I like Jon Stewart and his daily show... but in general I find American tv debates/discussions and os called 'critical' and investigative journalism a joke. You should watch some british tv stuff that made politicians walk out. They really bite them instead of playing that stupid left-right ping pong.
American politics has become too much of a show - and way to many countries imitate that. Is that the way our global democracies should be modelled after?!
New algorithms and canonfodder for armchair killers. I wonder how many times we can save the universe before itself self destructs because of boredom...
Well, Lucas main argument for all the changes was that he didn't have the money and technology to make 'proper' movies.
He seems to suffer from the same strange syndrome like many movie makers: the more money they get, their flicks get worse. Look at John Carpenter, his first low budget movies were great - and like Lucas he got fame and money... and he only produced bad stuff in his later years.
Lucas is a great producer, ok director and a lousy scriptwriter (especially his dialogues suck). But he is also a control fetishist... in some strange way all his new movies suffer from too much 'Lucas'...
The '77 Star Wars just did it for me. I can't stand artist who can't let go of their work... imagine Picasso rushing into the museeum to add little bits here and there just because...
Make new a better movies Mr. Lucas! You have the money and technology now.
What kind of Justice System raids people property and keeps silent?! I can hardly imagine that the indy-servers are a threat to anyones national security? Whatever happend to the freedom of expression or the freedom of the press?!
* the BBC is one of the best public broadcasters out there. The Brits can complain as much as they want, but mother BBC still rulez.
* ARD/ZDF have some of the highest budgets in europe, but produce hardly any acclaimed programms
* the ARD is not one single big station, but a conglomerat of smaller staate specific broadcasters
* according to the law the public broadcasters have to inform and educate the public. But in recent years they are showing more and more 'commercial' stuff and try to get around the advertising ban after 8:00pm (product placement etc.)
* neither ZDF nor ARD offer internet live streams on a daily basis, only small snippets, no archives of old programms or series
* every public broadcaster and every staate channel has it's internet presence. They are usually not very well done and offer the usual boring mixture of news and show announcements
* commerical broadcasters have been complaining for a long time that they are at a disadvantage, since they are based solely on advertising revenue and the public broadcasters are trying to hard to produce similar content
* most germans get their broadband connection from german Telekom (the pure hardware and connectivity) and their flatfee for access by T-Online (which is an offspin of Telekom - like T-Mobile). The government owns large parts of Telekom. The usual combined costs for telephone, DSL connection and flat rate is about 40 to 90 Euro (depending on the options you choose).
So overall is costs a lot of euros to be connected (I haven't included any cell phone prices). IMHO there is hardly any value for my money, since both public broadcasters and Telekom were build/supported with tax money.
I am not a fan of privatising everything, since BT in the UK was extremely slow to adapt broadband and still is very expensive.
ARD/ZDF need to be trimmed to be more efficient and lean, they have grown too fat and lazy to fullfill their mission to serve the public.
Well, you have to pay for public tv in other countries too. So what?! You prefer crappy commercials every three minutes? Producing tv costs money and the bbc produces great stuff. If you watch HBO in the US (another great producer) you have to pay too.
The main bastion of Microsoft is the Office & Exchange combination. The file formats are important, but not that important.
As long as there is no true Outlook/Exchange killer out there Microsoft will rule the office domain.
Most office slaves have their business life (and often word and excel documents) stored in Outlook - and old PST files. Plus companies need centralised mail, calendar and adress books - as well as public folders.
So far I haven't seen any commerical combination off an Office product and Exchange substitute that works as well (or bad) as the Microsoft 'standard'.
Sorry, my criticism wasn't meant to be sooo negative. Overall I love FF, use it everyday, but sometimes excitement about a new UNFINISHED product can do more harm then all the hype.
The FF team has done amazing work. BUT to compete with the usual lazieness of normal users FF has to be extremly easy to use and - even more important - to install. So far the install and import of data/settings is very good.
I would like to take it a step further: if you have for example flash installed for your IE, FF will recommend to install it as well (best would be a silent install in the background).
So far I give FF 8 out of 10, Opera gets 9 out of 10 and IE6.0 five out of 10.
