>... Will it ever be possible to do away with desktop solutions like Outlook and Thunderbird? Given the nature of the internet, will it ever be possible to truly move to an 'online desktop'?
Look at banking: Where's most/all of your money, in your home, or in the bank? If we can trust financial institutions with almost all of our money, why can't we trust these service providers with our data? What we need is regulation.
For what it's worth, my blog has actually been quoted in the local newspaper (India), at least once (and maybe more because I don't read the newspaper). So it can (and does) happen.
Re:Flash as an application development platform
on
The Future of Flash
·
· Score: 1
>In other words, even if you use Flash you're still giving away your movie because there's no way to stop the person at the other end from making a copy that they can keep. In fact, there's even a Firefox extension [mozilla.org] expressly designed for this purpose. If you think Flash will stop distribution, you're just fooling yourself.
The Firefox extension will work only with (1) embedded Flash video and (2) FLV files. It won't be able to save video (3) streamed to the player (which is the more secure way of delivering video).
Having worked on the video playback component in Flash and Flex (I'm an engineer at Adobe), I feel obligated to enlighten you on the bandwidth implications for users visiting web sites containing Flash-based video ads.
Of these, the first one is recommended only for extremely small video clips (5 seconds or less), because embedding the video into the SWF, aside from providing poor quality playback, also bloats the size of the SWF file.
The other two have their pros and cons each, but they have one thing in common: video is downloaded only when requested. Streaming (option 3) has the additional advantage of requesting video frame-by-frame, whereas in the case of HTTP download, the entire file is requested at once (though the download can be aborted at any point during playback).
So, take a chill pill. The world is not coming to an end. If you don't want to see the ads, don't click on the play button.
Be wary of all the India "hype" though - it's not as good as the media makes it sound.
My suggestion would be to first get a job in an American company that has an office in India. There's a lot of startup activity happening in the US right now, and even the smallest of companies (like even 4-5 employees) is having an "India strategy" (duh). Take advantage of that. Find an excuse to travel to India on your current job, see how it is here, and if you like it, then look for a more long-term position. I know people who've come here to train teams of engineers for 1-2 months and decided that living here wasn't for them (for whatever reasons). I know others who've found roles that allow them to travel between India and the US every couple of months.
On a more serious note: I'm a software developer based in Bangalore, India. We do telecommute quite often. The reasoning: if we can work remotely with our colleagues halfway across the globe in a different timezone, why can't we work remotely with our colleagues a few kms. away from home? Most American companies in Bangalore (like Oracle, Adobe, etc.) have flexible timings, and usually no one notices when you're around and not. As long as you're checking in code, answering email, closing bugs and putting out specs in time, you're doing fine.
I often travel to the US and work from there (mostly San Francisco), and I can say that India is going to be defining work trends in the coming years. Americans are very "old school".
I hate to break this to you, but the Flash (SWF) file format is actually open, and there are a number of tools available to play with SWF files.
I don't have links right now, but I'm pretty sure your other claims are false. Dreamweaver, for example, generates valid XHTML/CSS code. You obviously haven't used any of these products.
Hi, clueless. When the article says that closed source software is well documented, it means it is well documented for _internal use_.
Anyone who leaves a comment like yours is surely not qualified to comment on this topic. You've obviously never worked on a software project (closed or open).
Trackbacks suck. Believe me, it's not worth it. I've moved from LiveJournal to my own WordPress-based blog, and trackbacks is one of the last features I'm excited about. I got tired of all the trackback spam coming my way, and I disabled trackbacks for good.
Alternative: If you want to know who's linking to your blog -- whether or not they've trackbacked you -- you should look at Bloglines. Even if you don't use Bloglines, someone who reads your blog probably does, and Bloglines knows about which blogs are linking to you.
Looks like they've added a gazillion LiveJournal pages to their index. I used to have a Google search box on my LJ that didn't throw up relevant results until last week or so. Now it works perfectly, just like builtin search (like what you see in MT and WordPress).
These health workers, however, usually get lots of vacation time and very generous salaries to compensate for their stressful jobs -- something sysadmins typically do not enjoy.
Bah! They have r00t access!!! What more can a UNIX weenie ask for?!!
I just downloaded and installed it. And I'm using it. It is pretty good. I was able to import my subscriptions from Bloglines into RSSOwl. It used Mozilla 1.4 has a built-in browser on Linux, and IE 5+ on Windows. Neat.
And, BTW, client-side Java is pretty good. I'm happy to see an SWT-based GUI application other than the Eclipse IDE itself. It's a proof-of-concept (and you have the source). Now if you want to write a multi-OS GUI app in Java, you know what to refer to.
They are the ones who catch exceptions with blank handlers in Java at work.
You know what, that's why Anders Hejlsberg didn't add checked exceptions to C#--because half the programmers don't handle them and instead just ignore them, because Java won't let you be otherwise. In C#, you ignore all exceptions and they propogate up (without having to declare them in the method signature). That's an improvement over Java, sorry.
And what are you talking about, C# or.NET? Surely, you mean.NET application don't scale up. C# is just a language.
Slashdot Mirror
>... Will it ever be possible to do away with desktop solutions like Outlook and Thunderbird? Given the nature of the internet, will it ever be possible to truly move to an 'online desktop'?
Look at banking: Where's most/all of your money, in your home, or in the bank? If we can trust financial institutions with almost all of our money, why can't we trust these service providers with our data? What we need is regulation.
