1) Nobody uses load balancers and multiple app servers because they're serving "dancing and blinking crap" (Flash and JS heavy) sites. Those things slow down people's browsers, not the servers. Heavy server resources are needed when you need lots of server side processing, which generally comes from delivering customized pages to every user (ie you can't just cache everything). Furthermore, using AJAX helps REDUCE server load, by only requesting snippets of content, instead of complete page requests; you think GMail would be faster and less server-intensive if every click required a full page response? How about Google Maps?
2) You seem to be under the impression that developers actually design sites. Maybe in some tiny one-man-show setup, but in the real world a UX/IA specialist designs the user experience, a designer does the visuals, the client signs off on it, and then the developer makes it all happen using whatever tools and techniques are necessary. They don't have the option to "toss it all out" and make it as simple as they like, much as they'd like to. Heck, I have to fight to make sure there's accessible fallback versions of the fancy JS-enhanced UIs everyone designs these days. "Throw it all out"? You live in a dream world buddy, or you do work of extremely limited scope.
In short, your post is just "get off my lawn!". More and more clients demand rich user experiences, and this will continue to grow. Welcome to 2010.
Two, arranged symmetrically in a tractor configuration. They are angled outward a few degrees off the ship’s longitudinal axis so their exhaust plumes bypass the ship’s structure. This results in a slight cosine loss to thrust efficiency, and the body of the ship must be shielded from the plume’s thermal radiation, but the mass-savings advantage of a tensile structure outweigh these disadvantages. Since a very long truss is needed to separate the habitable section of the ship from the engines which produce large amounts of radiation, such a structure would be prohibitively massive if it were a conventional space-frame truss designed for compressive loading. But the carbon-nanotube composite tensile-truss creates the necessary stand-off distance at one tenth the mass. Essentially it is a tow cable with enough torsional rigidity to allow the ship to maneuver, including the pitch-over maneuver which must be performed to turn 180 degrees for the deceleration burn when inbound to Pandora.
There's tremendous amounts of thought that went into creating the universe of Avatar (I read they wrote a 5000 page "bible"), even if the majority of it didn't make it up on screen.... because James Cameron (apparently unlike you) understands what makes a movie sell (hint: not scientific exposition).
That's one reason I am really looking forward to the book, Cameron will get a chance to insert a lot more of the detail that was left on the cutting room floor for the movie.
Bishop: I'm shocked. Was it an older model? Burke: Yeah, the Hyperdine System's 120-A2. Bishop: Well, that explains it then. The A2s always were a bit twitchy. That could never happen now with our behavioral inhibitors. It is impossible for me to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being.
I seriously think you're splitting hairs. Taking the actual action of reversing a prior decision (the part that actually matters) is tacit admission they were wrong.
Obviously the PR schills are going to dress it up, what company in this world doesn't try to put the best spin on things?
Your larger point about the real motivator being negative press and Android is spot on, of course.
I just attended DrupalCon Copenhagen last week, one of the sponsors was Microsoft.
As I was meandering near their booth, I heard this phrase: "...make it more like Apache". What's this? I thought, and buzzed hurriedly over there.
"Make WHAT more like Apache?", I inquired.
"IIS"
"Can it read.htaccess files now?"
"No, but we've got this great utility that lets you convert.htaccess into our web.config format"
"OK that's pretty cool, but why not just let it read.htaccess files natively? It's pretty much the one big thing preventing me from just dropping a LAMP app into IIS and having it Just Work"
"Oh, but check out our web.config format, I think you'll find it's even better than.htaccess, it's [insert canned web.config spiel here]"
I pretty much lost interest at this point, because it became clear that what you guys are talking about above is absolutely true... Microsoft's participation in Open Source is not about openness or interoperability, it's just another vector to drive people towards Windows lock-in.
Except the study didn't ask the subjects "which did you ENJOY more", they asked them to rate the VIDEO QUALITY.
And they found people rating lower-quality video HIGHER than higher-quality video (again, solely on "video quality" criteria, not "enjoyability").
That is NOT an obvious result. Wouldn't you think you'd be able to clearly distinguish between high quality video and low quality video, independently of how much you enjoy the source material? This study suggests otherwise.
I still remember the first time I heard about it; a college buddy came running up all excited, "you have to see this new show! it's like this terrible animation with crappy cardboard pieces... and it's FUCKING AMAZING!"
They had a Critical Thinking class in my high school senior year (in Toronto). Great class, should be taught everywhere.
Then again, one should consider that Critical Thinking is something they don't really want to instill in the general populace as much as discipline and obedience. See John Taylor Gatto, and the Prussian Education Model.
I admit I originally bought an iPad as little more than an expensive toy, figured I'd just have it sitting on the coffee table at home for casual surfing, email, etc.
