Didn't macrovision patent ways around their copy protection as a way to block their use? Perhaps this patent is a weapon to prevent ad techniques like this from being used.
>>Unfortunately, I don't think anyone's going to buy a relatively expensive mac just so they can try osx on a machine that will still run windoze.
I don't see why this is a strange idea at all. Up until now, it has been a big risk for a Windows user to buy a Mac. That's a lot of money to spend on something you don't know will work for you. Now if you don't like OS X you're really only out a small premium and still have a good Windows machine. I've had three family members decide that was enough for them to give the Mac a chance. My father in law already got an iMac and has never bothered to boot back into Windows. I actually think there won't be that many people who regularly boot back and forth. If you are using something on the PC that often you'll buy one.
The expense difference isn't enough to matter to most people. Most people don't buy the cheapest option for any other thing in their life either.
I don't play games so I have a question about how spectator friendly these games are. It seems to me that games need a way to have an outside view and hopefully one controllable by a director. Is anything like that available? Ideally I would think you'd need several controllable chase cameras that could be used to watch the action from multiple angles so that I production staff could follow the action and show replay/highlights.
One thing I've seen is more people in the house using the connection at a time. A couple of years ago my wife never used the computer and my kids were too young. Now my wife gets online a few times a week and I bought my daughter an imac for christmas. In a couple of years she'll be using the computer even more and my younger daughter will be getting online. Throw in more appliances using bandwidth (Tivo etc) and I'll need a lot more bandwidth even if I don't change my personal usage at all.
But movies aren't the only kind of video content. The podcasting phenomenon shows a much more likely video scenario. I use my ipod and podcasting subscriptions to keep up with a lot of radio shows I would normally miss. I think the most popular "vpod" content will be time shifting short format news and sports highlights and opinion to watch on the train/bus or on breaks. This content works fine on a small screen.
The other big thing will be videos of the kids, which ties right into the iMovie thing that Apple is already into.
>>>I don't see much hope for games on Linux for a few years >>>yet which is sort of odd given Linux's marketshare as being >>>so much greater than OS X
Linux might have a larger marketshare in general but that doesn't mean a larger audience for games. i have 1 mac at home and run linux on 6 servers at work and a test server at home. The only box that I might ever buy a game for is the home mac.
I have a couple of commercial programs that are supported on RH 7.3 or RH 8. Without support for these versions what distributions are most like them? I did try installing on RH 9 and it didn't work so "not supported on" means more than they won't answer the call.
If you are starting a new project with Java, I would highly recommmed using JSP instead of PHP. JSP has come along way especially since the advent of JSTL (which I continually praise on Slashdot everytime a Java article is posted;-) ).
I completely agree with this statement. I am a longterm PHP user and still used it over Java when I needed to build small projects quickly. The JSTL (Java Standard Tag Library) has completely changed my mind on this. It makes simple web apps as easy as PHP or even Cold Fusion yet you can always move things out into Java Classes or Servlets if things need to scale up.
I completely agree with reading the Hugo and Nebula candidates. I started doing this last year and keep a list in my Palm of the candidates of the last few years and the winners for 1985 on. I'd say a vast magority are good and have discovered several interesting authors that I hadn't heard of before. I've only had one not be worth finishing, which is way ahead of when I was just trying out new authors by reading the back of the book.
I like KDE a lot more than Gnome and would be interested in a KDE focused distro. Failing that, I guess a distro that had an easy way to customize to a KDE centric setup.
I've used Smarty and patTemplate and like them both. I don't know that I would really call it MVC but they keep layout out of the logic. With patTemplate especially I end up with a lot less files that are easier to edit.
I mostly use Java, either Struts or Servlets depending on the app. I was pretty much hating going back to php for anything until I started using the template engines. Now I wouldn't do php without one.
Struts can be used with Velocity. Velocity can only replace JSP, not struts.
I use Struts but I'm not clear on why you would use it without JSP. I think of the taglibs as half the product. It seems if you want to use Velocity or XML/XSLT you would use a framework more optimized to work with those like Webwork or Turbine.
However, when you need your product written yesterday, Struts will just slow you down with all of the added abstractions that the architecture enforces.
I felt this way on the first couple of projects I used it on but now that I know my way around it I've changed my mind. Most of the things it does are things you're going to have to get to eventually so any time it wastes in the first week is more than made up in the later weeks.
The only thing I don't really get benefit from is the abstraction of error messages and labels into the applications.properties files. I'd like to just put the messages in the code. That's just because I never have i18n in any of my sites. Clients love it when we say that we can do it easily in the future though so maybe it's worth it for that.
I'm interested in Struts alternatives like Tapestry. Webwork and Barracuda are two others that look very interesting. Does anyone know if there is still any momentum with the other Jakarta framework, Turbine?
