Reading what you write more closely, you really sound like a tormented closet case crying out for help.
The only reason I can imagine that you would want to cling to the ridiculous idea that acting gay is a sin, but it's not a sin to have homosexual desires but not act on them, is because you are in that exact situation yourself.
If that's not the case, then why do you care about other people's sexuality? If your kids turn out gay, will you consider them sinners, reject their lifestyle, and attempt to have them reprogrammed? What effect do gay people have on your life? How do two gays getting married endanger your own marriage? The only possible explanation I can think of, is that you're struggling with your homosexuality, locked into a straight marriage, and see gay marriage as an irrestable temptation. Why else would you have any problem with gays getting married?
I have new for you, buddy: straight people don't have those irrational fears. Straight people aren't threatened by gays.
You wrote: "Or rejecting bestiality, or pedophilia, or incest."
You are wrong to associate homosexuality with beastiality, pedophilia or incest. That is a common technique that people use to demonize gays, and it's wrong. It sounds like you have been listening to Ted Haggard who preaches intollerance yet practices hypocracy (which is the real sin rather than homosexuality), instead of Jesus who preaches to love everyone.
You may not admit to being a big hot Ted Haggard fan in public, but let's explore how much common ground you share with Ted Haggard and Osama bin Laden, in your condemnation of homosexuals, and your rejection of evolution. Watch this video of Richard Dawkins interviewing Ted Haggard. Now tell me, do you think Ted Haggard or Richard Dawkins won that exchange?
So you say that non-believers have to read all the scripture to understand Christianity, but why won't Christians read any of the science books to understand Evolution?
When Richard Dawkins interviewed Ted Haggard about evolution (video, quotes), Haggard accused evolutionists of believing the eye formed "by accident".
Dawkins retorted that he never met any evolutionists who believed that. So Haggard replied: "Or maybe you haven't met the people I have." Then he chuckles, mounts his self-righteous high horse, shifts into his most arrogant, haughty, accusing tone of voice (see the video, it's hillarious!), and lectures Dawkins about intellectual arrogance, capping his diatribe with "don't be arrogant".
Let's see how your own argument applies to Ted Haggard:
By using the age old argument of accidental eye formation you are just demonstrating one thing, you really don't know evolution that well and will be dismissed as just another disgruntled person biased against science, therefore it is unlikely that you will be listened to.
Now back to your argument: it's arrogant. You made the ridiculous claim that "Homosexuality is not a sin, just the offenders are." That's absolutely incorrect, and it's morally wrong to believe it, and reprehensible to spread that belief.
If Paul can "dismiss most all of mosaic law with a few exceptions", then why can't you dismiss all the rest of your medieval hatreds and supersititions about gays and witches? Science has proven them wrong: it's time to throw them out.
The Bible didn't say anything about computers and cell phones, yet you take advantage of them every day.
So if you're going to reject science, then at least be consistent about it like the Amish.
-Don
Memorable Quotes from Root of All Evil? (2006) (TV)
Ted Haggard: We fully embrace the scientific method, as American Evangelicals. And we think, as time goes along, as we discover more and more facts, that we'll learn more and more about how God created the heavens and the earth. Richard Dawkins: The scientific method clearly demonstrates that the world is four and a half billion years old. I mean, do you accept that? Ted Haggard: Yeah, you know what you're doing, is you are, you are accepting some of the views that are accepted in some portions of the scientific community as fact, where in, in fact, your grandchildren might listen to the tape of you saying that and laugh at you? Richard Dawkins: [dead serious] Do you want to bet?
Ted Haggard: Sometimes it's hard for a human being to study the ear, or study the eye, and think that happened by accident. Richard Dawkins: I beg your pardon, did you say by accident? Ted Haggard: Yeah. Richard Dawkins: What do you mean, by accident? Ted Haggard: That the eye just formed itself somehow. Richard Dawkins: Who says it did? Ted Haggard: Well, some evolutionists say it did. Richard Dawkins: Not a single one that I've ever met. Ted Haggard: Really. Richard Dawkins: Really. You obviously know nothing about the subject of evolution. Ted Haggard: Or maybe you haven't met the people I have.
[chuckles] Ted Haggard: But you see, you do understand, you do understand that this issue right here, of intellectual arrogance, is the reason why people like you have a difficult problem with people of faith. I don't communicate an air of superiority over the people because I know so much more, and if you only read the books I know, and if you only knew the scientists I knew, then you would be great like me. Well, sir, there could be many things that you know well. There are other things that you don't know well. As you age, you'll find yourself wrong on some things, right on some other things. But please, in the process of it, don
You are morally wrong to condemn homosexuality as a sin. And you are factually wrong in the justifications you use to spread your hatred.
Comparing homosexuality to alchoholism is totally assinine. Why don't you stop being such an asshole, and stop labeling people you hate as sinners? And don't give me that big load of crap about "love the sinner but hate the sin" -- that's bullshit. Your hatered materially and emotionally hurts innocent people, and you know it, but you go on hating anyway, simply because your "Christian" values tell you it's OK to hurt sinners.
I agree that there is a strong case that Paul was gay, just as there is a strong case that your beloved Ted Haggard and your respected Mark Foley are gay.
When will you Christians figure out that most of the people who carry on about how they hate homosexuals, are GAY THEMSELVES. I mean, DUH! What could be more obvious? What straight person in their right mind would CARE if somebody else was gay?
Ted Haggard and Mark Foley tried not to act on their homosexuality, but they couldn't control themselves: neither their behavior nor their hypocrisy was under control. Did hating themselves for being gay help them to be better Christians? Why did they make such a big deal out of telling other people that being gay was wrong, when they were gay themselves?
So why isn't there a commandment against hypocrisy?
So do you cherry-pick your interpretation of the bible as is most convenient to you at the time, or do you blindly follow ALL of its teachings to the letter?
You Christian Cherry Pickers are at odds with the Literal Interpretationalists who point to the bible as their reason for hating gays. Or do you agree with Reverend Fred W Phelps?
Do you believe the Institution of Marriage needs to be protected? Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to your own heterosexual marriage?
Do you support passing laws enforcing the 10 Commandments, punishing Adultery with the Death Penalty, and outlawing divorce? That would certainly protect your sacred marriage institution. Or is it more convenient just to pick on gays, instead of addressing your own heterosexual problems like divorce and infidelity?