But you know what? I'm finding it a wonderful device to have around the office. Being able to combine typing and freeform sketching on something with the same form factor as a pad of paper is great for taking notes, without "separating" you from other people by having a laptop screen in the way. iThoughts is fantastic for brainstorming and more structured note-taking. I can pull up a design flat, walk over to a designer, ask some questions, and scribble notes or sketch right on top of the design. Just as good as a full colour printer and a box of crayons.;)
And where it really kills? Meetings. The other day someone asked a question about our new site's stats, so I pulled up a table of figures in Google Analytics and passed it around the meeting, just like a piece of paper. Try THAT with a laptop.
Can it replace a laptop or desktop for doing real work? Hell no. But I'm finding it invaluable for many things that have traditionally been the domain of paper & printouts. It's becoming my new "back of the napkin". When lying flat on a table it becomes far more of a shared, group experience than a laptop can ever be. No more huddling around one person's screen, everyone can see it, and even interact with it, at the same time.
Note that most of these points relate to the tablet form factor in general, not just the iPad.
Where/when could you use such a device in an effective way? You'd need a screen and/or a blank wall, as well as something close enough to that wall to set your phone on
So... you'd need a table and a wall. This is hard to find?
Have you ever wanted to show someone something on your phone?
Has the size of the tiny screen size ever contributed to a sub-optimal viewing experience?
This thing would kill for small presentations on-the-go. Of course it's not suitable for a big roomful of people, but it would be fine for a small group sitting close to the display.
Episodes 1-3 did not. They only had one great scene and that was the lightsaber battle at the end of episode 1 with Darth Maul.
Great choreography maybe, but c'mon, Darth Maul was just a prop, not a real character.
I'd take Obi-wan leaving Anakin to die on the hill at the end of Ep III over that, it's the only scene in the entire prequel trilogy that even remotely approaches some semblance of dramatic depth.
I have set up plenty of Drupal sites for non-technical users who have no problems updating content. It's important to create Roles carefully tailored for specific use, instead of just handing them the Admin account (which would be quite bewildering).
I will certainly admit that building your first Drupal site comes with a near vertical learning curve, but the community is fantastic at providing help, and once you get over the hump it's an incredibly powerful, flexible, and extensible platform, with thousands of modules covering just about any feature set you can dream of.
Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla: Yeah! We'll call them "Thunderbird" and "Phoenix"! Yeah!
Phoenix Technologies: We will sue you.
Mozilla: Shit. Well, how about Firebird then?
Firebird DB: We will sue you.
Mozilla: Well fuck it... FireFOX then. That HAS to be available.
Clint Eastwood: Listen, you punks...
1) Nobody uses load balancers and multiple app servers because they're serving "dancing and blinking crap" (Flash and JS heavy) sites. Those things slow down people's browsers, not the servers. Heavy server resources are needed when you need lots of server side processing, which generally comes from delivering customized pages to every user (ie you can't just cache everything). Furthermore, using AJAX helps REDUCE server load, by only requesting snippets of content, instead of complete page requests; you think GMail would be faster and less server-intensive if every click required a full page response? How about Google Maps?
2) You seem to be under the impression that developers actually design sites. Maybe in some tiny one-man-show setup, but in the real world a UX/IA specialist designs the user experience, a designer does the visuals, the client signs off on it, and then the developer makes it all happen using whatever tools and techniques are necessary. They don't have the option to "toss it all out" and make it as simple as they like, much as they'd like to. Heck, I have to fight to make sure there's accessible fallback versions of the fancy JS-enhanced UIs everyone designs these days. "Throw it all out"? You live in a dream world buddy, or you do work of extremely limited scope.
In short, your post is just "get off my lawn!". More and more clients demand rich user experiences, and this will continue to grow. Welcome to 2010.
Of course you didn't seem them... they're ninja robots.
Well clearly it wouldn't expand then. Can't you read?
Read about the design of the star ship in Pandora:
http://www.pandorapedia.com/human_operations/vehicles/isv_venture_star
For example:
There's tremendous amounts of thought that went into creating the universe of Avatar (I read they wrote a 5000 page "bible"), even if the majority of it didn't make it up on screen.... because James Cameron (apparently unlike you) understands what makes a movie sell (hint: not scientific exposition).
That's one reason I am really looking forward to the book, Cameron will get a chance to insert a lot more of the detail that was left on the cutting room floor for the movie.
Oh I see, a mashup-as-homage, not a direct quote.
Carry on then! ;)
I oughta slap you.
Bishop: I'm shocked. Was it an older model?
Burke: Yeah, the Hyperdine System's 120-A2.
Bishop: Well, that explains it then. The A2s always were a bit twitchy. That could never happen now with our behavioral inhibitors. It is impossible for me to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/quotes?qt0424800
Misquoting Aliens... honestly.. I don't know which species is worse.
I seriously think you're splitting hairs. Taking the actual action of reversing a prior decision (the part that actually matters) is tacit admission they were wrong.
Obviously the PR schills are going to dress it up, what company in this world doesn't try to put the best spin on things?
Your larger point about the real motivator being negative press and Android is spot on, of course.
I just attended DrupalCon Copenhagen last week, one of the sponsors was Microsoft.
