Tim can bitch all he wants about MSN ultimately becoming a closed network, and Microsoft clients ultimately sterring people towards a closed network they control...but at the end of the day the best solution that the W3 has to offer is HTTP 1.1 and XHTML 4.
The stateless, text-oriented, forms-supported model had its day but that day has passed. The only way Microsoft, AOL, and other comapnies can offer vastly richer experiences is to either turn their entire site into a Flash sequence, or to develop proprietary protocols.
Seeing how Microsoft would be insane to factor out the most interactive aspect of the online experience to a third party vendor like Macromedia, I am not surprised at all to see them making the moves they are making.
The W3 could have done something about this though - once upon a time they understood that HTTP needed to be overhauled, but the HTTP-NG spec was never refined. More or less they just decided that HTTP 1.1 was the last HTTP spec. Well, guess what happens in an innovation vaccum at the open, standards-based end? Yup, closed proprietary extensions.
Within five years the "open" web will be a second-class network and AOL and Microsoft will own 95% of online traffic on their closed, enhanced networks.
1.) dot net is still vaporware and has no installed base, nor even a solid customer base--home user OR business--that wants to downgrade to (eXtermination of Privacy).
If XP users don't have it already, they'll get it the next time they do a Windows Update (yes, most people blindly download whatever MS tells them to at update time).
2.) People are satisfied with your so called "second class standards based Internet"
People were satisfied with BBSs at 1200 baud...most things MS, Apple, and most any other platform company do are not to satisfy users existing needs but create new needs
The "open", standards-based web exists largely because Microsoft allows it to exist. With over 90% of desktops under their control, and over 90% of the browser market under its control, Microsoft could at any time move off to a "extended" web (an online service using proprietary protocols), and in fact, we see that already happening.
Recently Microsoft has begun shipping XP, IE6, a new Windows Media Player, and the client libs for.Net.
They have also begun to shun non-IE clients at their web sites.
Why they are doing this should be obvious - soon, MSN sites will start to accesss client code available only on MS platforms. This will truly allow MS to extend what they have embraced.
Of course, can you blame them? HTTP and HTML are useful protocols that have become outdated. The stateless, text-oriented model was extremely useful to get early adoption, but at this point there is no doubt that users of every type of platform are ready to move on to more advanced protocols that offer greater functionality. This is why many websites use SSL now as a way of creating a session of any kind. Unfortunately the HTTP-NG protocol has been shelved - it would have provided a great deal of new functionality that could have moved the web in to the next generation.
So Microsoft is going to get there on their own. You will soon see them exploiting the client libs shipped to 90% of the desktop users out there to radically enhance the browsing experience.
The standards-based web will soon be relegated to a second-class experience, and its our collective fault for not moving more rapidly to create open standards that provide for a better user experience, and get the tools out there to support them.
I want my calendar available to me wherever I am - home, work, on the road - using a client-side solution is pointless in this respect. The same goes for mail. A service like Yahoo Calendar is the way to go - have your calendar wherever, on whatever browser. This seems self-evident.
Well, the demand for.Net is as contrived as the "demand" that was supposed to materialize for every other code transport protocol that has been rammed down our throats over the last decade.
I remember being told I would be dead in the water unless my code was transportable as a JavaBean...well, I'm still here....and where is that universal repository of JavaBeans everyone is hitting?
The more this stuff is rammed down our throats, the better plain old sockets look.
You simply cannot accomplish the tasks a modern system is given using small tools explicitly.
What you can look for is explicit modularity that avoids ridiculous reinvention of common functionality - KDE and GNOME are approaching this with their object models.
A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else.
on
Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 1
Agree with the article poster - Lame. Not only is this a lackluster MP3 unit (which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners), but it has virtually no UI wizardry that might define it as an Apple product.
Well this has been a problem for HP for a couple of years at least. The merger with Compaq will only complicate matters.
As it stands the market for this chip just doesn't justify production. SuperDome has been a failure (although HP is loathe to admit it), and the market for HPUX is dwindling rapidly.
The Alpha offers the concise history - a great core, but no marketing vision. Its just a product guys, if no one wants it, it isn't worth the billions to produce.
The bottom line is that customers don't really care what the underlying processors is.
You couldn't be more wrong. Enterprise customers often have technical support staff as versed in the tech as the vendor. They have to be - they are making budget and platform decisions that have huge ripple effects in their organizations.
