Are you trying to suggest that yourself and other gamers from days gone by (myself included, have been a gamer since 1983 thankyou very much, when we had 48K of RAM and were GREATFUL I tells yah) were of higher breeding and intelligence?
Don't get such an inflated view of yourself as a young gamer. I see people looking down on school kids on the train and hanging around etc. because they're loud and seemingly obnoxious etc. But if you actually get past them being boisterous(sp?) they are doing nothing wrong. Hell, I was just like them when I was at school, and I bet most of those scoffing at them were too.
It's all too easy to look back with aged eyes and believe that 'you back then' had the accumlated wisdom of 'you today'... it's just not the way it was.
Sure gaming has gained popularity, but it still had its fair share of those with lower than average intelligence back then, there's always the 'common rabble', and those that want a bit more. The success of games like Oblivion and Myst and other such 'thinking' type games (I'm only assuming Oblivion has some as it seems pretty epic and 'questy', not having played it), shows there's still plenty o' room for intelligence in games.
"Too many "unlockables" and it's work. No "unlockables" and it's 30 minutes of gameplay."
It depends on what you call an 'unlockable', is the next level of a FPS an 'unlockable' because you have to kill the bad guys to get there? I don't feel it as so, and yet a good FPS (Like HL2) give hours of gameplay without resorting to 'collect all the map pieces on this level'.
With my limited time to play games these days, FPSs are giving me the biggest bang for buck.
(Not the game bingo, just 'bingo, you got it spot on')
I too used to spend hours and hours with games like Civilisation, Syndicate Wars, all host of RTSs and the like. But now, yeah, with a family and very little spare time, I get, at most, a few hours on the weekends when the kids are asleep and the wife is at work to play games. I want something I can get into quickly and get out of quickly.
FPS have been my favourite for a while now because of that... not to say they have to be mindless either, the Hitman series is my current fav, and I played through HL2. Just the ability to get in and play for a bit and come back later to continue on is what makes them so wonderful. Having to really spend hours on hours in one sitting to ge the enjoyment out of the game... well it doesn't do it for me anymore... I would imagine I could enjoy it again once free time is available... maybe in 50 years or so when I'm retired, I might go back to games that need more time investment... who knows what there will be then though!
I hate the religious/right wing/conservative mindset that to be safe from sex (as if it's a dangerous thing), one must know as little as possible about it.
It's ridiculous. As studies and stats, and quite frankly, common sense show: Teach them young, teach them well and good things will come.
Having your kids know about sex and the other sex, know about the feelings, the meanings, the consequences etc. young can make a huge difference.
I know that in my life myself and my brother knew about sex etc. a lot earlier than some, and that when, say, visiting a museum and seeing artifacts with phallic symbols, we found them interesting, while other kids laughed and giggled away at them.
I'll just ensure my family has a healthy non-closeted understanding of sexuality and other people can handle themselves.
Oh don't try to make anything like that about 'free speech'. I wasn't saying he couldn't say 'whore' I was just saying that it's one heavily loaded word. I suppose you talk about any black friends of yours as niggers, and asian friends as chinks etc... there's political correctness gone mad, and then there's just plain offensive words and usage of them.
Anyone whose actually played the things in a bad mood knows what I'm talking about. The simulation is a cathartic. The bad date or club cockteases have made plenty a man hate women, if only for a bit. Killing a whore in GTA lets you get the release and satisfaction without actually hurting a human being.
OK, regardless of whether this is in a game or not... the fact that you get that riled up and feel the need to kill a simulated woman at all is concerning to me.
Combine that with the use of 'whore' as the way to describe the prostitutes (I've always thought that as a word, whore is particularly brutal) I feel you really have an issue with women. (They were leading me on... MAN they should have given it up).
Come on.
I completely agree with the cathartic nature of violent video games, First Person Shooters have a great calming effect on me... Getting out agression on the 'bad guys' or 'the aliens'... non descript enemies... but when it becomes an attack on a replacement for where your anger is directed, well that's just disturbing I'm afraid.
