It's a mistake to think that the RT was the real product.
Reasons to have the RT: 1. As a reminder to Intel that MS controls the ecosystem 2. To remind hardware manufacturers who is boss. 3. As a way to blunt the rise of tablets from Apple and Android by introducing confusion. 4. As a potential future growth path - an option.
Reasons not to have RT: 1. Anything that takes sales away from Windows on PCs is bad. That's where the money is. 2. Anything that drives down the cost of hardware is bad; when the Window tax is a large percentage of the cost of a machine, it looks like Windows is too expensive. The strategic reasons would have been related to a focus on users.
None of these point mention the end-users, and they don't buy stategies. A viable tablet from MS would have been better than Apple's, with as much software, cheaper without looking cheap, faster, with better battery life.
You might want to talk to Shelley Katz of Symphonova [http://www.symphonova.com/]. He's been working on integrating digitally produced music into an orchestra. The system uses an instrumented baton, and it should be possible to output a click track, or something more theremin-like, so that you can hear using an earbud what the conductor is indicating.
Your post reads like a mixture of trolling and ignorance. Maybe it's deliberate, or maybe it's a genuine lack of understanding. Let's deal with it point by point...
You should never use it, seriously.
Some users: The White House, The US Dept of Energy, NASA, Stanford Law School, the Grammies, as well as hundred's of thousands of less high-profile sites. Or we could believe you.
It's remarkably similar to early php in being a fractal of bad design.
At the heart of Drupal is a callback system, with registration by naming. This allows code written by different people to interact. Need to do something that nobody has done before? You hook into the data processing by writing a function with the right name, and return the result of your processing. That's with respect to stuff done in code, but you can a huge amount of what you'd like to do using click and point...
One core idea in Drupal is as much as possible to move the ability to do useful design work into the province of administrators. So if you need to record a new piece of info, you click and point, to add a new field to your existing database. Everything is taken care of, and it's immediately useful for storing and displaying data.
I guess you could call this a fractal of bad design if you believed that putting power into the hands of users was irrelevant.
They are slowly trying to improve it, but their attempts at improvements are woeful.
The development cycle runs at around 2 to 3 years for major releases, but that excludes modules, which are the packaged units of add-on functionality that extend Drupal. The last major version was 7 (and Drupal is 10 or 11 years old). The list of things that were added or changed are extensive. In fact this is one of the problems with Drupal - the rate of change can be too great.
Hundreds of tables with the most Byzantine schema you can imagine, even for incredibly simple needs
Yes, Drupal is a general purpose CMS. If you want a single table solution for a particular issue, you are free to write it, using one of the demo modules as a base. It's easy, and this is typically how Drupal in version 4 and 5 was extended, but if you take advantage of the click and point interface you end up with many more tables. You also have content versioning, the ability to have a multilingual site, the chance to add or remove fields from content by pointing and clicking, the chance to represent the content in different ways for different audiences. And more. I wouldn't say the scheme was Byzantine though, it's well documented in numerous places. All it takes is the willingness to read a bit.
Attempts to allow customers to define the db schema by adding fields etc
I guess you believe that customers should not have the ability to control the data they own. Nuff said.
Code in the db - that anyone ever thought this is a good idea is a huge red flag
I'm not sure what you are referring to. Maybe template caching? Maybe callback hook caching? Probably you mean the power user ability to turn on a PHP filter, which will allow PHP code as part of content. This by the way is turned off by default, and when it is turned on is subject to the Drupal permissions system which has fine-grained control over who can do what. Power users sometimes need powerful tools.
Upgrades are often incompatible
If you mean module updates, very infrequently in my experience. If the site you are working on is complex, maybe you need to run a development version too, or upgrade using an automated upgrade system. If you mean major version upgrades then, the promise is that Drupal may break your code, but will never break your data. That is, an upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 may require you to rebuild a custom component because of API changes, but will never destroy your data. A major version up
It looks to me like most the problems they are solving have already been solved. There are already several open source log-structured file systems. This list excludes experimental and similar software from educational institutions:
- Yaffs - http://www.yaffs.net/ - designed from the ground up for NAND
- JFFS2 - http://sourceware.org/jffs2/jffs2-html/jffs2-html.html - ditto.
- NANDFS - http://wiki.freebsd.org/NAND - BSD style licence
Plus there's Ext4 - which is used in Android now - not designed for NAND, but seems to work ok.
This work by Samsung fixes the problems with their previous file system. It's good, but it's not unique. Good PR though.
If you enjoy making software, and maybe running a team, then don't switch.
If you enjoy not knowing what's coming, dynamic situations with lots of change, and continually dealing with things that you haven't dealt with before, then change.
The money difference is not a big inducement, I'd say. Especially since you don't say how this new company will be funded - so you may be buying into 6 months of salary at 10% more, and then no job.
If after that you do think you are still interested in the job, it's really important to ask what you will control. If the big decisions are already made, and you are just a caretaker, then think twice as hard. Check how much budget you have. Check the constraints you'd be under. Check when you have to deliver software, and decide how viable it is. And ask for shares. A directorship without ownership is a fantastic way to load legal responsibility onto someone without the benefits of that responsibility. Culture of a company is important, what are your co-directors like? You'll set the tone for the people in your department - if you think they don't fit in, you'll be able to lose them - so that part of culture the culture is less important. The hat you wear as a director is completely different from making software; it's as table-tennis is to riding a bike.
Yep, I've done it. But it absolutely wouldn't be for everyone. Do the things that make you happy.
This is a classic crossing-a-chasm problem: the next set of users are not like the previous set of users. If you listen to the existing base, then you never make the leap to the next stage, you become pigeonholed and marginalised. When you hit that chasm breakpoint, you can't take all the old users with you - they aren't your future userbase.
The Start menu is just another UI choice. It's the one that you are used to because MS debuted the idea in Windows 95, but it's not the only possible choice. Nor is it necessarily the best... Computing has changed since 1995, and the UI should be appropriate to and work well with the form-factor, and we are in a phase where form factor is changing; the new computer is the tablet, the mobile phone, your glasses and your wallscreen. In ten years time your desktop and laptop will seem a bit like one of those pictures you see of mainframes.
Change is the one certainty in our industry. Go with it. Find better things, even if that means some wrong turnings and deadends along the way. But if we don't experiment we won't find something better.
"Documentation is a problem". Answer: we have an active documentation team. Documentation is not as good as it could be, but it never is. It's put together by volunteers, which makes it easy to contribute. Every module has a readme.txt. And there's a huge amount of documentation at . There are hundreds of videos - just last week all of drupalcon.org held in Munich was videoed and put online. And I note that the OP is a book review on another Drupal book.
