hosting sites can't afford to support multiple versions Well, I'm no expert, but I can support two versions on my desktop, and I can create a virtual machine that runs a different version, and I can even buy another server and have them supporting two different version (although I have no reason to do this). I guess what I'm trying to say is, hosting sites certainly can and many do. Smaller hosting companies may have more of a problem with it, but they can still do it.
Changing the API so greatly and so often in a non-backwardly compatible fashion does cause genuine problems And not closing security holes and letting the language stagnate is a sure road to obscurity. Hosting companies can choose to support one or the other or both, however they wish, but moving forward it will be the same as it was when switching from 4 to 5: already-written software and pre-packaged solutions will migrate slowly if at all, and enthusiasts and serious programmers will move as soon as they can.
PHP started as an incomplete language that didn't support most object oriented features we've come to expect and had pitfalls that were crippling for people who didn't know how to avoid them. It was exceptionally good for small projects and increasingly hard for larger projects. Now it's moving towards better support for serious development techniques, and those of us who work with it every day on large projects are thankful it's moving in that direction. The old versions will always be around, but large projects are increasingly being built in PHP, and if the language doesn't support this, then it's going to die in obscurity. Besides, if those programs depended on the shitty features they're removing, then they deserve to be broken. It's been years since magic quotes or register globals wasn't considered bad practice; let them die from lack of backwards compatibility if they care so little that they won't implement basic procedures in 3 years time.
Can you be more specific about how PHP "has a focus" on Web scripting PHP was made originally to program web pages and, while it's been expanded to other uses, its main focus is still web pages. $_GET, $_POST, $_SESSION, $_COOKIE, and $_REQUEST are (as far as I know) unique to PHP in being built into the core of the language. As frustrating as it sometimes is, PHP files are considered standard output unless they have tags enclosing them, whereas in perl everything is considered code unless stated otherwise.
Loose typing and non-strict syntax in general is particularly well suited to the internet because each request generates a completely new environment. Something that was wrong with the previous request, unless specifically stored, doesn't affect the next request. Strictness in programming stems from the need to keep far flung parts from affecting each other; the web is modular by nature and thus resistant to wide spread bugs. Thus, loose typing and other, less strict forms of programming that make life easier at the expense of fragility is counterbalanced by the modular nature.
Many won't agree with that analysis, and that's fine. Sloppy coding has gotten more than one web project in trouble, and more than one feature of PHP's that was intended to make life easier ended up going to far and introducing security holes. But that doesn't change the simple fact that PHP was made for the web and has conveniences built into the core that other languages either don't have or require an add on for.
and happens to integrate very well with HTML Yes, like regular expressions happen to be good at finding string patterns. PHP is good because it is first, foremost, and almost exclusively a web scripting language, which means you get really like features like super globals, HTML embedding, loose typing, great escaping functions, etc. Most other languages try to be all things to all people, but PHP has a focus and it does it pretty well.
Easy there cowboy. Do you really think that if I were being judgemental I would type it out? I was poking fun at the zealous christian stereotype (which isn't represented all that much here on slashdot for some reason...) I believe that if men and women want to have sex, make a video, and put it online, that's their business.
However, on a serious note, I think a lot of the younger girls who are legally able to do porn might end up regretting it, especially through things like web cams and girls gone wild. Not that I'm going to stop them or anything, but it's something they might not consider long enough before they do it.
I would say that Google agrees, given that their motto only deals with morals. The problem with a corporation focusing on morality as a business decision is that sometimes the way something appears isn't the way that it actually works out. Something that you made for the best moral reasons you could at the time may end up making you look like a guard at Auschwitz. As a business strategy, morality only works if you go for the most superficial morality that you can, which often ends up being less good than most of the alternatives.
While essential, it's not the only step. Automatic tests of the router hardware, random checking, and employee control are all necessary steps if we really want our government networks to be secure.
Your statement assumes that the same results will come through Baidu and Google and that it's the only avenue of information from Google.
First, I don't know whether they have their book search in China yet or any of their other services, but those things could help the Chinese people in their own ways. Giving the Chinese people strong online services isn't a bad thing; I like almost everything that Google's done in the US, the Chinese people might as well.
Second, Baidu's search is different from Google's search unless they're using the same database and algorithms. If Google's indexing more foreign sites, that's probably a good thing. Also, since Google's not based in China, they could easily have more autonomy than Baidu.
Finally, whether it's a play for market share or not, it doesn't change the fact that staying out of China does the Chinese people absolutely no good; unless Google's presence is harming them (and I've seen no evidence even hinting that's the truth), they're doing at least as well as the alternative. Making money doesn't negate any benefits you do along the way.
I'm sure seeing the world as pure black and white and hating corporations for making money is very easy, but you've at least got to admit that there's an argument to be made for Google participating in China without being evil. The fact that they had the vote at all shows that they're considering the human rights side of the equation, and the fact that both of the owners refused to vote makes me think that they're conflicted on the issue.