So where did that one Christian ever get the idea to hate gays? They were given their marching orders, in no uncertain terms, and they're only regurgitating what they were programmed to believe.
I think it says a lot about the lack of morality of the Christian leadership, like Reverend Ted Haggard, Reverend Jerry Falwell, and presumptuously infallible Pope: hypocrites who preach hatred and intolerance, who only recently got around to admitting that Galeleo might have been right.
Why should ANYTHING be kept away from software? Software effects and supports EVERYTHING.
There's no reason to put up an artificial firewall between software and anything else, including sexuality, politics or religion. The only reason I can possibly think of that you have such a problem with mixing software and sexuality, is that you have some kind of problem with your sexuality that you're fighting to keep in the closet. So stop trying to get other people to fight your battles. It's something you've got to deal with by yourself, Reverend Haggard.
Methinks the Reverend Donscarletti doth protest too much.
The OpenLaszloLegals Project will benefit immensely from this! OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of the now open source AMV2 JavaScript engine, for the benefit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.
"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.
The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.
Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.
See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.
The Architecture
With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.
The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.
The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so that the particular benefits of targeting a runtime are not lost to the OpenLaszlo application developer.
I didn't realize that SpiderMonkey already had a way to load pre-compiled JavaScript code. Is there any reason it's not possible to allow web pages to download pre-compiled JavaScript byte code as well? That would really benefit AJAX applications.
For Firefox with the AVM3, the most obvious format to use for pre-compiled byte code would be SWF files, which contain codes for graphics as well as byte codes. Firefox could just ignore or trap on unsupported graphics codes. And then all the tools that support SWF files (like the OpenLaszlo compiler) could be applied to Firefox.
(Of course I don't mean JavaScript compiled into machine instructions (that's the job of the JIT), so the security of downloading uncompiled JavaScript text and precompiled binary JavaScript byte codes should be identical).
The OpenLaszlo compiler also has an ECMAScript parser, and it outputs Flash bytecode. The Legals Project will support the AMV3 runtime, which Adobe just made Open Source and Mozilla will be incorporated into Firefox.
Adobe open sourcing AVM3 and Firefox incorporating it is great news for OpenLaszlo, because it dovetails so nicely with the roadmap already in place!
Opening up AVM3 also enables the development of open source debuggers and integrated development environments like Eclipse, and makes it possible to embed an efficient JavaScript engine into any application, which has enormous long term benefits for everyone.
Please, I beg: somebody write an AVM2 back-end for SWIG! That would totally rock. It's an essential tool for wrapping libraries and extending languages, that SpiderMonkey's sorely missing.
A: Legals is a project to extend OpenLaszlo to target multiple runtimes. For our initial release, we will be supporting AVM2 (Flash 7 and 8), AVM3 (Flash 9), and DHTML. It is also possible to extend legals to other runtimes in the future.
OpenLaszlo's Legals Project will benefit immensely from this, because the OpenLaszlo compiler will directly target the AVM2 virtual machine that was just released as Open Source! Thanks to AVM2, Firefox will be a much better AJAX application delivery and development platform. OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of that, for the benifit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.
All AJAX applications running on Firefox benefit, but Firefox itself will also benefit from integrating AVM2, because so much of FireFox is written in JavaScript itself.
AVM2 will be a huge improvement, because Firefox's current JavaScript interpreter, SpiderMonkey, is so extremely inefficient and wasteful of memory, that not only does it come in last in the computer language shootout, but it's actually TWICE as band and the next worst language, Smalltalk! (That's REALLY BAD.)
An important feature currently missing from Firefox that I'm looking forward to is a way to load pre-compiled binary bytecode into Firefox (like SWF9 files but without the graphics), instead of parsing and re-compiling the JavaScript source text every time. That's one of Flash's major advantages over browser-based JavaScript: it can quickly load and run pre-compiled AJAX applications much faster, thanks to the fact that it doesn't have to parse and compile huge amounts of JavaScript source code text files every time it starts up.
"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.
The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.
Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.
See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.
The Architecture
With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.
The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.
The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so t
Why as a matter of fact, yes, somebody HAS profiled SpiderMonkey. And you might be interested in knowing just how fat and slow it is compared to other languages.
The Computer Language Shootout demonstrates that SpiderMonkey JavaScript is not only THE WORST language, in terms of BOTH slow speed and huge size, but also TWICE AS BAD AS THE SECOND WORST. SpiderMonkey loses the Computer Language Shootout by a long shot. Even bigger than the Republicans are going to lose this election!
So the assumption that SpiderMonkey is fat and slow is extremely correct, by a long shot. Just like the assumption that the Republicans are corrupt and incompetent.
I gave several reasons why Lua is better than Ruby, for many tasks. Most tasks consider speed and memory usage to be important. Also, Lua is much better than Ruby when it comes to embedding it in an application (like World of Warcraft does). And Lua is also very easy to extend the language with C or C++ code and libraries written in other languages, which is useful for a wide range of tasks. And the fact that it's well written and well designed certainly doesn't hurt.
I still love Python and use it regularly, and won't stop using it just because I learned Lua. It has a huge library of useful extension modules and libraries written in Python, that I wouldn't want to do without. But it's impossible to strip down Python so it's as small and efficient as Lua, so Lua is useful for a wide range of tasks on small devices that Python simply can't address. I have both Python and Lua on my PocketPC, but Python is much larger and doesn't leave room for much else, while Lua is far more practical for developing scriptable applications on small devices, than Python.
Don't even get me started about how horrible and badly designed Perl is, but it's practically useless as an embedded extension language, or on small devices. The only task Perl is really good for is maintaining job security for unethical programmers of indecypherable spaghetti code.
Absolutely: The Lua interpreter source code is very clean and well written, and wonderfully portable and platform agnostic.
Here's the source code that you can view online -- there isn't much to it! Four global header files, 19 core C files, 19 core header files, 10 library C files, 1 interpreter C file, and 2 compiler C files. Here is the main loop of the virtual machine -- notice that there are only 38 opcodes!
One important reason to learn and consider using Lua, is that it's by far one of the fastest and smallest of all the interpreted scripting languages, on the Programming Language Shootout. It totally smokes most other scripting languages.
