Re:Good for the average joe
on
Netscape 6.2
·
· Score: 1
The idea that Netscape is launching a browser still has a nice ring to it. Netscape is still synonimous with the web to many people's ears. There's a sort of trust that if I download the browser from Netscape, and now AOL, it'll be more be somewhate more supported or reliable or, I guess, "standard."
I'm a bit more techy than the average joe, but a few weeks ago I decided to try to un-Microsoft myself and immediately loaded Netscape 6.1 - if only because I had the idea that Mozilla was "beta" stuff... After using Netscape for an hour or two, I thought, "this is pretty good - but still needs some polish. I wonder what the latest Mozilla is like?"
I'm now the proud user of Mozilla 0.9.5 (latest nightly build) and am quite happy with it. I probably should have gone right to Mozilla.org first, but that's my point. There's going to be lots of people who like me will discover Mozilla through Netscape. That brand still holds a lot of power and I think Mozilla is the better for it.
Waitasecond. Did YOU read this book? Have you made an informed decision based on YOUR experience. Or are you just letting your boss do your thinking? If not, maybe it's YOU that doesn't belong in the computer industry.
Java and Java Web Start are a long way from this thing. I mean Rebol's a 300k download for starters - even with all the bells and whistles it's less than a meg. Compare that with the 20meg download for Jdk1.3. And Rebol seems to work well over a slow connection. I was just playing with the demo apps and they download really quickly and run fast with little delay... unlike applets.
But along the Java line of thought, does this remind you of the Marimba stuff from circa 1996? Remember Bongo and Castanet and how you were able to write your own custom Java-ish apps that would be internet updateable? Rebol is obviously a much better implementation, but it's very similar in idea. The control panels are similar, the demo apps are similar...
I'm not ready to give up Java yet, especially for this wacky language that has little to no support (30 million upcoming clients or no), but after playing with it, I can see why Rebol's pretty cool.
This is waaaaay off topic, but if you weren't just exagerating, you need to download the trillian IM client. I use it now for my accounts on all those above plus IRC. I'm really happy with it (it's not as flaky as Jabber).
Man, I didn't know that the same director made StarBlazers! I remember watching that series before school back in the early 80s! On channel 25 in Boston... I can't believe you can buy the StarBlazers discs! I guess it makes sense since Anime is so popular, but I never made the connection.
It ALL makes sense now, I think. Daft Punk obviously connected with something from my childhood because after seeing the first two videos, which I thought were fantastic, I bought the album, which I think is good except that it loses something during the 2nd half...
That's a kick-ass marketing plan for a music group... find some cartoon a bunch of kids watched and use that as your next video.
Should we expect He-Man and the Masters of the Universe next?
I read the transgaming site and I think what they are doing is not a bad effort at a open source biz model. If all things go well, they will get paid for their efforts in developing their software and the community will eventually get the code.
Also, though it obviously didn't say it on their site, you can see that if they go under, the code will probably get turned over to the community a la eazel's Nautilus anyways. So it's a no-lose situation for the rest of us.
But CmdrTaco's got a point in that these guys are playing with their own ball and can go home anytime they want... But I'm sure that he can see the point about trying to make money. This sort of development is akin to producing/. Lots of hours, computers, etc.
Oh, but I HATE that name "Lindows"! Ugh. It's so... perverted.
I worked on a contract in AOL-Avant in Madrid and the main problem was that these computers were Yet Another Platform that needed to be developed for.
Mozilla was for the most part fine, but there were little problems with both the browser and the platform. For example, at the time (I'm not sure about now) the mailto: links didn't work because the custom email program on the box wasn't integrated with Mozilla.
There were also problems the html rendering of tables, etc. You had to develop java scripts that detected IE, Netscape, AND Mozilla on the "Paquitos" (it's what they called the machines... it was a play on words on iMac/iPaq)
Now... the COOL thing was when one of the system guys from Intel walked over and put a USB-based key into the side of the machine and this "dumb" terminal with only basic functionality became a full-fledged Linux box with a command-line, etc.
