Indeed. What's needed is more of a centralized auto-update service that programs can hook into to notify the user of updates rather than a centralized package service.
On the one side of this controversy... are those... who argue that patents must be available to encourage innovation in devising new ways to conduct business in the global information-based economy, including encouragement for new ways of digitizing business methods.
I don't see many "spam spewing zombie" Mac machines, do you?
The problem with Windows has more to do with allowing administrative access to dangerous services rather than the ability to install random program X.
(Though as a side note, I'm rather peeved that Apple allows programs to install background services for execution on startup without requesting administrator credentials. That decision may eventually land us a whole host of user-installed Mac spyware.)
I think we need multiple distros. (In fact, I once wrote an article to that effect.) However, I also think that we need more focus inside those distros. Rather than being good at being a desktop or being good at being a server, Linux distros tend to try and be all things to all people. Which makes them a jack of all trades, master of none.
What's needed are fundamental operating system components that support the desktop and/or support the server and/or support the supercomputer and/or support the embedded device, etc. It should all be a matter of how the OS is built.
Unfortunately, we seem to end up with all the disadvantages of choice in distros and none of the advantages. Why do GNOME and KDE both have their own hardware config tools that conflict with the underlying tools? Shouldn't there be OS-level services available that these desktop environments plug into?
Why is sound such a mess? That was a solved problem 15 years ago!
Why do X-Servers have the graphics drivers rather than the kernel or HAL? The X-Server should only be a consumer of graphics services!
So on and so forth. Make the individual distros more cohesive and things will get a lot better. Stop focusing on retreading the same ground that GNOME and KDE have tread a billion times before, and start working on a few standard, low-level APIs that can be compiled in to the OS to give the GUI Windows or Mac level control over the underlying system. THEN things will get better.
Oh, and stop with the packaging for crying out loud! A desktop system is antithetical to a centralized software repository. Desktop systems should have a standard method of software distribution that accepts any software from anywhere, commercial or OSS. Take Indie Gaming or Shareware developers as an example. Why should they submit their software to 30 different package repositories rather than providing a single, simple download on their website? (Worst case, two or three to support competing standards.)
And no, I'm not talking about installers. Unix systems and installers don't usually get along. (I remember back when the shortcut spec was changing every other week. And yet distros were deploying a different standard in each minor revision. GAHHH!!!) Rather, I'd prefer to see App Bundle distributions similar to OS X. Such a concept is simple to download, install, and run without the fuss of messing with shortcuts, restarting your desktop, installing packages, or the gazillion other minor barriers Linux desktop systems have put in the way over the years.
(I did create a Proof of Concept on Solaris a while back, but lacked time to follow up on it. This problem is solvable if distro makers are willing to dedicate the resources.)
I will give Ubuntu some credit here. Shuttleworth has been trying very hard to push the community in the right direction. But in order to "arrive" we need to actually embrace the ideals of OSS rather than hanging on to this idea that packaging repositories == Linux == OSS freedom.
An unlicensed transmission is an FCC, or the Canadian equivalent, violation and would have gotten them in trouble with that organization.
Is there some part of this I was unclear on? Why do you think the FCC doesn't like unlicensed transmissions if not because they can interfere with other public transmissions?
My presumption is that if they're transmitting without permission to the ISS, they're doing so without proper licensing. Which is a relatively safe assumption considering that the ISS does not (to my knowledge) normally monitor ham radio bands except when expecting ARISS communications. Thus in order to contact ISS, you'd need to transmit on one of NASA or Russia's frequencies. Which I'm fairly certain is going to require a bit more power than the ARISS transmissions. (Though I could be wrong on that point.)
Somewhat disappointingly, the students actually did have permission to make contact.
You shouldn't be encouraging readers to attempt broadcasts without permission. Unlicensed broadcasts with power sufficient to reach the International Space Station can be a safety hazard; potentially interfering with or jamming legitimate transmissions. At the very least, one might distract the ISS crew during an important maneuver/space walk when the entire crew needs to be focused.
(Think of it a bit like having the phone ring when you're in the middle of moving heavy furniture. Not exactly opportune.)