IMHO it's a big mistake to make create such a hype on the web for the prerelease version:
* there are still some nasty bugs in there (like some HTML rendering), so they should have waited for a proper 1.0
* many cool plugins and themes haven't been updated for 1.0PR - which would demonstrate the full power of FF
* I can see many avarage Joes downloading 1.0PR and never updating it - jeust because of the buzz
* maybe they should have started the hype, when FF and Thunderbird were ready for 1.0 - so they could offer both in a bundle?
* I still think many major features are either to hidden or need a plugin: mouse gestures should be in by default and 'search in page' is way toooo geeky
* there should be better mechanisms in the software / first startup to make users download their 'usual' plugins (they already have in IE) like Flash, QuickTime and RealPlayer - so that FF will work properly with their usual sites
1. Why did I get for my expensive subscription to the Euro 2004 only crappy video streams?
2. Why should I care about Real since they have ignored my feature requests and pleas for a better software for years?
3. Why should I install another media player that wants me to sell only expensive mini clips and radio stations that are mostly for free anyway?
4. And even when I subscribe to the radio pass, I still get stuttering streams and bad quality - can't you deliver what you promise and charge me for?
5. Why has Real missed the train to develop and support truely open initiatives like DIVX (in the beginning), XVID or the new BBC format?
6. Since Real complains about Apple's ignorance I like to complain about Reals lacking support and ignorance for MD-Players and so many other third party devices. Why am I ignored just because I have a not so cool tool?
7. Why is Real Server software so extremely expensive compared to Apples streaming solution?
8. Why does every media player have such a fancy interfaces that follow no standards except their own? Can't you comply to the standards of the OS the player is running on?
9. When will Real admit the failure and stop doing the RealArcade? There are hardly any unique products in there and I can buy most of them without the surrounding Real hype.
10. How much money has Real left in the bank to survive against Apple and Microsoft?
How cares if Linux has a few percent more market share?
Most people won't switch, because they have been using Win, Office and IE at home and in the office for five or more years. People are simply USED to this set of applications and are not keen to learn something new - no matter how geeky, secure and cool it is.
99% of people hate change that inferes with their daily work. The human animal hardly changes its habits - unless forced to.
Joe and Jane average expect their PC thingy to behave and look like what they have used the last few years. If it ain't the same they consider it weird or broken and won't use it...
Don't try to make (hyperlink) documents behave like real applications and don't try to make programming applications behave like a document.
A web browser certainly has to perform both tasks: presenting documents and providing additional functions, but IMHO too many technologies try to achieve too much in both worlds.
I'm sorry... I took a moment to finish laughing at your "wasting gazillion of Terrabytes" comment.
Well it seems you have problems with metaphors. Let me put it this way: Spiegel.de is a news site like many others. Their current index pages is about 100 Kbyte, which is a normal size. Most of it is either formatting or scripts - but hardly content (which is not even 10K). Even compressed - as you so vividly explained - this is a terrible ratio.
I still think that web browser still suck in terms of application building and formatting your content. Plus every new 'standard' makes it worse and harder to develop.
Re:Great.. A world of proprietary apps
on
Browser Wars 2004
·
· Score: 1
1. Browsers: My solution? My biggest wish would be more consolidation of existing technologies - instead of constantly cranking out new 'standards'.
1.b. CSS: Since several people mocked me for this one. Here are simple things I want CSS to do: better support for transparency, definition of multicolor gradients, a mechanism for embedding fonts (more a browser issue I know), better support for different colour systems like CMYK and Pantone, easy multicolumn layouts (were text easily flows from column to another when resized). Look what stylesheets can do in XPress, Word or InDesign and you get my drift. Yes, I know CSS was never meant for printing - but still it lacks many basic design features.
2. DOOM, XUL etc. all great stuff - but they have hardly entered any mainstream web sites. eBay, Amazon, even slashdot are pretty much bloated hyperlink documents - far below the potential of the technologies you have mentioned.
I agree that many webdesigners/coders still thing in static pages instead of more interactive applications, but they need solid standards to develop their stuff and sell to clients. I can not ask my client to create a certain set of (cooool) features for different browser/ java versions, nor one with ActiveX and one- let's say X-whatever...
