While the 'Killustrator' name may be a parody of Adobe's product name, it still refers to a product which is far from being a parody of Adobe Illustrator, but rather a feature-for-feature clone. I don't think the parody fair use could even be invoked in this case.
I don't see why people shouldn't pay for internet content. After all we go to the newsstand and buy magazines and newspapers. Same rule should apply to *compelling* internet content.
Additionally technologies available to HTTP/WWW content allow site authors to easily create user-based sites and offer granular free access to certain features of their site to give people a good taste/feel of what they could be getting if they paid for the service.
But like an earlier post mentioned, the minute I start paying for an on-line content site, I will be holding it to much higher standards than free sites, including site usability, server response time, spelling/grammar, integrity, squeaky clean and *clear* privacy policies and most likely no advertisement at all.
But paying for on-line content is far from being a new concept on the web. Look at all subscription-based porn sites, live smut cams and whatnot. People *are* willing to pay for quality content they can't find anywhere else. It's just that portals, on-line news sites and other forms of written content don't seem to be as readily gratifying as visual content. Still, there are 2 or 3 compelling sites I visit every single day before starting a hard day of work, and given higher standards described above, I'd probably pay $5-$10/year for each one of them.
Could Slashdot qualify? I think so. I agree Slashdot isn't perfect... occasional spelling/grammar errors, at times redundant microsoft bashing/linux praising and other slight annoyances... So What?!?. As far as I'm concerned, and I don't seem to be alone, it is still the best place to get news about stuff I give a shit about.
However forcing a paying subscription-based model onto slashdot would probably and ironically greatly reduce its value, because Slashdot's value comes primarily from the fact that many geeks from all walks of life and wallet sizes read it and contribute to it by story submissions and comments to stories. If Slashdot readers had to pay for content, we'd probably loose a good share of those valuable contributors.
In this way I think Slashdot really embodies the whole Open-Source concept.
Sorry Taco, I thought I could make a case for paying for Slashdot but in the end it really looks to me like things are good as they are right now:D.
1) Yes "Fate of Atlantis" was actually a pretty cool adventure game I used to play on my mac when I was in high school. I almost finished it then gave up. grr.
2) Does anyone know how closely or loosely tied to that game's plot the movie will be?
There will at least be two survivors to AOL's monopoly: EarthLink and MSN. Both financially sound ISP's. Now I don't know what the future holds in terms of mergers but that should at least give us a worst-case scenario of ONE very strong competitor to AOL. I'd say that's already pretty darn good considering how hard it is for a company to survive in the ISP market and make it to profitability.
People gotta understand that being in the ISP business is *very*, *VERY* expensive and it's extremely hard to survive in it.
Soon internet access will be just like any other "utility" in your home. But unlike local phone and long distance service, or electricity or water, activating "internet service" and maintaining it for the average user is far more complicated than flipping a few switches. You can't just tell non-internet-savvy users "OK, we activated your internet dialup or broadband account, you're ready to go". As an ISP, and to provide the best "internet experience" possible to the user, you have to provide the average user with very compelling software that supports a wide array of hardware platforms and operating systems to connect a user's computer to the internet. But that often doesn't go smoothely so you have to have a staff of highly trained technical support. Even when the average user gets connected, a lot of them don't know what to do on "this internet thingy", so again you need technical support to hold their hand so they value your service and continue using it. Even if the user encounters problems that are not the ISP's fault, most users only see that they can't open their browser and "YOU NEED TO FIX IT NOW!".'
The bottom line is, being an emerging ISP means survival in a very harsh business, filled with frustrations and miscommunications, where ISP's often have to compensate for the weaknesses of operating systems and mainstream internet software with their own technical support and custom-built software. To be a successful ISP that doesn't just cater to "elite users", your organization must be extremely proficient in an wide array of disciplines and all that comes at a cost of hard-earned lessons, experience and... MONEY.
Now you're talking about "Open Source" internet access by setting up Wireless LAN's everywhere? Hey I'm all for that and I'll be first to join. You still will *never* connect the average user. And if you're basing yourself off of the 802.11b standard you're opening another huge can of worms on privacy and internet security. Make sure you think it through.
Offering internet access to the masses is far from being all about picking with which network standards users will connect. You can write compelling open-source software at the only cost of your time and grey-matter then distribute it to the rest of the community so more programmers can enhance it, but offering internet service to the masses will cost you a whole lot more than that.
You're totally right, I've read a lot of criticisms on the 3 competitors being picked but I didn't see anyone offer better alternatives. As far as I know, there is not a fiercer AOL competitor than EarthLink out there.
