It is bullshit. AJAX does NOT give one the ability to deliver desktop quality applications through the web. Not even close. Sorry. At best, AJAX spices up traditional web applications. But it is still using HTML/CSS for the UI. The HTML/CSS document model simply doesn't work well for desktop quality applications.
Saying that AJAX will allow one to deliver desktop quality applications is like saying central heating will turn a mobile home into a mansion.
Javascript is fine. Not perfect, but it is usable. It is HTML that blows for web apps. There are just so many basic things you can't do in HTML such as listboxes and treelists. And the widgets HTML does have are really nmeant for simple forms, not complex user interfaces. Sure, you can find ugly and slow Javascript implementations but what we need is a UI language such as XUL which can describe a fully functional application UI. Right now AJAX is OK for adding a little spice to traditional web applications, but it won't be a revolution until we have something besides HTML to describe the UI.
Javascript+XUL is very powerful. Consider that the entire Firefox front end is written in XUL and Javascript. You can use AJAX with XUL, BTW.
What's wrong with Javascript? It is HTML which hinders web application development seeing as the few UI widgets that it does provide are all but worthless from an application standpoint. What we need is ubiquitous XUL.
Re:While panspermia is possible...
on
Space Lichens
·
· Score: 1
Umm, I don't think the implication is that humans came from another planet (who believes this?), but rather that the common ancestor for all life on Earth could have come from another planet. I imagine it would be all or nothing. Chances of just SOME life on Earth comeing from another planet seems pretty unlikely. I mean, all life on Earth shares similar basic biological mechanisms (DNA)... as well as fitting nicely into a nested hierarchy.
There is on OS X and Windows. Perhaps "local" isn't the correct word. I should say native. If I am running GNOME, the native toolkit is GTK+.
Sun are doing the right thing by providing a decent default one for their Java platform, but not tying you to it. Sun are doing the right thing by providing a decent default one for their Java platform, but not tying you to it.
Good for the programmer, bad for the user, IMHO. Historically, this has been one of the major shortcomings of the X environment from a user's perspective. Too many different looks and feels.
I agree Swing is ugly by default, that's why it is possible to theme it. In fact, making something ugly by default is probably a good idea as it encourages you to think about UI issues and not simply code something with the mindset of "I like it this way, therefore everyone else will like it this way". Aesthetics are a personal thing - there's probably people who think the default Swing look(s) (plural because it has 3 - motif, metal and windoze) are beautiful.
Exactly. Aethetics are a personal thing. That is why you should use a "native" widget toolkit (or at least emulate it as best as possible) which conforms to the user's local desktop preferences and not use some application/VM specific look and feel. You have demonstrated exactly why I think Swing is a bad UI toolkit.
Also, Java apps run perfectly fine on any machine made in the past 5 years;
But not as good as a native app. Java's brand of portability has a price.
epeating the "Java is slow" myth only makes you look foolish.
It is a partial myth. Java is just fine when it comes to raw computational power. Great on backend servers. But It is noticably slower for a lot of graphical applications. It has a much slower startup as well as a noticably sluggish UI. Where I work, our Mac users refuse to use the Groupwise java client because it is slow (as well as lacking features)
JEdit feels a lot faster than Visual Studio
I've never used VS, but I have heard that it is quite bloated with features. If it is slow, that probably owes to its size. I have used JEdit. I'd prefer a native GNOME/KDE application. On a Mac I use TextMate (not exactly comparable, but I do mostly web/script programming). Given two applications, one in Java and one in Cocoa with roughly similar features, I'd take the Cocoa application any day.
Personally, I wouldn't rely on the mother. That is like buying version 1.0 software. I'd go with the over-achieving child of the mother of all asteroid deflection devices. But I guess that is just me.
Why not? We put a price on everything else. We even put a price on human lives and the environment in general when calculating the feasability of regulating industry. Isn't a human life worth something ike $1 million?
The good news is that when you multiply $1 million by 300 million, you get a pretty good budget for thwarting asteroids. And that is just counting Amercian lives.
