3079 is only if you compile in every single possible external module. Most people aren't going to compile in mssql and mysql and oracle and pgsql and msql support at the same time, for example. Anecdotally, having worked across dozens of installations in various shops large and small and numerous hosting environments, there's probably 1000 functions that are commonly available via 'standard' compiled-in modules (mysql, gd, odbc, imap, etc).
I like Google precisely because I don't get a bias.
How do you know? It may appear so, but you don't have the source code to their system, and you don't know the inner workings of their company. There's no transparency there, so you can't know that there's no bias. My suspicion is that there's not any right now (or perhaps much less than the MS newsbot) but you can't ever be sure.
Wow! You bother to write distinct data cleansing input filters for every single 'page' of a web app? Many (most?) people doing that sort of repetitive work have determined that setting up the application to do all that basic protection processing before control is passed to the logic is a more secure way of programming. Feel free to keep putting your input filtering code on all of your 'pages', but don't lump everyone else in with your vision of web app development.
If memory serves, PHP3 had built-in debugging output capabilities. When Zend became 'official' and PHP4 was released, debugging was suddenly nowhere to be found. BUT, lo and behold, you can get debugging capabilities if you purchase the Zend Studio and server extensions. Yes, there are open source debugging extensions now too, but that move was the one that made me start thinking like you're doing. Again, nothing inherently WRONG with it, but it was something that seemed to be held out of the core system to help fund the development by selling it separately.
That's part of the problem though - defining what a 'best browser' is. I think many people are coming to the realization that a 'best browser' is different things to different people. People who are casual surfers, perhaps only using a browser an hour or so per day probably have different needs than someone who is a web developer or someone doing 5-6 hours of research per day using a web browser for much of their work.
You can't be everything to everyone. BUT, if there was a way to have a browser start to adapt to your habits, it might be a great boon to many people.
HOWEVER, it may also end up having the opposite effect - a completely different experience for each person even though they are using 'Mozilla' (for example). It's hard enough to teach people how to do certain things when there's only slight differences between IE5.5 and IE6 - trying to write docs for browsers that behave radically different based on the user might NOT be a good thing.
Similar issue here the other day with my wife's Mac (safari and mozilla both).
Not sure I can use the brackets, but you'll get the idea here anyway.
input type="text" " name="foobar"
(Note the extra ")
Safari/Mozilla (rightly?) barfed on that portion of the form, and wouldn't submit a value for foobar. I *suspect* IE works just fine with it, as the company hasn't yet replied to us about it not working for them. We're demanding a refund because they can't/won't fix the problem after 5 business days.
Refuse this, and you will cast a bad light on open source. (ie: That Mozilla thing broke my Internet and no one will help me!)
Unfortunately, it's true. However, the logical opposite DOESN'T happen, and that's what's so frustrating.
"My Internet Explorer is broke and no one will help me" doesn't seem to cast a bad light on Microsoft or closed-source software in general. If anything, all it does is create a situation where some 'friendly' geek does what they can to help (reinstalling Windows, or moving to mozilla or whatever).
You also have simply put out a list of unsubstantiated claims by saying "JAVA IS NOT SLOW". The fact that people have to try to fight this in 2004 would seem to indicate that the popular notion is that Java is slow (whether or not it is). By not providing any real evidence to substantiate your claim that Java is NOT slow, you're no better (or worse) than I am with my posting that it IS slow.
The fact that 'slow' is a subjective observation doesn't help the case, either.:)
So, it's not slow, it just appears slow? That's a great defense.
Take gaming out of it, Java apps are still slow, especially ones that use GUIs. Server-side web apps in Java tend to be slow, or at least not noticeable *faster* than other languages. That's, at best, a dead heat, but it's pain to develop in relative to those other languages. And on the GUI app side, people using 2ghz+ computers are still having to defend (rightfully so) that 'Java is just as fast as other stuff' (when it's noticeably not). The fact that you can tell a Java app by how slow the menus redraw in an app even in 2004 is sad.