Here are the ratios of interpreted languages compared to compiled C code, in order of SPEED (the number is how many times slower it is than C, smaller is better unless you make your living by wasting time):
Lua: 6.4;
Python: 7.4;
Pike: 8.3;
Tcl: 8.7;
Perl: 9.0;
Scheme MzScheme: 11;
PHP: 13;
Icon: 14;
Smalltalk GST: 15;
Ruby: 16;
JavaScript SpiderMonkey: 32;
Here are the ratios of interpreted languages compared to compiled C code, in order of SIZE (the number is how many times bigger it is than C, smaller is better unless you make your living by selling memory):
Lua: 2.5;
Haskell GHC: 2.8;
SML MLton: 3.4;
Python: 4.1;
Perl: 4.3;
Tcl: 5.1;
Icon: 5.4;
Ruby: 6.0;
C# Mono: 6.3;
Pike: 6.8;
PHP: 7.1;
Oberon-2 OO2C: 7.9;
Erlang HiPE: 7.9;
Java JDK -server: 9.1;
Scheme MzScheme: 9.2;
Mozart/Oz: 9.8;
Scala: 10;
Lisp SBCL: 10;
Smalltalk GST: 13;
Smalltalk VisualWorks: 15;
JavaScript SpiderMonkey: 30;
Lua is even better than several compiled languages (like Java) when it comes to its size! Like Java, Lua also has a "just in time" compiler, but that was not used in these benchmarks (although I presume Java's was, because Java did very well with speed but not memory usage).
I think it's laughable that someone would put their time into learning a faddishly popular language like Ruby, but would then not consider learning a technically superior language like Lua, since Ruby scores so badly on these benchmarks compared to Lua, Lua has been around a lot longer than Ruby, and it had already proven itself in many commercial products (like WOW).
Lua really is far ahead of the pack of other languages in many ways, BECAUSE it's so clean and well designed. Plus its licensing terms are excellent, it's extremely portable, easy to embed and integrate with applications, and SWIG supports it well. So it's definitely well worth learning.
Here's the definition of AJAX from another recent article on Slashdot.
This definition, which makes no mention of DHTML, exactly describes OpenLaszlo running on Flash:
"Asynchronous Javascript And Xml, popularly known as Ajax, is a combination of Javascript, XML and some coding on the server side. Even though this technology existed for years, many believe it was Google which brought it to the front by implementing it on its sites and thus raising it to the cult status it enjoys now. There is something magical in seeing a website update its content without reloading the whole page, which is the visual essence of Ajax."
AJAX is AJAX whether it uses DHTML, SVG, VML, J2ME, PDF or Flash to draw on the screen. The users don't care about which library is used to draw on the screen: what they care about is that the application doesn't refresh the whole page each time it needs to update some information. Arguing about the brand of JavaScript or the rendering library totally misses the point. The important question is what percentage of desktops does it consistently run on, and Flash's 98% is a great answer. Can you name any platform that's more consistent and ubiquituous?
The misunderstanding that you're spreading and I'm trying to clear up is your implication that OpenLaszlo itself is Alpha quality code. OpenLaszlo is a mature released product, in version 3.3, and many production quality products have been built and delivered with it, like Laszlo Mail. The Legals project targeting alternative runtimes is in alpha, but it works well and it's certainly not vaporware -- you can prove that to yourself by downloading the installer and checking it out.
And as I said in my other posting, OpenLaszlo applications certainly are "AJAX", since they use Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Nowhere in the acronym "AJAX" is the letter "D" for "DHTML" -- otherwise it would be "AJAXAD" for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML And DHTML". If you want a new buzzword for the subset of AJAX applications that exclusively use DHTML, then go coin another acronym than AJAX, because AJAX stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". And that describes OpenLaszlo to a tee, whether it uses Flash, DHTML, J2ME or SVG for rendering.
And as for your bizarre argument that open source projects shouldn't announce before beta, can you point to at least one other person or open source organization that agrees with you? Don't just cite the names of a couple of proprietary products that happened to have been released as open source software after they were post-beta, like Eclipse and OpenLaszlo. That doesn't mean the Eclipse and OpenLaszlo developers believe that all open source software projects should do the same thing. Can you actually point to anybody else who explicitly states that it's wrong to announce plans for open source software projects before beta, besides you? Well??? Who else can you cite who actually shares your strange beliefs?
Apparently the Slashdot editors disagreed with your bizarre position, and had no problem approving this article. If you want to grouse about their policies, that's considered off-topic for discussion, so you'll have to take it up with them personally. So please stop spreading misinformation in this thread, and stop trying to convince everyone to be more closed and secretive about the way they develop open source software.
You're wrong about that. But then again, you're the one who proudly proclaims to know nothing about Flash, so I wouldn't expect you to know. But please stop spreading misinformation.
Rhino is Netscape's Java implementation of JavaScript. JScript is Microsoft's implementation of JavaScript. In the same way, ActionScript is Macromedia's implementation of JavaScript. It started out something else, but now it's completely JavaScript. JScript has just as many quirks and bugs as ActionScript, and that's certainly considered JavaScript. OpenLaszlo's LZX language is also an implementation of JavaScript, which the OpenLaszlo compiler translates as necessary to the particular dialect of JavaScript supported by the target platform. You are splitting hairs over the spelling of the name, and have totally lost sight of the original argument.
Your definition of "most people" who say Flash isn't AJAX includes a whole bunch of Johny-come-lately newbies who only heard the AJAX hype recently, and people like yourself who refuse to learn anything about Flash or recognize its right to exist. But sticking your head in the sand doesn't make it go away, or give you the right to rewrite history.
Many people beyond your "most people" have been doing Asynchronous JavaScript and XML for years before the term was coined in 2005: Internet Explorer developers, Flash developers, XUL developers, OpenLaszlo developers, online game developers, and others. AJAX applications running on Flash enjoy all the techniques and advantages of DHTML based AJAX, and fewer disadvantages from incompatible DHTML implementations. So what is your point of trying to narrow the definition of AJAX, just to punish Flash developers?
The literal definition of AJAX is "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". How are Flash and OpenLaszlo not AJAX? They use different JavsScript interpreter implementations, but what they're doing architecturally is exactly the same, and that's what matters. An AJAX program is still fundamentally AJAXian, whether the class it uses to asynchronously load XML is spelled XMLHTTPRequest or LzDataset. If spelling is really more important to you than architecture, then OpenLaszlo provides a compatible API spelled "XMLHTTPRequest".
