My main problem with PHP is that it makes it extremely easy to code extremely poorly, and most PHP programmers make a lot of use out of that feature. It encourages mixing code and design, leading to difficult-to-manage websites (compare to any system which makes use of MVC.) This is also its greatest advantage--it's just so easy to add a ?php tag and some code for easy server-side scripting.
CakePHP seems like a very neat idea--but then, when you're talking about a framework like this, it could really be done in any language. Why choose PHP (specifically) over Python or Perl if you're not going to use the main benefit of PHP (easy integration of design and code.)
My next biggest complaint about PHP has to do with its types and casting, but realistically, that's something you can get over. Oh, and its lack of unsigned integers.
Assuming your statements were true, most students don't understand that if they're downloading, they're probably uploading, too.
But your statements aren't true. Making a copy of a copyrighted work violates copyright law. Pure downloaders almost never get caught, which I suspect is the reason for this fallacious belief.
Now, that said, my personal belief is that downloading should never be illegal, primarily because it's virtually impossible to know for sure that you're downloading from a legitimate source. Hulu.com? How do I know that they're legit? eDonkey? Maybe the band released their album on there.
In the end, standards don't mean too much. What matters is that the majority of people can communicate. If Microsoft could get away with making the web completely proprietary, you can bet that they would. They know that they can't, so they do what they can to be close while not screwing up proprietary websites designed for their proprietary browser.
IE8 will require a non-standard tag in order to render the page in a standards-compliant way. The page itself is still standards-compliant, and in fact, the extra information the meta-element should be ignored by standards-compliant browsers. It's a hack, but since that's the way browsers are supposed to behave, it's ok. I can make up all sorts of tags and create a browser that understands them, and as long as my browser also understands the standards and renders them correctly, it's still a standards-compliant browser. It's embracing and extending, and that's not necessarily bad.
What this ultimately means is that IE8 won't be standards-compliant, however web developers will be able to force it into standards-compliant mode on a per-page basis.
Maybe a good work-around for people who broke their sites by writing to IE 6 would be to add a tag that says to use IE 6's render mode. IT shouldn't be the people following the standards who have to make the change. Except that there are a lot of unmaintained pages out there. Microsoft wants to maintain compatibility. They don't want thousands of web developers to wake up one morning and find that half of their userbase can't use their websites because of an Internet Explorer upgrade, and they can't count on users upgrading to the new version of the browser.
Right. The code for Internet Explorer is heavily shared around in other Microsoft software. If they included GPL code, they'd be legally required to open most of Windows under the GPL.
And don't say "Shh, what do you think I was trying to get them to do!?" They have expensive lawyers. They wouldn't make that kind of mistake.
Obviously, and this is the manufacturer's solution.
I don't really know what people want from Microsoft now. They screwed up--it's obvious. They know it, we know it, web developers know it. Nevertheless, web developers have had to work around incompatibilities for years. What do you want, for Microsoft to change the rendering engine out from under people? Thousands of websites to stop working in that browser (the one that most people use) until the developers can fix the site? It's a bad situation, and it's Microsoft's fault to begin with, but what solution would you propose that wouldn't inconvenience a lot of end users (both developers and their customers, alike)?
Luckily, the two notebooks that I'm comparing aren't made of the same material. And regardless, I'm trying to isolate one variable--the variable that everyone seems to be harping on.
Did you miss the part where I said, "all other things being equal"? Everyone's so excited about the form factor and "how thin it is!" but when you get right down to it, functionally, it doesn't make that much of a difference (and the poster to whom I replied didn't say a thing about weight, just that it was the thinnest notebook with the biggest screen.)
Pretty neat site--definitely something I'll have to remember to use in the future.
Of course, you don't always get your choice of seats. Airlines are notorious for not giving you the seat you picked, and then saying, "It's just a request--we don't have to honor it." My wife and I experienced this on our honeymoon. "Sorry guys, you don't get to sit together." It was completely and utterly arbitrary and absurd.
I like the EEE, and I think that the Macbook Air is pointless, so I guess that I'm the kind of person that you're looking to get some answers from.
