Here's something that may help with accidental clicks: don't use mouse clicks to shift the focus back to your browser window, use a key combination like Alt-Tab
Indeed. I've long become wise to the tricks of the advertisers, but that unfortunately doesn't help the average user.
Outside of that, be sure to use AdBlock, disable pop-ups and all that
I do disable popups (there's almost zero usefulness for unrequested popup windows), but I don't bother with Ad Blocking software. If a site has overly annoying advertising, they can expect that I won't be revisiting. Otherwise I have no intention of depriving a site of their revenue as long as they're not shoving it in my face.:-)
Once again you make my point. HTML/CSS is great for sharing documents. Please use it to its fullest. Just stop using HTTP/HTML/CSS/etc for applications - Its horribly broken.
Your point is taken, but not significant. Do you see a better option for deploying document-based applications? Everyone has a web browser, and the W3C has been working hard to make sure that HTML/CSS *is* a valid choice for such applications, as has Mozilla with their XUL platform.
I also take issue with your description of it as "horribly broken". How is it broken? What doesn't work? Why can't you use it?
The reality is that HTML/CSS works quite well despite its origins. It's not the perfect solution, but then again neither was NeWS. If we bump up against limitations in this model, another model will come along to take its place. In the meantime, I'll keep creating JavaScript applications.:-)
1. Catfish are predisposed to growing quite large if given sufficient space.
2. The Mekong Giant Catfish is a sub-species that generally grows to humongous sizes. People catch record setting or near record setting catfish in the Mekong river every year. There's nothing unnatural about it.
The real problem at the moment is that the popularity of these catfish has some worried that they will be fished to extinction.
Slight modification to my example. In the case of WhenU, Cosmo doesn't have a choice because the user has supposedly agreed to view the advertisements. Mr. Cosmo will just have to live with this situation or help fight the legality of adware to install itself on a user's computer (a separate issue from this ruling).
Pop-ups probably don't sell anything, but they do generate clicks. Note how the advertisers always place popups, popunders, and popovers *exactly* where you're most likely to click by accident. e.g. My browser mysteriously loses focus, so I click to reset the focus so I can scroll. Suddenly a popover appears and I've clicked on it! I quickly close the resulting window, but somebody has already been payed for that click.
In any case, this ruling is really more about the issue of advertising on competitors sites. This ruling states that I can plug my Spacely's Sprockets product on Cosmo's Cogs website as long as Cosmo has third party advertising of some sort. Now if Cosmo was smart, he'd be using Google Adsense or a similarly featured product. He'd then be able to tell Google that he doesn't want to see my ads for Spacely's Sprockets. All of which violates no ones rights, yet everyone is happy.:-)
The operative word that you missed was "dynamic". This means platforms such as J2EE where a huge mass of dynamically generated script and HTML must be downloaded for every transaction [...] That is true of java and javascript apps, but patently false with dynamically scripted apps.
I'm afraid you missed the point of the conversation yourself. The AC was referring to JavaScipt applications as the patch, not dynamically generated content.
Dynamically generated pages is not a bad concept. It is, however, on par with the concept of Mainframe terminal screens, except prettier. JavaScript applications, OTOH, provide for the next level of multi-user app: The remote document interface pioneered by Sun back in the 80's. This sort of design is the only way forward for networked applications, as multimedia desktops have proven that they are chained to the machine they run on.
see that is laughable - you can't draw a curve and you are calling this the graphics drawing level
More correctly, this is a document drawing level. No one ever expected HTML/CSS to go beyond simply displaying textual data to users. As a result, it still needs some beefing up. But for regular use, the lack of things like curved objects is not a show-stopper. The fact that the document elements are solid objects is actually kind of nice, because you're *not* redrawing the screen every time. You just shift your elements around and the web browser figures the rest out.
Also, as I said before, SVG provides a nice solution to the lack of curved objects and rotation. The advantages to SVG are:
1. The image can be built in memory, then displayed.
2. Modifications can be made by walking the XML DOM Tree.
3. SVG is a good intermediary or long term format for storing drawing data.
Point #3 is rather important. Consider the case of a DHTML SpreadSheet application. If you wanted to create a Pie Chart, you can either have the server generate you an image (slow) or create an SVG on the fly (fast). Since you created the image as an SVG, you can then shunt the raw XML data back to the server for optional translation and long term storage. The server could even take the spreadsheet data and generate you an Excel file to email your coworkers.
