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Google Ports Box2D Demo To Dart
mikejuk writes with an excerpt from an article at i-programmer about a neat graphics demo written in Dart: "One of the difficulties in getting a new computer language accepted by a wider audience is that there is doubt that it is real. Is it a toy language that just proves a concept or can it do real work? In the case of Dart, which is Google's replacement for JavaScript, the development is speeding ahead at a rate that is impressive but worrying. To prove that Dart is already a language that can be used, we now have a port of the well known 2D physics engine Box2D, the one Angry Birds uses, to Dart."
Box2D has previously been ported to Javascript. Source is available at Google Code (under the Apache license). Note that you'll need Chromium to run the demos.
Note that you'll need Chromium to run the demos
As a web developer and after all the nuisance old IE's gave me and other web developers back in the day, this is really what's stupid with Chromium and Google's approach. They're mimicking the old Microsoft here - make your own "standards" and break the web by making features and sites that only work Google's browser. I seriously thought we would had been past that and the old IE's were the last browsers that didn't adhere to standards. IE9 is now fully standards compliant, and what does Google do? Oh yes, break the web AGAIN.
This isn't the only time they're introduced non-standards compliant features, either. Another example is NaCl, or Native Client, which tries to mimic Microsoft's ActiveX, and again, only works in Chrome. But with all the security headaches. It seems like Google is going out of it's way to copy all the stupid mistakes Microsoft made. I guess Google is at the same point now than Microsoft was back then - antitrust issues, breaking web standards and constant flow of news of how they're done wrong again. It's like Microsoft all again.
Will all of the housecleaning going on at Google these days, can we really trust them not to abandon this in a year to 18 months?
They're mimicking the old Microsoft here - make your own "standards" and break the web by making features and sites that only work Google's browser.
From Dart's wikipedia page:
Google will offer a cross compiler that compiles Dart to ECMAScript 3 on the fly, for compatibility with non-Dart browsers.
And, in fact, dartc already cross compiles Dart code to plain Javascript. Once it's integrated into browsers, use it or don't use it.
It's like Microsoft all again.
Right, that's a stretch. You conveniently cherry pick details here. For example, NaCl is released under a BSD license with source code readily available. Are you saying the same was true of ActiveX since it's launch?
My work here is dung.
Here we go again!
Every time I click on a news story involving Google, I'm all but positive that the first post will be:
a) Posted with a 2.5+ million UID
b) Over 100 words long, yet still posted the same minute the story goes live
c) Negative towards Google
Here we go again. Welcome back CmdrPony / InsightIn140Bytes / DCTech. Happy shilling. Hope you karma manages to hold out for more than 4 days this time.
Box2D has been ported to everything under the sun; Javascript, Actionscript, C#, Python... I'd think there would be a problem if it couldn't be ported to Dart.
The same problem that there would be with lots of people if Microsoft started suddenly introducing their own "standards" again. There's still some issues because of all that bs 10 years ago, but now it has almost gone away. There really isn't any need to broke the web again. And how to create something better? Work out a standard of it.
What a great idea! I'll hop to it right now!
Situation: there are n+1 competing standards.
My work here is dung.
The article mentions, box2d-js. The more current port is box2dweb: http://code.google.com/p/box2dweb/
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
But why would anyone start to use this?
That's called a deflection. You stated a point, I rebutted your point and -- instead of acknowledging me or providing more details to contradict my point -- you deflect it into a totally unrelated topic (everything faces user adoption problems these days).
...
I'm done with you
Is this a programming language with an existing shell script interpreter style implementation, too? If so, then I might have actual use for it. Basically, that means a light-weight interpreter (light enough to use it during system boot up to run rc scripts, so not more bloated than bash in its basic form) could be named in the script like having "#!/bin/dart" on the first line, and it would execute the file however it is designed to run them. I'm not talking about using in a browser here. For extended features beyond shell script code, it should have modules (in binary .so files or in Dart) that it can load.
I'm just starting to use Lua for this kind of thing now. Lua was intended as an embedded language, but has a shell script style interpreter which is pretty much a nice example of simple embedding. If they put Dart in a browser, and implemented it cleanly in the process, then a shell script embedding should be trivial. Have they done that?
I'd be more impressed if they make Dart do all these kinds of things (including directly run in a web server) than by implementing Box2D in it. That would mean a clear separation of execution from environment, something that Javascript only partially succeeded doing. Something that Lua did succeed at, but I still want a C-like syntax class for.
Oh, and I would definitely love to have a clean integer-only typing available, something I consider a major problem with Javascript.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The "shill" accusations flying around on Slashdot lately are getting out of control. Any position orthogonal to the common convention is accused, trashed, and filtered off the site.