The reason for my opinions on the matter stem largely from portability. The Macbook Air may only weigh 3lbs (certainly a technical innovation) but if you set it on top of a Macbook, it's going to be about the same size. Its length and width are almost identical. Only its height (thinness) and weight are less. To me, that doesn't make it significantly more portable than the Macbook.
The EEE, on the other hand, is much smaller than the Macbook Air. For portability, that's a much bigger difference than simply being thinner. The dimensions (found on reghardware.co.uk) can be found here: http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/01/16/asus_air_table_2.png
I think that it adds insult to injury that the Macbook Air costs $600 more than the Macbook for almost the same dimensions, but much more power. If Apple had come out with a 10" notebook, I'd feel very differently, but I just can't call the Air a subnotebook or an ultraportable, and as such, I have to compare it to other, normal-sized notebooks. When you compare it against these, it's a horrible deal.
In the US, warranties cannot be voided by aftermarket modification unless the vendor can prove that said modification caused the damage seeking to be repaired.
That said, something like would have to be fought in court, and with Apple's bankroll and the relatively low costs we're talking about, it's probably not going to be worth it to anyone. People replacing the batteries themselves won't think that fighting is worth it.
I hear you, but it's pretty worthless trying to argue this point here. People will just accuse you of being unable to understand people's needs besides your own--yet never really articulating how that extra thin size really makes a difference.
That's not been my finding at all. My observations have been that people use "Intelligent Design" when they're trying to shoehorn their own anti-evolution-creationist ideas into something that sounds like science. Most people I know use the term interchangeably with creationism, except that because of the intellectual slant to ID, people think that it's got some credibility.
Depending upon what sort of connectivity you have (and whether or not you can program), it may be possible to code up a gateway. Perl's Net-XMPP2 is really quite spiffy, and writing a bot to relay messages shouldn't be too hard. The key will be in integrating into it whatever connectivity you have with your phone.
Now a full gateway so that you could talk to multiple users and receive messages back might be quite a bit harder, but if it's really just for this one purpose, it shouldn't be.
Since Gtalk uses Jabber, any Jabber client ought to be able to connect to it. Have you searched for Jabber clients for your phone?
Anyway, I'm in the same boat as you, largely. I use IRC because it's simple, and because I can easily run it anywhere that I like. Typically, I run it in a screen on my colo. I've never found a satisfactory IM client that runs in a console, so I've never much been a fan of them.
Jabber, though, looks pretty neat, and since there are plugins for text-mode IRC clients (irssi, specifically) to connect to Jabber, I may give it a real shot, particularly if AOL enables server-to-server communication (as most of the people I'd want to talk to are on AIM.)
Well, logging into multiple networks means that you have to keep track of multiple usernames and passwords. You have to remember which network each person is on. Almost everyone has this problem, and it's just a little bit silly for everyone to be using a multi-network chat protocol to talk to everyone else.
AOL probably sees the writing on the wall, and realizes that if they want to keep people using their client (which is, after all, the only way they make money maintaining AIM, anyway) then they need interoperability. Otherwise, people will move on to multi-network clients, to whom AOL can't serve ads.
There are usually some pretty good advantages to using open standard when creating your product--aside from interoperability (which lots of people think is overrated), you also get to avoid re-inventing the wheel.
Since AOL came up with their instant messaging protocol long before Jabber, it seems like the advantages are much fewer for AOL. In fact, justifying such a move to the board or to the shareholders would probably be more difficult than if they had been able to use open protocols in the first place.
I'd be pretty surprised if Google Talk was putting a dent in their business. It's probably one of the other big-three--Yahoo! Instant Messanger, and MSN Messenger. By moving to XMPP, AOL can effectively increase their userbase to include anyone also using XMPP (since they can now communicate with AOL's subscribers.) It's Yet Another Reason to use AOL instead of Y!IM or MSN.
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My main problem with PHP is that it makes it extremely easy to code extremely poorly, and most PHP programmers make a lot of use out of that feature. It encourages mixing code and design, leading to difficult-to-manage websites (compare to any system which makes use of MVC.) This is also its greatest advantage--it's just so easy to add a ?php tag and some code for easy server-side scripting.
