Obviously, you've never had a tape physically fail.
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
And tapes without any tracks;
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
And tapes mixed up on the racks --
Take hold of the tape
And pull off the strip,
And then you'll be sure
Your tape drive will skip.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
Re:Slashdot: Don't bother linking to Flash-only si
on
Beautiful Case Modding
·
· Score: 2
Agreed. That would make ME happier.
I have one machine here that has Flash installed, but Javascript is disabled, so the site is useless anyway [unless it was just not responding due to the/. effect].
Now I'm in danger of being called names for not
enabling Javascript, no doubt.
It's not even that a site needs to be terribly "standards" conforming -- who cares if the webpages starts with a DOCTYPE or just goes straight to an HTML tag? And while PNG might be nice, GIF and JPEG work just as well.
Ah, well, I wonder how hard it would be to modify the/. preferences to include "Ignore articles that refer to flash-only or javascript-required sites."
But are the flatbed scanners good enough for thick hardcover books? I guess the scans would get messed up near the seam.
Put the scanner near the edge of the table or desk. Hang the unscanned-part of the book over
the edge (you'll have to be careful to hold the
book in place). This will eliminate much of the distortion that comes from trying to spread a thick book flat.
The SDSU Library has a couple of photocopiers that
do just this sort of thing. It works remarkably
well.
Why not go with a lightweight flatbed scanner? It'll fit in a backback, and many of them are powered from the USB/fireware/whatever connection as well.
If you put the scanner at the edge of a table or desk, you can scan pages of books quickly and easily with less distortion than you'd get from a hand-scanner. This may help make up for the slightly less convenient form-factor.
Try the discount/clearance table at your local Office Depot / Staples / Office Supply store. I always see "clearance" scanner there.
I've not actually tried this with my TiBook, so YMMV.
I bet he was teased in high school and wants to get back at all the bullies.
There's nothing wrong with getting back at the bullies of one's youth. More likely, he was a bully in High School and wants to regain that youthful feeling of power.
This isn't a bug. If you have Javascript enabled, you should expect to have little to no privacy anyway. (Just as you should expect popups, popunders, porn-adverts, memory leaks, and system crashes.)
I mean, what's the recommended solution?
In the meantime, Neuhaus said the vulnerability can be worked around by switching off Javascript.
That's right. Do what the security-minded folks have been saying for years. Disable Javascript. Don't use it. Don't visit sites that require it.
Alas, this says more for just sticking with MicroSoft Windows interface.
I went thru this last year with a demo of a software tool. The salesmen called me up and said he'd walk me thru the demo if I had the time; so I did.
Problem # 1:
Me: I click on the download link and
nothing happens.
Them: Shift-click.
Me: Still nothing. Half-sec (alt-U) Ah! It's a javascript redirect. I don't do Javascript.
Them: You can turn it on in I.E. by...
Me: One, I'm not using IE; Two, I'm not going to enable Javascript just because your web developer feels a need to replace perfectly good hrefs with something that does exactly the same thing if you have scripting enabled, and nothing otherwise.
Them: Um, lemme talk to a tech...
A couple of days later the salesman emails me, and gives me a "direct" URL to the Solaris version of the software. I d/l it, read the README, follow the instructions, and install it.
Problem #2:
Them: Now, double-click on the installation icon.
Me: One, there isn't any such thing, and two, it's installed.
Them: There's no icon?
Me: No, this is a Unix machine, and I'm not using a window manager that shows disk icons, and I refuse to use a file manager.
Them: But it's installed?
Me: Yes.
Them: How?
Me: I read the instructions in the README.
Them: Oh.
And then we tried to actually do the demonstration...
Problem # 3:
Them: So click on the "Start" button...
Me: I don't have a start button.
Them: Um, you don't?
Me: Nope. You'll notice that I downloaded the Unix version. How about I just type in the name of the program from an xterm?
Them: Um, will that work?
Me: Apparently so, as it's now running.
Now, one of the "features" of this product was that it was supposed to be able to find "dangerous coding habits" and syntax errors, and it came with a bunch of code to demonstrate these bad habits.
Problem # 4:
Me: Okay, example 3 compiles and runs. Now what?
Them: Now bring up Notepad...
Me: No notepad.
Them:...um, I mean wordpad...
Me: No wordpad either. Remember, this is a UNIX machine.
Them: You just go to the Start menu...
Me: No start menu either.
Them: Well, how are you going to edit (path)?
Me: Thank you....I am now editing (path). What now?
Them: Select (foo) and hit control-X, then type (bar).
Me: You mean replace (foo) with (bar)?
Them: Ummmm, yeah.
Me: Done.
Them: Good. Now go to the File menu and select "save."
Me: No File menu. But it's saved.
Them: Now click on (button).
Me: Done. Nothing happens.
Them:...and you'll see a dialog that says, um, what did you say?
Me: Nothing happens.
Them: Try again.
Me: Okay...done. Nothing happens.
Them: Did anything show up in your system tray?
Me: What's a system tray?
It turns out that *any* source file that I touched with a Unix editor would kill their product. But that's beside the point -- a "consistent interface" means Microsoft Windows.
One worrying question - are they getting all the power for the smartcard from that laser pulse? Really? Probably means a battery, so your CD or DVD now has an even more limited lifetime. Tinker with the battery size and Hollywood now has a way to program in obsolescence into that new DVD, forcing you to buy a new copy!
Q: What is the expected battery life?
A: $MIN_LEGAL_REQUIREMENT + 1 + rand()*30 days
IF they use a battery....
In fact, it becomes utterly trivial to implement the "You have 30 days from when you first listen to this CD or watch this DVD." policies -- imagine the junkmail opportunities! They can give you a taste... without worrying about this stupid postal policity that says you OWN whatever is sent to you unsolicited.
No need to return a movie to Blockbuster; they'll just provide a 7-day battery life, triggered by the initial laser pulse. 7 to 12 days later,
the battery will be discharged, and all you'll
be able to play will be the (mandatory) advertisements.
