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Parent has a good point. I work for a software company that Develops GIS (geopgraphical Information Software). and all of our clients want theor programs to be web based. this means VB or C# with AJAX/JAVA.

How does that follow? I don't see how web-based applications (or, judging from the context, the services which run these applications) have to be VB or C#. There are a number of other choices, be it scripted languages like Perl, Python, Ruby or PHP, or compiled languages like Java, C++ or C. Also, you said "AJAX/JAVA"... I would assume you're referring to JavaScript, which isn't the same as java.

Writing web-based applications isn't intrinsically tied to one particular language or set of particular languages. It only requires being able to read the HTTP headers that it is given and responding in a certain way. Most languages have toolkits which allow this. I'd go so far as to say that VB and C# would be *poor* choices for that sort of thing. Servlets or JSP with Java is a pretty easy way of going about it, and you get your choice of server (Jetty, Tomcat, J2EE server like jboss, etc).

In the end, it's more about the toolkit, not the language, and your choices seem to lean towards vendor lockin (since VB and C# more or less run on one platform, discounting Mono implementations) instead of something a bit more OS-agnostic.

I know i cant be that old school, but why cant people use C++ and and GUI APIs?

Perhaps not C++ GUI APIs, but things like GWT use very similar APIs to classic GUI toolkits, so it is indeed possible to do this in that sort of way to cut down on the slope of that learning curve.

I would wager that, upon the initial deal, a lot of authors agree to anything. One of these conditions might be that the before hand assumption is that the tech book will not sell well. And therefore, they charge a lot to make up for possible losses. If the book sells well, then why lower the price? Just keep it high and rake in the profits while the author gets what his contract says.

Authors don't set book prices, publishers do. I have no control over the pricing of the books I've published so far. The only way to get control is to publish them yourself, which is a different kettle of fish entirely.

I just love how /.ers seem intent on biting the hand that feeds; but, if you are investing time on cleaning your mozoogle searches, it's time wasted. Unless you're masquerading your browser headers somehow, google will still see all. Tinfoil hats, anyone?

Perhaps he heard it was a Linux-based phone and was worried when he couldn't find /dev/null.

Eric
View the XML for any Amazon product

No, that's wrong. You're probably confusing the fact that the BES used to ship with MSDE, the free/lite version of SQL Server. MSDE as a product has been replaced with SQL Server 2005 Express.

Eric
Some BlackBerry stuff (not much)

The third item in this query points to this excellent article

Another great resource to consider is Aaron Wall's SEO Book. Aaron is one of the most respected names in the business. Aaron also runs ThreadWatch.org, a community website about Internet marketing that would appeal to many /. readers.

Eric
William Shatner, nameless cereal box celebrity

However, people would rather buy books that they think will magically make their site better than actually bothering to write content.

That's because writing good content is hard and takes work, so of course people look for easy ways out. And it takes a long time to build up traffic based on good content alone. I do tell people in my book to take the long-term view by writing good content and not expecting riches overnight, but many people look for the quick fix.

Think back to when you were in high school and you had to write an essay or report. It wasn't easy, and it took time.

Then again, how many "how-to" books get written and read by people who never actually follow the advice, for whatever reason? Doesn't mean the advice is bad, just that the reader isn't motivated enough to put in the effort required.
Eric
See your HTTP headers here

2. Spell things correctly.

Actually, one valid SEO strategy is to specifically target misspellings. Not everyone using a search engine knows how to spell, and you can take advantage of that.

Eric
The Invisible Fence Guide

RSS is push? Maybe if you send it via email... Whoops, here comes another debate...

Eric
How to masquerade your browser

What I don't get is why it's always characterized as "LAMP vs. Java". To be correct it should either be "Perl/PHP/Python vs. Java" or "LAMP vs. LAMJ", because many Java systems are already built around Linux, Apache and MySQL.

Eric
Invisible Fence Guide

It's just easier to keep the document and the history together if they're in the same file. Otherwise the linkage is easily lost if (say) you rename the main document file and forget to rename the history file.

Eric
The Invisible Fence Guide (features my dogs!)

to take the word processor analogy: paragraphs, not characters.

I'm sure that e. e. cummings ("paragraph? what's a paragraph?") wouldn't have liked that "feature"...

Eric
View your HTTP headers here

But that's changing as the devices get more sophisticated. Mobile Flash and similar technologies mean it's getting harder for smaller shops to write games for these platforms. Progress, you know....

Eric
BlackBerry programming stuff

Publishing a game for these platforms requires a large investment in time and energy because of all the differences in the various platforms (not just J2ME, sorry "Java ME", either). That's really the biggest stumbling block for game developers, testing out and tweaking the game for the different devices. It can really suck up your time.

It's not an official site, though, just a compilation of DNSSEC information. It actually seems to be very comprehensive, obviously the compiler put a lot of effort into it. Maybe a bit crowded layout on the home page, yes, but lots of info. But here's the direct link to RFC 4033 if that helps.