2b. Flash & Actionscript: Yuck! I am sorry, but it's such an crappy tool. Macromedia tried to sell us Director as the ultimate Multimedia programming tool in the 90's - and it didn't catch on, apart from children CDs and language courses. Now they try the same with Flash and the Web. Apart from little games, interface gimmickry and small tech demos I have hardly seen any any flash apps that are solid and useful.
2c. Balkanization: Well that's exactly my point - it has already happened, we already develop for one big country called IE and some small rebel states. I suspect this will be even more so with Longhorn - since webservices are much closer tied into the OS anyway. So your bookmark collection will not point to websites, but very customized applications: a CNN browser with integrated video, that can maybe resize and show alerts depending on your prefs - or a great Amazon shopping tool that is capable of reading a sample chapter to you. Look at the many services and applications that have grown around eBay and you will see the direction of future applications...
Re:Great.. A world of proprietary apps
on
Browser Wars 2004
·
· Score: 1
Oke, let's form some thesis here:
1. Browsers: Current browsers are still not perfect for viewing internet-based hypertext/link documents. We need better standards for hyperlink documents - but not more standards to make browsers behave like application frameworks. We also need more separation between content and formating. And CSS has done so far a lousy job of providing basic design elements (you can't even do basic primitive shapes or rounded corners for boxes...) - it should learn some tricks from Postscript.
2. Web-Applications: We need a platform independent application wrapper/container which goes way beyond the 'page' metaphor of the browser. And needs to work without a browser. This application wrapper should behave and work like proper applications - apart from being platform independent and web based.
So far we have neither: Java - the great promise - is nowhere near it's potential and is dragged down by Sun..NET looks promising, but has the MS stigma attached to it - but in combination with Mono it might work. Flash... well, you don't want to develop any applications in that one - and I don't think that Macromedia is capable of producing any decent programming tool.
I agree - Browsers won't go away, but they shouldn't be neither an operating system by themselves nor application frameworks of some sort.
So many new and fancy acronyms/tech. They will make web developement only even more complicated, code even more bloated with workarounds and versions for a gozillion new browsers...
If choice means so much chaos and so little truely working 'standards' then please give me a working monopoly! I don't care if the steering wheel in a car is on the left or right side - as long as it works.
So far nothing really works as it should in all browsers - so I will simply follow where the money comes from: IE.
And please spare me the 'develop with web standards speach' - neither Moz, Firesomething nor Opera fully and properly support all CSS versions, DOM etc.... and let's not talk Java either.
So far almost each new technology for the web has made things more complicated and less 'standard'.
IMHO I hope that a technology like.NET will kill the browser completely and create an easier way to create webenabled application - proper applications - instead of that stupid static web page metaphor - truely ONLINE instead of 'what you saw on the server ten seconds ago'.
With real apps we could have proper and speedy shopping tools, better online forums, cool chat apps without bloated Java behind it... if your Amazon Client can talk directly to their database, you won't need an HTML-Page as 'in between' translator/wrapper for tthe information.
Instead of wasting gazillion of Terrabytes for sending html, java and css codes and workarounds lets focus on sending and communicating the truely wanted data as direct, speedy and interactive as possible - without any unnecessary wrappers.
HyperText is/was a great idea, but it should only be used for documents/news etc. - it was never meant for (web) applications. All that crap has been put on top later - and it never worked properly.
Let the server application/database and client talk directly...
Why go after the spammers? We simply need laws to sue companies who sell their products via spamming services. If companies get sued a lot employing spammers - their business practice won't pay off anymore.
As long as people buy the crap that is advertised and as long as some company can make some decent profit from spamming it will continue.
Destroy the economical basis of spam - then most companies won't use it.
Yeah and I design on a pc for real $$$ - and I have NO crashes at all with Photoshop, Freehand, InDesign, Flash etc. in my daily work with BIG files (postersize photoshop, 500 pages books with heavy graphics). Plus hundreds of fonts.
My wintel el cheapo box works nice and perfect. End of story.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of these players are plain ugly and hardly have the same elegance of the great idol.
Most of all, most of their bundled software sucks very much. iTunes (+ Shop) makes the iPod rock - and it's a very cool application!
So unless someone releases a convincing competitor to iTunes all those iPod-Killers will hardly make any impact.
I like Jon Stewart and his daily show ... but in general I find American tv debates/discussions and os called 'critical' and investigative journalism a joke. You should watch some british tv stuff that made politicians walk out. They really bite them instead of playing that stupid left-right ping pong.