The fact that you're using DHTML, SVG, J2ME or Flash to draw on the screen is much less important than the fact that you have an JavaScript interpreter in the client ("J"), that asynchronously ("A") downloads XML ("X") from the server.
If you're going to get pedantic about narrowing the definition of AJAX, then consider this: If DHTML was important to the definition of AJAX, it would be "AJAXAD", for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and DHTML." But nowhere in the name "AJAX" can you find a letter that stands for "DHTML".
The "AJAX" architecture has been around for a long time before the term was coined, even before JavaScript, XML and DHTML were invented. I worked on James Gosling's NeWS window system in the 1980's. NeWS was most definitely AJAXian, except that it uses PostScript code instead of JavaScript, PostScript data instead of XML, and PostScript graphics instead of DHTML or Flash.
But beyond having those superficial syntactic differences (and being consistently designed on purpose around PostScript, instead of haphazardly and accidentally thrown together like AJAX), the NeWS window system was most certainly AJAXian, in every important sense of the term. I will concede that NeWS was not literally AJAX the way Flash is, because JavaScript and XML and even DHTML had not been invented yet, but it certanly embodied the most important features of the AJAX architecture: extensibility, asynchronicity, local interaction, sending code and structured data, and defining dynamic application specific protocols.
I'd also like to address your deliberately misleading statement that "It's a bunch of alpha-quality code that's looking for developers." You're implying that OpenLaszlo itself is alpha quality, which is totally false and misleading. OpenLaszlo version 3.3 is quite solid and production quality code. Earthlink is happily shipping Laszlo Mail to millions of their customers, right now. That's certainly production quality by any measure, and you can try it yourself for free.
You're also implying that the announcements of OpenLaszlo for DHTML and J2ME claim that it's production quality, but they certainly DO NOT make that claim -- they're very clear about the development status and timetable. You're obviously just too lazy to read any of the information presented, and you're basing your accusations on your own ignorance and incorrect assumptions. It's you who's deliberately misleading. Go do your homework, kiddo.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Stop blaming others for your own misunderstandings. Take the time to learn about the issues, before making baseless assumptions and incorrect, misleading accusations. It's ironic that you'd get so furious about deliberately misleading statements, when you're the one who's making them, not me nor anyone at Laszlo Systems.
That's not misleading at all -- you're just misunderstanding. OpenLaszlo applications certainly are "AJAX". AJAX stands for: "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". That's exactly what OpenLaszlo is, whether it's running on Flash or the web browser. OpenLaszlo was "AJAX" long before the term was coined.
Before AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) had a name, there was Laszlo Systems, a software tools developer using AJAX-like methods along with with Macromedia's Flash player to deliver richer Web experiences. David Temkin tells us why he chose the Flash player as a platform. Laszlo went open source and chose IBM's Common Public License as it was flexible enough to fit their needs without curbing commercial use.
Now can you find anything at all misleading about the announcement, once you understand the standard definition of the terms? You told me privately that you were misled into believing that 1) there was a new production ready product available and 2) there were new demos ready now. I can find nothing in the announcement or web pages that states or implies any of that, so you're just making it up, and reacting to your own straw man misunderstandings. Don't blame other people for your own poor reading comprehension.
Who are you to say that I am not entitled to post an announcement about an open source project on Slashdot? Who else shares your unique "school of thought" that nobody should announce anything until beta?
Let's get back to your original argument that open source projects should not post announcements before they're in beta. Why not? Says who? What are the positive advantages of that? How do they outweight the horrible negative consequences of stifling development and supressing community participation?
What do you have against Linux and every other open source project? You don't seem to understand the first and most important thing about open source software development, and that's colaboration and communication. Operating in secret until beta, as you suggest, is totally against those principles.
The fact that Flash is commonly used for ads, and that those ads annoy everyone and cause many people to hate Flash, doesn't detract from the high quality user interfaces that you can build with it, if you use it for good instead of evil.
OpenLaszlo is an open source language and set of tools for developing full fledged rich web applications, which are compiled into SWF files that run on the Flash player. Laszlo/Flash is presently much more capable of implementing high quality cross platform user interfaces than dynamic AJAX/HTML/SVG currently is.
Laszlo is a high level XML and JavaScript based programming language. It's independent of Flash in the same way that GCC is independent of the Intel instruction set and Windows runtime, because they both compile a higher level language, and can target other runtimes and instruction sets.
Currently Flash is the most practical, so that's what Laszlo supports initially, but it can be retargeted to other runtimes like SVG, XUL, Java or Avalon, once they grow up and mature. But right now Flash is the best way to go, because of i
Who are you to say when open source projects should make announcements? Would you lecture Linus that he announced his operating system too soon, and should have waited until it was beta quality? Bill Gates would certainly agree with you, and he'd probably add that it's still not beta quality.
First of all, please read the announcement and web pages before replying, this time. Second of all, we use Subversion, not CVS. Third of all, you can download an installer for the nightly build or the latest stable release from here. And finally, stop complaining that the open source development process is not closed and secretive.
Of course a nicely formatted resume could mean that they paid someone to do it for them, just like they paid someone to do all their homework and write all their papers through college. But at least they know how to delegate!
Every Perl programmer knows the way to job security is to write piles of horrible undecipherable code, so your current employer will be afraid to fire you because they can't find anyone to take over the mess. The only reason anyone hires new Perl programmers any more these days, is to take over the horrible mess left by their previous Perl programmer who got hit by a bus. Anyone hiring Perl programmers to write new code is crazy.
Are you complaining that Laszlo developers should be more secretive about their plans and development process, and not tell anyone what they're doing until the software is fully completed and tested? That's just NOT how an open source project works.
Or are you complaining that we're not working fast enough? Then why don't you lend a hand and contribute some of your own time and effort to the open source project? That IS how an open source project works.
If that's not your problem, then what are you complaining about? Do you have some criticism of the design or implementation? Then speak up while there's still time to influence the development process! If we waited until we were finished before announcing our plans, you wouldn't have a chance to give any feedback, effect the design, or contribute your own efforts.
If you're just one of those people who likes listening to yourself complain about Flash, but doesn't actually feel like contributing to any open source software development efforts, then you might enjoy Oliver Steel's Flash Troll Generator. Oliver wrote the OpenLaszlo compiler, so he knows and hates Flash much more than you could ever aspire to.
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Reading what you write more closely, you really sound like a tormented closet case crying out for help.
