Separating content from presentation is a bad idea... which users don't care about anyways.
A common misconception. Separating content from presentation is not something intended to be of direct benefit to end-users. End-users get their benefit from the integration of content and presentation.
Separation of content and presentation benefits machines, not end-users. It allows programmers to write code which can read web content reliably and understand its meaning.
The point about where one implements the separation is a good one. As a practical matter, I agree that the server side should always be prepared to handle the lowest-common-denominator user interface spec such as HTML. But the benefits of doing user interface rendering on the client side are awfully compelling. Once users get a taste for something like Google maps, waiting on old-style, page-at-a-time round trips back to the server for page content gets old, quickly.
Sorry, didn't mean to give the impression that I believe record labels ought to give their services away for free. Everyone ought to be able to make a living.
I was just trying to point out that existing deals between artists and labels are predicated upon a business model that only makes sense if one can control distribution.
The MySpace model, however, is based not on controlling distribution, but on maximizing exposure. This is an attractive proposition for unsiged talent, but not for anyone with a traditional distribution deal.
I do see the possibility of MySpace acting as a farm system that feeds talent to a traditional label.
Not to nit-pick, but the artist is the only one who "owns" the music. What the label owns is the right to control the distribution of the music (hence the word "copy-right".)
In this case, what the label would want is to have all copies of the music removed from MySpace, so they could control it.
There's a bit of a risk here for the artist. If a song becomes too popular on MySpace, the label might not think there's enough airplay left in it to make it worth buying the copyright. Ideally, MySpace would be used just enough to give the band some serious buzz, then launch into a traditional distribution deal.
Good points all, but remember that the MySpace crowd is a lot more comfortable with web-delivered content than your typical iTunes user. Technical challenges such as downloading MP3s from the internet and adding them to a playlist don't faze this group of users, much.
Such a service would only ever work with listeners whose musical tastes are still forming, and who would see the net as the authoritative place where new music can be found.
As it turns out, this describes MySpace's audience perfectly, so yes, this could work.
With MySpace's ranking system, they only need to find a few dozen bands with real talent to make it a success. With a population of 300M bands to draw upon, that should be possible.
The record labels will never, ever give up their right to control distribution. It is the only thing they truly own. Any new licensing model will only work with new bands and new fans.
The point of this graphic is to show that Federal expenditures are roughly evenly divided between military and non-military purposes. While the graphic is very good, I found the following explanatory text accompanying it to be incorrect:
"...when the White House releases its budget pie graph it includes mandatory expenditures such as social security and medicare. This is misleading because Congress has no control over manditory expenditures."
To say that Congress has "no control" over social security and Medicare is not correct. The graphic author is confusing the concept of "mandatory", meaning something must be done, with that of "non-discretionary", meaning something has already been decided how it will be done.
Of course Congress controls the expenditures on Social Security. They just can't control them using the part of the budget reserved for short-term, discretionary spending.
To compel through pressure or necessity. To gain by the use of force or coercion. To inflict or impose relentlessly.
I hardly see how expressing an opinion that China should "tear down this (fire)wall" (with apologies to R. Reagan) entails compulsion, force, coercion, imposition, or infliction.
For people comfortable with developer tools, a lot of these comments are pretty good. I've used them all, from wikis to content managment systems, to version control systems.
If you have non-technical folks on your team, however, very few of these tools will be welcomed. They're just too low-level for ordinary people.
You mentioned that you've looked at Groove Virtual Office. That actually puts you way ahead already. One thing many people don't realize is that Groove's folder sync feature is often the only part of Groove that people really need. Here are some nice aspects of this little gem:
1. Utterly Simple Interface: works as an extension to the normal Windows Explorer.
2. Automated Replication: add, update, delete any file or path from a synchronized directory, and everyone's peer copy is updated automatically, in the background, in real time.
3. Replication Conflict Resolution: If two or more people change the same file at the same time, the system creates a version for each change, and flags them as replication conflicts. Simple and easy.