American politics has become too much of a show - and way to many countries imitate that. Is that the way our global democracies should be modelled after?!
I don't think so!
New algorithms and canonfodder for armchair killers. I wonder how many times we can save the universe before itself self destructs because of boredom ...
Well, Lucas main argument for all the changes was that he didn't have the money and technology to make 'proper' movies.
... and he only produced bad stuff in his later years.
... in some strange way all his new movies suffer from too much 'Lucas' ...
He seems to suffer from the same strange syndrome like many movie makers: the more money they get, their flicks get worse. Look at John Carpenter, his first low budget movies were great - and like Lucas he got fame and money
Lucas is a great producer, ok director and a lousy scriptwriter (especially his dialogues suck). But he is also a control fetishist
The '77 Star Wars just did it for me. I can't stand artist who can't let go of their work ... imagine Picasso rushing into the museeum to add little bits here and there just because ...
Make new a better movies Mr. Lucas! You have the money and technology now.
What kind of Justice System raids people property and keeps silent?! I can hardly imagine that the indy-servers are a threat to anyones national security? Whatever happend to the freedom of expression or the freedom of the press?!
Television is dead and HDTV is even more dead ... how many years have they spun standard after standard?!
Computers and the net will take over as the receivers of the future.
HomeTheaterPC anyone?!
I am German, but I have lived in the US and UK.
* the BBC is one of the best public broadcasters out there. The Brits can complain as much as they want, but mother BBC still rulez.
* ARD/ZDF have some of the highest budgets in europe, but produce hardly any acclaimed programms
* the ARD is not one single big station, but a conglomerat of smaller staate specific broadcasters
* according to the law the public broadcasters have to inform and educate the public. But in recent years they are showing more and more 'commercial' stuff and try to get around the advertising ban after 8:00pm (product placement etc.)
* neither ZDF nor ARD offer internet live streams on a daily basis, only small snippets, no archives of old programms or series
* every public broadcaster and every staate channel has it's internet presence. They are usually not very well done and offer the usual boring mixture of news and show announcements
* commerical broadcasters have been complaining for a long time that they are at a disadvantage, since they are based solely on advertising revenue and the public broadcasters are trying to hard to produce similar content
* most germans get their broadband connection from german Telekom (the pure hardware and connectivity) and their flatfee for access by T-Online (which is an offspin of Telekom - like T-Mobile). The government owns large parts of Telekom. The usual combined costs for telephone, DSL connection and flat rate is about 40 to 90 Euro (depending on the options you choose).
So overall is costs a lot of euros to be connected (I haven't included any cell phone prices). IMHO there is hardly any value for my money, since both public broadcasters and Telekom were build/supported with tax money.
I am not a fan of privatising everything, since BT in the UK was extremely slow to adapt broadband and still is very expensive.
ARD/ZDF need to be trimmed to be more efficient and lean, they have grown too fat and lazy to fullfill their mission to serve the public.
Well, you have to pay for public tv in other countries too. So what?! You prefer crappy commercials every three minutes? Producing tv costs money and the bbc produces great stuff. If you watch HBO in the US (another great producer) you have to pay too.
Compared to many other broadcoasters the BBC has a long and excellent record of producing great programms AND embracing the web/technology.
... compared to companies like Real ...
Certainly a good 'partner' to support
... another heavy skinhead makes verbal attack against arty-farty digital gadget.
...
Unless something better and cheaper comes out of his arse we won't listen
I wait for the first bug reports ... and version 1.5.1 ...
The main bastion of Microsoft is the Office & Exchange combination. The file formats are important, but not that important.
As long as there is no true Outlook/Exchange killer out there Microsoft will rule the office domain.
Most office slaves have their business life (and often word and excel documents) stored in Outlook - and old PST files. Plus companies need centralised mail, calendar and adress books - as well as public folders.
So far I haven't seen any commerical combination off an Office product and Exchange substitute that works as well (or bad) as the Microsoft 'standard'.
Sorry, my criticism wasn't meant to be sooo negative. Overall I love FF, use it everyday, but sometimes excitement about a new UNFINISHED product can do more harm then all the hype.