The only reason I can imagine that you would want to cling to the ridiculous idea that acting gay is a sin, but it's not a sin to have homosexual desires but not act on them, is because you are in that exact situation yourself.
If that's not the case, then why do you care about other people's sexuality? If your kids turn out gay, will you consider them sinners, reject their lifestyle, and attempt to have them reprogrammed? What effect do gay people have on your life? How do two gays getting married endanger your own marriage? The only possible explanation I can think of, is that you're struggling with your homosexuality, locked into a straight marriage, and see gay marriage as an irrestable temptation. Why else would you have any problem with gays getting married?
I have new for you, buddy: straight people don't have those irrational fears. Straight people aren't threatened by gays.
-Don
You wrote: "Or rejecting bestiality, or pedophilia, or incest."
You are wrong to associate homosexuality with beastiality, pedophilia or incest. That is a common technique that people use to demonize gays, and it's wrong. It sounds like you have been listening to Ted Haggard who preaches intollerance yet practices hypocracy (which is the real sin rather than homosexuality), instead of Jesus who preaches to love everyone.
You may not admit to being a big hot Ted Haggard fan in public, but let's explore how much common ground you share with Ted Haggard and Osama bin Laden, in your condemnation of homosexuals, and your rejection of evolution. Watch this video of Richard Dawkins interviewing Ted Haggard. Now tell me, do you think Ted Haggard or Richard Dawkins won that exchange?
-Don
So you say that non-believers have to read all the scripture to understand Christianity, but why won't Christians read any of the science books to understand Evolution?
When Richard Dawkins interviewed Ted Haggard about evolution (video, quotes), Haggard accused evolutionists of believing the eye formed "by accident".
Dawkins retorted that he never met any evolutionists who believed that. So Haggard replied: "Or maybe you haven't met the people I have." Then he chuckles, mounts his self-righteous high horse, shifts into his most arrogant, haughty, accusing tone of voice (see the video, it's hillarious!), and lectures Dawkins about intellectual arrogance, capping his diatribe with "don't be arrogant".
Let's see how your own argument applies to Ted Haggard: By using the age old argument of accidental eye formation you are just demonstrating one thing, you really don't know evolution that well and will be dismissed as just another disgruntled person biased against science, therefore it is unlikely that you will be listened to.
Now back to your argument: it's arrogant. You made the ridiculous claim that "Homosexuality is not a sin, just the offenders are." That's absolutely incorrect, and it's morally wrong to believe it, and reprehensible to spread that belief.
If Paul can "dismiss most all of mosaic law with a few exceptions", then why can't you dismiss all the rest of your medieval hatreds and supersititions about gays and witches? Science has proven them wrong: it's time to throw them out.
The Bible didn't say anything about computers and cell phones, yet you take advantage of them every day. So if you're going to reject science, then at least be consistent about it like the Amish.
-Don
Memorable Quotes from Root of All Evil? (2006) (TV)
Ted Haggard: We fully embrace the scientific method, as American Evangelicals. And we think, as time goes along, as we discover more and more facts, that we'll learn more and more about how God created the heavens and the earth.
Richard Dawkins: The scientific method clearly demonstrates that the world is four and a half billion years old. I mean, do you accept that?
Ted Haggard: Yeah, you know what you're doing, is you are, you are accepting some of the views that are accepted in some portions of the scientific community as fact, where in, in fact, your grandchildren might listen to the tape of you saying that and laugh at you?
Richard Dawkins: [dead serious] Do you want to bet?
Ted Haggard: Sometimes it's hard for a human being to study the ear, or study the eye, and think that happened by accident.
Richard Dawkins: I beg your pardon, did you say by accident?
Ted Haggard: Yeah.
Richard Dawkins: What do you mean, by accident?
Ted Haggard: That the eye just formed itself somehow.
Richard Dawkins: Who says it did?
Ted Haggard: Well, some evolutionists say it did.
Richard Dawkins: Not a single one that I've ever met.
Ted Haggard: Really.
Richard Dawkins: Really. You obviously know nothing about the subject of evolution.
Ted Haggard: Or maybe you haven't met the people I have.
[chuckles]
Ted Haggard: But you see, you do understand, you do understand that this issue right here, of intellectual arrogance, is the reason why people like you have a difficult problem with people of faith. I don't communicate an air of superiority over the people because I know so much more, and if you only read the books I know, and if you only knew the scientists I knew, then you would be great like me. Well, sir, there could be many things that you know well. There are other things that you don't know well. As you age, you'll find yourself wrong on some things, right on some other things. But please, in the process of it, don
You are morally wrong to condemn homosexuality as a sin. And you are factually wrong in the justifications you use to spread your hatred.
Comparing homosexuality to alchoholism is totally assinine. Why don't you stop being such an asshole, and stop labeling people you hate as sinners? And don't give me that big load of crap about "love the sinner but hate the sin" -- that's bullshit. Your hatered materially and emotionally hurts innocent people, and you know it, but you go on hating anyway, simply because your "Christian" values tell you it's OK to hurt sinners.
I agree that there is a strong case that Paul was gay, just as there is a strong case that your beloved Ted Haggard and your respected Mark Foley are gay.
When will you Christians figure out that most of the people who carry on about how they hate homosexuals, are GAY THEMSELVES. I mean, DUH! What could be more obvious? What straight person in their right mind would CARE if somebody else was gay?
Ted Haggard and Mark Foley tried not to act on their homosexuality, but they couldn't control themselves: neither their behavior nor their hypocrisy was under control. Did hating themselves for being gay help them to be better Christians? Why did they make such a big deal out of telling other people that being gay was wrong, when they were gay themselves?
So why isn't there a commandment against hypocrisy?
-Don
So do you cherry-pick your interpretation of the bible as is most convenient to you at the time, or do you blindly follow ALL of its teachings to the letter?
You Christian Cherry Pickers are at odds with the Literal Interpretationalists who point to the bible as their reason for hating gays. Or do you agree with Reverend Fred W Phelps?
-Don
Do you believe the Institution of Marriage needs to be protected? Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to your own heterosexual marriage?
Do you support passing laws enforcing the 10 Commandments, punishing Adultery with the Death Penalty, and outlawing divorce? That would certainly protect your sacred marriage institution. Or is it more convenient just to pick on gays, instead of addressing your own heterosexual problems like divorce and infidelity?