Another analogy is English. We're all using English right now to "interface" like pipes. We all know basic English words about objects and concepts and we use these to take an idea from one person and give it to another. Like a pipe takes the results from one program and gives it to another.
Okay. So why are we using English? There are better languages. Spanish for example is wonderful - it generally takes up a bit more space, but the rules are much more defined and there is never any discrepancy about how a word is spelled or pronounced (there's no such thing as a Spelling Bee in Spanish.) This is just an example, but the idea is we could do better than English, a language with more exceptions than rules.
But once a bunch of people are using something - WIMPs or a language, the results gained from a bunch of people USING that method of communication is exponentially greater than any benefits that can be derived from a different system. Maybe if the new system is so incredible like the GUIs when compared to the command prompts people will change, but this takes time. How many bright people here right now are saying they "prefer" the command line (when it's obviously inferior to a GUI)? They may be stubborn boneheads, but they prove my point.
Anyways, I think research into a better form of interfacing with a computer is fine, but there's nothing wrong with my GUI right now either.
Java is 100% about selling it to the corporate market. If you can sell the idea that your code-monkey's who just got all certified in Java to run your website can now swap over and start developing enterprise-wide handheld business applications, you're on to something. Also, any application you develop for this device with Java will be incredibly portable to any other device with Java like the iPaqs (same story as always with Java - it may not be 100% true, but it's good marketing.)
I should say that I use Java as my only programming language No C for me. To me the advantages are really clear that I can get up to speed programming on this device much faster than I could for the PalmOS or PocketPC.
You're right, I felt REALLY sorry for him! God this news makes me really happy.
Why? Follow me on this: Lately while everyone else is freaked out thinking that terrorists are going to bomb their local mall next, I've been freaked out at how the Republicans are using terrorism as an excuse to push defense spending and hammer of our civil liberties. (Don't fool yourselves, in D.C. it's back to politics as usual.)
Between Dimitry, the Georgia screen saver dude, this guy and the fascism labeled "war on terrorism", I've started to think that our government has lost all balance and that we as a society were doomed.
Now it seems that this guy DID do some things wrong - I don't believe the whole report but to me the downloading of a password file and relogging on was the worst part - and our government isn't COMPLETELY chock-full of jackbooted thugs waiting to take away our liberties and throw us in jail.
It's just one less thing to worry about, and these days, that's cause for celebration.
A 15 second search on Gnutella found hundreds of copies of this song. I don't know if they're "digitially pure" but they're available.
-Russ
Re:I have found some uses... really!
on
WAP Bashing
·
· Score: 1
I have a Nokia 7110 (the one with the big WAP screen) and here in Madrid and it's essentially useless.
1) It's too slow. A 10 minute taxi ride should be enough to check my email, but I've just barely logged in when I arrive at my destination.
2) It costs the same as making a regular phone call, so while waiting for a 9600 baud connection to retrieve it's 2k of text (the biggest GSM networks will allow over the SMS carrier) I'm paying through the nose.
I tried. I really did, I bought the big WAP phone and everything, got excited, made my WAP home page, etc. but it's just pretty useless. I agree that to not be able to view the millions of HTML pages already in use is a waste.
While I'm on a tear, developing in XML is hell. It's worse than it seems - a missed bracket or an included ñ that you forgot to strip out and the whole page breaks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/19/national/19CIV I. html
Bush has approved detaining immigrants indefinitely like some Banana Republic despot or some Marxist leader. "Sorry if you weren't born here, but if you're a suspect, you can go to jail until we decide what to do with you."
This is only one step away from detaining whomeever for whatever reason in the name of national security.
You went a little overboard there. If I don't agree with a corporation's actions, the only thing I can do as an individual is not support that company. I don't buy or recommend their products and if I have a chance to remind everyone else to do the same, I'll do it.
Adobe in general needs to learn a lesson for sponsering a vicious persecution of a programmer to protect it's bottom line. The best way to do that is to remind people not to use their software.