The viability of the platform will figure keenly in the minds of anyone looking at further extensions of the PA line. Seeing as SuperDome has been a dud, you can presume that the SuperDome successor will thud even louder.
HP can't bring this chip to market, I don't care how cool it is. HP and Compaq are merging to bring about volume manufacturing and economies of scale, largely to fend off Dell, which is destroying them both individually using advanced manufacturing and distribution methods.
With an agenda based on scale, you don't get there by introducing a new CPU in a dead line. HP's SuperDome line is getting creamed by Sun and IBM - HP cannot afford to go back to the front lines with another enterprise offering unless SuperDome pans out a hell of a lot more than it is currently.
HP has always had impressive technology but still loses market share . HP-UX has dwindling market share and software support. The merger with Compaq will derail any plans for further proprietary architectures.
If you want to look at the gee-whiz value here, fine, but don't expect to see this in a product.
You are confusing open source with collaborative development. There is no reason why a closed source project cannot be collaboratively developed in a distributed fashion (i.e., only approved license holders given access to code), and why open source projects cannot be built in relative isolation. I believe Qt is an example of the latter.
Time for environment integration
on
GNU Emacs 21
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It really is time for editors to become better integrated with their environments, and even better, become components for their environments.
Imagine the glee that would ensue if emacs became a KPart or Bonobo component. Want an editor for your new IDE? Drop in emacs. I know integrating beyond pipe support is anathema to most unix folks, but in my opinion its worth it.
No, I have not seen the movie Fight Club. I have read the book. Try it.
What you need is an introduction to Nihilism. The core concept with regards to you is this - for your entire life you have been told that you are special by your parents, teachers, religious leaders, and most of all, anyone who has marketed a product to you (these people are more to blame than any of the previous).
This has resulted in a collectively inflated sense of self-worth amongst Americans, and a total absence of modesty. You believe you are worth something because your Mercedes tells you so.
Now wipe away all of this. Break down the core concepts of who you are and where you are in the world by destructing it and laying it before you so you can assess it without your own bullshit getting in the way. You'll find you aren't the smartest, biggest, fastest or best anymore. You'll find that there is someone who can code you under the table even in your tool of choice. You'll find that there are people who are effortlessly better than you in pursuits you have dedicated your life to.
Knowing all of this is the payoff, not the letdown. You'll find the liberation in shearing off all of the aggregated horseshit the "I'm okay, you're okay" crowd have jammed down your throat all of your life. Maybe just maybe you'll see things for what they really are starting with your self
Grady Booch has written excellent books on object-oriented design. Design Patterns by Gamma, et al is widely recognized as an excellent Patterns book. Some people also like Bertrand Meyer's "Object Oriented Software Construction" but this seems to have migrated to an Eiffel tutorial in later editions.
Best place to start is the comp.object FAQ. Don't underestimate the power of some of the better FAQ's out there - you can get a good grasp of basics and an excellent review of literature, all gratis.
Yes, but he's the essence of the /. user
on
Coder or Architect?
·
· Score: 4, Flamebait
The reason your post will eventually get modded down is that the submitter is manifesting the secret wet-dreams of everyone on/. - they all want to think of themselves as special, as prodigies.
They cling to the notions that experience should be subborned to genius, with the provision that they be recognized as such.
There's a deep inherent smugness around here, but as Chuck wrote in Fight Club - You aren't special. You aren't a precious little snowflake.
You go to great lengths to describe to us your engineering prowess, but then you solicit the opinion of college students and other random posters for your career development.
Given the fact that you seem unable to resolve key personal issues using your own judgement, I would have to say you are certainly not ready to make those decisions for others. Stay coding.
My use and enjoyment of linux does not detract from the use and enjoyment of XP or OSX users. Linux developers are happily creating software for their own enjoyment - how is this enjoyment diminshed by someone else using another OS?
I don't think anyone is disputing that Microsoft has won the majority of desktop users, but the issue is, who cares?
The heroic developer is the opposite of software engineering. While its often the case that one developer will carry the load of many (the 90/10 rule - 90% of the work is done by 10% of the staff), organizations often end up depending on this individual for more and more, until sooner or later the system simply breaks down.
