2011-04-24

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 April 17

There were two posts this week that got a handful of comments, so I'll try to repost most of them.

Joking Around with Professors

Reader Abhijith said, "You're absolutely right about the state of this in India. Let alone school teachers; teachers/lecturers in undergrad were still uptight about having a good chat with students. But then again, not all were. We have attended marriages of lecturers, teased them about it, had pointless chats with some lady teachers(they are more approachable any day). But I still don't think the relationship goes beyond the boundaries of the college. If they met you outside, you would probably be treated as a stranger. Apart from a few, most lecturers don't mix with students outside of class at all."

Adobe Flash Troubles: 64-Bit or 32-Bit PAE?

An anonymous commenter suggested this: "Fix the problem: Hulu checking your Flash version string. Don't attack issues that aren't the direct cause of your symptoms. Spoof the version string." Unfortunately, I couldn't find any further information regarding this or telling how to do this.
Another anonymous reader said, "Try this: they don't seem to update it timely.. but at least it works (on Hulu as well)! http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_square.html" I tried to avoid this in order to minimize conflicts with the existing installation of Adobe Flash.
Reader John Lewis had this tip: "Did you try the native 64 bit flash? I find it to be a lot more stable and less problematic than the 32 bit version under 64 bit Ubuntu. Follow shameless plug for my own article on the subject :) http://johnlewis.ie/improving-flash-experience-in-ubuntu-64-bit/"
Yet another anonymous commenter had a different take: "Running 64 bit Ubuntu 10.10. I'm using Chrome as my web browser because it works better than Firefox with Flash. Hulu has no problems." This was supported by reader Tim, who said, "I'm running Chromium on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid). I have no problems running Hulu. Also, 64-bit does have some advantages even with less RAM for certain things--compiling code and rendering video, I believe, I are two areas where it is a bit quicker. Unfortunately, the RAM address sizing is bigger so you actually end up with less effective memory. (I could be a bit off on some of the technical details.)"
Still another anonymous commenter clarified, "32bit OS limits your process virtual memory to 2^32 or 4GB of memory. If your laptop has 4GB of RAM, then 64bit OS will not make any difference. In any case, I am running a 64bit Ubuntu 11.04 and have firefox and flash versions of 64 bit and I don't have any issues with hulu. You can also have firefox run flash in 32bit mode using an intermediary library."
Finally, reader piquant00 suggested, "If you're using Firefox, there's an extension to make installing 64-bit flash quick and painless: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-aid/" This was what I tried, and it worked like a charm. Thank you so much for that amazing tip!

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. I'm going to be pretty busy this coming week and probably the following week as well, and in any case, I don't really have anything planned...wait, what am I saying, Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" comes out this week! I've been saying a lot of stuff about Unity only based on other people's reviews without having actually tried it myself, so I'd certainly like to see what Unity is like in the final release. Interestingly enough, I have never actually directly reviewed Ubuntu or any of its directly-related variants, so that'll be a first for this blog. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!