The New Economics: individuals can't _own_ anything.
Government isn't there to compete with private industry.
That is not its purpose, true. The purpose of Government includes protecting the Public Good. Frequently, this means regulating private industry in an attempt to restrain the typical excesses associated with "Business". Less frequently, it can provide publically-funded alternatives when it is in the interests of the population at large to do so. (Consider fire and police departments.)
What's unfair is that many corporate executives and financial officers will avoid hanging after what's basically 'Grand Theft Martini'. What's unfair is that the government didn't confiscate the assets of Microsoft for their business practices. What's unfair is that businesses can lobby the government to enact or change policy.
If you want the world to be fair, then you should strive to make it fair for everyone. That's only fair, isn't it?
Apologies for the percieved childish insults. It was aimed at the myriad of "Javascript is cool you luser!!!!"-type followups; you had the one of the few reasonable responses, and you still misread what I had written. That's very annoying, to be attacked in a condescending tone by someone who didn't read what was written. I blame the forum: a browser is not the best place to compose a reply, or indeed do much work at all (IMNSHO), which partially explains my resistance to attempts to make it the universal interface.
So let me address some of your points, and we'll disdain each other as civilized creatures.
First, thank you for your acknowledgement that a public site should be made available to as large a number of users as possible. Let me also agree with your basic premise, which (to me) seems to be "anything is allowed on an intranet behind a closed firewall".
Now, let's get to the nit-picking:
If I had to choose between spending $1m on developing an alternative navigation and rendering structure, or losing 0.01% of clients, I think I know what I'd do.
I assert that if it takes $1m to develop an "alternative navigation" then your website developer is incompetent and/or stupid, unless the site was so huge that $1m was a tiny fraction of the overall cost. On the other hand, trying to retrofit alternatives might be prohibitively and excessively costly, but it would not cost much more when *creating* a website to make it work without javascript, especially for the "trivial" (ab)uses it is mostly used for -- on the public web, at least.
You also say:
We're not building noddy little "here's my house" pages here - these are full blown GUI applications which just happen to run in a standard browser.
That just happens to be a really stupid idea[0], in my book, especially when dealing with the public internet. It encourages careless and stupid behavior on the part of a mostly-ignorant browsing public, and it furthers their attitude that they are passive particpants -- turning the Web into yet another version of the TV. Training people (by forcing them to use Javascript) to be passive acceptors of any indignity is something we'd expect from Microsoft and Spammers, not fellow geeks.
However, when you're behind a firewall and writing applications for your own users, all is allowed. Ideally, you require all of your users to use a filtering proxy to eliminate javascript from non-intranet site. In practice, the suits[1] who love flashy applications-in-a-browser probably demand unfiltered access to the Web as well; and the risk your company runs should have the stockholders suing everyone involved in that decision process for taking needless risks.
Personally, I'd be pushing for a full-blown GUI application that would be easily downloaded from the intranet site. But then, I'm also the sort of person who finds "integrated tools" to be annoying, prefering instead the UNIX way of "a tools does just one thing, and does it well". I'm also not you (and thus I don't know your actual situation -- but the "doing stupid things because my boss told me to" has never been an acceptable excuse, even when we've all done it because there was no alternative), and I've been down the do-anything-for-a-paycheck software prostitution path, and I didn't like it, and I didn't like what it was doing to my ethics and morals. Working for idiots is a soul-draining experience.
What's next? Oh, yes.
Please show me a way of representing the following in normal HTML (without countless, slow, wasteful server roundtrips):
Dynamic tree view containing 100's of nodes.
Dynamic, cascading, drop down menus
Real time push-updating of table data
Dynamic resizing of page components, e.g. docking toolbars, expandable panels
Tree view? The alternate form would be to show the tree fully expanded. Remember, the alternate interface does not have to be slick, flashy, or even behave the same way. It just needs to present the same functionality, as opposed to the same behavior or appearance.
Menus are menus, the end result is some string is pushed to the server. Give a straight-up menu, or give a text box and a list of "allowed" values. As you have to do server-side validation anyway, you lose nothing, and although your user of the alternate interface might have more work to do. That's okay. Alternative interfaces don't have to be as pretty. They just have to work.
Push-updating of table data? The user can click on "reload" if they're interested. Or keep the link open and redraw the page.
And finally, "dynamic resizing", docking toolbars, and expandable panels... Why bother? Remember, the alternative interfaces are there to allow the user who disables Javascript to *use* the page, not to make it pretty or configurable.
In short, Javascript is still only useful for eye-candy, trivial things. Countless slow, wasteful, server roundtrips are irrelevent, because almost all of your users love Javascript, remember? It's only contrarians like me who'll disable it (and if, given the choice, your users disable Javascript, then you've learned something important, no?).
Further up you write:
The site I work on is aimed at a specific, rich, demanding, fickle demographic consisting of around 20k users.
s/users/idiots/
It must be nice to have enough money so that you can afford to be careless. (I really hope that a sizable segment of your user base gets burned by the various redirection exploits. It would perhaps pound a lesson through their thick skulls[2].)
Ah, well.
If you're still taking offence, then assume that I was unclear, unless your answer is to "suck it up and conform".
What brought my dislike of Javascript to a boil when an online service I used, and which I had real money invested in, rewrote their website, at great expense and labor, and make it completely useless without Javascript. The appearance did not change that much, and no actual functionality was added... they just replaced all of the static links with obfuscated Javascript. So I never believe this business of "it's too hard and expensive to rewrite the site to provide alternatives", as my personal experience, it's all been the other way -- working sites go through great expense and effort to rewrite the website with javascript. (My credit union has completely rewritten their website three times in four years, and still manages to make it work with javascript-disabled browsers.)
Basically, what I'm saying is that there's nothing you can do in Javascript that you can't easily provide in an alternative, if ugly, way. And for in-house projects, anything is allowed, no matter how unwise.