For anyone that bothers to defend Java in this respect with "well, it's the coders' fault! just use API XYZ123!", why on earth does Sun make a language that is SO EASY to make slow stuff in? Why isn't the default way of making Java stuff FAST? MS VB basically defaults to apps that run (and APPEAR to run) quickly. You can work at messing up a VB app to make it run slow, but it's not easy to do.
A friend of mine recently started a discussion forum to cover this movie specifically - perhaps for more long-term debate, y'all would visit http://www.fh911.com/".
I'm not a big Amazon fan, but it seems that if they had an agreement to allow Toysrus to sell certain items exclusively, then violate that agreement, they're in the wrong.
If Amazon's charges are true, then ToysRUs.com can't seem to operate ANYTHING. Back in 99/2000 (or 2000/2001?) they failed miserably at xmas two years consecutively. Both times relying on rather crappy ColdFusion (I had a friend with inside contacts to the web dev team at that time, and they just did not know how to scale a site - relying on CF wasn't a big help either).
So, they get rid of their net headaches, and can focus just on the business of management and fulfillment, and couldn't seem to do that right either (again, if Amaazon's charges are true).
If there was a public health risk - such as biohazardous material - even in a private storefront - the city or state would close off the area and warn people not to go there. Yes, you might have people wanting to go anyway, but they've been warned.
I know the analogy isn't all that great, but it's the best I can do right now.:)
This time, however, the flaws affect every user of Internet Explorer, because Microsoft has not yet released a patch. Moreover, the infectious Web sites are not just those of minor companies inhabiting the backwaters of the Web, but major companies, including some banks, said Brent Houlahan, chief technology officer of NetSec.
"There's a pretty wide variety," he said. "There are auction sites, price comparison sites and financial institutions."
The Internet Storm Center, which monitors Net threats, confirmed that the list of infected sites included some large Web properties.
"We won't list the sites that are reported to be infected in order to prevent further abuse, but the list is long and includes businesses that we presume would normally be keeping their sites fully patched," the group stated on its Web site.
WHY NOT? I've been trying to think of a reason NOT to list the sites infected, but I can't think of a good one. "To prevent further abuse"???? Wouldn't giving the public NOTICE about these sites help prevent more infections by having people NOT go to those sites?
Can I VIEW SOURCE without a page reload?
on
Mozilla 1.7 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I seem to remember this *might* have been fixed, but I could swear it was causing me problems the other day. That's just an insane bug which even after all these years I can't understand any rationalization for. If I want to VIEW SOURCE, I want to view the source of what's being rendered, NOT the source of another POST action.
The only time anyone is allowed to 'use' GPL software is after they downloaded it from sourceforge, joined the mailing lists/forums, and contributed back at least 10% of their available time to 'the project'. Furthermore, any GPL code which has a public profile (generally acknowledged to be something available in ebuilds, deb packages or - shudder - RPMs via apt-get or yum, or something which ships with a major distro) is only allowed to be used after approval by the package's original founders. Any other such use (like this Project David) constitutes an affront to the entire GPL community and a sorry understanding of nettiquette.
Just because the wheel doesn't work for you is no reason to assume it obviously must not work for anyone and that all the people buying ipod's are elitist fashion whores.
Read the post again. Nowhere do I say that it obviously doesn't work for anyone. On the contrary - it's selling, and must work for some people.
However, read comments (or listen to comments) by iPod owners about other players. Invariably, they will end-up bashing the other player, on 'ease of use' or 'intuitiveness' or something else. The wheel is indicative of that, as it's the most different design element in comparison with other players.
No, I don't read Apple support boards. Most of my Apple owning friends claim that you don't *need* support with Apple products because "they just work", but that's another story.
I didn't say iPod owners were elitist fashion whores.
My whole point on this was that the subject of the article was stating that IT IS NOT HARD to build an MP3 player that would be superior to the iPod. I certainly do not believe it is not hard - in fact, I believe it would be very difficult. 'Superior' is obviously relative, but combining all the good features of all the players out there into one unit hasn't happened yet, and won't for a long time (if ever).
