Point of fact, AJAX is a technique, a mindset, an approach, rather than a specific technology implementation.
As an example, I built an application nearly six years ago, LONG before I had even heard of the XMLHttpRequest object... this application used a hidden frame where all form submissions were targetted to, and some relatively (at the time at least) fancy Javascript to populate pre-existing
s in the main content frame... you see, *all* the pages of the application were loaded at startup, and what the server returned from then on out was nothing but data that was inserted into the appropriate elements, and then the appropriate
was shown.
This is equivalent to what we know as AJAX today, but without XML, and without the specialized component to make the requests. AJAX is a misnomer because it doesn't require usage of XMLHttpRequest, nor does it even require XML. But, the underlying concept, that every request to the server DOES NOT need to result in a new page, is what is key.
FYI, it doesn't even have to result in something new being displayed... unknown to many is the fact that the server can return a chunk of Javascript to be executed. Have a look here:
Download the bin package and drop it in your favorite container, then navigate to the taglib sample page and check out the AjaxTags example that returns and executes Javascript on-the-fly. Think of what's possible there! AJAX IS NOT simply inserting new content into a
, the other popular misconception!
Ok, let's put any (probably legitimate) criticism of Photoshop aside for a moment... no one has ever claimed it was a product designed for anyone but grahics professionals.
I don't go around complaining that the emissions test computers they use on your car is too complex for the shadetree mechanic. I don't go around saying that the tools they use at the optometrist to measure occular aberations is too complicated for my wife to use to test my kids.
These are professional tools, meant to be used by professionals who will have the necessary training and time invested to learn to use them. That the everyman finds them complex shouldn't be surprising or criticised.
Paint Shop Pro, until the most recent versions anyway, was always nearly as powerful as Photoshop and considerably less complex. For someone like me who does some occasional graphics work, but is far from a professional, it was nirvana. Why Dvorak can't see that is beyond me.
Ah, sorry, of course I can see why... he's a writer, and he's gotta write, and when you read anything by Dvorak you have to ask whether it's something legitimate (sometimes) or just a fluff piece to meet his required allotment of columns for the week (frequently). This one falls in the later category as far as I'm concerned.
But, the way I understand it (and maybe I don't) is that if the shell doesn't recognize it as a command (and I bunch an executable something-or-other in as a command) then it treats it as an expression. While this isn't arbitrary, I can certainly see why it might give the appearance of it being so.
It might even be the case that there are no built-in commands per se, everything is an external executable. In that case, any executable not found in the path is an expression, end of story. This would be reasonable to me, at least after 5 seconds of thinking about it.
Your example of '5' is a good one... if that was an executable I would expect it to be executed, assuming it was in the path. If it isn't found though, whether because I typo'd 6 or because 5 isn't in the path, it's treated as an expression. This makes sense to me and jives with it being an "interactive shell" ala Ruby.
Ah, so, by extension you should be bitching about every shell that assumes I entered a command? Shouldn't I have to TELL IT to 'execute ls'? Why does it ASSUME that if I type ls I want to see a directory listing? Stupid shell, I hate them when they do things for me!
And, you know, if a shell is going to make an assumption at all, I'd prefer it assume it's an expression than a command because if someone aliases ls with rm -fR, better it just echo that back then execute it, right?!?
I think Yahoo! has managed to take this next round
on
Preview of New MSN Hotmail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Now, which one wins on FUNCTIONALITY? Dunno. That's obviously what matters most, but if we're going to talk about which looks most desktop-like, I think Yahoo! takes the crown, for now.
#5 Battlestar: Galactica (new) #4 The Outer Limits (original) #3 Star Trek TOS #2 Stargate SG-1 #1 Babylon 5...is not worth reading any further IMO. The only arguable point in my mind is whether BSG should actually be ahead of The Outer Limits. My feeling is it probably will be, and could even beat out ST:TOS in the end, but for now it's where it should be.
