I'd be more interested to hear that in some magical way all the remaining IE6 users have been forced to upgrade to IE7 at least...
argh, when can that browser whither out of existence? For good!!! On our site (it's a corporate one) we still get a healthy 42% IE users, 40% of which are still IE6!!!! (which means... you guessed it... we still have to support it as web developers)
Maybe Ubuntu does look the part to compete with Win7 and it may have all the necessary apps to support it... yet I can't help but notice that I have yet to make ONE successful installation of this distro yet (ok, Kubuntu to be precise), even the latest 10.4 version I downloaded a couple of weeks back. Let alone have it work with graphics cards (I mean proper support, not compatibility mode) and audio cards out of the box.
And not that I'm a newcomer to Linux/Unix... Since '97 I've installed all major distros from Slackware to RH and SuSE and I've administered Solaris, Irix and AIX systems.
The bottom line... linux still needs a ways to go before it achieves the user friendliness of Win7. AFAIK some/many distros STILL don't include the necessary MP3 playback libraries on the dvd and you need to browse around the web for support. You still need to have kernel sources installed to *compile* a graphics driver. Hmmm, sorry folks. Things have improved a lot since the "configure/make/make install for anything" era, but there are still quite a few spots where Linux is rough around the ages. Until these spots are all evened out, I wouldn't talk about real comparison to Win7.
Yes, JS is very limiting when you have to develop any large libraries. The people who wrote/maintain jQuery will disagree, but they also know what I mean.
Building any relatively complex UI is a complete nightmare. Let alone a fully-fledged UI like you would like to have.
If you want your web app to look and behave like a real app... you're in for some frustration, unless you use some 3rd-party libraries... and I've seen none I'm entirely happy with. Either they're free and buggy or you have to pay tons of money to use them. This thing is more art (and prayer) than science.
Prediction: Unless HTML5 includes support for LAYOUTS and WIDGETS, it's not gonna do much.
Over the last 3 years I've developed some rather large data-centric web applications over HTML+jQuery. In the process I had to develop my own MVC framework just to survive (JS frontend libraries based on jQuery and PHP backend equivalents). I'm now happy (and lucky) enough to claim that they work on Firefox, Chrome (layout so-so) and Safari (you can forget IE).
Now I'm at the task of combining these to a much larger application. I want it to load on a single page, having multiple "views" (think viewstack), each having a rather complex interface in them (splitpanes, tabbed panels, lists etc.).
Do the UI in HTML / <your favourite framework>... forget it. In Flex... a few hours. Some colleagues used extJS extensively for another project which again had a complex UI. End result: they got it to work like they want, but only on FF2!
I'm now at the process of learning Flex. There's a learning curve to it but at least it's a lot more promising (and CONSISTENT) than HTML will ever be, in my opinion.
Our government works a lot like that, but more like in shady deals with the ultra rich (much like Cheney et al do over there, might I remind you -- at least we're not invading other countries as part of those deals).
This, however, is one of the rare cases where the govt system worked like it was supposed to (ok, maybe a bit overzealous, but what the hell)
It's quite simple to track positions individually yet anonymously. It all depends on goodwill (and how much people want to spend on the GPRS traffic they donate to that system)
Depends, though, if you live in england or not;) (see today's post about UK wanting to snoop on all internet traffic)
We need to raise that cost in terms of the labour required.
Easy. The army does it a lot. They keep their networks busy at all times so that the enemy has no way of knowing when they might strike (otherwise they would detect the increase in communications).
So, giv'em tons of garbage to chew on. They might overcome this, but at least you'll have the pleasure of having given them something to chew on
Just let me know who defines "dodgy". Is it you and me and the chap next door, or is it anybody with an interest in keeping us aligned to one particular way of thinking (and hence they need to find and weed-out any "mal-thinkers")?
As for time and resources... there's plenty of them. Huge computer systems with advanced software is at their service, tailor-made for such tasks.
I'm greek and here's a summary of what the hacked page contains:
They did it to shut the mouths of some people who thought they were incompetent. They have nothing against the CERN team and what they do, they just wanted a high-profile page. ("Like we wrote, we have no intention of damaging the system or ruining the site... our intention is to demonstrate (a) practical response to some "active" members of the GHS who have their noses stuck to the roof without contributing anything")
The main body contains messages to ppl who call them names and prefer style to substance. They salute true amateurs (hackers I presume) and all fellow geeks and some old hats that quit because they got tired of all the 1337ness of the "field experts". They also salute all the young ppl who -without much talking- put their head down to work, because what they care about is knowledge and only that.