EarthLink has always positioned itself as the clear alternative to AOL by always offering far superior services at lower prices than AOL, may it be dialup, broadband or wireless, if that's not competition, I don't know what is!
Now just because AOL is looking to strike a financial deal with EarthLink and other ISP's to share pipelines doesn't mean any of this is going to stop. There are tremendous costs associated with sharing cable lines due to the fact that they cannot be abstracted into various layers like dialup and DSL and this forces all parties in the game to financially cooperate at some level so those costs are fairly spread out. That's what I believe those deals are all about.
But in the end the competition will still remain fierce and AOL will have to be on its toes, especially since EarthLink has been *extremely* aggressive in the broadband market, offering a far wider array of broadband and mobile connectivity options than any other ISP out there: Case in point...
I agree, an ex-girlfriend of mine took some intense courses with BAMM and it really helped her fight a lot of traumas she's had since her adolescence. I went to the graduation ceremony and it was, indeed, quite impressive what they taught these women to efficiently defend themselves and not be victims anymore. This type of coursework should really become part of highschool and college programs.
is not the only thing to take into account. Remember that a single device could conceivably occupy an infinite amount of IP addresses, just like many ISP's offer their customers "IP-based virtual web hosting" instead of "HTTP 1.1 'Host'-header based virtual web hosting". if everyone starts doing that then it could reduce the number of available ip addresses from a per-atom to a per-molecule ballpark.
I'm also trying to figure out who is and how the hell they're guna manage the assignment of IPv6 blocks. heh.
the most lame-ass-retarded-productivity-killing piece of shit ever invented. I work at a fairly big ISP with now well over 5000 employees around the nation, we took all those VB EMAIL viruses up our asses because every exchange-using employee's address-book was essentially comprised of every employee in the company and the little viruses just feasted, the exchange servers were overloaded and became pretty unstable for a while although I must give mad props to our IT workers who must have spent quite a few sleepless nites to highly minimize damages.
Beside Exchange servers, as mentioned in other posts, happen to be really slow. Many times i've sent emails to people in the company using exchange and they'd always get it after everyone else.
Thank god we do have the option to choose which mail architecture we use. I do use Outlook as my email client on windoze, however there's an option in it that allows you to sorta "recompile" it to only use internet standards, and I did just that, although I had disabled all my exchange server preferences and configured my good old incoming and outgoing mail server accounts.
Also, to get people's contact information, we use an LDAP setup, and outlook even has that built-in, kinda cool.
Katz, your little essay is very cute and all but you are obviously not thinking about all the homes that *still* don't have internet connectivity of any sort. You're not thinking of all the technology-impaired. You're really thinking as a geek and not proposing anything very practical nore secure. The internet is a medium in the middle of constantly re-inventing itself and, as you fairly mentioned earlier, the playground of every lame-ass packet kiddie in the world, servers hosting the "voting sites" being on this global network are *very* appealing targets to crackers and whatever potential evil political interests that may stand behind them. You can't possibly compare Amazon to a nation-wide "online" voting system, you can't compare buying books with deciding the faith of a nation.
So here's what I propose:
USE THE PHONE.
each phone call is a dedicated non-shared connection between your phone and the remote system, no snooping in-between, no risk for packet-sniffing, no need for encryption algorithms. Phone-interfaced automated systems have been around for a long time and people are A LOT MORE used to them.
It's a *very* simple interface:
"If you want to vote for Al Gore press ONE, If you want to vote for BUSH, press TWO. 1 - You have selected AL GORE, from the DEMOCRATIC party, press one if this is correct. - please enter the passcode that was sent to you in the mail after your registered if this is correct"
or better yet:
call 1 888 GO GORE to vote for Al Gore.
call 1 888 GO BUSH to vote for GWB.
"By calling this number, you are about to vote for Al Gore, please enter the passcode that was sent to you in the mail after your registered if this is correct"
This would make blind people happy
For the hearing impaired, we can set-up kiosks at post offices and other municipal offices
People who live in foreign countries could phone-in their votes thru a toll number, if they're cheap fucks they could use some kind of collect-call system
Phone network is obviously not a packet network, you cannot do DoS attacks on'em, it's also a lot harder to be anonymous from a phone than on the internet, phone numbers could be mapped directly to residence numbers, calls could only be made from registered residence phones and whatnot.