If you're just going to multicast TV over the 'net, what is the point? I mean, it isn't ondemand then. You might as well just use the other, tried and true, broadcast methods. I think most people would rather get TV on their... TV, not their computer anyway.I mean, people don't spend hundreds and sometimes thousands for a home theater system just to watch TV on their 17" computer monitor.
Then again, 'net based multicast could be good if you combined it with a set-top PVR. You could subscribe to just the multicast streams that you want, record them, and watch them "on demand." If nothing else, it would save me from having to purchase an $80/mo. package from Comcast which contains 150 channels that I will never watch. I currently don't have cable for that reason. But when I did have cable combined with my MythTV box, I hardly ever watched "live" TV.
In the end, I don't see it being much different than the current situation. Whatever internet TV service you subscribe to, you'll probably have to buy expensive "package" deals anyway. Whether it is Comcast or someone else, it ain't gonna be cheap.
HOw long ago was this? I don't think Comcast has been using the phone to place orders for a while now. Not since cable became bidirectional, anyway. Maybe Comcast infrastructure isn't built out in your area. My Comcast onDemand orders (when I had comcast) went right over the cable.
I remember when Comcast used to sell cable internet where you needed a modem for the upstream traffic. Wow, that was a bad service.
To be fair, I think the extra $99 cents would represent the cost of "on-Demand" infrastructure and not necessarily an extra cost for the content itself. What really makes this a lame idea is the fact that so many people have DVR/PVR's like Tivo. They most likely record all the episodes of teh shows they are interested in anyway. And if they don't do this, they probably should. Then they can skip the commercials.
OnDemand isn't bad when it comes to movies. It satisfies the desire to see a movie right away rather than wait for netflix to come in the mail or go down to the video store. Although the selection is generally pretty bad.
Another option would be a scheme where the customer agrees to watch say 5 commercials out of a selection of 20 or so and in exchange you get 1 month of free downloads. The advantage is that people would be watching only commercials for products that they were actually interested in and that data would itself be valuable.
Ok, this is taking the idea that people don't mind watching commercials for products they are interested in just a little too far. If I know I am interested in buying a car, why in the world would I elect to see a biased advertisement for a certain car when I could just do real research? Chances are, the car they decide to advertise is not hte particular one I am interested in. And if I am already interested in it, why do I need see an advertisment for it? Seriously, I've heard people in real life say "I don't mind watching commercials that are entertaining/funny." But NEVER "I don't mind watching commercials for things I am interested in." Never. Not once. I think it is a Slashdot myth.
If none of the moon can be claimed by any country, on what basis can one defend a personal or corporate claim? Who's going to defend you when your claim is disputed? It is like a boat in international waters. You can "claim" a portion of internation waters if you want, but nobody is going to hornor it.
That's why I want multiple waves of hardware-destroying worms. Worms that ruin your mobo month after month, until people wake up and see that proper administration is good for them too.
A worm that is so destructive wouldn't propagate very easily, now would it?
Another possible incentive would be to fine ISPs for allowing machines on their netblock to send out spam or do other anti-social things -- but that's going to be less effective, because an ISP can't fix the problem on a user's machine. All it can do is disconnect it, and that just leads to support calsl and whining from the (l)user. Which is why it isn't done (duh!)
ISPs shut off infected users all the time. Where have you been? The ISP I worked for would actually contact the user first though and only disconnect if a) the infection was particularlly bad or b) they didn't clean up. The way the ISP was setup, though, was such that one infected user could affect the service of hundreds of others. So there was incentive to keep users computers clean even if it meant annoying that one user.
This isn't true. I worked for an ISP which was dilligent about working with customers to clean up PCs. They are surprisingly coorporative. They don't like the idea of their computer be infected any more than you do. You just have to be diplomatic about it. Don't blame them. Just give them the tools to clean and keep clean their computers.