4. Peer-to-peer: Folders are synchronized peer-to-peer, so no content managment infrastructure is needed for a typical project team. No web servers, no content servers. Every person on the team has a complete copy of all shared files.
5. Encryption: All Groove traffic is automatically encrypted.
6. Firewall Traversal: Groove namespaces traverse through firewalls, so you can contact your team and share files without messing about with VPNs.
Look, not to turn this into anything personal, but just listen to the way you're talking:
You've got that "rightwinger binary disease"...
[You fail to understand] simple logic.. [that] is evident to children...
you need... absolutist thinking to manage your denial.
[You are a member of a] fanatic minority... [who've] plugged their own ears and scream.
This is tolerance? This is acceptance of another's point of view? You don't know anything about me, and already you've judged that I'm some kind of fanatic?
I know that people on the left give themselves a lot of back-slaps for being open-minded, but in my personal experience, this is an accolade rarely deserved.
Well, if secular people invented "agree to disagree", why do you see them calling people names all the time? I can't remember the last time I heard a reasoned voice from the left. Including -- sadly -- your own argument. Burned at the stake when you don't convert? I mean, really... that is so over the top, no one can listen to what you have to say.
Microsoft realizes as much as anybody that the days of desktop-bound apps are swiftly coming to a close. They realize that XML is "the" way that data is shared between applications, a trend that will likely continue for many, many years to come. The realize that being able to easily inject Office-authored content into enterprise-wide, services oriented architectures is critical to their very future.
I think people should be paying more attention to where MS has been heading lately. They are aggresively pursuing a platform of loosely-coupled, network-delivered services, just like everyone else. They have a complete software stack of everything needed from the back office to the mobile desktop. Very few companies have anything close to their breadth and depth in application coverage.
Key to this whole enterprise is a data model that can capture everything people do in the business environment. Well, it just so happens that we have a suite of products that shows us what kinds of data models we need: WYSIWYG text, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, drawing, messenging, calendar... the whole Office suite. The Open Document format goes far, far beyond being able to encapsulate word processing documents. Open Document puts the entire office data model into one, clean spec. Open Document is HTML, XML, SMIL, and XForms, all rolled up into one. This is heady stuff. Read it for yourself at as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument .
Microsoft gains absolutely nothing by not being able to participate with other services in this larger, connected world. Of course they will always have their own specialized content, and even their own specialized XML version of what Open Document provides. But if the customer base needs compatibility with another XML schema, of course MS will participate. To participate is to make money, and that is something that MS is very, very good at.
Odd. In my travels, the insanse rightwing religious nuts have been a lot more tolerant of other people's opinions than the insane leftwing secular nuts. A religious nut will actually listen to what you have to say -- so they can try and convert you. A secular nut will just call you names.
Not to get embroiled in a Lotus Notes slugfest, but in its heyday (early 90s), Notes was _way_ ahead of the curve: database field-level replication, certificate-based security, private networking, model-view-controller ADE, built-in email, workflow, scripting,... the list is a long one.
The point isn't whether you'd use Notes or not today (other infrastructures have largely passed it by), but whether the mind that thought it up was thinking in a visionary manner or not.
The point also isn't whether Notes had a "bad" user interface or not. It had a pre-Internet, pre-Windows interface that made sense at the time. If you look at Groove Virtual Office, Ray's next step, I'll think you'll find a perfectly conforming UI.
If this reorg. helps Ray Ozzie get control over the technical direction, that might make a big difference. Ray Ozzie (the technical mind behind Lotus Notes and Groove) is a true visionary. Probably no one knows more about the potential for SOA-based applications running over client/server and peer-to-peer networks.
The point is that Ajax and Java are technologies on the same trajectory, going away from the platform-dependent, fat clients of today, towards the "write once, run anywhere" clients of tomorrow. Ajax is on the lightweight, easier-to-deploy end of this arc, and Java is further along towards the more muscular, but harder-to-deploy end.
As a Java devotee, you should support the adoption of Ajax because it validates the "write one, run anywhere" principle. The more people adopt the principle, the more they will be open to Java-based clients.
