That's just stupid. If it's just sitting there, it's not going to hurt anyone. It actually has to be aerosolized (which is REALLY hard to do without industrial equipment) and inhaled to pose a significant threat. Even indigestion poses only minimal risks as most cases have resulted in the PU passing through with no harm to the subject.
I can read just fine, thank you. And i presume that must be in the independent.co.uk article, because that's the only one that gives a "404: OracleJSP: java.io.FileNotFoundException". I checked the other links, and NONE of them contain that text.
And a quick check confirms it. Searching the Independent's site finds the article in question. The only one to contain the text you mention. The *correct* link is:
No, sorry. That's horrendously incorrect. There have only been a handful of missions that used RTGs as power sources. Most satellites rely on Solar Power and batteries to operate. The reasoning is simple: Nuclear materials are EXPENSIVE. Far too expensive for anyone other than NASA to use. And NASA only uses them for very specific missions where no other option is feasible. (For example, while the current rovers have a few grains of plutonium to keep the joints from freezing on Mars, they are still powered by solar panels. The follow-up mission was supposed to use RTGs to provide a longer-lasting robot, but that's being reevaluated in light of the longevity of Spirit and Opportunity.)
PU-238 would be an unlikely source of problems of this sort. Most of the radiation is Alpha Particles which are easily rejected by human skin. (Alpha particle dangers are almost entirely due to internal consumption.) Even if we take possible Gamma and X-Ray emissions from long decay into account, the people who were near the meteor shouldn't feel sick until an hour or two after the exposure.
According to the article (coral cache), the problem was a "strange odor" that caused the headaches and vomiting. Such an odor suggests a strong chemical of some sort that has been aerosolized near the point of impact. The officials will probably send out a Hazmat team, take air samples, collect the debris from the crash and investigate the exact composition. (Assuming that the authorities have the necessary resources. Otherwise they'll probably get someone to dispose of it and let the air clear.)
Actually, you got a chance to attempt to discredit it publicly. Which is what the process is about. Scientists argue back and forth on the exact causes, and correct each other as necessary. Now I'm reviewing the data you provided that swings the other direction.
Just about every scientist in it has said that they were misrepresented
Unfortunately, that's one point you didn't make with your links. I've read through them and I don't see where the scientist who were present in the documentary disclaimed their roles. Not that I don't believe you, but do you have links that back that up?
Actually, it is. According to the scientists who reported in "The Great Global Warming Swindle", the concept of CO2 warming was a fairly small area of research that wasn't taken very seriously (and actually seen as a benefit to combat Global Cooling!) until Margaret Thatcher decided to fund CO2 warming research. She was a big proponent of Nuclear Power and saw the CO2 warming research as another bullet point for the advantages of nuclear power. Once there was money on the table for the research, things went downhill from there.
If you haven't seen the documentary, I highly recommend it. One of the key issues they point out was that Gore's graph didn't show a slight problem with CO2 warming theory due to its scale of several million years. In specific, in the ice core samples used to create the data CO2 levels rose about 800 years AFTER the temperature rose. The reason? Because the ocean can hold less CO2 when it is warmed. (Which takes hundreds of years to cause an appreciable temperature change in a water body that large.) So it stops being a carbon sink and actually rejects already dissolved CO2. When the temperatures cool, the CO2 levels drop a few hundred years later as the ocean is able to reabsorb the CO2.
It doesn't actually have to dethrone powerpoint to be useful. I was extremely critical of Google Spreadsheet when it was first introduced. And for a lot of good reasons. But Google worked hard to improve it to the point where it was a usable platform. It still fails to replace Excel for all uses, but I've found that it makes a good collaboration tool over large distances. If there's some sort of project information, for example, that needs to be tracked, Google Spreadsheets works in a pinch.
I can see Google Presenter working the same. Have a phone meeting with important clients? Upload the Powerpoint presentation and email them the link. The remote office should be able to follow along with you. Possibly from their individual desks or from conference rooms with projectors.