"It's spaghetti code" Answer: The code is hugely well structured. It works on a callback-by-naming system, so there's no need to register callback functions, it happens automagically. Mostly, I think that this criticism comes from people who don't understand the architecture. It's not perfect - there is cruft - for instance there hasn't been a settled standard for code-level plugins - e.g. I want to rewrite the standard paging through lists, so that it works better for my site. That uses one style of plugin code. There are others. This is part of growing pain, and is ironed out with each version.
"It's not Object Orientated" Answer: Much, but not all of the code is OO, but was designed to work on PHP4 as well as PHP5. In time it will all be OO. But more importantly, OO is an idea to promote modularity and extensibility, which are notions that are built into the architecture. For instance, a pattern that is repeatedly used is the system of overrides by putting a well named piece of code in the right place.
"It's written on PHP" Yep. It's not as fast as C++. Or Java. It's also cheaper to write, easier to learn, runs on almost every webserver, and is a mutt of languages, rather like English. There are hundreds of developers who contribute to the core development and thousands who contribute to modules. I don't know of any open-source C++ CMSs with the same rate of growth. Hardware is cheaper than developers. Turns out that PHP is good enough for Facebook. (Yes, I know: Hiphop. That's optimization.)
"It's complicated and over-engineered" If you want a tool that is just a blog, then Wordpress is excellent. If you want a tool that grows with you, and can do anything you want then Drupal is probably going to work out better for you than many other tools. That's not to say that there aren't great Drupal blogs, but out-of-the-box, Wordpress is better than Drupal as a blog. But Drupal also has distros/install profiles, which are versions specialised for a particular job. And maybe one of those is a better match for your needs than the core version of Drupal.
"I'm a Joomla/Silverstripe/Wordpress/Perl/whatever user" Those are all excellent tools. You should carry on using what works for you. But if you are interested in what's happening elsewhere, then come by drupal.org and have a look around. Have a play with one of the pre-packaged versions like drupalgardens.com.
"I can make a CMS. Why do I need someone elses?" I too made and sold CMSs. Turns out that you can't compete with the rate of growth, the rate at which maintenance is done, or the availablity of add-ons.
"I've always been fine with my hammer and nail and plain HTML." Yep. You don't make websites that work on mobile phones. Or large websites. Or ones that change frequently. Or you make something which for which a completely custom solution is better: Drupal is never going to be the best forum software. If you just need a forum, then use specialist forum software. But if you need forums, and to put some pages up, and to have an image gallery, and to send SMSs on update, and...etc, then start with a tool that can grow.
"It looks terrible" It will look exactly how you want it to look. It's true that some other systems have many more off-the-shelf templates. And it's true that Drupal could be more designer-friendly, but shouldn't how your site looks reflect you?
"It does hardly anything - it doesn't even do Wysiwyg" When you install it, you get a bare-bones system, to which you add parts. The core is a framework to
A while ago I was going to post the ideas that follow in the comments of one of the Gnome developers, but I decided it was a bit impertinent, but here is less so.
As a Gnome user, it seems to me that Gnome lacks vision.
So, here's what I want: I want an environment that travels with me. I want it to work nicely on my desktop computer, my laptop, my large screens, my tablets, and any other devices I use, in public and private. I want a consistent interface - it doesn't have to be the same on all these devices, just consistent. I want my environment tailored to the device it's on at the moment whilst remaining familiar. I want my workspace to be available across all my devices - my gnomespace.
I want it to know about work and about play, and to be context sensitive.
When I'm using my work PC it should know that my entertainment folder is not something that needs to be available in an instant. If I'm sitting on the sofa at 7pm, interacting with my gnomespace using my tablet, then work is not important, but entertainment is. So, I want my devices to understand that there are levels of appropriateness according to the device, the location, who is around, and the screen. It should know that my screensaver with a family portrait is not appropriate during a business meeting, and definitely not when I am making a presentation.
We are going to live in a future where screens are plentiful - rather like pens and pencils now - they used to be expensive, now if you mistakenly walk away with a pen, it's no biggie. Screens will be everywhere - the interior walls of your house will be screens. So my devices need to know that they may be sharing the screens with other devices. Again - the context.
So, I want my gnomespace to have context awareness of the screens it is using... When I have my notebook to work with my gnomespace near a large screen in a public place, then the sensitive work documents that shouldn't be displayed on the public screen without checking. But I don't want to spend a lot of time dealing with this - the system should be able to figure it out.
I'm not an island and neither is my gnomespace. I should be able to share parts of my gnomespace. My gnomespace should also understand various relationships - for instance, if I work for a company then part of the gnomespace should belong to my company too, meaning that they should be able to access that part. And if I work for two companies then neither should be able to access the work of the other: gnomespace needs to be smart about relationships.
Gnomespace also needs to understand that people make mistakes: if I put the wrong thing in the wrong place then it should not be instantly visible to my company unless I permit it - maybe the lag should be 5 minutes. Similarly, permanent deletion, and other irreversible acts.
I own more than one device, that they should all work together as one, should be context aware, should understand my relationships.to people and places, and it should be tolerant of my mistakes.
That's a vision of what will move the idea of the desktop forward, making it more useful, and it's this sort of vision that I think that Gnome needs.
We, the users of the internet, don't want this treaty. It is only broadcasters who want this agreement, and we believe that the evidence is scant that there is a problem with broadcasting that would be solved with this treaty.
Please don't pursue a course of action which is going to end in many people questioning your legitimacy; it's not good for you, it's not good for the UN, and it's not good for the concept of copyright when there is overreaching by any party.
I think it does symmetry: have a look, not at the pictures on the linked page, but the pdfs, which are examples of what he was talking about. But you are quite right it's not simple and my comment should be downvoted, which is my punishment for a knee-jerk reaction. My apologies to Khalegh Mamakani and Frank Ruskey.
"Dr Edwards came up with an ingenious solution based on segmenting the surface of a sphere, beginning with the equator and the 0 and the +/- 90-degree meridians. It can be extended to an arbitrary number of sets by creating wobbly lines that cross the equator - starting with the pattern of stitching found on a tennis ball. You can unwrap the sphere back onto a plane and the sets still work."
It's last thing at night, my wife is immersed in some fictive on her Slate, and i've been watching TV, a rebuild of American Pie on mine. For a few years it was lame - it really didn't age well - but the rebuild is funny, because an AI has been spicing it up, and it's got Marilyn Monroe in it now, and she's still hot. And the soundtrack with New Beatles is kinda good too; John Lennon II - the AI clone - is really getting it right, and the music is going places it didn't when the Beatles were alive.