That said, we don't live in Utopia - some programmers are simply better than others, but if you don't have a process in place to support migration and redistribtion of that work load, you will regret it.
IE and Netscape got into trouble by trying to do an end-run around standards altogether. Features included in the 3.x series of both browsers were simply not part of any standards proposal.
They've tried many times in the past to switch tracks, but Apple is a hrdware company and they always will be. Porting OSX to x86 would destroy their hardware business, and the resulting port to x86 would be worthelss as it would have no software available. It would take years to get vendors to redistribute x86 binaries.
XML is a great technology for allowing systems that do not share a well-understood data interchange format to understand each other. Thats it. XML solves the interchange problem. This in itself is fantastic.
Applying this technolgy to page generation and tree transformation is not fantastic. This is what you get when you assemble the same gang of professional committee sitters that tanked SGML, and give them a blank slate.
Want to transform documents and render content? Try DOM and CSS. These are much simpler, more flexible, better understood technologies. CSS is actually supported by your browser, and DOM is actually supportedf by real programming languages.
Slashdot Mirror
The stateless, text-oriented, forms-supported model had its day but that day has passed. The only way Microsoft, AOL, and other comapnies can offer vastly richer experiences is to either turn their entire site into a Flash sequence, or to develop proprietary protocols.
Seeing how Microsoft would be insane to factor out the most interactive aspect of the online experience to a third party vendor like Macromedia, I am not surprised at all to see them making the moves they are making.
The W3 could have done something about this though - once upon a time they understood that HTTP needed to be overhauled, but the HTTP-NG spec was never refined. More or less they just decided that HTTP 1.1 was the last HTTP spec. Well, guess what happens in an innovation vaccum at the open, standards-based end? Yup, closed proprietary extensions.
Within five years the "open" web will be a second-class network and AOL and Microsoft will own 95% of online traffic on their closed, enhanced networks.
If XP users don't have it already, they'll get it the next time they do a Windows Update (yes, most people blindly download whatever MS tells them to at update time).
2.) People are satisfied with your so called "second class standards based Internet"
People were satisfied with BBSs at 1200 baud...most things MS, Apple, and most any other platform company do are not to satisfy users existing needs but create new needs
The "open", standards-based web exists largely because Microsoft allows it to exist. With over 90% of desktops under their control, and over 90% of the browser market under its control, Microsoft could at any time move off to a "extended" web (an online service using proprietary protocols), and in fact, we see that already happening.
Recently Microsoft has begun shipping XP, IE6, a new Windows Media Player, and the client libs for .Net.
They have also begun to shun non-IE clients at their web sites.
Why they are doing this should be obvious - soon, MSN sites will start to accesss client code available only on MS platforms. This will truly allow MS to extend what they have embraced.
Of course, can you blame them? HTTP and HTML are useful protocols that have become outdated. The stateless, text-oriented model was extremely useful to get early adoption, but at this point there is no doubt that users of every type of platform are ready to move on to more advanced protocols that offer greater functionality. This is why many websites use SSL now as a way of creating a session of any kind. Unfortunately the HTTP-NG protocol has been shelved - it would have provided a great deal of new functionality that could have moved the web in to the next generation.
So Microsoft is going to get there on their own. You will soon see them exploiting the client libs shipped to 90% of the desktop users out there to radically enhance the browsing experience.
The standards-based web will soon be relegated to a second-class experience, and its our collective fault for not moving more rapidly to create open standards that provide for a better user experience, and get the tools out there to support them.
I want my calendar available to me wherever I am - home, work, on the road - using a client-side solution is pointless in this respect. The same goes for mail. A service like Yahoo Calendar is the way to go - have your calendar wherever, on whatever browser. This seems self-evident.
I remember being told I would be dead in the water unless my code was transportable as a JavaBean...well, I'm still here....and where is that universal repository of JavaBeans everyone is hitting?
The more this stuff is rammed down our throats, the better plain old sockets look.
What you can look for is explicit modularity that avoids ridiculous reinvention of common functionality - KDE and GNOME are approaching this with their object models.
A total waste of time.
As it stands the market for this chip just doesn't justify production. SuperDome has been a failure (although HP is loathe to admit it), and the market for HPUX is dwindling rapidly.
The Alpha offers the concise history - a great core, but no marketing vision. Its just a product guys, if no one wants it, it isn't worth the billions to produce.
