Intellidick.com - Pure Insanity

Has anyone noticed a steady decline of service quality in UPS here lately? My last few run-ins with UPS have not been pleasant.

The last major item that came in via UPS was a server that I purchased. It was damaged… I know the box was heavy and all but it had obviously been dropped on its corner. It was wet outside that day and I could see the water on the corner so I assume it happened on the way up to my door. No major damage, just the face place. Bummer. The next week the rails for the server came in and the box for them had suffered the same fate. The sad part… both packages were packed by “professionals” at the UPS store and shipped to me in UPS boxes packed by UPS employees. Pitiful.

I recently had to send my Xbox 360 back for service due to my run in with the Red Ring of Death. The UPS guy showed up with the empty box that Microsoft sends you and we both had a good chuckle because he already knew I had a dead console based on the address of where it came from and the fact that it was empty. He smiled and said he’d see me in a few weeks when they returned the console in that same box. Off to UPS my Xbox 360 went and one week later I get a notice from MS saying that it has been shipping back. (48 hour turn around, bravo Microsoft Xbox service center!)

Now I’m excited… I’m ready to have my Xbox 360 again. And here’s where the drama begins.

• 07/02/2008, Afternoon some time - I receive a call from an unfamiliar number. It’s an automated message from UPS saying I have a package arriving tomorrow that will require a signature. I jump online and look at the tracking number Microsoft gave me. Sure enough, it’s my Xbox. Now i’m really excited.
• 07/03/2008, 08:00 - I’m at home, waiting for my Xbox.
• 07/03/2008, 10:00 - I decide to track my package. I get the weirdest message… something is wrong with the label on the package but apparently it has been repaired. The package no longer has a delivery date and says “Exception” instead. Weird, but okay, whatever.
• 07/03/2008, 11:20 - I track the package again. The package is now back to normal status… to be delivered on Monday! Too bad i’m going to be out of town all next week and i’m already sitting on my tail at home waiting for this package. No big deal. I’ll just call UPS and set it up for a “will call” pickup.
• 07/03/2008, 11:23 - I call UPS. I get a really nice lady who tells me that she’ll have someone from the Palatine, IL center call me back within one hour with a status as to when I can pick my package up. Now i’m happy again. Nice lady too.
• 07/03/2008, 11:37 - Marie from Palatine center calls me. Wow! Fast response! Go UPS! But wait… The package never made it to Palatine this morning. It must be on the truck! Marie tells me that she’s going to find out and she’ll call me back. No problem. Now we’re getting somewhere and maybe the web site is just out of date. If a UPS Representative is reading this post, Marie was a really nice lady as well. She really was making an effort to help… read on for the part where the experience goes bad.
• 07/03/2008, 11:45 - Once again, super fast response from UPS Palatine. They’re either really good or really bored. Either way, i’m happy that they’re being so responsive. Marie tells me that the package is not on the truck nor in Palatine and that I can expect it Monday. If nothing else, call her and she’ll put the package on hold in Palatine and I can pick it up when I return. I’m a little angry at this point because i’ve now stayed at home today waiting for them. If I worked a normal desk job i’d have had to have taken off of work and would be pissed that my package didn’t show. But whatever, okay. I’ll figure something out.
• 07/03/2008, 12:03 - I decide to call UPS corporate back and have them track my package. Them not being able to tell me where it is right now is unacceptable. They really need to at least provide me with a current location of the package because it should be in Palatine. I get another nice lady at UPS corporate. I tell her the story and that neither Palatine nor the driver have it and I would like to know the location and expected delivery date so that I can make arrangements for someone to be home to sign for it. She tells me that it’s not a problem and she’ll have someone from the main Chicago center call me. It must be there still.
• 07/03/2008, 12:27 - UPS Palatine calls again. Wait? UPS Palatine? Why would they call me. I was expecting a call from Chicago center. Hmmmmm… Okay. It’s not Marie this time. It’s some other lady that I didn’t catch her name. She was talking too fast and in a very abrasive tone. She “informs” me that she was sitting next to Marie when I was on the phone and that there’s nothing else she can do. She then tells me that my package should go out on Monday and that I need to call by 07:30 on Monday morning if I want to have them pull it from the truck for a Monday will call. I started to explain to her that I wouldn’t be in town but decided to just save it because she’s obviously angry at me for calling again and isn’t going to help me. She was quite possibly one of the rudest customer service representatives that i’ve ever spoken to.
• 07/03/2008, 12:35 - The second time I called UPS, the lady told me that i’d have to call the sender of the package to escalate any further. It was a nice way of telling me to stop calling and that they weren’t going to help me anymore. So, that’s what I did. I called Microsoft. Unlike my first experience with Xbox 360 support, I get a really unfriendly individual with poor english skills. Oh joy… i’m screwed. I explain the situation. The first thing he does it try to give me the UPS tracking number and disconnect the call. I explain that I have the tracking number and I need Microsoft to escalate with UPS. He then proceeds to track the package himself and tells me that it will be here tomorrow. I try to explain again. He tells me he’s going to let me talk to his supervisor. After almost 15 minutes of holding, he returns… no supervisor on the phone. He then trys to give me the URL to get to UPS and track the pacakge. I explain to him that i’ve already done it. He tells me “but the status was updated 10 minutes ago!”. I jump on and check and no, it wasn’t… he’s in a different time zone and doesn’t realize that the web site isn’t updating for his timezone. I explain to him that it’s in central time, not wherever he is. That update was 1h10m ago, not 10m ago. Oh joy… I have one of “those” customer service representatives. We go back and forth for a few mintues with him insisting that my Xbox will be at my home tomorrow. I explain that tomorrow is a holiday and he just does not get it. I guess when you don’t celebrate Independence Day as a good US citizen should, you wouldn’t know that. He tells me that he’s going to go talk to his supervisor again, after another 10 minutes, I hang up.