Boris, our AI housekeeper, has realised that I have to be up by 6am tomorrow, and I take it as a subtle hint that we should be turning in when he starts dimming the walls. "Hey, Boris", I mutter, "hang on for ten minutes." The walls brighten a little, he's bumped up the lightness of the wallpaper pattern. I say he, but I guess he's not really he. "Also, I've just remembered, I'm going to need the Mercury file on the plane tomorrow." No need to worry about that now; Boris will talk to my desk and get that moved to the slate I'm going to take with me tomorrow. I watch the last few minutes of the movie, and then get ready for bed. Liz is still engrossed in some historical fictive. Her and a bunch of friends have been writing a community set in the 18th century. It's not my cup of tea, but it's been getting great reviews from all the people following them. It's better soap than soap to be honest, and some of them are getting really famous now. A real bonus is that it's desperately hard to sneak product placement into historical drama. Lol. But they were offered trips to Vegas if they'd name a character in reference to the new Audi Scoot. I decide that it would be nice to have a glass of juice before bed, so I help myself to one, and then climb into bed next to Liz. At least I don't have to brush my teeth anymore. Not since I had that DentaZ treatment; all my enamel has been renewed, I've been vaccinated against caries, and my oral bacteria have been repopulated with a healthier batch. I give Liz a kiss and drift off to sleep to the sound of Liz subvocalising the plot for the next day for her character, Charlotte.
I wake hugely refreshed. Boris has organised the room lighting so that it's timed to my sleep cycle. The interesting bits of the news are cycling up the wall, and there's a note that I wrote to myself to take a phone. That's not something I normally carry, but I'm going to need some privacy. After showering, it's straight into the car. It will arrange to pick up breakfast on the way. I work while it's driving. It's pretty quick once we join the cartrain. I forgot my work Slate at home. I guess I was still dozy, but I get the car to pull the Mercury file up onto the windscreen, and the dash screen. I start by reading the summary that the office AI has provided. It's also given a tree of the most important bits, so I have a look through the tree. About half way through I realise that I don't understand how the deal is structured, so I call the office AI, and ask. She explains that she has spoken to Mercury's AIs, and they've come up with 3 scenario deals, and that this one is the primary. I ask her about how we'll be handling things going forward if we can agree the deal, and she flashes some graphs to my car screen. We agree to chat later in the day.
By the time I get to the airport, it's only 15 minutes before my flight. I've been precleared for everything. It's a bit weird actually getting on a plane. It's been at least two years since I had any face-to-face meetings but this one is too important to leave to tele. I walk straight to the gate. I've been scanned thoroughly ever since we reached the road to the airport. I've been profiled, the car vouched for me, Boris has, my movements over the last 4 years have been analysed. The airport know I am me.
After I've boarded the plane I get my phone out, and flick it at my seat screen, so it knows that I want to use that. It's not as smart as a Slate, but it can talk to the seat adequately, and it was keeping an eye on what was going on with the car
Value is more than one thing in a language
on
The PHP Singularity
·
· Score: 1
The OP thinks that the value of a language is chiefly technical, but that's not the whole story.
The value of a language is made up of: - The value embedded in its ecosystem of developers - both core and users - The value of its libraries - The value/cost of deployment - The cost of maintenance - The cost of adoption - how much does it cost to bring a new person up to speed - The technical elegance of the language - The costs associated with a failure - And probably some things that I've forgotten, or which are specific to a particular project
For a particular project, each of these things have relevance with different weights - so it doesn't matter how messy a language is if the value in everything else outweighs the problems caused by the inelegance of PHP (or any other language).
A viable replacement for PHP (or any language) has to provide 10x the benefit for a class of problems to be taken up at any scale; for anything less than that the risks of using the new language are outweighed. It turns out that this is very very hard to do: there are still many COBOL systems; new programs are still written for Fortran; and Lisp, and Lisp derivatives, despite their beauty, have not taken over the world.
What propels a language to glory is its ability to dominate a niche while that niche is growing, but once that niche has reached stability, or perhaps a critical mass, it's next to impossible to dislodge. Don't look to see PHP go away while traditional web is important.
So, if the OP is really interested in languages that are better than PHP, looking at web development as a whole is unlikely to be successful. But a language that engaged a growing niche which PHP will need to compete for at least has some chance of succeeding. The closest possible thing I can think of at the moment would be a language which was fantastically well-adapted to HTML5. Or maybe one that understood dynamic layout in its bones. Or was very well adapted to mobile or mobile web.
Other than those possible areas, to grow a language, it had better target a new form factor problem/niche - e.g. virtual reality/Google glasses.
Because I suggested something very similar to CMP when Dr Dobbs was failing in slow motion: codes with the magazine to gain access to online resources.
Oracle's ludicrous claims in the Oracle/Google Android trial have shown that they are not trustworthy. Do not base your work on a base where you can be ransomed. No more Java.:-( And when you read Java stories, wonder to yourself every time whether it's the Oracle PR department astroturfing Java stories in an attempt to make Java appear relevant or to attempt to repair the damage.
Microsoft and Intel are companies that have a co-dependent relationship: MS depends on Intel to bring out new chips - driving better computers, because when someone buys a new computer they pay the Windows tax. But Intel got into bed with Apple too, because being dependent on MS alone is an uncomfortable place to be; remember what happened to [fill in your own long list of companies]. So MS needed to explain to Intel who is in charge in the relationship. And spending a few million dollars to make a version of Windows which does not depend on Intel is a good way to do it. It's got other benefits too: it might spur Intel into making an i86 architecture chip and chipset that can compete with Apple A-series (something intel is not keen on doing, apparently, or we'd have seen it), it strings ARM along for a bit, it's a useful cloak for any antitrust investigation into the relationship between Intel and Microsoft, it reminds Apple that encroaching on Windows territory is a bad idea, it provides an option for future development, and it's good for PR because journalists love to talk about new goodies.
All-in-all a pretty good strategic list of why you'd want to do this. And only costing a few million.
Of course you don't want to have a properly working version because that _really would_ jeopardize the relationship with Intel. So you make sure it's incompatible with Windows-proper in a variety of ways, like being unable to run Windows programs without extra work, and you make sure that in the existing form it doesn't threaten the business market.
But maybe you privately demo to Intel versions that can do these things.
And if that doesn't interest you, your degree is most valuable in the year or so after you've gained it, until you have experience of your chosen field. If you don't want to study more, perhaps something where you can leverage the degree to gain operational IT experience - for instance something in user interface design. There are consultancies which specialise in this. Look for opportunities which leverage your degree.
Ethics sidenote: When you have simulated a brain and you killall on the processes, have you just done a bad thing? At what point is the cat simulation conscious? And should we be concerned about live animal experimentation? Now there's still a lot we have to learn about the ways that brains work - just look at the recently proposed microtubule idea for memory (can't find the original reference where I read about it, but Google shows a few results), but I think we are on the cusp of the where questions like this matter. Maybe models need aging built in, so that the cat dies a simulated death. And then there's the issue of whether keeping a conciousness in isolation is cruel. Should the simulation have simulated toys? Companions? Food?