That being said, I hope that Google takes this beyond PowerPoint's level of competence. Powerpoint is not that great of a tool to begin with and could stand quite a bit of improvement. Especially in the area of conveying information in a more elegant fashion.
...the example presentation is Proprietary and Confidential. So don't go spreading this link across the Internet! Especially not on one of those high traffic sites like Slashdot.
...if any open source developers will start making Open Hardware phones. With the rise of the cell phone as a complete multimedia platform (a wave to Apple in particular here), the market is ripe for sophisticated embedded hardware of the type that OSS developers have been toying with for some time now.
Obviously, the biggest hurdle is FCC regulations. You can't actually install and run the radio without an FCC license and/or a shielded area to test radio communications from. I don't know what's involved in being licensed for public airwaves (especially for development purposes), but even finding a mini-tower to install in your "Faraday garage" that you're sure properly emulates a true cell tower could be difficult.
Hmm... unless someone OSSed that first? An OSS cell network? (Yeah, right.);-)
So anyone riding the spacecraft better hope that there isn't a malfunction of the "slowing down" laser at the other end, as depending on the angle, that might be enough to exit the solar system altogether!
The article calls this a "Photon Thruster". What that means is that the device would be mounted on the vehicle as a thruster rather than the vehicle "riding" a laser-beam like in Beam-powered propulsion. So as long as the laser restarts after you flip the ship, you're good to go.
Note that this is a separate issue from powering a laser cluster large enough to reach Mars in a week...
Antimatter might be a compact way to store the required energy, but converting the gamma rays from matter/antimatter reactions to electricity is going to require heat exchangers and great big radiators as well.
Why bother? A graser is practically the same thing as a laser, so just focus the output of the reaction into a semi-cohesive beam. It doesn't have to be fully coherent as long as it exits the vehicle in the direction of thrust.
Of course, antimatter engines have been on the drawing board for decades. The key issue is actually storing enough antimatter to make the trip possible. Until that problem is solved, we're still looking at far longer trips than the article promises. Even a fission reactor is unlikely to produce enough energy to make a one-week trip to Mars feasible. Maybe a month with sufficient thrust and nuclear materials. I'd have to crunch the numbers to give you a better answer. Something which I'm terribly rusty at.
As I recall, the computations for reaching Mars in a week were predicated on One-G acceleration. i.e. Earth normal gravity for a ship in transit. To slow down, you simply spin the ship at the halfway point and accelerate in the opposite direction.
If (and I stress *if*) this invention is not so much hyperbole, it could change the face of space travel forever. We could build interplanetary starships (in this context, ships that never land on a planet) that would be limited only by their power-generation capabilities and not by their reactive fuel. Which means that we could build a ship with a large nuclear powerplant on board, and it could cruise the solar system for as long as its Uranium/Plutonium fuel held out.
Of course, we still need to solve the problem of high cost of launch, but that little issue would be easier to solve if we actually had somewhere to go once we got in orbit. Scaling up the number of launches would almost certainly bring the price per launch down. In fact, the reason why the Space Shuttle never reached its promised price-per-kilo is because it was predicated on regular launches that never materialized. Starships could change all that. Especially if the cost of moving personnel and equipment was marginalized by carrying more of them per trip.
For example, I always figured that a special module could be fitted to the Shuttle's cargo bay to carry as many as 60 people to the ISS. Given that the Shuttle has to be man-rated for flight, carrying people makes a lot more sense than hauling around equipment that's better served by a Delta or Atlas rocket.
Oh look. I did about 2 seconds of googling and came across a wonderful article describing all kinds of BIN files that Microsoft is embedding in 2007 "OOXML" documents:
BIN parts are of particular interest for the file format consumer or updater since the underlying file formats are undocumented (at the time of writing, August 10 2006) and are several additional file formats to deal with.