As for being a racist hypocritical murderous zealot. Cool! I've never been flamed so badly before. I feel like I just joined a club. (But you might want to take a nap or something now you seem a little... stressed.)
"All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. "
-Benjamin Franklin
I just wanted to add my thanks. I'm an American living in Spain and/. was my connection to what was going on back home. (And in English!) Your efforts to keep the site up kept many of us in distant parts of the world up to date.
And thanks to everyone who posted links to alternate audio/video streams and those who were broadcasting the news. This sort of cooperation really showed the internet community at its best.
Now if we just combined this thread with the Lego Mindstorms thread we'd get some true BattleBot action in your living room... I wonder how Lego'd feel about THAT?
It's a plot! The NSA goes on 60 minutes to complain about their technology KNOWING that someone would post a link on/. and now they are watching posts for signs of "dangerous hackers."
Don't think for a minute the NSA isn't watching you NOW.
Then again maybe the NSA is a typical government agency that promotes mismanagement and ineptitude. Think about your local DMV only with encryption.
Or maybe I'm a NSA mole trying to put you off the scent of the real scheme... (Never ending, isn't it...)
Re:Isn't X-Box Hackproof?
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 1
So, like the original PC that IBM made, Microsoft is taking basically off the shelf components and creating a new platform. Like the IBM had it's original proprietary BIOS which Compaq reverse engineered, the Xbox has a different file system, CD and skewed OS. Big deal it'll get hacked for sure.
The main difference is the DMCA. What could IBM have done to Compaq if the DMCA existed then? Is reverse engineering considered circumventing copyright protection?
We'd all be using IBMs probably and be talking about the "IBM Xbox", instead of M$.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea that Netscape is launching a browser still has a nice ring to it. Netscape is still synonimous with the web to many people's ears. There's a sort of trust that if I download the browser from Netscape, and now AOL, it'll be more be somewhate more supported or reliable or, I guess, "standard."
I'm a bit more techy than the average joe, but a few weeks ago I decided to try to un-Microsoft myself and immediately loaded Netscape 6.1 - if only because I had the idea that Mozilla was "beta" stuff... After using Netscape for an hour or two, I thought, "this is pretty good - but still needs some polish. I wonder what the latest Mozilla is like?"
I'm now the proud user of Mozilla 0.9.5 (latest nightly build) and am quite happy with it. I probably should have gone right to Mozilla.org first, but that's my point. There's going to be lots of people who like me will discover Mozilla through Netscape. That brand still holds a lot of power and I think Mozilla is the better for it.
-Russ
Waitasecond. Did YOU read this book? Have you made an informed decision based on YOUR experience. Or are you just letting your boss do your thinking? If not, maybe it's YOU that doesn't belong in the computer industry.
-Russ
Java and Java Web Start are a long way from this thing. I mean Rebol's a 300k download for starters - even with all the bells and whistles it's less than a meg. Compare that with the 20meg download for Jdk1.3. And Rebol seems to work well over a slow connection. I was just playing with the demo apps and they download really quickly and run fast with little delay... unlike applets.
But along the Java line of thought, does this remind you of the Marimba stuff from circa 1996? Remember Bongo and Castanet and how you were able to write your own custom Java-ish apps that would be internet updateable? Rebol is obviously a much better implementation, but it's very similar in idea. The control panels are similar, the demo apps are similar...
I'm not ready to give up Java yet, especially for this wacky language that has little to no support (30 million upcoming clients or no), but after playing with it, I can see why Rebol's pretty cool.
-Russ
This is waaaaay off topic, but if you weren't just exagerating, you need to download the trillian IM client. I use it now for my accounts on all those above plus IRC. I'm really happy with it (it's not as flaky as Jabber).
http://www.trillian.cc
-Russ
Man, I didn't know that the same director made StarBlazers! I remember watching that series before school back in the early 80s! On channel 25 in Boston... I can't believe you can buy the StarBlazers discs! I guess it makes sense since Anime is so popular, but I never made the connection.