For what it's worth, my blog has actually been quoted in the local newspaper (India), at least once (and maybe more because I don't read the newspaper). So it can (and does) happen.
Yes... I am change my names to Borat Sagdiyev. WHY NOT?!!
No RMS, what a pity.
In case you haven't seen penguin.swf.
>In other words, even if you use Flash you're still giving away your movie because there's no way to stop the person at the other end from making a copy that they can keep. In fact, there's even a Firefox extension [mozilla.org] expressly designed for this purpose. If you think Flash will stop distribution, you're just fooling yourself.
The Firefox extension will work only with (1) embedded Flash video and (2) FLV files. It won't be able to save video (3) streamed to the player (which is the more secure way of delivering video).
Having worked on the video playback component in Flash and Flex (I'm an engineer at Adobe), I feel obligated to enlighten you on the bandwidth implications for users visiting web sites containing Flash-based video ads.
There are three ways to play video in Flash:
Of these, the first one is recommended only for extremely small video clips (5 seconds or less), because embedding the video into the SWF, aside from providing poor quality playback, also bloats the size of the SWF file.
The other two have their pros and cons each, but they have one thing in common: video is downloaded only when requested. Streaming (option 3) has the additional advantage of requesting video frame-by-frame, whereas in the case of HTTP download, the entire file is requested at once (though the download can be aborted at any point during playback).
So, take a chill pill. The world is not coming to an end. If you don't want to see the ads, don't click on the play button.
>How hard is it for a foreigner to come and get a job there?
I saw this article on MSNBC last week.
Be wary of all the India "hype" though - it's not as good as the media makes it sound.
My suggestion would be to first get a job in an American company that has an office in India. There's a lot of startup activity happening in the US right now, and even the smallest of companies (like even 4-5 employees) is having an "India strategy" (duh). Take advantage of that. Find an excuse to travel to India on your current job, see how it is here, and if you like it, then look for a more long-term position. I know people who've come here to train teams of engineers for 1-2 months and decided that living here wasn't for them (for whatever reasons). I know others who've found roles that allow them to travel between India and the US every couple of months.
On a more serious note: I'm a software developer based in Bangalore, India. We do telecommute quite often. The reasoning: if we can work remotely with our colleagues halfway across the globe in a different timezone, why can't we work remotely with our colleagues a few kms. away from home? Most American companies in Bangalore (like Oracle, Adobe, etc.) have flexible timings, and usually no one notices when you're around and not. As long as you're checking in code, answering email, closing bugs and putting out specs in time, you're doing fine.
I often travel to the US and work from there (mostly San Francisco), and I can say that India is going to be defining work trends in the coming years. Americans are very "old school".
Macromedia had countersued.
I hate to break this to you, but the Flash (SWF) file format is actually open, and there are a number of tools available to play with SWF files.
I don't have links right now, but I'm pretty sure your other claims are false. Dreamweaver, for example, generates valid XHTML/CSS code. You obviously haven't used any of these products.
Hi, clueless. When the article says that closed source software is well documented, it means it is well documented for _internal use_.
Anyone who leaves a comment like yours is surely not qualified to comment on this topic. You've obviously never worked on a software project (closed or open).
RSS does not support deleting a post, but in NNTP you can (the cancel command). I know you're joking, but really RSS is no comparison.
* They did _not_ use Flash
Well, if they had used Flash, it would be accessible to more users. Flash, running on 98% of desktops, is more ubiquitious than IE + Firefox.
Have you seen the enhancements to Java 5? There is no bounds checking if you use the new for-each loop (of course).
Trackbacks suck. Believe me, it's not worth it. I've moved from LiveJournal to my own WordPress-based blog, and trackbacks is one of the last features I'm excited about. I got tired of all the trackback spam coming my way, and I disabled trackbacks for good.
Alternative: If you want to know who's linking to your blog -- whether or not they've trackbacked you -- you should look at Bloglines. Even if you don't use Bloglines, someone who reads your blog probably does, and Bloglines knows about which blogs are linking to you.
I've converted the videos to Flash Video (FLV) (my blog).
I've converted to low-quality FLVs and hosted here, if anyone wants to have a quick look: Tsunami videos .
Looks like they've added a gazillion LiveJournal pages to their index. I used to have a Google search box on my LJ that didn't throw up relevant results until last week or so. Now it works perfectly, just like builtin search (like what you see in MT and WordPress).
Have you overloaded the & operator then?
Yes, it's confirmed.
Bah! They have r00t access!!! What more can a UNIX weenie ask for?!!
I just downloaded and installed it. And I'm using it. It is pretty good. I was able to import my subscriptions from Bloglines into RSSOwl. It used Mozilla 1.4 has a built-in browser on Linux, and IE 5+ on Windows. Neat.
And, BTW, client-side Java is pretty good. I'm happy to see an SWT-based GUI application other than the Eclipse IDE itself. It's a proof-of-concept (and you have the source). Now if you want to write a multi-OS GUI app in Java, you know what to refer to.
But PEP works (apparently).
You know what, that's why Anders Hejlsberg didn't add checked exceptions to C#--because half the programmers don't handle them and instead just ignore them, because Java won't let you be otherwise. In C#, you ignore all exceptions and they propogate up (without having to declare them in the method signature). That's an improvement over Java, sorry.
And what are you talking about, C# or .NET? Surely, you mean .NET application don't scale up. C# is just a language.