These kids did the right thing by having official permission to make the broadcast. Especially because it meant that there was an astronaut available to speak with them. If it was an unlicensed transmission without prior approval, they would have gotten "hung up" on.;-)
And if they're communicating by some mechanism that we can't read?
Gamma Ray bursts. Any sufficiently advanced civilization is going to be using antimatter for propulsion. We're sitting on the cusp of such technology ourselves. All we need is a breakthrough in antimatter creation and we'll be heading off to alpha centauri in our souped-up space jalopies.
So if you want to find signs of little green men, follow the gamma radiation.
The "video phones of the future" always assumed use while one was outside of the home or at a place of business. The concept broke down when it was realized that people don't want video feeds in their homes. (The "I just got out of the shower" example is often bandied about.) With a cell phone, the concept starts to make sense again. Like with the characters in TekWar, you're usually in an acceptable location and/or state of dress to take video calls on a cell phone.
Of course, it will be interesting to see how many calls are answered in privacy mode. Will people even trust such a feature?
None of my forums require or even offer paid membership, nor does Facebook. Steam's services are free, Slashdot is free, Wikipedia is free.
I think you're missing the point. I can't speak to Facebook, but Steam makes their money off of the games hosted. When you purchase a game through Steam, you indirectly support it. Slashdot has a subscription service if you're interested. The key advantage is being able to see stories before they go live. (Which lets you compose your thoughts and post them in a well-formed manner before the comments are open.) Wikipedia is not a for-profit organization. You can make a donation if you like as that is the only way to support their services.
The business model is very simple: Give the product away and make it up in volume!
Joking aside, there has never been a better time for free products. As the strength of McDonalds and Walmart demonstrates, consumers are looking for the cheapest prices to help reduce their costs. Even consumers who are financially okay at the moment are reducing costs to prepare for any eventuality.
If you look at the market, you see a lot of giveaways that used to be unthinkable. McDonalds is doing "free latte mondays" to draw business away from Starbucks while Denny's is giving away a free Grand Slam breakfast to each visitor tomorrow in an attempt to push coupon books out to customers. (Thus encouraging them to think about the large and inexpensive breakfast they can get there.)
The key is that these businesses have solid revenue models that their giveaways promote. Web-based businesses are in a slightly tighter pickel. With advertising budgets getting slashed across the board, ad-supported websites are feeling the same pinch as print and broadcast media. Now is the time to find alternative revenue streams such as premium content to back their free services. Things like selling larger downloadable versions of free web games or state tax filings to go with free Federal filings.
These are potentially sustainable models in the Internet age. They preserve the free service concept and allow consumers to evaluate the product(s). Customers then have a difficult time not paying for Premium features or content with real value. The "real value" is the key, of course. Which is something the internet has been missing with its premium features. (Video Game DLC is particularly bad in this area.)
I wish the editors didn't get so tricky with the links all the time. If they'd just plop what was posted on the front page, we wouldn't have this problem.
*wistfully remembers the days before the awfulness that is Firehose*
Implementing cooperative multithreading in a browser just throws up all kinds of red flags.
I can't go into too much detail about this particular implementation, but I agree with what you're saying. Cooperative multitasking is not a scalable solution in web browsers. In fact, sorting is one of those issues generally best left to the database. The circumstances of this particular situation required that the code be written in this fashion, even though it would not have been my first choice.
The takeaway from this should not be that the technology was improperly implemented, but rather that there are situations under which significant processing is being pushed to the browser today. Thus future browsers must consider supporting such heavy processing, especially as web applications grow in complexity and sophistication. Today we have a choice on this issue. What of tomorrow when the browser pulls large quantities of data for offline use? Without access to the server during these periods, the client must operate self-sufficiently.
True multi-threading is a very real part of upcoming browsers. It's already in Google Gears and will show up in browsers as the Web Workers specification is finalized. So we're covered for the direction the market is going with web apps.:-)
Your information about timeouts is correct. You can effectively create a cooperative multi-threading environment using such a technique. The purpose of doing this is NOT to improve performance. In fact, you take a slight hit for it. The purpose is to improve responsiveness. Locking the user's browser solid for 30 seconds straight is not going to make them happy. And when they get the "this script is taking too long" error message, they're going to kill the script and decide your app doesn't work.