My point wasn't criticizing Apple or the iPod, but I was criticizing the backseat hardware designer attititude displayed by the subject of the article.
BUT this is someone who generally *does* write/build things themselves, and furthermore probably has more than enough ability to do it. Rather than complaining that no one else is doing it 'good enough' (although god knows there are dozens trying), if he really believes IT IS NOT THAT HARD, then demonstrate.
I believe he probably would come to a different conclusiong.
It's probably NOT THAT HARD to build something *HE* would use, but IT IS THAT HARD to build a physical device to be sold at the consumer level. Anticipating everyone's needs/wants/desires in hardware is a lot harder because you can't flip a few bytes, recompile and say 'download the new version'.
I'm actually normally against the 'DIY' attitude that most OSS people spout, primarily because, as you say, people have better things to do with their time. BUT, for someone in his position, who probably *could* do something better (at least to address the issues he has with things), and with a winning track record, to simply bad mouth everyone else's attempts *AND* tell people 'IT IS NOT THAT HARD' reeks of arrogance. Maybe he's earned that in your mind, i dunno, but not in mine.
Hey - he's the one saying 'IT'S NOT THAT HARD'. Granted, some of those projects have had a big impact on a lot of people. So have the myriad of companies who've developed various MP3 players. He was hoping to raise $400M to develop a win2k clone. If he *really* believes it 'easy' to develop a better mp3 player (one that doesn't 'piss him off' like he says his iPod does) then why not do it? There's more money to be made in an mp3 player than an open source win2k desktop clone (which surely the investors in a $400M enterprise would be looking for).
It really does amaze me that nobody else has produced an mp3 player whose UI is even in the same league of decent as the iPod's -- don't get me wrong, the iPod's UI is nowhere near perfect and pisses me off now and then too --but everything else I've seen is just an order of magnitude worse. What gives?
It's NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE.
Two obvious points:
1. Anyone doing anything similar to Apple is charged with 'ripping them off'. 2. Anyone doing something *different* from Apple is making it 'too complex'.
IT IS HARD, PEOPLE, to replicate something which people love on an emotional level, differentiate yourself enough so as to not be seen as just a knock-off, and yet have it be close enough to the original to be seen as 'good'.
Frankly, most iPod people will *never* use anything else because, like pretty much all Apple-buying people, they've paid top dollar and will never think anything less expensive has any merit.
I do not think the ipod interface is all that hot. Let me take that back - the *wheel* thing isn't. The visual interface is OK (not much you can do there) but I don't like the wheel. Tried both a regular and a 'mini' - can't use either of them very well.
I'm speaking from the standpoint of a new neuros owner, so yes I'm biased, but so are pretty much all pro-iPod zealots (either reviewers who got theirs free or the early-adopter raving "Apple can do no wrong" crowd).
WOW - one more thing I just noticed - an iPod owner criticizing Apple! He even says the interface 'pisses him off' now and then! What's wrong in paradise? Why doesn't he design a 'better' one if is so damn easy? He says himself IT'S NOT THAT HARD.
Not everyone's making $40/hour to start with - I presume many more who might be considering the 'redbull' lifestyle are in the $18-$25/hour range.
Assume $25/hour. After taxes, you're probably making $18/hour. Minus the $2 (you buy most things with after-tax dollars, not pretax dollars) and you're left with $16 'profit'.
Considering the long-term health risks associated with that type of abuse, and the more likely ROI financially most people would actually realize, it's not as great as many people make it out to be.
Having said that, I do partake in some caffeine-fueled binges now and then, but I don't try to justify it from a financial standpoint.
ipofinancial.com has a report for sale
on
Google IPO Swami
·
· Score: 1
As long as we're pitching services,:)
IPOFinancial.com is offering a Google IPO report for sale. It's a reasonable price if anyone is considering actually investing in Google's IPO. As many others have said already, the dutch auction system will put a spin on this which not many high profile IPOs have had (at least recently).