If there was ever a site which was in jeopardy, it would be slashdot. Why is Slashdot not participating in the SOPA blackout? Does this mean that Geeknet Inc is a SOPA supporter? Please can we have a statement.
DragonFly/Hammer - http://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/ includes dedup. Competitor to ZFS and Btrfs, also using Btree. Includes block level dedup, but I'm not sure if it's fixed block or not. Suspect it is fixed.
Btrfs - there's a patch. Not sure if it's in mainlined yet. But without fsck btfs is not trustworthy enough. That's coming soon, but has been for a while. In case you read this as being negative about btrfs, it's not; it's an awesome file system, combining modern ideas and an excellent implementation, but it's still at testing stage for critical data.
BackupPC, the next version may have block level dedup, it's been suggested/requested. Numerous people pointed out the hard linking scheme it uses. I'm backing up VM images, which is what started me on this block-level dedup search, and when you have a small change in a 60BG file, it's a new file. (Yes, I have thought of schemes to split them.)
Bacula have been experimenting with block level dedup, fixed and sliding. May be in future versions.
Bup - https://github.com/apenwarr/bup has many of the ideas. It's not a file system, but could be reconstructed, I think. Based on Git store. I recommend reading http://apenwarr.ca/log/ which has more, and is entertaining. I think this is an excellent approach. Read back in his blog for details on bup ideas.
By fixed block I mean that the file system does not search out shared data when the blocks are not on block boundaries. So if you add one byte to the beginning of a 10 GB file, and that has the unfortunate consequence of rippling up through all the blocks that make the file, then there will be no block level sharing with the original file. Of course that's a pathological case, but you get the idea.
Original poster, perhaps you could keep us informed of your findings? There's at least me who is also interested.
Firstly, he thinks that consumers are stupid: "They don’t know what they hate. All they know is they buy phone service from mobile carriers and/or buy a phone from a carrier. They love speeds & feeds and will generally buy anything they are told to by television ads and RSPs (Retail Sales Professionals)."
No: consumers ask their friends. Their friends are Slashdot readers. They know full-well what a phone Market dominated by Microsoft would look like, they know how Microsoft has behaved. Repeatedly. And they are not going to recommend a MS phone to anyone: friends don't screw friends. They all know it's just about protecting the desktop market, and the moment that MS has achieved that objective they'll screw the user. The clue is in the name: 'Windows Phone'.
Secondly: "My hypothesis is that it also enables too much fragmentation that will eventually drive end users nuts." I guess that's how it's worked out for x86 choice in the face of the Apple desktop monoculture. Nope? It turns out that we value openness. It's one of the variables we play with when making a choice between systems: given all else equal, we'll choose the system that's more open. Advantages of openness far outweigh the disadvantages like fragmentation. So all that Google has to do is keep Android at rough parity with Apple in terms of UI/features. But they are doing better than parity - it's cheaper for better.
Thirdly: Carriers know full well what happens to companies who partner with Microsoft. And so do device manufacturers. I guess some companies (cough, Nokia, cough), like the idea of handing their future to Microsoft, but it turns out that most think that's a bad idea. Sendo, anyone?
Then I'm sure we can find a bunch of people who will dispute that WP is the best technically. Form an orderly queue in the replies please.
But finally, even if you were to consider that WP was technically the best, the idea that the best tech is the winner has been roundly disproved again and again. Everyone, including Charlie Kindel, knows it's about the whole package. We all know that MS on the desktop isn't the best technically (it can't be - it has to satisfy everyone) but it is the best at the whole package.
If this research is validated, then there may be implications for UI design...
Gnome 3, for example, works using an application space focus, rather than a window focus. In one way that's quite appealing - it gives you full focus on the task at hand without the distraction of the 12 other programs you are running at the same time. The problem that lots of people have reported/commented on is that it makes it very difficult to be task focused when a task involves more than one program. Part of this may be to do with the doorway context switch impeding short term memory retention on the task at hand.
I've used Gnome 3 as an example, but it's far from alone; Metro & Apple full-screen apps spring to mind, though there's a mitigation with Apple full-screen in that it's not forced upon you.
I wonder if there's a way to enjoy the focus of application-centricity without the disadvantages? For instance, I can imagine keeping a map of the other applications visible, or a representation of the overall desktop/workspace, as you move th'rough the doorway between applications, and/or as you work in an application space. (Slashdot, you may want to vote this up so that it isn't deleted when this item is archived, so that there's some evidence of prior art when large megacorp tries to patent this UI idea.)
Something like that might be enough to jog short term memory and stop the context loss.
Or of course, we could decide that window centric works best, but work on ways to easily group windows into tasks.
Workspaces/Desktops are one way to accomplish this. The problem that I find with workspaces is that they are a clumsy way to manage tasks when I have an application that spans different tasks. But on the other hand, actively managing windows by marking and grouping them introduces unwelcome management overhead.
I would welcome a system whereby windows and applications were grouped together, either automatically or on the cue of the user, by virtue of the fact that they had been used together. (Again - oh no megacorp! - more prior art! ) For instance, one embodiment of this might be to group windows or applications based on the transfer of info between them. Cut and paste for example shows a transfer of info, and could be used as an indicator of affinity.
Firstly, the landscape is constantly evolving, and some of what I say below reflects the current situation for Drupal 7. It may not be the same in six months time.
You need to decide: Do you want very clean, targeted HTML and CSS? Or do you want as many options as possible in the CSS, and don't mind the cost of many wrapping divs and CSS with many overrides?
If it's the latter, then you will likely want to work from one of the starter themes, sculpting the CSS and templates to suit your design. Try the Stark (shipped with Drupal 7), Clean, Boron and Basic themes.
Or if it's the former then you will likely want to either build the theme from scratch or work from one of the minimal themes, and build up to cater for your exact requirements. Omega, Zen, Adaptive, Genesis and Fusion are all good bets.
You need to decide whether your design is grid-based or not. If it is grid-based, then it's easier to use a theme with built-in grid support. (Or you can add grid support to a theme which doesn't have it.) If your design is not gridded, then you are probably best-off not using a gridded theme (though of course you could override the grid classes to remove the grid.)
If it's grid-based, then the best is probably Omega, but 960 is worth a look. For non-gridded, Stark, Clean, Basic, Zen, Adaptive, Genesis and Fusion are all still ok.
You need to decide whether mobile support, HTML5, and adaptive theming are critical or not. Of course you can override the templates a theme provides, to include any of these, but starting off with a theme with them built-in will be easier for most people.
If any of these are critical, and you aren't interested in building in support yourself, then Omega, Adaptive, Genesis, Boron and Fusion have support for some or all of these features.
At the moment, if a maximal theme, with grid support is what interests you most, Omega is the best imo. The cost is that it's big, and complex.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a mistake to think that the RT was the real product.