I worked for a small ISP in the US and we were dilligent about getting users to clean their PCs. If they didn't comply, their service got turned off until they could. Primarily we used IDS to detect zombies and such. But sometimes they would actually affect the service of other users. It really isn't that bad if you keep on top of it. But of course, it is a small ISP with no more than 10,000 users. Maybe Comcast, et al would find the initial task of identifying and notifying thousands of users to be daunting.
Certainly "evolution" can be applied to many things from organisms to human language. But despite what Dawkins may insinuate, biological evolution specifically refers to life AFTER it started. Before life, it would be geochemical evolution or something along those lines. One needs to be specific about exactly what kind of evolution one is talking about (and no, I don't mean macro- vs. micro- evolution. That is just an ignorant, arbitrary distinction with no real scientific meaning.)
I have a 5.4 server that I recently installed and I want to upgrade to 6.0. It isn't in production yet, but it does have some custom configuration and many ports installed (as well as a system disk mirrored with geom). I've never really run FreeBSD before. Do I need to recompile all the ports I installed against the 6.0 system? How do I go about doing that? I'm concerned about running ports built against old libraries. I'm used to running Debian where everything gets upgraded automatically.
What do you think you are going to learn from a Live CD of FreeBSD? Whether or not it supports your hardware? I assume you've run Linux or some kind of unix variant. It'll have a shell and maybe a desktop like KDE or GNOME. What's to see? You can get that on just about any Unixy system. IMO, you don't really know what an OS or distribution is like until you have to actually manage a box.
Unless, of course, you've never run a unix-like system before. Then by all means, try Freesbie.
Slashdot Mirror
It is bullshit. AJAX does NOT give one the ability to deliver desktop quality applications through the web. Not even close. Sorry. At best, AJAX spices up traditional web applications. But it is still using HTML/CSS for the UI. The HTML/CSS document model simply doesn't work well for desktop quality applications.
Saying that AJAX will allow one to deliver desktop quality applications is like saying central heating will turn a mobile home into a mansion.
-matthew
Javascript is fine. Not perfect, but it is usable. It is HTML that blows for web apps. There are just so many basic things you can't do in HTML such as listboxes and treelists. And the widgets HTML does have are really nmeant for simple forms, not complex user interfaces. Sure, you can find ugly and slow Javascript implementations but what we need is a UI language such as XUL which can describe a fully functional application UI. Right now AJAX is OK for adding a little spice to traditional web applications, but it won't be a revolution until we have something besides HTML to describe the UI.
Javascript+XUL is very powerful. Consider that the entire Firefox front end is written in XUL and Javascript. You can use AJAX with XUL, BTW.
-matthew
What's wrong with Javascript? It is HTML which hinders web application development seeing as the few UI widgets that it does provide are all but worthless from an application standpoint. What we need is ubiquitous XUL.
-matthew
They was better off when He was running the show.
Umm, I don't think the implication is that humans came from another planet (who believes this?), but rather that the common ancestor for all life on Earth could have come from another planet. I imagine it would be all or nothing. Chances of just SOME life on Earth comeing from another planet seems pretty unlikely. I mean, all life on Earth shares similar basic biological mechanisms (DNA)... as well as fitting nicely into a nested hierarchy.
-matthew
Also, we're most likely talking about seeds/spores and not the organisms themselves.
-matthew
There is on OS X and Windows. Perhaps "local" isn't the correct word. I should say native. If I am running GNOME, the native toolkit is GTK+.
Sun are doing the right thing by providing a decent default one for their Java platform, but not tying you to it. Sun are doing the right thing by providing a decent default one for their Java platform, but not tying you to it.
Good for the programmer, bad for the user, IMHO. Historically, this has been one of the major shortcomings of the X environment from a user's perspective. Too many different looks and feels.
I agree Swing is ugly by default, that's why it is possible to theme it. In fact, making something ugly by default is probably a good idea as it encourages you to think about UI issues and not simply code something with the mindset of "I like it this way, therefore everyone else will like it this way". Aesthetics are a personal thing - there's probably people who think the default Swing look(s) (plural because it has 3 - motif, metal and windoze) are beautiful.