The last line is translated as is: Dear admins at CERN, we closed a very serious BUG that your page had so that it does not become a DORK and you become defaced every single day by the (stupid) actions of every wannabe hacker. Don't look for us, we'll find you real soon.
For my tastes this is horrible: It's brackets galore. In any fairly complex piece of code you'll need to scroll all over the place and it's way too much formatting sugar. Seems to me like the people who prefer this style have a problem tracking logic sequences.
Ok, so maybe I overdid it a bit in the previous paragraph. But my point is: it's all subjective. You like it this way, lots of others (apparently) like it another way.
While on the topic... one coding practice that I was taught while working for a large company was:
"Keep your methods shorter than 10 lines".
Actually makes the code a lot more readable (but you have to be careful so as to break up your code in such a way that you don't get performance hits from the increased function calls (stack).
It's nice to be able to go out and by an iPhone at a subsidised price WITHOUT starting the said contract......but it's unfair for the mobile operator. If the unsubsidised iPhone is expensive, this is Apple's pricing problem.
So the move to require you to pre-sign the contract in order to buy a subsidised iphone seems fair to me.
I am considering to buy one, if and when it becomes available as-is (without a contract) and at a decent price.
Haven't posted on/. for a long while, but this one called for it... (ok, it's a bit flamebait, but nevertheless)
Telecoms companies dream......a lot....a f*** of a lot.
They keep dreaming of wide-grinned customers going over to their tills and blindly giving them all their money because they a) keep downloading through their mobiles the latest mp3s / ringtones / videos from <some popular bimbo teenager artist> and then flock around to rejoice on them b) keep searching for holidays to the Bahamas / Tenerife that they book through their services c) keep talking on their phones 24/7 like there's nothing else on the planet to do and generally because "we" keep using their lifestyle-oriented apps/services that were designed with carriers' profits in mind, rather than the end user's needs.
As long as they keep their heads up their a***s and keep on this profit model, people are going to be looking for alternative ways to do their job. Apple took a nab on that, but from the wrong angle methinks (make Jobs our emperor rather than the carriers).
You want to make profits from mobile internet? Fine... lower the cost to < 0.1 euros per megabyte (or less) and let people surf on. Don't keep it at 1 or 2 eur/MB and wait while rubbing your hands with a big smirk... We're not THAT stupid (yet).
I speak as a software developer working on J2ME and WM applications that try to overcome the said restrictions...:/
For linux to catch on you really need to do away with all the tweaking of config files and all the config/make/make install.
I speak as an ex linux fan who got tired of having to tweak a million things on every install so as to
- get the soundcard working (plod along forums XYZ to find out that you need a kernel recompile, what a joy)
- try one of 10 different hacks to get my logitech mediaplay to work under X (still haven't figured it out)
- upgrade kde to 3.5.5 in SuSE. You need a phd to sort out the dependencies (yes, that was recent history)
- be able to see & use the "network neighbourhood" (samba shares)
- have NTFS write support, anyone? For my external HDDs?
- etc. etc.
So after losing a couple of days at work (re)configuring my brand new linux pc, thinking I'll eventually get rid of the silly windoze environment again and get back to good-old linux, I got fed up.
So I stopped fiddling about, reassured myself that this is for people who've got time on their hands (like I used to when I was at uni), and popped a windows cd again. Took me 5 hours to get all my programs sorted and fully working (I do keep a fixed set of apps I install) along with all my hardware running smoothly.
The bottom line: Not everybody has the willingness/time to mother-hen an alternative OS. As much as I like linux, I'll stick to windows until a better time comes (I have time to waste or I don't need kernel recompilations). Things like gui slickness are details. Both KDE (my fav) and Gnome are doing really well on that aspect.
Or maybe I'm getting rusty. My real linux days finished with slackware (still my fav. distro) and suse about two years back, having used every single linux/unix distro there was, even irix/solaris (on SGI/Sun boxes:)
This is extremely old news, guys. If CFL bulbs are a rarity in the States, or something not very well known, then I'm completely amazed (*).