If the app is cooperatively mutli-threaded, you can provide the user feedback on progress thus improving the perceived performance.
I can't understand why anyone who would spend the time to read the TOS's of these kinds of services would agree to them for any but the most inconsequential creations or needs. Your thoughts?
The way I see it, there are two aspects to your question:
1. Why would anyone use a public web service to share information about themselves?
2. Why would anyone trust a business with their private information?
The first one is very easy to answer, but somewhat depends on your personality. Simply put, don't post anything publicly that you don't want everyone (and I do mean EVERYONE; from your trash pickup guy to the CEO of your company) to see. And be aware what rights you're giving up when posting that information. Personally, I'd be uncomfortable placing pictures of myself or my family on a site like Flickr. However, placing images for a public article I'm posting doesn't bother me in the slightest. And if they use my images in their advertising, I'd be more flattered than upset. Free publicity for me, so why not?
Other people see this equation differently. They live their lives in the public eye and want people to see them. So the end result of sharing such personal information does not bother them.
As to the second question, the answer deals with the imperfect nature of the world we live in. I can tell you that if you run your own mail server, it will take you less than six months to start wondering if it was a good idea or not. By running your own server you have to worry about spam filtering, security patches, power outages, disk space (huge problem with all the spam these days), performance, DNS entries, and a host of other niggling things that are going to cause you no end of grief.
In result, it makes a lot of sense to hand off such a duty to someone who's good at it. But who can you trust? Well, that's a personal decision. In the case of GMail, I looked into both Google's terms of service (relatively unimportant, but can contain valuable clues to intent) and their general philosophy as a business (FARRRR more important!). I've also taken into consideration the possibility that new management could change directions as well as their general responsibility as a company.
My conclusion is that they're a trustworthy company and will not abuse the privileged information in their possession. Many people see their secretive nature as a negative. I see it as evidence that they will keep my information safe and will not divulge it to anyone short of a government subpoena. And even then, Google has demonstrated that they would be willing to buck such a request. So generally they have my trust.
On the other hand, JoeBlowFlyByNightEMail.com might just give up my data at the drop of a hat. I have no way to judge their effectiveness in the market, so I'm not going to trust them. This is usually reflected in the choice of my password when I do sign up for such a service out of curiosity or because I treat them as public rather than private. They always get one of my lower-tier, insecure passwords so that if my information was compromised, nothing of value is lost.
In short, using an Application Service Provider is like any other business transaction. You have to weight your level of comfort and trust, and compare that against your cost of not using the service. If the weighting works out in your favor, go for it.
The innovation you describe happened 10 years ago when Microsoft was working hard to create a decent browser. After they realized the potential issues with having the application platform move off of Windows, they put the brakes on EVERYTHING.
Read this thread to understand what is seriously wrong with Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft's current strategy. The short version is that Internet Explorer must die so that technology can move forward. And it will either get completely wiped out or be forced to meet the standards. There's a technological tidal wave coming and Microsoft thinks it can stop it.
I don't usually bother messing with Slashdot's friend system, but this post has won me over. These are some of the best one-liners ever crammed into a single post. Kudos!
This story was previously posted to the L4C list. Here's the response I sent there:
An interesting, albeit unoriginal, take on the problem of WebApps. Unfortunately, I do not find his arguments very compelling.
What sense does [Thin Client technology] make when any modern laptop packs enough CPU and GPU power to put yesterday's Cray supercomputer to shame?
Quite a bit, actually. First and foremost is the convenience of application access. There is no software to install and you can use your applications anywhere you have access to a web browser. In addition, the rise of web applications has spurred the rise of web services. Web services share out tremendous amounts of public information allowing developers to "mashup" (I hate that term) data sources to produce superior applications. Compare that to the desktop where just getting the programs on your system to cooperate is a challenge! (To say nothing of networking.)
Concentrating computing power in the datacenter is fine if you're a Google or a Microsoft, but that approach puts a lot of pressure on smaller players.
