A well defined set of technologies? Hardly. Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, right? Oh wait, I don't use XML. Is that still AJAX? Most people seem to think so. Or maybe it's Asynchronous JavaScript And XmlHttpRequest. Execpt that you can do the same thing with iframes. Or dynamically created elements. Or...
AJAX is a fancy name for making something happen in a browser window without reloading the whole page, using techniques that have been around for over 5 years. Nothing less. Nothing more.
As far as I can tell, it was mainly concieved as a scam by consultants so that they can charge more money by telling a client "We'll build your site with AJAX(TM)" and do the exact same work they would have done anyway.
If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, PNG wouldn't have happened.
Wrong. If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, not only would PNG still have happened, but it might actually have been implemented properly in Internet Explorer, although no one would ever have noticed.
While you are right that each subset of the population would still be vulnerable to their own viruses, there is one key point to keep in mind. The rate of infection of new hosts increases geometrically with the percentage of suceptible hosts. A windows virus in an all windows environment spreads like wildfire, because nearly every infection attempt will succeed and continue propgating the virus. In a mixed environment, the rate will be much lower, because the infected hosts will either (a) blindly pick targets and spend much of their time attempting to infect hosts that aren't vulnerable, or (b) spend time actively looking for other vulnerable hosts. Either one will reduce the rate at which the virus can spread from any given host, and will dramatically reduce the overall rate at which the virus can spread. In that light, even if you are a member of the vulnerable population, you gain some protection by being in a mixed environment, because a reduced infection rate means more time available to detect and protect against the threat.
If the standard is inadequate to perform the function that I want, I would rather not follow the standard than spend a day of my time trying to figure out a workaround that tricks a validator into believeing that my non-compliant behavior really is. It's great that in this particular case somebody else has figured out how to accomplish this for me, (and if I ever have reason to embed flash in a page I'm working on, I'll have to remember this) but in the general case, if the standard is inadequate, screw it.
I generally make my pages validate as much as possible, because most of the time, it's trivial, and there's no good reason not to. But when I inevitably come up against something that I can't so according to the standard because the standard writers never anticipated somebody trying to do the things that I want to do, well, that's a good reason not to.
I suppose that's nice if you actually like programming in Java.
I'll stick to rolling my own, thanks. I suspect I wouldn't be able to use a tool like this for more than a half hour without finding something I want to do that the toolkit doesn't support. What then? Can you edit the JavaScript output by hand or is it totally obfuscated?
HD-DVD will not win the format war because SONY will have blu-ray standard on the PS3. End of story.
HD-DVD will not win the format war because the "format war" is going to consist of a couple of rich kids arguing inthe corner while the rest of the world collectively ignores them. It doesn't matter who wins because they're both losers...
Either you completely misread my post or you are attributing somebody else's words to me. I never said, or implied, that freezing the API would help the developers because it would provide more proprietary drivers. Proprietary drivers are a peripheral issue. My point was that freezing the API would help the developers because it would encourage stability in the kernel and reduce the amount of work that goes into making sure all of the drivers in the kernel stay in sync with the kernel proper.
Of course, this would make things easier for those who release binary drivers as well- the point is to make less work for everybody who has to maintain drivers. By making things easier for themselves, they would also make things easier for other driver maintainers. Conversely, by making things more difficult for other driver maintainers, they are making things more difficult for themselves as well.
Perhaps actively discouraging the efforts of companies that insist on releasing binary only drivers is a priority to the kernel developers, and they are willing to go through a little extra work themselves to achieve that goal. If so, then more power to them. If not, I don't really see why they would be unwilling to adopt a more stable kernel API. But again, IANAKD...
For that matter, why are some of the porn outfits against the idea? Aside from worrying about a squatter getting your domain name, what's the downside? It's not like a.xxx domain is going to have some stigma that customers would avoid.
Because it means having to maintain more domain names, and another landrush on a new TLD. The only people who would have benefitted from this proposal would have been the registrars and a handful of squatters.
Personally, I'm glad the idea is dead, not because I care one bit about the porn companies or the motivations of any particular religious group, but because I think that domain registrars(*) and domain squatters are right up there with spammers as the scummiest people on the net, and I have no desire to see any plan implemented that would help get them more money.