As I said before, forcing the user to use Javascript indicates incompetence, stupidity, carelessness.... or an unethical or harried developer. (You didn't seem to pick up on this theme before, so perhaps I should explain the last two: by 'unethical' I mean that you know what you're doing, but you don't care; by 'harried', I mean that you know what you're doing, and you don't like it, but you don't have the time/energy/resources/skill to do it the way you know you should. Sometimes life means we prostitute[3] ourselves because we have to -- if it doesn't bother us, then we are probably causing more misery than we know.)
But claiming that foolishness is wisdom, that expedience is good design, that doing what you're told is a virtue... well, that is where much of the evil in the world comes from. Not that Javascript is the cause of the world's evil or anything, although I wouldn't be suprised if it was.;-P
[0] In my professional opinion. YMMV.
[1] They don't have to wear suits; it is more of a mindset. The kind of person who considers themselves a Power User (with caps) using their ability to change the screensaver is a suit, no matter what they wear.
[2] More likely, it would cause them to contribute large amounts of money so that someone can lobby congress to make it a capital crime to exploit anyone with a lot of money.
[3] Yes, I mean this. Been there, done that: I was a developer for a small company that was gung-ho on MS Windows. I developed on, and for, MSWindows. I admin'd a Windows network. I use MS tools on a daily basis. And it sucked the joy from life, far more than I realized. But the money was good... and in hindsight, chasing money was the wrong thing to do. It causes you[4] to lie to yourself.
...am I supposed to turn around and say "sorry, we can't make the site JS only, it goes against my geek principles"? I think not.
See? This is exactly what I mean. (And it's obvious that you aren't thinking.) Perhaps I should add "illiterate" to the list as well, as it appears that the reading comprehension of javascript lovers is pretty damn poor. Perhaps they know they're doing nasty unethical things and they're feeling guilty about it, leading to the blind defensiveness we're seeing.
The amusing part is that you even quoted my statement, including the qualifier: "If a site doesn't work without Javascript..." Please note that I didn't say "If a site contains any Javascript whatsoever..." I mean, I'm quite happy when I find a website that contains no Javascript whatsoever, and I'd be more than pleased if the majority of users would adopt a belief that Javascript was Evil, but the real gripe is the practice of taking away control of the user's software away from the user.
'Wizzy' features are not required to make a site work. There's no essential functionality provided by Javascript that can't be provided, perhaps in a less "wizzy" way, by some alternative means.
What are the most common uses for Javascript? It seems (off the top of my head) to be (1) client-side validation of data, (2) popup windows, advertisements, and other annoyances, (3) following links, and (4) tool-tip-style "dynamic information".
(1) It is just stupid to require -- anyone who trusts client-side validation is either incompetent or stupid. You need to do server-side validation anyway. So why not give the user the ability to rely on the server-side validation? Sure, it'll be slower, but if they've disabled Javascript, they're aware of this, and are willing to take the hit.
(2) These are just plain useless. We're talking about filtering such things, or disabling them in the local browser, so they're obviously nonessential. End of story.
(3) These are perhaps the most annoying. You have a perfectly good <a href="url"> style link available, why use javascript? To force it to open on a new window? Why? If the user wanted to open that link in a new window, they can instruct their browser to do so. What used to be a one-step process controlled by the user now requires a workaround of several steps.
(4) These are purely informational, and information can be provided in many ways. (Consider ALT tags for images...)
I'm sure that there are many more uses of Javascript than what I've come up with here, but I assert that for all of them, they're either unessential (except for the clueless suits who are asking for them) or annoying.
On the other hand, I'd be interested to find out if there's a way to handle
this evil javascript without turning off
Javascript entirely. (Please save your work before following the link -- in at least one case, it's crashed a Linux box.)
It seems that many people have forgotton about the <noscript> tag. And this is why I consider sites that require Javascript to be creations of the incompetent, careless, or the stupid. I guess I need to add "unethical" and "harried" to that list as well, don't I?
I use whatever browser I want (mostly Netscape 4.78, as I can disable the ugly little icons for back/forward/reload), and I don't have any problem with popups.
I disable Javascript entirely.
If a site doesn't work without Javascript, the site designer and programmers are incompetent, careless, or stupid, and I'd be foolish to use the site with Javascript enabled anyway.
It's not like it's hard to spot a remaindered book - they don't have covers (that's what is sent back to the publishers for the refund).
Remaindering is an abomination in and of itself. It's a subversion of the whole supply-and-demand basis of the market -- if you don't pay at least $PRICE for a book, you don't get it at all.
The books are already printed. The expense has already been incurred. Remaindering is just a[n artificial] way to keep prices high. So yeah, it's not suprising that the publishers are on the lookout for folks selling remaindered books.
I buy a fair number of books. I buy a lot of them in hard-cover, even. I have a list of authors[1] that I purchase their new-to-me works as soon as I find 'em, be it hardcover, paperback, used, or whatnot. I don't have a problem with authors and publishers making money. I do, however, have a problem with being considered a mark by the publishing industry.
[1] Headed up by Terry Pratchett, Vernor Vinge, Lewis Thomas, Robert Fulghum, Jim Butcher....
onLoad isn't the most evil popup rule; onExit or onLeave (or whatever they're called) are worse as you can end up with something you can't leave without some fast clicking or disabling Javascript
All Javascript is evil.
Instead of objecting to popups, popunders, and suchlike (if you enable Javascript, that's what you are asking for, so stop whining and suck it up), why not object to all those sites that REQUIRE Javascript for basic functionality?
I don't want to have an experience with my computer.
Browers should install with all scripting disabled, and you should turn it on only if (1) you understand the implications, and (2) you can handle the expected results ( while ( 1 ) { alert("Isn't this fun?"); } ).
Personally, I might consider a "client-side scripting solution" if (1) the language was not turing complete, (2) I could filter all events and built-in functions, and (3) I could set up a library of "allowed scripts" that could be inspected and modified only by the user.