FWIW, the author is propagating a misconception about web applications. His belief appears to be that web apps MUST push computing power to the server. Nothing could be further from the truth. Web apps are "rich" clients rather than thin clients. Rich clients are more than capable of accepting a significant processing load. Whether that be Video Games, Image Editors, 3D Engines, Fractal Explorers, or other compute-intensive applications, the client is more than ready to pull its weight.
I personally have written an application for my current employer that requires the client to dynamically sort a 100,000 record data set in nothing but client-side Javascript. Significant computer science had to go into creating an optimized, multi-threaded algorithm that would perform well on the lowest common denominator. (IE6) The next generation of browsers that are appearing (Chrome, Firefox 3.1, Opera 10, Safari 4) will have so much compute power that a problem like my 100,000 row sorter will become easy and commonplace. Furthermore, the standards are even adding true background threads to support long-running compute operations. (The standard is based on the Google Gears implementation, which is already available.)
The Web's stateless, mainly forms-based UI approach is reliable, but it's not necessarily the right model for every application.
The communications protocol is stateless. The UI is not. AJAX UIs know their state as well as any desktop application.
Buttons, controls, and widgets vary from app to app.
Anyone who lived through the development of GUI systems know that this is not a new issue. In fact, it used to be quite common for apps to eschew Windows controls in favor of something custom. Borland, for example, LOVED their custom controls. The rise of GNOME, KDE, Java, and.NET/Avalon/WFC have created just as many problems for the desktop.
That being said, flexibility appears to occasionally improve applications. Using GMail as an example, the design would be gimped rather than helped by a "standard" Windows XP look. The clean lines of the GMail interface manage to communicate a great deal of information without creating the sort of 3D visual noise seen in applications like Outlook.
Why give up the full range of languages, tools, and methodologies that systems programming has to offer? JavaScript has evolved into a respectable general-purpose language, but it can hardly be expected to be all things to all people.
Why is resurrecting Red Dwarf fantastic but resurrecting Blade Runner an abomination?
Because the creator of Red Dwarf is alive and well, and is coming back to revive a universe that was created for the purpose of an episodal series.
The author responsible for Blade Runner (Philip K. Dick) died during production of a standalone movie based on his standalone book. Given that the story (originally "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") was an exploration of what it means to be human and NOT an exploration of a fantasy future (ala Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.), expanding the universe would only detract from the original creation.
Besides, Olmos is too old to play Gaff again. He just wouldn't have that same menace about him.;-)
"Space" as counted in gates/transistors for the same amount of silicon. I don't see how that could be misinterpreted in the context of "what to do with all those extra transistors".
Slashdot Mirror
News for nerds, rantings of crazy people?
Jack has no authority anymore. Until such a time as he actually gets some, please ignore him.
Indeed. What's needed is more of a centralized auto-update service that programs can hook into to notify the user of updates rather than a centralized package service.
My bullshit detector just exploded.
I don't see many "spam spewing zombie" Mac machines, do you?
The problem with Windows has more to do with allowing administrative access to dangerous services rather than the ability to install random program X.
(Though as a side note, I'm rather peeved that Apple allows programs to install background services for execution on startup without requesting administrator credentials. That decision may eventually land us a whole host of user-installed Mac spyware.)
In which case I concede the point. My argument was entirely about unlicensed transmissions, not ones within the standard ham bands.
I think we need multiple distros. (In fact, I once wrote an article to that effect.) However, I also think that we need more focus inside those distros. Rather than being good at being a desktop or being good at being a server, Linux distros tend to try and be all things to all people. Which makes them a jack of all trades, master of none.
What's needed are fundamental operating system components that support the desktop and/or support the server and/or support the supercomputer and/or support the embedded device, etc. It should all be a matter of how the OS is built.
Unfortunately, we seem to end up with all the disadvantages of choice in distros and none of the advantages. Why do GNOME and KDE both have their own hardware config tools that conflict with the underlying tools? Shouldn't there be OS-level services available that these desktop environments plug into?
Why is sound such a mess? That was a solved problem 15 years ago!
Why do X-Servers have the graphics drivers rather than the kernel or HAL? The X-Server should only be a consumer of graphics services!