No, I don't have any hard stats to back up my claims, just the common sense knowledge that: a) The percentage of 64 bit systems is still very small in comparison to 32bit & b) The percentage of Linux being used as a desktop is still very small in comparison to Windows
Multiply one small percentage by another small percentage and you get a tiny percentage. Also... once it becomes a large enough user base to worry about, Adobe will port it to it, no issue there.
Also, as I stated, our target audience is business users within Marketing areas, so they are almost entirely using Windows boxes (some are Mac based, but that's fine for us too).
And And furthermore, Flash is still not supported "in a browser, on a phone or wherever".
Huh?
So, flash running in 94.8 percent of all US (if you want more stats of other areas, check out this list (I'm using flash version 7 stats, although our code will run on 6 or above if need be) browsers is 'not supported in a browser' and in the Original Article that this is attached to it shows a Laszlo app running in the flash player ON A PHONE.
So, yeah, it kinda does run in a lot of places... and the flash player is being pushed to run in other items as well.
Completely dismissing Flash as a distribution platform for applications just because it doesn't run on some tiny amount of the world's possible computers, and ones that don't even concern us from a target point of view is just pure Flash hatred for no good reason. I suppose you dismiss anything with images or mouse interaction as some people use text based browsers?
And that the laszlo system will be offering DHTML rendering soon as well only further broadens our available market.
Indeed, I thought this too... as did many obviously... why they can't do this I don't know. They could have chosen the top X number of designs and made them all optional skins with the winners being the default.
More people happy, more people's work on display on a site as large as Slashdot... what's not to love about that?
Really, for all it's nerdy ways, sometimes you have to wonder about the common sense intelligence of those running it.
We have a working demo of our application (not for public consumption), that does some pretty funky stuff with data manipulations, checking in tree portions, consolidation, timelines etc. etc... and it handles it all.
Have there been painful experiences with it as we've gone along? Oh hell yeah, but I've had that with every language I've ever coded in (Which is up to... hmmm... Dunno... like 9 or so now?). Refresh issues were a big pain, and probably will be a bit again, but there are ways to mitigate those problems and it is getting a lot better too. (Trees handling dynamic data is still horrible if you use the default tree, but if you use the tree contained in the latest release's 'Incubator' then you'll have much, much more luck!).
We have been very, very impressed with what you can do with it...
So, you don't use Google Maps or any other service that uses Javascript then?
I mean really, this outright hatred of Flash is ridiculous. In our case we are coding an application for use within Businesses. What this allows us to do is to not have to install any client on their pcs, not have to worry about getting updates to them, as we just update our servers with the latest version, and next time they load the app, it's brand new.
By rendering to flash you remove almost 100% of the issues of cross browser incompatibility of using DHTML and the like, and you also get a much more attractive user interface.
Quite frankly, Flash is a far more usable interface for web apps than DHTML.
- I like the idea of using JavaServer Faces and renderkits, so you can easily migrate to different presentation technologies. Did you write directly to Lazlo's API or use a renderkit-type method? IBM has a Lazlo-JSF renderkit and that seems like the best way to go in that world.
Laszlo's code is not tied completely to an actual final renderpath... ie. while currently your only option is flash, as can be seen on their homepage, they have a working DHTML output that works as well... and the idea is that the code you write is independant of what output it finally has.
We code in Laszlo's mixture of XML and Javascript, and it compiles that to Flash for rendering. The final output may be in a browser, may be on a phone, or whatever.
- If you're writing to the API, how tied to it are you? With a rederkit, you can quickly make changes from a web-browser to a PDA, with the components taking care of the display issues. Is display migration an issue? OK, so we're writing our own 'renderkit' if you will... we're using a modification of the Visual Proxy methodology and as such our final display objects can be changed and modified based on what it's rendering to. But we do use a number of the inbuilt Laszlo visual components (windows, buttons, sliders and the like)... but as they render in flash, anything you can run flash on, they'll run on.