Scroll down about half way to the "Does Mercury have an atmosphere?" question. Seems it does, sort of, kind, in a way:)
You raise an interesting point though, and illustrate just how hard defining a planet actually is... we'd have to define what exactly an "atmosphere" is first:)
I should point out that I deliberatly tried to write these criteria so that the existing planets in our solar systen would all qualify, but (to the best of my knowledge) no known Kuiper Belt Objects, or any other object out there that we know about, would qualify. I'm *fairly* sure I succeeded:)
Also, no existing moons would change in classification. I believe this is the way it should be, I don't think it is warranted to change the status of any known objects. The outer planets have always been debatable, but I give them the benefit of the doubt.
* Must orbit a star, in any form (i.e., brown dwarf, red giant, typical main sequence, etc). While I suspect there may be planets out there that are not orbiting stars, my bet is that they are rare enough to warrant their own title. Anything else is most likely not something that might be considered a planet (i.e., comets and the like, which may not be in orbits around stars).
* Must *not* orbit another body that itself would qualify as a planet (yes, I realize that technically our moon orbits the Sun just like Earth does, but the distinction is which body exerts the most direct gravitational effect). It seems reasonable that if an object is orbiting something we call a planet, it probably should not be a planet itself, it should be a moon. A problem here is of course when we discover a binary planet system where both objects would otherwise be called a planet. I say tie goes to the larger object:) It's the planet, the smaller body is a moon. Call me when we find a system where the objects are identical in size!
* Must be larger than our own moon by at least 10%. This is the most arbitrary of the criteria, but I think of it like this... we need a known reference point for comparison, and since no one wants to call the moon a planet, I'll add a little and call it a selection criteria!:) I don't want to see a bunch of asteroids being called planets because they meet the other criteria. I'm sure we'll discover some interesting exceptions, but for the most part I think this will wind up being true.
* Its orbital path must be something close to circular, perhaps to within 25% or something... all the planets in our own solar system are someting close to circular orbits (I don't know by what percentage they vary away from a perfect circle, but I'm guessing it's no more than 25%). Anything in a more eccentric orbit is probably a comet or meteor or something like that, and this rule should help keep it that way.
* It must posess some atmosphere. A body with no atmosphere probably isn't large enough anyway, but I think its important to state it. It can be as thin an atmosphere as you like, so long as it has something.
Eh, I'm sure there's all kinds of flaws with those criteria, but no one else seems to be coming up with the obvious right answer either:)
This is a component of the larger Java Web Parts project called AjaxTags. It's a taglib that allows you to easily add AJAX functionality to arbitrary page elements in a purely declarative manner, i.e., *NO* coding on your part (although there is more capability there if you need more). It really makes AJAX a breeze, and is pretty powerful at the same time. If you are a Java web developer, have a look, you may very much like what you see!
I could be an uber geek and quote Jeffrey Sinclair here because he answered this question better than it's ever been answered before (and no, I don't know if it was said by someone else first in real life, but it was never delivered better, I'd say that!), but I'll do it myself with the same overall theme in mind...
Simply put, we *have* to go. The Earth isn't going to be around forever. Unless we get off this rock and get our species out into the vastness of space, we are at risk of extinction, and it's that simple.
Talk about asteroid collisions, talk about global warming, talk about nuclear war, talk about some super plague or just talk about the absolute inevitable demise of our Sun... all of these, and plenty more that we can't think of, lead to our extinction unless we colonize space.
We *have* to do this, and we *can't* wait simply because while we know we have time before the Sun goes out, we don't know about the other things. The longer we wait, the closer we get to extinction, regardless of any other factors. That is an absolute truth. We can't leave it to future generations, we have to get the ball rolling now, and learning how to live in space permanently in a relatively benign environment like the moon before we try it when it matter in even more less hospitable environments.
I'd goot the bill myself in a hearbeat if I could, believe me.
And now I will be a little geeky... when you have a vast data infrastructure to deal with in an enterprise setting, isn't geographic diversity and disaster recovery integral to what you do? Of course it is, if you want to survive! And if you wait a week for that backup server to come down in price because you don't want to incur the difficulty and cost right away and your datacenter gets flooded in the mean time, was waiting a good choice? HELL NO!