Reasons to have the RT:
1. As a reminder to Intel that MS controls the ecosystem
2. To remind hardware manufacturers who is boss.
3. As a way to blunt the rise of tablets from Apple and Android by introducing confusion.
4. As a potential future growth path - an option.
Reasons not to have RT:
1. Anything that takes sales away from Windows on PCs is bad. That's where the money is.
2. Anything that drives down the cost of hardware is bad; when the Window tax is a large percentage of the cost of a machine, it looks like Windows is too expensive. The strategic reasons would have been related to a focus on users.
None of these point mention the end-users, and they don't buy stategies. A viable tablet from MS would have been better than Apple's, with as much software, cheaper without looking cheap, faster, with better battery life.
You might want to talk to Shelley Katz of Symphonova [http://www.symphonova.com/]. He's been working on integrating digitally produced music into an orchestra. The system uses an instrumented baton, and it should be possible to output a click track, or something more theremin-like, so that you can hear using an earbud what the conductor is indicating.
Your post reads like a mixture of trolling and ignorance. Maybe it's deliberate, or maybe it's a genuine lack of understanding. Let's deal with it point by point...
You should never use it, seriously.
Some users: The White House, The US Dept of Energy, NASA, Stanford Law School, the Grammies, as well as hundred's of thousands of less high-profile sites. Or we could believe you.
It's remarkably similar to early php in being a fractal of bad design.
At the heart of Drupal is a callback system, with registration by naming. This allows code written by different people to interact. Need to do something that nobody has done before? You hook into the data processing by writing a function with the right name, and return the result of your processing. That's with respect to stuff done in code, but you can a huge amount of what you'd like to do using click and point...
One core idea in Drupal is as much as possible to move the ability to do useful design work into the province of administrators. So if you need to record a new piece of info, you click and point, to add a new field to your existing database. Everything is taken care of, and it's immediately useful for storing and displaying data.
I guess you could call this a fractal of bad design if you believed that putting power into the hands of users was irrelevant.
They are slowly trying to improve it, but their attempts at improvements are woeful.
The development cycle runs at around 2 to 3 years for major releases, but that excludes modules, which are the packaged units of add-on functionality that extend Drupal. The last major version was 7 (and Drupal is 10 or 11 years old). The list of things that were added or changed are extensive. In fact this is one of the problems with Drupal - the rate of change can be too great.
Hundreds of tables with the most Byzantine schema you can imagine, even for incredibly simple needs
Yes, Drupal is a general purpose CMS. If you want a single table solution for a particular issue, you are free to write it, using one of the demo modules as a base. It's easy, and this is typically how Drupal in version 4 and 5 was extended, but if you take advantage of the click and point interface you end up with many more tables. You also have content versioning, the ability to have a multilingual site, the chance to add or remove fields from content by pointing and clicking, the chance to represent the content in different ways for different audiences. And more. I wouldn't say the scheme was Byzantine though, it's well documented in numerous places. All it takes is the willingness to read a bit.
Attempts to allow customers to define the db schema by adding fields etc
I guess you believe that customers should not have the ability to control the data they own. Nuff said.
Code in the db - that anyone ever thought this is a good idea is a huge red flag
I'm not sure what you are referring to. Maybe template caching? Maybe callback hook caching? Probably you mean the power user ability to turn on a PHP filter, which will allow PHP code as part of content. This by the way is turned off by default, and when it is turned on is subject to the Drupal permissions system which has fine-grained control over who can do what. Power users sometimes need powerful tools.
Upgrades are often incompatible
If you mean module updates, very infrequently in my experience. If the site you are working on is complex, maybe you need to run a development version too, or upgrade using an automated upgrade system. If you mean major version upgrades then, the promise is that Drupal may break your code, but will never break your data. That is, an upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 may require you to rebuild a custom component because of API changes, but will never destroy your data. A major version up
It looks to me like most the problems they are solving have already been solved. There are already several open source log-structured file systems. This list excludes experimental and similar software from educational institutions:
- Yaffs - http://www.yaffs.net/ - designed from the ground up for NAND
- JFFS2 - http://sourceware.org/jffs2/jffs2-html/jffs2-html.html - ditto.
- NANDFS - http://wiki.freebsd.org/NAND - BSD style licence
Plus there's Ext4 - which is used in Android now - not designed for NAND, but seems to work ok.
This work by Samsung fixes the problems with their previous file system. It's good, but it's not unique. Good PR though.
What are your drivers?
If you enjoy making software, and maybe running a team, then don't switch.
If you enjoy not knowing what's coming, dynamic situations with lots of change, and continually dealing with things that you haven't dealt with before, then change.
The money difference is not a big inducement, I'd say. Especially since you don't say how this new company will be funded - so you may be buying into 6 months of salary at 10% more, and then no job.
If after that you do think you are still interested in the job, it's really important to ask what you will control. If the big decisions are already made, and you are just a caretaker, then think twice as hard. Check how much budget you have. Check the constraints you'd be under. Check when you have to deliver software, and decide how viable it is. And ask for shares. A directorship without ownership is a fantastic way to load legal responsibility onto someone without the benefits of that responsibility. Culture of a company is important, what are your co-directors like? You'll set the tone for the people in your department - if you think they don't fit in, you'll be able to lose them - so that part of culture the culture is less important. The hat you wear as a director is completely different from making software; it's as table-tennis is to riding a bike.
Yep, I've done it. But it absolutely wouldn't be for everyone. Do the things that make you happy.
This is a classic crossing-a-chasm problem: the next set of users are not like the previous set of users. If you listen to the existing base, then you never make the leap to the next stage, you become pigeonholed and marginalised. When you hit that chasm breakpoint, you can't take all the old users with you - they aren't your future userbase.
The Start menu is just another UI choice. It's the one that you are used to because MS debuted the idea in Windows 95, but it's not the only possible choice. Nor is it necessarily the best... Computing has changed since 1995, and the UI should be appropriate to and work well with the form-factor, and we are in a phase where form factor is changing; the new computer is the tablet, the mobile phone, your glasses and your wallscreen. In ten years time your desktop and laptop will seem a bit like one of those pictures you see of mainframes.
Change is the one certainty in our industry. Go with it. Find better things, even if that means some wrong turnings and deadends along the way. But if we don't experiment we won't find something better.
Doesn't matter how many times I check my writing, the moment I post, I discover something wrong. :-(
"And there's a huge amount of documentation at " http://drupal.org/documentation.
Drupal haters say:
"Documentation is a problem".
Answer: we have an active documentation team. Documentation is not as good as it could be, but it never is. It's put together by volunteers, which makes it easy to contribute. Every module has a readme.txt. And there's a huge amount of documentation at . There are hundreds of videos - just last week all of drupalcon.org held in Munich was videoed and put online. And I note that the OP is a book review on another Drupal book.