Ajax is not a "hack on top of a hack", in any case. It is simply an extension of remote procedure calling. Remote scripting has been around for decades. The concepts behind Ajax are hardly new.
Java offers a far richer programming environment than Ajax. Assuming that a suitable Java runtime is already installed on all machines, Java is an excellent choice for client application development.
Ajax has traction now because it offers the same premise as Java ("write one, run anywhere"), and Javascript is deployed in a whole lot more applications than the Java runtime. Ajax is not nearly as robust as Java, but there are a surprising number of client applications that can be done with it, even so.
For me, the boundry line is drawn around local write/execute access. If you need to write or run anything on the local PC, then Java's security model can handle the job, but Ajax cannot. Other people draw the boundry-line differently.
I see Ajax as essentially a precursor to Java. It enables highly interactive interfaces, is simple to write, and runs everywhere. It works as long as all the data needs to stay on the server.
Ajax is a very simple technique. Here is a trivial example, with an HTML Client, an Ajax class library, and a PHP-based server. Click the button, and the server tells the Ajax engine to redraw a portion of the page.
The trivial Ajax HTML Client:
<html> <head> <script src="AjaxClass.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> function ajax(method,argv) { var session = new AjaxClass(); session.getURL("server.php","method="+method+"&arg v="+escape(argv)); }; </script> </head> <body> <div id="componentA"> <h1>This is Component A</h1> </div> <p> <input type="Button" value="Click Here" onclick="ajax('this_method','id=componentA');"> to replace Component A with text from the Server. </p> </body> </html>
The Trivial Ajax Class (AjaxClass.js):
This class provides a wrapper for the XMLHttpRequest object, and handles some browser-specific implementation issues. It is a simplified version of the excellent DataRequestor Class, copyright 2005, Mike West, http://www.mikewest.org, Licensed under the CC-GNU LGPL, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/.
function AjaxClass() {
var self = this; this.getXMLHTTP = function() { var xmlHTTP = null; if(typeof ActiveXObject!="undefined") { xmlHTTP = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") } else if(typeof XMLHttpRequest!="undefined") { xmlHTTP = new XMLHttpRequest() } self._XML_REQ = xmlHTTP; return self._XML_REQ; } this.getURL = function(url,qs) { self._XML_REQ.onreadystatechange = self.callback; self._XML_REQ.open("POST","server.php", true); self._XML_REQ.setRequestHeader('Content-Type','app lication/x-www-form-urlencoded'); self._XML_REQ.send(qs) return true; } this.callback = function() { if (self._XML_REQ.readyState == 4 && self._XML_REQ.status == 200) { try { eval(self._XML_REQ.responseText) } catch (e) { alert("Error in returned JavaScript:\n\n" + self._XML_REQ.responseText); } } else if (self._XML_REQ.readyState == 4) { throw new Error("Data Request failed with an HTTP status of " + self._XML_REQ.status); } } if (!this.getXMLHTTP()) { throw new Error("Could not load XMLHttpRequest object"); } }
Perhaps AJAX will finally deliver what Java promised. Perhaps it will really provide a solid way to distribute software seamlessly... (emphasis mine)
The "promise" of Java (write once, run anywhere) is exactly the same as Ajax. A big implmentation difference is in the runtime. Ajax's runtime is native to the browser; Java's runtime is not.
If what you need to do can be done with Ajax, then Ajax delivers on the promise, today. Java? Sure, it delivers big-time, if you can live with Web Start and deploying the runtime to every desktop.
Ajax should be welcomed by Java advocates everywhere. The marketplace are finally "getting it" regarding write once, run anywhere. The limitations of Ajax are substantial, so it won't be long before people need more muscle.
Besides being an interesting story, you make a pretty reasonable argument, and there's not much to find fault with. The only thing that makes me uncomfortable, however, is this:
"...allowing demagogues to aggressively push their ideas on people is dangerous for the long-term health of a society"
By what authority could anyone claim to not be a demagogue? Since you are implying that we should give these folks the power to stifle the speech of anyone they find disagreeable, this is a pretty important status. And what would be the mechanism for nominating and empowering non-demogogues? Do we hold an election to appoint these people? Do it on rotation (my 15 minutes of fame!) Run a lottery?