Exactly. Aethetics are a personal thing. That is why you should use a "native" widget toolkit (or at least emulate it as best as possible) which conforms to the user's local desktop preferences and not use some application/VM specific look and feel. You have demonstrated exactly why I think Swing is a bad UI toolkit.
Also, Java apps run perfectly fine on any machine made in the past 5 years;
But not as good as a native app. Java's brand of portability has a price.
epeating the "Java is slow" myth only makes you look foolish.
It is a partial myth. Java is just fine when it comes to raw computational power. Great on backend servers. But It is noticably slower for a lot of graphical applications. It has a much slower startup as well as a noticably sluggish UI. Where I work, our Mac users refuse to use the Groupwise java client because it is slow (as well as lacking features)
JEdit feels a lot faster than Visual Studio
I've never used VS, but I have heard that it is quite bloated with features. If it is slow, that probably owes to its size. I have used JEdit. I'd prefer a native GNOME/KDE application. On a Mac I use TextMate (not exactly comparable, but I do mostly web/script programming). Given two applications, one in Java and one in Cocoa with roughly similar features, I'd take the Cocoa application any day.
-matthew
Personally, I wouldn't rely on the mother. That is like buying version 1.0 software. I'd go with the over-achieving child of the mother of all asteroid deflection devices. But I guess that is just me.
-matthew
Why not? We put a price on everything else. We even put a price on human lives and the environment in general when calculating the feasability of regulating industry. Isn't a human life worth something ike $1 million?
The good news is that when you multiply $1 million by 300 million, you get a pretty good budget for thwarting asteroids. And that is just counting Amercian lives.
-matthew
Sure, but Swing is ugly and it doesn't use local widgets. I personally would tend to avoid a Swing application even if it were fast enough.
-matthew
Is this what the Azureus bittorrent client uses? Not bad, but it is still a bit slower than a native app.
-matthew
Apple is just bitter that someone already took the name iPhone.
Seriously though, why doesn't Apple just make a serious enty into the cell/mp3 market and head off the competition?
-matthew
If you're just going to multicast TV over the 'net, what is the point? I mean, it isn't ondemand then. You might as well just use the other, tried and true, broadcast methods. I think most people would rather get TV on their... TV, not their computer anyway.I mean, people don't spend hundreds and sometimes thousands for a home theater system just to watch TV on their 17" computer monitor.
Then again, 'net based multicast could be good if you combined it with a set-top PVR. You could subscribe to just the multicast streams that you want, record them, and watch them "on demand." If nothing else, it would save me from having to purchase an $80/mo. package from Comcast which contains 150 channels that I will never watch. I currently don't have cable for that reason. But when I did have cable combined with my MythTV box, I hardly ever watched "live" TV.
In the end, I don't see it being much different than the current situation. Whatever internet TV service you subscribe to, you'll probably have to buy expensive "package" deals anyway. Whether it is Comcast or someone else, it ain't gonna be cheap.
-matthew
HOw long ago was this? I don't think Comcast has been using the phone to place orders for a while now. Not since cable became bidirectional, anyway. Maybe Comcast infrastructure isn't built out in your area. My Comcast onDemand orders (when I had comcast) went right over the cable.
I remember when Comcast used to sell cable internet where you needed a modem for the upstream traffic. Wow, that was a bad service.
-matthew
To be fair, I think the extra $99 cents would represent the cost of "on-Demand" infrastructure and not necessarily an extra cost for the content itself. What really makes this a lame idea is the fact that so many people have DVR/PVR's like Tivo. They most likely record all the episodes of teh shows they are interested in anyway. And if they don't do this, they probably should. Then they can skip the commercials.
OnDemand isn't bad when it comes to movies. It satisfies the desire to see a movie right away rather than wait for netflix to come in the mail or go down to the video store. Although the selection is generally pretty bad.