(*) Not all, but certainly a large number of them.
To use your argument as a counter to my statement requires one to make two very strong assumptions.
1) Linux' adoption rate is not just the primary, but the only, concern of the kernel developers. What was this article about again? Oh yeah, the kernel maintainer has suggested feature freezing the kernel for at least one realease because he feels too many bugs are being added with each release and not enough are being fixed.
2) You have sufficient reason to believe that Linux adoption rate would not be what it is (or higher) if the kernel were maintained differently. Just because Linux is doing well now doesn't mean it couldn't be doing better.
Of course, as I said, this is just me opinion, and I hardly consider myself an expert on the matter, but it certaily seems to me that stabilizing certain key kernel interfaces could certainly make many people's lives a lot easier. Your argument, on the other hand seems to have almost nothing to do with either what I said or what is being discussed in this article.
ODF compatible software isn't friendly to the disabled. This has nothing to do with whether or not Word can or cannot read the format.
If Word can read the format, than it is "ODF compatible software", thus making ODF compatible software just as friendly to the disabled as the current status quo. Given that, I would say that this article has quite a bit to do with whether or not Word can read the format.
The current situation is ridiculous, though, regardless of whether or not you believe that binary drivers are acceptable.
First of all, I don't believe that Linus et al refuse to provide a stable kernel API merely so they can snub companies who only release binary drivers (although obviously it is perceived by many as a nice side effect).
Providing a stable kernel API would provide substantial benefits for open source drivers as well in terms of reduced maintenance. This would especially be true for hardware that was once common and well supported but is now aging and not actively maintained, but there would be many other benefits as well.
IMHO, the kernel developers would do well to realize that their antics are hurting themselves far more than they are hurting any hardware company that refuses to release GPL drivers.
I think you misread "five years". Those emails were written in 1992. Five years later most people were running the original Pentium, or maybe the Pentium MMX.
Of course, by "free GNU" I'm pretty sure he was referring to GNU/Hurd, which we are still waiting for...
I don't know who the current owner is, but Ricochet is available again in San Diego and Denver. The current technology I believe is roughly DSL speed for about $25 a month. The current owner doesn't have the money to run all of Metricom's old networks, but I believe they are looking for partners to do that under license. Just before they went on the block, Metricom was operating in something like 23 cities, at least one of which had only been online for a few weeks. Most of that hardware is still out there, just waiting for somebody with a little bit of money to light it up and start running the service again.
Even assuming you are right on all of your points (I don't necessarily agree with them, but I will give you the benifit of the doubt), brick and mortar stores will not go away for a long time, for a few reasons.
First of all, there are some people who just won't shop online until it is foreign to them. I would be rather surprised if my mother ever buys anything online in her lifetime. My wife told me about how one of her co-workers went to every electronics store in town trying to find an iPod for her daughter for christmas. When one of her other co-workers commented that she just bought hers online, the first co-worker was surprised- "They sell them online?". Much of this is generational of course, and as a new generation grows up buying things online, this factor will disappear, but it will take a long time.
Then there is the fact that some things just do not make sense to buy online. I would probably not ever buy shoes, clothes, ski boots, or anything of that sort online. Sure, many online retailers will guarantee free replacement if something doesn't fit right, but how often is it worth the hassle? Some things you just like to see and try out in a store before you buy them.
Finally, money isn't always everything. This is the same concept that people have finally started to catch onto in the whole outsourcing debate. Some people only care about getting what they want the absolute cheapest way possible. Others believe that on some level you get what you pay for. For you, getting the absolute cheapest price possible on everything you buy may be your highest priority. Other people may prefer to pay slightly higher prices to go to a real store, because it means talking to knowledgeable sales people (ok, not likely, but theoretically possible) returning items or otherwise getting service without having to wait on hold for a half hour to talk to somebody in a call center half way around the world, and being able to browse through items in a way that's not really possible online. Despite the cheaper prices, I've bought about 3 times as many books from my local Borders over the last 2 years than from Amazon. Why? When I go to Amazon, I have one thing in mind that I want, I order it and I'm done. When I go to Borders, I may or may not have anything in particular in mind, but in walking through the store, I find books that look interesting, flip through them, and sometimes buy them. These are usually books that I would never have even found, much less bought, online.