Slashdot Mirror
3079 is only if you compile in every single possible external module. Most people aren't going to compile in mssql and mysql and oracle and pgsql and msql support at the same time, for example. Anecdotally, having worked across dozens of installations in various shops large and small and numerous hosting environments, there's probably 1000 functions that are commonly available via 'standard' compiled-in modules (mysql, gd, odbc, imap, etc).
I like Google precisely because I don't get a bias.
How do you know? It may appear so, but you don't have the source code to their system, and you don't know the inner workings of their company. There's no transparency there, so you can't know that there's no bias. My suspicion is that there's not any right now (or perhaps much less than the MS newsbot) but you can't ever be sure.
Wow! You bother to write distinct data cleansing input filters for every single 'page' of a web app? Many (most?) people doing that sort of repetitive work have determined that setting up the application to do all that basic protection processing before control is passed to the logic is a more secure way of programming. Feel free to keep putting your input filtering code on all of your 'pages', but don't lump everyone else in with your vision of web app development.
end of message
If memory serves, PHP3 had built-in debugging output capabilities. When Zend became 'official' and PHP4 was released, debugging was suddenly nowhere to be found. BUT, lo and behold, you can get debugging capabilities if you purchase the Zend Studio and server extensions. Yes, there are open source debugging extensions now too, but that move was the one that made me start thinking like you're doing. Again, nothing inherently WRONG with it, but it was something that seemed to be held out of the core system to help fund the development by selling it separately.
That's part of the problem though - defining what a 'best browser' is. I think many people are coming to the realization that a 'best browser' is different things to different people. People who are casual surfers, perhaps only using a browser an hour or so per day probably have different needs than someone who is a web developer or someone doing 5-6 hours of research per day using a web browser for much of their work.
You can't be everything to everyone. BUT, if there was a way to have a browser start to adapt to your habits, it might be a great boon to many people.
HOWEVER, it may also end up having the opposite effect - a completely different experience for each person even though they are using 'Mozilla' (for example). It's hard enough to teach people how to do certain things when there's only slight differences between IE5.5 and IE6 - trying to write docs for browsers that behave radically different based on the user might NOT be a good thing.
Similar issue here the other day with my wife's Mac (safari and mozilla both).
Not sure I can use the brackets, but you'll get the idea here anyway.
input type="text" " name="foobar"
(Note the extra ")
Safari/Mozilla (rightly?) barfed on that portion of the form, and wouldn't submit a value for foobar. I *suspect* IE works just fine with it, as the company hasn't yet replied to us about it not working for them. We're demanding a refund because they can't/won't fix the problem after 5 business days.
Refuse this, and you will cast a bad light on open source. (ie: That Mozilla thing broke my Internet and no one will help me!)
Unfortunately, it's true. However, the logical opposite DOESN'T happen, and that's what's so frustrating.
"My Internet Explorer is broke and no one will help me" doesn't seem to cast a bad light on Microsoft or closed-source software in general. If anything, all it does is create a situation where some 'friendly' geek does what they can to help (reinstalling Windows, or moving to mozilla or whatever).
You also have simply put out a list of unsubstantiated claims by saying "JAVA IS NOT SLOW". The fact that people have to try to fight this in 2004 would seem to indicate that the popular notion is that Java is slow (whether or not it is). By not providing any real evidence to substantiate your claim that Java is NOT slow, you're no better (or worse) than I am with my posting that it IS slow.
:)
The fact that 'slow' is a subjective observation doesn't help the case, either.
So, it's not slow, it just appears slow? That's a great defense.
Take gaming out of it, Java apps are still slow, especially ones that use GUIs. Server-side web apps in Java tend to be slow, or at least not noticeable *faster* than other languages. That's, at best, a dead heat, but it's pain to develop in relative to those other languages. And on the GUI app side, people using 2ghz+ computers are still having to defend (rightfully so) that 'Java is just as fast as other stuff' (when it's noticeably not). The fact that you can tell a Java app by how slow the menus redraw in an app even in 2004 is sad.