"It's spaghetti code"
Answer: The code is hugely well structured. It works on a callback-by-naming system, so there's no need to register callback functions, it happens automagically. Mostly, I think that this criticism comes from people who don't understand the architecture. It's not perfect - there is cruft - for instance there hasn't been a settled standard for code-level plugins - e.g. I want to rewrite the standard paging through lists, so that it works better for my site. That uses one style of plugin code. There are others. This is part of growing pain, and is ironed out with each version.
"It's not Object Orientated"
Answer: Much, but not all of the code is OO, but was designed to work on PHP4 as well as PHP5. In time it will all be OO. But more importantly, OO is an idea to promote modularity and extensibility, which are notions that are built into the architecture. For instance, a pattern that is repeatedly used is the system of overrides by putting a well named piece of code in the right place.
"It's written on PHP"
Yep. It's not as fast as C++. Or Java. It's also cheaper to write, easier to learn, runs on almost every webserver, and is a mutt of languages, rather like English. There are hundreds of developers who contribute to the core development and thousands who contribute to modules. I don't know of any open-source C++ CMSs with the same rate of growth. Hardware is cheaper than developers. Turns out that PHP is good enough for Facebook. (Yes, I know: Hiphop. That's optimization.)
"It's complicated and over-engineered"
If you want a tool that is just a blog, then Wordpress is excellent. If you want a tool that grows with you, and can do anything you want then Drupal is probably going to work out better for you than many other tools. That's not to say that there aren't great Drupal blogs, but out-of-the-box, Wordpress is better than Drupal as a blog. But Drupal also has distros/install profiles, which are versions specialised for a particular job. And maybe one of those is a better match for your needs than the core version of Drupal.
"I'm a Joomla/Silverstripe/Wordpress/Perl/whatever user"
Those are all excellent tools. You should carry on using what works for you. But if you are interested in what's happening elsewhere, then come by drupal.org and have a look around. Have a play with one of the pre-packaged versions like drupalgardens.com.
"I can make a CMS. Why do I need someone elses?"
I too made and sold CMSs. Turns out that you can't compete with the rate of growth, the rate at which maintenance is done, or the availablity of add-ons.
"I've always been fine with my hammer and nail and plain HTML."
Yep. You don't make websites that work on mobile phones. Or large websites. Or ones that change frequently. Or you make something which for which a completely custom solution is better: Drupal is never going to be the best forum software. If you just need a forum, then use specialist forum software. But if you need forums, and to put some pages up, and to have an image gallery, and to send SMSs on update, and...etc, then start with a tool that can grow.
"It looks terrible"
It will look exactly how you want it to look. It's true that some other systems have many more off-the-shelf templates. And it's true that Drupal could be more designer-friendly, but shouldn't how your site looks reflect you?
"It does hardly anything - it doesn't even do Wysiwyg"
When you install it, you get a bare-bones system, to which you add parts. The core is a framework to
A while ago I was going to post the ideas that follow in the comments of one of the Gnome developers, but I decided it was a bit impertinent, but here is less so.
As a Gnome user, it seems to me that Gnome lacks vision.
So, here's what I want: I want an environment that travels with me. I want it to work nicely on my desktop computer, my laptop, my large screens, my tablets, and any other devices I use, in public and private. I want a consistent interface - it doesn't have to be the same on all these devices, just consistent. I want my environment tailored to the device it's on at the moment whilst remaining familiar. I want my workspace to be available across all my devices - my gnomespace.
I want it to know about work and about play, and to be context sensitive.
When I'm using my work PC it should know that my entertainment folder is not something that needs to be available in an instant. If I'm sitting on the sofa at 7pm, interacting with my gnomespace using my tablet, then work is not important, but entertainment is. So, I want my devices to understand that there are levels of appropriateness according to the device, the location, who is around, and the screen. It should know that my screensaver with a family portrait is not appropriate during a business meeting, and definitely not when I am making a presentation.
We are going to live in a future where screens are plentiful - rather like pens and pencils now - they used to be expensive, now if you mistakenly walk away with a pen, it's no biggie. Screens will be everywhere - the interior walls of your house will be screens. So my devices need to know that they may be sharing the screens with other devices. Again - the context.
So, I want my gnomespace to have context awareness of the screens it is using... When I have my notebook to work with my gnomespace near a large screen in a public place, then the sensitive work documents that shouldn't be displayed on the public screen without checking. But I don't want to spend a lot of time dealing with this - the system should be able to figure it out.
I'm not an island and neither is my gnomespace. I should be able to share parts of my gnomespace. My gnomespace should also understand various relationships - for instance, if I work for a company then part of the gnomespace should belong to my company too, meaning that they should be able to access that part. And if I work for two companies then neither should be able to access the work of the other: gnomespace needs to be smart about relationships.
Gnomespace also needs to understand that people make mistakes: if I put the wrong thing in the wrong place then it should not be instantly visible to my company unless I permit it - maybe the lag should be 5 minutes. Similarly, permanent deletion, and other irreversible acts.
I own more than one device, that they should all work together as one, should be context aware, should understand my relationships.to people and places, and it should be tolerant of my mistakes.
That's a vision of what will move the idea of the desktop forward, making it more useful, and it's this sort of vision that I think that Gnome needs.
Dear WIPO,
We, the users of the internet, don't want this treaty. It is only broadcasters who want this agreement, and we believe that the evidence is scant that there is a problem with broadcasting that would be solved with this treaty.
Please don't pursue a course of action which is going to end in many people questioning your legitimacy; it's not good for you, it's not good for the UN, and it's not good for the concept of copyright when there is overreaching by any party.
Yours,
The Internet.
I think it does symmetry: have a look, not at the pictures on the linked page, but the pdfs, which are examples of what he was talking about. But you are quite right it's not simple and my comment should be downvoted, which is my punishment for a knee-jerk reaction. My apologies to Khalegh Mamakani and Frank Ruskey.
In 1989 Anthony Edwards figured out how to make Venn diagrams of arbitrary size: http://www.qandr.org/quentin/software/venn
"Dr Edwards came up with an ingenious solution based on segmenting the surface of a sphere, beginning with the equator and the 0 and the +/- 90-degree meridians. It can be extended to an arbitrary number of sets by creating wobbly lines that cross the equator - starting with the pattern of stitching found on a tennis ball. You can unwrap the sphere back onto a plane and the sets still work."
It's last thing at night, my wife is immersed in some fictive on her Slate, and i've been watching TV, a rebuild of American Pie on mine. For a few years it was lame - it really didn't age well - but the rebuild is funny, because an AI has been spicing it up, and it's got Marilyn Monroe in it now, and she's still hot. And the soundtrack with New Beatles is kinda good too; John Lennon II - the AI clone - is really getting it right, and the music is going places it didn't when the Beatles were alive.