Almost everyone has a phone, those who don't can go to post offices or various locations prepared to that effect with phones already programmed to only call the correct number(s)
In short, I don't see the need for something as complex as a packet-switched network with various internet-enabled devices and computers to vote. Voting is a very simple, basic, straightforward task, and should be made thru the simplest most straighforward and efficient medium we can think of. I know for sure the internet isn't and I think a phone system meets those goals fairly nicely.
i work for a rather *big*... ISP-type-of-corporation. we have a portal. our team of developers is about 1/100th of rival portals. Yet we manage to embrace W3C standards in our web applications, including XML, XSL-T and XHTML. You can always find ways to make your code standards comliant and make it work under all browsers. Now if you want extra IE5-only DHTML-type of snazzy stuff, fine, make it a little extra work, we did that too.
We simply managed to explain product management that it makes more business sense to evolve towards W3C standards NOW rather than later because they're all driving the global web applications market. That it makes more sense to spend some extra time making our code compliant to standards now so we can build on it later on rather than doing it later.
Chances are your boss'es are uneducated on the subject and chances are you could use some more education on the subject of XML-derived standards and their benefits.
Go to xml.apache.org
and look at the various projects they have going there. Look at Coccoon. You'll see that standards are your friends, not your enemies.
Right the problem is that too many people, and you might be one of them, are "Web Designers" who most of the time don't understand the intricacies of markup languages because they prefer to use "DHTML-enabled" WYSIWIG editors like DreamWeaver to build their sites, and are just happy with their content looking snazzy, and as long as it looks snazzy in the browser that has the biggest market share then everything's cool. Well THAT, my friend, is what will kill the world wide web.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE IE5, I have developed a number of client-side-based web applications all leveraging its kick-butt support for XML, XSL, javascript, CSS, DOM and overall DHTML. But I kept in mind that most of IE5's implementations of those standards at the time were indeed mostly specific to Microsoft as most of those standards were still in the process of being clearly defined by the W3C.
But most of those applications were for company-wide Intranet tools or a subset of our "beta" users, in short, a smaller well-defined group of people we KNEW would use IE5. We'd never release a product relying solely on non-standards based technologies to millions of users just because "they should all be using IE5 anyway".
Standards are bound to evolve to more and more reflect all the web-enabled devices that are coming to the market, don't fight them, embrace them. Or watch the world pass you by.
I totally agree, where I work we've been closely developing our web applications based on W3C standards, their effort strongly benefits the internet as a whole.
To answer some bonehead who started trashing XSL as a useless standard, I think he should take a close look at the official XSL-Transformation specification to understand all the benefits XSL brings to building global and device-independent web applications.
Now I do think XSL-T should be renamed to something else do emphasize its transformation abilities rather than tagging it as a mere "styling language".
I think styling should remain the job of CSS, that various flavors of CSS should be developed for each mainstream markup language suited for a given set of platforms and user-agents. I think a basic platform/user-agent-specific markup language should define elements of formatting and structuration of information and a custom-fitted version of CSS should be developed to allow developers to define more precise elements of style like font sizes, faces, colors, backgrounds and such.
And I think XSL-T should be renamed "eXtensible Markup Transformation Language".
bleh.
Re:Trial by money as bad as patent idiocy
on
Patent Warfare
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· Score: 1
mod this up, i really like the idea.
Re:Don't believe everything you read on the Web
on
The Battle for .Web
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· Score: 1
Moderators, I beg you, mod that up. I completely agree with him and I'll add this:
A lot of trademark-related lawsuits have qualified domain name holders as "cybersquatters" for not having a "web site" for that domain, and many lawyers base their case on those mere facts.
I've owned domains to simply use them for my nameservers because they were short and easy to type and remember, and also made snazzy email addresses for me and my friends, helped keep in touch easier but I never cared about having a www.wuteverdomain.com.
you're missing the point. all other ICANN-nominated candidates had "some grasp" of technical issues but they did not spend their careers/lives dealing with them.
You *will* make sounder decisions about DNS-related issues when you have gone through the growing pains of setting up, running and securing entire networks like Karl has.
What you and a lot of people do not seem to understand is that ICANN elected members are taking on the role of ARCHITECTS of the internet, notpolitical leaders. They are responsible for building one of the highest levels of Internet Infrastructure. Without the support of leaders possessing strong technical knowledge and vision of DNS, foundations of the internet are bound to CRUMBLE. Then again technical knowledge is not everything, but Karl also has a very strong legal background which makes him an exceptionally well-rounded individual and the most fit for the task.
I voted Karl #1 and am really happy he won.
I also voted for Barbara in second place because I like her thoughts and visions about trademarks and domain names.