-matthew
Another option would be a scheme where the customer agrees to watch say 5 commercials out of a selection of 20 or so and in exchange you get 1 month of free downloads. The advantage is that people would be watching only commercials for products that they were actually interested in and that data would itself be valuable.
Ok, this is taking the idea that people don't mind watching commercials for products they are interested in just a little too far. If I know I am interested in buying a car, why in the world would I elect to see a biased advertisement for a certain car when I could just do real research? Chances are, the car they decide to advertise is not hte particular one I am interested in. And if I am already interested in it, why do I need see an advertisment for it? Seriously, I've heard people in real life say "I don't mind watching commercials that are entertaining/funny." But NEVER "I don't mind watching commercials for things I am interested in." Never. Not once. I think it is a Slashdot myth.
-matthew
If none of the moon can be claimed by any country, on what basis can one defend a personal or corporate claim? Who's going to defend you when your claim is disputed? It is like a boat in international waters. You can "claim" a portion of internation waters if you want, but nobody is going to hornor it.
-matthew
I want waves and waves of Witty Worms, destroying insecure Windows installations.
:-P
I'm sure the FBI has you on record as say that too.
-matthew
A worm that is so destructive wouldn't propagate very easily, now would it?
Another possible incentive would be to fine ISPs for allowing machines on their netblock to send out spam or do other anti-social things -- but that's going to be less effective, because an ISP can't fix the problem on a user's machine. All it can do is disconnect it, and that just leads to support calsl and whining from the (l)user. Which is why it isn't done (duh!)
ISPs shut off infected users all the time. Where have you been? The ISP I worked for would actually contact the user first though and only disconnect if a) the infection was particularlly bad or b) they didn't clean up. The way the ISP was setup, though, was such that one infected user could affect the service of hundreds of others. So there was incentive to keep users computers clean even if it meant annoying that one user.
-matthew -matthew
This isn't true. I worked for an ISP which was dilligent about working with customers to clean up PCs. They are surprisingly coorporative. They don't like the idea of their computer be infected any more than you do. You just have to be diplomatic about it. Don't blame them. Just give them the tools to clean and keep clean their computers.
-matthew
I worked for a small ISP in the US and we were dilligent about getting users to clean their PCs. If they didn't comply, their service got turned off until they could. Primarily we used IDS to detect zombies and such. But sometimes they would actually affect the service of other users. It really isn't that bad if you keep on top of it. But of course, it is a small ISP with no more than 10,000 users. Maybe Comcast, et al would find the initial task of identifying and notifying thousands of users to be daunting.
-matthew
Certainly "evolution" can be applied to many things from organisms to human language. But despite what Dawkins may insinuate, biological evolution specifically refers to life AFTER it started. Before life, it would be geochemical evolution or something along those lines. One needs to be specific about exactly what kind of evolution one is talking about (and no, I don't mean macro- vs. micro- evolution. That is just an ignorant, arbitrary distinction with no real scientific meaning.)
-matthew
Ok, so God created the first life form and everything evolved from there. Do you accept common descent? Why only "some" evolution?
-matthew
Since you mentioned upgrading from 5.x...
I have a 5.4 server that I recently installed and I want to upgrade to 6.0. It isn't in production yet, but it does have some custom configuration and many ports installed (as well as a system disk mirrored with geom). I've never really run FreeBSD before. Do I need to recompile all the ports I installed against the 6.0 system? How do I go about doing that? I'm concerned about running ports built against old libraries. I'm used to running Debian where everything gets upgraded automatically.
Any advice?
-matthew
What do you think you are going to learn from a Live CD of FreeBSD? Whether or not it supports your hardware? I assume you've run Linux or some kind of unix variant. It'll have a shell and maybe a desktop like KDE or GNOME. What's to see? You can get that on just about any Unixy system. IMO, you don't really know what an OS or distribution is like until you have to actually manage a box.
Unless, of course, you've never run a unix-like system before. Then by all means, try Freesbie.
-matthew