Do I have a right to be angry? I think I do. UPS called me and said I needed to be here. I stayed home and waited, only for them to say that something is wrong with the label. It made it all the way from Texas to Chicago before somebody noticed the label? It was supposedly illegible. Funny… it was legible when they used it to look up my customer record for my phone number. My other concern is that they can’t find the package and aren’t willing to help me track it. I wonder who’s kid just got a repaired Xbox 360. Only time will tell but it bothers me that UPS employees know the box and address of repaired Xbox 360’s that well. Even the UPS Corporate lady made a joke about it.

Maybe i’m over reacting here but damn… what an annoyance. A total array of cluster f*** just to get an Xbox shipped from Texas to Chicago. Time to find a new shipping carrier.

Closing it down and then returning a few hours later to find it still sitting in my process table taking 120 megs of memory. I love that. I closed it… it didn’t listen. The task tray icon is gone, it should be closed… it’s not. The main window is gone, it should be closed… it’s not. I especially love when I go to restart Outlook and it won’t because the old process is hung up and I have to go to task manager and kill it. That just makes me happy.

Thanks again guys, I didn’t like that memory anyway. I probably needed to upgrade… 4 gigs just doesn’t seem like enough for some reason. Especially for a 32-bit OS that doesn’t allow me to use it all anyway.

Do I seem angry or just beaten down after years of this. And yes, it’s patched up to the maximum. It’s Outlook 2003 on Windows XP. I don’t do any crazy stuff to the PC. It’s a work machine, totally standard installation. Nothing exciting at all.

Oh well… another day, another piece of crappy code. Tune in soon for my discussion on Linux ATI video drivers and display corruption!

Well folks, I got hit tonight. I was about to kick into some Rock Band and there was an update out for my Xbox 360… I downloaded it, rebooted, and the console worked fine. I grabbed my trusty guitar and went after it. Two songs into it, the game crashed and locked up the console. Okay, bad sign, it’s never locked up like this before. I reboot, it comes back! I hit the button to start Rock Band, the game freezes at the opening screen… console lucked up complete again. So now i’m thinking that it must be that the update broke Rock Band. I’ll be angry but I know they’ll fix it soon so no big deal… right? Oh wait, the console locked up again, this time at the green Xbox 360 boot screen. That’s not good. Not good at all. One more reboot and it finally happens.

Red Ring of Death.

The feared “General Hardware Failure”. I’ve checked the power supply, it has a green light and should be good to go. I’ve pulled all of the cables and reseated them. I’ve removed the hard drive. Nothing. It’s dead. No more Xbox 360 for me. Fortunately, i’ve never cracked the case and Microsoft has extended the warranty of the console. Oh well, if i’m lucky, i’ll get an updated premium console with the HDMI output. That’d be nice.