-Don
So where did that one Christian ever get the idea to hate gays? They were given their marching orders, in no uncertain terms, and they're only regurgitating what they were programmed to believe.
I think it says a lot about the lack of morality of the Christian leadership, like Reverend Ted Haggard, Reverend Jerry Falwell, and presumptuously infallible Pope: hypocrites who preach hatred and intolerance, who only recently got around to admitting that Galeleo might have been right.
-Don
Why should ANYTHING be kept away from software? Software effects and supports EVERYTHING.
There's no reason to put up an artificial firewall between software and anything else, including sexuality, politics or religion. The only reason I can possibly think of that you have such a problem with mixing software and sexuality, is that you have some kind of problem with your sexuality that you're fighting to keep in the closet. So stop trying to get other people to fight your battles. It's something you've got to deal with by yourself, Reverend Haggard.
Methinks the Reverend Donscarletti doth protest too much.
-Don
The OpenLaszlo Legals Project will benefit immensely from this! OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of the now open source AMV2 JavaScript engine, for the benefit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.
-Don
I didn't realize that SpiderMonkey already had a way to load pre-compiled JavaScript code. Is there any reason it's not possible to allow web pages to download pre-compiled JavaScript byte code as well? That would really benefit AJAX applications.
For Firefox with the AVM3, the most obvious format to use for pre-compiled byte code would be SWF files, which contain codes for graphics as well as byte codes. Firefox could just ignore or trap on unsupported graphics codes. And then all the tools that support SWF files (like the OpenLaszlo compiler) could be applied to Firefox.
(Of course I don't mean JavaScript compiled into machine instructions (that's the job of the JIT), so the security of downloading uncompiled JavaScript text and precompiled binary JavaScript byte codes should be identical).
-Don
The OpenLaszlo compiler also has an ECMAScript parser, and it outputs Flash bytecode. The Legals Project will support the AMV3 runtime, which Adobe just made Open Source and Mozilla will be incorporated into Firefox.
Adobe open sourcing AVM3 and Firefox incorporating it is great news for OpenLaszlo, because it dovetails so nicely with the roadmap already in place!
Opening up AVM3 also enables the development of open source debuggers and integrated development environments like Eclipse, and makes it possible to embed an efficient JavaScript engine into any application, which has enormous long term benefits for everyone.
Please, I beg: somebody write an AVM2 back-end for SWIG! That would totally rock. It's an essential tool for wrapping libraries and extending languages, that SpiderMonkey's sorely missing.
-Don
From the OpenLaszlo Project Legals FAQ:
OpenLaszlo's Legals Project will benefit immensely from this, because the OpenLaszlo compiler will directly target the AVM2 virtual machine that was just released as Open Source! Thanks to AVM2, Firefox will be a much better AJAX application delivery and development platform. OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of that, for the benifit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.
All AJAX applications running on Firefox benefit, but Firefox itself will also benefit from integrating AVM2, because so much of FireFox is written in JavaScript itself.
AVM2 will be a huge improvement, because Firefox's current JavaScript interpreter, SpiderMonkey, is so extremely inefficient and wasteful of memory, that not only does it come in last in the computer language shootout, but it's actually TWICE as band and the next worst language, Smalltalk! (That's REALLY BAD.)
An important feature currently missing from Firefox that I'm looking forward to is a way to load pre-compiled binary bytecode into Firefox (like SWF9 files but without the graphics), instead of parsing and re-compiling the JavaScript source text every time. That's one of Flash's major advantages over browser-based JavaScript: it can quickly load and run pre-compiled AJAX applications much faster, thanks to the fact that it doesn't have to parse and compile huge amounts of JavaScript source code text files every time it starts up.
-Don
Why as a matter of fact, yes, somebody HAS profiled SpiderMonkey. And you might be interested in knowing just how fat and slow it is compared to other languages.
The Computer Language Shootout demonstrates that SpiderMonkey JavaScript is not only THE WORST language, in terms of BOTH slow speed and huge size, but also TWICE AS BAD AS THE SECOND WORST. SpiderMonkey loses the Computer Language Shootout by a long shot. Even bigger than the Republicans are going to lose this election!
So the assumption that SpiderMonkey is fat and slow is extremely correct, by a long shot. Just like the assumption that the Republicans are corrupt and incompetent.
-Don
I gave several reasons why Lua is better than Ruby, for many tasks. Most tasks consider speed and memory usage to be important. Also, Lua is much better than Ruby when it comes to embedding it in an application (like World of Warcraft does). And Lua is also very easy to extend the language with C or C++ code and libraries written in other languages, which is useful for a wide range of tasks. And the fact that it's well written and well designed certainly doesn't hurt.
I still love Python and use it regularly, and won't stop using it just because I learned Lua. It has a huge library of useful extension modules and libraries written in Python, that I wouldn't want to do without. But it's impossible to strip down Python so it's as small and efficient as Lua, so Lua is useful for a wide range of tasks on small devices that Python simply can't address. I have both Python and Lua on my PocketPC, but Python is much larger and doesn't leave room for much else, while Lua is far more practical for developing scriptable applications on small devices, than Python.
Don't even get me started about how horrible and badly designed Perl is, but it's practically useless as an embedded extension language, or on small devices. The only task Perl is really good for is maintaining job security for unethical programmers of indecypherable spaghetti code.
-Don
Absolutely: The Lua interpreter source code is very clean and well written, and wonderfully portable and platform agnostic.
Here's the source code that you can view online -- there isn't much to it! Four global header files, 19 core C files, 19 core header files, 10 library C files, 1 interpreter C file, and 2 compiler C files. Here is the main loop of the virtual machine -- notice that there are only 38 opcodes!
A great example of some interesting code written in Lua is the Auctioneer add-on for World of Warcraft (screenshots, manual). Here's the index of the Lua sources, and an interesing Lua file that calculates statistics on auction items. This code depends on features provided by the WOW client (implemented in C++ or whatever), as well as other Lua scripts loaded into the client.
One important reason to learn and consider using Lua, is that it's by far one of the fastest and smallest of all the interpreted scripting languages, on the Programming Language Shootout. It totally smokes most other scripting languages.