Obviously, I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here. One man's demagogue is another man's voice of reason.
I think I'd rather have full, no-holds-barred freedom of speech, even if it does mean I have to listen to a lot of blowhards (Rush Limbaugh, are you listening?).
A small price to pay for the freedom to voice my own opinion.
It's probably too late to actually discuss this, but here goes anyway. I've never understood this complaint about "forcing" a belief on other people.
A belief is a matter of conscience. It is something you, and you alone, decide. It cannot be forced upon you. Either you believe something, or you don't.
Using this argument is a actually a roundabout way of saying you disagree with someone. Since you never reveal your own beliefs, you are thus free to bash the other guy as being the aggressor.
Frankly, that doesn't sound very intellectually honest to me. I'd rather someone just say they disagree, tell me their point of view, and proceed from there.
And, if I don't agree with your beliefs, I promise not to believe them.
As the the commercial site notes, the power levels are too low to power a laptop directly. BetaBatteries would be paired with normal chemical batteries. The BetaBattery is an always-on, trickle charger, and the chemical battery handles the heavy load.
Not a perfect solution, but it means you'd never have to recharge your laptop ever again.
So, some people want to believe in the God of the Bible (the classic definition of "fundamentalist Christian".) And this is a cause of concern to you because... ?
Slashdot Mirror
A common misconception. Separating content from presentation is not something intended to be of direct benefit to end-users. End-users get their benefit from the integration of content and presentation.
Separation of content and presentation benefits machines, not end-users. It allows programmers to write code which can read web content reliably and understand its meaning.
The point about where one implements the separation is a good one. As a practical matter, I agree that the server side should always be prepared to handle the lowest-common-denominator user interface spec such as HTML. But the benefits of doing user interface rendering on the client side are awfully compelling. Once users get a taste for something like Google maps, waiting on old-style, page-at-a-time round trips back to the server for page content gets old, quickly.
Sorry, didn't mean to give the impression that I believe record labels ought to give their services away for free. Everyone ought to be able to make a living.
I was just trying to point out that existing deals between artists and labels are predicated upon a business model that only makes sense if one can control distribution.
The MySpace model, however, is based not on controlling distribution, but on maximizing exposure. This is an attractive proposition for unsiged talent, but not for anyone with a traditional distribution deal.
I do see the possibility of MySpace acting as a farm system that feeds talent to a traditional label.
Not to nit-pick, but the artist is the only one who "owns" the music. What the label owns is the right to control the distribution of the music (hence the word "copy-right".)
In this case, what the label would want is to have all copies of the music removed from MySpace, so they could control it.
There's a bit of a risk here for the artist. If a song becomes too popular on MySpace, the label might not think there's enough airplay left in it to make it worth buying the copyright. Ideally, MySpace would be used just enough to give the band some serious buzz, then launch into a traditional distribution deal.
Think "Snakes on a Plane".
Good points all, but remember that the MySpace crowd is a lot more comfortable with web-delivered content than your typical iTunes user. Technical challenges such as downloading MP3s from the internet and adding them to a playlist don't faze this group of users, much.
Such a service would only ever work with listeners whose musical tastes are still forming, and who would see the net as the authoritative place where new music can be found.
As it turns out, this describes MySpace's audience perfectly, so yes, this could work.
With MySpace's ranking system, they only need to find a few dozen bands with real talent to make it a success. With a population of 300M bands to draw upon, that should be possible.
The record labels will never, ever give up their right to control distribution. It is the only thing they truly own. Any new licensing model will only work with new bands and new fans.
The point of this graphic is to show that Federal expenditures are roughly evenly divided between military and non-military purposes. While the graphic is very good, I found the following explanatory text accompanying it to be incorrect:
To say that Congress has "no control" over social security and Medicare is not correct. The graphic author is confusing the concept of "mandatory", meaning something must be done, with that of "non-discretionary", meaning something has already been decided how it will be done.