Anyway, thanks to Microsoft for ruining my night (and my successful Expert career in Rock Band!)

As I read through the news, I constantly see articles about authors who are pissed off about someone taking their works and distributing them in other countries. Here’s the deal guys, you can’t publish something exclusively in one country and then get upset because someone from another country got a hold of it. Here is why I say that… The days of exclusive paper publishing  are dead, digital distribution is here. If you write a book and only release it in the US, somebody will scan it and send it over the wire to their friend in Germany… especially if it’s a series. The Harry Potter book is a perfect example, there was a story about a 16-year old kid who got a hold of the English version of the book and then translated it to French… in a matter of days. The author got upset because this wasn’t the “official” distribution channel (read: She didn’t get paid). I understand her right to get paid for her works, but she should stop listening to the meatheads at her publishers office and release her works onto the world, all at once. Give everyone who wants it the opportunity to have it, legally. Stop forcing them to pirate it in order to get a copy at the same time as the US does.

Millions and millions of dollars are dumped into advertising things like this to make us want them. They advertise them to the point where it’s social status to not have it on the first day. Do they actually sit around and wonder why people riot when they can’t get them? It doesn’t sound like rocket science to me. You advertise something enough that it gets a social status with it (like the iPhone) did, then you do a limited quantity, limited market release? Then you sit around and wonder why people rioted to get a copy? Yeah… totally not rocket science here people. If you don’t want to release it world wide and in enough quantity for a large percentage of the early adopters to get one, then STOP ADVERTISING IT EVERYWHERE you monkeys. You can’t get us all excited about it and then not give it to us.

(Time to rant hardcore) One more note. Parents, stop buying this crap on the media’s time line for your kids please. Make your kids wait and earn their things. Make them understand the value of working for what they want. If they want a new toy or something, put a value on chores and make them do chores until such time as they have enough “credit” to get what they want. But if they do their part, don’t back out on them. Make sure that if you promise something, you deliver it. Stop giving it to them freely and teaching them incorrectly. They don’t “deserve” to have it. It’s not their “right” to have it, it’s their “privilege”. Just think, you could be the mean parent that makes their kid work for everything they have but ends up as an adult with a true appreciation for everything that they’ve worked so hard for. Maybe your kids can have parents who care enough about them to teach them the value of things and not let the media and market teach them that an H2 is the most valuable thing in the world because of the “hummer” name on the side.

What do I have against Blu-Ray? SONY! That’s what. They own the technology, all of it. What does that mean for consumers? Licensing… lots and lots of licensing. Expensive players, expensive movies, etc. Sony knows this, most consumers apparently don’t.

I figure that we’ve got one shot left for HD-DVD and to not be stuck with Blu-Ray. That shot is to buy HD-DVD. Everybody, go find an HD-DVD player… buy it. Go find HD-DVD movies… buy them. Then wait. The technology is open, somebody will pick it back up and make it.

Let’s take our market back! If Sony REALLY wanted to do something good, they should give Blu-Ray to the DVD forum. Then i’ll buy one. Until then, forget it.

GO HD-DVD!

That’s it… I want the idiots off of my internet. I want my internet back. I’m so sick of all of the whiners on the internet, talking about their “right” to surf at work, their “right” to a safe, clean internet. I say to them, you have no “rights”. You have the “right” to keep yourself off of my internet and go back to AOL where they’ll offer you a “safe” (read: restricted) internet. Me? I’ll put up firewalls in front of me, choose to only run secure operating environments, and keep my sensitive data off of the internet. Go ahead, compromise this terminal… all of my valuable data isn’t here.

I want my internet back! I recently read an article about a Chinese hacking group that was boasting of no web sites being safe and how they even hacked into U.S. government web sites.. I thought to myself, why would the government have that crap connected in ANY way to the internet? Oh wait… because some idiot thinks that all computers should be on the internet! I say no… no, no, no, no, no! GET YOUR SECURE INFORMATION OFF OF THE INTERNET. IT IS NOT SECURE. Physical security is the only way to truly keep information off of the internet. If it’s connected to the LAN, it’s vulnerable… period. Not that anybody actually cares what my opinion is or anything, but we need to get our sensitive data away from the internet completely. Attention Government : The internet is NOT safe, pull the countries’ data away from it. Those machines (with my social security number and such) should NOT have public addresses or any form of address translation. Access to them should be controlled through a secure gateway with (at least) two-factor authentication. That gateway ought to be at least 2 or 3 firewalls away from the internet with no path back. NO ACCESS FROM HOME. COME TO WORK YOU LAZY MORONS. No copy/paste functions should be allowed on machines that connect to the secure area. No screen captures… nothing. Consider seriously that people who access those machines should not have access to the internet while at work. They don’t NEED it… it’s not their “right”. Prisoners don’t need Cable TV and internet either, but that’s a whole new rant.

