It is seldom I write about proprietary software. I seem to be one of the first few users of Flash Player 9 plugin for firefox on Linux, the news hasn't even been slashdotted. ( I use Ubuntu Breezy Badger with KDE )
But Adobe has worked really hard to hack together the Flash Player 9 for Linux.
Its a massive 6.5 MB beast. I am sure when they move from beta to production version it would be lesser size with less debug info.
ldd shows up the long list of libraries linked to it.
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb77f3000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb77e0000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7720000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb7713000)
libXt.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXt.so.6 (0xb76c5000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb765b000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb762c000)
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7358000)
libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb7321000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb72a0000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb727d000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb714f000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)
libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb714b000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xb7147000)
libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xb7140000)
libICE.so.6 => /usr/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xb7127000)
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb7113000)
libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb70f4000)
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb70dd000)
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7060000)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0xb705a000)
libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb7025000)
libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb700a000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb7007000)
libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0xb6fbf000)
libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0xb6fbc000)
libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb6fb4000)
libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb6fb1000)
libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb6fa8000)
libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb6f9f000)
libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0xb6f9b000)
libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0xb6f78000)
libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb6f54000)
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf says more about the Linux version of Flash player 9 development pains.
Feels good to be a Linux Desktop user today.
Go get your copy at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/

Orkut profiles provide access control to pieces of information on your profile according to these 4 criteria.
1. Myself
2. Friends
3. Friends of Friends
4. Everyone
My suggest to Orkut would be that it should also provide access control based based on community membership, for e.g. I should be able to provide access to a certain piece of contact information to say my High School's community members even those who are not my friends. This might apply to other Social Networking sites too.
PS: I have nothing to do with Orkut/Google apart from being a user of their services.

' This month's linux user's group meeting features a talk by Jawed Karim
(www.jawed.com),a master's student in Stanford's CS
program and co-founder of YouTube.com, a new website for hosting and sharing
personal video clips. It is often referred to as 'the Flickr of Video.'

It is rare that one has the benefit of seeing history in making. At this LUG meeting Jawed discussed the Open Source Stack on which yet un-funded youtube.com was built, initially with cheap servers from various providers on a software based architecture. Over the next few weeks I found myself evangelizing youtube to all my friends whom I talked about technology and startups in general.

There was an interesting discussion I had with friends as how Google was taking up the place of Microsoft on the Web as someone against whom you can't compete on the web i.e. if they launch something you don't move in as a second mover in that space. Google Videos was launched before Youtube.
One could almost predict even then after listening to Jawed that these guys can beat up google videos to pulp.
On being asked whether Youtube will go in for VC funding, Jawed's reply was that, they have been approached by a couple of VCs and we'll decide on it soon.

They seemed to have done everything right from using Open Source stack of implementing High Availability and Load Balancing inside software without relying on hardware and hardware proximity in a single Datacenter or on Content Delivery Networks.
Jawed apparently decided to leave youtube founders to continue to pursue his MS at Stanford.

Read latest on techcrunch about Google buying Youtube

It is not really important in my not so humble opinion whether youtube is making revenue or not, they have a large and loyal userbase who wouldn't want youtube to disappear so either they'll be able to raise more money to continue to run it or will get acquired.