- How is performance? I've always found the examples on OpenLazlo to be slow, limitted, and not seem to be very useful in the real world. Performance is always something that we battle with, but we're trying to manipulate hundreds of linked visual objects onscreen at one time, with many calculations running in the background. You have to be tricky here and there, but you can do some amazing things. Basically, the limitations are not really a result of Laszlo as such, but the fact that you're running an app within a web browser, and you always have to be conscious of that. The more you use it though, the more you learn the tricks to get a great user experience... I would hate to be trying to do this in DHTML.
- How much time have you spend on the UI versus other techniques (e.g. DHTML/AJAX)? If longer with Lazlo, do your customers see your UI as value-added? Does it reduce your time from working on the core business-logic?
(First up... this is AJAX, very much so it's Asynchronous Javascript and XML) We spend a fair amount of time on the UI, but only because the main thrust of our app is presenting a whole lot of data in a visual way that the users can interact with in different ways to any other applications in this space... so it's a large portion of the appeal of this app. That it's targetted at the Marketing teams of companies means that it should be easy to use and appealing to work with, hence the flash interface.
We have coded other PHP/Javascript/DB applications for clients (we have one being finished up at present), and while they're nice to work with etc. And do take less time to initially code they have a number of drawbacks: * Maintenance is harder as writing directly for HTML output means trying to be cross-browser friendly, which results in solutions for each of the major browsers. Flash means it just works the same, full stop. * It looks the same. While you can do some pretty great things with DHTML etc. It's all still pretty web browser looking, you're tied to that due to limitations of what you can do, and performance issues if you stray too far from the simple. Flash allows you to have nice transitions, animation of key things, fluid interface interactions etc. Plus it's can be very different visually if you so wish. * As for the time we can spend on Business Logic vs Interface. As in this space we are coding in an OO language, and can create nice class seperation and encapsulation, we can completely split off our business logic from our presentation code. This makes ongoing maintenance of either side of that equation
Did you see Pandora listed in the article? That's a fully fledged, and nice app. Also Laszlo mail is installed as the default webmail for Earthlink subscribers? And of course... there's this list of apps!:)
What a lot of crud to say and of course, this is the only comparison that really matters.... There is so very much more to be concerned with:
Size of memory footprint Scan speed Scheduled scanning ability Plugs into email applications How it behaves with other applications How easy it is to use.
So NO that is not the only comparison that matters.
I've been coding in Laszlo for almost a year now for a new product my company is launching soon, and I have to say it's a great language to use. A very easy way to create great web applications while still being able to write completely Object Orientated code... There's absolutely zero need to code in a WYSIWYG style method ala visual basic or the like, our application dynamically loads in its objects and layout from a db, completely configurable... it's all very nice.
The article itself is quite a nice summary of what Laszlo is I suppose. It does seem to harp on a bit about PHP as a back end, when there is nothing tying laszlo to php at all... we were using Ruby, now we're using Java, and are able o talk directly to Java classes from within Laszlo code using a JavaRPC structure. As the Laszlo server is a Java app, it all sits together nicely.
Also it's good to see it mentioning the alternate runtime of DHTML which is currently able to be played with at Openlaszlo.org (currently in pre-beta). So, in the future you'll be able to write your code and chose to render it to Flash OR DHMTL or Both... it's all very nice.
Is there anything that people who are interesting in Laszlo would like to know from someone who's been coding in it for a while? As while I'm not a zealot of it or anything, I do like it a lot, and just would love to see as many people as possible using it.:)
I have mentioned Laszlo a fair few times here... but Laszlo does what this framework does, but far better, far more extensively, in an easier to code in language (XML + Javascript), and can render your output to Flash OR DHTML from the same source code (note that the DHTML output is in pre-beta form).
Hurray for Google for providing this, and it'll be nice for some... but it's not revolutionary.
Also aggrivating is the names of those darn things...