It's quite an amazing paradigm shift.
P.S. There is some existing work demonstrating the use of dynamically generated images. The game at the link I've provided creates a new XBM image for every frame. (Info) While I don't recommend using HTML for Wolf3D, this method works perfectly for business applications.
precisely HTML is not a widget factory. We need something that is.
Why? Is X-Windows a Widget Factory? Is the Windows GDI a widget factory? Is Display Postscript a widget factory? Of course not! That's the domain of code written on top of these things.
As for being the level of drawing the graphics...that laughable...it horrible for that.
That's one opinion, anyway. Having spent a lot of time actually creating the types of tools I'm talking about, I have to say that it's anything *but* laughable. CSS/HTML do this quite well, actually. The greatest failing of the current model is the lack of more sophisticated document constructs such as rotation and curves. My thought is, however, that SVG may be able to fill in for graphics intensive areas where HTML doesn't work well.:-)
And, yes, I know that means having two networks in the long run. I'm not certain that that's a showstopper.
The only showstopper is if users are saying "Why should I use Internet 3 over Internet 1?" There's a lot of people in the loop that have to be convinced even to capture a subset. As a result, the technology *must* be a tremendous step up from what we have today.:-)
However support for java script across browsers blows
Actually, it's really not so bad if you follow the WC3 standards. DOM Level 2 covers everything from HTML components to a JavaScript Event Model. The latter support is still lacking in IE (the LAST straggler), but it can be added by patching the document event listeners. (Does anyone know if the IE7 JS package does this already?)
HTML doesn't have enough and rich enough widgets.
HTML is not a widget factory. HTML/CSS is a document layout language that is quite flexible and can be used to create any manner of button, text widget, word processor, spreadsheet, or anything else that your heart desires. Think of it as being at the level of drawing the graphics as opposed to a Component Class Model. Standard JS libraries don't yet exist for buttons, but I know that quite a few people (myself included) have libraries that allow a programmer to do stuff like this:
var button = new Button("Click Me!");
button.onclick = function(e) {
alert("Shame on you! You clicked me!): };
One of the coolest tricks I ever pulled was a DHTML drop down box that deferred the cost of loading the hundreds of options until the user clicked on the dropdown. At that point an IFrame popped up and started downloading the list. The CSS for the list was tuned so that the IFrame acted as if it were a regular drop down.:-)
I think the time is now... look at all this dynamic javascript applications...just a band-aid on a bad system.
Actually, that's not true. Putting aside your confusion of the Web vs. The Internet, JavaScript Applications fullfill a design that was started nearly 20 years ago by James Gosling. The design I'm referring to is NeWS. The concept behind NeWS was that a Postscript renderer would be modified to allow for true Object Oriented Programming, and client/server communication. This half-document/half-program Postscript would then be downloaded to a client (potentially over EMail no less!) where it would execute and obtain remote data from its server.
Having the application at this level meant that only absolutely necessary data was transferred over the network. The application was loaded once, then only updates and file accesses would occur remotely. This design was far more powerful than X-Windows because it transferred far less data, could run over any network, and could render complex primitives from standard vector drawing programs. No other windowing system up until NeXT could do that!
It's amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same.:-)
...is this project going to actually provide revolutionary designs to ease or eliminate the problems we face today, or is this just a matter of reinventing the wheel?
I realize that it's quite tempting for computer developers to want to clean up a system after it's done, but such work only ever works if you have a clear understanding of the problems faced under the current codebase as well as an absolute need to fix the issues with the current system. Simply saying, "it'll be better/cooler/faster" just doesn't cut it. Those things can be obtained from evolutionary development. Revolutionary means that you are uprooting all the existing users. The payoff MUST be tremendous or they ignore it!
Regarding network access, though, I think more people would have used it were it available.
Nothing an acoustic coupler and some modem software didn't fix. TCP/IP was only necessary once the Internet (a much more ad-hoc network where services ran both ways instead of being "pushed" to the client) came along. Terminal software fit in the Mac's memory just fine, and a coupler could always be hooked up to one of the existing ports.