Of course Congress controls the expenditures on Social Security. They just can't control them using the part of the budget reserved for short-term, discretionary spending.From dictionary.com:
"force":
To compel through pressure or necessity.
To gain by the use of force or coercion.
To inflict or impose relentlessly.
I hardly see how expressing an opinion that China should "tear down this (fire)wall" (with apologies to R. Reagan) entails compulsion, force, coercion, imposition, or infliction.
Free speech is only words, after all.
For people comfortable with developer tools, a lot of these comments are pretty good. I've used them all, from wikis to content managment systems, to version control systems.
If you have non-technical folks on your team, however, very few of these tools will be welcomed. They're just too low-level for ordinary people.
You mentioned that you've looked at Groove Virtual Office. That actually puts you way ahead already. One thing many people don't realize is that Groove's folder sync feature is often the only part of Groove that people really need. Here are some nice aspects of this little gem:
1. Utterly Simple Interface: works as an extension to the normal Windows Explorer.
2. Automated Replication: add, update, delete any file or path from a synchronized directory, and everyone's peer copy is updated automatically, in the background, in real time.
3. Replication Conflict Resolution: If two or more people change the same file at the same time, the system creates a version for each change, and flags them as replication conflicts. Simple and easy.
4. Peer-to-peer: Folders are synchronized peer-to-peer, so no content managment infrastructure is needed for a typical project team. No web servers, no content servers. Every person on the team has a complete copy of all shared files.
5. Encryption: All Groove traffic is automatically encrypted.
6. Firewall Traversal: Groove namespaces traverse through firewalls, so you can contact your team and share files without messing about with VPNs.
This is a lot of bang for the buck.
This is the most even-handed and intelligent comparison I've read yet. No agenda, no filler, and completely fair to both products.
Look, not to turn this into anything personal, but just listen to the way you're talking:
...
.. [that] is evident to children...
... absolutist thinking to manage your denial.
... [who've] plugged their own ears and scream.
You've got that "rightwinger binary disease"
[You fail to understand] simple logic
you need
[You are a member of a] fanatic minority
This is tolerance? This is acceptance of another's point of view? You don't know anything about me, and already you've judged that I'm some kind of fanatic?
I know that people on the left give themselves a lot of back-slaps for being open-minded, but in my personal experience, this is an accolade rarely deserved.
Well, if secular people invented "agree to disagree", why do you see them calling people names all the time? I can't remember the last time I heard a reasoned voice from the left. Including -- sadly -- your own argument. Burned at the stake when you don't convert ? I mean, really ... that is so over the top, no one can listen to what you have to say.
Microsoft realizes as much as anybody that the days of desktop-bound apps are swiftly coming to a close. They realize that XML is "the" way that data is shared between applications, a trend that will likely continue for many, many years to come. The realize that being able to easily inject Office-authored content into enterprise-wide, services oriented architectures is critical to their very future.
... the whole Office suite. The Open Document format goes far, far beyond being able to encapsulate word processing documents. Open Document puts the entire office data model into one, clean spec. Open Document is HTML, XML, SMIL, and XForms, all rolled up into one. This is heady stuff. Read it for yourself at as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument .
I think people should be paying more attention to where MS has been heading lately. They are aggresively pursuing a platform of loosely-coupled, network-delivered services, just like everyone else. They have a complete software stack of everything needed from the back office to the mobile desktop. Very few companies have anything close to their breadth and depth in application coverage.
Key to this whole enterprise is a data model that can capture everything people do in the business environment. Well, it just so happens that we have a suite of products that shows us what kinds of data models we need: WYSIWYG text, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, drawing, messenging, calendar
Microsoft gains absolutely nothing by not being able to participate with other services in this larger, connected world. Of course they will always have their own specialized content, and even their own specialized XML version of what Open Document provides. But if the customer base needs compatibility with another XML schema, of course MS will participate. To participate is to make money, and that is something that MS is very, very good at.