The main difference in these frameworks is how you handle the html. Struts is JSP focused, Barracuda uses XMLC and Tapestry uses HTML with extra tags, Webwork and Turbine use Velocity as a first choice and can use JSP.
I use Struts a lot now. The community is very active and helpful. There is more documentation available and with a lot of the development is by Sun insiders so I expect it to be around for a while. Unlike some, I see the JSP focus as an advantage in that it can easily include other tag libraries.
That said, I'd like to see people post advantages to other approaches. Not "Struts sucks, use XYZ!" but "XYZ is better when your site uses ABC and needs to DEF".
This discussion seems to be all about the difficulties of taxing in so many jurisdictions. Why not just tax at the seller's address? When I stop at a store anywhere and buy something they don't ask me where I live and charge me Dallas Texas taxes.
You'd also have the competition effect of keeping the taxes low to encourage internet vendors to operate in your state.
People might like to think that Apple is somehow better than Microsoft, but trust me - if they had Microsoft's monopoly, their behavior would be no better
So if they had Microsoft's monopoly they would be bad.Since they don't have that monopoly, why do we care what they are doing in some alternate universe.
I use Mason and Perl every day, and I'm not sure where the confusion is. Is it just you don't understand Perl, or that you haven't used mixing a programming language with HTML? If the latter, I have to tell you that this is the ONLY way to go when you have complex web pages.
Mixing a programming language with your html template is not the only way to go. Tapestry (http://tapestry.sourceforge.net/) and XMLC (http://xmlc.enhydra.org/) put no programming code in the html and Tiles (http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/userGuide/dev_ti les.html) uses a tagging system that is very html like. These are all Java based solutions.
I've done a lot of the mixing approach, especially with PHP, but now I use Tiles and it is incredibly powerful and flexible.
Templating approaches like Velocity and patTemplate (for PHP) have small amounts of code in the html but as sub language designed for more readability so they are easier to maintain than the above.
It's like MS just doesn't "get it." Moreover, I don't mean to preach, but companies like Apple do (to some extent) "get it."
Apple has had sound effect that link to window opening/closing etc for a couple of versions. The last place I worked I'd say more than 50% of the people had them on. I couldn't stand them. My problem with them was they didn't add any information. They were just repeating obvious visual events.
Similarly, I don't understand why there is still one beep for everything. It seems like there should at least be a few beep types that can be used with some context. Error beep, question beep and attention beep maybe. I noticed this the most when I set my beep to a voice that yelled "wrong!" once. About half the time it wasn't the right message, it's not wrong if the program needs more info to complete a task or if something finished in the background.
Freehand (an illustration program) has optional sounds that indicate whether you've snapped to a horizontal or vertical guide, a point or to a grid. I can see that as being useful because it is adding more information. In a complex drawing it could be unclear if you snapped to what you intended to. A subtle difference in sound could make that clear.
I just remembered an funny use of sound in a program. KidPics was a a kid's paint program. The eraser made a eraser scratchy sound and there was drippy paint brush that made drippy sounds. The text tool said the name of the letter when you stamped it on the page.
This is matter of taste I know, but personally I just can't stand MDI.
I totally agree with this. I don't understand the whole MDI concept. I think they fly in the face of the idea of a modern multi-tasking enviroment. They are very much in the mode of "now I'm doing this. Now I'm doing that" I like to be able to see what's happening in other windows and to easily be able to drag items from one app to another.
That's a good question because we don't want to freeze applications in the past. I think it's better to say "don't change a norm unless you can make a good case for why it's better."
A good example is Quark on the mac.Most graphics apps use command-space for magnify and option-command-space for zoom out. Quark uses control for magnify. Command-space either beeps or adds spaces in your text that you have to fix.
Obviously there is no clear reason why this key is better than that key but the typical Quark user is continually switching between Photoshop, Quark and an Illustration app like Illustrator or Freehand. You're certain to hit the wrong key several times a day.
In other cases a unique UI element adds enough features that it is welcome anyway. Fireworks broke several Photoshop traditions but there was a payoff in Fireworks ability to use vector and bitmap elements in a single workspace.
I find unix style copy-paste often frustrating. It works inconsistantly and about 50% of the time I want to cut/copy, select something and and paste over it. That's awkward with the middle button paste.
Don't think of it as one or the other with tabbed browsing. I use both by using tabs to group related content. I might have one window that has 3 tabs with a google search and two pages that are the results of that search and another window with slashdot in one tab and this reply window in the other. I usually only create tabs by right clicking and hitting open link in new window.
...MSFT is an American company that employs American citizens with American families.
... but purchasing dutifully from Microsoft helps to ensure our economic vitality (and, by extension, our nation, our military, and our way of life.)