Re: EEEPROMs vs EEPROMS: I can never keep the number of 'E's straight; my double-e parents are so disappointed:)
No worries. It is somewhat confusing when one considers that there are PROMs (programmable ROMs), EPROMs (erasable ROMs), and EEPROMs (a rewritable ROM).:-)
Anyhow. My point is still that no matter how good a design (and it was good... I have one), there is always the opportunity to re-visit, re-engineer, and improve.
Of course. My only point is that the Mac managed to hit its target dead on with little to no room for improvment given the technology of the time. That's actually quite amazing when you think about it. If only we could engineer computers that well today!;-)
Not really. Ruby on Rails is in many ways a rather old fashioned approach.
Abstracting RoR out to the more general JavaScript/DHTML/AJAX stuff, it's worth noting that James Gosling invented this form of application interface. The NeWS system was everything that AJAX is today. If Sun hadn't tried to keep NeWS proprietary, we might have never seen the Web Browser as we know it today, and X-Windows would be nothing more than a footnote in history.:-)
And doesn't OS X use the (stupid) file extension primarily these days, rather than metadata? In most ways OS X is a big leap forward, but in some ways it feels like going back to the stone age.
Nope. The extension is secondary to the fork and is only used on file import/export. If you save a file from a program, the fork will remember which program you used even if it isn't the default. You can also go to the file properties and change the default program on a per file basis.
There really is no step back in OS X. Merely an acknoledgement that the system needs to interoperate with other systems. The resource fork is not particularly useful for files transferred over a network, so it's stripped in those cases and the file extension is used instead.
You didn't read close enough. It's multiple choice, not "All of the Above". That's the reason for the line "C it is." As in "Option C is the real problem here, not fan-subbing or lack of exports."
And then you go on to admit that you've seen anime that is actually quite good. Try this, turn on daytime Nick-TV and try and struggle through that. Just as bad, usually. Not meant for you.
Let me put it this way:
Gundam Seed: Unwatchable Zatch Bell: Unwatchable Some Stretchy Pirate (Name escapes me): Unwatchable Akira: Unwatchable Vampire Hunter D: Unwatchable Ghost in the Shell (Movie): Just, OK Ghost in the Shell (TV): Entertaining Show Currently on after Gundam: Every sterotype and then some.
This stuff just isn't appealing to a general audience. When I selected SF:A, I was using an example that *should* appeal to the American market, but instead embodies most of the cliche traits that I mentioned. Did anyone understand that movie?
No, I read it just fine. However, the constraints of the day still didn't allow for much variety in choices.:-)
1) I would know that people wanted to write code for the apple, and that adoption would require supporting them. Also, I would already know how to create and optimze the system, and I would know which apps were "revolutionary" and which would simply be ignored. Hindsight is nice:)
Using my crystal ball, I could easily see that programmability was never the key failing of the Apple. The Board's decision to replace Jobs with Scully was.
Even if we accept your premise, Apple would have incurred a huge expense to develop tools at the time. There was no GCC base that everyone could use. A usable toolkit took a lot of engineering and time. That's why development kits were usually made by third parties, while the average user used BASIC. I suppose that Apple could have used their crystal ball to tell Microsoft off, but they did need more applications than just MS-BASIC.
2) I suspect that considering the tiny size of files, and given sufficient optimization, you could store a "spotlight directory" on EEEPROM[sic].
*bug eyed* You want to put a 20 volt programmer inside the computer? That's just not realisitc. In any case, the EEPROM wasn't invented until 1983, after the Mac design was nearly finalized.
3) So, operating under the guidelines, I would know not only what a kernel is, but how critical it is. I think the cost of an extra few hundred kilobytes of RAM might be a bit much, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try;)
A few... hundred kilobytes?!? Did you check the price tags on RAM and ROM back then? A kernel design was doable for the Apple Lisa (which was $10,000), but was not doable for $2,500 Macintosh. Kernel designs were well known, but explicitly ignored in favor of a less expensive approach. Remember, these machines were glorified calculators. They didn't even have an MMU to virtualize the memory across applications, or prevent the kernel from being overwritten.
Therefore, since it was physically possible to use ethernet (as 3Com released the etherlink a couple years before) and Apple is widely known for attempting to be as bleeding edge as possible (bluetooth everything, gigabit, the Lisa, etc), I can easily put in support for the stuff I mentioned.