So on and so forth. Make the individual distros more cohesive and things will get a lot better. Stop focusing on retreading the same ground that GNOME and KDE have tread a billion times before, and start working on a few standard, low-level APIs that can be compiled in to the OS to give the GUI Windows or Mac level control over the underlying system. THEN things will get better.
Oh, and stop with the packaging for crying out loud! A desktop system is antithetical to a centralized software repository. Desktop systems should have a standard method of software distribution that accepts any software from anywhere, commercial or OSS. Take Indie Gaming or Shareware developers as an example. Why should they submit their software to 30 different package repositories rather than providing a single, simple download on their website? (Worst case, two or three to support competing standards.)
And no, I'm not talking about installers. Unix systems and installers don't usually get along. (I remember back when the shortcut spec was changing every other week. And yet distros were deploying a different standard in each minor revision. GAHHH!!!) Rather, I'd prefer to see App Bundle distributions similar to OS X. Such a concept is simple to download, install, and run without the fuss of messing with shortcuts, restarting your desktop, installing packages, or the gazillion other minor barriers Linux desktop systems have put in the way over the years.
(I did create a Proof of Concept on Solaris a while back, but lacked time to follow up on it. This problem is solvable if distro makers are willing to dedicate the resources.)
I will give Ubuntu some credit here. Shuttleworth has been trying very hard to push the community in the right direction. But in order to "arrive" we need to actually embrace the ideals of OSS rather than hanging on to this idea that packaging repositories == Linux == OSS freedom.
Is there some part of this I was unclear on? Why do you think the FCC doesn't like unlicensed transmissions if not because they can interfere with other public transmissions?
My presumption is that if they're transmitting without permission to the ISS, they're doing so without proper licensing. Which is a relatively safe assumption considering that the ISS does not (to my knowledge) normally monitor ham radio bands except when expecting ARISS communications. Thus in order to contact ISS, you'd need to transmit on one of NASA or Russia's frequencies. Which I'm fairly certain is going to require a bit more power than the ARISS transmissions. (Though I could be wrong on that point.)
You shouldn't be encouraging readers to attempt broadcasts without permission. Unlicensed broadcasts with power sufficient to reach the International Space Station can be a safety hazard; potentially interfering with or jamming legitimate transmissions. At the very least, one might distract the ISS crew during an important maneuver/space walk when the entire crew needs to be focused.
(Think of it a bit like having the phone ring when you're in the middle of moving heavy furniture. Not exactly opportune.)
These kids did the right thing by having official permission to make the broadcast. Especially because it meant that there was an astronaut available to speak with them. If it was an unlicensed transmission without prior approval, they would have gotten "hung up" on. ;-)
Gamma Ray bursts. Any sufficiently advanced civilization is going to be using antimatter for propulsion. We're sitting on the cusp of such technology ourselves. All we need is a breakthrough in antimatter creation and we'll be heading off to alpha centauri in our souped-up space jalopies.
So if you want to find signs of little green men, follow the gamma radiation.
The "video phones of the future" always assumed use while one was outside of the home or at a place of business. The concept broke down when it was realized that people don't want video feeds in their homes. (The "I just got out of the shower" example is often bandied about.) With a cell phone, the concept starts to make sense again. Like with the characters in TekWar, you're usually in an acceptable location and/or state of dress to take video calls on a cell phone.
Of course, it will be interesting to see how many calls are answered in privacy mode. Will people even trust such a feature?
I think you're missing the point. I can't speak to Facebook, but Steam makes their money off of the games hosted. When you purchase a game through Steam, you indirectly support it. Slashdot has a subscription service if you're interested. The key advantage is being able to see stories before they go live. (Which lets you compose your thoughts and post them in a well-formed manner before the comments are open.) Wikipedia is not a for-profit organization. You can make a donation if you like as that is the only way to support their services.
The business model is very simple: Give the product away and make it up in volume!
Joking aside, there has never been a better time for free products. As the strength of McDonalds and Walmart demonstrates, consumers are looking for the cheapest prices to help reduce their costs. Even consumers who are financially okay at the moment are reducing costs to prepare for any eventuality.
If you look at the market, you see a lot of giveaways that used to be unthinkable. McDonalds is doing "free latte mondays" to draw business away from Starbucks while Denny's is giving away a free Grand Slam breakfast to each visitor tomorrow in an attempt to push coupon books out to customers. (Thus encouraging them to think about the large and inexpensive breakfast they can get there.)