I've heard things like this spoken seriously during the anti-trust trial and found it really odd. The economy doesn't need a super Microsoft. If Microsoft only sold 1/3 of the products it does now other companies would pick up the difference. Monopolies exploit efficiencies, they don't generate more jobs. How many people were hired as a result of the Compaq/HP merger?
I'm really sick of all the "Apple is a hardware company" arguments though. Microsoft became the biggest company in the entire world without selling anything physically more substantial than keyboards, mice and joysticks.
I hear this a lot but it overlooks so many things. Microsoft is huge not just because being software only is so brilliant but because they had such a great licensing set up with all the box makers. They can sell the os cheap because they really make the money on Office and friends. Apple doesn't have either of these advantages.
I say the os is cheap compared to the R&D needed to make an OS. I'm sure there is a lot more engineering effort put into Windows than there is into Word.Yet Word is sold for more.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't macrovision patent ways around their copy protection as a way to block their use? Perhaps this patent is a weapon to prevent ad techniques like this from being used.
>>Unfortunately, I don't think anyone's going to buy a relatively expensive mac just so they can try osx on a machine that will still run windoze.
I don't see why this is a strange idea at all. Up until now, it has been a big risk for a Windows user to buy a Mac. That's a lot of money to spend on something you don't know will work for you. Now if you don't like OS X you're really only out a small premium and still have a good Windows machine. I've had three family members decide that was enough for them to give the Mac a chance. My father in law already got an iMac and has never bothered to boot back into Windows. I actually think there won't be that many people who regularly boot back and forth. If you are using something on the PC that often you'll buy one.
The expense difference isn't enough to matter to most people. Most people don't buy the cheapest option for any other thing in their life either.
I don't play games so I have a question about how spectator friendly these games are. It seems to me that games need a way to have an outside view and hopefully one controllable by a director. Is anything like that available? Ideally I would think you'd need several controllable chase cameras that could be used to watch the action from multiple angles so that I production staff could follow the action and show replay/highlights.
One thing I've seen is more people in the house using the connection at a time. A couple of years ago my wife never used the computer and my kids were too young. Now my wife gets online a few times a week and I bought my daughter an imac for christmas. In a couple of years she'll be using the computer even more and my younger daughter will be getting online. Throw in more appliances using bandwidth (Tivo etc) and I'll need a lot more bandwidth even if I don't change my personal usage at all.
But movies aren't the only kind of video content. The podcasting phenomenon shows a much more likely video scenario. I use my ipod and podcasting subscriptions to keep up with a lot of radio shows I would normally miss. I think the most popular "vpod" content will be time shifting short format news and sports highlights and opinion to watch on the train/bus or on breaks. This content works fine on a small screen.
The other big thing will be videos of the kids, which ties right into the iMovie thing that Apple is already into.
>>>I don't see much hope for games on Linux for a few years
>>>yet which is sort of odd given Linux's marketshare as being
>>>so much greater than OS X
Linux might have a larger marketshare in general but that doesn't mean a larger audience for games. i have 1 mac at home and run linux on 6 servers at work and a test server at home. The only box that I might ever buy a game for is the home mac.
I have a couple of commercial programs that are supported on RH 7.3 or RH 8. Without support for these versions what distributions are most like them? I did try installing on RH 9 and it didn't work so "not supported on" means more than they won't answer the call.
I completely agree with this statement. I am a longterm PHP user and still used it over Java when I needed to build small projects quickly. The JSTL (Java Standard Tag Library) has completely changed my mind on this. It makes simple web apps as easy as PHP or even Cold Fusion yet you can always move things out into Java Classes or Servlets if things need to scale up.
I completely agree with reading the Hugo and Nebula candidates. I started doing this last year and keep a list in my Palm of the candidates of the last few years and the winners for 1985 on. I'd say a vast magority are good and have discovered several interesting authors that I hadn't heard of before. I've only had one not be worth finishing, which is way ahead of when I was just trying out new authors by reading the back of the book.
So what is the best distro for KDE fans?
I like KDE a lot more than Gnome and would be interested in a KDE focused distro. Failing that, I guess a distro that had an easy way to customize to a KDE centric setup.
I've used Smarty and patTemplate and like them both. I don't know that I would really call it MVC but they keep layout out of the logic. With patTemplate especially I end up with a lot less files that are easier to edit.
I mostly use Java, either Struts or Servlets depending on the app. I was pretty much hating going back to php for anything until I started using the template engines. Now I wouldn't do php without one.
I use Struts but I'm not clear on why you would use it without JSP. I think of the taglibs as half the product. It seems if you want to use Velocity or XML/XSLT you would use a framework more optimized to work with those like Webwork or Turbine.