Boris, our AI housekeeper, has realised that I have to be up by 6am tomorrow, and I take it as a subtle hint that we should be turning in when he starts dimming the walls. "Hey, Boris", I mutter, "hang on for ten minutes." The walls brighten a little, he's bumped up the lightness of the wallpaper pattern. I say he, but I guess he's not really he. "Also, I've just remembered, I'm going to need the Mercury file on the plane tomorrow." No need to worry about that now; Boris will talk to my desk and get that moved to the slate I'm going to take with me tomorrow. I watch the last few minutes of the movie, and then get ready for bed. Liz is still engrossed in some historical fictive. Her and a bunch of friends have been writing a community set in the 18th century. It's not my cup of tea, but it's been getting great reviews from all the people following them. It's better soap than soap to be honest, and some of them are getting really famous now. A real bonus is that it's desperately hard to sneak product placement into historical drama. Lol. But they were offered trips to Vegas if they'd name a character in reference to the new Audi Scoot. I decide that it would be nice to have a glass of juice before bed, so I help myself to one, and then climb into bed next to Liz. At least I don't have to brush my teeth anymore. Not since I had that DentaZ treatment; all my enamel has been renewed, I've been vaccinated against caries, and my oral bacteria have been repopulated with a healthier batch. I give Liz a kiss and drift off to sleep to the sound of Liz subvocalising the plot for the next day for her character, Charlotte.
I wake hugely refreshed. Boris has organised the room lighting so that it's timed to my sleep cycle. The interesting bits of the news are cycling up the wall, and there's a note that I wrote to myself to take a phone. That's not something I normally carry, but I'm going to need some privacy. After showering, it's straight into the car. It will arrange to pick up breakfast on the way. I work while it's driving. It's pretty quick once we join the cartrain. I forgot my work Slate at home. I guess I was still dozy, but I get the car to pull the Mercury file up onto the windscreen, and the dash screen. I start by reading the summary that the office AI has provided. It's also given a tree of the most important bits, so I have a look through the tree. About half way through I realise that I don't understand how the deal is structured, so I call the office AI, and ask. She explains that she has spoken to Mercury's AIs, and they've come up with 3 scenario deals, and that this one is the primary. I ask her about how we'll be handling things going forward if we can agree the deal, and she flashes some graphs to my car screen. We agree to chat later in the day.
By the time I get to the airport, it's only 15 minutes before my flight. I've been precleared for everything. It's a bit weird actually getting on a plane. It's been at least two years since I had any face-to-face meetings but this one is too important to leave to tele. I walk straight to the gate. I've been scanned thoroughly ever since we reached the road to the airport. I've been profiled, the car vouched for me, Boris has, my movements over the last 4 years have been analysed. The airport know I am me.
After I've boarded the plane I get my phone out, and flick it at my seat screen, so it knows that I want to use that. It's not as smart as a Slate, but it can talk to the seat adequately, and it was keeping an eye on what was going on with the car
The OP thinks that the value of a language is chiefly technical, but that's not the whole story.
The value of a language is made up of:
- The value embedded in its ecosystem of developers - both core and users
- The value of its libraries
- The value/cost of deployment
- The cost of maintenance
- The cost of adoption - how much does it cost to bring a new person up to speed
- The technical elegance of the language
- The costs associated with a failure
- And probably some things that I've forgotten, or which are specific to a particular project
For a particular project, each of these things have relevance with different weights - so it doesn't matter how messy a language is if the value in everything else outweighs the problems caused by the inelegance of PHP (or any other language).
A viable replacement for PHP (or any language) has to provide 10x the benefit for a class of problems to be taken up at any scale; for anything less than that the risks of using the new language are outweighed. It turns out that this is very very hard to do: there are still many COBOL systems; new programs are still written for Fortran; and Lisp, and Lisp derivatives, despite their beauty, have not taken over the world.
What propels a language to glory is its ability to dominate a niche while that niche is growing, but once that niche has reached stability, or perhaps a critical mass, it's next to impossible to dislodge. Don't look to see PHP go away while traditional web is important.
So, if the OP is really interested in languages that are better than PHP, looking at web development as a whole is unlikely to be successful. But a language that engaged a growing niche which PHP will need to compete for at least has some chance of succeeding. The closest possible thing I can think of at the moment would be a language which was fantastically well-adapted to HTML5. Or maybe one that understood dynamic layout in its bones. Or was very well adapted to mobile or mobile web.
Other than those possible areas, to grow a language, it had better target a new form factor problem/niche - e.g. virtual reality/Google glasses.
Because I suggested something very similar to CMP when Dr Dobbs was failing in slow motion: codes with the magazine to gain access to online resources.
Nuff said.
Oracle's ludicrous claims in the Oracle/Google Android trial have shown that they are not trustworthy. Do not base your work on a base where you can be ransomed. No more Java. :-( And when you read Java stories, wonder to yourself every time whether it's the Oracle PR department astroturfing Java stories in an attempt to make Java appear relevant or to attempt to repair the damage.
Strategy is where it's at.
Microsoft and Intel are companies that have a co-dependent relationship: MS depends on Intel to bring out new chips - driving better computers, because when someone buys a new computer they pay the Windows tax. But Intel got into bed with Apple too, because being dependent on MS alone is an uncomfortable place to be; remember what happened to [fill in your own long list of companies]. So MS needed to explain to Intel who is in charge in the relationship. And spending a few million dollars to make a version of Windows which does not depend on Intel is a good way to do it. It's got other benefits too: it might spur Intel into making an i86 architecture chip and chipset that can compete with Apple A-series (something intel is not keen on doing, apparently, or we'd have seen it), it strings ARM along for a bit, it's a useful cloak for any antitrust investigation into the relationship between Intel and Microsoft, it reminds Apple that encroaching on Windows territory is a bad idea, it provides an option for future development, and it's good for PR because journalists love to talk about new goodies.
All-in-all a pretty good strategic list of why you'd want to do this. And only costing a few million.
Of course you don't want to have a properly working version because that _really would_ jeopardize the relationship with Intel. So you make sure it's incompatible with Windows-proper in a variety of ways, like being unable to run Windows programs without extra work, and you make sure that in the existing form it doesn't threaten the business market.
But maybe you privately demo to Intel versions that can do these things.
Go get a masters in CS, then apply to IBM: pretty soon now they are going to need people who have psych & CS to work with the human & animal simulations. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=graphic-science-ibm-simulates-4-percent-human-brain-all-of-cat-brain
And if that doesn't interest you, your degree is most valuable in the year or so after you've gained it, until you have experience of your chosen field. If you don't want to study more, perhaps something where you can leverage the degree to gain operational IT experience - for instance something in user interface design. There are consultancies which specialise in this. Look for opportunities which leverage your degree.