The key is that these businesses have solid revenue models that their giveaways promote. Web-based businesses are in a slightly tighter pickel. With advertising budgets getting slashed across the board, ad-supported websites are feeling the same pinch as print and broadcast media. Now is the time to find alternative revenue streams such as premium content to back their free services. Things like selling larger downloadable versions of free web games or state tax filings to go with free Federal filings.
These are potentially sustainable models in the Internet age. They preserve the free service concept and allow consumers to evaluate the product(s). Customers then have a difficult time not paying for Premium features or content with real value. The "real value" is the key, of course. Which is something the internet has been missing with its premium features. (Video Game DLC is particularly bad in this area.)
Here's the actual article, taken from the Firehose entry:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090130/ap_on_hi_te/tec_nosy_ads
I wish the editors didn't get so tricky with the links all the time. If they'd just plop what was posted on the front page, we wouldn't have this problem.
*wistfully remembers the days before the awfulness that is Firehose*
1. No.
2. People keep using that word, "cloud". I do not think it means what you think it means.
I can't go into too much detail about this particular implementation, but I agree with what you're saying. Cooperative multitasking is not a scalable solution in web browsers. In fact, sorting is one of those issues generally best left to the database. The circumstances of this particular situation required that the code be written in this fashion, even though it would not have been my first choice.
The takeaway from this should not be that the technology was improperly implemented, but rather that there are situations under which significant processing is being pushed to the browser today. Thus future browsers must consider supporting such heavy processing, especially as web applications grow in complexity and sophistication. Today we have a choice on this issue. What of tomorrow when the browser pulls large quantities of data for offline use? Without access to the server during these periods, the client must operate self-sufficiently.
True multi-threading is a very real part of upcoming browsers. It's already in Google Gears and will show up in browsers as the Web Workers specification is finalized. So we're covered for the direction the market is going with web apps. :-)
Your information about timeouts is correct. You can effectively create a cooperative multi-threading environment using such a technique. The purpose of doing this is NOT to improve performance. In fact, you take a slight hit for it. The purpose is to improve responsiveness. Locking the user's browser solid for 30 seconds straight is not going to make them happy. And when they get the "this script is taking too long" error message, they're going to kill the script and decide your app doesn't work.
If the app is cooperatively mutli-threaded, you can provide the user feedback on progress thus improving the perceived performance.
The way I see it, there are two aspects to your question:
1. Why would anyone use a public web service to share information about themselves?
2. Why would anyone trust a business with their private information?
The first one is very easy to answer, but somewhat depends on your personality. Simply put, don't post anything publicly that you don't want everyone (and I do mean EVERYONE; from your trash pickup guy to the CEO of your company) to see. And be aware what rights you're giving up when posting that information. Personally, I'd be uncomfortable placing pictures of myself or my family on a site like Flickr. However, placing images for a public article I'm posting doesn't bother me in the slightest. And if they use my images in their advertising, I'd be more flattered than upset. Free publicity for me, so why not?
Other people see this equation differently. They live their lives in the public eye and want people to see them. So the end result of sharing such personal information does not bother them.
As to the second question, the answer deals with the imperfect nature of the world we live in. I can tell you that if you run your own mail server, it will take you less than six months to start wondering if it was a good idea or not. By running your own server you have to worry about spam filtering, security patches, power outages, disk space (huge problem with all the spam these days), performance, DNS entries, and a host of other niggling things that are going to cause you no end of grief.
In result, it makes a lot of sense to hand off such a duty to someone who's good at it. But who can you trust? Well, that's a personal decision. In the case of GMail, I looked into both Google's terms of service (relatively unimportant, but can contain valuable clues to intent) and their general philosophy as a business (FARRRR more important!). I've also taken into consideration the possibility that new management could change directions as well as their general responsibility as a company.
My conclusion is that they're a trustworthy company and will not abuse the privileged information in their possession. Many people see their secretive nature as a negative. I see it as evidence that they will keep my information safe and will not divulge it to anyone short of a government subpoena. And even then, Google has demonstrated that they would be willing to buck such a request. So generally they have my trust.