Web developers are guna have to realize one day that there will be other platforms and user interfaces than desktop computers running Internet Explorer or Netscape and HTML being "the" markup language of choice for all devices.
People need to start thinking out of their box and be more open-minded to emerging standards that fit specific interaction purposes between users and the "The Web" instead of making all devices fit within already existing standards.
Evolve and start moving away from everybody's pre-conceived idea of "The Web"
HTML/XHTML were built from the ground up with Desktop Computers and Mouse in mind within a windowed environment, and this even extends to various versions of Event Handling and Document Object Model implemented in Netscape and IE with concepts like "onmouseover" and "Window". I'm really curious to see how the recent efforts by the WAP community to integrate XHTML as part of their protocol will pan out. I'm fairly skeptical right now and see it as a mere attempt to make "web developers" feel good about WAP (which really could use some added popularity these days) by giving them a false sense of security by throwing at them acronyms they know they master.
Do YOU really think those metaphores will always apply to upcoming devices?
i-mode managed to "CRAM" existing metaphores and standards to a handheld device they call a cellphone, let's see if usability wins here, maybe it will.
But that doesn't mean the WAP efforts should be discarded, I think they're the first groundbreaking effort for web-enabling non-computer devices, because after all, i-mode is just a smaller version of a computer on which they added cell-phone capabilities.
You WILL have to learn new markup languages, new protocols, new standards if you want to cater to more devices than your competitors.
I've seen everyone being very excited about WAP and then everyone loathing it.
I personally only see it as part of a necessary evolution of protocols, a good starting
point for competing protocols to emerge and not necessarily a depracated protocol and architecture
which just may have its own place in the wireless market, not from a bandwidth
standpoint but more from a usability standpoint. Cellular Phones being the first widespread
major non-desktop computer devices becoming "internet and web"-enabled I tend to question the
virulent attempts to "make phones like computers" and mold them into existing models of user-interface
and transport protocols while completely negating the various benefits consumers could get from
a very basic user-interface to access very topical data.
1) The WAP protocol itself, with focus on the Wireless Markup Language
WAP is not a bad protocol, and I would add that it is a rather good protocol that meets the goals it was developed for:
Limited Bandwidth
Limited Screen Real Estate
The wireless markup language offers great flexibility to interface with phones with limited capabilities. I've been working with it ever since its creation and thru its (at times) painful evolution. Interacting with a phone is quite different from interacting with a desktop computer and a mouse, a lot of out-of-the-box thinking had to be put into the development of this markup language, how to go from one screen to another, how to loop thru all the links within a screen, the concepts of DECKS and CARDS that let you minimize useless downloads of information and optimize navigation, the various ways to send data to a server through different input mechanisms, user-input validation to minimize errors and downloads. If thoroughly thought-out, a wireless web application working with the WAP protocol can be a very useful tool for every day life.
2) Why WAP phones? Why do less?
I personally, currently don't *need* to be surfing the whole entire web on my phone. Not right now. With work and personnal research I do from home and at my office, I already spend all the time I need using the Internet to its full potential. And I'd much rather like to be sitting comfortably in a chair at a desktop computer while I do all that.
When I'm on the move and/or going out with friends, I don't necessarily want to have a full-featured computer in the palm of my hand. Not worth the money, not worth the weight nor the size of an i-mode (I bought the Motorolla StarTAC for its compact size). I know it's tempting, I'm all for snazzy gadgets, I do have quite a few, but frankly, I don't need it right now.
However, I'd often be hanging out with friends and suddenly one of us would ask: "I wonder what's playing at the theaters located near the Derby, Hollywood, anyone up for a movie before going out dancing?". I get out my StarTAC Sprint PCS phone, connect, go straight to the wireless interface of my yahoo, go to movies, key in a zipcode, get a list of theaters in that area, pick one, see movies playing, pick one to get the times, and boom!: In a matter of a few seconds I get all the information I need. How's my EarthLink stock doing today? same thing -> my yahoo, stocks, select ELNK (which was part of my list of the portfolio I had set-up), see stocks details.
The nice thing about WAP phones is that they don't allow SPAM!
no ad banners
no useless images
clear, simple and well presented information: when you have such limited screen real-estate and bandwith, it FORCES web applications developers and interface designers to put a MUCH stronger emphasis on USABILITY, which a lot of web sites currently lack.