Odd. In my travels, the insanse rightwing religious nuts have been a lot more tolerant of other people's opinions than the insane leftwing secular nuts. A religious nut will actually listen to what you have to say -- so they can try and convert you. A secular nut will just call you names.
Frankly, I'd rather be listened to.
Not to get embroiled in a Lotus Notes slugfest, but in its heyday (early 90s), Notes was _way_ ahead of the curve: database field-level replication, certificate-based security, private networking, model-view-controller ADE, built-in email, workflow, scripting, ... the list is a long one.
The point isn't whether you'd use Notes or not today (other infrastructures have largely passed it by), but whether the mind that thought it up was thinking in a visionary manner or not.
The point also isn't whether Notes had a "bad" user interface or not. It had a pre-Internet, pre-Windows interface that made sense at the time. If you look at Groove Virtual Office, Ray's next step, I'll think you'll find a perfectly conforming UI.
If this reorg. helps Ray Ozzie get control over the technical direction, that might make a big difference. Ray Ozzie (the technical mind behind Lotus Notes and Groove) is a true visionary. Probably no one knows more about the potential for SOA-based applications running over client/server and peer-to-peer networks.
...
Things could get interesting
Did I read that right in the article? They're only budgeting $200M to deploy a nationwide wireless network?
That would be 1/1000th the amount of money Bush pledged the Feds to throw in to rebuilding the Gulf coast.
Wow.
Very interesting!
The point is that Ajax and Java are technologies on the same trajectory, going away from the platform-dependent, fat clients of today, towards the "write once, run anywhere" clients of tomorrow. Ajax is on the lightweight, easier-to-deploy end of this arc, and Java is further along towards the more muscular, but harder-to-deploy end.
As a Java devotee, you should support the adoption of Ajax because it validates the "write one, run anywhere" principle. The more people adopt the principle, the more they will be open to Java-based clients.
Ajax is not a "hack on top of a hack", in any case. It is simply an extension of remote procedure calling. Remote scripting has been around for decades. The concepts behind Ajax are hardly new.
Java offers a far richer programming environment than Ajax. Assuming that a suitable Java runtime is already installed on all machines, Java is an excellent choice for client application development.
Ajax has traction now because it offers the same premise as Java ("write one, run anywhere"), and Javascript is deployed in a whole lot more applications than the Java runtime. Ajax is not nearly as robust as Java, but there are a surprising number of client applications that can be done with it, even so.
For me, the boundry line is drawn around local write/execute access. If you need to write or run anything on the local PC, then Java's security model can handle the job, but Ajax cannot. Other people draw the boundry-line differently.
I see Ajax as essentially a precursor to Java. It enables highly interactive interfaces, is simple to write, and runs everywhere. It works as long as all the data needs to stay on the server.
Hope this helps.
Ajax is a very simple technique. Here is a trivial example, with an HTML Client, an Ajax class library, and a PHP-based server. Click the button, and the server tells the Ajax engine to redraw a portion of the page.
g v="+escape(argv));
p lication/x-www-form-urlencoded');
) ;
... */
1 >You called method \"'
.$method.'\" on the Server</h1>";';
The trivial Ajax HTML Client:
<html>
<head>
<script src="AjaxClass.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function ajax(method,argv) {
var session = new AjaxClass();
session.getURL("server.php","method="+method+"&ar
};
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="componentA">
<h1>This is Component A</h1>
</div>
<p>
<input type="Button" value="Click Here" onclick="ajax('this_method','id=componentA');">
to replace Component A with text from the Server.