Question: How many original Macintoshes ever accessed a network? Question: How much did an Ethernet card cost back in 1984? Question: How much did a hub cost back in 1984? Question: What would your average consumer even plug his ethernet into?
You're advocating a feature (Ethernet) that wasn't useful to consumers until ~1998. Even TCP/IP wasn't useful to even the earliest consumer adopters until ~1993.
However, if we took the current team there now, threw in a few of the old guys from the 80's, and tried again? I bet we could totally improve on the original.
You can email them and ask, but my guess is that they'll tell you that they lacked the technology to do much better than they did. As computers went, the original Macintosh was cutting edge for its price point and market. It really couldn't have been done any better than it was.
I found your post, with it's tired references to big eyes and tentacles, to be very condescending.
It wasn't my intent to be condescending, but to portray anime as the general public sees it. Unfortunately, big eyes, tentacles, and many of the other points I mentioned *are* staples of anime. Not all anime has these elements, but a lot of it does. For example, I tried paying attention to Gundum Seed a few days ago. While the setup allows for thoughtful dialog, the constant overreactions of the characters grated on my nerves. Not to mention the sexism! (There was some nonsense about where guy was complaning about female captains.)
I can't say that I've been much happier with other hi-profile Anime such as Vampire Hunter-D or Akira, but that obviously isn't true of everyone.
But you are correct that my post was heavy on the attack, and low on the content.
*shrug* I was expecting it. A lot of Anime fans are very defensive about their positions, because of constant criticism. My only point (which I hope didn't get lost) was that Anime doesn't generally appeal to mass-market America. That is the real reason for a lack of imports, not the fan-subbing as suggested.
"generally accepted by the American public" is a somewhat vague criteria. I mean, Yugio and Pokemon are both anime, and every kid (and their poor parents) has heard of that! Best Buy has a huge selection of Anime, it's carried in every video store. There's an Anime cable channel, and more on the way. What's your criteria?
It's interesting to note, however, that only Anime targetted at kids is making huge inroads. While an adult may enjoy it, I assume the target audience for Pokemon and DBZ are children. The "serious" anime is limited to well known movies such as Akira and GitS.
The Japanese DVD market is quite different from ours. It's mostly a rental market, which some have explained as being due to the space requirements of a DVD collection. A DVD there costs the equivalent of 3 times or more what it would cost here. Remember when buying a movie on VHS would cost you $100? Not quite that bad, but close.
Whoa. Perhaps the (temporary?) solution, then, is a Netflix for Anime? That would effectively place the US market on parity with the Japanese market. If it works, the JP market would smell money and hopefully make it possible for fans like yourself to own titles.
What is still surprising is Japan's embrace of American pop culture, which is of course exactly the same kind of product as anime
Honestly? I think it's universal appeal. America has been in the past (although it is less so today) the melting pot of the world. As new cultures were added to the mix, the best attributes of those cultures were adopted by others. The result is that things that generally appeal to Americans are going to generally appeal to a wide variety of other cultures. In the case of Coca-Cola and Star Trek, that's not such a bad thing. In the case of "The Pepsi Generation" and Britney Spears, well... I feel sorry for our international cousins. It's bad enough *we* have to put up with it.;-)
Ok, I've said my peace. Bring on the "You're an idiot, and the world is really like [describe some screwed up theory that could never happen, or argue with something I didn't say]" flames.
But perhaps I should ask, rather than assume. What, specifically, made the series better, in your opinion?
1. The backstory of the movie was completely unclear 2. I found it incredibly depressing
GitS was still better than most Anime I've seen, but it just wasn't my idea of entertainment. The television show is quite a bit more entertaining, and spends time filling in the backstory holes.
That being said, I've only seen a couple of episodes, so this is just my personal opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's something that may help with accidental clicks: don't use mouse clicks to shift the focus back to your browser window, use a key combination like Alt-Tab
:-)
Indeed. I've long become wise to the tricks of the advertisers, but that unfortunately doesn't help the average user.