The above are my usual replies to the obvious question "why do less when you can do more?" Hopefuly, with much-needed healthy i-mode competition arising, the price of WAP phones and services will go down. There might still be a market for those phones catering to more low-end users, people like me maybe. I would expect i-modes to be a raging success among teens, who as everyone know, will LOVE to be connected ALL THE TIME and do all kinds of entertaining stuff on their gadget. i-mode also seems a much cheaper alternative to computers + internet connection. Some other people already get enough connectivity at work and at home and don't need additional entertainment on that but wouldn't mind a phone that gives them the option to look-up some very topical information every once in a while.
3) The Real Issues / Why so much hate?
a) Symptoms...
A lot of i-mode's hype among developers comes from the fact that "it does HTML!". Hurray, that means developers don't have to re-think nor re-do any of their site to cater to i-modes! Hey, being a developer myself and having dealt with quite a lot of markup languages I'm all for that too. Then I can't help but wonder: What would http://www.wired.com/, http://www.slashdot.org/, http://my.yahoo.com/ look like on an i-mode? How nicely do framesets render? What about ad banners? Does it handle complex nested tables? Then I read "well you should optimize your site to deliver 'compact HTML' or cHTML". Ok, now that makes a little more sense. You do need to rethink your site a little. At least you don't have to learn that very complex new markup language called WML, you might "waste" a whole half day of your life learning it. And the interface and site flow can pretty much remain the same! All valid reasons...
b) Diagnosis...
But I believe there is a much deeper issue that lurks around the corner when I look at the strong resistance from so many people to WML.
-> Change <-
A lot of people praise the i-mode because it is closer to already existing standards like HTML, thereby solving implementation nightmares. People will one day have to face the fact that HTML *might not* be THE answer to all web applications. Who knows what task-specific web-enabled devices will come out in the next few years? One can't guarantee HTML will the the appropriate markup language for all of them.
I personally don't think i-mode and WAP phones are ready to compete on the exact same level because they don't necessarily serve the same purposes nor markets, yet I keep seeing people writing big controversies about "WAP vs i-mode".
Over the last 5 years, a good part of the Internet community has learned to live with a now well-defined "vision" of the "The Web", with a well-defined set of protocols that are known and understood by all developers, and in the last year, with the demise of WAP, it has become a more popular belief that any "web-enabled" device should fit within that same original vision.
c) Solutions... ?
People and developers will have to learn to live with the fact that new standards SHOULD and WILL arise, and that it's the only way we can build stronger, more user-oriented web applications. If we don't explore all options that are currently out there, how can we certify that our current standards are the best?
"The Web" will evolve to serve a wider array of purposes, and it is not unreasonable to think that some of those purposes should be part of different protocols and infrastructures custom-built from the ground-up.
Slashdot Mirror
Additionally technologies available to HTTP/WWW content allow site authors to easily create user-based sites and offer granular free access to certain features of their site to give people a good taste/feel of what they could be getting if they paid for the service.
But like an earlier post mentioned, the minute I start paying for an on-line content site, I will be holding it to much higher standards than free sites, including site usability, server response time, spelling/grammar, integrity, squeaky clean and *clear* privacy policies and most likely no advertisement at all.
But paying for on-line content is far from being a new concept on the web. Look at all subscription-based porn sites, live smut cams and whatnot. People *are* willing to pay for quality content they can't find anywhere else. It's just that portals, on-line news sites and other forms of written content don't seem to be as readily gratifying as visual content. Still, there are 2 or 3 compelling sites I visit every single day before starting a hard day of work, and given higher standards described above, I'd probably pay $5-$10/year for each one of them.
Could Slashdot qualify? I think so. I agree Slashdot isn't perfect ... occasional spelling/grammar errors, at times redundant microsoft bashing/linux praising and other slight annoyances ... So What?!?. As far as I'm concerned, and I don't seem to be alone, it is still the best place to get news about stuff I give a shit about.
However forcing a paying subscription-based model onto slashdot would probably and ironically greatly reduce its value, because Slashdot's value comes primarily from the fact that many geeks from all walks of life and wallet sizes read it and contribute to it by story submissions and comments to stories. If Slashdot readers had to pay for content, we'd probably loose a good share of those valuable contributors.
In this way I think Slashdot really embodies the whole Open-Source concept.
Sorry Taco, I thought I could make a case for paying for Slashdot but in the end it really looks to me like things are good as they are right now :D.
2) Does anyone know how closely or loosely tied to that game's plot the movie will be?
People gotta understand that being in the ISP business is *very*, *VERY* expensive and it's extremely hard to survive in it.