I want my internet back. I say this to these morons who can’t seem to realize that the internet is NOT a safe place and it never will be as long as it’s connected to the rest of the world. This goes back to an old rant of mine… People have this need to believe that all other people are basically good and if given the choice would do the right thing… it’s definitely not true but i’ll let that one lye for now. But on that note… I want my internet back.

It’s time to throw on my old man hat here! Parents are just pissing me off lately and it’s time to throw the power of the rant into action.

What is wrong with parents today? I’m driving to the store the other night at like 11pm, and there are young kids walking the streets around the fast food spots. Granted, it wasn’t a school night, but these kids were definitely not driving age… yet they were out at 11pm? I go in the store and when I came out, most of them were still there. I do live in a great neighborhood and all… but still… 11pm? Parents… WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Next… TV and video games… Parents, you do know that TV’s and most new video game consoles have parental controls… right? USE THEM! Most parents just don’t pay attention to what their kids play and don’t bother to even crack the instruction manual to lock down the console / cable box / satellite receiver. Parents… WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Another TV rant… Parents, TV is NOT a baby sitter. I see parents in the car with the TV on for their kids. My mom used to talk to us in the car. I see those same parents get home and pop a DVD in for the kids right away. We did house chores, played outside, etc… Parents, you do know that there are other things for kids to do… right? I thank my lucky stars that my parents made me go outside and play from time to time. I actually learned how to make friends and such without a “play date”… crazy! So, Parents… WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Computers. Oh… computers. I love computers. I’m really starting to dislike kids with computers though. Parents, you do know that the internet is NOT child friendly, right? Here’s a tip, there’s pornography on there! ( If anybody needs to know where the good stuff is, email me. ) There are stalkers and such out there. There are lots of influences out there that the mind of a child is NOT ready for. I know parents that at least take enough interest in their children to install some sort of filter / proxy software, but even that can be bypassed. So, sorry parents, it looks like you’re actually going to have to SPEND TIME WITH YOUR CHILDREN. I say again, Parents… WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Alright, one more and we’ll call this one a rant.

Stop letting your little girl dress like a tramp! We don’t need to see that much of her figure exposed. Now i’m REALLY going to sound old here, but that’s just disgusting and encourages bad things to happen. STOP IT PEOPLE. Teach your kids to have respect for themselves and their own bodies and not feel the need to tramp out in order to get attention. I’d say that the attention gained by this is negative and not desirable for a teenage girl. ( Yes, I had the teenage sister who got pregnant and I had to watch her go through all of the mental anguish of being a pregnant high school kid. It was not pleasant for her and my parents… definitely not desirable attention. ) Granted, this behavior is a classic scenario and girls have been trying to get away with more and more over the generations, but at some point it just has to stop. What’s next? Just pasties and a g-string? Parents… WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

All parents seem to want to believe that their kids are perfect… another false pretense. Every time my father turned the other way, I was in to something that I shouldn’t have been.

Parents, i’m sorry to tell you, but you’re going to have to watch your kids. You can’t just make them, put them in front of the TV, and expect them to grow up okay. They will need your guidance and wisdom… if you don’t have any, don’t go see your parents because they probably didn’t raise you right either.

Alright, i’m taking the old man hat off now and going back to normal.

I almost quit the hobby last night! I was working on my new MTC PROCAL reactor and noticed a leak in the main chamber seal. I shut the reactor pump off and was fiddling around with those annoying little screws and decided to go ahead and pull it out of the stand.

Wouldn’t ya know, I managed to find the only piece of tubing that didn’t have a clamp on it! (Lesson 1 : Tubing is easy, PVC doesn’t come loose) Apparently I neglected to go back and clamp that one piece of tubing on that end. What a dumb mistake and a testament to why one shouldn’t get in a hurry when building a tank… needless to say, I knocked the drain hose off with a big reactor in my hands.