Box2D in all it's ports is a very basic physics engine. While it's great news, and quite awesome it's been ported, whether it is good is different to whether it is real. VB is real, but whether it is good depends on what you're using it for.
So pointing out that MS screwed up in the past and using concrete examples that another company is making the same mistake is somehow MS propaganda? MS did some crap (works, Vista, IE 7, patent crap threatening without stating exactly what is being infringed, etc), they did some good things (Win 95-8 (for it's day was really cool if not exactly that stable), Win 7, .Ne/VS I'd put in that list), but regardless saying someone other than MS is being stupid doesn't make you an MS shill.
Then we'll have a Rusty Dart.
Or maybe just name the language after yourself
It's 2012. Can we please stop writing "Micro$oft"? It's really, really juvenile at this point.
Nobody ever claimed such.
However, just because someone has reached a conclusion you don't like doesn't make them mentally deranged or a paid astroturfer. If you believe a position to be wrong, it's so much more persuasive to respond to the points one by one rather than shoo them off with personal attacks, which only serves to please those who already agreed with you.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Am I really the only one on Slashdot who dislikes JavaScript? Every time I have to work with JS, I feel like shooting myself in the head -> Little IDE support, no type safety, no compile phase... These things make it extremely hard to work on a large application base. In fact, at work we have a custom Java -> JavaScript compiler, which makes things a lot more manageable. Most of the bugs we get in our issue tracker are related to the web interface which is still written in plain JavaScript.
I actually commend google on trying to fix this part of the web. I am not sure if this is the correct approach, but we have to start somewhere.
the development is speeding ahead at a rate that is impressive but worrying.
Worrying because...?
Advice: on VPS providers
Slashdot posts cannot be censored or filtered off the site. We don't do that here. They can't even be taken back by the author after you've pressed "submit" and believe me, I've put a few I'd like to have back. On the balance I prefer it this way, and well, as the post accepted page says, you should have thought of that before you pressed "submit".
Shill posts detract. Pointing out shill posts detract. But there's nothing to be done. There are financial interests involved, and they will spam. There are folks who want to white-knight slashdot as a forum for Truth, and I'm guilty of that now and then even though I know that's not what it's for. As a wise someone once said (and I paraphrase), "the value of a free thing approaches zero over time". The moderation system works.
Dart looks to be interesting tech. No doubt Google will look to make it an open standard that anyone can implement - even IE. And that will move us closer to the day that all apps are web apps, which cannot be anything but a good thing. It's time that the client architecture was unhooked from the application ecosystem at the network layer. In fact, it's at least 15 years past time for that. That was the goal of X Windows (not to be confused with the upstart), back in the day (onion, belt, lawn, etc).
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I don't understand what the big fuz is about. It's not like they wrote a AAA game engine in dart, it's just an over hyped physics approximator. The demos aren't even interactive (and one performs @5fps). For all you know (no, not really) the bytecode it loads is just a predefined animation. So what if they are trying to do it wrong? Let them go that way, as long as they don't break support for the standardized www framework, I have no problem with them wasting cycles.
There are enough devs out there, with enough intellectual lucidness, that can see through the hype and understand that nacl and dart are non viable solutions. For everyone else, happy grinding fella. I'm not going to get involved with this.
-- no sig today
Given the cost of solutions these days, I suppose it would be more accurate to write A$$le.
But I'm above that.
A remark like is is modded interesting? Really?
I've been a /. user since 1996 and I'm seriously considering leaving this site. The user-interface is broken and unintelligible and the comments seem to be heading towards brain-dead.
Y
but can it deal with a concave polygon?
"Is it a toy language that just proves a concept or can it do real work?"
depends on the work at hand
Anonymous Coward is a known Google shill.
AFAIK the problem was never "innovation", which is what OP is accusing Google and MS of, it was the way MS pushed innovation, and then subtly sabotaged efforts to make compliant implementations (like, by only releasing part of a spec, or by leaving the spec open so that various compliant implementations would have different renderings, with MS's being the only correct one).
The comparison to ActiveX is retarded anyways, since Firefox already has that: its called NPAPI, and its used for flash, silverlight, and all the other things that make the web go round.
Yes, it does, one of its common meanings / usages is "something that is at odds with"; much like two orthagonal lines do not "agree" with each other, and are "at odds".
Bullshit. The posting pattern here is either mental derangement of clinical scale, or a paid astroturfing effort.
You know, you can actually read the posting pattern by clicking on somebodies name. If you had known this, you might have based your accusations of "posting pattern" based on more than a single post. But then you wouldn't have been able to just cry faul.
