Mike Chambers

Yeah, I got my general license a couple of years ago, and was really trying to get into it, but where I live in the SF bay area, there is just too much interference. I am looking forward to when I eventually move and hopefully have some more electronically quieter spaces. Its really fun and exciting doing digital modes to see how far you can send / receive on simple antennas. I wrote up some info on on of the digital modes JT65 here: http://mikechambers.com/blog/2016/02/19/example-jt65-qso-exchange/ (not sure if that mode is still used.) (I used to really love listening to shortwave, especially to get difference news / views, but not shortwave is mostly just religious stations)

There's many reasons this didn't happen. Some of them Adobe's fault, some not. The main thing to realize is that Adobe based AS3 on many leading proposals for Ecmascript 4. Ecmascript 4 would lay the groundwork for future versions of javascript, etc. Flash would still be closed source, but the language would be useful elsewhere in the browser. Several people have described the political issues surrounding this ES4 situation in far more detail, and how we arguably ended up the worse for it: Resig: http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/ Canasse: http://ncannasse.free.fr/?p=82 Mike Chambers: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-and-ecmascr… So, why didn't Adobe just open source the flash plugin? One main reason not to was Microsoft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Mi… Another reason was, naturally, control. Both for Adobe and for user development. The Flash player was quirky, but incredibly consistent with decent performance. There really was no other option... js, java applets, activeX, they all had significant weaknesses due to differing availability and performance. If you wait around long enough in web development, you will have seen this type of situation many times. Haxe is a "free agent" that can break this cycle imho. It is not tied to a company like Typescript or Dart, nor is it tied to corporate controlled committees like ES4. It has an incredibly gifted language author, and a great…

Wait, how exactly did Adobe create noninfringing models? Edit: not a full explanation, but https://www.mikechambers.com/blog/post/2025-09-24-generative-ai-commer… ; this is subtly different. It's a claim that the model will not create infringing output, but that's not the same as "this model was trained only on content which was licensed for the purpose of AI training". (there's also a discussion of the idea that the output of a model may not be copyrightable at all, which will cause a whole second set of problems for commercial users)

The iOS App Store preceded the Flash ban. "Apple introduced the App Store on July 10, 2008 with 500 apps" https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/07/app-store-turns-10/ Apple's Flash restrictions were published in draft form in April 2010. http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/04/20/on-adobe-flash-cs5-and-iph… And justified by Steve Jobs that same month: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

You're right, but I really do think it was inevitable. Flash Lite just didn't run well on any of its supported platforms at the time, and the then-new technology "HTML5" had the advantage of being simpler and more open. The main thing Flash had going for it was the inertia from developers who already knew it. If you're interested here's a blogpost from Adobe's developer relations person at the time of Flash on Mobile's demise http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-pl…

> The problem is, at least in the case of image editors (and 3d editors), standard formats arguably stifle innovation because you have to break the standard to add anything. Indeed: that's exactly why Adobe created FXG instead of adopting SVG in the first place[1] (though they are now circling back to SVG). [1]: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/09/30/why-adobe-chose-fxg-over-s…

"You seem to think that the entire mobile platform runs iOS." It's silly to assume that someone on HN would be unaware of the players in the mobile marketplace. Adobe themselves said that Apple's move to block them proved to be the clincher: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-pl… Quote: "This one should be pretty apparent, but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops."

Flash isn't dead like kayluhb pointed out Mike Chambers post: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-pl… True, "if you can't deal with it..." approach is rude. But it's the truth. And Tom did explain the situation in detail to the students as he wrote in his post. It wasn't like STFU or leave.

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-content-mouse… FTA: Flash Player Mouse Events on Touch Screen Devices- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1hiLnIp_g

If by 'working with flash' you actually mean, 'producing a SWF to run in the Flash Player'... 1) I've been using Vim for years to produce SWFs. I hate their tool too - that's why I don't use it. You can use any text editor you want. 2) The 'Flash UI' is very skinnable (not as skinnable in Flex3 as in the upcoming Flex4, see: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/27/everything-there-is-to-kno… ) 3) I'm not sure what you mean by tedious. You might be referring to the Flash editor's use of the timeline. If that's the case then you'll want to look into the Flex SDK I mentioned. I haven't used a timeline for over 5 years.

I have trouble swallowing some of this. A few of these theories have been debunked successfully. I have a small problem with this "don't look at the man behind the curtain" routine. Proprietary is proprietary. Don't try and swing it. Battery Life: http://vimeo.com/9705969, http://vimeo.com/9724682 Delays: http://www.neowin.net/news/adobe-quotapple-hurts-customers-flash-101-d… Touch/Scroll: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-content-mouse… http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/23/scrolling-html-with-flash-… Speed: http://jobemakar.blogspot.com/2010/04/flash-is-speedy-on-android.html

> Does anyone know of any other incidents that make case against centralized servers? Yes. Many of these are undemocratic, but others are merely unintentional problems of reliability induced by a single point of failure. http://www.delicious.com/kragen/decentralization-stories has a few dozen items up through 2008. http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395310.html livejournal users want more control of livejournal. decentralization-stories omg decentralization-stories: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/when-google-owns-you/ http://www.chrisbrogan.com/google-gets-back-to-nick/ http://valleywag.com/5053704/kentucky-judge-moves-to-seize-gambling-si… more decentralization-stories: caribbeangold.com, etc., censored http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341378 more decentralization-stories: legal intimidation takes a site offline http://blog.wikiring.com/Blog/BlogEntry28 decentralization-stories: the TWiki Takeover http://norayounis.com/2008/11/04/308 The impressive flickr account of blogger and friend Hossam el-Hamalawy is facing censorship by flickr themselves! First they disabled pro-palestine photos he had taken in Ireland, then they started searching their old drawers for reasons to un-list his account from public search. decentralization-stories http://arabist.net/arabawy/2008/11/04/flick-censors-my-account/ more details. ugly. decentralization-stories http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/11/05/support-the-arabist/ global voices picks it…