It ALL makes sense now, I think. Daft Punk obviously connected with something from my childhood because after seeing the first two videos, which I thought were fantastic, I bought the album, which I think is good except that it loses something during the 2nd half...
That's a kick-ass marketing plan for a music group... find some cartoon a bunch of kids watched and use that as your next video.
Should we expect He-Man and the Masters of the Universe next?
-Russ
I think I'll probably be upgrading my Win2k... but only after that pesky copy-protection bug has been fixed by someone first.
-Russ
I read the transgaming site and I think what they are doing is not a bad effort at a open source biz model. If all things go well, they will get paid for their efforts in developing their software and the community will eventually get the code.
Also, though it obviously didn't say it on their site, you can see that if they go under, the code will probably get turned over to the community a la eazel's Nautilus anyways. So it's a no-lose situation for the rest of us.
But CmdrTaco's got a point in that these guys are playing with their own ball and can go home anytime they want... But I'm sure that he can see the point about trying to make money. This sort of development is akin to producing
Oh, but I HATE that name "Lindows"! Ugh. It's so... perverted.
-Russ
Stupid mice and keyboards and billion-dollar investments in things like XBox and WebTV.
-Russ
If a hundred Slashdotters spend a thousand minutes typing out 20 million bytes worth of audio, will it be Shakespeare?
Or something like that...
-R
I worked on a contract in AOL-Avant in Madrid and the main problem was that these computers were Yet Another Platform that needed to be developed for.
Mozilla was for the most part fine, but there were little problems with both the browser and the platform. For example, at the time (I'm not sure about now) the mailto: links didn't work because the custom email program on the box wasn't integrated with Mozilla.
There were also problems the html rendering of tables, etc. You had to develop java scripts that detected IE, Netscape, AND Mozilla on the "Paquitos" (it's what they called the machines... it was a play on words on iMac/iPaq)
Now... the COOL thing was when one of the system guys from Intel walked over and put a USB-based key into the side of the machine and this "dumb" terminal with only basic functionality became a full-fledged Linux box with a command-line, etc.
-Russ
That's so nice that they volunteered the machines... Where do I put my order in for a couple more?
One for me and one for Linus of course.
-Russ
Another analogy is English. We're all using English right now to "interface" like pipes. We all know basic English words about objects and concepts and we use these to take an idea from one person and give it to another. Like a pipe takes the results from one program and gives it to another.
Okay. So why are we using English? There are better languages. Spanish for example is wonderful - it generally takes up a bit more space, but the rules are much more defined and there is never any discrepancy about how a word is spelled or pronounced (there's no such thing as a Spelling Bee in Spanish.) This is just an example, but the idea is we could do better than English, a language with more exceptions than rules.
But once a bunch of people are using something - WIMPs or a language, the results gained from a bunch of people USING that method of communication is exponentially greater than any benefits that can be derived from a different system. Maybe if the new system is so incredible like the GUIs when compared to the command prompts people will change, but this takes time. How many bright people here right now are saying they "prefer" the command line (when it's obviously inferior to a GUI)? They may be stubborn boneheads, but they prove my point.
Anyways, I think research into a better form of interfacing with a computer is fine, but there's nothing wrong with my GUI right now either.
-Russ
Java is 100% about selling it to the corporate market. If you can sell the idea that your code-monkey's who just got all certified in Java to run your website can now swap over and start developing enterprise-wide handheld business applications, you're on to something. Also, any application you develop for this device with Java will be incredibly portable to any other device with Java like the iPaqs (same story as always with Java - it may not be 100% true, but it's good marketing.)
I should say that I use Java as my only programming language No C for me. To me the advantages are really clear that I can get up to speed programming on this device much faster than I could for the PalmOS or PocketPC.
-Russ
You're right, I felt REALLY sorry for him! God this news makes me really happy.
Why? Follow me on this: Lately while everyone else is freaked out thinking that terrorists are going to bomb their local mall next, I've been freaked out at how the Republicans are using terrorism as an excuse to push defense spending and hammer of our civil liberties. (Don't fool yourselves, in D.C. it's back to politics as usual.)