Eric
Read my Invisible Fence Guide

All application servers are transactional in the simple case, where all the operations actually affect a single database. In that case the application server's transaction maps to the database server's concept of a transaction and things are very simple.

The difficulties arise when you're doing operations that involve more than one database or a database and some other type of software. For example, say the business logic does two things: it updates a database record and it sends an SMS message to a mobile device informing it of the update. Ideally, you want to wrap those two operations in a single transaction, so that if the udpate fails no message gets sent and vice-versa. Of if the update succeeds but the system goes down then on wakeup the system continues and sends out the message, or else rolls back the whole thing.

That's what this stuff is about.

Eric
See your HTTP headers

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying it all from Amazon.
When she gets there she knows, that the store's never closed
With a click she can get what she came for.

(with apologies to Page and Plant)

Eric
Speaking of product promotion (features my dogs)

That's a good analogy, actually, a blog that is ordered by popularity instead of chronologically. Although you could argue that popularity of a blog posting can already be measured by the number of comments it generates, and some blog software lets you order entries that way.

Eric
Read my Invisible Fence Guide

Yeah, but, like, it's so 80's...

Eric
See your HTTP headers

So if you think splogs are a problem now, wait until the music companies start actively getting into the fray. Mind you, it's not like they haven't already done that kind of thing before.

Eric
Follow my AdSense case study

What Amazon is doing, of course, is protecting a vast amount of intellectual property that it has amassed over the years in the form of consumer reviews. While Amazon does not own the copyright to those reviews, they do have extensive rights to them as set out in the Amazon Conditions of Use:

If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon.com and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Amazon.com or its affiliates for all claims resulting from content you supply. Amazon.com has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Amazon.com takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.

This data that it has managed to collect is an important selling tool, especially for book authors. Why? Because potential book buyers often look at the Amazon reviews to get more details about what a book is really about, even if they don't end up buying it on Amazon (but it gives Amazon more opportunities to push products on those eyeballs). Sure, us authors will fuss over the star ratings (of course you want a 5-star rating, who wouldn't!) but the reality is that the negative ratings can also sell books -- if they're constructive. Those reviews get shared with Amazon partners through the Amazon Web Services, so they just don't end up on the Amazon.com site (though I do find it odd that the reviews aren't shared between the different English-locale Amazon sites). All this data just helps them become the e-commerce portal of choice.

So trying to protect the gathering and processing of this information -- visitor-supplied metadata -- is completely understandable from their point of view. They'd be fools not to do so, especially with the ease with which these kinds of patents seem to be granted.

Eric
Read my Invisible Fence story

I have a B.Math in CS from Waterloo.

Um, so do I. Hence the knowledge about what CS at Waterloo involves. But it's still debatable, as you can see from all the comments here.

That makes sense if the CS program is offered by the science faculty, but some schools (like Waterloo) offer it through a different faculty, so core science courses aren't necessarily a requirement. It's debatable whether computer "science" is really science, after all, just like the way some people don't consider mathematics to be science.

Eric

Read my Invisible Fence Guide

Symbian is not the easiest OS to write for. Also, Symbian is dominated by Nokia, who bought out Motorola's share a couple of years back (which allowed Motorola to work on developing Microsoft Smartphone devices). See the Wikipedia entry for Symbian OS for more. Over time, I'm sure the power management features of Linux phones will be just as sophisticated.

Eric
BlackBerry programming information (speaking of non-Symbian)

Indeed, see Tim Bray's comments on Why XML Doesn't Suck for some great insight.

Really, the problem many people have had with XML is that the tools aren't always up to par. But new ways of doing things come around to fix things, such as pull parsers, which simplifies XML parsing without having to resort to regular expression tricks like Tim Bray was talking about in XML Is Too Hard For Programmers.

Eric
HTTP header viewer

Nvu (note spelling) is indeed a great program. It's an open source project that supports Linux, Win32 and Mac OS X. You can use it in a WYSIWYG mode or you can edit the source of the page directly. Besides being free, it also includes support for editing CSS styles (including external style sheets), a must for building sites today. Plus you can get extensions that add neat new features. Definitely worth a look.

Eric
Invisible Fence Guide (CSS to make it fancy is still coming...)

Everyone knows it's not gamers that set the priorities.

Eric
See your HTTP headers

Of course, some people can afford to lose $100,000 if they have fun doing it. (Not me!)

Building new land in virtual space is very similar to what they're doing over in Dubai, it seems, though the actual investment required to build a virtual property is considerably less than building new islands.

Now it all makes sense. The studios released these movies for the same reason that esquivalience was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary, not because they were worth seeing in a movie theatre.

If that's the aussie definition of a rootkit, what's the aussie definition of a trojan? Ahhh... never mind...

Funny, I didn't think the DEC Alpha had such a long history.

From webexhibits.org:

Daylight Saving Time, for the U.S. and its territories, is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (not the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe). Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, due to its large size and location in three states.

In Canada, currently the province of Saskatchewan doesn't observe it.