I might not agree with TechGuys opinions, but they don't seem too much out-of-the-ordinary or biased towards/against any particular company. I've seen decidedly more pro-MS/anti-everything-else posting histories for some other users.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Arguing with an astroturfer is useless by definition. It won't make him repent and convert. Though, yes, bringing out flaws in his arguments for others to see is useful too.
And, btw, I can see why that concerns you. Why do you bother changing accounts anymore?
Can we compromise on Assle?
When he talks about posting pattern he probably means all of those accounts, not this single post. Kinda like this.
a) Fresh made account - check
b) "Thoughtful" irst post with same timestamp as the article without subscription to help him - check, already third one for this acc
c) Baseless hate towards Google - check, how baseless is explained in the comments.
An Open Source Proprietary Solution?
No. In professional literature and discussion, "orthogonal" always refers to independent -- as in, separated design elements are orthogonal, or this discussion is orthogonal to TFA. I have not once heard it used in the manner you describe, and find that implication to be, well, orthogonal to its actual meaning *grin*.
"but Microsoft are better now, they grew up"
"Google are becoming the old, evil Microsoft"
Yes, sure doesn't seem like spreading bad things about competition at all.
Your entire argument was awful.
THEY DIDN'T.
Browser developers IMPLEMENTED IDEAS, they passed it back to the development boards, others played around with them, discussed ideas, THEY UPDATED. Rinse and repeat. There is a reason browser prefixes exist for CSS rules that weren't completed since they have different syntax most of the time. (the same should have been done with JavaScript as well!)
The standards weren't just pulled out of someones ass for everyone to glare and and implement, they were worked on for YEARS by individuals and groups in separate project tests according to some wants and needs of other developers and contributors in a HUGE mailing list, that covers authors of web dev sites, bloggers, website owners, games developers and so on.
Only after everyone has had their say, experimented and tested out a whole host of scenarios, will it be Set In Stone for everyone to implement as Final.
Microsoft pretty much had absolutely no part in any of this development because they are cheap.
They'd rather let everyone else implement everything and just take all the glory.
The last useful things they added to the pot were embed and XHR. (Crap, deprecated. Buggy, which is why XHR2 is being worked on, in addition to the web sockets system)
More like Fart. Great name, Google.
If M$ wasn't bullying Android hardware companies then I'd agree but that's not the case.
How about "£inux"?
No, the problem is brand new accounts using a distortion of the facts to push an agenda (pro or anti a specific company). The problem was never that Microsoft added new features to IE. Individual vendors adding things to their browsers is how we got all of the features of the modern web - including images! The problems were that they implemented features that were tied closely to Windows (e.g. ActiveX: run a Windows x86 binary in a web page) and that they pushed their developer tools, which generated IE-specific output that was incompatible with other browsers.
The standard way of adding new features to the web, since it's creation, has been for one vendor to add them to a browser, for users to experiment with them, and if they're useful for them to be implemented by multiple vendors and standardised.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is enough for me not to bother clicking on the link. Web pages that say 'This page should be viewed on browser X with screen resolution y by z' is so 1990s. Moving on.
This is enough for me not to bother clicking on the link. Saying this about your web page is a risky strategy and I guess only Google can get away with this and get a subset of people to dutifully switch browsers just to see what the exciting page has on it (and possibly Apple could too).
Moving on.
Korma: Good
I would love to have a choice of what language to use when writing client side code. JavaScript gets the job done and it is far from ideal. Even Crockford recognizes that JavaScript contains many mistakes in its implementation.
Ah there is the /. hate I've grown to love. Thanks.
I still don't see how the poster was promoting a specific company by pointing out there mistakes but okay I'll give you that new accounts going off pushing a particular idea might be astro-turfing. One could argue a lot of new accounts get away with pushing No-Company (TM) products though as in it is okay to go off on Richard Stallman like rants of craziness as long as you are pushing FOSS without being labelled an astro-turfer. Techies have their preferred tech and likely will post about what they care about. So I'd say with something this subtle give the guy/girl the benefit of the doubt.
Bonch and Over Critical Guy are two known MS shills who even post messages based on the same script. See this post from Overly Critical Guy and compare it to this post by bonch. Notice any similiarities?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
No, but posting the same astroturfing propaganda based on the same script sure does. See this post from Overly Critical Guy [slashdot.org] and compare it to this post by bonch [slashdot.org].
And bonch and Overly Critical Guy are only a couple of user accounts. Slashdot is packed with dozens of professional shills tryint go sway public opinion to a more favourable position towards their employers.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I'm getting so tired of these accusations. This is not bonch. I don't post "astroturfing propaganda based on the same script" and you can't provide any example of it. Whatever you were trying to link didn't even show up.