Think of going to the moon as geographic diversity for the human species. The moon, then Mars, then we figure out a way to traverse the distance between stars and off we go, survival virtually guaranteed.
As a Bush supporter, I have just one thing to say here...
BULLSHIT.
Bush deserves every bit of blame he's getting, and probably more. He has done virtually nothing to make a horrible situation better, and aruably has made it worse by not reacting in a timely fashion.
He also says something stupid seemingly every time he opens his mouth these days.
Look, I voted for the guy. I felt he was the best available choice. I supported going to war in Iraq. But his second term has frankly, thus far, made me absolutely regret that vote. This situation is not helping any at all. The one thing he should be doing more than anything is LEADING. Get up there, be definitive, tell people what to do and see that it's done. He's not doing that.
Bullshit. Bush deserves every bit of flake he's getting now, and that's coming from a supporter.
"...those IT managers having trouble simply 'aren't looking hard enough.'"
Isn't that EXACTLY the point of buying from a vendor? So that I can EASILY and QUICKLY get the support I need WITHOUT HAVING TO LOOK FOR IT?!?
I can see the MS and Sun and IBM ad campaigns next week..
"Choose XXXX because our support staff is a phonecall away, 24/7x365... Or make sure you have a good newsgroup feed and bookmark all the good OSS sites because that's your other option!"
Ugh. With friends like this wino, who needs enemeis?
I absolutely agree... they made probably the best choice they could under the circumstances. More than that, it sounds very much like they would have made the same choice even if they had money growing on trees in the office. They had some good reasons for choosing Linux, and although I don't consider myself a Linux fan, I think they made a great decision that has served them well.
My only point was that they didn't say they choose the technically superior solution, which is an interesting omission in light of all the zealots out there (as you correctly call them) who claim Linux couldn't have been engineered better by God herself:)
I find it interesting that there didn't seem to be any mention of Linux' technical superiority over Windows. That doesn't seem to be one of Googles' reasons for going with Linux. This is interesting because many people claim Linux is far superior to Windows in terms of basic architecture and technical design, yet Google didn't see fit to mention that reason, if that is one of their reasons at all. And it MAY BE one of their reasons and they just forgot to mention it, but it's an intersting, ah, Freudian non-slip I suppose:)
(1) Get this virus into the DMCA-supporters computers.
(2) When they are screaming that all their data is encrypted, kindly inform them that you could create a crack for it and get all their data back, but unfortunately you would run afoul of the DMCA reverse-engineering laws and therefore cannot help them.
You fired someone for making a suggestion that turned out bad and in the end was a decision *YOU* were responsible for?!?
That guy is *A LOT* better off now than he was working for you, that much is clear. You are a terrible leader in the worst sense, someone who will cover their own ass at the expense of others.
You are lucky I am not *YOUR* boss... you'd be on the unemployment line right behind that guy... no, actually, only *YOU* would be on the unemployment line... I'd hire him back and get him a better boss too.
...what you need is to slap the crap out of some executives there and get them to hire AT LEAST 1 more person to cover you arse.
Where I work, we're always hearing about how we need to be sure to properly document and do knowledge transfers to others on our teams just in case the lead gets hit by a bus. As much as we laugh about it, it couldn't be more true, because after the sad eMails go around the office, people will want to know how what the dead guy was responsible for is gonna be kept going.
Slashdot Mirror
Point of fact, AJAX is a technique, a mindset, an approach, rather than a specific technology implementation.
As an example, I built an application nearly six years ago, LONG before I had even heard of the XMLHttpRequest object... this application used a hidden frame where all form submissions were targetted to, and some relatively (at the time at least) fancy Javascript to populate pre-existing s in the main content frame... you see, *all* the pages of the application were loaded at startup, and what the server returned from then on out was nothing but data that was inserted into the appropriate elements, and then the appropriate was shown.
This is equivalent to what we know as AJAX today, but without XML, and without the specialized component to make the requests. AJAX is a misnomer because it doesn't require usage of XMLHttpRequest, nor does it even require XML. But, the underlying concept, that every request to the server DOES NOT need to result in a new page, is what is key.