Linux Dude: "Oh Mr Joe... just run alsaconf, that'll fix your problem" Mr Joe: "Ally Whatnow?" LD: "alsaconf... lower case mind, as it is case sensitive... just run that, you'll be right" MJ: "How do I run that? I don't find it here... where's the icon for that?" MJ: "Oh, and I want to be able to burn CDs like I used to. I used to just use Media Player to do that, what do I use now?" LD: "k3b will do it" MJ: "What the hell is k3b? WHaaaaa?"
The names are ridiculous, the ways of doing things are arcane, the whole thing just doesn't gell... Every few months I install another distro on a work PC here and tinker, and every few months I'm glad I'm still using Windows... I'm sorry but it's just infuriating to have to keep dropping to command line to fix things and remember commands again... I left all that behind with DOS, I don't want to have to remember commands... I want a desktop that when I can't remember how to do something or other I just click my way through logical areas to get to what I need... Sound isn't working... go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices... if it says there's an issue, click on the 'Hardware' Tab right in there... it's all logical... I don't need to remember that the comman is alsaconf for crap's sake.
I'm looking forward to Mario Galaxy and waving my Wii wand around:)
Surely, as long as you're male, you can quite easily wave your 'wii wand' around all you like... just probably not in front of other people without being considered rude at best, or a pedafile at worst.
Still, for all the females out there, you'll get to find out what's so much fun about waving one's wii wand... and why all us guys just love to do it!
In comparison to the competition, yes it is too much. It's no good comparing it to another market entirely different to the one it's being launched into (the high end, yearly upgrade, video card market is no way a mass market).
In comparison to the XBox 360's current price, the price the XBox 360 may be by the time the PS3 comes out, and the price of the Wii (*snigger*)... it's making life very hard for itself. Especially if it cannot demonstrate anything far and above what the 360 and Wii can do.
I'm just glad to be able to buy them legally... I have the original trilogy as it was on DVD, in three different forms by way of Fan Preservation efforts. The quality is suprisingly good, and it's great to be able to enjoy them as they were, but I always wanted to really own them, to have a real copy of them. And now I can.
Seeing as all the fan efforts are sourced largly from the same Laserdiscs anyways, this should at least be going right to the source they were mastered from, so a good generation better in quality.
As for the Dolby 2.0 sound... That's how it was. I don't want him remastering it. I want to be able to SEE and HEAR it the way it was in 1977, to be able to ooh and ahh at what was accomplished in a SciFi film in the year of my birth. (it was made in 1976, so it matches with my birthyear, not the release year!).
I'm excited.
And I'm happy to be getting the 'redux' versions as well. I have no issue with directors making updates... As long as you can get the originals... and now we can, so I'm happy to have both.
I don't know the figures myself... but wasn't it case that last time they cried foul like this they had actually taken record profits from ticket and DVD sales? Anyone know whether their overall intake is actually still going UP despite all their crying?
Re:Ajax web framework support
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Head Rush Ajax
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I have mentioned this language/product before here on Slashdot, but that's because I program in it everyday... but Laszlo does what you want. The biggest thing that scares 'tech heads' away from it is that it's output currently is Flash. Now I personally think it's a excellent thing, huge penetration of plugin, almost completely guaranteed same result in all browsers/operating systems, supurb animation an interaction ability. It makes for a great user experience.
However they now have a pre-beta DHTML runtime option as well. So you can have the same source code (written in the Laszlo language which is XML + Javascript) delivery either Flash OR DHMTL.
Check it out (including a demo of DHMTL vs Flash from the one source) at OpenLaszlo.
And my PR for my current programming language is done for today!:P
Slashdot Mirror
Are you trying to suggest that yourself and other gamers from days gone by (myself included, have been a gamer since 1983 thankyou very much, when we had 48K of RAM and were GREATFUL I tells yah) were of higher breeding and intelligence?
