Well, it seems that I stumbled upon a bug that affects how the Flash 9 beta works on the old linux box.

It's a Compaq Presario circa 2001 with an 900 MHz Athlon processor and 378 megs of RAM.

The box's motherboard has onboard sound (via 82C686A/B). Being who I am, I disabled it in the BIOS and used an audio PCI ES1370 SB-compatible card instead.

For some reason, the Flash 9 Beta refuses to work with the ES13710 even though Flash 7 did.

On a hunch, I re-enabled the onboard sound and LO and BEHOLD, Flash 9 has sound in Sabayon (Gentoo-based) with firefox 2.0 and even in Elive (Debian) if ALSA is used instead of ESD. Unfortunately, the rendering in Elive using firefox 1.5 is a bit wacky.

The beta also works in SimplyMepis which is Ubuntu-based.

As far as I know Texstar hasn't gotten it work with PCLinuxOS.

The Flash Player 9 beta for Vista, osX, and Linux is available at

Just in case anyone is interested:

Firefox 2.0 is available for MS Windows 98 and XP, osX, and Linux-686

Internet Explorer 7 is available for MS Windows XP and Server 2003


Let the browser wars continue.

--walt

It seems that the fine folks that Adobe that now own the fine folks at Macromedia have decided to change the name of the Flash 8.5 beta to Flash 9.0 beta.

Nothing has changed except the name it is claimed.

The new "9.0 beta" for Windows and osX is available at

For Linux Fanboys and Fangirls only

It is possible to experience the new Flash player using Linux with WINE with the Windows versions of Firefox and Flash

I've not tried this with the "9.0 beta" but this works with the "8.5 beta" and with the stable 8.0 release for me.

Sound and Video work ok - including (e:peep) user sounds.

However, when using Firefox and Flash with WINE for estrip.org, some frames have rendering problems. My assumption is that they don't' call it "Flash" because the content of the frames flashs on a regular basis. This bug is duplicated on both Linux boxes.

Generic Instructions

Download and install WINE for your distro.

Download Firefox for Windows and install it with WINE.

Download Flash 8.0 or higher for Windows and install it using WINE.

Here's a brief how-to for Ubuntu that gives a bit more detail:

You should be able to modify this how-to for your favie distro without too much trouble.

--walt ( (e:uncutsaniflush) )

Those people who use illegally obtained ("pirated") copies of WinXP can expect to be nagged by Microsoft until they respond to the nags if they install the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications application. At the present time, if one updates manually, one can choose not to install the application. However, the application will be installed automatically for those who choose to allow Windows to update automatically

I wonder how many people who thought they had legal copies of WinXP will find out that their copy is actually pirated. Only time will tell.

for more info including descriptions of the actual nags from Microsoft Support check out:

--Walt

I know that (e:paul) likes AJAX so here is something he might find interesting and/or annoying.

Ajaxwrite is a web-based word processor that is written in AJAX with some XUL. It is claimed that it is MS Office compatible.

I've tested it with some old .doc and .wpd files and it read them ok.

Micheal Robertson, the person responsible for mp3.com, Linspire (Lindows), SIPphone, etc, is behind ajaxwrite.

To me the funniest thing about ajaxwrite is that as of right now it only works on Firefox 1.5 and other browsers based on that version of the gecko rendering engine.

In other words, it doesn't work on MSIE. Supposedly MSIE and Safari compatiblity is in the works.