On the other hand, JoeBlowFlyByNightEMail.com might just give up my data at the drop of a hat. I have no way to judge their effectiveness in the market, so I'm not going to trust them. This is usually reflected in the choice of my password when I do sign up for such a service out of curiosity or because I treat them as public rather than private. They always get one of my lower-tier, insecure passwords so that if my information was compromised, nothing of value is lost.
In short, using an Application Service Provider is like any other business transaction. You have to weight your level of comfort and trust, and compare that against your cost of not using the service. If the weighting works out in your favor, go for it.
Hope this answers your question!
The innovation you describe happened 10 years ago when Microsoft was working hard to create a decent browser. After they realized the potential issues with having the application platform move off of Windows, they put the brakes on EVERYTHING.
Read this thread to understand what is seriously wrong with Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft's current strategy. The short version is that Internet Explorer must die so that technology can move forward. And it will either get completely wiped out or be forced to meet the standards. There's a technological tidal wave coming and Microsoft thinks it can stop it.
...you should be shot.
I don't usually bother messing with Slashdot's friend system, but this post has won me over. These are some of the best one-liners ever crammed into a single post. Kudos!
This story was previously posted to the L4C list. Here's the response I sent there:
An interesting, albeit unoriginal, take on the problem of WebApps. Unfortunately, I do not find his arguments very compelling.
Quite a bit, actually. First and foremost is the convenience of application access. There is no software to install and you can use your applications anywhere you have access to a web browser. In addition, the rise of web applications has spurred the rise of web services. Web services share out tremendous amounts of public information allowing developers to "mashup" (I hate that term) data sources to produce superior applications. Compare that to the desktop where just getting the programs on your system to cooperate is a challenge! (To say nothing of networking.)
FWIW, the author is propagating a misconception about web applications. His belief appears to be that web apps MUST push computing power to the server. Nothing could be further from the truth. Web apps are "rich" clients rather than thin clients. Rich clients are more than capable of accepting a significant processing load. Whether that be Video Games, Image Editors, 3D Engines, Fractal Explorers, or other compute-intensive applications, the client is more than ready to pull its weight.
I personally have written an application for my current employer that requires the client to dynamically sort a 100,000 record data set in nothing but client-side Javascript. Significant computer science had to go into creating an optimized, multi-threaded algorithm that would perform well on the lowest common denominator. (IE6) The next generation of browsers that are appearing (Chrome, Firefox 3.1, Opera 10, Safari 4) will have so much compute power that a problem like my 100,000 row sorter will become easy and commonplace. Furthermore, the standards are even adding true background threads to support long-running compute operations. (The standard is based on the Google Gears implementation, which is already available.)
The communications protocol is stateless. The UI is not. AJAX UIs know their state as well as any desktop application.
Anyone who lived through the development of GUI systems know that this is not a new issue. In fact, it used to be quite common for apps to eschew Windows controls in favor of something custom. Borland, for example, LOVED their custom controls. The rise of GNOME, KDE, Java, and .NET/Avalon/WFC have created just as many problems for the desktop.
That being said, flexibility appears to occasionally improve applications. Using GMail as an example, the design would be gimped rather than helped by a "standard" Windows XP look. The clean lines of the GMail interface manage to communicate a great deal of information without creating the sort of 3D visual noise seen in applications like Outlook.
Javascript is only one component to a very lar
Dear moderators, you appear to have misspelled "+5 Insightful".
Because the creator of Red Dwarf is alive and well, and is coming back to revive a universe that was created for the purpose of an episodal series.
The author responsible for Blade Runner (Philip K. Dick) died during production of a standalone movie based on his standalone book. Given that the story (originally "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") was an exploration of what it means to be human and NOT an exploration of a fantasy future (ala Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.), expanding the universe would only detract from the original creation.
Besides, Olmos is too old to play Gaff again. He just wouldn't have that same menace about him. ;-)
"Space" as counted in gates/transistors for the same amount of silicon. I don't see how that could be misinterpreted in the context of "what to do with all those extra transistors".
Ah, hell. I apparently can't win today. :-P