What a crock of bullshit. What are 'they' going to steal? My history logs?
Sure, you can say: my CC info. This is NOT true, however. And by the way using a credit card in a restaurant is INFINITELY more unsecure than using it online, regardless of the browser used.
I downloaded and installed the latest version of mozilla (on a Win98/AMD machine). It ran smoothly, rendered a lot more pages correctly than that horrible CSS-less Netscape does. And it doesn't crash (although from what I've seen mileage varies amongst different users).
However, I seriously question the relevance of ANY project that tries to 'start a revolution' in the browser market. The de facto situation has arisen that a browser is part of the OS. This may have been accomplished in part by scheming, bully tactics and FUD, but it is true nonetheless.
So you have the situation that someone who buys a PC gets an OS, including a browser, installed on it. If said PC is bought at, say, CompUSA you have a 99.9% chance that that OS is some Windows version. Regarding the person who buys the PC: there's a 95% or even higher chance that he or she has little or no affinity with computers, let alone can compare the compliance of different W3C standards. The most likely desire of that person for the browser is that it renders web pages the way their creators designed them. Now, who do you think those creaters have in mind?
The browser with the largest market share!
WAKE UP, PEOPLE! Web standards are being set by Microsoft, and people who get a browser installed that complies to THOSE standards flawlessly are unlikely to replace it. As are most Linux/Mac users by the way. So Mozilla is destined to attain a market share of no more than 1%, if even that is possible (personally I think Opera's current market share of.25% among IT professionals says it all, really).
If his wife/daughter/puppy receive the proceeds, isn't it very likely that Mr. Adams would have wanted them to publish his work, especially since their loss was so sudden and tragic?
As for all the fans -including myself: I personally believe that anyone who is truly a Douglas Adams fan won't hesitate for a second if he/she sees the Salmon of Doubt in a local bookstore.
In my view, there are two extremes in which a software project can be approached:
I) Design it to death
Take a few weeks to write specs that describe every nitty-gritty detail. Reduce coders' individual freedom to a bare-bones minimum.
Advantages:
- Client knows exactly, beforehand, what a piece of software will do and at least to an extent what the cost will be.
- Programmers know exactly what their job is.
Disadvantages:
- Constant micromanagement is required to find out if the programmers in quiestion aren't cutting a few corners to meet their deadlines/to show off.
- For a huge amout of time, no progress is visible, since everything is planned in advance. This could lead to a seizure or two when the deadline is there and the resulting software doesn't meet requirements.Also, tests can't really start before the project is completed.
I suppose this method works best if you have a team of inexperienced coders and a rather large architect force.
II) XP
Together with client, draw up a list of requirements. Then hand out this list to all programmers who divide the work out amongst teams either made by themselves or by management. Make them develop on a shared, simulated test-implementation environment.
Advantages:
- Huge cost cuts are made in the design.
- Obviously, since there is a shared, 'real-life' testing environment, testing can be done at any given time.
- Kent Beck could give you about a thousand more:)
Disadvantages:
- Requires a lot of independence from the programmers themselves. Independence some, if not most programmers simply do not possess or even _desire_.
- Assumes a good design will sort of 'come naturally' out of a joint team effort. I do not believe this notion will ever hold true, maybe only for small teams.
- If one little cog in the XP wheel is missing, like continuous deployment and testing or constant peer-reviewing, the whole thing comes crashing down like, well, a badly built bridge because -guess what- the DESIGN is missing!
XP works, I've seen it work, but only in small teams, on small to medium projects done only by REALLY good programmers.
Conclusion: The old-style, Systems Development method of doing a software project is certainly up for a revamp, although I think XP is too 'Extreme' for most real-world situations. My clients generally _want_ to see solid design before they OK a project, they simply aren't content with just turning in requirements, and most certainly do not want to put one of their own tech people on the project (why else would they have come to us).
I personally believe that there is a more elegant solution to the dilemma, which is combining the design phase of old with both generative programming and the development phase of XP. It may seem a bit bulky at first but with generative programming a lot of bulkiness is taken out of development, and people can start 'dumping modules' into the test environment almost instantly after design has finished.
I've been a programmer for about 10 years (C/C++/ASM/Java) an architect for 2 years and right now I have my own business and divide my time between meeting with clients, paying money to people, PhotoShopping brochures and ads and -if I get the chance- writing code.
I admit without hesitation that for a pretty long while I have been a primadonna about stuff quite some times ("What? No raise? Ok, lets see...1 month's notice, 21 free days left...See ya!!!").
First of all I think that many claims made by primadonnas are fully justified. I believe, I _know_ that a good coder is worth 10 if not 100 times more than a poor one.
But I disagree with the notion of some of these people that code is what makes or breaks a project. Code is fully and absolutely inferior to design. Any idiot who had a three month course in [name your favourite language] can create a class/procedure/app that does what was agreed with the customer if told so properly. That's what the design is for.
If you go to your most talented coder and say to him/her: "Client X wants us to write a web-based email system. Deadline in two weeks.", you shouldn't be surprised if said coder regards the project as "his property", and you're more or less at his mercy.