Short of Microsoft providing the exact specs for the BIN serializers of every involved part, consumers and implementers of the file format will have to stick to replicating structures that cannot be understood because of a discrepancy between serializers. It goes all the way up to guessing default values of the objects you work with, that's why it's such a big deal. One of those well-known file format loopholes, the ones that can give a vendor a say in the format's future as well as any interoperability scenario, across Windows and non-Windows platforms.
What good is a "standard" that is still impossible to implement in a method compatible with the leading office suite on the market?
I wish I had the time to sit and correct Miguel on things he should already know, but I'm afraid I have more important work to perform. My post was only to express my disappointment in him, not to get into a pointless argument.
FWIW, I'm shocked that Miguel didn't already know about the VBA issue. It's mentioned right on the NoOOXML page for the Binary Space complaint:
(Yes, sorry. I should have used the preview button.)
Jody left Novell some time ago, and today coincidentally he blogged about his opinion on OOXML and ODF, his blog post is very interesting, as he is an independent developer working now only on gnumeric and not in OOo nor being paid by Microsoft (as I know that many of you consider my opinion completely invalid and tainted):
Yes, very interesting. Jody says: "I did not comment on the quality of the formats. That will come up later."
What did Jody actually say? That OOXML was easier to support because Gnumeric already supported the XLS format. Which does nothing to address the relative merits of having a format like OOXML standardized under the terms with which Microsoft wishes to standardize it.
OH MY GOD THEY USE A BITFIELD THAT IS JUST SO-NOT-XML
Oh my God, they used a bitfield to encapsulate Microsoft-proprietary extensions like VBA rather than standardizing them as well. (Proper capitalization used to represent more somber tone of retort.)
I just do not have the energy or the time to compete with a guy whose full time job is to make sure OOXML is blocked.
That's right. It's Microsoft's job to pay off officials, exert political pressure, and abuse due process to ensure that OOXML is forced into consumer hands before ODF catches hold.
People claimed that 6,000 pages for 4 office applications was to big, but it comes down to 1,500 pages per application. And someone mentioned that removing the examples and changing the font size to use the same font size that the ODF spec uses the spreadsheet (or word processor, I cant remember) spec goes down to 700 pages.
A disingenuous argument at best. The ODF format supports those same four applications, plus a bit more. 1,500 per application is huge in comparison. Even if we assume that it's 700 per application, it's STILL huge when compared to 867 for ALL applications.
That being said, I don't mind long specifications if they are long for a good reason. Being long because ancient cruft is being supported for no real reason is not a "good" reason at all.
ODF is predicated on the ideals of KISS, interoperability, and long-term data storage and retrieval. OOXML is predicated on the concept of converting Microsoft formats to an XML description. While the latter may be a nice goal for Microsoft, it does not conform the the former ideals required for an international standardization effort.
I'm sorry Miguel. I've disagreed with you in the past, but I can't even begin to fathom your position in this matter.
Jody left Novell some time ago, and today coincidentally he blogged about his opinion on OOXML and ODF, his blog post is very interesting, as he is an independent developer working now only on gnumeric and not in OOo nor being paid by Microsoft (as I know that many of you consider my opinion completely invalid and tainted):
Yes, very interesting. Jody says: "I did not comment on the quality of the formats. That will come up later."
What did Jody actually say? That OOXML was easier to support because Gnumeric already supported the XLS format. Which does nothing to address the relative merits of having a format like OOXML standardized under the terms with which Microsoft wishes to standardize it.
OH MY GOD THEY USE A BITFIELD THAT IS JUST SO-NOT-XML
Oh my God, they used a bitfield to encapsulate Microsoft-proprietary extensions like VBA rather than standardizing them as well. (Proper capitalization used to represent more somber tone of retort.)
I just do not have the energy or the time to compete with a guy whose full time job is to make sure OOXML is blocked.
That's right. It's Microsoft's job to pay off officials, exert political pressure, and abuse due process to ensure that OOXML is forced into consumer hands before ODF catches hold.