Either that or they agree that a little information is better for the chinese people than none at all. I agree with that sentiment, too, yet I feel no burning desire to kill babies or repress people. The best way to change the system is to empower the people, and depriving them of your resources because you'd have to work with an evil government doesn't empower the people at all. Moral stands look good in the paper, but they don't help the people of China at all.
The sooner microsoft's strangle hold on the industry is broken, the better It's interesting that you should say that considering everything that's going on. Ubuntu's the friendliest desktop distro to come around ever as far as most people are concerned. Apple keeps gaining market share, slowly but surely eating away at Microsoft. Vista came out and it included things that Macs and Linux have had for years, including a 3d desktop and something akin to sudo. In the desktop market, the pressure's building.
In the server market Windows has always had must more competition, and it's not getting any smaller. Solaris has ZFS which is creating a lot of buzz; I remember when WinFS sounded cool, now it sounds like it would be an incremental upgrade in the face of the ZFS revolution. It wasn't even a year ago that the story came out about the Microsoft sysadmins who had to switch from linux to windows server and hated it, prompting microsoft to look into more configuration in text files.
In the browser market, Microsoft has finally started seeing that they can't rely on IE6 forever, and now they've got IE7 out with IE8 in the works. They're moving closer to standards compliance, although they're taking their sweet time to do it and they're not taking a direct route. Safari's generating buzz, especially on the iphone, opera's dominating the embedded market and they're still the browser of choice for those who like to feel superior, and firefox is spreading like fire as swift as a fox! (it was a stretch, I know, but I couldn't resist)
The point is that Microsoft is feeling the pinch. Vista came out and showed everyone that they were wounded, and now all the little guys are running up and taking bites out of their markets before Microsoft can respond. They'll come back with efforts to maintain market share, but the competition is heating up and Microsoft can't (and doesn't) ignore it any longer.
Don't you see? The source code is right there in the open! It's free! Why are you guys getting so worked up about something that you don't care about enough to protect? The nerve of you hippies; go smoke your pot while us real people turn your code into something useful, something that will revolutionize the world and move us closer to utopia, things like recording television and making phone calls on the internet.
If they're reusing an engine, it'll be the quake wars engine with the super textures. However, I'm guessing that they'll make a new engine, considering how long its been since they released their last major game.
Just because I don't think we're living in a 1984 dystopia doesn't mean that I think we should all shut our eyes to the problems around us. Hyperbole doesn't help the case because it's easily disproven and makes your argument look dumb. If we lived in such a world, then we'd need a violent and bloody transition to get our freedom back; as it stands, we can use the ballot box and choose congresspeople that aren't going to abuse their power.
Windows is the reason we want something else, so why are you copying it? Speak for yourself there, cowboy. The pricing is the biggest reason that I use open source instead of proprietary, everything else is just icing on the cake. The biggest problem with open source that most people have with it is user friendliness, something that their proprietary competitors either nail or create (since they're the de facto user friendly program). In the case of OOO, at the very least they need to be able to replicate the functionality of the Office version to replace usage for complex documents.
I'm DMing a D&D game right now, and most people are trying to use HeroForge spreadsheets to build their characters and show them to me. Without MS Office, I can't read them. If there's a problem with character sheets for D&D, I can only imagine how many businesses and other groups have problems with OOO not recognizing MS scripts.
Until OpenOffice, and a lot of other Open Source Software projects, understand this [that they need to be different], they aren't much better than what they emulate. In the areas that matter, they're very much inferior. Apple has been able to create UIs that are much superior to anything anyone else offers. Open source has failed to do so for 90% of their attempts. Unless the project is in that 10%, they could do better by moving towards the MS version rather than continuing what they're doing.
I bought Galactic Civilizations 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire from Stardock, and I can tell you right now that it's not copy protection at all, it's just damn convenient. They don't have any copy protection on the cds (last I checked anyway) and they don't have any sort of online checking to see if it's valid (if you don't put in a serial number, it'll still install and play).
What they do is provide you with advantages to buying instead of pirating. The first is that you aren't stealing the game, which is enough for most people. The second is that you can download the game at any time from any where. That's what eliminates the most common reason I download the torrent, because I've lost the CDs and/or cd key. The third is that they let you get the updates and they pack the updates with content. They rebalance, they add to the tech tree, they improve the graphics, tutorials, etc. Stardock just plain does it right and adds value to the purchase rather than trying to take value from the pirate. A pirated version of the game becomes, in essence, just a free demo since buying the game keeps giving you more.
Thanks to Smith's own work in the Ministry of Truth, the population couldn't actually read about how bad things really were. But the fact that we can read 1984 and that we have people who can speak out against the government without getting killed is proof enough that we don't live in an Orwellian dystopia. I know it's extremely popular to say that we're living in the world of 1984, but it's just not true. Things are bad in America, but they're better than they are in most other countries and they're better than they've been historically.