The point I am trying to make here is that if you know how to handle a primadonna he or she can be of great value for the organization. If you don't then brace yourself: you'll lose control of your projects in a second.
Also, having a good architect is often far more rewarding than having a good coder.
I think that experiences vary wildly over different hardware configurations, a problem that can't arise when everyone uses the same hardware (like in a Mac).
I myself have worked on some 10 different PC's over the last two years (call me schizophrenic, I just hate drag =).
On the last three of them I have had the (mis)fortune to have had Win2K installed on it by default. Each of those eventually got the '98 Treatment' out of sheer frustration, and I haven't had any problems with them since.
My co-workers have had similar experiences.
You are correct in stating that the installation _procedures_ are virtually identical.
However, Win2k has some quirks that make it annoying to say the least. For example: it falsely identified one of our ATA100 boards as an ATA66 board, preventing it from functioning properly. OTOH, Win98 just uses the bus as it is supposed to.
I have never had a driverv conflict within Win98 that caused it to stop functioning, a truely endemic symptom in Win2k.
Furthermore, if I look at it objectively there are simply more applications that run on 98 than on 2k, which is what an OS is really about, right?
sdijkstra
PS: I think Win2k _is_ a decent server system, although I would trust *nix with that task if I'd taken the time to learn how to use it.
This comparison is not fair at all. IMHO, from an end user point of view Win2K doesn't even come CLOSE to the Win98 Second Edition in ease of installation, stability and most importantly hardware support.
Therefor, if this 'contest' should be of any significance, CNET should put Win98 in the ring instead of Win2K
With stuff like HTML4.0 and JRE1.x being pretty commonplace, do we really need yet another browser?
I mean, apart from some cool features what really sets it aside from the rest is probably its (admittedly: nice =) interface.
So my question is: What more is a browser than an address bar, a status bar and a HTML/Applet viewer with back button? Does it really matter which one you use?
PS: Mozilla just got itself a huge potential market, sadly all non-MS Despair Inc. 2000-2001
Slashdot Mirror
If you consider a "cup" to be about 200ml (7oz), then chances are the water alone will poison you.
"milli Siemens"?
Is that some sort of miniturized German electronics manufacturer?
I always thought that mS stood for "milli Sievert", a unit for ionizing radiation...
Today's PCs have the computing power of a small reptile, and don't have the ability to form neural connections except in simulation.
Also, typically, a huge chunk of a game's resources are devoted to audiovisual support.
Yet Lionhead in all it's greatness claims they found a way to accurately simulate a flock of intelligent creatures???
I have one word for this:
*goatse*
What a crock of bullshit. What are 'they' going to steal? My history logs?
Sure, you can say: my CC info. This is NOT true, however. And by the way using a credit card in a restaurant is INFINITELY more unsecure than using it online, regardless of the browser used.
Flamebait, troll, call it what you like.
.25% among IT professionals says it all, really).
I downloaded and installed the latest version of mozilla (on a Win98/AMD machine). It ran smoothly, rendered a lot more pages correctly than that horrible CSS-less Netscape does. And it doesn't crash (although from what I've seen mileage varies amongst different users).
However, I seriously question the relevance of ANY project that tries to 'start a revolution' in the browser market. The de facto situation has arisen that a browser is part of the OS. This may have been accomplished in part by scheming, bully tactics and FUD, but it is true nonetheless.
So you have the situation that someone who buys a PC gets an OS, including a browser, installed on it. If said PC is bought at, say, CompUSA you have a 99.9% chance that that OS is some Windows version. Regarding the person who buys the PC: there's a 95% or even higher chance that he or she has little or no affinity with computers, let alone can compare the compliance of different W3C standards. The most likely desire of that person for the browser is that it renders web pages the way their creators designed them. Now, who do you think those creaters have in mind?
The browser with the largest market share!
WAKE UP, PEOPLE! Web standards are being set by Microsoft, and people who get a browser installed that complies to THOSE standards flawlessly are unlikely to replace it. As are most Linux/Mac users by the way. So Mozilla is destined to attain a market share of no more than 1%, if even that is possible (personally I think Opera's current market share of
If his wife/daughter/puppy receive the proceeds, isn't it very likely that Mr. Adams would have wanted them to publish his work, especially since their loss was so sudden and tragic?
As for all the fans -including myself: I personally believe that anyone who is truly a Douglas Adams fan won't hesitate for a second if he/she sees the Salmon of Doubt in a local bookstore.
Hell, I won't that's for sure.
In my view, there are two extremes in which a software project can be approached:
:)
I) Design it to death
Take a few weeks to write specs that describe every nitty-gritty detail. Reduce coders' individual freedom to a bare-bones minimum.
Advantages:
- Client knows exactly, beforehand, what a piece of software will do and at least to an extent what the cost will be.
- Programmers know exactly what their job is.
Disadvantages:
- Constant micromanagement is required to find out if the programmers in quiestion aren't cutting a few corners to meet their deadlines/to show off.