People claimed that 6,000 pages for 4 office applications was to big, but it comes down to 1,500 pages per application. And someone mentioned that removing the examples and changing the font size to use the same font size that the ODF spec uses the spreadsheet (or word processor, I cant remember) spec goes down to 700 pages.
A disingenuous argument at best. The ODF format supports those same four applications, plus a bit more. 1,500 per application is huge in comparison. Even if we assume that it's 700 per application, it's STILL huge when compared to 867 for ALL applications.
That being said, I don't mind long specifications if they are long for a good reason. Being long because ancient cruft is being supported for no real reason is not a "good" reason at all.
ODF is predicated on the ideals of KISS, interoperability, and long-term data storage and retrieval. OOXML is predicated on the concept of converting Microsoft formats to an XML description. While the latter may be a nice goal for Microsoft, it does not conform the the former ideals required for an international standardization effort.
I'm sorry Miguel. I've disagreed with you in the past, but I can't even begin to fathom your position in this matter.
Heh. Sorry. Finding the time to finish the article has been a rather difficult proposition. I'll get it done. When? Umm... I'll get back to you on that...
Can you honestly say "Windows" is a generic OS name though? Do you often confuse Windows, the OS with a bunch of glass windows in your office?
One of the oddities of trademark law is that you can't trademark a word already in common usage. As Bill Gates mentioned in his book, Microsoft was not allowed to trademark "Windows" by the Patent and Trademark Office. However, they were allowed to patent "Microsoft Windows".
By using such a generic name, Microsoft set themselves up for a difficult legal situation. They rely entirely on "brand confusion" to protect a trademark that is technically only valid if the name of the company is prefixed to it.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of it yet. It *is* a full web interface. Which is a bonus for them. (Finally.) On the other hand, I was unable to determine if it was just XUL all over again. Which would still be neat, but not nearly as neat as it could be. There's practically no mention of ajaxOffice anywhere, with the video advertising Google Office apps. Hmm...
All the desktop widgets appear to be the same ones that Opera supports. Not quite sure what's up with that. One thing I didn't like was the use of a signed Java applet to access the desktop. While I'll grant that it may be necessary (though they might as well have signed the Javascript, then they could have just used the Firefox XPCOM APIs), it's kind of a clunky way of handling local system transfers. Once you invoke Java like that, there's always the question of why you don't just use Java in the first place?
I guess we'll see if it's truly worth any attention once the site is back up.
You're not missing much. Last time I saw "ajaxWindows" being worked on, it was nothing more than a regular Linux Desktop with the standard links replaced by the "ajaxOffice" applications. Given the stellar (*cough*) work done on ajaxOffice, I'm not exactly holding my breath for Michael to produce something new, original, and worth using.
For example, the one that made me choke on my coffee was the "Java MP3 Player" that got written, where they could just have shipped something like xmms.
No one really "wrote" that for JDS. They just repackaged the Java Media Player they already had on hand for their Video APIs. They bundled it with CDE as well, so it wasn't anything new. You might not have noticed it before if you skipped Solaris 8.
You would have thought that they would have had some internal communication, and, you know, improved Java.
Astounding idea. That must be why Sun, you know, improved Java. In case you haven't noticed, the Java we use today has everything from gaming services (OpenGL, OpenAL, 2D hardware acceleration, JavaSound, etc.) to nearly every Desktop service you could possibly want (Native L&F with actual hooks into the OS, Cross-platform systray support, Webstart Program Installer w/Program Menu integration, Full Printer APIs, etc.) on top of its already popular "Enterprise" services like Database, Networking, and XML parsing.
How do you figure that one?
Quantum bit already did a superb job addressing this one.
Slashdot Mirror
Pot meet kettle.
That's just stupid. If it's just sitting there, it's not going to hurt anyone. It actually has to be aerosolized (which is REALLY hard to do without industrial equipment) and inhaled to pose a significant threat. Even indigestion poses only minimal risks as most cases have resulted in the PU passing through with no harm to the subject.