In Europe where I live (Greece, if you have to know) they're very common and their use, afaik, is quite widespread. At home we've long stopped using classic lightbulbs.
I do sincerely hope, though, that this CFL thing isn't really something most americans are just becoming aware of.
(*) I don't mean to be flamebait but... it struck me afterwards. The States isn't exactly well known for its energy-conservation awareness (think big SUVs, engine technology that's lightyears behind european / japanese manufacturers in terms of efficiency). This is the only way it could make sense to me that over there you guys don't know about CFLs a lot.
...but personally I'd be more than tempted to give these "extremists" an eye-for-an-eye. They want gorilla tactics, they'll have them.
They are entitled to their opinion but they have no bloody right to enforce it on others.
I don't know how horrible this researcher has been to animals (I hope not), but there are other means to express your "concerns" to him in any case.
(I'm sorry guys, but when I see people so headstrong in their views that they want to force them on others, I get berserk).
Where I live the so called "environmentalists" are more of a group that blindly opposes anything they think might harm the environment, when at the same time they approve other things that are a lot more damaging to it.
I'm probably gonna get modded as flamebait for saying this, but I'll go ahead anyway:
Iran is not like the U.S.
True. Iran does not keep a habit of occupying foreign countries for its own economic benefit. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Iran also does not send its CIA/FBI/NSA/whatever to mess up another country's internal affairs in order to give them a "reason" to invade later.
Call me flamebait, but this thing happened in Iraq and in Serbia (ok Serbia isn't occupied by US troops). I know also my country is down the queue for splitting up ("divide and conquer", does it ring a bell?). I'm not going to talk much about it here. Here it's even out on respected papers. Guess you won't read about it on CNN/Fox News, will you?
(btw, how would you feel if you found out that [pick your favourite country] had plans underway for more than a decade to divide the US on grounds of "ethnic minorities" ???)
Some people over there (in the States) have gotten too cocky/power hungry and it saddens me to realise that when the US was among the good guys in WWII, in WWIII I fear very much it's going to be the bad guy:-/
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be more interested to hear that in some magical way all the remaining IE6 users have been forced to upgrade to IE7 at least...
argh, when can that browser whither out of existence? For good!!! On our site (it's a corporate one) we still get a healthy 42% IE users, 40% of which are still IE6!!!! (which means... you guessed it... we still have to support it as web developers)
errrrm, rough around the EDges... (typing faster than I think)... :P
Maybe Ubuntu does look the part to compete with Win7 and it may have all the necessary apps to support it... yet I can't help but notice that I have yet to make ONE successful installation of this distro yet (ok, Kubuntu to be precise), even the latest 10.4 version I downloaded a couple of weeks back. Let alone have it work with graphics cards (I mean proper support, not compatibility mode) and audio cards out of the box.
And not that I'm a newcomer to Linux/Unix... Since '97 I've installed all major distros from Slackware to RH and SuSE and I've administered Solaris, Irix and AIX systems.
The bottom line... linux still needs a ways to go before it achieves the user friendliness of Win7. AFAIK some/many distros STILL don't include the necessary MP3 playback libraries on the dvd and you need to browse around the web for support. You still need to have kernel sources installed to *compile* a graphics driver. Hmmm, sorry folks. Things have improved a lot since the "configure/make/make install for anything" era, but there are still quite a few spots where Linux is rough around the ages. Until these spots are all evened out, I wouldn't talk about real comparison to Win7.
Wonder when the swat team will get called in.
ah, finally, there's hope for them too :)
(and on a more serious note: and for many many more people, I would suspect)
ROFL
aaah, where are my mod points when I need them most???
assuming you got a pretty wife ;)
Did they discover this just now???
Gee...
My ideas were along the line...
Prediction: Unless HTML5 includes support for LAYOUTS and WIDGETS, it's not gonna do much.
Over the last 3 years I've developed some rather large data-centric web applications over HTML+jQuery. In the process I had to develop my own MVC framework just to survive (JS frontend libraries based on jQuery and PHP backend equivalents). I'm now happy (and lucky) enough to claim that they work on Firefox, Chrome (layout so-so) and Safari (you can forget IE).
Now I'm at the task of combining these to a much larger application. I want it to load on a single page, having multiple "views" (think viewstack), each having a rather complex interface in them (splitpanes, tabbed panels, lists etc.).
