It seems to me that this would appease both parties in this case as well as eliminate a lot of porting efforts if you ever decide to roll out your application to other platforms.
If you're going to go the Java route
Java Web Start, would probably be better than an applet.
(not that I've actually used it, mind you, but I do like the fact that it appears to be free of the browser-related issues that can occur with applets)
Of course, then you'll need to roll out JWS itself to all your computers... ---
What happens when
(A) The remote site's WAN connection is down.
(B) The PC's networking is broken (for whatever reasons).
(C) The OS won't boot.
You'll have to have good phone people for these.
All of the above will typically require a technician to actually physically go to the customer's site.. wow, what a concept!
Friendly and well-trained helpdesk won't do you any good if the guy who actually comes out to go monkey around with the customer's hardware is incompetent. ---
The PCs here are not all configured the same way, because they were bought at different times, came from companies we acquired, or whatever. This can cause troubles when assumptions are made by IT about the software state of the machines being remotely "upgraded". Three times in the past six months, a remote installation of software has gone wrong in my group. There have also been about the same number of successful installs.
I have seen this problem myself. I think the issue is that people fail to realize that
Remote Administration != Administration
en masse
at least not in the kind of environment you are talking about.
If you're on the same NT domain as the user, and you are an administrator, you can just edit his registry directly. I used to fix things all the time by doing that. No need for any special remote-control services that may or may not be available.
Of course this was in a company that could afford its own tech support staff. No company would ever give this kind of access to some 3rd-party outfit. At least I hope not.
---
Harddrive space may be cheap, but not THAT cheap. There are only so many damn copies of the same library I can fit in a 1gig partition... I've never had a problem with backwards compatibility with the MFC etc. libraries.
Then how come one of Microsoft's biggest "innovations" in Windows XP is support for multiple versions of DLLs? Sounds very similar to what has been described here.
---
Now the report I read was in relation to a group of pedophiles; these people were caught easily, because of the non-anoynmous nature of usenet - when you post to usenet, it puts your name and company at the top, and there is little you can do to hide.
I haven't actually bothered to check, but I'm sure there is already more than one web site which offers anonymous USENET posting in the tradition of the long-gone anon.penet.fi email service.
Even without such a service, any fool can simply put false information in the From and Organization headers. Of course, these posts be traced back to the originating IP address or ISP.
---
Are they planning to restore the threaded interface?
While they're at it, they should create a truly threaded interface for browsing messages in a group. Deja's browsing functionality was never all that great. ---
I think we need two formats.
One that does the thing HTML was originally designed to do, but improves on it. Some combination of langauages such as TeX and HTML. Something that describes what the different parts in the page are, and lets the client decide where to place images, if a table of context is needed etc.
AND one that can be used by market-droids to make webpages that the server descides how they sould look.
Trying to combine these both two very different goals into one language is obviously not A Good Thing.
Some people would say that we already have two formats: HTML and Flash. ---
As long as you have some free time in the evening/weekends and don't mind your current job for another few months I don't see any reason you couldn't teach yourself java. It really isn't that tough of a language. Go buy yourself a few books and find some online docs.
Be prepared to learn the basic concepts Object-Oriented programming at the same time as you learn Java.
Also, even if you were doing OOP ten years ago in C++ or Smalltalk or something, there have been developments since then like design patterns.
---
They are aware that you can turn off javascript, but what if the person you forward your mail to hasn't turned off javascript?
My question is, why in the world would does the browser have it turned on by default? The end-user should have to go out of his way to enable JavaScript in email, not the other way around.
---
For things like ordered and unordered lists, tables (not for page layout!), and such, yes HTML can be helpful in email. These are things that you can easily do without, but which can sometimes make it much easier to say what you mean.
Unfortunately very few people use it like that. There is no excuse for using JavaScript in email.
---
One that I think is particularly cool is the ability (also present in JSP, I believe) to create custom tags tied to a "code behind" mechanism.
I haven't looked a.NET much yet, but I know they didn't invent custom tags. ColdFusion has had custom tags for years. JSP also has "taglibs" which do this. ---
They look like the origianl transformers in the good looking cars trucks, and trains. But When you transformer them it isn't as simple as flip them up on there back
I recall that some of the originals were quite complex.
---
ooh wo-Jem, the music's contaegous-outrageous.. jem is my name no one else is the same, jem is my name... WE ARE THE MISFITS our songs are are better something something WE'RE GONNA GET HER).
Jem would have been so much better if the bad guys had been the these
Misfits. ---
Well, how fast is C evolving? Not at all since the ANSI specification superseded K&R as far as I can tell. So the answer is yes, but that doesn't mean that the language will lose any popularity.
What about C99?
(although the differences between C89 (aka K&R2) and C99 is miniscule compared to say, Perl 4 vs. Perl 5.) ---
Much more entertaining was Microsoft BASIC for the Commodore line of computers... Not only were the programs stored in RAM in bytecode, but they were also stored on diskette/cassette the same way.
I seem to recall that this was also true of BASICA and/or GW-BASIC for the PC. The "save" command had an option to save the full source, but it was not the default.
---
Unix admins, maybe... NT/W2K sys admins need this book. Every one I've been acquainted with has been surprised when I told them how much you can do with Perl.
---
While electronic books can easily fix this problem, that's not the solution when you need to look at paper copies, whether at the terminal or on the toilet.
Would be nice to have a printer that can bind up its output in such a way that it looks and feels like a store-bought book. Anybody know how much such a thing would cost ?