Water is now going EVERYWHERE. I scrambled to get the reactor back on the ground, grabbed the hose and got it back on the bulkhead. As i’m walking away to go get an army of towels, the pump runs dry. Enough water had run out of the tank to successful drain the pump chamber. And then… I start to hear the inevitable “sizzle” sound from a surge protector that had gotten wet. Any body want to guess where a large portion of my electrical was sitting? Fortunately, all of the GFCI actually worked and everything shut down. (Lesson 2 : GFCI. Always, Always, Always)

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Just when I thought I had it back under control…

I get all of the affected electrical out of there and start soaking up water. During that process, I managed to KNOCK OFF THE CANOPY! Okay, so apparently, my canopy has no nifty piece of wood on the back to prevent it from sliding forward off of the tank! (Lesson 3 : If your canopy will slide off of your tank with just a push, FIX THAT ASAP)

What a mess… i’m standing there, wedged behind my tank, holding on to my canopy that’s loaded with expensive lighting and reflectors. Anybody want to guess where I set my new electrical stuff that I was about to install? You guessed it! On top of the canopy! Seeing as the canopy is now at a 45 degree angle, everything has now slid off… into my ATO reservoir, which I just moved to the front of the tank so I could get behind there. (Lesson 4 : 12″ from the wall is NOT far enough, you will need more space! Deal with the look of it or run a smaller tank that you don’t need to get behind!)

So I have now managed to ruin my old electrical stuff as well as my new electrical stuff, gotten water all over the floor, and have no idea what equipment works and what doesn’t. I got the circ pumps back up, set two of them to break the surface tension, tossed in a heater and WENT TO BED. (Lesson 5 : If you’re that tired, you’re probably doing more harm than good)

Insert 8 hour sleep break here

I have now spent the better part of the morning putting everything back together, all of the “core” equipment is working but I have yet to test the calcium reactor, ATO, etc… my 3 IceCap 660’s survived the splashing and all of the bulbs survived. Even my moonlight LEDs made it. I’m not sure about the reactor pump just yet, but I consider that a minor loss if I have to buy a new one. That last piece of flexible tubing is now CLAMPED in place. (Lesson 6 : Using Flexible tubing as PVC elbows is a neat concept but turns out to be a big PITA in the end)

So, that’s the end of my story. I was ready to start bagging livestock and taking it to the various stores. But man… i’m sooooo close. I can’t help but love this hobby. I’ve invested all of this time and money to get it running, and now i’ve learned yet another lesson that will make my next tank even better!

I’m still in the fight, but wow did I want to quit.

Let me summarize all of this into one small, informative list and add one more…

Lesson 1 : Tubing is easy, PVC doesn’t come loose
Lesson 2 : GFCI. Always, Always, Always
Lesson 3 : If your canopy will slide off of your tank with just a push, FIX THAT ASAP
Lesson 4 : 12″ from the wall is NOT far enough, you will need more space! Deal with the look of it or run a smaller tank that you don’t need to get behind!
Lesson 5 : If you’re that tired, you’re probably doing more harm than good
Lesson 6 : Using Flexible tubing as PVC elbows is a neat concept but turns out to be a big PITA in the end
Lesson 7 : Big calcium reactors are freakin’ cool… After all of this crap, i’m staring at my PROCAL going “Wow… that’s just cool”

It’s official, I just had the best meeting I’ve ever had today.

I received an email from a project manager yesterday afternoon informing me of a meeting at 9:30AM this morning… I cringed at the thought and reluctantly hit the “Accept” button on my trusty BlackBerry.

9:15AM - My BlackBerry reminded me of the meeting. Once again, I cringed

9:30AM - I arrive at the meeting… no one is in the room except the PM. Weird, everyone must be late. It’s just myself and the project manager? Nope… we have a quorum! Apparently, she only invited the main tech contact for this project and yours truly. The main tech contact is out this morning due to working late last night so it’s up to us to get through the meeting agenda.

9:39AM - I’m back at my PC already. She asked me a few questions about the time line for my part of the project and accepted my answers as the truth. She questioned one answer with a legitimate concern and just trusted that I know my job on the rest of them. PERFECT!

Score 100/100 - Flawless!