Outside of that, be sure to use AdBlock, disable pop-ups and all that
I do disable popups (there's almost zero usefulness for unrequested popup windows), but I don't bother with Ad Blocking software. If a site has overly annoying advertising, they can expect that I won't be revisiting. Otherwise I have no intention of depriving a site of their revenue as long as they're not shoving it in my face.
Once again you make my point. HTML/CSS is great for sharing documents. Please use it to its fullest. Just stop using HTTP/HTML/CSS/etc for applications - Its horribly broken.
:-)
Your point is taken, but not significant. Do you see a better option for deploying document-based applications? Everyone has a web browser, and the W3C has been working hard to make sure that HTML/CSS *is* a valid choice for such applications, as has Mozilla with their XUL platform.
I also take issue with your description of it as "horribly broken". How is it broken? What doesn't work? Why can't you use it?
The reality is that HTML/CSS works quite well despite its origins. It's not the perfect solution, but then again neither was NeWS. If we bump up against limitations in this model, another model will come along to take its place. In the meantime, I'll keep creating JavaScript applications.
Umm... no.
1. Catfish are predisposed to growing quite large if given sufficient space.
2. The Mekong Giant Catfish is a sub-species that generally grows to humongous sizes. People catch record setting or near record setting catfish in the Mekong river every year. There's nothing unnatural about it.
The real problem at the moment is that the popularity of these catfish has some worried that they will be fished to extinction.
Pics of Catfish caught
A 140 pound Catfish caught in Texas
Slight modification to my example. In the case of WhenU, Cosmo doesn't have a choice because the user has supposedly agreed to view the advertisements. Mr. Cosmo will just have to live with this situation or help fight the legality of adware to install itself on a user's computer (a separate issue from this ruling).
Pop-ups probably don't sell anything, but they do generate clicks. Note how the advertisers always place popups, popunders, and popovers *exactly* where you're most likely to click by accident. e.g. My browser mysteriously loses focus, so I click to reset the focus so I can scroll. Suddenly a popover appears and I've clicked on it! I quickly close the resulting window, but somebody has already been payed for that click.
:-)
In any case, this ruling is really more about the issue of advertising on competitors sites. This ruling states that I can plug my Spacely's Sprockets product on Cosmo's Cogs website as long as Cosmo has third party advertising of some sort. Now if Cosmo was smart, he'd be using Google Adsense or a similarly featured product. He'd then be able to tell Google that he doesn't want to see my ads for Spacely's Sprockets. All of which violates no ones rights, yet everyone is happy.
The operative word that you missed was "dynamic". This means platforms such as J2EE where a huge mass of dynamically generated script and HTML must be downloaded for every transaction [...] That is true of java and javascript apps, but patently false with dynamically scripted apps.
I'm afraid you missed the point of the conversation yourself. The AC was referring to JavaScipt applications as the patch, not dynamically generated content.
Dynamically generated pages is not a bad concept. It is, however, on par with the concept of Mainframe terminal screens, except prettier. JavaScript applications, OTOH, provide for the next level of multi-user app: The remote document interface pioneered by Sun back in the 80's. This sort of design is the only way forward for networked applications, as multimedia desktops have proven that they are chained to the machine they run on.
see that is laughable - you can't draw a curve and you are calling this the graphics drawing level
More correctly, this is a document drawing level. No one ever expected HTML/CSS to go beyond simply displaying textual data to users. As a result, it still needs some beefing up. But for regular use, the lack of things like curved objects is not a show-stopper. The fact that the document elements are solid objects is actually kind of nice, because you're *not* redrawing the screen every time. You just shift your elements around and the web browser figures the rest out.
Also, as I said before, SVG provides a nice solution to the lack of curved objects and rotation. The advantages to SVG are:
1. The image can be built in memory, then displayed.
2. Modifications can be made by walking the XML DOM Tree.
3. SVG is a good intermediary or long term format for storing drawing data.
Point #3 is rather important. Consider the case of a DHTML SpreadSheet application. If you wanted to create a Pie Chart, you can either have the server generate you an image (slow) or create an SVG on the fly (fast). Since you created the image as an SVG, you can then shunt the raw XML data back to the server for optional translation and long term storage. The server could even take the spreadsheet data and generate you an Excel file to email your coworkers.
It's quite an amazing paradigm shift.