Don't get such an inflated view of yourself as a young gamer. I see people looking down on school kids on the train and hanging around etc. because they're loud and seemingly obnoxious etc. But if you actually get past them being boisterous(sp?) they are doing nothing wrong. Hell, I was just like them when I was at school, and I bet most of those scoffing at them were too.
It's all too easy to look back with aged eyes and believe that 'you back then' had the accumlated wisdom of 'you today'... it's just not the way it was.
Sure gaming has gained popularity, but it still had its fair share of those with lower than average intelligence back then, there's always the 'common rabble', and those that want a bit more. The success of games like Oblivion and Myst and other such 'thinking' type games (I'm only assuming Oblivion has some as it seems pretty epic and 'questy', not having played it), shows there's still plenty o' room for intelligence in games.
"Too many "unlockables" and it's work. No "unlockables" and it's 30 minutes of gameplay."
It depends on what you call an 'unlockable', is the next level of a FPS an 'unlockable' because you have to kill the bad guys to get there? I don't feel it as so, and yet a good FPS (Like HL2) give hours of gameplay without resorting to 'collect all the map pieces on this level'.
With my limited time to play games these days, FPSs are giving me the biggest bang for buck.
(Not the game bingo, just 'bingo, you got it spot on')
I too used to spend hours and hours with games like Civilisation, Syndicate Wars, all host of RTSs and the like. But now, yeah, with a family and very little spare time, I get, at most, a few hours on the weekends when the kids are asleep and the wife is at work to play games. I want something I can get into quickly and get out of quickly.
FPS have been my favourite for a while now because of that... not to say they have to be mindless either, the Hitman series is my current fav, and I played through HL2. Just the ability to get in and play for a bit and come back later to continue on is what makes them so wonderful. Having to really spend hours on hours in one sitting to ge the enjoyment out of the game... well it doesn't do it for me anymore... I would imagine I could enjoy it again once free time is available... maybe in 50 years or so when I'm retired, I might go back to games that need more time investment... who knows what there will be then though!
I hate the religious/right wing/conservative mindset that to be safe from sex (as if it's a dangerous thing), one must know as little as possible about it.
It's ridiculous. As studies and stats, and quite frankly, common sense show: Teach them young, teach them well and good things will come.
Having your kids know about sex and the other sex, know about the feelings, the meanings, the consequences etc. young can make a huge difference.
I know that in my life myself and my brother knew about sex etc. a lot earlier than some, and that when, say, visiting a museum and seeing artifacts with phallic symbols, we found them interesting, while other kids laughed and giggled away at them.
I'll just ensure my family has a healthy non-closeted understanding of sexuality and other people can handle themselves.
Oh don't try to make anything like that about 'free speech'. I wasn't saying he couldn't say 'whore' I was just saying that it's one heavily loaded word. I suppose you talk about any black friends of yours as niggers, and asian friends as chinks etc... there's political correctness gone mad, and then there's just plain offensive words and usage of them.
Anyone whose actually played the things in a bad mood knows what I'm talking about. The simulation is a cathartic. The bad date or club cockteases have made plenty a man hate women, if only for a bit. Killing a whore in GTA lets you get the release and satisfaction without actually hurting a human being.
OK, regardless of whether this is in a game or not... the fact that you get that riled up and feel the need to kill a simulated woman at all is concerning to me.
Combine that with the use of 'whore' as the way to describe the prostitutes (I've always thought that as a word, whore is particularly brutal) I feel you really have an issue with women. (They were leading me on... MAN they should have given it up).
Come on.
I completely agree with the cathartic nature of violent video games, First Person Shooters have a great calming effect on me... Getting out agression on the 'bad guys' or 'the aliens'... non descript enemies... but when it becomes an attack on a replacement for where your anger is directed, well that's just disturbing I'm afraid.
No, I don't have any hard stats to back up my claims, just the common sense knowledge that:
a) The percentage of 64 bit systems is still very small in comparison to 32bit
&
b) The percentage of Linux being used as a desktop is still very small in comparison to Windows
Multiply one small percentage by another small percentage and you get a tiny percentage. Also... once it becomes a large enough user base to worry about, Adobe will port it to it, no issue there.