---
Actually, I believe that Macintosh Bible was sold on an "upgrade" basis. If you bought the first edition, then you were entitled to two "free upgrades" (in the form of mini-booklets that they'd mail to you).
Publishers of reference books have been doing similar things for decades. Check out your nearest public library. Very likely they have an edition of Enclycopædia Britannica that is about 10 years old, with "yearbooks" for every year since then. The yearbooks are the patches that keep it up to date.
I'm pretty sure they weren't free. But it must have been cheaper than buying 20+ volumes every year.
---
This leads to an idea about a fallback position on DECSS: as a copyright owner, you are allowed to encrypt copyrighted material, but only if you deposit the keys with (say) the Library of Congress. When copyright expires, the keys become publicly available.
You'd have to be careful to word this law in such a way that it couldn't be construed to apply to things like encrypted personal email... because beleive me, some government agencies would try!
people who have built collections of films and records are facing the same problems, the media is detorating, the player are wearing out, and replacements are becoming harder to find, much less obtain. Many people are copying their old records to tape or CD, and thier old films to videotape, to preserve them.
Off-topic, but I would expect VHS tape to eventually deteriorate as well. Possibly faster than film.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't call it a "course", but Bruce Eckel's book "Thinking in C++" is available for free on his website http://www.bruceeckel.com .
---
If you're going to go the Java route Java Web Start, would probably be better than an applet.
(not that I've actually used it, mind you, but I do like the fact that it appears to be free of the browser-related issues that can occur with applets)
Of course, then you'll need to roll out JWS itself to all your computers...
---
(A) The remote site's WAN connection is down.
(B) The PC's networking is broken (for whatever reasons).
(C) The OS won't boot.
You'll have to have good phone people for these.
All of the above will typically require a technician to actually physically go to the customer's site.. wow, what a concept!
Friendly and well-trained helpdesk won't do you any good if the guy who actually comes out to go monkey around with the customer's hardware is incompetent.
---
I have seen this problem myself. I think the issue is that people fail to realize that
at least not in the kind of environment you are talking about.
---
Of course this was in a company that could afford its own tech support staff. No company would ever give this kind of access to some 3rd-party outfit. At least I hope not.
---
Then how come one of Microsoft's biggest "innovations" in Windows XP is support for multiple versions of DLLs? Sounds very similar to what has been described here.
---
I haven't actually bothered to check, but I'm sure there is already more than one web site which offers anonymous USENET posting in the tradition of the long-gone anon.penet.fi email service.
Even without such a service, any fool can simply put false information in the From and Organization headers. Of course, these posts be traced back to the originating IP address or ISP.
---
While they're at it, they should create a truly threaded interface for browsing messages in a group. Deja's browsing functionality was never all that great.
---
CSS more of a "luxury" than plug-ins and applets?
If CSS were more widely used, the amount of HTML code in most web pages could be much smaller.
---
I think we need two formats. One that does the thing HTML was originally designed to do, but improves on it. Some combination of langauages such as TeX and HTML. Something that describes what the different parts in the page are, and lets the client decide where to place images, if a table of context is needed etc. AND one that can be used by market-droids to make webpages that the server descides how they sould look. Trying to combine these both two very different goals into one language is obviously not A Good Thing. Some people would say that we already have two formats: HTML and Flash.
---
Be prepared to learn the basic concepts Object-Oriented programming at the same time as you learn Java.
Also, even if you were doing OOP ten years ago in C++ or Smalltalk or something, there have been developments since then like design patterns.
---
My question is, why in the world would does the browser have it turned on by default? The end-user should have to go out of his way to enable JavaScript in email, not the other way around.
---
For things like ordered and unordered lists, tables (not for page layout!), and such, yes HTML can be helpful in email. These are things that you can easily do without, but which can sometimes make it much easier to say what you mean.
Unfortunately very few people use it like that. There is no excuse for using JavaScript in email.
---
I haven't looked a .NET much yet, but I know they didn't invent custom tags. ColdFusion has had custom tags for years. JSP also has "taglibs" which do this.
---
I recall that some of the originals were quite complex.
---
Jem would have been so much better if the bad guys had been the these Misfits .
---
What about C99?
(although the differences between C89 (aka K&R2) and C99 is miniscule compared to say, Perl 4 vs. Perl 5.)
---
CSS has well known problems with cross-platform means to specify things like font size. You can specify font sizes in points in CSS:
but a "point" looks like one size on Windows and a different size on Mac.
---
Well, you could change it with a hex editor but it still sucks.
---
I seem to recall that this was also true of BASICA and/or GW-BASIC for the PC. The "save" command had an option to save the full source, but it was not the default.
---
Unix admins, maybe... NT/W2K sys admins need this book. Every one I've been acquainted with has been surprised when I told them how much you can do with Perl.
---
Would be nice to have a printer that can bind up its output in such a way that it looks and feels like a store-bought book. Anybody know how much such a thing would cost ?
---
Publishers of reference books have been doing similar things for decades. Check out your nearest public library. Very likely they have an edition of Enclycopædia Britannica that is about 10 years old, with "yearbooks" for every year since then. The yearbooks are the patches that keep it up to date.
I'm pretty sure they weren't free. But it must have been cheaper than buying 20+ volumes every year.
---
You'd have to be careful to word this law in such a way that it couldn't be construed to apply to things like encrypted personal email... because beleive me, some government agencies would try!
Off-topic, but I would expect VHS tape to eventually deteriorate as well. Possibly faster than film.