Apple had indexing of content based on metadata in OS 9. Sherlock supported plugins to let 3rd party application developers tell it how to index content in their proprietary file formats, and the Sherlock interface could search by file type, date, full text of content, IPTC fields inside a JPEG, and so on.
They're just putting back into OS X stuff that was in OS 9.
Yeah, I had looked at Konfabulator, and decided it had a huge problem: either all your handy widgets get buried under your active windows, or you make them stick to the top and permanently lose a chunk of screen real estate.
One of the projects I was thinking of building was a lightweight replacement for Konfabulator that would make the widgets dynamically appear and disappear based on a function key. Well hey, Apple have saved me the trouble.
I guess I'd be a bit pissed off if I had started work on the code, but I don't see why Apple shouldn't take an idea started by a shareware developer and make major improvements to it. The Konfabulator guys are welcome to compete by improving their product.
I would summarize your summary as: The problem with SQL, and with relational models as implemented by SQL databases, is that it is often incredibly difficult to represent real-world data.
This is particularly true if you limit yourself to standard SQL and brain-dead fixed-length fields. The result is endless RISKS Digest stories about inflexible database systems which can't represent unexpected real-world data because it's too wide, too narrow, uses unexpected characters,...
Even a fairly simple problem domain, like a customer relationship management system, results in a complex tangle of tables.
Furthermore, the representation which allows you to query the data the way users want (star schema) is utterly different to the representation which allows you to update the data efficiently and keep it consistent (normalized form).
This latter defect has given rise to the entire OLAP / data warehousing industry, where you basically take all your data out of a database with one structure, and dump it in its entirety into a separate database with a different structure, just so that you can browse it and report on it without your SQL server falling over.
I was just thinking the other day about how nice it is that whenever the gaming industry really, really hypes a new game, it usually turns out to be good...
You mean like Daikatana, or Postal, or Battlecruiser 3000AD, or Frontier: Elite 2, or Dragon's Lair, or The Getaway, or Enter The Matrix?
I was an AT&T long distance customer, but they kept calling me and trying to sell me AT&T long distance. Each time I would tell them I already had AT&T long distance, and to stop calling me. The next week, they'd call again.
After about the fourth or fifth call, I told them if they ever called again, I'd switch to a different LD provider.
Hey, guess what, I'm not an AT&T customer any more.
Those clowns can't even work out how to avoid calling *their own customers* to try to sell them services *they already subscribe to*, so it doesn't surprise me at all that they're taking the lead in do-not-call complaints.
This is not news. Many of us noticed this years ago. And picking a French-made video game as an example just makes the whole thing seem ludicrous to the US citizens who could stop the whole process if they really wanted to.
All the evidence is that Microsoft have skilled developers who know how to build high-quality software. They have known how to build solid code for a good decade now. Yet they still don't actually build high-quality software. Why not?
Similarly, all the evidence is that Microsoft have a massive well-funded research department filled with smart and inventive people. Yet I can't think of a single innovation Microsoft has actually rolled out in shipping product, that hadn't been done before by someone else, and usually done better.
To me, the question of why Microsoft is institutionally unable to harness its clueful employees is much more interesting than what those clueful employees have to say. It must be pretty frustrating for the smart engineers at Microsoft, in fact, seeing their work ignored or screwed up. Still, I guess the piles of cash make up for it.
I'm not contributing to Folding@Home until they state their position on patenting the results.
They say the data will be released publically and not sold for profit, but they say nothing about patenting discoveries that result from my work and then forcing others to pay fees.
Well, that's fine for you, but there are also plenty of people like me. I'm English, 35, and I never learned Imperial units. I have absolutely no idea how to use them, and no interest in learning.
This has become somewhat more problematic since I moved to the USA...
Yeah, there are lots of people who use Imperial measurements and don't know metric. However, they're gradually dying off...
Well, as far as I can tell there's no useful documentation for SWT, which is a bit of a disadvantage. Take a look at the Eclipse documentation page--where's the SWT documentation, let alone the JFace documentation?