CakePHP seems like a very neat idea--but then, when you're talking about a framework like this, it could really be done in any language. Why choose PHP (specifically) over Python or Perl if you're not going to use the main benefit of PHP (easy integration of design and code.)
My next biggest complaint about PHP has to do with its types and casting, but realistically, that's something you can get over. Oh, and its lack of unsigned integers.
Assuming your statements were true, most students don't understand that if they're downloading, they're probably uploading, too.
But your statements aren't true. Making a copy of a copyrighted work violates copyright law. Pure downloaders almost never get caught, which I suspect is the reason for this fallacious belief.
Now, that said, my personal belief is that downloading should never be illegal, primarily because it's virtually impossible to know for sure that you're downloading from a legitimate source. Hulu.com? How do I know that they're legit? eDonkey? Maybe the band released their album on there.
In the end, standards don't mean too much. What matters is that the majority of people can communicate. If Microsoft could get away with making the web completely proprietary, you can bet that they would. They know that they can't, so they do what they can to be close while not screwing up proprietary websites designed for their proprietary browser.
Somewhat ironically, DTrace is open source, and it should be possible to compile it without this crippling feature.
IE8 will require a non-standard tag in order to render the page in a standards-compliant way. The page itself is still standards-compliant, and in fact, the extra information the meta-element should be ignored by standards-compliant browsers. It's a hack, but since that's the way browsers are supposed to behave, it's ok. I can make up all sorts of tags and create a browser that understands them, and as long as my browser also understands the standards and renders them correctly, it's still a standards-compliant browser. It's embracing and extending, and that's not necessarily bad.
What this ultimately means is that IE8 won't be standards-compliant, however web developers will be able to force it into standards-compliant mode on a per-page basis. Maybe a good work-around for people who broke their sites by writing to IE 6 would be to add a tag that says to use IE 6's render mode. IT shouldn't be the people following the standards who have to make the change. Except that there are a lot of unmaintained pages out there. Microsoft wants to maintain compatibility. They don't want thousands of web developers to wake up one morning and find that half of their userbase can't use their websites because of an Internet Explorer upgrade, and they can't count on users upgrading to the new version of the browser.
Right. The code for Internet Explorer is heavily shared around in other Microsoft software. If they included GPL code, they'd be legally required to open most of Windows under the GPL.
And don't say "Shh, what do you think I was trying to get them to do!?" They have expensive lawyers. They wouldn't make that kind of mistake.
Obviously, and this is the manufacturer's solution.
I don't really know what people want from Microsoft now. They screwed up--it's obvious. They know it, we know it, web developers know it. Nevertheless, web developers have had to work around incompatibilities for years. What do you want, for Microsoft to change the rendering engine out from under people? Thousands of websites to stop working in that browser (the one that most people use) until the developers can fix the site? It's a bad situation, and it's Microsoft's fault to begin with, but what solution would you propose that wouldn't inconvenience a lot of end users (both developers and their customers, alike)?
Honestly, NT4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP have all been pretty decent OS releases--well, ok, after the service packs are considered.
Luckily, the two notebooks that I'm comparing aren't made of the same material. And regardless, I'm trying to isolate one variable--the variable that everyone seems to be harping on.
Did you miss the part where I said, "all other things being equal"? Everyone's so excited about the form factor and "how thin it is!" but when you get right down to it, functionally, it doesn't make that much of a difference (and the poster to whom I replied didn't say a thing about weight, just that it was the thinnest notebook with the biggest screen.)
Just for a test, I checked the stock Macbook. Seems to also fit just fine.
Pretty neat site--definitely something I'll have to remember to use in the future.
Of course, you don't always get your choice of seats. Airlines are notorious for not giving you the seat you picked, and then saying, "It's just a request--we don't have to honor it." My wife and I experienced this on our honeymoon. "Sorry guys, you don't get to sit together." It was completely and utterly arbitrary and absurd.
Can you tell me what use a thin notebook is? Seriously, all other things being equal, what does that quarter inch get you?
You can actually configure an Air with either SSD, faster processor, or both. The SSD drive costs $999, and the faster processor costs $300.