Also, as I stated, our target audience is business users within Marketing areas, so they are almost entirely using Windows boxes (some are Mac based, but that's fine for us too).
And And furthermore, Flash is still not supported "in a browser, on a phone or wherever".
Huh?
So, flash running in 94.8 percent of all US (if you want more stats of other areas, check out this list (I'm using flash version 7 stats, although our code will run on 6 or above if need be) browsers is 'not supported in a browser'
and in the Original Article that this is attached to it shows a Laszlo app running in the flash player ON A PHONE.
So, yeah, it kinda does run in a lot of places... and the flash player is being pushed to run in other items as well.
Completely dismissing Flash as a distribution platform for applications just because it doesn't run on some tiny amount of the world's possible computers, and ones that don't even concern us from a target point of view is just pure Flash hatred for no good reason. I suppose you dismiss anything with images or mouse interaction as some people use text based browsers?
And that the laszlo system will be offering DHTML rendering soon as well only further broadens our available market.
Indeed, I thought this too... as did many obviously... why they can't do this I don't know. They could have chosen the top X number of designs and made them all optional skins with the winners being the default.
More people happy, more people's work on display on a site as large as Slashdot... what's not to love about that?
Really, for all it's nerdy ways, sometimes you have to wonder about the common sense intelligence of those running it.
End users surfing the web, or using this product in a business environment using 64Bit Linux would be what though? 0.0001%?
64Bit Linux as a server, sure, but it really doesn't affect a large enough userbase to be of any concern I'm afraid.
Did you even go to the site? Openlaszlo? RIGHT THERE you can launch a DHTML site from the SAME source code that also creates a Flash page.
IT's there! It's in pre-beta, you can see it works.
We have a working demo of our application (not for public consumption), that does some pretty funky stuff with data manipulations, checking in tree portions, consolidation, timelines etc. etc... and it handles it all.
Have there been painful experiences with it as we've gone along? Oh hell yeah, but I've had that with every language I've ever coded in (Which is up to... hmmm... Dunno... like 9 or so now?). Refresh issues were a big pain, and probably will be a bit again, but there are ways to mitigate those problems and it is getting a lot better too. (Trees handling dynamic data is still horrible if you use the default tree, but if you use the tree contained in the latest release's 'Incubator' then you'll have much, much more luck!).
We have been very, very impressed with what you can do with it...
I only just found out about Haxe... but are there any examples at all of it being used in an actual application.
Interesting concept, but until I see it proven in practice, I'm not going to spend much time on it!
So, you don't use Google Maps or any other service that uses Javascript then?
I mean really, this outright hatred of Flash is ridiculous. In our case we are coding an application for use within Businesses. What this allows us to do is to not have to install any client on their pcs, not have to worry about getting updates to them, as we just update our servers with the latest version, and next time they load the app, it's brand new.
By rendering to flash you remove almost 100% of the issues of cross browser incompatibility of using DHTML and the like, and you also get a much more attractive user interface.
Quite frankly, Flash is a far more usable interface for web apps than DHTML.
- I like the idea of using JavaServer Faces and renderkits, so you can easily migrate to different presentation technologies. Did you write directly to Lazlo's API or use a renderkit-type method? IBM has a Lazlo-JSF renderkit and that seems like the best way to go in that world.
Laszlo's code is not tied completely to an actual final renderpath... ie. while currently your only option is flash, as can be seen on their homepage, they have a working DHTML output that works as well... and the idea is that the code you write is independant of what output it finally has.
We code in Laszlo's mixture of XML and Javascript, and it compiles that to Flash for rendering. The final output may be in a browser, may be on a phone, or whatever.
- If you're writing to the API, how tied to it are you? With a rederkit, you can quickly make changes from a web-browser to a PDA, with the components taking care of the display issues. Is display migration an issue?