FYI, it doesn't even have to result in something new being displayed... unknown to many is the fact that the server can return a chunk of Javascript to be executed. Have a look here:
http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net/
Download the bin package and drop it in your favorite container, then navigate to the taglib sample page and check out the AjaxTags example that returns and executes Javascript on-the-fly. Think of what's possible there! AJAX IS NOT simply inserting new content into a , the other popular misconception!
Ok, let's put any (probably legitimate) criticism of Photoshop aside for a moment... no one has ever claimed it was a product designed for anyone but grahics professionals.
I don't go around complaining that the emissions test computers they use on your car is too complex for the shadetree mechanic. I don't go around saying that the tools they use at the optometrist to measure occular aberations is too complicated for my wife to use to test my kids.
These are professional tools, meant to be used by professionals who will have the necessary training and time invested to learn to use them. That the everyman finds them complex shouldn't be surprising or criticised.
Paint Shop Pro, until the most recent versions anyway, was always nearly as powerful as Photoshop and considerably less complex. For someone like me who does some occasional graphics work, but is far from a professional, it was nirvana. Why Dvorak can't see that is beyond me.
Ah, sorry, of course I can see why... he's a writer, and he's gotta write, and when you read anything by Dvorak you have to ask whether it's something legitimate (sometimes) or just a fluff piece to meet his required allotment of columns for the week (frequently). This one falls in the later category as far as I'm concerned.
That's a fair point...
But, the way I understand it (and maybe I don't) is that if the shell doesn't recognize it as a command (and I bunch an executable something-or-other in as a command) then it treats it as an expression. While this isn't arbitrary, I can certainly see why it might give the appearance of it being so.
It might even be the case that there are no built-in commands per se, everything is an external executable. In that case, any executable not found in the path is an expression, end of story. This would be reasonable to me, at least after 5 seconds of thinking about it.
Your example of '5' is a good one... if that was an executable I would expect it to be executed, assuming it was in the path. If it isn't found though, whether because I typo'd 6 or because 5 isn't in the path, it's treated as an expression. This makes sense to me and jives with it being an "interactive shell" ala Ruby.
Ah, so, by extension you should be bitching about every shell that assumes I entered a command? Shouldn't I have to TELL IT to 'execute ls'? Why does it ASSUME that if I type ls I want to see a directory listing? Stupid shell, I hate them when they do things for me!
And, you know, if a shell is going to make an assumption at all, I'd prefer it assume it's an expression than a command because if someone aliases ls with rm -fR, better it just echo that back then execute it, right?!?
http://patcavit.com/2005/09/14/y-mail-beta-impress ions/
Looks VERY sharp.
Now, which one wins on FUNCTIONALITY? Dunno. That's obviously what matters most, but if we're going to talk about which looks most desktop-like, I think Yahoo! takes the crown, for now.
Good point... besides, KITT's voice was always very soothing :)
#5 Battlestar: Galactica (new) ...is not worth reading any further IMO. The only arguable point in my mind is whether BSG should actually be ahead of The Outer Limits. My feeling is it probably will be, and could even beat out ST:TOS in the end, but for now it's where it should be.
:)
#4 The Outer Limits (original)
#3 Star Trek TOS
#2 Stargate SG-1
#1 Babylon 5
And don't bother disagreeing, you are wrong
Does it meet the other criteria?
I have no doubt there are a bunch of objects out there yet to be discovered that will be borderline cases, regardless of what definition one chooses.
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications /tnl/22/22.html
:)
:)
Scroll down about half way to the "Does Mercury have an atmosphere?" question. Seems it does, sort of, kind, in a way
You raise an interesting point though, and illustrate just how hard defining a planet actually is... we'd have to define what exactly an "atmosphere" is first
I should point out that I deliberatly tried to write these criteria so that the existing planets in our solar systen would all qualify, but (to the best of my knowledge) no known Kuiper Belt Objects, or any other object out there that we know about, would qualify. I'm *fairly* sure I succeeded :)
Also, no existing moons would change in classification. I believe this is the way it should be, I don't think it is warranted to change the status of any known objects. The outer planets have always been debatable, but I give them the benefit of the doubt.