The point isn't that the applications are available on both platforms, it's which platforms are being used for which processes. Yes, a publisher could work entirely with Windows, but most work with Macs.

Right, I know that Word is available on Mac OS, which is why it's OK for writers to send in documents in that format, because it does integrate well with the editing/layout setups that publishers have in place. The point I was making was that not all writers use Macs, even if the publishing houses themselves do.

And I wonder how many professional journalists have Macs at home as well? Surely a large proportion of them must have Windows-based systems at home, if only because they're cheaper to buy than Macs. If the iPod halo effect works for Apple, of course, the proportion of consumers buying Macs vs. Windows will go up in their favor. Good for them, I say.

You have to separate the writing of articles/columns/books from the editing and layout tasks. The latter are normally done on Macs, yes, and that was a very natural evolution. The non-techies (think English majors, graphic design artists, etc.) found the Mac systems easier and more intuitive to use, so of course the software developers took note and developed software for that market. Seems like a perfect example of one company managing to dominate a vertical market. Kudos to Apple for that.

But how much of the writing is actually done on a Mac? Now, it may be that conventional journalists may use Macs more often than not, but I suspect most freelancers are using Windows systems. Or even Linux. And producing Microsoft Word documents more than likely. Almost everyone I've written for accepts Word documents, for many it's the preferred (often the only) format. (IBM being one exception, they want you to write it using XML, which actually can be more of a pain.)

Yes, it's ironic that most of the pro-Windows books out there today end up being edited and composited on Macs. But that's just the way the industry works today. I think calling it a bias is an exaggeration.

On the other hand, wireless costs are significantly higher in Canada than the US. Things vary by country, it seems. What a concept!

iPod, iMac, iTunes, iLife, iTax... though initially the latter was going to be a competitor to QuickTax.

Note that this announcement is for BlackBerry Connect, which essentially gives Palm access to the protocols that BlackBerry devices use to talk to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). You still end up using the Treo's mail client -- the actual BlackBerry software (which is all written in Java and runs on top of RIM's own VM implementation) is not part of this deal. (That's covered by a different program called BlackBerry Built-In, which includes the VM and everything needed to run the standard BlackBerry software.) This is all about improving the Treo's ability to connect to different mail/contact servers. It won't improve the software on the Treo itself.

If your company doesn't install the agent on the Exchange server, then yes, you have to do it to the desktop but that's not what it was designed for.

Actually, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) came later. The devices (remember when they were called the Inter@ctive Pager?) were originally designed to sync via your desktop. The direct sync to the mail server was a later addition, and of course now that's the standard (and most reliable) way to do it.

... it shouldn't be surprising that someone took it literally and tried to claim it all for himself.

Either way, I doubt that the real problem is that IT managers are oblivious to the vendor lock-in MS represents, but rather that the lock-in has already taken place, and now the question is, how do you get out?

The real problem isn't vendor lock-in at the IT level, but vendor lock-in at the user level. Day-to-day users of Office don't even want to upgrade the version of Office they're using, let alone switch to a comparable but completely new product. Too many things to re-learn. That's a huge amount of intertia to overcome and a big barrier to entry for anyone to overcome.

American "CND" == Canadian "CDN"... American "MM/DD/YY" == Canadian "DD/MM/YY"... Seems like par for the course!

many of the professors had never worked in industry

This would in fact be true of most university professors, I'd say, because of the way the training is done. Most professors go immediately to grad school after the undergraudate degree and from there to teaching/research. Those who work for a while and then go back to university to get their PhD are a minority, for various reasons -- loss of income (could _you_ revert back to being a poor student?), family stability, etc.

Your goal at university should be to get an education, which is as much about learning how to learn as it is anything else. Then when you get to the "real" world you learn how it's done in the real world.

I loved Computer Language in its heyday. Really fun stuff, wacko languages, programming problems, Ken and Barbie naked on the cover...

A lot of sites base their security, in part, on the idea that you can only access certain pages if you were referred to them by the same site

Security? Better to use a session variable accessed via a session ID passed around using cookies or URL rewriting than depend on the easily spoofed (and often disabled) "referer" header...

A lot of sites base their security, in part, on the idea that you can only access certain pages if you were referred to them by the same site

Security? Better to use a session variable accessed via a session ID passed around using cookies or URL rewriting than depend on the easily spoofed (and often disabled) "referer" header...

Blogs are glorified web pages are they not?

They are systems of web pages. But yes, underlying it all are the same old Web standards we're familiar with.

Advertisers use a bidding system to tell Google how much they're willing to pay and those who pay more get their ads shown more often. Kind of a free market system. But there are some dampening factors used to reduce the price they actually pay based on how well ads are doing, how reputable the site is, etc.

One of the best projects I did at school was a networked tank game in my computer graphics class, on (now quite ancient) IRIX workstations. Battlezone kind of game, very simple, but lots of fun to play -- especially when the professor was manning one of the tanks :-)

Simplicity is a virtue, and not just in coding. Now take this project and combine it with Google Maps and it could be very interesting...