Oh, and there's not a way for a web-site to ask me to install some script of their automatically. It would have to be either "write a function that does this, given these arguments" or "copy this script into an editor and save it to $HOME/.$BROWSER/allowed_scripts/$SCRIPTNAME" or somesuch.
Why do I feel as if this sort of thing has a snowball's chance in hell?
If you have to apply patches multiple times, then you're probably patching branches, and developing in the branches. The "CVS Way" seems to be (corrections welcome) to develop in the default branch, and to tag the tree at drop-points -- when you ship the code. If you need to support an old code-drop, you turn the tag into a branch, and then patch the branch.
If you have too many delivered branches being supported at the same time, perhaps you should
upgrade those customers to a newer version of
the software. They'll appreciate, and it will
simplify your situation.
The develop-in-a-branch-and-ship-the-default is
appealing, but troublesome.
Otherwise, it sounds like your developers aren't playing nice... developer A patches the tree, and developer B goes to commit his changes, but gets told that there are conflicts and that he needs to update. Not wanting to deal with the conflicts, he copies his important files to a save spot, updates, copies his "important" files back over the top of the conflicted files, and then commits the whole thing, effectively "rolling back" the patch.
If this is what is going on, you need to educate your developers. With a stick.
Over the years, I've discovered that a significant amount of heartburn I may have with CVS comes not from any deficiency of CVS, but from the fact that I frequently fail to use CVS "properly" -- meaning, of course, "as intended".
If HTTP were UDP then you'd be relying on IP-framentation to get HUGE transmissions across the pipe (e.g. file-uploads, large form-fields, to say nothing of the downloads). Though I'm not too familiar with practical installations, I thought I've read about firewalls disallowing such fragmentation.
Actually, no, there wouldn't be HUGE transmissions across the http pipe. (That's what FTP is for anyway.) Most HTTP transactions are tiny -- just a few K -- that would easily fit into a packet.
(And a form that would be larger than, what, 64K? Any web-developer that insane should be shot. Immediately, if not sooner.)
So the answer becomes "so what"?
People on dial-up connections don't want HUGE chunks of data coming at them; shoot, even people with broadband connections frequently don't want to send or receive huge pieces of data. Just because some crack-smoking graphic-artist with a shiny new disk and Photoshop want to inflict his "art" on the general populace is no reason to make it easy for 'em.
The reason for using TCP was that it was the easy -- the lazy -- way out.
Not to mention, on such large transmission, UDP provides no error-recovery.
Again, "so what"? We have that now -- I routinely get stalled TCP connections, broken links, incomplete images... and I just wait a few minutes, and then click on "Reload" to see if it gets better.
If TCP connections were maintained, then places like cnn.com would go insance with the millions of persistent TCP connections (which often take forever to timeout and die as it is).
Why does CNN need a persistent connection from you? What state is there that needs to be preserved?
And now that we have "invented" cookies, what need is there for TCP at all when discussing HTTP? Error detection? Use checksums.
In cases of good network connectivity, TCP is needless overhead. In cases of poor connectivity, TCP is frequently-needless-delay. Do I REALLY need to have my browser keep trying to reload that 1x1-transparent-GIF from an overloaded ad-tracking site? Is it that important to me?
I've long thought that HTTP should have been a UDP protocol for simple stateless request/responses; for state-preserving communication, TCP should have been used, and a single connection kept for the entire interaction.
As it is, HTTP is a mess, and frequently invents poor solutions to problems solved long ago.
But what can you expect when you release alpha-quality designs to a population desperately seeking a simpler way to acquire pr0n than Usenet?
When I was interviewing applications for programming, I made sure to look for breadth of interest and/or experience; if they were so focussed on $SHINY_TECHNOLOGY, they would be totally useless when it came to actually solving the problem. (Thank goodness I'm away from that now. It's so depressing to ask simple questions and get a totally blank stare in return.)
A developer not only needs to be able to program, but they need to be able to quickly comprehend some new problem domain. Those who can't simply recommend whatever is currently being hyped at the moment. ("Your systems are slow? You NEED XML! Yes! Yes! XML will _solve_ ALL of your problems. And LDAP too! Written in C#! Yes! Much better than C!")
MY biggest complaint about businesses is that so many of them won't step up to the plate and shoulder the responsibility of actually training people. Instead, the CEOs of businesses go golfing with University presidents and bitch about how the students from $UNIVERSITY are un-employable ("Your students graduate knowing about UNIX, C, C++, Lisp, Forth, Prolog, MATLAB, Calculus, algorithms, some crap like Big-O or Big-Theta, computability, some nonsense excuse like NP-complete, but they don't know Visual Basic. I can't give your students a job, why don't you fire all of your professors and scrap your curriculum and Get With The Times?" "uhh, okay.")
[Note: this isn't about _all_ businesses, as there are plenty of 'em out there that recognize that learning a new programming language isn't hard if you already know a couple, and that by the time the new hire has learned the local programming culture sufficiently well to touch the existing code-base without supervision, they'll also be up to speed for the language....]
The students who think they're wasting money crying for $LANGUAGE_OF_THE_MONTH should go to trade schools, not a university. But, no, they want the prestige and job options available to University graduates, but without having to learn as much. University graduates in CS -- the ones who didn't waste their money -- can learn the basics of a new language on their own (and do even better with some expert guidance nearby). Nearly half of the languages I put on my resume I learned on my own -- at least enough to write small to medium sized programs with it.
If I have the skills you want, then you're not going to be hiring me for an entry level position; if that's what you offer me, then you're trying to rip me off.
Would you want to work with (or supervise) a slacker who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag, but who graduated anyway because hecut-and-pasted the work of his (harder-working) classmates?
Seen that.
A lot of college students -- especially the ones in CS -- use the argument that copying work is equivalent to "consulting with a co-worker"; apparently, this is to disguise the fact that they don't actually know what they're doing.