Back door or not, this could be exploited almost more easily than other DRM just by setting up your own computer as the answering server, or for more advanced people, setting up a network box as the server. I can see whole floors of college dorm rooms sharing pirated copies and having the answering server set up in the nerd's room.
I worry that this portends a day when consoles (and even blu-ray movie players) will REQUIRE an internet connection and do something similar to verify their games/movies I worry about the same thing, but there's a counter-movement right now from many media companies where they're trying to add convenience and features rather than regulate them through DRM. These companies realize that DRM just means they're product is inferior to what pirates can put out with a minimum of effort and are trying to combat that.
DRM is always going to be around because companies are always going to try to protect themselves from unauthorized copying. When the measures they take get to onerous, they tend to be scaled back or changed so that people can use the products again. We're at or nearing a peak in DRM technologies, and pretty soon more companies will be giving up DRM than are taking it up. In three years time I expect us to be reading headlines about one of the last companies giving up strenuous DRM in favor of more lax restrictions or no restrictions at all.
I really don't want that kind of confusion in a deadly weapon! I'll stick with a sword. No buttons, switches, or triggers. Pointy end goes into human. Done. So, how's your program written in BASIC coming?
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PHP started as an incomplete language that didn't support most object oriented features we've come to expect and had pitfalls that were crippling for people who didn't know how to avoid them. It was exceptionally good for small projects and increasingly hard for larger projects. Now it's moving towards better support for serious development techniques, and those of us who work with it every day on large projects are thankful it's moving in that direction. The old versions will always be around, but large projects are increasingly being built in PHP, and if the language doesn't support this, then it's going to die in obscurity. Besides, if those programs depended on the shitty features they're removing, then they deserve to be broken. It's been years since magic quotes or register globals wasn't considered bad practice; let them die from lack of backwards compatibility if they care so little that they won't implement basic procedures in 3 years time.
Loose typing and non-strict syntax in general is particularly well suited to the internet because each request generates a completely new environment. Something that was wrong with the previous request, unless specifically stored, doesn't affect the next request. Strictness in programming stems from the need to keep far flung parts from affecting each other; the web is modular by nature and thus resistant to wide spread bugs. Thus, loose typing and other, less strict forms of programming that make life easier at the expense of fragility is counterbalanced by the modular nature.
Many won't agree with that analysis, and that's fine. Sloppy coding has gotten more than one web project in trouble, and more than one feature of PHP's that was intended to make life easier ended up going to far and introducing security holes. But that doesn't change the simple fact that PHP was made for the web and has conveniences built into the core that other languages either don't have or require an add on for.
It's better than dealing with the airlines.
Easy there cowboy. Do you really think that if I were being judgemental I would type it out? I was poking fun at the zealous christian stereotype (which isn't represented all that much here on slashdot for some reason...) I believe that if men and women want to have sex, make a video, and put it online, that's their business.
However, on a serious note, I think a lot of the younger girls who are legally able to do porn might end up regretting it, especially through things like web cams and girls gone wild. Not that I'm going to stop them or anything, but it's something they might not consider long enough before they do it.
*Judgemental stare*
For those of us who have some self respect and respect for women, porn is a bad thing.
*Continuing judgemental stare*
Judging by the sheer amount of porn, violence, and other forms of immorality on the internet, I would tend to agree with you.
I would say that Google agrees, given that their motto only deals with morals. The problem with a corporation focusing on morality as a business decision is that sometimes the way something appears isn't the way that it actually works out. Something that you made for the best moral reasons you could at the time may end up making you look like a guard at Auschwitz. As a business strategy, morality only works if you go for the most superficial morality that you can, which often ends up being less good than most of the alternatives.
While essential, it's not the only step. Automatic tests of the router hardware, random checking, and employee control are all necessary steps if we really want our government networks to be secure.
Your statement assumes that the same results will come through Baidu and Google and that it's the only avenue of information from Google.
First, I don't know whether they have their book search in China yet or any of their other services, but those things could help the Chinese people in their own ways. Giving the Chinese people strong online services isn't a bad thing; I like almost everything that Google's done in the US, the Chinese people might as well.
Second, Baidu's search is different from Google's search unless they're using the same database and algorithms. If Google's indexing more foreign sites, that's probably a good thing. Also, since Google's not based in China, they could easily have more autonomy than Baidu.
Finally, whether it's a play for market share or not, it doesn't change the fact that staying out of China does the Chinese people absolutely no good; unless Google's presence is harming them (and I've seen no evidence even hinting that's the truth), they're doing at least as well as the alternative. Making money doesn't negate any benefits you do along the way.