Ethics sidenote: When you have simulated a brain and you killall on the processes, have you just done a bad thing? At what point is the cat simulation conscious? And should we be concerned about live animal experimentation? Now there's still a lot we have to learn about the ways that brains work - just look at the recently proposed microtubule idea for memory (can't find the original reference where I read about it, but Google shows a few results), but I think we are on the cusp of the where questions like this matter. Maybe models need aging built in, so that the cat dies a simulated death. And then there's the issue of whether keeping a conciousness in isolation is cruel. Should the simulation have simulated toys? Companions? Food?
If there was ever a site which was in jeopardy, it would be slashdot. Why is Slashdot not participating in the SOPA blackout? Does this mean that Geeknet Inc is a SOPA supporter? Please can we have a statement.
I was doing similar research a few days ago.
Some of these are already mentioned...
Other stuff:
By fixed block I mean that the file system does not search out shared data when the blocks are not on block boundaries. So if you add one byte to the beginning of a 10 GB file, and that has the unfortunate consequence of rippling up through all the blocks that make the file, then there will be no block level sharing with the original file. Of course that's a pathological case, but you get the idea.
Original poster, perhaps you could keep us informed of your findings? There's at least me who is also interested.
Firstly, he thinks that consumers are stupid: "They don’t know what they hate. All they know is they buy phone service from mobile carriers and/or buy a phone from a carrier. They love speeds & feeds and will generally buy anything they are told to by television ads and RSPs (Retail Sales Professionals)."
No: consumers ask their friends. Their friends are Slashdot readers. They know full-well what a phone Market dominated by Microsoft would look like, they know how Microsoft has behaved. Repeatedly. And they are not going to recommend a MS phone to anyone: friends don't screw friends. They all know it's just about protecting the desktop market, and the moment that MS has achieved that objective they'll screw the user. The clue is in the name: 'Windows Phone'.
Secondly: "My hypothesis is that it also enables too much fragmentation that will eventually drive end users nuts." I guess that's how it's worked out for x86 choice in the face of the Apple desktop monoculture. Nope? It turns out that we value openness. It's one of the variables we play with when making a choice between systems: given all else equal, we'll choose the system that's more open. Advantages of openness far outweigh the disadvantages like fragmentation. So all that Google has to do is keep Android at rough parity with Apple in terms of UI/features. But they are doing better than parity - it's cheaper for better.
Thirdly: Carriers know full well what happens to companies who partner with Microsoft. And so do device manufacturers. I guess some companies (cough, Nokia, cough), like the idea of handing their future to Microsoft, but it turns out that most think that's a bad idea. Sendo, anyone?
Then I'm sure we can find a bunch of people who will dispute that WP is the best technically. Form an orderly queue in the replies please.
But finally, even if you were to consider that WP was technically the best, the idea that the best tech is the winner has been roundly disproved again and again. Everyone, including Charlie Kindel, knows it's about the whole package. We all know that MS on the desktop isn't the best technically (it can't be - it has to satisfy everyone) but it is the best at the whole package.
If this research is validated, then there may be implications for UI design...
Gnome 3, for example, works using an application space focus, rather than a window focus. In one way that's quite appealing - it gives you full focus on the task at hand without the distraction of the 12 other programs you are running at the same time. The problem that lots of people have reported/commented on is that it makes it very difficult to be task focused when a task involves more than one program. Part of this may be to do with the doorway context switch impeding short term memory retention on the task at hand.
I've used Gnome 3 as an example, but it's far from alone; Metro & Apple full-screen apps spring to mind, though there's a mitigation with Apple full-screen in that it's not forced upon you.
I wonder if there's a way to enjoy the focus of application-centricity without the disadvantages? For instance, I can imagine keeping a map of the other applications visible, or a representation of the overall desktop/workspace, as you move th'rough the doorway between applications, and/or as you work in an application space. (Slashdot, you may want to vote this up so that it isn't deleted when this item is archived, so that there's some evidence of prior art when large megacorp tries to patent this UI idea.)
Something like that might be enough to jog short term memory and stop the context loss.
Or of course, we could decide that window centric works best, but work on ways to easily group windows into tasks.
Workspaces/Desktops are one way to accomplish this. The problem that I find with workspaces is that they are a clumsy way to manage tasks when I have an application that spans different tasks. But on the other hand, actively managing windows by marking and grouping them introduces unwelcome management overhead.
I would welcome a system whereby windows and applications were grouped together, either automatically or on the cue of the user, by virtue of the fact that they had been used together. (Again - oh no megacorp! - more prior art! ) For instance, one embodiment of this might be to group windows or applications based on the transfer of info between them. Cut and paste for example shows a transfer of info, and could be used as an indicator of affinity.
As ever, it depends:
Firstly, the landscape is constantly evolving, and some of what I say below reflects the current situation for Drupal 7. It may not be the same in six months time.
You need to decide:
Do you want very clean, targeted HTML and CSS? Or do you want as many options as possible in the CSS, and don't mind the cost of many wrapping divs and CSS with many overrides?
If it's the latter, then you will likely want to work from one of the starter themes, sculpting the CSS and templates to suit your design. Try the Stark (shipped with Drupal 7), Clean, Boron and Basic themes.
Or if it's the former then you will likely want to either build the theme from scratch or work from one of the minimal themes, and build up to cater for your exact requirements. Omega, Zen, Adaptive, Genesis and Fusion are all good bets.
You need to decide whether your design is grid-based or not. If it is grid-based, then it's easier to use a theme with built-in grid support. (Or you can add grid support to a theme which doesn't have it.) If your design is not gridded, then you are probably best-off not using a gridded theme (though of course you could override the grid classes to remove the grid.)
If it's grid-based, then the best is probably Omega, but 960 is worth a look. For non-gridded, Stark, Clean, Basic, Zen, Adaptive, Genesis and Fusion are all still ok.
You need to decide whether mobile support, HTML5, and adaptive theming are critical or not. Of course you can override the templates a theme provides, to include any of these, but starting off with a theme with them built-in will be easier for most people.
If any of these are critical, and you aren't interested in building in support yourself, then Omega, Adaptive, Genesis, Boron and Fusion have support for some or all of these features.
At the moment, if a maximal theme, with grid support is what interests you most, Omega is the best imo. The cost is that it's big, and complex.
There are several good resources:
http://drupal.org/node/323993 contains a list of starter themes.
http://www.chapterthree.com/blog/squiggy_rubio/review_drupal_6_starter_themes - is about Drupal 6, but much of it remains relevant for Drupal 7.
And in some blatant promotion, sometime in the next week we'll post an article at http://www.tanasity.com/ comparing and contrasting the best starter themes for Drupal 7, the work on which this note is based.