Ah, but you can't instantly change which SMTP server the mail goes to, if your mail host suddenly goes out of business or turns out to be run by a crook. Which has happened to me, and if I'd been using my personal domain as my primary e-mail address, I'd have been without mail for days. As it was, I redirected pobox mail elsewhere--end of problem.
Guess what--the risks you apply to pobox also apply to the companies that handle your DNS, SMTP and IMAP. Yeah, you can be up and running somewhere else in minutes... and then you can wait a couple of days for DNS to propagate the change around the world.
Read it again. The "unlike personal domains" is that I can redirect stuff *instantly*. I don't have to wait for DNS propagation and watch days of mail vanish into a black hole if my web and mail host turns out to be run by a crook. (And yes, it happened.)
There's no 100% safety unless you run the whole thing yourself--DNS servers, mail servers, the lot. I've done that, but it's expensive for an end user.
Pobox have been around for ten years providing good service, during which time I've had to switch web and mail hosts at short notice three times. Each time, I would have lost mail if I'd had to mess with DNS. I therefore conclude that pobox.com is *less* risky than a custom domain; so even though I *have* a custom domain, I don't use it as my primary e-mail address.
DNS is the essential infrastructure required for almost all Internet applications to function correctly... so let's fuck with it and create some cool hacks, and use it to implement stuff that's already been done much better using other protocols! I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe they're gonna hire the guys from Rockstar Games who developed Manhunt, team them up with the developers of the Silent Hill series, and put them to work on a Guantanamo/Al Ghraib interrogation simulator...
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If I could translate Real format audio into other formats, I might consider purchasing content in Real format.
I will not purchase content that I can only play in RealPlayer.
Let me export from Real formats to other formats, and I'll consider touching your Helix code and using Real encoded audio.
Until then, it looks like Helix is just another attempt to snare people into using write-only data formats.
Apple had indexing of content based on metadata in OS 9. Sherlock supported plugins to let 3rd party application developers tell it how to index content in their proprietary file formats, and the Sherlock interface could search by file type, date, full text of content, IPTC fields inside a JPEG, and so on.
They're just putting back into OS X stuff that was in OS 9.
Yeah, I had looked at Konfabulator, and decided it had a huge problem: either all your handy widgets get buried under your active windows, or you make them stick to the top and permanently lose a chunk of screen real estate.
One of the projects I was thinking of building was a lightweight replacement for Konfabulator that would make the widgets dynamically appear and disappear based on a function key. Well hey, Apple have saved me the trouble.
I guess I'd be a bit pissed off if I had started work on the code, but I don't see why Apple shouldn't take an idea started by a shareware developer and make major improvements to it. The Konfabulator guys are welcome to compete by improving their product.
Is that the same Tom Etter who co-wrote RACTER?
I would summarize your summary as: The problem with SQL, and with relational models as implemented by SQL databases, is that it is often incredibly difficult to represent real-world data.
...
This is particularly true if you limit yourself to standard SQL and brain-dead fixed-length fields. The result is endless RISKS Digest stories about inflexible database systems which can't represent unexpected real-world data because it's too wide, too narrow, uses unexpected characters,
Even a fairly simple problem domain, like a customer relationship management system, results in a complex tangle of tables.
Furthermore, the representation which allows you to query the data the way users want (star schema) is utterly different to the representation which allows you to update the data efficiently and keep it consistent (normalized form).
This latter defect has given rise to the entire OLAP / data warehousing industry, where you basically take all your data out of a database with one structure, and dump it in its entirety into a separate database with a different structure, just so that you can browse it and report on it without your SQL server falling over.
You mean like Daikatana, or Postal, or Battlecruiser 3000AD, or Frontier: Elite 2, or Dragon's Lair, or The Getaway, or Enter The Matrix?
I was an AT&T long distance customer, but they kept calling me and trying to sell me AT&T long distance. Each time I would tell them I already had AT&T long distance, and to stop calling me. The next week, they'd call again.
After about the fourth or fifth call, I told them if they ever called again, I'd switch to a different LD provider.
Hey, guess what, I'm not an AT&T customer any more.