</p>
</body>
</html>
The Trivial Ajax Class (AjaxClass.js):
This class provides a wrapper for the XMLHttpRequest object, and handles some browser-specific implementation issues. It is a simplified version of the excellent DataRequestor Class, copyright 2005, Mike West, http://www.mikewest.org, Licensed under the CC-GNU LGPL, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/.
function AjaxClass() {
var self = this;
this.getXMLHTTP = function() {
var xmlHTTP = null;
if(typeof ActiveXObject!="undefined") {
xmlHTTP = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
} else if(typeof XMLHttpRequest!="undefined") {
xmlHTTP = new XMLHttpRequest()
}
self._XML_REQ = xmlHTTP;
return self._XML_REQ;
}
this.getURL = function(url,qs) {
self._XML_REQ.onreadystatechange = self.callback;
self._XML_REQ.open("POST","server.php", true);
self._XML_REQ.setRequestHeader('Content-Type','ap
self._XML_REQ.send(qs)
return true;
}
this.callback = function() {
if (self._XML_REQ.readyState == 4 && self._XML_REQ.status == 200) {
try {
eval(self._XML_REQ.responseText)
} catch (e) {
alert("Error in returned JavaScript:\n\n" + self._XML_REQ.responseText);
}
} else if (self._XML_REQ.readyState == 4) {
throw new Error("Data Request failed with an HTTP status of " +
self._XML_REQ.status);
}
}
if (!this.getXMLHTTP()) {
throw new Error("Could not load XMLHttpRequest object");
}
}
The Trivial Ajax Server (server.php):
<?PHP
$method = $_REQUEST['method'];
parse_str($_REQUEST['argv']
/*
Some processing would take place here
$response = 'document.getElementById("'.$id.'").innerHTML="<h
header('Content-Type: text/javascript');
header("Content-Length: " . strlen($response));
echo $response;
?>
Perhaps AJAX will finally deliver what Java promised. Perhaps it will really provide a solid way to distribute software seamlessly... (emphasis mine)
The "promise" of Java (write once, run anywhere) is exactly the same as Ajax. A big implmentation difference is in the runtime. Ajax's runtime is native to the browser; Java's runtime is not.
If what you need to do can be done with Ajax, then Ajax delivers on the promise, today. Java? Sure, it delivers big-time, if you can live with Web Start and deploying the runtime to every desktop.
Ajax should be welcomed by Java advocates everywhere. The marketplace are finally "getting it" regarding write once, run anywhere. The limitations of Ajax are substantial, so it won't be long before people need more muscle.
Besides being an interesting story, you make a pretty reasonable argument, and there's not much to find fault with. The only thing that makes me uncomfortable, however, is this:
"...allowing demagogues to aggressively push their ideas on people is dangerous for the long-term health of a society"
By what authority could anyone claim to not be a demagogue? Since you are implying that we should give these folks the power to stifle the speech of anyone they find disagreeable, this is a pretty important status. And what would be the mechanism for nominating and empowering non-demogogues? Do we hold an election to appoint these people? Do it on rotation (my 15 minutes of fame!) Run a lottery?
Obviously, I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here. One man's demagogue is another man's voice of reason.
I think I'd rather have full, no-holds-barred freedom of speech, even if it does mean I have to listen to a lot of blowhards (Rush Limbaugh, are you listening?).
A small price to pay for the freedom to voice my own opinion.
It's probably too late to actually discuss this, but here goes anyway. I've never understood this complaint about "forcing" a belief on other people.
A belief is a matter of conscience. It is something you, and you alone, decide. It cannot be forced upon you. Either you believe something, or you don't.
Using this argument is a actually a roundabout way of saying you disagree with someone. Since you never reveal your own beliefs, you are thus free to bash the other guy as being the aggressor.
Frankly, that doesn't sound very intellectually honest to me. I'd rather someone just say they disagree, tell me their point of view, and proceed from there.
And, if I don't agree with your beliefs, I promise not to believe them.
As the the commercial site notes, the power levels are too low to power a laptop directly. BetaBatteries would be paired with normal chemical batteries. The BetaBattery is an always-on, trickle charger, and the chemical battery handles the heavy load.
Not a perfect solution, but it means you'd never have to recharge your laptop ever again.
So, some people want to believe in the God of the Bible (the classic definition of "fundamentalist Christian".) And this is a cause of concern to you because ... ?