Stop listening to Nader. He doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to Plutonium.
I can read just fine, thank you. And i presume that must be in the independent.co.uk article, because that's the only one that gives a "404: OracleJSP: java.io.FileNotFoundException". I checked the other links, and NONE of them contain that text.
And a quick check confirms it. Searching the Independent's site finds the article in question. The only one to contain the text you mention. The *correct* link is:
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2934320.ece
NOT:
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2368999.ece
as you had previously linked to. So... learn to hyperlink?
No, sorry. That's horrendously incorrect. There have only been a handful of missions that used RTGs as power sources. Most satellites rely on Solar Power and batteries to operate. The reasoning is simple: Nuclear materials are EXPENSIVE. Far too expensive for anyone other than NASA to use. And NASA only uses them for very specific missions where no other option is feasible. (For example, while the current rovers have a few grains of plutonium to keep the joints from freezing on Mars, they are still powered by solar panels. The follow-up mission was supposed to use RTGs to provide a longer-lasting robot, but that's being reevaluated in light of the longevity of Spirit and Opportunity.)
Wikipedia has a list of RTGs and their missions here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#RTG_models
PU-238 would be an unlikely source of problems of this sort. Most of the radiation is Alpha Particles which are easily rejected by human skin. (Alpha particle dangers are almost entirely due to internal consumption.) Even if we take possible Gamma and X-Ray emissions from long decay into account, the people who were near the meteor shouldn't feel sick until an hour or two after the exposure.
According to the article (coral cache), the problem was a "strange odor" that caused the headaches and vomiting. Such an odor suggests a strong chemical of some sort that has been aerosolized near the point of impact. The officials will probably send out a Hazmat team, take air samples, collect the debris from the crash and investigate the exact composition. (Assuming that the authorities have the necessary resources. Otherwise they'll probably get someone to dispose of it and let the air clear.)
Actually, you got a chance to attempt to discredit it publicly. Which is what the process is about. Scientists argue back and forth on the exact causes, and correct each other as necessary. Now I'm reviewing the data you provided that swings the other direction.
Unfortunately, that's one point you didn't make with your links. I've read through them and I don't see where the scientist who were present in the documentary disclaimed their roles. Not that I don't believe you, but do you have links that back that up?
Actually, it is. According to the scientists who reported in "The Great Global Warming Swindle", the concept of CO2 warming was a fairly small area of research that wasn't taken very seriously (and actually seen as a benefit to combat Global Cooling!) until Margaret Thatcher decided to fund CO2 warming research. She was a big proponent of Nuclear Power and saw the CO2 warming research as another bullet point for the advantages of nuclear power. Once there was money on the table for the research, things went downhill from there.
If you haven't seen the documentary, I highly recommend it. One of the key issues they point out was that Gore's graph didn't show a slight problem with CO2 warming theory due to its scale of several million years. In specific, in the ice core samples used to create the data CO2 levels rose about 800 years AFTER the temperature rose. The reason? Because the ocean can hold less CO2 when it is warmed. (Which takes hundreds of years to cause an appreciable temperature change in a water body that large.) So it stops being a carbon sink and actually rejects already dissolved CO2. When the temperatures cool, the CO2 levels drop a few hundred years later as the ocean is able to reabsorb the CO2.
It doesn't actually have to dethrone powerpoint to be useful. I was extremely critical of Google Spreadsheet when it was first introduced. And for a lot of good reasons. But Google worked hard to improve it to the point where it was a usable platform. It still fails to replace Excel for all uses, but I've found that it makes a good collaboration tool over large distances. If there's some sort of project information, for example, that needs to be tracked, Google Spreadsheets works in a pinch.
I can see Google Presenter working the same. Have a phone meeting with important clients? Upload the Powerpoint presentation and email them the link. The remote office should be able to follow along with you. Possibly from their individual desks or from conference rooms with projectors.