This is exactly the dumb crap going on that is ruining the site. Absolutely everybody who doesn't take a hardline pro-Google/pro-Linux position is called a shill, a troll, a paid employee, etc. Not only is it cartoony and stupid, but I'm willing to bet there are a lot more posters with vested interests in Google and Linux posting on Slashdot than there are with vested interests in Apple or Microsoft. There are often posts proclaiming that Google has never done anything wrong and that any negative news about them is just a Microsoft-funded conspiracy, but you never see those people getting accused of being a paid-for Google shill.
Enough with the bias!
"Sufferin' succotash."
The term orthagonal has a meaning referring to two elements at 90-degree angles with each other:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonality
It has somewhat different meanings depending on the context, but most involve the idea of perpendicular, non-overlapping, varying independently, or uncorrelated.
There are many ways to use it, and your claim that it ONLY means "independent" is definitely wrong-- ask any professional mathematician.
No, but I sure notice similarities between this post and this post. You're the troll who has been anonymously accusing people of being shills, and now you've created some psychotic "list" of accounts.
Get a life.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I have to admit, that I am very pro-linux and very pro-google.
I still think there is a big difference between Google and Microsoft in this case. Microsoft tends to do things to create lock in wherever they can. Back then by doing things with HTML, addons, etc, to tie you to Windows. Now by having a signed boot loader that can only boot Windows 8 on the ARM platform. They play "open" where they have to, but play "lock in" and "monopoly" whenever they think they can get away with it. This means if they could kill off other browsers, they would. if it means making HTML a Microsoft product and a must have, while breaking the internet, they would.
Google has a different goal. The more stuff people do on line, the more likely they are to use Google services, and the more Google services they use, the more money Google makes. Google does not lock people in. If you want to leave google mail, hoock up to it via IMAP and copy your stuff out. You can opt out and go elsewhere when ever you want. Most people dont. Googles goal with web browsers is to make them such a powerful platform that google services run as well as native apps. So they work on their own browser, their improved javascript engine, a replacement for javascript. Why? Speed, everyone else is able to copy what they are doing and make their web browsers better. It does not matter in the long run if you use Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. If they improve so that the google experience is good, they are happy and they have "won".
With Google they want others to take advantage of their work with HTML, scripting and other web advancements. Please do so, on any platform you want, create your own dev tools. We will make it easy for you to use our standard. Versus Microsofts, only our implementation is standard, it only runs on our platform, you should only use our platform.
vi +
I've said this a few times, but I guess there's little harm in repeating it one more time.
1) The way to identify astroturfers is not through content, but through posting patterns. Content is just a very small part that only indicates who hired that person.
2) Do you argue with ads? Do you also go one by one through ads, debunking every claim? Maybe you do it for a few, but it's not feasible to do it for every one. Furthermore, you can't have an honest debate with them. The best you can hope for is to alert others to the fact that the arguments are incorrect, and to move on. After the 15th debunking, you just leave it at "astroturf alert", and move on.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
i actually did look at both, and he's got a point. This isn't democracy - you either prove your not bonch, or that unfortunate set of posts stands - you're he, and they you. Your comeback is pretty weak, too; it's what one would expect, when weaseling one's way out of being caught. You're more outraged at having the message corrupted then by your person being misidentified. Obvious shilling. (don't trust high ids, kids!)
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
You looked at what? He didn't link anything. What point are you referring to?! He thinks I'm bonch because I've criticized Google before, and clearly anyone else who has also criticized Google must be a puppet account. Stupid.
I honestly couldn't care less what you believe. I don't need to prove anything. GreatBunzinni has already revealed himself as one of the anonymous trolls who stalks my posts, because he anonymously posted almost the exact same message earlier today, word for word, complete with the two comment links (properly formatted this time). For someone accusing others of posting with multiple accounts, he seems to have no problem writing a ton of anonymous replies over the last few months, one of which stated that he uses an open proxy.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Well, of course you're not the same as bonch. You don't even read from the same script. You're just really, really feel same way.
You might even be his long lost twin brother.
It has already been repeatedly demonstrated that Overly Critical Guy and bonch accounts are operated by same invididual/organization, to the point that the same script is shared between accounts. The organization behind the bonch and Overly Critical Guy accounts is invested in a massive astroturfing campaign which produces such a high volume of crap pushing a pro-Microsoft point of view that you don't even bother tweaking the official script, as was demonstrated by chrb in this post, and as I've pointed out before in this post.
So, you can cut your deceitful comments now that your cover has been blown.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
For a headsup, the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post and a previous post I've made here for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Whoops, you forgot to log out!
Oh dear. What's the universal hand signal for egg on face?