Soon internet access will be just like any other "utility" in your home. But unlike local phone and long distance service, or electricity or water, activating "internet service" and maintaining it for the average user is far more complicated than flipping a few switches. You can't just tell non-internet-savvy users "OK, we activated your internet dialup or broadband account, you're ready to go". As an ISP, and to provide the best "internet experience" possible to the user, you have to provide the average user with very compelling software that supports a wide array of hardware platforms and operating systems to connect a user's computer to the internet. But that often doesn't go smoothely so you have to have a staff of highly trained technical support. Even when the average user gets connected, a lot of them don't know what to do on "this internet thingy", so again you need technical support to hold their hand so they value your service and continue using it. Even if the user encounters problems that are not the ISP's fault, most users only see that they can't open their browser and "YOU NEED TO FIX IT NOW!".'
The bottom line is, being an emerging ISP means survival in a very harsh business, filled with frustrations and miscommunications, where ISP's often have to compensate for the weaknesses of operating systems and mainstream internet software with their own technical support and custom-built software. To be a successful ISP that doesn't just cater to "elite users", your organization must be extremely proficient in an wide array of disciplines and all that comes at a cost of hard-earned lessons, experience and ... MONEY.
Now you're talking about "Open Source" internet access by setting up Wireless LAN's everywhere? Hey I'm all for that and I'll be first to join. You still will *never* connect the average user. And if you're basing yourself off of the 802.11b standard you're opening another huge can of worms on privacy and internet security. Make sure you think it through.
Offering internet access to the masses is far from being all about picking with which network standards users will connect. You can write compelling open-source software at the only cost of your time and grey-matter then distribute it to the rest of the community so more programmers can enhance it, but offering internet service to the masses will cost you a whole lot more than that.
It is not all about technology.
EarthLink has always positioned itself as the clear alternative to AOL by always offering far superior services at lower prices than AOL, may it be dialup, broadband or wireless, if that's not competition, I don't know what is!
Now just because AOL is looking to strike a financial deal with EarthLink and other ISP's to share pipelines doesn't mean any of this is going to stop. There are tremendous costs associated with sharing cable lines due to the fact that they cannot be abstracted into various layers like dialup and DSL and this forces all parties in the game to financially cooperate at some level so those costs are fairly spread out. That's what I believe those deals are all about.
But in the end the competition will still remain fierce and AOL will have to be on its toes, especially since EarthLink has been *extremely* aggressive in the broadband market, offering a far wider array of broadband and mobile connectivity options than any other ISP out there: Case in point ...
mod this up please that pretty much sums it up.
This phone number just got slashdotted. busy signal. figures :-/
You can download the drawmap source code right HERE.
you are obviously talking out of your ass. just *look* at the specs and then *think*. geez.
I agree, an ex-girlfriend of mine took some intense courses with BAMM and it really helped her fight a lot of traumas she's had since her adolescence. I went to the graduation ceremony and it was, indeed, quite impressive what they taught these women to efficiently defend themselves and not be victims anymore. This type of coursework should really become part of highschool and college programs.
I'm also trying to figure out who is and how the hell they're guna manage the assignment of IPv6 blocks. heh.
Beside Exchange servers, as mentioned in other posts, happen to be really slow. Many times i've sent emails to people in the company using exchange and they'd always get it after everyone else.
Thank god we do have the option to choose which mail architecture we use. I do use Outlook as my email client on windoze, however there's an option in it that allows you to sorta "recompile" it to only use internet standards, and I did just that, although I had disabled all my exchange server preferences and configured my good old incoming and outgoing mail server accounts.
Also, to get people's contact information, we use an LDAP setup, and outlook even has that built-in, kinda cool.
So here's what I propose:
USE THE PHONE.
In short, I don't see the need for something as complex as a packet-switched network with various internet-enabled devices and computers to vote. Voting is a very simple, basic, straightforward task, and should be made thru the simplest most straighforward and efficient medium we can think of. I know for sure the internet isn't and I think a phone system meets those goals fairly nicely.
We simply managed to explain product management that it makes more business sense to evolve towards W3C standards NOW rather than later because they're all driving the global web applications market. That it makes more sense to spend some extra time making our code compliant to standards now so we can build on it later on rather than doing it later.
Chances are your boss'es are uneducated on the subject and chances are you could use some more education on the subject of XML-derived standards and their benefits.
Go to xml.apache.org and look at the various projects they have going there. Look at Coccoon. You'll see that standards are your friends, not your enemies.
spread the joy.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE IE5, I have developed a number of client-side-based web applications all leveraging its kick-butt support for XML, XSL, javascript, CSS, DOM and overall DHTML. But I kept in mind that most of IE5's implementations of those standards at the time were indeed mostly specific to Microsoft as most of those standards were still in the process of being clearly defined by the W3C.
