HP recently posted the video below on their Voodoo Blog. To me, the video shows several things.
First and foremost, the video highlights the ubiquity of Flash on the web. As far as I know, Apple still has no plans to support Flash on iPad. I’ve always heard that this was due to bugginess in Flash, as well as Flash’s cost in battery life. On the Mac, battery life is less of an issue, and the Flash code is isolated from the main browser code. If Flash crashes, the browser notifies you of the crash and then restarts Flash. Apparently, either this is not possible in the iPhone OS browser, or the battery cost of Flash is just too great. The video points out that tablets like HP’s Slate are based on Windows 7 and get Flash support by default as part of the overall Windows 7 experience.
The video also highlights the basic differences between Apple and Windows 7 vendors like HP and Dell in their approach to the tablet market. As they did with smart phones, Microsoft’s partners are working with a scaled down version of the desktop operating system. A process or application you run on your desktop has at least a chance of working on the tablet. Certainly, the browser experience will be nearly identical. Apple’s core approach is different, as different as the toolboxes offered by Mac OS X and iPhone OS. The SDKs for both are quite similar, but there are a vast sea of differences. Clearly, there’s no simple way to port an application from one platform to the other.
The video also shows off the HP device, gives it a real chance to shine. And, in my opinion, this is where Apple really comes out ahead. HP’s Slate is thick and chunky. The iPad is graceful, subtle, elegant. And thin.
All that said, I think this is going to be a very interesting new phase in the evolution of computing. Will Apple force Flash to change or, perhaps, open the door so a Flash competitor can enter the market? Or will the ubiquity of Flash eventually force Apple to allow Flash to play under iPhone OS. Interesting, interesting times!
I want Microsoft to succeed. I have good friends who build Microsoft apps and/or hardware, and I believe Microsoft makes an incredibly important contribution to our economy.
That said, I was never a fan of the Zune and I do not believe that Microsoft will ever unseat the iPhone. This story just seems fitting somehow. Thanks for the pointer, Jeff.
Posted by Dave Mark on Jan 19, 2009 in Windows, virus
I am not a Windows person, but I know plenty of folks who are. According to this article, there is a new worm that has infected more than 8.9 million Windows machines. It also infects memory sticks and can crack weak passwords (passwords made up of words or simple patterns).
To safeguard against this worm, users need to make sure they have the latest Windows patch installed (MS08-067) and make sure they have the latest anti-virus updates installed.
From the article:
According to Microsoft, the worm works by searching for a Windows executable file called “services.exe” and then becomes part of that code.
It then copies itself into the Windows system folder as a random file of a type known as a “dll”. It gives itself a 5-8 character name, such as piftoc.dll, and then modifies the Registry, which lists key Windows settings, to run the infected dll file as a service.
Once the worm is up and running, it creates an HTTP server, resets a machine’s System Restore point (making it far harder to recover the infected system) and then downloads files from the hacker’s web site.
Most malware uses one of a handful of sites to download files from, making them fairly easy to locate, target, and shut down.
But Conficker does things differently.
Anti-virus firm F-Secure says that the worm uses a complicated algorithm to generate hundreds of different domain names every day, such as mphtfrxs.net, imctaef.cc, and hcweu.org. Only one of these will actually be the site used to download the hackers’ files. On the face of it, tracing this one site is almost impossible.