Between Dimitry, the Georgia screen saver dude, this guy and the fascism labeled "war on terrorism", I've started to think that our government has lost all balance and that we as a society were doomed.
Now it seems that this guy DID do some things wrong - I don't believe the whole report but to me the downloading of a password file and relogging on was the worst part - and our government isn't COMPLETELY chock-full of jackbooted thugs waiting to take away our liberties and throw us in jail.
It's just one less thing to worry about, and these days, that's cause for celebration.
Jerry Springer, when he was in public office, paid for such services using a check, and got nailed...
Sometimes it's not about going to jail, but about privacy.
-Russ
A 15 second search on Gnutella found hundreds of copies of this song. I don't know if they're "digitially pure" but they're available.
-Russ
I have a Nokia 7110 (the one with the big WAP screen) and here in Madrid and it's essentially useless.
1) It's too slow. A 10 minute taxi ride should be enough to check my email, but I've just barely logged in when I arrive at my destination.
2) It costs the same as making a regular phone call, so while waiting for a 9600 baud connection to retrieve it's 2k of text (the biggest GSM networks will allow over the SMS carrier) I'm paying through the nose.
I tried. I really did, I bought the big WAP phone and everything, got excited, made my WAP home page, etc. but it's just pretty useless. I agree that to not be able to view the millions of HTML pages already in use is a waste.
While I'm on a tear, developing in XML is hell. It's worse than it seems - a missed bracket or an included ñ that you forgot to strip out and the whole page breaks.
-Russ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/19/national/19CI
Bush has approved detaining immigrants indefinitely like some Banana Republic despot or some Marxist leader. "Sorry if you weren't born here, but if you're a suspect, you can go to jail until we decide what to do with you."
This is only one step away from detaining whomeever for whatever reason in the name of national security.
-Russ
You went a little overboard there. If I don't agree with a corporation's actions, the only thing I can do as an individual is not support that company. I don't buy or recommend their products and if I have a chance to remind everyone else to do the same, I'll do it.
Adobe in general needs to learn a lesson for sponsering a vicious persecution of a programmer to protect it's bottom line. The best way to do that is to remind people not to use their software.
As for being a racist hypocritical murderous zealot. Cool! I've never been flamed so badly before. I feel like I just joined a club. (But you might want to take a nap or something now you seem a little... stressed.)
"All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. "
-Benjamin Franklin
For more:
http://www.bartleby.com/100/245.html
-Russ
Excuse me, but screw Adobe. Those litigating idiots don't deserve two minutes of your attention or admiration for any product of theirs.
Just because Dmitry Sklyarov is out of jail doesn't mean he's out of trouble.
-Russ
I just wanted to add my thanks. I'm an American living in Spain and
And thanks to everyone who posted links to alternate audio/video streams and those who were broadcasting the news. This sort of cooperation really showed the internet community at its best.
-Russ
Now if we just combined this thread with the Lego Mindstorms thread we'd get some true BattleBot action in your living room... I wonder how Lego'd feel about THAT?
It's a plot! The NSA goes on 60 minutes to complain about their technology KNOWING that someone would post a link on
Don't think for a minute the NSA isn't watching you NOW.
Then again maybe the NSA is a typical government agency that promotes mismanagement and ineptitude. Think about your local DMV only with encryption.
Or maybe I'm a NSA mole trying to put you off the scent of the real scheme... (Never ending, isn't it...)
So, like the original PC that IBM made, Microsoft is taking basically off the shelf components and creating a new platform. Like the IBM had it's original proprietary BIOS which Compaq reverse engineered, the Xbox has a different file system, CD and skewed OS. Big deal it'll get hacked for sure.
The main difference is the DMCA. What could IBM have done to Compaq if the DMCA existed then? Is reverse engineering considered circumventing copyright protection?
We'd all be using IBMs probably and be talking about the "IBM Xbox", instead of M$.
-Russ