But most of those applications were for company-wide Intranet tools or a subset of our "beta" users, in short, a smaller well-defined group of people we KNEW would use IE5. We'd never release a product relying solely on non-standards based technologies to millions of users just because "they should all be using IE5 anyway".
Standards are bound to evolve to more and more reflect all the web-enabled devices that are coming to the market, don't fight them, embrace them. Or watch the world pass you by.
To answer some bonehead who started trashing XSL as a useless standard, I think he should take a close look at the official XSL-Transformation specification to understand all the benefits XSL brings to building global and device-independent web applications.
Now I do think XSL-T should be renamed to something else do emphasize its transformation abilities rather than tagging it as a mere "styling language".
I think styling should remain the job of CSS, that various flavors of CSS should be developed for each mainstream markup language suited for a given set of platforms and user-agents. I think a basic platform/user-agent-specific markup language should define elements of formatting and structuration of information and a custom-fitted version of CSS should be developed to allow developers to define more precise elements of style like font sizes, faces, colors, backgrounds and such.
And I think XSL-T should be renamed "eXtensible Markup Transformation Language".
bleh.
mod this up, i really like the idea.
mod this up, it's very informative
A lot of trademark-related lawsuits have qualified domain name holders as "cybersquatters" for not having a "web site" for that domain, and many lawyers base their case on those mere facts.
I've owned domains to simply use them for my nameservers because they were short and easy to type and remember, and also made snazzy email addresses for me and my friends, helped keep in touch easier but I never cared about having a www.wuteverdomain.com.
You *will* make sounder decisions about DNS-related issues when you have gone through the growing pains of setting up, running and securing entire networks like Karl has.
What you and a lot of people do not seem to understand is that ICANN elected members are taking on the role of ARCHITECTS of the internet, not political leaders. They are responsible for building one of the highest levels of Internet Infrastructure. Without the support of leaders possessing strong technical knowledge and vision of DNS, foundations of the internet are bound to CRUMBLE. Then again technical knowledge is not everything, but Karl also has a very strong legal background which makes him an exceptionally well-rounded individual and the most fit for the task.
I voted Karl #1 and am really happy he won.
I also voted for Barbara in second place because I like her thoughts and visions about trademarks and domain names.
i guess i'm ready for a job in computer programming :) ... oh wait i already have one! :]
whoa i really needed that after a hard day at work :) Thanks Taco!
Web developers are guna have to realize one day that there will be other platforms and user interfaces than desktop computers running Internet Explorer or Netscape and HTML being "the" markup language of choice for all devices.
People need to start thinking out of their box and be more open-minded to emerging standards that fit specific interaction purposes between users and the "The Web" instead of making all devices fit within already existing standards.
Evolve and start moving away from everybody's pre-conceived idea of "The Web"
HTML/XHTML were built from the ground up with Desktop Computers and Mouse in mind within a windowed environment, and this even extends to various versions of Event Handling and Document Object Model implemented in Netscape and IE with concepts like "onmouseover" and "Window". I'm really curious to see how the recent efforts by the WAP community to integrate XHTML as part of their protocol will pan out. I'm fairly skeptical right now and see it as a mere attempt to make "web developers" feel good about WAP (which really could use some added popularity these days) by giving them a false sense of security by throwing at them acronyms they know they master.
Do YOU really think those metaphores will always apply to upcoming devices?
i-mode managed to "CRAM" existing metaphores and standards to a handheld device they call a cellphone, let's see if usability wins here, maybe it will.
But that doesn't mean the WAP efforts should be discarded, I think they're the first groundbreaking effort for web-enabling non-computer devices, because after all, i-mode is just a smaller version of a computer on which they added cell-phone capabilities.
You WILL have to learn new markup languages, new protocols, new standards if you want to cater to more devices than your competitors.
By the way ... I'm a web developer too ;-P
1) The WAP protocol itself, with focus on the Wireless Markup Language
WAP is not a bad protocol, and I would add that it is a rather good protocol that meets the goals it was developed for:
- Limited Bandwidth
- Limited Screen Real Estate
The wireless markup language offers great flexibility to interface with phones with limited capabilities. I've been working with it ever since its creation and thru its (at times) painful evolution. Interacting with a phone is quite different from interacting with a desktop computer and a mouse, a lot of out-of-the-box thinking had to be put into the development of this markup language, how to go from one screen to another, how to loop thru all the links within a screen, the concepts of DECKS and CARDS that let you minimize useless downloads of information and optimize navigation, the various ways to send data to a server through different input mechanisms, user-input validation to minimize errors and downloads. If thoroughly thought-out, a wireless web application working with the WAP protocol can be a very useful tool for every day life.2) Why WAP phones? Why do less?