Those clowns can't even work out how to avoid calling *their own customers* to try to sell them services *they already subscribe to*, so it doesn't surprise me at all that they're taking the lead in do-not-call complaints.
Congratulations, North Korea. You've finally worked out that America is a warmongering nation with an extensive corporate propaganda system operating through movies, news media and even video games.
This is not news. Many of us noticed this years ago. And picking a French-made video game as an example just makes the whole thing seem ludicrous to the US citizens who could stop the whole process if they really wanted to.
All the evidence is that Microsoft have skilled developers who know how to build high-quality software. They have known how to build solid code for a good decade now. Yet they still don't actually build high-quality software. Why not?
Similarly, all the evidence is that Microsoft have a massive well-funded research department filled with smart and inventive people. Yet I can't think of a single innovation Microsoft has actually rolled out in shipping product, that hadn't been done before by someone else, and usually done better.
To me, the question of why Microsoft is institutionally unable to harness its clueful employees is much more interesting than what those clueful employees have to say. It must be pretty frustrating for the smart engineers at Microsoft, in fact, seeing their work ignored or screwed up. Still, I guess the piles of cash make up for it.
Yeah, but if I had the cash for two web hosting services, I'd just run the whole thing myself...
I'm not contributing to Folding@Home until they state their position on patenting the results.
They say the data will be released publically and not sold for profit, but they say nothing about patenting discoveries that result from my work and then forcing others to pay fees.
There's nothing "natural" about what Noah Webster did to the English language in America...
Well, that's fine for you, but there are also plenty of people like me. I'm English, 35, and I never learned Imperial units. I have absolutely no idea how to use them, and no interest in learning.
This has become somewhat more problematic since I moved to the USA...
Yeah, there are lots of people who use Imperial measurements and don't know metric. However, they're gradually dying off...
Yeah. Of course games are a treadmill; life's a fucking treadmill.
Now that's what I call stamina!
Well, as far as I can tell there's no useful documentation for SWT, which is a bit of a disadvantage. Take a look at the Eclipse documentation page--where's the SWT documentation, let alone the JFace documentation?
You mean the kind of person who cheats at video games is also likely to cheat you on Paypal transactions? I'm amazed.
That's great... until your DNS or mail hosts tank.
I have a domain. It has been less reliable than pobox redirection, because of domain and mail hosting companies tanking.
Ah, but you can't instantly change which SMTP server the mail goes to, if your mail host suddenly goes out of business or turns out to be run by a crook. Which has happened to me, and if I'd been using my personal domain as my primary e-mail address, I'd have been without mail for days. As it was, I redirected pobox mail elsewhere--end of problem.
Guess what--the risks you apply to pobox also apply to the companies that handle your DNS, SMTP and IMAP. Yeah, you can be up and running somewhere else in minutes... and then you can wait a couple of days for DNS to propagate the change around the world.
Read it again. The "unlike personal domains" is that I can redirect stuff *instantly*. I don't have to wait for DNS propagation and watch days of mail vanish into a black hole if my web and mail host turns out to be run by a crook. (And yes, it happened.)
There's no 100% safety unless you run the whole thing yourself--DNS servers, mail servers, the lot. I've done that, but it's expensive for an end user.
Pobox have been around for ten years providing good service, during which time I've had to switch web and mail hosts at short notice three times. Each time, I would have lost mail if I'd had to mess with DNS. I therefore conclude that pobox.com is *less* risky than a custom domain; so even though I *have* a custom domain, I don't use it as my primary e-mail address.
"inexplicably starts swearing"?
You must have read the censored American version of "Life, The Universe And Everything", and not the real thing.
DNS is the essential infrastructure required for almost all Internet applications to function correctly... so let's fuck with it and create some cool hacks, and use it to implement stuff that's already been done much better using other protocols! I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe they're gonna hire the guys from Rockstar Games who developed Manhunt, team them up with the developers of the Silent Hill series, and put them to work on a Guantanamo/Al Ghraib interrogation simulator...
What's wrong with VNC?
Nothing, except that it's slower than a dead snail in treacle on a cold day. Those 24-bit Aqua bitmaps don't compress well.