For anyone that bothers to defend Java in this respect with "well, it's the coders' fault! just use API XYZ123!", why on earth does Sun make a language that is SO EASY to make slow stuff in? Why isn't the default way of making Java stuff FAST? MS VB basically defaults to apps that run (and APPEAR to run) quickly. You can work at messing up a VB app to make it run slow, but it's not easy to do.
A friend of mine recently started a discussion forum to cover this movie specifically - perhaps for more long-term debate, y'all would visit http://www.fh911.com/".
I'm not a big Amazon fan, but it seems that if they had an agreement to allow Toysrus to sell certain items exclusively, then violate that agreement, they're in the wrong.
If Amazon's charges are true, then ToysRUs.com can't seem to operate ANYTHING. Back in 99/2000 (or 2000/2001?) they failed miserably at xmas two years consecutively. Both times relying on rather crappy ColdFusion (I had a friend with inside contacts to the web dev team at that time, and they just did not know how to scale a site - relying on CF wasn't a big help either).
So, they get rid of their net headaches, and can focus just on the business of management and fulfillment, and couldn't seem to do that right either (again, if Amaazon's charges are true).
Who do you root for here?
Replying to my own post: :)
:)
If there was a public health risk - such as biohazardous material - even in a private storefront - the city or state would close off the area and warn people not to go there. Yes, you might have people wanting to go anyway, but they've been warned.
I know the analogy isn't all that great, but it's the best I can do right now.
This time, however, the flaws affect every user of Internet Explorer, because Microsoft has not yet released a patch. Moreover, the infectious Web sites are not just those of minor companies inhabiting the backwaters of the Web, but major companies, including some banks, said Brent Houlahan, chief technology officer of NetSec.
"There's a pretty wide variety," he said. "There are auction sites, price comparison sites and financial institutions."
The Internet Storm Center, which monitors Net threats, confirmed that the list of infected sites included some large Web properties.
"We won't list the sites that are reported to be infected in order to prevent further abuse, but the list is long and includes businesses that we presume would normally be keeping their sites fully patched," the group stated on its Web site.
WHY NOT? I've been trying to think of a reason NOT to list the sites infected, but I can't think of a good one. "To prevent further abuse"???? Wouldn't giving the public NOTICE about these sites help prevent more infections by having people NOT go to those sites?
I seem to remember this *might* have been fixed, but I could swear it was causing me problems the other day. That's just an insane bug which even after all these years I can't understand any rationalization for. If I want to VIEW SOURCE, I want to view the source of what's being rendered, NOT the source of another POST action.
I hear those are much better than GoboLinux. Can anyone confirm?
It's "earl scheib" not "earl shive"
The only time anyone is allowed to 'use' GPL software is after they downloaded it from sourceforge, joined the mailing lists/forums, and contributed back at least 10% of their available time to 'the project'. Furthermore, any GPL code which has a public profile (generally acknowledged to be something available in ebuilds, deb packages or - shudder - RPMs via apt-get or yum, or something which ships with a major distro) is only allowed to be used after approval by the package's original founders. Any other such use (like this Project David) constitutes an affront to the entire GPL community and a sorry understanding of nettiquette.
After all, it is "NOT THAT HARD" :)
Here is more info
Just because the wheel doesn't work for you is no reason to assume it obviously must not work for anyone and that all the people buying ipod's are elitist fashion whores.
Read the post again. Nowhere do I say that it obviously doesn't work for anyone. On the contrary - it's selling, and must work for some people.
However, read comments (or listen to comments) by iPod owners about other players. Invariably, they will end-up bashing the other player, on 'ease of use' or 'intuitiveness' or something else. The wheel is indicative of that, as it's the most different design element in comparison with other players.
No, I don't read Apple support boards. Most of my Apple owning friends claim that you don't *need* support with Apple products because "they just work", but that's another story.
I didn't say iPod owners were elitist fashion whores.