The FF team has done amazing work. BUT to compete with the usual lazieness of normal users FF has to be extremly easy to use and - even more important - to install. So far the install and import of data/settings is very good.
I would like to take it a step further: if you have for example flash installed for your IE, FF will recommend to install it as well (best would be a silent install in the background).
So far I give FF 8 out of 10, Opera gets 9 out of 10 and IE6.0 five out of 10.
IMHO it's a big mistake to make create such a hype on the web for the prerelease version:
* there are still some nasty bugs in there (like some HTML rendering), so they should have waited for a proper 1.0
* many cool plugins and themes haven't been updated for 1.0PR - which would demonstrate the full power of FF
* I can see many avarage Joes downloading 1.0PR and never updating it - jeust because of the buzz
* maybe they should have started the hype, when FF and Thunderbird were ready for 1.0 - so they could offer both in a bundle?
* I still think many major features are either to hidden or need a plugin: mouse gestures should be in by default and 'search in page' is way toooo geeky
* there should be better mechanisms in the software / first startup to make users download their 'usual' plugins (they already have in IE) like Flash, QuickTime and RealPlayer - so that FF will work properly with their usual sites
My questions would be:
1. Why did I get for my expensive subscription to the Euro 2004 only crappy video streams?
2. Why should I care about Real since they have ignored my feature requests and pleas for a better software for years?
3. Why should I install another media player that wants me to sell only expensive mini clips and radio stations that are mostly for free anyway?
4. And even when I subscribe to the radio pass, I still get stuttering streams and bad quality - can't you deliver what you promise and charge me for?
5. Why has Real missed the train to develop and support truely open initiatives like DIVX (in the beginning), XVID or the new BBC format?
6. Since Real complains about Apple's ignorance I like to complain about Reals lacking support and ignorance for MD-Players and so many other third party devices. Why am I ignored just because I have a not so cool tool?
7. Why is Real Server software so extremely expensive compared to Apples streaming solution?
8. Why does every media player have such a fancy interfaces that follow no standards except their own? Can't you comply to the standards of the OS the player is running on?
9. When will Real admit the failure and stop doing the RealArcade? There are hardly any unique products in there and I can buy most of them without the surrounding Real hype.
10. How much money has Real left in the bank to survive against Apple and Microsoft?
That's it.
How cares if Linux has a few percent more market share?
...
Most people won't switch, because they have been using Win, Office and IE at home and in the office for five or more years. People are simply USED to this set of applications and are not keen to learn something new - no matter how geeky, secure and cool it is.
99% of people hate change that inferes with their daily work. The human animal hardly changes its habits - unless forced to.
Joe and Jane average expect their PC thingy to behave and look like what they have used the last few years. If it ain't the same they consider it weird or broken and won't use it
Don't try to make (hyperlink) documents behave like real applications and don't try to make programming applications behave like a document.
A web browser certainly has to perform both tasks: presenting documents and providing additional functions, but IMHO too many technologies try to achieve too much in both worlds.
I'm sorry... I took a moment to finish laughing at your "wasting gazillion of Terrabytes" comment.
Well it seems you have problems with metaphors. Let me put it this way: Spiegel.de is a news site like many others. Their current index pages is about 100 Kbyte, which is a normal size. Most of it is either formatting or scripts - but hardly content (which is not even 10K). Even compressed - as you so vividly explained - this is a terrible ratio.
I still think that web browser still suck in terms of application building and formatting your content. Plus every new 'standard' makes it worse and harder to develop.
1. Browsers: My solution? My biggest wish would be more consolidation of existing technologies - instead of constantly cranking out new 'standards'.
...
...
1.b. CSS: Since several people mocked me for this one. Here are simple things I want CSS to do: better support for transparency, definition of multicolor gradients, a mechanism for embedding fonts (more a browser issue I know), better support for different colour systems like CMYK and Pantone, easy multicolumn layouts (were text easily flows from column to another when resized). Look what stylesheets can do in XPress, Word or InDesign and you get my drift. Yes, I know CSS was never meant for printing - but still it lacks many basic design features.
2. DOOM, XUL etc. all great stuff - but they have hardly entered any mainstream web sites. eBay, Amazon, even slashdot are pretty much bloated hyperlink documents - far below the potential of the technologies you have mentioned.