Many of these students appear to be pursuing a CS degree because "that is where the money is". Which is a damn poor reason, I think, but that's just my opinion. They also tend to be the ones who complain about having to learn more than one language... "You should teach us $LANGUAGE_OF_THE_MONTH, to better prepare us for the work force!" they cry.
Bah. A university degree is supposed to certify that you know how to think and how to learn, not that you're basically a trained monkey. I think that undergrad courses should only teach the so-called "dead" languages -- and when one of 'em becomes popular again, drop it, and move to something else. An undergraduate should come out of school with a solid grasp of Pascal, Forth, Scheme, and MIX or SICTOY.
True. He understands that in business, it's okay to lie, cheat, and steal, if you get away with it. (Or even if you get away with it for long enough.)
It has been said that a dollar spent on marketing is worth five spent on engineering. I'm inclined to think this is an understatement, except that Apple is doing relatively well in absolute terms, if not in percentage-of-the-marketplace.
But then, my income is a very small percentage of the wages paid to software developers (the corresponding 'marketplace'). This is not a problem.
I said "shouldn't somebody be using that expensive tape drive hooked up to the file server to back up the code base?"
And I was told "Great! Do it. In addition to developing software, naturally. Here's the administration password. Could you add an account for this new hire while you're at it?"
And while I was adding the account, I logged into the SPARCStation 20 that was the mail-server, and I noticed that/var/spool/mail/root was the largest file on the system. And I said "Shouldn't someone take care of that?"
And I was told "Great! Do it. In addition to developing software, performing backups, and maintaing the system accounts for the other developers, of course. Here's the root password. Oh, could you add some mail aliases while you're at it?"
For some reason, people keep giving me root access.
Slashdot Mirror
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
And tapes without any tracks;
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
And tapes mixed up on the racks --
Take hold of the tape
And pull off the strip,
And then you'll be sure
Your tape drive will skip.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
I have one machine here that has Flash installed, but Javascript is disabled, so the site is useless anyway [unless it was just not responding due to the /. effect].
Now I'm in danger of being called names for not enabling Javascript, no doubt. It's not even that a site needs to be terribly "standards" conforming -- who cares if the webpages starts with a DOCTYPE or just goes straight to an HTML tag? And while PNG might be nice, GIF and JPEG work just as well.
Ah, well, I wonder how hard it would be to modify the /. preferences to include "Ignore articles that refer to flash-only or javascript-required sites."
The SDSU Library has a couple of photocopiers that do just this sort of thing. It works remarkably well.
If you put the scanner at the edge of a table or desk, you can scan pages of books quickly and easily with less distortion than you'd get from a hand-scanner. This may help make up for the slightly less convenient form-factor.
Try the discount/clearance table at your local Office Depot / Staples / Office Supply store. I always see "clearance" scanner there.
I've not actually tried this with my TiBook, so YMMV.
There's nothing wrong with getting back at the bullies of one's youth. More likely, he was a bully in High School and wants to regain that youthful feeling of power.
Sheesh.
This isn't a bug. If you have Javascript enabled, you should expect to have little to no privacy anyway. (Just as you should expect popups, popunders, porn-adverts, memory leaks, and system crashes.)
I mean, what's the recommended solution?
That's right. Do what the security-minded folks have been saying for years. Disable Javascript. Don't use it. Don't visit sites that require it.And if you don't, well, don't whine about it.
Let Joe Windows switch to a Mac. OS X has all the GUI eye candy that Joe Windows could want.
After all, OS X is a UNIX. Which is sort of the point, after all.
Alas, this says more for just sticking with MicroSoft Windows interface.
I went thru this last year with a demo of a software tool. The salesmen called me up and said he'd walk me thru the demo if I had the time; so I did.
Problem # 1:
Me: I click on the download link and nothing happens.
Them: Shift-click.
Me: Still nothing. Half-sec (alt-U) Ah! It's a javascript redirect. I don't do Javascript.
Them: You can turn it on in I.E. by...
Me: One, I'm not using IE; Two, I'm not going to enable Javascript just because your web developer feels a need to replace perfectly good hrefs with something that does exactly the same thing if you have scripting enabled, and nothing otherwise.
Them: Um, lemme talk to a tech...
A couple of days later the salesman emails me, and gives me a "direct" URL to the Solaris version of the software. I d/l it, read the README, follow the instructions, and install it.
Problem #2:
Them: Now, double-click on the installation icon.
Me: One, there isn't any such thing, and two, it's installed.
Them: There's no icon?
Me: No, this is a Unix machine, and I'm not using a window manager that shows disk icons, and I refuse to use a file manager.
Them: But it's installed?
Me: Yes.
Them: How?
Me: I read the instructions in the README.
Them: Oh.
And then we tried to actually do the demonstration...
Problem # 3:
Them: So click on the "Start" button...
Me: I don't have a start button.
Them: Um, you don't?
Me: Nope. You'll notice that I downloaded the Unix version. How about I just type in the name of the program from an xterm?
Them: Um, will that work?
Me: Apparently so, as it's now running.
Now, one of the "features" of this product was that it was supposed to be able to find "dangerous coding habits" and syntax errors, and it came with a bunch of code to demonstrate these bad habits.
Problem # 4: ...um, I mean wordpad... ...and you'll see a dialog that says, um, what did you say?
Me: Okay, example 3 compiles and runs. Now what?
Them: Now bring up Notepad...
Me: No notepad.
Them:
Me: No wordpad either. Remember, this is a UNIX machine.
Them: You just go to the Start menu...
Me: No start menu either.
Them: Well, how are you going to edit (path)?
Me: Thank you....I am now editing (path). What now?
Them: Select (foo) and hit control-X, then type (bar).
Me: You mean replace (foo) with (bar)?
Them: Ummmm, yeah.
Me: Done.
Them: Good. Now go to the File menu and select "save."