A large part of me thinks this a just a plot so that everyone will just refer to it by the generic name "Nintendo". I suspect that there is still a large part of the non-gaming public that still thinks that "Nintendo" == "game system" the same way that "Xerox" == "copier", "Kleenex" == "facial tissue" and "Coke" == "sugary carbonated beverage", and I think that this is Nintendo's attempt to capitalize on that. Seriously, I would never go into a store and tell someone that I want to buy a "Wii", I will tell them that I want a Nintendo, and I cetainly won't ever ask anyone where the "Wii games" are.
I also have to observe that most people here who were looking forward to buying a Revolution haven't suddenly decided not to buy i because it is now known as "Wii". So in that sense, this is a success in that Nintendo has generated a huge amount of buzz while not actually losing any of the customers that were probably going to buy it no matter what it was called.
Swing may be a little slow, but nothing Java has ever had that "hackish" feel to it.
Nothing that runs on the server or command line perhaps. I have yet to use a GUI Java application that doesn't feel "hackish". The Zend IDE for PHP is ironically the closest to a decent GUI Java appliation I've ever used, and even that was only barely tolerable.
If they at least put it under a license that would allow Debian, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, et al distribute the JVM and JDK without restrictions, they would massively increase their developer base. I've considered experimenting with Java development a few times, but it is such a pain to get a meaningful Java environment set up on my FreeBSD servers, that I've never made it beyond the consideration stage, and I've sworn off trying again until there is a (up to date) freely redistributable Java package for FreeBSD.
Even if they get no other benefit whatsoever from open sourcing Java, increased developer mindshare in itself would help them substantially.
I know it's not the kind of "storage" we're talking about here, but most power plants have some form of output regulation; it seems like the power companies are probably trying to match demand as closely as they can, from their "top down" perspective, but can only get so close.
They do, but for many types of large scale power generation, output regulation happens at the scale of days, not hours, so absent a technology similar to this, a power company has to generate enough power round the clock to meet the highest level of demand at one point in the day. If they could really change their output levels that quicky, there wouldn't be a "peak price" and "off hours price"
You don't think something as powerful a single, mandatory way to track an individual's history won't be abused?
Hmmm... You mean like a Social Security number?
The way I see it, I already have a mandatory national ID. As long as that's the case, it might be nice if it was, you know, something that actually identified me.
And before you say it, yes, I am aware of the fact that Social Security numbers are massively abused, and like the original poster, my gut feeling is that I am against having a national ID, but I have yet to hear a good logical reason why I should be, other than "The founding fathers are rolling in their graves!!!"
Of course it hasn't been put into practice. If it had, been he might have realized by now that it's all BS. The entire idea is based on an unsound premise.
It is every bit as easy to write buggy hardware as it is to write buggy software. We don't notice it as much because hardware companies do a better job of testing their products before shipping because (a) it is a lot harder to fix them after the fact and (b) it is far easier to return faulty hardware to the store than buggy software, so they are more likely to lose money if they release a product that has not been thouroughly tested.
The solution to developing software that has less bugs in it is not any new, revolutionary way of developing software, but rather to raise the expectations of consumers regarding software performance, and thus the willingness of companies that write software to make sure it gets done right. Unfortunately, I think it may be too late for that battle to be won.
Now explain to me why, in even the most densely populated U.S. cities, the fastest available residential broadband is 3MB DSL or 5MB cable, and you cant't get any broadband for less than $55/month (total cost- those $29.99/month DSL packages you can get from your local phone company don't count because you can only get them if you are spending at least $35 a month on your phone bill.)
Hmmm?
I'd believe your arguments if the biggest U.S. cities had broadband access equivalent to Japan or Sweden or any number of other countries, but even in the areas that are comparable, we're years behind.
Slashdot Mirror
Every fully patched windows box with Microsoft Word installed...
That opens an infected file...
And doesn't have the virus definitions yet...
Yes, I'm totally serious.
A well defined set of technologies? Hardly. Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, right? Oh wait, I don't use XML. Is that still AJAX? Most people seem to think so. Or maybe it's Asynchronous JavaScript And XmlHttpRequest. Execpt that you can do the same thing with iframes. Or dynamically created elements. Or...