* Must orbit a star, in any form (i.e., brown dwarf, red giant, typical main sequence, etc). While I suspect there may be planets out there that are not orbiting stars, my bet is that they are rare enough to warrant their own title. Anything else is most likely not something that might be considered a planet (i.e., comets and the like, which may not be in orbits around stars).
:) It's the planet, the smaller body is a moon. Call me when we find a system where the objects are identical in size!
:) I don't want to see a bunch of asteroids being called planets because they meet the other criteria. I'm sure we'll discover some interesting exceptions, but for the most part I think this will wind up being true.
:)
* Must *not* orbit another body that itself would qualify as a planet (yes, I realize that technically our moon orbits the Sun just like Earth does, but the distinction is which body exerts the most direct gravitational effect). It seems reasonable that if an object is orbiting something we call a planet, it probably should not be a planet itself, it should be a moon. A problem here is of course when we discover a binary planet system where both objects would otherwise be called a planet. I say tie goes to the larger object
* Must be larger than our own moon by at least 10%. This is the most arbitrary of the criteria, but I think of it like this... we need a known reference point for comparison, and since no one wants to call the moon a planet, I'll add a little and call it a selection criteria!
* Its orbital path must be something close to circular, perhaps to within 25% or something... all the planets in our own solar system are someting close to circular orbits (I don't know by what percentage they vary away from a perfect circle, but I'm guessing it's no more than 25%). Anything in a more eccentric orbit is probably a comet or meteor or something like that, and this rule should help keep it that way.
* It must posess some atmosphere. A body with no atmosphere probably isn't large enough anyway, but I think its important to state it. It can be as thin an atmosphere as you like, so long as it has something.
Eh, I'm sure there's all kinds of flaws with those criteria, but no one else seems to be coming up with the obvious right answer either
Since everyone else is mentioning their favorite AJAX toolkit, I'll list one too:
x .html
http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net/javadocs/inde
This is a component of the larger Java Web Parts project called AjaxTags. It's a taglib that allows you to easily add AJAX functionality to arbitrary page elements in a purely declarative manner, i.e., *NO* coding on your part (although there is more capability there if you need more). It really makes AJAX a breeze, and is pretty powerful at the same time. If you are a Java web developer, have a look, you may very much like what you see!
P.S., The parent projects' page is here:
http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net/
I could be an uber geek and quote Jeffrey Sinclair here because he answered this question better than it's ever been answered before (and no, I don't know if it was said by someone else first in real life, but it was never delivered better, I'd say that!), but I'll do it myself with the same overall theme in mind...
Simply put, we *have* to go. The Earth isn't going to be around forever. Unless we get off this rock and get our species out into the vastness of space, we are at risk of extinction, and it's that simple.
Talk about asteroid collisions, talk about global warming, talk about nuclear war, talk about some super plague or just talk about the absolute inevitable demise of our Sun... all of these, and plenty more that we can't think of, lead to our extinction unless we colonize space.
We *have* to do this, and we *can't* wait simply because while we know we have time before the Sun goes out, we don't know about the other things. The longer we wait, the closer we get to extinction, regardless of any other factors. That is an absolute truth. We can't leave it to future generations, we have to get the ball rolling now, and learning how to live in space permanently in a relatively benign environment like the moon before we try it when it matter in even more less hospitable environments.
I'd goot the bill myself in a hearbeat if I could, believe me.
And now I will be a little geeky... when you have a vast data infrastructure to deal with in an enterprise setting, isn't geographic diversity and disaster recovery integral to what you do? Of course it is, if you want to survive! And if you wait a week for that backup server to come down in price because you don't want to incur the difficulty and cost right away and your datacenter gets flooded in the mean time, was waiting a good choice? HELL NO!
Think of going to the moon as geographic diversity for the human species. The moon, then Mars, then we figure out a way to traverse the distance between stars and off we go, survival virtually guaranteed.