You couldn't be more wrong. Enterprise customers often have technical support staff as versed in the tech as the vendor. They have to be - they are making budget and platform decisions that have huge ripple effects in their organizations.
The viability of the platform will figure keenly in the minds of anyone looking at further extensions of the PA line. Seeing as SuperDome has been a dud, you can presume that the SuperDome successor will thud even louder.
With an agenda based on scale, you don't get there by introducing a new CPU in a dead line. HP's SuperDome line is getting creamed by Sun and IBM - HP cannot afford to go back to the front lines with another enterprise offering unless SuperDome pans out a hell of a lot more than it is currently.
HP has always had impressive technology but still loses market share . HP-UX has dwindling market share and software support. The merger with Compaq will derail any plans for further proprietary architectures.
If you want to look at the gee-whiz value here, fine, but don't expect to see this in a product.
You are confusing open source with collaborative development. There is no reason why a closed source project cannot be collaboratively developed in a distributed fashion (i.e., only approved license holders given access to code), and why open source projects cannot be built in relative isolation. I believe Qt is an example of the latter.
Imagine the glee that would ensue if emacs became a KPart or Bonobo component. Want an editor for your new IDE? Drop in emacs. I know integrating beyond pipe support is anathema to most unix folks, but in my opinion its worth it.
What you need is an introduction to Nihilism. The core concept with regards to you is this - for your entire life you have been told that you are special by your parents, teachers, religious leaders, and most of all, anyone who has marketed a product to you (these people are more to blame than any of the previous).
This has resulted in a collectively inflated sense of self-worth amongst Americans, and a total absence of modesty. You believe you are worth something because your Mercedes tells you so.
Now wipe away all of this. Break down the core concepts of who you are and where you are in the world by destructing it and laying it before you so you can assess it without your own bullshit getting in the way. You'll find you aren't the smartest, biggest, fastest or best anymore. You'll find that there is someone who can code you under the table even in your tool of choice. You'll find that there are people who are effortlessly better than you in pursuits you have dedicated your life to.
Knowing all of this is the payoff, not the letdown. You'll find the liberation in shearing off all of the aggregated horseshit the "I'm okay, you're okay" crowd have jammed down your throat all of your life. Maybe just maybe you'll see things for what they really are starting with your self
Best place to start is the comp.object FAQ. Don't underestimate the power of some of the better FAQ's out there - you can get a good grasp of basics and an excellent review of literature, all gratis.
They cling to the notions that experience should be subborned to genius, with the provision that they be recognized as such.
There's a deep inherent smugness around here, but as Chuck wrote in Fight Club - You aren't special. You aren't a precious little snowflake.
Given the fact that you seem unable to resolve key personal issues using your own judgement, I would have to say you are certainly not ready to make those decisions for others. Stay coding.
I use linux with KDE at home as my primary desktop. When I am using that computer I am not thinking about what the CFOs of America think.
I don't think anyone is disputing that Microsoft has won the majority of desktop users, but the issue is, who cares?
That said, we don't live in Utopia - some programmers are simply better than others, but if you don't have a process in place to support migration and redistribtion of that work load, you will regret it.
I have made purchases from LLBean using Mozilla 0.9.4 on FreeBSD without any problem whatsoever.
IE and Netscape got into trouble by trying to do an end-run around standards altogether. Features included in the 3.x series of both browsers were simply not part of any standards proposal.
I'm not saying it couldn't be done, I'm saying that very few software vendors would bother going through the hassle.
They've tried many times in the past to switch tracks, but Apple is a hrdware company and they always will be. Porting OSX to x86 would destroy their hardware business, and the resulting port to x86 would be worthelss as it would have no software available. It would take years to get vendors to redistribute x86 binaries.
If this is what is required to make OSX useable, Apple is finished. Memory is cheap but you have to market to what the average Mac owner already has.
I can practically assure you that very few Mac users have 512MB desktop systems.
Good luck Apple.
Applying this technolgy to page generation and tree transformation is not fantastic. This is what you get when you assemble the same gang of professional committee sitters that tanked SGML, and give them a blank slate.
Want to transform documents and render content? Try DOM and CSS. These are much simpler, more flexible, better understood technologies. CSS is actually supported by your browser, and DOM is actually supportedf by real programming languages.