I personally, currently don't *need* to be surfing the whole entire web on my phone. Not right now. With work and personnal research I do from home and at my office, I already spend all the time I need using the Internet to its full potential. And I'd much rather like to be sitting comfortably in a chair at a desktop computer while I do all that.
When I'm on the move and/or going out with friends, I don't necessarily want to have a full-featured computer in the palm of my hand. Not worth the money, not worth the weight nor the size of an i-mode (I bought the Motorolla StarTAC for its compact size). I know it's tempting, I'm all for snazzy gadgets, I do have quite a few, but frankly, I don't need it right now.
However, I'd often be hanging out with friends and suddenly one of us would ask: "I wonder what's playing at the theaters located near the Derby, Hollywood, anyone up for a movie before going out dancing?". I get out my StarTAC Sprint PCS phone, connect, go straight to the wireless interface of my yahoo, go to movies, key in a zipcode, get a list of theaters in that area, pick one, see movies playing, pick one to get the times, and boom!: In a matter of a few seconds I get all the information I need. How's my EarthLink stock doing today? same thing -> my yahoo, stocks, select ELNK (which was part of my list of the portfolio I had set-up), see stocks details.
- The nice thing about WAP phones is that they don't allow SPAM!
- no ad banners
- no useless images
- clear, simple and well presented information: when you have such limited screen real-estate and bandwith, it FORCES web applications developers and interface designers to put a MUCH stronger emphasis on USABILITY, which a lot of web sites currently lack.
The above are my usual replies to the obvious question "why do less when you can do more?" Hopefuly, with much-needed healthy i-mode competition arising, the price of WAP phones and services will go down. There might still be a market for those phones catering to more low-end users, people like me maybe. I would expect i-modes to be a raging success among teens, who as everyone know, will LOVE to be connected ALL THE TIME and do all kinds of entertaining stuff on their gadget. i-mode also seems a much cheaper alternative to computers + internet connection. Some other people already get enough connectivity at work and at home and don't need additional entertainment on that but wouldn't mind a phone that gives them the option to look-up some very topical information every once in a while.3) The Real Issues / Why so much hate?
A lot of i-mode's hype among developers comes from the fact that "it does HTML!". Hurray, that means developers don't have to re-think nor re-do any of their site to cater to i-modes! Hey, being a developer myself and having dealt with quite a lot of markup languages I'm all for that too. Then I can't help but wonder: What would http://www.wired.com/, http://www.slashdot.org/, http://my.yahoo.com/ look like on an i-mode? How nicely do framesets render? What about ad banners? Does it handle complex nested tables? Then I read "well you should optimize your site to deliver 'compact HTML' or cHTML". Ok, now that makes a little more sense. You do need to rethink your site a little. At least you don't have to learn that very complex new markup language called WML, you might "waste" a whole half day of your life learning it. And the interface and site flow can pretty much remain the same! All valid reasons ...
b) Diagnosis ...
But I believe there is a much deeper issue that lurks around the corner when I look at the strong resistance from so many people to WML.
-> Change <-
A lot of people praise the i-mode because it is closer to already existing standards like HTML, thereby solving implementation nightmares. People will one day have to face the fact that HTML *might not* be THE answer to all web applications. Who knows what task-specific web-enabled devices will come out in the next few years? One can't guarantee HTML will the the appropriate markup language for all of them. I personally don't think i-mode and WAP phones are ready to compete on the exact same level because they don't necessarily serve the same purposes nor markets, yet I keep seeing people writing big controversies about "WAP vs i-mode". Over the last 5 years, a good part of the Internet community has learned to live with a now well-defined "vision" of the "The Web", with a well-defined set of protocols that are known and understood by all developers, and in the last year, with the demise of WAP, it has become a more popular belief that any "web-enabled" device should fit within that same original vision.
c) Solutions ... ?
People and developers will have to learn to live with the fact that new standards SHOULD and WILL arise, and that it's the only way we can build stronger, more user-oriented web applications. If we don't explore all options that are currently out there, how can we certify that our current standards are the best? "The Web" will evolve to serve a wider array of purposes, and it is not unreasonable to think that some of those purposes should be part of different protocols and infrastructures custom-built from the ground-up.