Me: No File menu. But it's saved.
Them: Now click on (button).
Me: Done. Nothing happens.
Them:
Me: Nothing happens.
Them: Try again.
Me: Okay...done. Nothing happens.
Them: Did anything show up in your system tray?
Me: What's a system tray?
It turns out that *any* source file that I touched with a Unix editor would kill their product. But that's beside the point -- a "consistent interface" means Microsoft Windows.
A: $MIN_LEGAL_REQUIREMENT + 1 + rand()*30 days
IF they use a battery....
In fact, it becomes utterly trivial to implement the "You have 30 days from when you first listen to this CD or watch this DVD." policies -- imagine the junkmail opportunities! They can give you a taste... without worrying about this stupid postal policity that says you OWN whatever is sent to you unsolicited.
No need to return a movie to Blockbuster; they'll just provide a 7-day battery life, triggered by the initial laser pulse. 7 to 12 days later, the battery will be discharged, and all you'll be able to play will be the (mandatory) advertisements.
The New Economics: individuals can't _own_ anything.
What's unfair is that many corporate executives and financial officers will avoid hanging after what's basically 'Grand Theft Martini'. What's unfair is that the government didn't confiscate the assets of Microsoft for their business practices. What's unfair is that businesses can lobby the government to enact or change policy.
If you want the world to be fair, then you should strive to make it fair for everyone. That's only fair, isn't it?
Apologies for the percieved childish insults. It was aimed at the myriad of "Javascript is cool you luser!!!!"-type followups; you had the one of the few reasonable responses, and you still misread what I had written. That's very annoying, to be attacked in a condescending tone by someone who didn't read what was written. I blame the forum: a browser is not the best place to compose a reply, or indeed do much work at all (IMNSHO), which partially explains my resistance to attempts to make it the universal interface.
So let me address some of your points, and we'll disdain each other as civilized creatures.
First, thank you for your acknowledgement that a public site should be made available to as large a number of users as possible. Let me also agree with your basic premise, which (to me) seems to be "anything is allowed on an intranet behind a closed firewall".
Now, let's get to the nit-picking:
I assert that if it takes $1m to develop an "alternative navigation" then your website developer is incompetent and/or stupid, unless the site was so huge that $1m was a tiny fraction of the overall cost. On the other hand, trying to retrofit alternatives might be prohibitively and excessively costly, but it would not cost much more when *creating* a website to make it work without javascript, especially for the "trivial" (ab)uses it is mostly used for -- on the public web, at least.
You also say:
That just happens to be a really stupid idea[0], in my book, especially when dealing with the public internet. It encourages careless and stupid behavior on the part of a mostly-ignorant browsing public, and it furthers their attitude that they are passive particpants -- turning the Web into yet another version of the TV. Training people (by forcing them to use Javascript) to be passive acceptors of any indignity is something we'd expect from Microsoft and Spammers, not fellow geeks.
However, when you're behind a firewall and writing applications for your own users, all is allowed. Ideally, you require all of your users to use a filtering proxy to eliminate javascript from non-intranet site. In practice, the suits[1] who love flashy applications-in-a-browser probably demand unfiltered access to the Web as well; and the risk your company runs should have the stockholders suing everyone involved in that decision process for taking needless risks.
Personally, I'd be pushing for a full-blown GUI application that would be easily downloaded from the intranet site. But then, I'm also the sort of person who finds "integrated tools" to be annoying, prefering instead the UNIX way of "a tools does just one thing, and does it well". I'm also not you (and thus I don't know your actual situation -- but the "doing stupid things because my boss told me to" has never been an acceptable excuse, even when we've all done it because there was no alternative), and I've been down the do-anything-for-a-paycheck software prostitution path, and I didn't like it, and I didn't like what it was doing to my ethics and morals. Working for idiots is a soul-draining experience.
What's next? Oh, yes.
Tree view? The alternate form would be to show the tree fully expanded. Remember, the alternate interface does not have to be slick, flashy, or even behave the same way. It just needs to present the same functionality, as opposed to the same behavior or appearance.
Menus are menus, the end result is some string is pushed to the server. Give a straight-up menu, or give a text box and a list of "allowed" values. As you have to do server-side validation anyway, you lose nothing, and although your user of the alternate interface might have more work to do. That's okay. Alternative interfaces don't have to be as pretty. They just have to work.
Push-updating of table data? The user can click on "reload" if they're interested. Or keep the link open and redraw the page.
And finally, "dynamic resizing", docking toolbars, and expandable panels... Why bother? Remember, the alternative interfaces are there to allow the user who disables Javascript to *use* the page, not to make it pretty or configurable.
In short, Javascript is still only useful for eye-candy, trivial things. Countless slow, wasteful, server roundtrips are irrelevent, because almost all of your users love Javascript, remember? It's only contrarians like me who'll disable it (and if, given the choice, your users disable Javascript, then you've learned something important, no?).
Further up you write:
s/users/idiots/
It must be nice to have enough money so that you can afford to be careless. (I really hope that a sizable segment of your user base gets burned by the various redirection exploits. It would perhaps pound a lesson through their thick skulls[2].)
Ah, well.
If you're still taking offence, then assume that I was unclear, unless your answer is to "suck it up and conform".
What brought my dislike of Javascript to a boil when an online service I used, and which I had real money invested in, rewrote their website, at great expense and labor, and make it completely useless without Javascript. The appearance did not change that much, and no actual functionality was added... they just replaced all of the static links with obfuscated Javascript. So I never believe this business of "it's too hard and expensive to rewrite the site to provide alternatives", as my personal experience, it's all been the other way -- working sites go through great expense and effort to rewrite the website with javascript. (My credit union has completely rewritten their website three times in four years, and still manages to make it work with javascript-disabled browsers.)
Basically, what I'm saying is that there's nothing you can do in Javascript that you can't easily provide in an alternative, if ugly, way. And for in-house projects, anything is allowed, no matter how unwise.