P.S. There is some existing work demonstrating the use of dynamically generated images. The game at the link I've provided creates a new XBM image for every frame. (Info) While I don't recommend using HTML for Wolf3D, this method works perfectly for business applications.
precisely HTML is not a widget factory. We need something that is.
:-)
Why? Is X-Windows a Widget Factory? Is the Windows GDI a widget factory? Is Display Postscript a widget factory? Of course not! That's the domain of code written on top of these things.
As for being the level of drawing the graphics...that laughable...it horrible for that.
That's one opinion, anyway. Having spent a lot of time actually creating the types of tools I'm talking about, I have to say that it's anything *but* laughable. CSS/HTML do this quite well, actually. The greatest failing of the current model is the lack of more sophisticated document constructs such as rotation and curves. My thought is, however, that SVG may be able to fill in for graphics intensive areas where HTML doesn't work well.
Better examples:
t ml_script_34.html t ml_script_48.html c ombo.shtml
http://simplythebest.net/scripts/DHTML_scripts/dh
http://simplythebest.net/scripts/DHTML_scripts/dh
http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/dhtml
And, yes, I know that means having two networks in the long run. I'm not certain that that's a showstopper.
:-)
The only showstopper is if users are saying "Why should I use Internet 3 over Internet 1?" There's a lot of people in the loop that have to be convinced even to capture a subset. As a result, the technology *must* be a tremendous step up from what we have today.
Actually, it's really not so bad if you follow the WC3 standards. DOM Level 2 covers everything from HTML components to a JavaScript Event Model. The latter support is still lacking in IE (the LAST straggler), but it can be added by patching the document event listeners. (Does anyone know if the IE7 JS package does this already?)
HTML doesn't have enough and rich enough widgets.
HTML is not a widget factory. HTML/CSS is a document layout language that is quite flexible and can be used to create any manner of button, text widget, word processor, spreadsheet, or anything else that your heart desires. Think of it as being at the level of drawing the graphics as opposed to a Component Class Model. Standard JS libraries don't yet exist for buttons, but I know that quite a few people (myself included) have libraries that allow a programmer to do stuff like this:For example: http://dhtmlkitchen.com/learn/css/forms/index4.js
One of the coolest tricks I ever pulled was a DHTML drop down box that deferred the cost of loading the hundreds of options until the user clicked on the dropdown. At that point an IFrame popped up and started downloading the list. The CSS for the list was tuned so that the IFrame acted as if it were a regular drop down.
I think the time is now... look at all this dynamic javascript applications...just a band-aid on a bad system.
:-)
Actually, that's not true. Putting aside your confusion of the Web vs. The Internet, JavaScript Applications fullfill a design that was started nearly 20 years ago by James Gosling. The design I'm referring to is NeWS. The concept behind NeWS was that a Postscript renderer would be modified to allow for true Object Oriented Programming, and client/server communication. This half-document/half-program Postscript would then be downloaded to a client (potentially over EMail no less!) where it would execute and obtain remote data from its server.
Having the application at this level meant that only absolutely necessary data was transferred over the network. The application was loaded once, then only updates and file accesses would occur remotely. This design was far more powerful than X-Windows because it transferred far less data, could run over any network, and could render complex primitives from standard vector drawing programs. No other windowing system up until NeXT could do that!
It's amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
...is this project going to actually provide revolutionary designs to ease or eliminate the problems we face today, or is this just a matter of reinventing the wheel?
I realize that it's quite tempting for computer developers to want to clean up a system after it's done, but such work only ever works if you have a clear understanding of the problems faced under the current codebase as well as an absolute need to fix the issues with the current system. Simply saying, "it'll be better/cooler/faster" just doesn't cut it. Those things can be obtained from evolutionary development. Revolutionary means that you are uprooting all the existing users. The payoff MUST be tremendous or they ignore it!
Nice blog, BTW.
:-)
:)
:-)
;-)
Thank you.
Regarding network access, though, I think more people would have used it were it available.
Nothing an acoustic coupler and some modem software didn't fix. TCP/IP was only necessary once the Internet (a much more ad-hoc network where services ran both ways instead of being "pushed" to the client) came along. Terminal software fit in the Mac's memory just fine, and a coupler could always be hooked up to one of the existing ports.