OK, so we're writing our own 'renderkit' if you will... we're using a modification of the Visual Proxy methodology and as such our final display objects can be changed and modified based on what it's rendering to. But we do use a number of the inbuilt Laszlo visual components (windows, buttons, sliders and the like)... but as they render in flash, anything you can run flash on, they'll run on.
- How is performance? I've always found the examples on OpenLazlo to be slow, limitted, and not seem to be very useful in the real world.
Performance is always something that we battle with, but we're trying to manipulate hundreds of linked visual objects onscreen at one time, with many calculations running in the background. You have to be tricky here and there, but you can do some amazing things. Basically, the limitations are not really a result of Laszlo as such, but the fact that you're running an app within a web browser, and you always have to be conscious of that. The more you use it though, the more you learn the tricks to get a great user experience... I would hate to be trying to do this in DHTML.
- How much time have you spend on the UI versus other techniques (e.g. DHTML/AJAX)? If longer with Lazlo, do your customers see your UI as value-added? Does it reduce your time from working on the core business-logic?
(First up... this is AJAX, very much so it's Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
We spend a fair amount of time on the UI, but only because the main thrust of our app is presenting a whole lot of data in a visual way that the users can interact with in different ways to any other applications in this space... so it's a large portion of the appeal of this app. That it's targetted at the Marketing teams of companies means that it should be easy to use and appealing to work with, hence the flash interface.
We have coded other PHP/Javascript/DB applications for clients (we have one being finished up at present), and while they're nice to work with etc. And do take less time to initially code they have a number of drawbacks:
* Maintenance is harder as writing directly for HTML output means trying to be cross-browser friendly, which results in solutions for each of the major browsers. Flash means it just works the same, full stop.
* It looks the same. While you can do some pretty great things with DHTML etc. It's all still pretty web browser looking, you're tied to that due to limitations of what you can do, and performance issues if you stray too far from the simple. Flash allows you to have nice transitions, animation of key things, fluid interface interactions etc. Plus it's can be very different visually if you so wish.
* As for the time we can spend on Business Logic vs Interface. As in this space we are coding in an OO language, and can create nice class seperation and encapsulation, we can completely split off our business logic from our presentation code. This makes ongoing maintenance of either side of that equation
Did you see Pandora listed in the article? That's a fully fledged, and nice app. Also Laszlo mail is installed as the default webmail for Earthlink subscribers? And of course... there's this list of apps! :)
What a lot of crud to say and of course, this is the only comparison that really matters.... There is so very much more to be concerned with:
Size of memory footprint
Scan speed
Scheduled scanning ability
Plugs into email applications
How it behaves with other applications
How easy it is to use.
So NO that is not the only comparison that matters.
Firstly, Google cache.
:)
I've been coding in Laszlo for almost a year now for a new product my company is launching soon, and I have to say it's a great language to use. A very easy way to create great web applications while still being able to write completely Object Orientated code... There's absolutely zero need to code in a WYSIWYG style method ala visual basic or the like, our application dynamically loads in its objects and layout from a db, completely configurable... it's all very nice.
The article itself is quite a nice summary of what Laszlo is I suppose. It does seem to harp on a bit about PHP as a back end, when there is nothing tying laszlo to php at all... we were using Ruby, now we're using Java, and are able o talk directly to Java classes from within Laszlo code using a JavaRPC structure. As the Laszlo server is a Java app, it all sits together nicely.
Also it's good to see it mentioning the alternate runtime of DHTML which is currently able to be played with at Openlaszlo.org (currently in pre-beta). So, in the future you'll be able to write your code and chose to render it to Flash OR DHMTL or Both... it's all very nice.
Is there anything that people who are interesting in Laszlo would like to know from someone who's been coding in it for a while? As while I'm not a zealot of it or anything, I do like it a lot, and just would love to see as many people as possible using it.
I have mentioned Laszlo a fair few times here... but Laszlo does what this framework does, but far better, far more extensively, in an easier to code in language (XML + Javascript), and can render your output to Flash OR DHTML from the same source code (note that the DHTML output is in pre-beta form).
