Adobe’s invisible platform

Cringley wrote a post on his blog today about Adobe Flash and the possibility of its becoming the invisible, ubiquitous platform for the Internet.”The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” So wrote Mark Weiser in his 1991 paper “The Computer for the 21st Century”.

Cringley’s thesis is that Adobe PDF and Flash have become so ubiquitous that they are now invisible–essentially every computer used for web browsing has Acrobat Reader (or another PDF reader) and Flash Player. And with the Internet being driven more and more to mobile devices, Adobe has the potential to put Flash everywhere and make it the invisible standard for Internet applications. Adobe doesn’t even have to compete with Microsoft in that realm. (.NET has a long way to go before it can even compete with Flash, and Windows doesn’t even enter the picture.)

JALVWA (Just another Linux vs. Windows article)

I just read an interesting article today about the linux vs. Microsoft battle. The author’s thesis is that the latest division among linux distributions and companies, those who are making deals with Microsoft and those who refuse to do so, just adds to the list of differences but won’t totally fracture the linux world. His last two paragraphs were the most interesting to me:

At the end of the day, Microsoft wants to sell you a unique, proprietary product. No matter where a business falls on the open-source/free-software spectrum, it wants to sell you support and the freedom to make your own IT way. You can argue endlessly about Ubuntu being better than Vista or Windows Server 2003 delivering a higher TCO than Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, but here’s the part that Microsoft really, really hates and can no longer deny: Both approaches create workable software.So, here we are: Microsoft is making Linux partners. Microsoft is making patent claims. Microsoft is trying to stir up controversy. But, as my grandpa might have put it, “Microsoft is still bringing cards to a horseshoes tournament.” No matter how Microsoft tries to stack this deck, Microsoft is not going to win.

A friend and I had a discussion yesterday about why attempts to drive Ubuntu (or any other linux distribution) into the mainstream OS market will most likely fail. Simply stated, Microsoft has created a good product that works well enough. Normal people are used to it, and IT departments like it because it’s easier to support. My friend also said that a Microsoftie he knows told him linux is ill-prepared for the security challenges of the real world. I don’t know if I agree with that, but he may be correct.

I don’t like Windows any more than the next linux geek, but I do have to admit that they have a monopoly (call it what you will) on desktops and even servers. We’ll see who wins in the end: Microsoft, Microsoft + Novell, or open-source.

By the way, Java != Just Another Vague Acronym, but all the same…

Vim and how to write a worm

Being the computer geek I am, I found a few articles that are intriguing to the geeky mind.

On July 26, 1989, Robert Morris, a student at Cornell, was indicted for releasing the Morris worm. This computer worm, one of the first ever created, played on several UNIX security vulnerabilities and infected thousands of computers once it was released. I found an article by University of Utah professor Donn Seeley, which describes how the worm was built. It was a fascinating read.

I also came across a few articles on Vim, my favorite command-line text editor. It can do amazing things. This website discusses using Vim efficiently, working with multiple files, and customizing the vimrc file. I’m putting these links here mostly for my own benefit, but perhaps someone out there shares my love for Vim…

Religion in Second Life

Who’d a thunk it?

I just read a post on ldsWebguy’s blog about Mormons in Second Life, an online virtual-reality world where users create avatars and live virtual lives. Basically, a group of LDS users of Second Life have created a visitors center, meeting house, and a few other things to introduce others to the gospel.

I’m not sure that I agree with it, but it’s interesting all the same.

See also this article on MSNBC.

Panorama proposition

So I went to the BYU University Chorale concert tonight at the Provo Tabernacle. (I intend to write a bit more about that later.) I decided it would be cool to test my skills with Hugin, which I recently discovered, to create a panorama of the front of the Tabernacle.

It was quite an ordeal. I took three sets of shots of the entire east side of the building using exposure lock and burst mode on my Canon PowerShot A550. The first set, which I took prior to the concert, had too many people in it, so I didn’t attempt to use it. On the second set, which I took after the concert, I locked the exposure on the upper part of the building, including the sky. For the third set I locked the exposure on the lower part of the building. Because of the ISO speed difference, the third set turned out blurry on most of the shots, so I couldn’t use it.

So, I settled on using the second set of shots, which contained about 50 exposures. I spent probably an hour aligning the control points on the frames I wanted. Cross your fingers. I ran the stitcher and got this:

Not quite ideal.

I played around with the various projections and but still came up with very distorted images. I followed some instructions on this how-to and, after some post processing, produced this image:

(click here to view it)

It’s all still a bit rounded (I tried to fix that, too, believe you me), but I’m pretty impressed with what I was able to make of 50 photos, some open-source software, and a laptop.