- For a huge amout of time, no progress is visible, since everything is planned in advance. This could lead to a seizure or two when the deadline is there and the resulting software doesn't meet requirements.Also, tests can't really start before the project is completed.
I suppose this method works best if you have a team of inexperienced coders and a rather large architect force.
II) XP
Together with client, draw up a list of requirements. Then hand out this list to all programmers who divide the work out amongst teams either made by themselves or by management. Make them develop on a shared, simulated test-implementation environment.
Advantages:
- Huge cost cuts are made in the design.
- Obviously, since there is a shared, 'real-life' testing environment, testing can be done at any given time.
- Kent Beck could give you about a thousand more
Disadvantages:
- Requires a lot of independence from the programmers themselves. Independence some, if not most programmers simply do not possess or even _desire_.
- Assumes a good design will sort of 'come naturally' out of a joint team effort. I do not believe this notion will ever hold true, maybe only for small teams.
- If one little cog in the XP wheel is missing, like continuous deployment and testing or constant peer-reviewing, the whole thing comes crashing down like, well, a badly built bridge because -guess what- the DESIGN is missing!
XP works, I've seen it work, but only in small teams, on small to medium projects done only by REALLY good programmers.
Conclusion: The old-style, Systems Development method of doing a software project is certainly up for a revamp, although I think XP is too 'Extreme' for most real-world situations. My clients generally _want_ to see solid design before they OK a project, they simply aren't content with just turning in requirements, and most certainly do not want to put one of their own tech people on the project (why else would they have come to us).
I personally believe that there is a more elegant solution to the dilemma, which is combining the design phase of old with both generative programming and the development phase of XP. It may seem a bit bulky at first but with generative programming a lot of bulkiness is taken out of development, and people can start 'dumping modules' into the test environment almost instantly after design has finished.
I've been a programmer for about 10 years (C/C++/ASM/Java) an architect for 2 years and right now I have my own business and divide my time between meeting with clients, paying money to people, PhotoShopping brochures and ads and -if I get the chance- writing code. I admit without hesitation that for a pretty long while I have been a primadonna about stuff quite some times ("What? No raise? Ok, lets see...1 month's notice, 21 free days left...See ya!!!"). First of all I think that many claims made by primadonnas are fully justified. I believe, I _know_ that a good coder is worth 10 if not 100 times more than a poor one. But I disagree with the notion of some of these people that code is what makes or breaks a project. Code is fully and absolutely inferior to design. Any idiot who had a three month course in [name your favourite language] can create a class/procedure/app that does what was agreed with the customer if told so properly. That's what the design is for. If you go to your most talented coder and say to him/her: "Client X wants us to write a web-based email system. Deadline in two weeks.", you shouldn't be surprised if said coder regards the project as "his property", and you're more or less at his mercy. The point I am trying to make here is that if you know how to handle a primadonna he or she can be of great value for the organization. If you don't then brace yourself: you'll lose control of your projects in a second. Also, having a good architect is often far more rewarding than having a good coder.
Funny that this report should come when this rumour is buzzing around.
WARNING: the site linked to contains abusive language and NO idiot filter. Be warned.
SD
Not to be viewed as a troll or anything...for me it is possible to bring down _any_ OS with netscape :)
Hardware support is not _good_ in 98, it is just less horrible than in 2k.
Hope this clarifies my statements.
I think that experiences vary wildly over different hardware configurations, a problem that can't arise when everyone uses the same hardware (like in a Mac).
I myself have worked on some 10 different PC's over the last two years (call me schizophrenic, I just hate drag =).
On the last three of them I have had the (mis)fortune to have had Win2K installed on it by default. Each of those eventually got the '98 Treatment' out of sheer frustration, and I haven't had any problems with them since.
My co-workers have had similar experiences.
You are correct in stating that the installation _procedures_ are virtually identical.
However, Win2k has some quirks that make it annoying to say the least. For example: it falsely identified one of our ATA100 boards as an ATA66 board, preventing it from functioning properly. OTOH, Win98 just uses the bus as it is supposed to.
I have never had a driverv conflict within Win98 that caused it to stop functioning, a truely endemic symptom in Win2k.
Furthermore, if I look at it objectively there are simply more applications that run on 98 than on 2k, which is what an OS is really about, right?
sdijkstra
PS: I think Win2k _is_ a decent server system, although I would trust *nix with that task if I'd taken the time to learn how to use it.
This comparison is not fair at all. IMHO, from an end user point of view Win2K doesn't even come CLOSE to the Win98 Second Edition in ease of installation, stability and most importantly hardware support.
Therefor, if this 'contest' should be of any significance, CNET should put Win98 in the ring instead of Win2K
$.02
sdijkstra
With stuff like HTML4.0 and JRE1.x being pretty commonplace, do we really need yet another browser?
I mean, apart from some cool features what really sets it aside from the rest is probably its (admittedly: nice =) interface.
So my question is: What more is a browser than an address bar, a status bar and a HTML/Applet viewer with back button? Does it really matter which one you use?
PS: Mozilla just got itself a huge potential market, sadly all non-MS Despair Inc. 2000-2001