That being said, I hope that Google takes this beyond PowerPoint's level of competence. Powerpoint is not that great of a tool to begin with and could stand quite a bit of improvement. Especially in the area of conveying information in a more elegant fashion.
...the example presentation is Proprietary and Confidential. So don't go spreading this link across the Internet! Especially not on one of those high traffic sites like Slashdot.
[...]
(Oops)
...if any open source developers will start making Open Hardware phones. With the rise of the cell phone as a complete multimedia platform (a wave to Apple in particular here), the market is ripe for sophisticated embedded hardware of the type that OSS developers have been toying with for some time now.
;-)
Obviously, the biggest hurdle is FCC regulations. You can't actually install and run the radio without an FCC license and/or a shielded area to test radio communications from. I don't know what's involved in being licensed for public airwaves (especially for development purposes), but even finding a mini-tower to install in your "Faraday garage" that you're sure properly emulates a true cell tower could be difficult.
Hmm... unless someone OSSed that first? An OSS cell network? (Yeah, right.)
The article calls this a "Photon Thruster". What that means is that the device would be mounted on the vehicle as a thruster rather than the vehicle "riding" a laser-beam like in Beam-powered propulsion. So as long as the laser restarts after you flip the ship, you're good to go.
Note that this is a separate issue from powering a laser cluster large enough to reach Mars in a week...
Why bother? A graser is practically the same thing as a laser, so just focus the output of the reaction into a semi-cohesive beam. It doesn't have to be fully coherent as long as it exits the vehicle in the direction of thrust.
Of course, antimatter engines have been on the drawing board for decades. The key issue is actually storing enough antimatter to make the trip possible. Until that problem is solved, we're still looking at far longer trips than the article promises. Even a fission reactor is unlikely to produce enough energy to make a one-week trip to Mars feasible. Maybe a month with sufficient thrust and nuclear materials. I'd have to crunch the numbers to give you a better answer. Something which I'm terribly rusty at.
As I recall, the computations for reaching Mars in a week were predicated on One-G acceleration. i.e. Earth normal gravity for a ship in transit. To slow down, you simply spin the ship at the halfway point and accelerate in the opposite direction.
If (and I stress *if*) this invention is not so much hyperbole, it could change the face of space travel forever. We could build interplanetary starships (in this context, ships that never land on a planet) that would be limited only by their power-generation capabilities and not by their reactive fuel. Which means that we could build a ship with a large nuclear powerplant on board, and it could cruise the solar system for as long as its Uranium/Plutonium fuel held out.
Of course, we still need to solve the problem of high cost of launch, but that little issue would be easier to solve if we actually had somewhere to go once we got in orbit. Scaling up the number of launches would almost certainly bring the price per launch down. In fact, the reason why the Space Shuttle never reached its promised price-per-kilo is because it was predicated on regular launches that never materialized. Starships could change all that. Especially if the cost of moving personnel and equipment was marginalized by carrying more of them per trip.
For example, I always figured that a special module could be fitted to the Shuttle's cargo bay to carry as many as 60 people to the ISS. Given that the Shuttle has to be man-rated for flight, carrying people makes a lot more sense than hauling around equipment that's better served by a Delta or Atlas rocket.
How exciting! And probably too good to be true.
http://www.codeproject.com/cs/library/office2007bin.asp
What good is a "standard" that is still impossible to implement in a method compatible with the leading office suite on the market?
You assume too much:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=293507&cid=20555063
I wish I had the time to sit and correct Miguel on things he should already know, but I'm afraid I have more important work to perform. My post was only to express my disappointment in him, not to get into a pointless argument.
FWIW, I'm shocked that Miguel didn't already know about the VBA issue. It's mentioned right on the NoOOXML page for the Binary Space complaint:
http://www.noooxml.org/binaryspace
A reference? Certainly. Ever hear of "vbaProject.bin"?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa982683.aspx
Yes, very interesting. Jody says: "I did not comment on the quality of the formats. That will come up later."
