Comments on: More Eolas Panic-mongering

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:27:39 +0000

There’s no way to create good patented ideas nowaday’s without either one or two things happenning.
(1) someone will claim you thought of the idea while working under a contract where you have to share intellectual property.
(2) where you are simply outmanouvered by the fact that you cant defend a copyright case.

Andy

By: Den nye IE patch - er det enden for Flash? · omFlash();

Den nye IE patch - er det enden for Flash? · omFlash(); — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 12:48:38 +0000

[...] Geoff giver i sin blog et udemærket overblik over præcis hvad der sker, og de kommentarer der er lavet er får de sidste brikker til at falde på plads: More Eolas Panic-mongering [...]

By: sutrostyle

sutrostyle — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:45:10 +0000

This is not Microsofts problem. It’s a problem of US patent system creating patent trolls, like Michael Doyle, the founder of Eolas.com, a company with no working product, 1 employee, 10 lawers and 100 investors. Patents were supposed to promote innovation. I wonder how users will like Eolas “innovation” when their browsers get updated.

And eventually ALL browsers will have to implement this, including Firefox and Safari, since nobody in his sane mind wants to voluntarily infringe on a patent.

By: geoff

geoff — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 23:41:52 +0000

The whole reason we have web standards is so that we don’t have to go and recode our pages because of a change in the functionality of a browser. If we code our pages to web standards, our pages should be future-proof. The only exception would be if the W3C deprecates something, like, say, the blink tag.
Somehow, though, since it is Microsoft, it doesn’t work that way. Up is down, down is up. We change our code to follow them. This is why I said, “No way!” before. It’s a slippery slope.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:08:58 +0000

“…the Eolas patch is being WAY overhyped…”

This can’t be farther from the truth. Flash was designed to be an interactive medium. By definition, if you have to do something to initiate that interactivity then it takes away from the intended use.

The claim that “just install a little JS” is so hap-hazard it isn’t even funny. We have over 8000 website pages across 50+ domains that have flash menus, flash banners, flash movies with interaction elements, that are embedded using the tag. This code has to be removed and substituted with flashobject code. Unless I am missing a really simple explanation or tutorial…this is a “by-hand-page-by-page” task.

This EOLAS issue WILL BE A BIG DEAL later this summer.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:28:22 +0000

I’m with you on this one. To some degree, the Eolas patch is being WAY overhyped. Some simple Javascript will fix everything, and then it’s no big deal. That said, even I made some sensational claims about the patch as it relates to Flash-based ads. I felt I was making some valid points, but it turns out that people are more willing to use Javascript than I thought. I have a feeling I fell into the “hear it enough times, and you’ll start to believe it” area.

By: geoff

geoff — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:33:51 +0000

Thanks Michael, I appreciate your journalistic integrity.

I guess I got a little fired up myself, because the first blog post I read on this subject on another blog was saying “this will break the internet”, and “your pages will have a blank space where the Flash should be”. I nearly wet myself. So, I was both relieved and a little peeved when I installed the patch and found out what it really does.

My next blog post on the subject will be “Alien Slugs will Infest Your Brain if you Install the Eolas Patch”.

By: Michael Dinowitz

Michael Dinowitz — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:15:57 +0000

I’m sorry for being so snarky. We do appreciate your information and pointing out where we (and others) are wrong. We’ve gone back and altered the article to make sure it’s accurate. While this isn’t really a ColdFusion issue (which we are focused on), it’s still something that impacts the CF community. Any news source needs to be double checked and to admit when they were inaccurate.

Actually, we’re still in the process of updating the article. As for installing the fix, we depended on others hands on work with this. We should have tried it ourselves.

By: geoff

geoff — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:28:40 +0000

Michael, thank you for the comment. I wasn’t talking about your site specifically. I didn’t post a link to any sites because I didn’t want to unfairly single anyone out. If I had time, I’d locate all of the sites on the world wide internet and post them, with specific notations on where inaccurate information appears. When I speak about panic-mongering, what I’m really talking about is sites who post information that is untrue or inflammatory in order to get attention to their site. I’m not saying that this is true in your case. But, I have to ask, in your research, did you install the patch and see the results for yourself?

By: geoff

geoff — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:25:10 +0000

Dave, thanks for the comment. I still think there’s a huge difference between “not running” and “not interactive”. I have a Flash slideshow player on Slideroll that makes a call to the server, loads XML, and loads several JPEGS, then displays them. This all happens without user intervention, and happens with the Eolas patch installed. So therefore, the content is running, and the actionscript is executing. Fortunately, in the case of the Flash slideshow, user intervention really isn’t necessary. There may be other cases where this is more of an issue.