I felt this way on the first couple of projects I used it on but now that I know my way around it I've changed my mind. Most of the things it does are things you're going to have to get to eventually so any time it wastes in the first week is more than made up in the later weeks.
The only thing I don't really get benefit from is the abstraction of error messages and labels into the applications.properties files. I'd like to just put the messages in the code. That's just because I never have i18n in any of my sites. Clients love it when we say that we can do it easily in the future though so maybe it's worth it for that.
The main difference in these frameworks is how you handle the html. Struts is JSP focused, Barracuda uses XMLC and Tapestry uses HTML with extra tags, Webwork and Turbine use Velocity as a first choice and can use JSP.
I use Struts a lot now. The community is very active and helpful. There is more documentation available and with a lot of the development is by Sun insiders so I expect it to be around for a while. Unlike some, I see the JSP focus as an advantage in that it can easily include other tag libraries.
That said, I'd like to see people post advantages to other approaches. Not "Struts sucks, use XYZ!" but "XYZ is better when your site uses ABC and needs to DEF".
This discussion seems to be all about the difficulties of taxing in so many jurisdictions. Why not just tax at the seller's address? When I stop at a store anywhere and buy something they don't ask me where I live and charge me Dallas Texas taxes.
You'd also have the competition effect of keeping the taxes low to encourage internet vendors to operate in your state.
urban legend altert!m l
Water's spin direction is not set by coriolis forces. See: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.ht
So if they had Microsoft's monopoly they would be bad.Since they don't have that monopoly, why do we care what they are doing in some alternate universe.
Mixing a programming language with your html template is not the only way to go. Tapestry (http://tapestry.sourceforge.net/) and XMLC (http://xmlc.enhydra.org/) put no programming code in the html and Tiles (http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/userGuide/dev_t
I've done a lot of the mixing approach, especially with PHP, but now I use Tiles and it is incredibly powerful and flexible.
Templating approaches like Velocity and patTemplate (for PHP) have small amounts of code in the html but as sub language designed for more readability so they are easier to maintain than the above.
Apple has had sound effect that link to window opening/closing etc for a couple of versions. The last place I worked I'd say more than 50% of the people had them on. I couldn't stand them. My problem with them was they didn't add any information. They were just repeating obvious visual events.
Similarly, I don't understand why there is still one beep for everything. It seems like there should at least be a few beep types that can be used with some context. Error beep, question beep and attention beep maybe. I noticed this the most when I set my beep to a voice that yelled "wrong!" once. About half the time it wasn't the right message, it's not wrong if the program needs more info to complete a task or if something finished in the background.
Freehand (an illustration program) has optional sounds that indicate whether you've snapped to a horizontal or vertical guide, a point or to a grid. I can see that as being useful because it is adding more information. In a complex drawing it could be unclear if you snapped to what you intended to. A subtle difference in sound could make that clear.
I just remembered an funny use of sound in a program. KidPics was a a kid's paint program. The eraser made a eraser scratchy sound and there was drippy paint brush that made drippy sounds. The text tool said the name of the letter when you stamped it on the page.
A good example is Quark on the mac.Most graphics apps use command-space for magnify and option-command-space for zoom out. Quark uses control for magnify. Command-space either beeps or adds spaces in your text that you have to fix.
Obviously there is no clear reason why this key is better than that key but the typical Quark user is continually switching between Photoshop, Quark and an Illustration app like Illustrator or Freehand. You're certain to hit the wrong key several times a day.
In other cases a unique UI element adds enough features that it is welcome anyway. Fireworks broke several Photoshop traditions but there was a payoff in Fireworks ability to use vector and bitmap elements in a single workspace.
I find unix style copy-paste often frustrating. It works inconsistantly and about 50% of the time I want to cut/copy, select something and and paste over it. That's awkward with the middle button paste.
Don't think of it as one or the other with tabbed browsing. I use both by using tabs to group related content. I might have one window that has 3 tabs with a google search and two pages that are the results of that search and another window with slashdot in one tab and this reply window in the other. I usually only create tabs by right clicking and hitting open link in new window.
I've heard things like this spoken seriously during the anti-trust trial and found it really odd. The economy doesn't need a super Microsoft. If Microsoft only sold 1/3 of the products it does now other companies would pick up the difference. Monopolies exploit efficiencies, they don't generate more jobs. How many people were hired as a result of the Compaq/HP merger?
I hear this a lot but it overlooks so many things. Microsoft is huge not just because being software only is so brilliant but because they had such a great licensing set up with all the box makers. They can sell the os cheap because they really make the money on Office and friends. Apple doesn't have either of these advantages.
I say the os is cheap compared to the R&D needed to make an OS. I'm sure there is a lot more engineering effort put into Windows than there is into Word.Yet Word is sold for more.