Do the UI in HTML / <your favourite framework>... forget it. In Flex... a few hours. Some colleagues used extJS extensively for another project which again had a complex UI. End result: they got it to work like they want, but only on FF2!
I'm now at the process of learning Flex. There's a learning curve to it but at least it's a lot more promising (and CONSISTENT) than HTML will ever be, in my opinion.
My cynical side is very tempted to agree...
Our government works a lot like that, but more like in shady deals with the ultra rich (much like Cheney et al do over there, might I remind you -- at least we're not invading other countries as part of those deals).
This, however, is one of the rare cases where the govt system worked like it was supposed to (ok, maybe a bit overzealous, but what the hell)
if only he were riding a little lower... :D
It's quite simple to track positions individually yet anonymously. It all depends on goodwill (and how much people want to spend on the GPRS traffic they donate to that system)
Depends, though, if you live in england or not ;) (see today's post about UK wanting to snoop on all internet traffic)
We need to raise that cost in terms of the labour required.
Easy. The army does it a lot. They keep their networks busy at all times so that the enemy has no way of knowing when they might strike (otherwise they would detect the increase in communications).
So, giv'em tons of garbage to chew on. They might overcome this, but at least you'll have the pleasure of having given them something to chew on
And if we do this on a large-scale basis... :D
amen my friend!
So glad I left this place for good...
All well and good mate.
Just let me know who defines "dodgy". Is it you and me and the chap next door, or is it anybody with an interest in keeping us aligned to one particular way of thinking (and hence they need to find and weed-out any "mal-thinkers")?
As for time and resources... there's plenty of them. Huge computer systems with advanced software is at their service, tailor-made for such tasks.
Just a thought...
Hi there,
I'm greek and here's a summary of what the hacked page contains:
They did it to shut the mouths of some people who thought they were incompetent. They have nothing against the CERN team and what they do, they just wanted a high-profile page. ("Like we wrote, we have no intention of damaging the system or ruining the site ... our intention is to demonstrate (a) practical response to some "active" members of the GHS who have their noses stuck to the roof without contributing anything")
The main body contains messages to ppl who call them names and prefer style to substance. They salute true amateurs (hackers I presume) and all fellow geeks and some old hats that quit because they got tired of all the 1337ness of the "field experts". They also salute all the young ppl who -without much talking- put their head down to work, because what they care about is knowledge and only that.
The last line is translated as is:
Dear admins at CERN, we closed a very serious BUG that your page had so that it does not become a DORK and you become defaced every single day by the (stupid) actions of every wannabe hacker. Don't look for us, we'll find you real soon.
For my tastes this is horrible: It's brackets galore. In any fairly complex piece of code you'll need to scroll all over the place and it's way too much formatting sugar. Seems to me like the people who prefer this style have a problem tracking logic sequences.
Ok, so maybe I overdid it a bit in the previous paragraph. But my point is: it's all subjective. You like it this way, lots of others (apparently) like it another way.
While on the topic... one coding practice that I was taught while working for a large company was:
"Keep your methods shorter than 10 lines".
Actually makes the code a lot more readable (but you have to be careful so as to break up your code in such a way that you don't get performance hits from the increased function calls (stack).
It's nice to be able to go out and by an iPhone at a subsidised price WITHOUT starting the said contract... ...but it's unfair for the mobile operator. If the unsubsidised iPhone is expensive, this is Apple's pricing problem.
So the move to require you to pre-sign the contract in order to buy a subsidised iphone seems fair to me.
I am considering to buy one, if and when it becomes available as-is (without a contract) and at a decent price.
Amen!
Very well said!
Haven't posted on /. for a long while, but this one called for it... (ok, it's a bit flamebait, but nevertheless)
...a lot. ...a f*** of a lot.
:/
Telecoms companies dream...
They keep dreaming of wide-grinned customers going over to their tills and blindly giving them all their money because they
a) keep downloading through their mobiles the latest mp3s / ringtones / videos from <some popular bimbo teenager artist> and then flock around to rejoice on them
b) keep searching for holidays to the Bahamas / Tenerife that they book through their services
c) keep talking on their phones 24/7 like there's nothing else on the planet to do
and generally because "we" keep using their lifestyle-oriented apps/services that were designed with carriers' profits in mind, rather than the end user's needs.