As a Bush supporter, I have just one thing to say here...
BULLSHIT.
Bush deserves every bit of blame he's getting, and probably more. He has done virtually nothing to make a horrible situation better, and aruably has made it worse by not reacting in a timely fashion.
He also says something stupid seemingly every time he opens his mouth these days.
Look, I voted for the guy. I felt he was the best available choice. I supported going to war in Iraq. But his second term has frankly, thus far, made me absolutely regret that vote. This situation is not helping any at all. The one thing he should be doing more than anything is LEADING. Get up there, be definitive, tell people what to do and see that it's done. He's not doing that.
Bullshit. Bush deserves every bit of flake he's getting now, and that's coming from a supporter.
"...those IT managers having trouble simply 'aren't looking hard enough.'"
Isn't that EXACTLY the point of buying from a vendor? So that I can EASILY and QUICKLY get the support I need WITHOUT HAVING TO LOOK FOR IT?!?
I can see the MS and Sun and IBM ad campaigns next week..
"Choose XXXX because our support staff is a phonecall away, 24/7x365... Or make sure you have a good newsgroup feed and bookmark all the good OSS sites because that's your other option!"
Ugh. With friends like this wino, who needs enemeis?
Anyone see the T-shirts Manny Ramirez of Boston Red Sox fame had made up? It simply says "Manny Being Manny".
Time for the "Microsoft Being Microsoft" shirts.
I absolutely agree... they made probably the best choice they could under the circumstances. More than that, it sounds very much like they would have made the same choice even if they had money growing on trees in the office. They had some good reasons for choosing Linux, and although I don't consider myself a Linux fan, I think they made a great decision that has served them well.
:)
My only point was that they didn't say they choose the technically superior solution, which is an interesting omission in light of all the zealots out there (as you correctly call them) who claim Linux couldn't have been engineered better by God herself
I find it interesting that there didn't seem to be any mention of Linux' technical superiority over Windows. That doesn't seem to be one of Googles' reasons for going with Linux. This is interesting because many people claim Linux is far superior to Windows in terms of basic architecture and technical design, yet Google didn't see fit to mention that reason, if that is one of their reasons at all. And it MAY BE one of their reasons and they just forgot to mention it, but it's an intersting, ah, Freudian non-slip I suppose :)
I will gladly give up the convenience of connectivity on airplanes (something I look forward to) if it means causing problems finding life in space.
And if you give any answer other than that, you have NO RIGHT to be reading Slashdot!
...besides, I like my festering eye cancer just fine the way it's developing, thank you very much.
Twoeasy steps:
(1) Get this virus into the DMCA-supporters computers.
(2) When they are screaming that all their data is encrypted, kindly inform them that you could create a crack for it and get all their data back, but unfortunately you would run afoul of the DMCA reverse-engineering laws and therefore cannot help them.
Yes. Irony is *NOT* dead!!
You fired someone for making a suggestion that turned out bad and in the end was a decision *YOU* were responsible for?!?
That guy is *A LOT* better off now than he was working for you, that much is clear. You are a terrible leader in the worst sense, someone who will cover their own ass at the expense of others.
You are lucky I am not *YOUR* boss... you'd be on the unemployment line right behind that guy... no, actually, only *YOU* would be on the unemployment line... I'd hire him back and get him a better boss too.
...what you need is to slap the crap out of some executives there and get them to hire AT LEAST 1 more person to cover you arse.
Where I work, we're always hearing about how we need to be sure to properly document and do knowledge transfers to others on our teams just in case the lead gets hit by a bus. As much as we laugh about it, it couldn't be more true, because after the sad eMails go around the office, people will want to know how what the dead guy was responsible for is gonna be kept going.
...to FINALLY have working voice recognition! :)
Now for the obligatory...
* Now imagine a Beowolf cluster of these!
* This would make a hell of a MAME PC!
* Windows will finally boot up in under five minutes!
* Any Java GUI app would STILL run like a dog on this!
Did I miss any??
Eh, I think your stretching the definitions a bit here, but what you say *IS* of course technically correct. :)