I'm sure seeing the world as pure black and white and hating corporations for making money is very easy, but you've at least got to admit that there's an argument to be made for Google participating in China without being evil. The fact that they had the vote at all shows that they're considering the human rights side of the equation, and the fact that both of the owners refused to vote makes me think that they're conflicted on the issue.
Either that or they agree that a little information is better for the chinese people than none at all. I agree with that sentiment, too, yet I feel no burning desire to kill babies or repress people. The best way to change the system is to empower the people, and depriving them of your resources because you'd have to work with an evil government doesn't empower the people at all. Moral stands look good in the paper, but they don't help the people of China at all.
In the server market Windows has always had must more competition, and it's not getting any smaller. Solaris has ZFS which is creating a lot of buzz; I remember when WinFS sounded cool, now it sounds like it would be an incremental upgrade in the face of the ZFS revolution. It wasn't even a year ago that the story came out about the Microsoft sysadmins who had to switch from linux to windows server and hated it, prompting microsoft to look into more configuration in text files.
In the browser market, Microsoft has finally started seeing that they can't rely on IE6 forever, and now they've got IE7 out with IE8 in the works. They're moving closer to standards compliance, although they're taking their sweet time to do it and they're not taking a direct route. Safari's generating buzz, especially on the iphone, opera's dominating the embedded market and they're still the browser of choice for those who like to feel superior, and firefox is spreading like fire as swift as a fox! (it was a stretch, I know, but I couldn't resist)
The point is that Microsoft is feeling the pinch. Vista came out and showed everyone that they were wounded, and now all the little guys are running up and taking bites out of their markets before Microsoft can respond. They'll come back with efforts to maintain market share, but the competition is heating up and Microsoft can't (and doesn't) ignore it any longer.
Don't you see? The source code is right there in the open! It's free! Why are you guys getting so worked up about something that you don't care about enough to protect? The nerve of you hippies; go smoke your pot while us real people turn your code into something useful, something that will revolutionize the world and move us closer to utopia, things like recording television and making phone calls on the internet.
If they're reusing an engine, it'll be the quake wars engine with the super textures. However, I'm guessing that they'll make a new engine, considering how long its been since they released their last major game.
Is it really constitutional or moral to ask him to shut up? Let yOur Conscience be YouR guiDe.
Splitting hairs isn't contributing to the conversation, especially when there's no functional difference for most people.
Just because I don't think we're living in a 1984 dystopia doesn't mean that I think we should all shut our eyes to the problems around us. Hyperbole doesn't help the case because it's easily disproven and makes your argument look dumb. If we lived in such a world, then we'd need a violent and bloody transition to get our freedom back; as it stands, we can use the ballot box and choose congresspeople that aren't going to abuse their power.
I'm DMing a D&D game right now, and most people are trying to use HeroForge spreadsheets to build their characters and show them to me. Without MS Office, I can't read them. If there's a problem with character sheets for D&D, I can only imagine how many businesses and other groups have problems with OOO not recognizing MS scripts. Until OpenOffice, and a lot of other Open Source Software projects, understand this [that they need to be different], they aren't much better than what they emulate. In the areas that matter, they're very much inferior. Apple has been able to create UIs that are much superior to anything anyone else offers. Open source has failed to do so for 90% of their attempts. Unless the project is in that 10%, they could do better by moving towards the MS version rather than continuing what they're doing.
I bought Galactic Civilizations 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire from Stardock, and I can tell you right now that it's not copy protection at all, it's just damn convenient. They don't have any copy protection on the cds (last I checked anyway) and they don't have any sort of online checking to see if it's valid (if you don't put in a serial number, it'll still install and play).
What they do is provide you with advantages to buying instead of pirating. The first is that you aren't stealing the game, which is enough for most people. The second is that you can download the game at any time from any where. That's what eliminates the most common reason I download the torrent, because I've lost the CDs and/or cd key. The third is that they let you get the updates and they pack the updates with content. They rebalance, they add to the tech tree, they improve the graphics, tutorials, etc. Stardock just plain does it right and adds value to the purchase rather than trying to take value from the pirate. A pirated version of the game becomes, in essence, just a free demo since buying the game keeps giving you more.
Back door or not, this could be exploited almost more easily than other DRM just by setting up your own computer as the answering server, or for more advanced people, setting up a network box as the server. I can see whole floors of college dorm rooms sharing pirated copies and having the answering server set up in the nerd's room.
DRM is always going to be around because companies are always going to try to protect themselves from unauthorized copying. When the measures they take get to onerous, they tend to be scaled back or changed so that people can use the products again. We're at or nearing a peak in DRM technologies, and pretty soon more companies will be giving up DRM than are taking it up. In three years time I expect us to be reading headlines about one of the last companies giving up strenuous DRM in favor of more lax restrictions or no restrictions at all.
That sounds like something a terrorist would name them.