I agree that many webdesigners/coders still thing in static pages instead of more interactive applications, but they need solid standards to develop their stuff and sell to clients. I can not ask my client to create a certain set of (cooool) features for different browser/ java versions, nor one with ActiveX and one- let's say X-whatever
2b. Flash & Actionscript: Yuck! I am sorry, but it's such an crappy tool. Macromedia tried to sell us Director as the ultimate Multimedia programming tool in the 90's - and it didn't catch on, apart from children CDs and language courses. Now they try the same with Flash and the Web. Apart from little games, interface gimmickry and small tech demos I have hardly seen any any flash apps that are solid and useful.
2c. Balkanization: Well that's exactly my point - it has already happened, we already develop for one big country called IE and some small rebel states. I suspect this will be even more so with Longhorn - since webservices are much closer tied into the OS anyway. So your bookmark collection will not point to websites, but very customized applications: a CNN browser with integrated video, that can maybe resize and show alerts depending on your prefs - or a great Amazon shopping tool that is capable of reading a sample chapter to you. Look at the many services and applications that have grown around eBay and you will see the direction of future applications
Oke, let's form some thesis here:
...) - it should learn some tricks from Postscript.
.NET looks promising, but has the MS stigma attached to it - but in combination with Mono it might work. Flash ... well, you don't want to develop any applications in that one - and I don't think that Macromedia is capable of producing any decent programming tool.
1. Browsers: Current browsers are still not perfect for viewing internet-based hypertext/link documents. We need better standards for hyperlink documents - but not more standards to make browsers behave like application frameworks. We also need more separation between content and formating. And CSS has done so far a lousy job of providing basic design elements (you can't even do basic primitive shapes or rounded corners for boxes
2. Web-Applications: We need a platform independent application wrapper/container which goes way beyond the 'page' metaphor of the browser. And needs to work without a browser. This application wrapper should behave and work like proper applications - apart from being platform independent and web based.
So far we have neither: Java - the great promise - is nowhere near it's potential and is dragged down by Sun.
I agree - Browsers won't go away, but they shouldn't be neither an operating system by themselves nor application frameworks of some sort.
So many new and fancy acronyms/tech. They will make web developement only even more complicated, code even more bloated with workarounds and versions for a gozillion new browsers ...
... and let's not talk Java either.
.NET will kill the browser completely and create an easier way to create webenabled application - proper applications - instead of that stupid static web page metaphor - truely ONLINE instead of 'what you saw on the server ten seconds ago'.
... if your Amazon Client can talk directly to their database, you won't need an HTML-Page as 'in between' translator/wrapper for tthe information.
...
If choice means so much chaos and so little truely working 'standards' then please give me a working monopoly! I don't care if the steering wheel in a car is on the left or right side - as long as it works.
So far nothing really works as it should in all browsers - so I will simply follow where the money comes from: IE.
And please spare me the 'develop with web standards speach' - neither Moz, Firesomething nor Opera fully and properly support all CSS versions, DOM etc.
So far almost each new technology for the web has made things more complicated and less 'standard'.
IMHO I hope that a technology like
With real apps we could have proper and speedy shopping tools, better online forums, cool chat apps without bloated Java behind it
Instead of wasting gazillion of Terrabytes for sending html, java and css codes and workarounds lets focus on sending and communicating the truely wanted data as direct, speedy and interactive as possible - without any unnecessary wrappers.
HyperText is/was a great idea, but it should only be used for documents/news etc. - it was never meant for (web) applications. All that crap has been put on top later - and it never worked properly.
Let the server application/database and client talk directly
Why go after the spammers? We simply need laws to sue companies who sell their products via spamming services. If companies get sued a lot employing spammers - their business practice won't pay off anymore.
As long as people buy the crap that is advertised and as long as some company can make some decent profit from spamming it will continue.
Destroy the economical basis of spam - then most companies won't use it.
The Department of Homeland Security recommends not to use George Bush anymore - because of serious security leaks and erratic behaviour.
Windows is not very usable in my field.
Yeah and I design on a pc for real $$$ - and I have NO crashes at all with Photoshop, Freehand, InDesign, Flash etc. in my daily work with BIG files (postersize photoshop, 500 pages books with heavy graphics). Plus hundreds of fonts.
My wintel el cheapo box works nice and perfect. End of story.