As I said before, forcing the user to use Javascript indicates incompetence, stupidity, carelessness.... or an unethical or harried developer. (You didn't seem to pick up on this theme before, so perhaps I should explain the last two: by 'unethical' I mean that you know what you're doing, but you don't care; by 'harried', I mean that you know what you're doing, and you don't like it, but you don't have the time/energy/resources/skill to do it the way you know you should. Sometimes life means we prostitute[3] ourselves because we have to -- if it doesn't bother us, then we are probably causing more misery than we know.)
But claiming that foolishness is wisdom, that expedience is good design, that doing what you're told is a virtue... well, that is where much of the evil in the world comes from. Not that Javascript is the cause of the world's evil or anything, although I wouldn't be suprised if it was. ;-P
[0] In my professional opinion. YMMV.[1] They don't have to wear suits; it is more of a mindset. The kind of person who considers themselves a Power User (with caps) using their ability to change the screensaver is a suit, no matter what they wear.
[2] More likely, it would cause them to contribute large amounts of money so that someone can lobby congress to make it a capital crime to exploit anyone with a lot of money.
[3] Yes, I mean this. Been there, done that: I was a developer for a small company that was gung-ho on MS Windows. I developed on, and for, MSWindows. I admin'd a Windows network. I use MS tools on a daily basis. And it sucked the joy from life, far more than I realized. But the money was good... and in hindsight, chasing money was the wrong thing to do. It causes you[4] to lie to yourself.
[4] Generic 'you', of course.
The amusing part is that you even quoted my statement, including the qualifier: "If a site doesn't work without Javascript..." Please note that I didn't say "If a site contains any Javascript whatsoever..." I mean, I'm quite happy when I find a website that contains no Javascript whatsoever, and I'd be more than pleased if the majority of users would adopt a belief that Javascript was Evil, but the real gripe is the practice of taking away control of the user's software away from the user.
'Wizzy' features are not required to make a site work. There's no essential functionality provided by Javascript that can't be provided, perhaps in a less "wizzy" way, by some alternative means.
What are the most common uses for Javascript? It seems (off the top of my head) to be (1) client-side validation of data, (2) popup windows, advertisements, and other annoyances, (3) following links, and (4) tool-tip-style "dynamic information".
I'm sure that there are many more uses of Javascript than what I've come up with here, but I assert that for all of them, they're either unessential (except for the clueless suits who are asking for them) or annoying.
On the other hand, I'd be interested to find out if there's a way to handle this evil javascript without turning off Javascript entirely. (Please save your work before following the link -- in at least one case, it's crashed a Linux box.)
It seems that many people have forgotton about the <noscript> tag. And this is why I consider sites that require Javascript to be creations of the incompetent, careless, or the stupid. I guess I need to add "unethical" and "harried" to that list as well, don't I?
I use whatever browser I want (mostly Netscape 4.78, as I can disable the ugly little icons for back/forward/reload), and I don't have any problem with popups.
I disable Javascript entirely.
If a site doesn't work without Javascript, the site designer and programmers are incompetent, careless, or stupid, and I'd be foolish to use the site with Javascript enabled anyway.
Remaindering is an abomination in and of itself. It's a subversion of the whole supply-and-demand basis of the market -- if you don't pay at least $PRICE for a book, you don't get it at all.
The books are already printed. The expense has already been incurred. Remaindering is just a[n artificial] way to keep prices high. So yeah, it's not suprising that the publishers are on the lookout for folks selling remaindered books.
I buy a fair number of books. I buy a lot of them in hard-cover, even. I have a list of authors[1] that I purchase their new-to-me works as soon as I find 'em, be it hardcover, paperback, used, or whatnot. I don't have a problem with authors and publishers making money. I do, however, have a problem with being considered a mark by the publishing industry.
[1] Headed up by Terry Pratchett, Vernor Vinge, Lewis Thomas, Robert Fulghum, Jim Butcher....All Javascript is evil.
Instead of objecting to popups, popunders, and suchlike (if you enable Javascript, that's what you are asking for, so stop whining and suck it up), why not object to all those sites that REQUIRE Javascript for basic functionality?
I don't want to have an experience with my computer.
Browers should install with all scripting disabled, and you should turn it on only if (1) you understand the implications, and (2) you can handle the expected results ( while ( 1 ) { alert("Isn't this fun?"); } ).
Personally, I might consider a "client-side scripting solution" if (1) the language was not turing complete, (2) I could filter all events and built-in functions, and (3) I could set up a library of "allowed scripts" that could be inspected and modified only by the user.
Oh, and there's not a way for a web-site to ask me to install some script of their automatically. It would have to be either "write a function that does this, given these arguments" or "copy this script into an editor and save it to $HOME/.$BROWSER/allowed_scripts/$SCRIPTNAME" or somesuch.
Why do I feel as if this sort of thing has a snowball's chance in hell?
Failing that, getting out of the OS Monopoly business and concentrating on just standalone (NOT integrated) applications would be nice.
[I am not a CVS guru, I just use it.]
If you have to apply patches multiple times, then you're probably patching branches, and developing in the branches. The "CVS Way" seems to be (corrections welcome) to develop in the default branch, and to tag the tree at drop-points -- when you ship the code. If you need to support an old code-drop, you turn the tag into a branch, and then patch the branch.
If you have too many delivered branches being supported at the same time, perhaps you should upgrade those customers to a newer version of the software. They'll appreciate, and it will simplify your situation.
The develop-in-a-branch-and-ship-the-default is appealing, but troublesome.
Otherwise, it sounds like your developers aren't playing nice... developer A patches the tree, and developer B goes to commit his changes, but gets told that there are conflicts and that he needs to update. Not wanting to deal with the conflicts, he copies his important files to a save spot, updates, copies his "important" files back over the top of the conflicted files, and then commits the whole thing, effectively "rolling back" the patch.
If this is what is going on, you need to educate your developers. With a stick.