Here are the ratios of interpreted languages compared to compiled C code, in order of SPEED (the number is how many times slower it is than C, smaller is better unless you make your living by wasting time):
Lua: 6.4; Python: 7.4; Pike: 8.3; Tcl: 8.7; Perl: 9.0; Scheme MzScheme: 11; PHP: 13; Icon: 14; Smalltalk GST: 15; Ruby: 16; JavaScript SpiderMonkey: 32;
Here are the ratios of interpreted languages compared to compiled C code, in order of SIZE (the number is how many times bigger it is than C, smaller is better unless you make your living by selling memory):
Lua: 2.5; Haskell GHC: 2.8; SML MLton: 3.4; Python: 4.1; Perl: 4.3; Tcl: 5.1; Icon: 5.4; Ruby: 6.0; C# Mono: 6.3; Pike: 6.8; PHP: 7.1; Oberon-2 OO2C: 7.9; Erlang HiPE: 7.9; Java JDK -server: 9.1; Scheme MzScheme: 9.2; Mozart/Oz: 9.8; Scala: 10; Lisp SBCL: 10; Smalltalk GST: 13; Smalltalk VisualWorks: 15; JavaScript SpiderMonkey: 30;
Lua is even better than several compiled languages (like Java) when it comes to its size! Like Java, Lua also has a "just in time" compiler, but that was not used in these benchmarks (although I presume Java's was, because Java did very well with speed but not memory usage).
I think it's laughable that someone would put their time into learning a faddishly popular language like Ruby, but would then not consider learning a technically superior language like Lua, since Ruby scores so badly on these benchmarks compared to Lua, Lua has been around a lot longer than Ruby, and it had already proven itself in many commercial products (like WOW).
Lua really is far ahead of the pack of other languages in many ways, BECAUSE it's so clean and well designed. Plus its licensing terms are excellent, it's extremely portable, easy to embed and integrate with applications, and SWIG supports it well. So it's definitely well worth learning.
-Don
Here's the definition of AJAX from another recent article on Slashdot. This definition, which makes no mention of DHTML, exactly describes OpenLaszlo running on Flash:
AJAX is AJAX whether it uses DHTML, SVG, VML, J2ME, PDF or Flash to draw on the screen. The users don't care about which library is used to draw on the screen: what they care about is that the application doesn't refresh the whole page each time it needs to update some information. Arguing about the brand of JavaScript or the rendering library totally misses the point. The important question is what percentage of desktops does it consistently run on, and Flash's 98% is a great answer. Can you name any platform that's more consistent and ubiquituous?
-Don
The misunderstanding that you're spreading and I'm trying to clear up is your implication that OpenLaszlo itself is Alpha quality code. OpenLaszlo is a mature released product, in version 3.3, and many production quality products have been built and delivered with it, like Laszlo Mail. The Legals project targeting alternative runtimes is in alpha, but it works well and it's certainly not vaporware -- you can prove that to yourself by downloading the installer and checking it out.
And as I said in my other posting, OpenLaszlo applications certainly are "AJAX", since they use Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Nowhere in the acronym "AJAX" is the letter "D" for "DHTML" -- otherwise it would be "AJAXAD" for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML And DHTML". If you want a new buzzword for the subset of AJAX applications that exclusively use DHTML, then go coin another acronym than AJAX, because AJAX stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". And that describes OpenLaszlo to a tee, whether it uses Flash, DHTML, J2ME or SVG for rendering.
And as for your bizarre argument that open source projects shouldn't announce before beta, can you point to at least one other person or open source organization that agrees with you? Don't just cite the names of a couple of proprietary products that happened to have been released as open source software after they were post-beta, like Eclipse and OpenLaszlo. That doesn't mean the Eclipse and OpenLaszlo developers believe that all open source software projects should do the same thing. Can you actually point to anybody else who explicitly states that it's wrong to announce plans for open source software projects before beta, besides you? Well??? Who else can you cite who actually shares your strange beliefs?
Apparently the Slashdot editors disagreed with your bizarre position, and had no problem approving this article. If you want to grouse about their policies, that's considered off-topic for discussion, so you'll have to take it up with them personally. So please stop spreading misinformation in this thread, and stop trying to convince everyone to be more closed and secretive about the way they develop open source software.
-Don
You're wrong about that. But then again, you're the one who proudly proclaims to know nothing about Flash, so I wouldn't expect you to know. But please stop spreading misinformation.
Rhino is Netscape's Java implementation of JavaScript. JScript is Microsoft's implementation of JavaScript. In the same way, ActionScript is Macromedia's implementation of JavaScript. It started out something else, but now it's completely JavaScript. JScript has just as many quirks and bugs as ActionScript, and that's certainly considered JavaScript. OpenLaszlo's LZX language is also an implementation of JavaScript, which the OpenLaszlo compiler translates as necessary to the particular dialect of JavaScript supported by the target platform. You are splitting hairs over the spelling of the name, and have totally lost sight of the original argument.
Your definition of "most people" who say Flash isn't AJAX includes a whole bunch of Johny-come-lately newbies who only heard the AJAX hype recently, and people like yourself who refuse to learn anything about Flash or recognize its right to exist. But sticking your head in the sand doesn't make it go away, or give you the right to rewrite history.
Many people beyond your "most people" have been doing Asynchronous JavaScript and XML for years before the term was coined in 2005: Internet Explorer developers, Flash developers, XUL developers, OpenLaszlo developers, online game developers, and others. AJAX applications running on Flash enjoy all the techniques and advantages of DHTML based AJAX, and fewer disadvantages from incompatible DHTML implementations. So what is your point of trying to narrow the definition of AJAX, just to punish Flash developers?
The literal definition of AJAX is "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". How are Flash and OpenLaszlo not AJAX? They use different JavsScript interpreter implementations, but what they're doing architecturally is exactly the same, and that's what matters. An AJAX program is still fundamentally AJAXian, whether the class it uses to asynchronously load XML is spelled XMLHTTPRequest or LzDataset. If spelling is really more important to you than architecture, then OpenLaszlo provides a compatible API spelled "XMLHTTPRequest".
The fact that you're using DHTML, SVG, J2ME or Flash to draw on the screen is much less important than the fact that you have an JavaScript interpreter in the client ("J"), that asynchronously ("A") downloads XML ("X") from the server.
If you're going to get pedantic about narrowing the definition of AJAX, then consider this: If DHTML was important to the definition of AJAX, it would be "AJAXAD", for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and DHTML." But nowhere in the name "AJAX" can you find a letter that stands for "DHTML".