Re: EEEPROMs vs EEPROMS: I can never keep the number of 'E's straight; my double-e parents are so disappointed
No worries. It is somewhat confusing when one considers that there are PROMs (programmable ROMs), EPROMs (erasable ROMs), and EEPROMs (a rewritable ROM).
Anyhow. My point is still that no matter how good a design (and it was good... I have one), there is always the opportunity to re-visit, re-engineer, and improve.
Of course. My only point is that the Mac managed to hit its target dead on with little to no room for improvment given the technology of the time. That's actually quite amazing when you think about it. If only we could engineer computers that well today!
Not really. Ruby on Rails is in many ways a rather old fashioned approach.
:-)
Abstracting RoR out to the more general JavaScript/DHTML/AJAX stuff, it's worth noting that James Gosling invented this form of application interface. The NeWS system was everything that AJAX is today. If Sun hadn't tried to keep NeWS proprietary, we might have never seen the Web Browser as we know it today, and X-Windows would be nothing more than a footnote in history.
my guess is he knows what he's talking about when it comes to Java.
:-)
I should hope so! He did invent the thing, after all!
Definitely C. I feel sorry for our international brothers that we've sicked Britney Spears on the world. Ugh. Here's hoping they duck for cover.
BTW, I can't believe that you think that Britney Spears should appear in the next Star Wars movie, ya moron!
;-)
Wait a moment! I didn't say...
oh.
And doesn't OS X use the (stupid) file extension primarily these days, rather than metadata? In most ways OS X is a big leap forward, but in some ways it feels like going back to the stone age.
Nope. The extension is secondary to the fork and is only used on file import/export. If you save a file from a program, the fork will remember which program you used even if it isn't the default. You can also go to the file properties and change the default program on a per file basis.
There really is no step back in OS X. Merely an acknoledgement that the system needs to interoperate with other systems. The resource fork is not particularly useful for files transferred over a network, so it's stripped in those cases and the file extension is used instead.
You didn't read close enough. It's multiple choice, not "All of the Above". That's the reason for the line "C it is." As in "Option C is the real problem here, not fan-subbing or lack of exports."
And then you go on to admit that you've seen anime that is actually quite good. Try this, turn on daytime Nick-TV and try and struggle through that. Just as bad, usually. Not meant for you.
Let me put it this way:
Gundam Seed: Unwatchable
Zatch Bell: Unwatchable
Some Stretchy Pirate (Name escapes me): Unwatchable
Akira: Unwatchable
Vampire Hunter D: Unwatchable
Ghost in the Shell (Movie): Just, OK
Ghost in the Shell (TV): Entertaining
Show Currently on after Gundam: Every sterotype and then some.
This stuff just isn't appealing to a general audience. When I selected SF:A, I was using an example that *should* appeal to the American market, but instead embodies most of the cliche traits that I mentioned. Did anyone understand that movie?
Umm, maybe you didn't read the parent?
:-)
:)
;)
No, I read it just fine. However, the constraints of the day still didn't allow for much variety in choices.
1) I would know that people wanted to write code for the apple, and that adoption would require supporting them. Also, I would already know how to create and optimze the system, and I would know which apps were "revolutionary" and which would simply be ignored. Hindsight is nice
Using my crystal ball, I could easily see that programmability was never the key failing of the Apple. The Board's decision to replace Jobs with Scully was.
Even if we accept your premise, Apple would have incurred a huge expense to develop tools at the time. There was no GCC base that everyone could use. A usable toolkit took a lot of engineering and time. That's why development kits were usually made by third parties, while the average user used BASIC. I suppose that Apple could have used their crystal ball to tell Microsoft off, but they did need more applications than just MS-BASIC.
2) I suspect that considering the tiny size of files, and given sufficient optimization, you could store a "spotlight directory" on EEEPROM[sic].
*bug eyed* You want to put a 20 volt programmer inside the computer? That's just not realisitc. In any case, the EEPROM wasn't invented until 1983, after the Mac design was nearly finalized.
3) So, operating under the guidelines, I would know not only what a kernel is, but how critical it is. I think the cost of an extra few hundred kilobytes of RAM might be a bit much, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try
A few... hundred kilobytes?!? Did you check the price tags on RAM and ROM back then? A kernel design was doable for the Apple Lisa (which was $10,000), but was not doable for $2,500 Macintosh. Kernel designs were well known, but explicitly ignored in favor of a less expensive approach. Remember, these machines were glorified calculators. They didn't even have an MMU to virtualize the memory across applications, or prevent the kernel from being overwritten.
