

I find that your argument against Flash on the iPhone misses the point. I don't want to create iPhone-specific apps with Flash (yet!). A similar argument could be provided for any web technology:

"HTML doesn't support multi-touch, iPhone runs on it...hence, iPhone should not support HTML"...?

All multi-touch does in Safari is zoom! Flash could support the very same functionality. I think you're focusing on the limitations of the technology instead of focusing on the limitations inherent to the iPhone today.

My reasoning goes something like this: the Internet contains information that I want to access. Often, that information is embedded in Flash widgets, Flex RIAs, iPapers, etc. As an end-user, I could care less that the information, the video, the whatever is in Flash, HTML, or sign language - I just want to be able to see it. Continuing with my previous example: I don't care that I can't use two fingers to control stormpulse, my only requirement is that I can access the existing information! I want to be able to see the content in the links my friends send me, to see the videos embedded in the pages I'm looking at. That alone should be a large enough requirement to make Flash on the iPhone useful. You can argue for days about the best technology to build something in, but the fact is that when I can't see a video I want to see on the iPhone, I'm frustrated.

In fact, I think the opposite is true - Flash will appear 'consistent across platforms', as there is no way to use multi-touch and Flash on your computer screen today either. How this affects coherency on the iPhone is up for debate, but regardless I don't think Flash's lack of multi-touch should restrict me from using stormpulse from my iPhone.

Actually, ActionScript can be an extremely elegant and powerful language, when coded "correctly". The vast majority of Flex developers come from either a design or Java background, and as a result you find that most ActionScript RIA code adheres to strict application frameworks, static typing, etc...and rarely takes advantage of the interesting parts.

ActionScript has first-order functions, allows for dynamic typing, and utilizes class as well as prototype inheritance, even for built-in classes. This means you can do neat things to the prototype object associated with any object - even the Function object itself.

Just because the majority of people developing in ActionScript don't utilize the functionality doesn't mean it doesn't exist! Take a minute to look into the language yourself - you might be very surprised.

Great reply. My current thinking for the project I'm working on is that I don't need Hadoop...yet. That said, if it's trivial to implement on a single machine it might be wise to just begin the project in Hadoop so that I don't have to make the switch later. Always balance between 'premature optimization is the root of all evil' and 'choosing the right tools for the right job'.

I'll give it a shot on my desktop to start - thanks for the tips!

Does anyone on HN have any first-hand experience configuring and using Hadoop? If so, how was the process - was it straightfoward or complex, did it require lots of peeking into the source, any major pitfalls, etc - and, are you satisfied with how it's currently working and with your ability to add new boxes easily?