AJAX is a fancy name for making something happen in a browser window without reloading the whole page, using techniques that have been around for over 5 years. Nothing less. Nothing more.
As far as I can tell, it was mainly concieved as a scam by consultants so that they can charge more money by telling a client "We'll build your site with AJAX(TM)" and do the exact same work they would have done anyway.
While normally I'm not a big fan of trademark silliness, in this case I wholeheartedly approve. Maybe now the stupid meme will finally die.
Now, if only we could get somebody to trademark the term "AJAX".
If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, PNG wouldn't have happened.
Wrong. If we'd all said that GIF was good enough, not only would PNG still have happened, but it might actually have been implemented properly in Internet Explorer, although no one would ever have noticed.
Word viruses have been around for at least 8 years, and the Microsoft Word monoculture for longer than that. How is this new?
While you are right that each subset of the population would still be vulnerable to their own viruses, there is one key point to keep in mind. The rate of infection of new hosts increases geometrically with the percentage of suceptible hosts. A windows virus in an all windows environment spreads like wildfire, because nearly every infection attempt will succeed and continue propgating the virus. In a mixed environment, the rate will be much lower, because the infected hosts will either (a) blindly pick targets and spend much of their time attempting to infect hosts that aren't vulnerable, or (b) spend time actively looking for other vulnerable hosts. Either one will reduce the rate at which the virus can spread from any given host, and will dramatically reduce the overall rate at which the virus can spread. In that light, even if you are a member of the vulnerable population, you gain some protection by being in a mixed environment, because a reduced infection rate means more time available to detect and protect against the threat.
If the standard is inadequate to perform the function that I want, I would rather not follow the standard than spend a day of my time trying to figure out a workaround that tricks a validator into believeing that my non-compliant behavior really is. It's great that in this particular case somebody else has figured out how to accomplish this for me, (and if I ever have reason to embed flash in a page I'm working on, I'll have to remember this) but in the general case, if the standard is inadequate, screw it.
I generally make my pages validate as much as possible, because most of the time, it's trivial, and there's no good reason not to. But when I inevitably come up against something that I can't so according to the standard because the standard writers never anticipated somebody trying to do the things that I want to do, well, that's a good reason not to.
I suppose that's nice if you actually like programming in Java.
I'll stick to rolling my own, thanks. I suspect I wouldn't be able to use a tool like this for more than a half hour without finding something I want to do that the toolkit doesn't support. What then? Can you edit the JavaScript output by hand or is it totally obfuscated?
HD-DVD will not win the format war because SONY will have blu-ray standard on the PS3. End of story.
HD-DVD will not win the format war because the "format war" is going to consist of a couple of rich kids arguing inthe corner while the rest of the world collectively ignores them. It doesn't matter who wins because they're both losers...
Either you completely misread my post or you are attributing somebody else's words to me. I never said, or implied, that freezing the API would help the developers because it would provide more proprietary drivers. Proprietary drivers are a peripheral issue. My point was that freezing the API would help the developers because it would encourage stability in the kernel and reduce the amount of work that goes into making sure all of the drivers in the kernel stay in sync with the kernel proper.
Of course, this would make things easier for those who release binary drivers as well- the point is to make less work for everybody who has to maintain drivers. By making things easier for themselves, they would also make things easier for other driver maintainers. Conversely, by making things more difficult for other driver maintainers, they are making things more difficult for themselves as well.
Perhaps actively discouraging the efforts of companies that insist on releasing binary only drivers is a priority to the kernel developers, and they are willing to go through a little extra work themselves to achieve that goal. If so, then more power to them. If not, I don't really see why they would be unwilling to adopt a more stable kernel API. But again, IANAKD...
For that matter, why are some of the porn outfits against the idea? Aside from worrying about a squatter getting your domain name, what's the downside? It's not like a .xxx domain is going to have some stigma that customers would avoid.
Because it means having to maintain more domain names, and another landrush on a new TLD. The only people who would have benefitted from this proposal would have been the registrars and a handful of squatters.