The "AJAX" architecture has been around for a long time before the term was coined, even before JavaScript, XML and DHTML were invented. I worked on James Gosling's NeWS window system in the 1980's. NeWS was most definitely AJAXian, except that it uses PostScript code instead of JavaScript, PostScript data instead of XML, and PostScript graphics instead of DHTML or Flash.
But beyond having those superficial syntactic differences (and being consistently designed on purpose around PostScript, instead of haphazardly and accidentally thrown together like AJAX), the NeWS window system was most certainly AJAXian, in every important sense of the term. I will concede that NeWS was not literally AJAX the way Flash is, because JavaScript and XML and even DHTML had not been invented yet, but it certanly embodied the most important features of the AJAX architecture: extensibility, asynchronicity, local interaction, sending code and structured data, and defining dynamic application specific protocols.
Here's an article I wrote a while ago, about how AJAX is old NeWS, Laszlo is non-toxic AJAX.
-Don
I'd also like to address your deliberately misleading statement that "It's a bunch of alpha-quality code that's looking for developers." You're implying that OpenLaszlo itself is alpha quality, which is totally false and misleading. OpenLaszlo version 3.3 is quite solid and production quality code. Earthlink is happily shipping Laszlo Mail to millions of their customers, right now. That's certainly production quality by any measure, and you can try it yourself for free.
You're also implying that the announcements of OpenLaszlo for DHTML and J2ME claim that it's production quality, but they certainly DO NOT make that claim -- they're very clear about the development status and timetable. You're obviously just too lazy to read any of the information presented, and you're basing your accusations on your own ignorance and incorrect assumptions. It's you who's deliberately misleading. Go do your homework, kiddo.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Stop blaming others for your own misunderstandings. Take the time to learn about the issues, before making baseless assumptions and incorrect, misleading accusations. It's ironic that you'd get so furious about deliberately misleading statements, when you're the one who's making them, not me nor anyone at Laszlo Systems.
-Don
That's not misleading at all -- you're just misunderstanding. OpenLaszlo applications certainly are "AJAX". AJAX stands for: "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". That's exactly what OpenLaszlo is, whether it's running on Flash or the web browser. OpenLaszlo was "AJAX" long before the term was coined.
Now can you find anything at all misleading about the announcement, once you understand the standard definition of the terms? You told me privately that you were misled into believing that 1) there was a new production ready product available and 2) there were new demos ready now. I can find nothing in the announcement or web pages that states or implies any of that, so you're just making it up, and reacting to your own straw man misunderstandings. Don't blame other people for your own poor reading comprehension.
Who are you to say that I am not entitled to post an announcement about an open source project on Slashdot? Who else shares your unique "school of thought" that nobody should announce anything until beta?
Let's get back to your original argument that open source projects should not post announcements before they're in beta. Why not? Says who? What are the positive advantages of that? How do they outweight the horrible negative consequences of stifling development and supressing community participation?
What do you have against Linux and every other open source project? You don't seem to understand the first and most important thing about open source software development, and that's colaboration and communication. Operating in secret until beta, as you suggest, is totally against those principles.
-Don
To address the question "Is OpenLaszlo AJAX?", here's something I wrote a while ago (before OpenLaszlo's DHTML support was announced): OpenLaszlo Makes Full Blown AJAX Apps on Flash :
The fact that Flash is commonly used for ads, and that those ads annoy everyone and cause many people to hate Flash, doesn't detract from the high quality user interfaces that you can build with it, if you use it for good instead of evil.
Since usability guru Jakob Nielson wrote Flash: 99% Bad in 2000, a lot has changed about Flash. He worked with Macromedia to improve Flash's usability, and he sells a report with 117 design guidelines for Flash usability. So yes, it is possible to develop usable applications in Flash.
OpenLaszlo is an open source language and set of tools for developing full fledged rich web applications, which are compiled into SWF files that run on the Flash player. Laszlo/Flash is presently much more capable of implementing high quality cross platform user interfaces than dynamic AJAX/HTML/SVG currently is.
Laszlo is a high level XML and JavaScript based programming language. It's independent of Flash in the same way that GCC is independent of the Intel instruction set and Windows runtime, because they both compile a higher level language, and can target other runtimes and instruction sets.
Currently Flash is the most practical, so that's what Laszlo supports initially, but it can be retargeted to other runtimes like SVG, XUL, Java or Avalon, once they grow up and mature. But right now Flash is the best way to go, because of i
Who are you to say when open source projects should make announcements? Would you lecture Linus that he announced his operating system too soon, and should have waited until it was beta quality? Bill Gates would certainly agree with you, and he'd probably add that it's still not beta quality.
First of all, please read the announcement and web pages before replying, this time. Second of all, we use Subversion, not CVS. Third of all, you can download an installer for the nightly build or the latest stable release from here. And finally, stop complaining that the open source development process is not closed and secretive.
-Don
Of course a nicely formatted resume could mean that they paid someone to do it for them, just like they paid someone to do all their homework and write all their papers through college. But at least they know how to delegate!
-Don
Every Perl programmer knows the way to job security is to write piles of horrible undecipherable code, so your current employer will be afraid to fire you because they can't find anyone to take over the mess. The only reason anyone hires new Perl programmers any more these days, is to take over the horrible mess left by their previous Perl programmer who got hit by a bus. Anyone hiring Perl programmers to write new code is crazy.
-Don
Is it just new demos that you want? Well that's easy! Here's an OpenLaszlo YouTube Player, which is a demonstration of the new video api. And of course there's SimFaux and its open source code and content.
-Don
I don't understand what you're so angry about.
Are you complaining that Laszlo developers should be more secretive about their plans and development process, and not tell anyone what they're doing until the software is fully completed and tested? That's just NOT how an open source project works.
Or are you complaining that we're not working fast enough? Then why don't you lend a hand and contribute some of your own time and effort to the open source project? That IS how an open source project works.
If that's not your problem, then what are you complaining about? Do you have some criticism of the design or implementation? Then speak up while there's still time to influence the development process! If we waited until we were finished before announcing our plans, you wouldn't have a chance to give any feedback, effect the design, or contribute your own efforts.
If you're just one of those people who likes listening to yourself complain about Flash, but doesn't actually feel like contributing to any open source software development efforts, then you might enjoy Oliver Steel's Flash Troll Generator. Oliver wrote the OpenLaszlo compiler, so he knows and hates Flash much more than you could ever aspire to.
-Don