If all meetings were like this, life would be SO good in corporate America. But no… most PM’s have to argue with you for no apparent reason. Most of them somehow feel that they know your job better than you do. And let’s not forget about the arbitrary deadlines that people like to make up and impose on their employees.

Anyway, bravo to the PM that I just got done meeting with! Bravo! What a meeting! Short, focused, and not overly distracting from my day. Now the time line is adjusted and we’re on target.

After my recent FreeBSD experience, I came to the realization that a large part of my web experience depends on Flash. Not having a decent Flash player in BSD was a big turn off to the OS as a viable desktop environment. Oh sure, you can use the Linux binary emulator to run a Linux version of Firefox and Flash under the BSD kernel. That’s definitely neat, but just not practical. And what about other platforms that can’t emulate Linux or Windows? Are they just out in the cold? Well, not exactly. There are FOSS alternatives, like Gnash and others. Anybody who has tried to use these things knows they aren’t exactly a joyride. No offense to these guys, they’re doing the best they can with what they have to work with from Adobe, which is basically nothing. Reverse engineering something as complex as Flash can’t be easy. Hats off to the Gnash team and others for trying to help.

With this being said, i’ve come up with what I believe to be compelling reasons for Adobe to open up the doors to Flash for the rest of the world to truly embrace it. Now, when I say “open up the doors to Flash”, I do not mean give up the source code. That’s really not practical. No, what i’d like to see is for Adobe to open up the format for everyone to use. I understand that they can’t very well open up the full source code to the Flash player without giving up on some trade secrets, but would opening up the file format kill them?

Technological Reasons

• It’s old enough. The money has been made, adoption is at it’s peak. Give it away and allow it to spread it’s wings even further. Keep it proprietary and watch as people being to migrate away from it. (More on this later)
• A large majority of the web sites out there depend on Flash content, yet the player isn’t supported on all platforms. Support for some of those platforms is pretty pitiful. I know there’s not a lot of demand for commercial UNIX versions, I get it, but still…
• The FOSS developers would most likely provide support on all of the platforms. Leading in from my last point… hey Adobe, if you want Flash on all platforms, then give it to people who love their platforms enough to put it there.
• Alternative technologies (like Silverlight) will not stand a chance against a format that is applicable to all users with all browsers. The market is speaking out and buying alternative platforms and hardware. People are experimenting with their machines again.
• Applications will start to use Flash as a format for other things, not just web applications. Creativity will set in eventually and the Flash format will soar to new heights. Just imagine the amazing widget engine that could be built using Flash/ActionScript instead of HTML/CSS/JavaScript!
• SVG didn’t do so hot in the web world. (Makes for a great icon though!) It was misunderstood and poorly implemented in most cases. We’re sorry that didn’t go so well, but Flash is already seated. Just open up the format and solidify it’s position as a first rate content format.

Business Reasons

• The current Flash money making model is to sell environments to build high quality Flash content. Opening the format will open the door for competition in this arena, thus giving alternatives to those who don’t like the current Flash editor. This may be considering a negative by some, as Adobe will have to try harder to build the best Flash editor money can buy. In the end, competition will only drive these companies harder and the consumer will be the winner.
• Be the company that gave Flash to the world, similar to what Sun is trying to do with Java. Build products that use Flash and sell those, don’t hog the Flash format. Don’t be the company that drove us away from Flash. Remember, today’s computer geek is tomorrow’s IT lead.
• It’s cheaper to release a format specification and a reference player than it is to release a player for all platforms. Make the Windows/Mac player if you’d like, and let the FOSS guys handle the rest if you choose not to. Hey, here’s an idea… how about an open source version of the Linux player that can be extended more than the normal player. Maybe some alternate graphics engine support, similar to the current generation’s alternative sound engine support. (Which was a great move from Adobe). I’m sure Apple would like to get their hands on the MacOSX player to build a highly optimized version. I’m sure the Linux guys would love to as well.

Ethical Reasons

• People will sing the praises of the company that makes and supports open formats. Flash will become “a standard”. Not just a “we use it because they’re isn’t anything better out there right now”
• It’s a really nice thing to do. We’d really appreciate it. (Do I have to beg here?)

In closing… Adobe, please open up Flash. Take the lead here, give the Flash format to the world and let us build some amazing applications with it! Don’t make us invent something better. It can happen. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at how much Flash market share has already been lost to CSS.