Personally, I'm glad the idea is dead, not because I care one bit about the porn companies or the motivations of any particular religious group, but because I think that domain registrars(*) and domain squatters are right up there with spammers as the scummiest people on the net, and I have no desire to see any plan implemented that would help get them more money.
(*) Not all, but certainly a large number of them.
When did I mention adoption rate?
To use your argument as a counter to my statement requires one to make two very strong assumptions.
1) Linux' adoption rate is not just the primary, but the only, concern of the kernel developers. What was this article about again? Oh yeah, the kernel maintainer has suggested feature freezing the kernel for at least one realease because he feels too many bugs are being added with each release and not enough are being fixed.
2) You have sufficient reason to believe that Linux adoption rate would not be what it is (or higher) if the kernel were maintained differently. Just because Linux is doing well now doesn't mean it couldn't be doing better.
Of course, as I said, this is just me opinion, and I hardly consider myself an expert on the matter, but it certaily seems to me that stabilizing certain key kernel interfaces could certainly make many people's lives a lot easier. Your argument, on the other hand seems to have almost nothing to do with either what I said or what is being discussed in this article.
ODF compatible software isn't friendly to the disabled.
This has nothing to do with whether or not Word can or cannot read the format.
If Word can read the format, than it is "ODF compatible software", thus making ODF compatible software just as friendly to the disabled as the current status quo. Given that, I would say that this article has quite a bit to do with whether or not Word can read the format.
The current situation is ridiculous, though, regardless of whether or not you believe that binary drivers are acceptable.
First of all, I don't believe that Linus et al refuse to provide a stable kernel API merely so they can snub companies who only release binary drivers (although obviously it is perceived by many as a nice side effect).
Providing a stable kernel API would provide substantial benefits for open source drivers as well in terms of reduced maintenance. This would especially be true for hardware that was once common and well supported but is now aging and not actively maintained, but there would be many other benefits as well.
IMHO, the kernel developers would do well to realize that their antics are hurting themselves far more than they are hurting any hardware company that refuses to release GPL drivers.
I think you misread "five years". Those emails were written in 1992. Five years later most people were running the original Pentium, or maybe the Pentium MMX.
Of course, by "free GNU" I'm pretty sure he was referring to GNU/Hurd, which we are still waiting for...
I don't know who the current owner is, but Ricochet is available again in San Diego and Denver. The current technology I believe is roughly DSL speed for about $25 a month. The current owner doesn't have the money to run all of Metricom's old networks, but I believe they are looking for partners to do that under license. Just before they went on the block, Metricom was operating in something like 23 cities, at least one of which had only been online for a few weeks. Most of that hardware is still out there, just waiting for somebody with a little bit of money to light it up and start running the service again.
Even assuming you are right on all of your points (I don't necessarily agree with them, but I will give you the benifit of the doubt), brick and mortar stores will not go away for a long time, for a few reasons.
First of all, there are some people who just won't shop online until it is foreign to them. I would be rather surprised if my mother ever buys anything online in her lifetime. My wife told me about how one of her co-workers went to every electronics store in town trying to find an iPod for her daughter for christmas. When one of her other co-workers commented that she just bought hers online, the first co-worker was surprised- "They sell them online?". Much of this is generational of course, and as a new generation grows up buying things online, this factor will disappear, but it will take a long time.
Then there is the fact that some things just do not make sense to buy online. I would probably not ever buy shoes, clothes, ski boots, or anything of that sort online. Sure, many online retailers will guarantee free replacement if something doesn't fit right, but how often is it worth the hassle? Some things you just like to see and try out in a store before you buy them.
Finally, money isn't always everything. This is the same concept that people have finally started to catch onto in the whole outsourcing debate. Some people only care about getting what they want the absolute cheapest way possible. Others believe that on some level you get what you pay for. For you, getting the absolute cheapest price possible on everything you buy may be your highest priority. Other people may prefer to pay slightly higher prices to go to a real store, because it means talking to knowledgeable sales people (ok, not likely, but theoretically possible) returning items or otherwise getting service without having to wait on hold for a half hour to talk to somebody in a call center half way around the world, and being able to browse through items in a way that's not really possible online. Despite the cheaper prices, I've bought about 3 times as many books from my local Borders over the last 2 years than from Amazon. Why? When I go to Amazon, I have one thing in mind that I want, I order it and I'm done. When I go to Borders, I may or may not have anything in particular in mind, but in walking through the store, I find books that look interesting, flip through them, and sometimes buy them. These are usually books that I would never have even found, much less bought, online.