What did Jody actually say? That OOXML was easier to support because Gnumeric already supported the XLS format. Which does nothing to address the relative merits of having a format like OOXML standardized under the terms with which Microsoft wishes to standardize it.
Oh my God, they used a bitfield to encapsulate Microsoft-proprietary extensions like VBA rather than standardizing them as well. (Proper capitalization used to represent more somber tone of retort.)
That's right. It's Microsoft's job to pay off officials, exert political pressure, and abuse due process to ensure that OOXML is forced into consumer hands before ODF catches hold.
A disingenuous argument at best. The ODF format supports those same four applications, plus a bit more. 1,500 per application is huge in comparison. Even if we assume that it's 700 per application, it's STILL huge when compared to 867 for ALL applications.
That being said, I don't mind long specifications if they are long for a good reason. Being long because ancient cruft is being supported for no real reason is not a "good" reason at all.
ODF is predicated on the ideals of KISS, interoperability, and long-term data storage and retrieval. OOXML is predicated on the concept of converting Microsoft formats to an XML description. While the latter may be a nice goal for Microsoft, it does not conform the the former ideals required for an international standardization effort.
I'm sorry Miguel. I've disagreed with you in the past, but I can't even begin to fathom your position in this matter.
Heh. Sorry. Finding the time to finish the article has been a rather difficult proposition. I'll get it done. When? Umm... I'll get back to you on that...
One of the oddities of trademark law is that you can't trademark a word already in common usage. As Bill Gates mentioned in his book, Microsoft was not allowed to trademark "Windows" by the Patent and Trademark Office. However, they were allowed to patent "Microsoft Windows".
By using such a generic name, Microsoft set themselves up for a difficult legal situation. They rely entirely on "brand confusion" to protect a trademark that is technically only valid if the name of the company is prefixed to it.
The demo was back online for a short time. They moved the intro video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX9SvLtr4J8
I'm not entirely sure what to make of it yet. It *is* a full web interface. Which is a bonus for them. (Finally.) On the other hand, I was unable to determine if it was just XUL all over again. Which would still be neat, but not nearly as neat as it could be. There's practically no mention of ajaxOffice anywhere, with the video advertising Google Office apps. Hmm...
All the desktop widgets appear to be the same ones that Opera supports. Not quite sure what's up with that. One thing I didn't like was the use of a signed Java applet to access the desktop. While I'll grant that it may be necessary (though they might as well have signed the Javascript, then they could have just used the Firefox XPCOM APIs), it's kind of a clunky way of handling local system transfers. Once you invoke Java like that, there's always the question of why you don't just use Java in the first place?
I guess we'll see if it's truly worth any attention once the site is back up.
After being Slashdotted several times before, you'd think he'd learn to have enough capacity for these things. :-/
You're not missing much. Last time I saw "ajaxWindows" being worked on, it was nothing more than a regular Linux Desktop with the standard links replaced by the "ajaxOffice" applications. Given the stellar (*cough*) work done on ajaxOffice, I'm not exactly holding my breath for Michael to produce something new, original, and worth using.
No one really "wrote" that for JDS. They just repackaged the Java Media Player they already had on hand for their Video APIs. They bundled it with CDE as well, so it wasn't anything new. You might not have noticed it before if you skipped Solaris 8.
Astounding idea. That must be why Sun, you know, improved Java. In case you haven't noticed, the Java we use today has everything from gaming services (OpenGL, OpenAL, 2D hardware acceleration, JavaSound, etc.) to nearly every Desktop service you could possibly want (Native L&F with actual hooks into the OS, Cross-platform systray support, Webstart Program Installer w/Program Menu integration, Full Printer APIs, etc.) on top of its already popular "Enterprise" services like Database, Networking, and XML parsing.
Quantum bit already did a superb job addressing this one.