Hurray for Google for providing this, and it'll be nice for some... but it's not revolutionary.
Also aggrivating is the names of those darn things...
... where's the icon for that?"
Linux Dude: "Oh Mr Joe... just run alsaconf, that'll fix your problem"
Mr Joe: "Ally Whatnow?"
LD: "alsaconf... lower case mind, as it is case sensitive... just run that, you'll be right"
MJ: "How do I run that? I don't find it here
MJ: "Oh, and I want to be able to burn CDs like I used to. I used to just use Media Player to do that, what do I use now?"
LD: "k3b will do it"
MJ: "What the hell is k3b? WHaaaaa?"
The names are ridiculous, the ways of doing things are arcane, the whole thing just doesn't gell... Every few months I install another distro on a work PC here and tinker, and every few months I'm glad I'm still using Windows... I'm sorry but it's just infuriating to have to keep dropping to command line to fix things and remember commands again... I left all that behind with DOS, I don't want to have to remember commands... I want a desktop that when I can't remember how to do something or other I just click my way through logical areas to get to what I need... Sound isn't working... go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices... if it says there's an issue, click on the 'Hardware' Tab right in there... it's all logical... I don't need to remember that the comman is alsaconf for crap's sake.
Urgh Linux gives me the the irits.
I'm looking forward to Mario Galaxy and waving my Wii wand around :)
Surely, as long as you're male, you can quite easily wave your 'wii wand' around all you like... just probably not in front of other people without being considered rude at best, or a pedafile at worst.
Still, for all the females out there, you'll get to find out what's so much fun about waving one's wii wand... and why all us guys just love to do it!
In comparison to the competition, yes it is too much. It's no good comparing it to another market entirely different to the one it's being launched into (the high end, yearly upgrade, video card market is no way a mass market).
In comparison to the XBox 360's current price, the price the XBox 360 may be by the time the PS3 comes out, and the price of the Wii (*snigger*)... it's making life very hard for itself. Especially if it cannot demonstrate anything far and above what the 360 and Wii can do.
Wouldn't you just evenly split the surround track between the two rear channels?
I'm just glad to be able to buy them legally... I have the original trilogy as it was on DVD, in three different forms by way of Fan Preservation efforts. The quality is suprisingly good, and it's great to be able to enjoy them as they were, but I always wanted to really own them, to have a real copy of them. And now I can.
Seeing as all the fan efforts are sourced largly from the same Laserdiscs anyways, this should at least be going right to the source they were mastered from, so a good generation better in quality.
As for the Dolby 2.0 sound... That's how it was. I don't want him remastering it. I want to be able to SEE and HEAR it the way it was in 1977, to be able to ooh and ahh at what was accomplished in a SciFi film in the year of my birth. (it was made in 1976, so it matches with my birthyear, not the release year!).
I'm excited.
And I'm happy to be getting the 'redux' versions as well. I have no issue with directors making updates... As long as you can get the originals... and now we can, so I'm happy to have both.
Hurray!
I don't know the figures myself... but wasn't it case that last time they cried foul like this they had actually taken record profits from ticket and DVD sales? Anyone know whether their overall intake is actually still going UP despite all their crying?
I have mentioned this language/product before here on Slashdot, but that's because I program in it everyday... but Laszlo does what you want. The biggest thing that scares 'tech heads' away from it is that it's output currently is Flash. Now I personally think it's a excellent thing, huge penetration of plugin, almost completely guaranteed same result in all browsers/operating systems, supurb animation an interaction ability. It makes for a great user experience.
:P
However they now have a pre-beta DHTML runtime option as well. So you can have the same source code (written in the Laszlo language which is XML + Javascript) delivery either Flash OR DHMTL.
Check it out (including a demo of DHMTL vs Flash from the one source) at OpenLaszlo.
And my PR for my current programming language is done for today!