Therefore, since it was physically possible to use ethernet (as 3Com released the etherlink a couple years before) and Apple is widely known for attempting to be as bleeding edge as possible (bluetooth everything, gigabit, the Lisa, etc), I can easily put in support for the stuff I mentioned.
Question: How many original Macintoshes ever accessed a network?
Question: How much did an Ethernet card cost back in 1984?
Question: How much did a hub cost back in 1984?
Question: What would your average consumer even plug his ethernet into?
You're advocating a feature (Ethernet) that wasn't useful to consumers until ~1998. Even TCP/IP wasn't useful to even the earliest consumer adopters until ~1993.
However, if we took the current team there now, threw in a few of the old guys from the 80's, and tried again? I bet we could totally improve on the original.
You can email them and ask, but my guess is that they'll tell you that they lacked the technology to do much better than they did. As computers went, the original Macintosh was cutting edge for its price point and market. It really couldn't have been done any better than it was.
I found your post, with it's tired references to big eyes and tentacles, to be very condescending.
It wasn't my intent to be condescending, but to portray anime as the general public sees it. Unfortunately, big eyes, tentacles, and many of the other points I mentioned *are* staples of anime. Not all anime has these elements, but a lot of it does. For example, I tried paying attention to Gundum Seed a few days ago. While the setup allows for thoughtful dialog, the constant overreactions of the characters grated on my nerves. Not to mention the sexism! (There was some nonsense about where guy was complaning about female captains.)
I can't say that I've been much happier with other hi-profile Anime such as Vampire Hunter-D or Akira, but that obviously isn't true of everyone.
But you are correct that my post was heavy on the attack, and low on the content.
*shrug* I was expecting it. A lot of Anime fans are very defensive about their positions, because of constant criticism. My only point (which I hope didn't get lost) was that Anime doesn't generally appeal to mass-market America. That is the real reason for a lack of imports, not the fan-subbing as suggested.
"generally accepted by the American public" is a somewhat vague criteria. I mean, Yugio and Pokemon are both anime, and every kid (and their poor parents) has heard of that! Best Buy has a huge selection of Anime, it's carried in every video store. There's an Anime cable channel, and more on the way. What's your criteria?
It's interesting to note, however, that only Anime targetted at kids is making huge inroads. While an adult may enjoy it, I assume the target audience for Pokemon and DBZ are children. The "serious" anime is limited to well known movies such as Akira and GitS.
The Japanese DVD market is quite different from ours. It's mostly a rental market, which some have explained as being due to the space requirements of a DVD collection. A DVD there costs the equivalent of 3 times or more what it would cost here. Remember when buying a movie on VHS would cost you $100? Not quite that bad, but close.
Whoa. Perhaps the (temporary?) solution, then, is a Netflix for Anime? That would effectively place the US market on parity with the Japanese market. If it works, the JP market would smell money and hopefully make it possible for fans like yourself to own titles.
What is still surprising is Japan's embrace of American pop culture, which is of course exactly the same kind of product as anime
;-)
Honestly? I think it's universal appeal. America has been in the past (although it is less so today) the melting pot of the world. As new cultures were added to the mix, the best attributes of those cultures were adopted by others. The result is that things that generally appeal to Americans are going to generally appeal to a wide variety of other cultures. In the case of Coca-Cola and Star Trek, that's not such a bad thing. In the case of "The Pepsi Generation" and Britney Spears, well... I feel sorry for our international cousins. It's bad enough *we* have to put up with it.
Ok, I've said my peace. Bring on the "You're an idiot, and the world is really like [describe some screwed up theory that could never happen, or argue with something I didn't say]" flames.
But perhaps I should ask, rather than assume. What, specifically, made the series better, in your opinion?
1. The backstory of the movie was completely unclear
2. I found it incredibly depressing
GitS was still better than most Anime I've seen, but it just wasn't my idea of entertainment. The television show is quite a bit more entertaining, and spends time filling in the backstory holes.
That being said, I've only seen a couple of episodes, so this is just my personal opinion.