Over the years, I've discovered that a significant amount of heartburn I may have with CVS comes not from any deficiency of CVS, but from the fact that I frequently fail to use CVS "properly" -- meaning, of course, "as intended".
So the answer becomes "so what"?
People on dial-up connections don't want HUGE chunks of data coming at them; shoot, even people with broadband connections frequently don't want to send or receive huge pieces of data. Just because some crack-smoking graphic-artist with a shiny new disk and Photoshop want to inflict his "art" on the general populace is no reason to make it easy for 'em.
The reason for using TCP was that it was the easy -- the lazy -- way out.
Again, "so what"? We have that now -- I routinely get stalled TCP connections, broken links, incomplete images... and I just wait a few minutes, and then click on "Reload" to see if it gets better. Why does CNN need a persistent connection from you? What state is there that needs to be preserved?And now that we have "invented" cookies, what need is there for TCP at all when discussing HTTP? Error detection? Use checksums.
In cases of good network connectivity, TCP is needless overhead. In cases of poor connectivity, TCP is frequently-needless-delay. Do I REALLY need to have my browser keep trying to reload that 1x1-transparent-GIF from an overloaded ad-tracking site? Is it that important to me?
As it is, HTTP is a mess, and frequently invents poor solutions to problems solved long ago.
But what can you expect when you release alpha-quality designs to a population desperately seeking a simpler way to acquire pr0n than Usenet?
The problem with this is that while I was attending school, it would have been Visual C++, Visual Basic, Access, and .BAT file programming.
Perl? Java? Unix? Nah. Why bother? Business has declared that Microsoft is the winner!
(And as far as I am concerned, "Working knowledge of C++" is "C++ sucks big rocks thru small straws")
SQL isn't hard, in the basics, but it is tricky to do the fancy stuff well. So yeah, SQL. But HTML? In a _CS_ curriculum? You must be kidding.
Far better to have 'em take a data visualization course, perhaps based on something by Edward Tufte.
No, I'm not joking.
When I was interviewing applications for programming, I made sure to look for breadth of interest and/or experience; if they were so focussed on $SHINY_TECHNOLOGY, they would be totally useless when it came to actually solving the problem. (Thank goodness I'm away from that now. It's so depressing to ask simple questions and get a totally blank stare in return.)
A developer not only needs to be able to program, but they need to be able to quickly comprehend some new problem domain. Those who can't simply recommend whatever is currently being hyped at the moment. ("Your systems are slow? You NEED XML! Yes! Yes! XML will _solve_ ALL of your problems. And LDAP too! Written in C#! Yes! Much better than C!")
MY biggest complaint about businesses is that so many of them won't step up to the plate and shoulder the responsibility of actually training people. Instead, the CEOs of businesses go golfing with University presidents and bitch about how the students from $UNIVERSITY are un-employable ("Your students graduate knowing about UNIX, C, C++, Lisp, Forth, Prolog, MATLAB, Calculus, algorithms, some crap like Big-O or Big-Theta, computability, some nonsense excuse like NP-complete, but they don't know Visual Basic. I can't give your students a job, why don't you fire all of your professors and scrap your curriculum and Get With The Times?" "uhh, okay.")
[Note: this isn't about _all_ businesses, as there are plenty of 'em out there that recognize that learning a new programming language isn't hard if you already know a couple, and that by the time the new hire has learned the local programming culture sufficiently well to touch the existing code-base without supervision, they'll also be up to speed for the language....]
The students who think they're wasting money crying for $LANGUAGE_OF_THE_MONTH should go to trade schools, not a university. But, no, they want the prestige and job options available to University graduates, but without having to learn as much. University graduates in CS -- the ones who didn't waste their money -- can learn the basics of a new language on their own (and do even better with some expert guidance nearby). Nearly half of the languages I put on my resume I learned on my own -- at least enough to write small to medium sized programs with it.
If I have the skills you want, then you're not going to be hiring me for an entry level position; if that's what you offer me, then you're trying to rip me off.
If we would have just stuck with core memory, we wouldn't be having these problems!
Seen that.
A lot of college students -- especially the ones in CS -- use the argument that copying work is equivalent to "consulting with a co-worker"; apparently, this is to disguise the fact that they don't actually know what they're doing.
Many of these students appear to be pursuing a CS degree because "that is where the money is". Which is a damn poor reason, I think, but that's just my opinion. They also tend to be the ones who complain about having to learn more than one language... "You should teach us $LANGUAGE_OF_THE_MONTH, to better prepare us for the work force!" they cry.
Bah. A university degree is supposed to certify that you know how to think and how to learn, not that you're basically a trained monkey. I think that undergrad courses should only teach the so-called "dead" languages -- and when one of 'em becomes popular again, drop it, and move to something else. An undergraduate should come out of school with a solid grasp of Pascal, Forth, Scheme, and MIX or SICTOY.
True. He understands that in business, it's okay to lie, cheat, and steal, if you get away with it. (Or even if you get away with it for long enough.)
It has been said that a dollar spent on marketing is worth five spent on engineering. I'm inclined to think this is an understatement, except that Apple is doing relatively well in absolute terms, if not in percentage-of-the-marketplace.
But then, my income is a very small percentage of the wages paid to software developers (the corresponding 'marketplace'). This is not a problem.
I said "shouldn't somebody be using that expensive tape drive hooked up to the file server to back up the code base?"
And I was told "Great! Do it. In addition to developing software, naturally. Here's the administration password. Could you add an account for this new hire while you're at it?"
And while I was adding the account, I logged into the SPARCStation 20 that was the mail-server, and I noticed that /var/spool/mail/root was the largest file on the system. And I said "Shouldn't someone take care of that?"
And I was told "Great! Do it. In addition to developing software, performing backups, and maintaing the system accounts for the other developers, of course. Here's the root password. Oh, could you add some mail aliases while you're at it?"
For some reason, people keep giving me root access.