As I was meandering near their booth, I heard this phrase: "...make it more like Apache". What's this? I thought, and buzzed hurriedly over there.
"Make WHAT more like Apache?", I inquired.
"IIS"
"Can it read .htaccess files now?"
"No, but we've got this great utility that lets you convert .htaccess into our web.config format"
"OK that's pretty cool, but why not just let it read .htaccess files natively? It's pretty much the one big thing preventing me from just dropping a LAMP app into IIS and having it Just Work"
"Oh, but check out our web.config format, I think you'll find it's even better than .htaccess, it's [insert canned web.config spiel here]"
I pretty much lost interest at this point, because it became clear that what you guys are talking about above is absolutely true... Microsoft's participation in Open Source is not about openness or interoperability, it's just another vector to drive people towards Windows lock-in.
I'm not sure I understand your post.
UDP packet order is already unreliable. You have to build in your own sequencing and error-correction logic at the application level (if you need it).
Again, UDP does not fit this description. Are you sure you're not confusing TCP and UDP?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol#Comparison_of_UDP_and_TCP
I've had some success with my iPhone doing voice searches, like "chinese restaurants", and it pulls up Google Maps with local results pinned.
Of course, I am using the Google App for that. ;)
Except the study didn't ask the subjects "which did you ENJOY more", they asked them to rate the VIDEO QUALITY.
And they found people rating lower-quality video HIGHER than higher-quality video (again, solely on "video quality" criteria, not "enjoyability").
That is NOT an obvious result. Wouldn't you think you'd be able to clearly distinguish between high quality video and low quality video, independently of how much you enjoy the source material? This study suggests otherwise.
South Park proved this 12 years ago.
I still remember the first time I heard about it; a college buddy came running up all excited, "you have to see this new show! it's like this terrible animation with crappy cardboard pieces... and it's FUCKING AMAZING!"
Story is king (unless it's gameplay).
Source code, knock yourself out: http://internet.ls-la.net/folklore/wumpus.html ;)
Um, exactly? (AKA "whoosh")
He's mocking the reductive judgement-passing of the grandparent.
It has nothing to do with PC gamers being "too good", the mouse is just a superior aiming tool. But of course everyone already knows that.
Can God create a question so complex that even he cannot answer it?
Can Chuck Norris grow a beard so tough that even he cannot shave it?
(Personally I think he roundhouse kicks himself in the beard. Nothing can withstand that)
They had a Critical Thinking class in my high school senior year (in Toronto). Great class, should be taught everywhere.
Then again, one should consider that Critical Thinking is something they don't really want to instill in the general populace as much as discipline and obedience. See John Taylor Gatto, and the Prussian Education Model.
Yes, that's why I was careful to qualify it by saying "table of figures". ;)
I admit I originally bought an iPad as little more than an expensive toy, figured I'd just have it sitting on the coffee table at home for casual surfing, email, etc.
But you know what? I'm finding it a wonderful device to have around the office. Being able to combine typing and freeform sketching on something with the same form factor as a pad of paper is great for taking notes, without "separating" you from other people by having a laptop screen in the way. iThoughts is fantastic for brainstorming and more structured note-taking. I can pull up a design flat, walk over to a designer, ask some questions, and scribble notes or sketch right on top of the design. Just as good as a full colour printer and a box of crayons. ;)
And where it really kills? Meetings. The other day someone asked a question about our new site's stats, so I pulled up a table of figures in Google Analytics and passed it around the meeting, just like a piece of paper. Try THAT with a laptop.
Can it replace a laptop or desktop for doing real work? Hell no. But I'm finding it invaluable for many things that have traditionally been the domain of paper & printouts. It's becoming my new "back of the napkin". When lying flat on a table it becomes far more of a shared, group experience than a laptop can ever be. No more huddling around one person's screen, everyone can see it, and even interact with it, at the same time.
Note that most of these points relate to the tablet form factor in general, not just the iPad.
So... you'd need a table and a wall. This is hard to find?
Have you ever wanted to show someone something on your phone?
Has the size of the tiny screen size ever contributed to a sub-optimal viewing experience?
This thing would kill for small presentations on-the-go. Of course it's not suitable for a big roomful of people, but it would be fine for a small group sitting close to the display.
Hey now, not ALL men and women have different tastes. Stop generalizing! ;)
Great choreography maybe, but c'mon, Darth Maul was just a prop, not a real character.
I'd take Obi-wan leaving Anakin to die on the hill at the end of Ep III over that, it's the only scene in the entire prequel trilogy that even remotely approaches some semblance of dramatic depth.
I have set up plenty of Drupal sites for non-technical users who have no problems updating content. It's important to create Roles carefully tailored for specific use, instead of just handing them the Admin account (which would be quite bewildering).
I will certainly admit that building your first Drupal site comes with a near vertical learning curve, but the community is fantastic at providing help, and once you get over the hump it's an incredibly powerful, flexible, and extensible platform, with thousands of modules covering just about any feature set you can dream of.