My whole point on this was that the subject of the article was stating that IT IS NOT HARD to build an MP3 player that would be superior to the iPod. I certainly do not believe it is not hard - in fact, I believe it would be very difficult. 'Superior' is obviously relative, but combining all the good features of all the players out there into one unit hasn't happened yet, and won't for a long time (if ever).
My point wasn't criticizing Apple or the iPod, but I was criticizing the backseat hardware designer attititude displayed by the subject of the article.
BUT this is someone who generally *does* write/build things themselves, and furthermore probably has more than enough ability to do it. Rather than complaining that no one else is doing it 'good enough' (although god knows there are dozens trying), if he really believes IT IS NOT THAT HARD, then demonstrate.
I believe he probably would come to a different conclusiong.
It's probably NOT THAT HARD to build something *HE* would use, but IT IS THAT HARD to build a physical device to be sold at the consumer level. Anticipating everyone's needs/wants/desires in hardware is a lot harder because you can't flip a few bytes, recompile and say 'download the new version'.
I'm actually normally against the 'DIY' attitude that most OSS people spout, primarily because, as you say, people have better things to do with their time. BUT, for someone in his position, who probably *could* do something better (at least to address the issues he has with things), and with a winning track record, to simply bad mouth everyone else's attempts *AND* tell people 'IT IS NOT THAT HARD' reeks of arrogance. Maybe he's earned that in your mind, i dunno, but not in mine.
Hey - he's the one saying 'IT'S NOT THAT HARD'. Granted, some of those projects have had a big impact on a lot of people. So have the myriad of companies who've developed various MP3 players. He was hoping to raise $400M to develop a win2k clone. If he *really* believes it 'easy' to develop a better mp3 player (one that doesn't 'piss him off' like he says his iPod does) then why not do it? There's more money to be made in an mp3 player than an open source win2k desktop clone (which surely the investors in a $400M enterprise would be looking for).
It really does amaze me that nobody else has produced an mp3 player whose UI is even in the same league of decent as the iPod's -- don't get me wrong, the iPod's UI is nowhere near perfect and pisses me off now and then too --but everything else I've seen is just an order of magnitude worse. What gives?
It's NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE.
Two obvious points:
1. Anyone doing anything similar to Apple is charged with 'ripping them off'.
2. Anyone doing something *different* from Apple is making it 'too complex'.
IT IS HARD, PEOPLE, to replicate something which people love on an emotional level, differentiate yourself enough so as to not be seen as just a knock-off, and yet have it be close enough to the original to be seen as 'good'.
Frankly, most iPod people will *never* use anything else because, like pretty much all Apple-buying people, they've paid top dollar and will never think anything less expensive has any merit.
I do not think the ipod interface is all that hot. Let me take that back - the *wheel* thing isn't. The visual interface is OK (not much you can do there) but I don't like the wheel. Tried both a regular and a 'mini' - can't use either of them very well.
I'm speaking from the standpoint of a new neuros owner, so yes I'm biased, but so are pretty much all pro-iPod zealots (either reviewers who got theirs free or the early-adopter raving "Apple can do no wrong" crowd).
WOW - one more thing I just noticed - an iPod owner criticizing Apple! He even says the interface 'pisses him off' now and then! What's wrong in paradise? Why doesn't he design a 'better' one if is so damn easy? He says himself IT'S NOT THAT HARD.
Not everyone's making $40/hour to start with - I presume many more who might be considering the 'redbull' lifestyle are in the $18-$25/hour range.
Assume $25/hour. After taxes, you're probably making $18/hour. Minus the $2 (you buy most things with after-tax dollars, not pretax dollars) and you're left with $16 'profit'.
Considering the long-term health risks associated with that type of abuse, and the more likely ROI financially most people would actually realize, it's not as great as many people make it out to be.
Having said that, I do partake in some caffeine-fueled binges now and then, but I don't try to justify it from a financial standpoint.
As long as we're pitching services, :)
IPOFinancial.com is offering a Google IPO report for sale. It's a reasonable price if anyone is considering actually investing in Google's IPO. As many others have said already, the dutch auction system will put a spin on this which not many high profile IPOs have had (at least recently).