A large part of me thinks this a just a plot so that everyone will just refer to it by the generic name "Nintendo". I suspect that there is still a large part of the non-gaming public that still thinks that "Nintendo" == "game system" the same way that "Xerox" == "copier", "Kleenex" == "facial tissue" and "Coke" == "sugary carbonated beverage", and I think that this is Nintendo's attempt to capitalize on that. Seriously, I would never go into a store and tell someone that I want to buy a "Wii", I will tell them that I want a Nintendo, and I cetainly won't ever ask anyone where the "Wii games" are.
I also have to observe that most people here who were looking forward to buying a Revolution haven't suddenly decided not to buy i because it is now known as "Wii". So in that sense, this is a success in that Nintendo has generated a huge amount of buzz while not actually losing any of the customers that were probably going to buy it no matter what it was called.
Swing may be a little slow, but nothing Java has ever had that "hackish" feel to it.
Nothing that runs on the server or command line perhaps. I have yet to use a GUI Java application that doesn't feel "hackish". The Zend IDE for PHP is ironically the closest to a decent GUI Java appliation I've ever used, and even that was only barely tolerable.
If they at least put it under a license that would allow Debian, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, et al distribute the JVM and JDK without restrictions, they would massively increase their developer base. I've considered experimenting with Java development a few times, but it is such a pain to get a meaningful Java environment set up on my FreeBSD servers, that I've never made it beyond the consideration stage, and I've sworn off trying again until there is a (up to date) freely redistributable Java package for FreeBSD.
Even if they get no other benefit whatsoever from open sourcing Java, increased developer mindshare in itself would help them substantially.
I know it's not the kind of "storage" we're talking about here, but most power plants have some form of output regulation; it seems like the power companies are probably trying to match demand as closely as they can, from their "top down" perspective, but can only get so close.
They do, but for many types of large scale power generation, output regulation happens at the scale of days, not hours, so absent a technology similar to this, a power company has to generate enough power round the clock to meet the highest level of demand at one point in the day. If they could really change their output levels that quicky, there wouldn't be a "peak price" and "off hours price"
You still didn't answer his question...
You don't think something as powerful a single, mandatory way to track an individual's history won't be abused?
Hmmm... You mean like a Social Security number?
The way I see it, I already have a mandatory national ID. As long as that's the case, it might be nice if it was, you know, something that actually identified me.
And before you say it, yes, I am aware of the fact that Social Security numbers are massively abused, and like the original poster, my gut feeling is that I am against having a national ID, but I have yet to hear a good logical reason why I should be, other than "The founding fathers are rolling in their graves!!!"
Seems to function precisely as it does in Mac OSX,
If that's really true, it's a wonder anyone uses it. All this time I figured it might actually be a good program when running under OS X.
Of course it hasn't been put into practice. If it had, been he might have realized by now that it's all BS. The entire idea is based on an unsound premise.
It is every bit as easy to write buggy hardware as it is to write buggy software. We don't notice it as much because hardware companies do a better job of testing their products before shipping because (a) it is a lot harder to fix them after the fact and (b) it is far easier to return faulty hardware to the store than buggy software, so they are more likely to lose money if they release a product that has not been thouroughly tested.
The solution to developing software that has less bugs in it is not any new, revolutionary way of developing software, but rather to raise the expectations of consumers regarding software performance, and thus the willingness of companies that write software to make sure it gets done right. Unfortunately, I think it may be too late for that battle to be won.
All well and good.
Now explain to me why, in even the most densely populated U.S. cities, the fastest available residential broadband is 3MB DSL or 5MB cable, and you cant't get any broadband for less than $55/month (total cost- those $29.99/month DSL packages you can get from your local phone company don't count because you can only get them if you are spending at least $35 a month on your phone bill.)
Hmmm?
I'd believe your arguments if the biggest U.S. cities had broadband access equivalent to Japan or Sweden or any number of other countries, but even in the areas that are comparable, we're years behind.