As long as they keep their heads up their a***s and keep on this profit model, people are going to be looking for alternative ways to do their job. Apple took a nab on that, but from the wrong angle methinks (make Jobs our emperor rather than the carriers).
You want to make profits from mobile internet? Fine... lower the cost to < 0.1 euros per megabyte (or less) and let people surf on. Don't keep it at 1 or 2 eur/MB and wait while rubbing your hands with a big smirk... We're not THAT stupid (yet).
I speak as a software developer working on J2ME and WM applications that try to overcome the said restrictions...
For linux to catch on you really need to do away with all the tweaking of config files and all the config/make/make install.
:)
I speak as an ex linux fan who got tired of having to tweak a million things on every install so as to
- get the soundcard working (plod along forums XYZ to find out that you need a kernel recompile, what a joy)
- try one of 10 different hacks to get my logitech mediaplay to work under X (still haven't figured it out)
- upgrade kde to 3.5.5 in SuSE. You need a phd to sort out the dependencies (yes, that was recent history)
- be able to see & use the "network neighbourhood" (samba shares)
- have NTFS write support, anyone? For my external HDDs?
- etc. etc.
So after losing a couple of days at work (re)configuring my brand new linux pc, thinking I'll eventually get rid of the silly windoze environment again and get back to good-old linux, I got fed up.
So I stopped fiddling about, reassured myself that this is for people who've got time on their hands (like I used to when I was at uni), and popped a windows cd again. Took me 5 hours to get all my programs sorted and fully working (I do keep a fixed set of apps I install) along with all my hardware running smoothly.
The bottom line: Not everybody has the willingness/time to mother-hen an alternative OS. As much as I like linux, I'll stick to windows until a better time comes (I have time to waste or I don't need kernel recompilations). Things like gui slickness are details. Both KDE (my fav) and Gnome are doing really well on that aspect.
Or maybe I'm getting rusty. My real linux days finished with slackware (still my fav. distro) and suse about two years back, having used every single linux/unix distro there was, even irix/solaris (on SGI/Sun boxes
wtf?
This is extremely old news, guys. If CFL bulbs are a rarity in the States, or something not very well known, then I'm completely amazed (*).
In Europe where I live (Greece, if you have to know) they're very common and their use, afaik, is quite widespread. At home we've long stopped using classic lightbulbs.
I do sincerely hope, though, that this CFL thing isn't really something most americans are just becoming aware of.
(*) I don't mean to be flamebait but... it struck me afterwards. The States isn't exactly well known for its energy-conservation awareness (think big SUVs, engine technology that's lightyears behind european / japanese manufacturers in terms of efficiency). This is the only way it could make sense to me that over there you guys don't know about CFLs a lot.
...but personally I'd be more than tempted to give these "extremists" an eye-for-an-eye. They want gorilla tactics, they'll have them.
They are entitled to their opinion but they have no bloody right to enforce it on others.
I don't know how horrible this researcher has been to animals (I hope not), but there are other means to express your "concerns" to him in any case.
(I'm sorry guys, but when I see people so headstrong in their views that they want to force them on others, I get berserk).
Where I live the so called "environmentalists" are more of a group that blindly opposes anything they think might harm the environment, when at the same time they approve other things that are a lot more damaging to it.
Trian
I guess this gives a whole new meaning to "inflatable toys"...
I'm probably gonna get modded as flamebait for saying this, but I'll go ahead anyway:
True. Iran does not keep a habit of occupying foreign countries for its own economic benefit. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Iran also does not send its CIA/FBI/NSA/whatever to mess up another country's internal affairs in order to give them a "reason" to invade later.
Call me flamebait, but this thing happened in Iraq and in Serbia (ok Serbia isn't occupied by US troops). I know also my country is down the queue for splitting up ("divide and conquer", does it ring a bell?). I'm not going to talk much about it here. Here it's even out on respected papers. Guess you won't read about it on CNN/Fox News, will you?
(btw, how would you feel if you found out that [pick your favourite country] had plans underway for more than a decade to divide the US on grounds of "ethnic minorities" ???)
Some people over there (in the States) have gotten too cocky/power hungry and it saddens me to realise that when the US was among the good guys in WWII, in WWIII I fear very much it's going to be the bad guy :-/