I like the EEE, and I think that the Macbook Air is pointless, so I guess that I'm the kind of person that you're looking to get some answers from.
The reason for my opinions on the matter stem largely from portability. The Macbook Air may only weigh 3lbs (certainly a technical innovation) but if you set it on top of a Macbook, it's going to be about the same size. Its length and width are almost identical. Only its height (thinness) and weight are less. To me, that doesn't make it significantly more portable than the Macbook.
The EEE, on the other hand, is much smaller than the Macbook Air. For portability, that's a much bigger difference than simply being thinner. The dimensions (found on reghardware.co.uk) can be found here: http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/01/16/asus_air_table_2.png
I think that it adds insult to injury that the Macbook Air costs $600 more than the Macbook for almost the same dimensions, but much more power. If Apple had come out with a 10" notebook, I'd feel very differently, but I just can't call the Air a subnotebook or an ultraportable, and as such, I have to compare it to other, normal-sized notebooks. When you compare it against these, it's a horrible deal.
In the US, warranties cannot be voided by aftermarket modification unless the vendor can prove that said modification caused the damage seeking to be repaired.
That said, something like would have to be fought in court, and with Apple's bankroll and the relatively low costs we're talking about, it's probably not going to be worth it to anyone. People replacing the batteries themselves won't think that fighting is worth it.
Cool--until you need to use the Internet and your cdrom at the same time. Or A flash drive.
I hear you, but it's pretty worthless trying to argue this point here. People will just accuse you of being unable to understand people's needs besides your own--yet never really articulating how that extra thin size really makes a difference.
Looks pretty neat! I'll check it out.
That's not been my finding at all. My observations have been that people use "Intelligent Design" when they're trying to shoehorn their own anti-evolution-creationist ideas into something that sounds like science. Most people I know use the term interchangeably with creationism, except that because of the intellectual slant to ID, people think that it's got some credibility.
Depending upon what sort of connectivity you have (and whether or not you can program), it may be possible to code up a gateway. Perl's Net-XMPP2 is really quite spiffy, and writing a bot to relay messages shouldn't be too hard. The key will be in integrating into it whatever connectivity you have with your phone.
Now a full gateway so that you could talk to multiple users and receive messages back might be quite a bit harder, but if it's really just for this one purpose, it shouldn't be.
Since Gtalk uses Jabber, any Jabber client ought to be able to connect to it. Have you searched for Jabber clients for your phone?
Anyway, I'm in the same boat as you, largely. I use IRC because it's simple, and because I can easily run it anywhere that I like. Typically, I run it in a screen on my colo. I've never found a satisfactory IM client that runs in a console, so I've never much been a fan of them.
Jabber, though, looks pretty neat, and since there are plugins for text-mode IRC clients (irssi, specifically) to connect to Jabber, I may give it a real shot, particularly if AOL enables server-to-server communication (as most of the people I'd want to talk to are on AIM.)
Well, logging into multiple networks means that you have to keep track of multiple usernames and passwords. You have to remember which network each person is on. Almost everyone has this problem, and it's just a little bit silly for everyone to be using a multi-network chat protocol to talk to everyone else.
AOL probably sees the writing on the wall, and realizes that if they want to keep people using their client (which is, after all, the only way they make money maintaining AIM, anyway) then they need interoperability. Otherwise, people will move on to multi-network clients, to whom AOL can't serve ads.
There are usually some pretty good advantages to using open standard when creating your product--aside from interoperability (which lots of people think is overrated), you also get to avoid re-inventing the wheel.
Since AOL came up with their instant messaging protocol long before Jabber, it seems like the advantages are much fewer for AOL. In fact, justifying such a move to the board or to the shareholders would probably be more difficult than if they had been able to use open protocols in the first place.
I'd be pretty surprised if Google Talk was putting a dent in their business. It's probably one of the other big-three--Yahoo! Instant Messanger, and MSN Messenger. By moving to XMPP, AOL can effectively increase their userbase to include anyone also using XMPP (since they can now communicate with AOL's subscribers.) It's Yet Another Reason to use AOL instead of Y!IM or MSN.