I reckon M$ would be happy to continue to pour money down the IE hole if it meant people were using Frontpage. IMHO, the browser wars were never about making IE profitable, they were about controlling web standards so that they could sell their development tools.
Perhaps they initially thought that the web was going to be a document delivery system and that everyone would be publishing web pages using a package like Frontpage (cf..DOC files and MS Word). That hasn't happened. The WWW is now more of an application delivery system with complicated web-sites written by professionals. The document publishing side of the WWW has been changed so that non-techy people use blogs, wikis and so forth to publish documents - for free.
M$ has recently announced the "Expression" web designer, so we'll have to see how that shakes things up.
All they need to do is call it "Star Trek XI: Kobayashi Maru" and you know we'll go and watch it.
No web page technology is ever going to work...
on
Dvorak Rants on CSS
·
· Score: 1
...because there is an inherent tension in the system. Page authors want you to view their web page as they have designed it, and users want to view it the way that suits them.
Has everyone forgotten that the original purpose of HTML was to separate content from presentation? All of this stuff is tacked on to HTML to overcome the "limitation" that HTML can't guarantee what the page will look like on the client device. I've got news for you, guys, this "limitation" is part of the original design.
This is the sort of crap they introduced into everything2 a few years back. It ruined everything2, and I am confident if Wikipedia introduced something similar it would ruin Wikipedia as well.
It is far better for Wikipedia users to know that anyone at all can change an article, and to be critical when reading articles there. In fact, I would suggest that people should always be critical of everything they read anyway.
Re:Solve next years problem as well as todays...
on
A Database for the Office?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
One solution I have seen effectively used is the creation of a "general" database using mysql and a rather clever PHP front end. The database allowed for 8 "fields"; each field was really three fields, Data descriptor, Data name and Data type. Essentially the ID-10-T entered a name for the data field, its data and selected a type from a drop down box. They could select previous "name and type" combinations they had used. This then spawns a copy of this "standard" database with user access privelges set to a default rule; another interface allowed advanced users to adjust this. Finally a generic PHP gateway presented them a data entry/query sheet that formatted itself based on type... Sure, it was probably alot of work, once; but it ensured that all future databases created were in "real" databases that were relatively easy to maintain for the IT department.
If I understand you correctly, this system you've described encapsulates a database engine to provide the functionality of... a crippled database engine! More to the point, if you are mixing data from different user "databases" in the one table, you, by definition, have a de-normalised database. Also, your users are learning database skills that only work with your particular app, not general skills that are useful throughout their career. You are also reinventing the wheel since you'll need to write a whole bunch of code to parse their queries through the encapsulation layer. Lemme guess... you've written either a homebrew cut-down version of SQL that isn't standards compliant, or a visual query interface that the users keep asking for improvements to, right?
What is the benefit of all this crapola? The IT department maintains control. Something I am sure almost every IT department forgets is that they are a SUPPORT department. The "ID-10-T"s you are talking about are actually the guys performing the core business of your company. Your job is to make these users MORE productive, not limit them. You should be teaching them how to use technology such as Access, mySQL etc, not simply act as a highwayman by stopping them from creating useful business tools.
What kind of troll article is this anyway? Some guy gets a job in a VB software house, to re-write a VB app in VB and then complains because he doesn't know VB? And starts heaping on it, even though he's never used it much? How is this newsworthy?
I am not a medical researcher, but my understanding is that a stem cell is a primitive type of cell that can grow into another type of cell. The fuss about stem cell research is that human foetuses have a large supply of stem cells, because they have not finished growing yet. So harvesting aborted foetuses would be one way to provide stem cells for research. This is controversial for obvious reasons.
Apart from being good for you, I find that drinking a glass of water between coffees/cokes actually extends my caffeine buzz. Too much coffee/coke dehydrates you and actually makes you sleepy as a result.
That part of the article about sensory deprivation was interesting. The old Infocom game "Suspended" had something similar, and this aspect made it the best Infocom game of all time, IMHO.
I've been programming in BASIC for around 15 years. I don't know why, but during that whole 15 years BASIC has copped flak.
The reasons have changed over the years. Originally, the complaints were that it didn't have variable declarations and encouraged "spaghetti code" through the GOTO command. Variable declarations were added, and SUBs/Functions and even classes/objects were added to the language.
Then there was a complaint that you couldn't make "true executables", so M$ added that option.
Then the complaints were about its lack of providing object inheritance. Now we have that. But the flames continue.
Why?
It's clear that the flames are not due to any particular aspect of the language, since the arguments have changed over time. And so has the language. I can tell you that modern BASIC has almost nothing in common with the original ANSI BASIC except for a few legacy keywords (FOR..NEXT, GOTO, DIM etc). Modern object-oriented computer languages are so similar that I have more than once been reading a bit of code in a magazine article and only realised half way through that it was a different language from VB.
I wonder if other languages get as persistently flamed. I believe the real reason is due to the language's very name: BASIC. I suspect that if the language was instead called "Visual Complex.NET", all of this flaming of the language would cease.
[waves hand] This is not the repost you are looking for.
P.S. People can actually tell the difference between C# and VB code?:-)
Yes, and because the post office charge people for delivering mail, I never get junk mail in my letterbox.
Oh, wait...:-)
That said, I actually support charging people for sending email. I think it will at last improve the quality of the spam. It's interesting that it is the recipient mailserver (AOL) charging, though, not the sending ISP (although I wouldn't be surprised if AOL require mass-mailers to use them as the sender too). They could even implement a bidding war, charging subscribers a premium for not receiving the ads.
It's my observation that any organisation or community tends to develop its own jargon and modes of communication. This is partly for better communication within its members. Constructs such as well-known abbreviations (e.g. CRM, OOP), or normal english words that are used in a specific way e.g. object, delegate. At some point, this novel use of the language also becomes a way of distinguishing those inside the community and those outside. It can also become a form of innuendo, or even a dialect of its own designed to exclude muggles. Some of the bad spelling and grammar is simply that, but I suspect much of it is also jargon used in this manner. I know this because I am teh 1337 h@xx0r & pwn u.
Well, the real reason for the "Set" command was because it was a way to get around the lack of access to pointers.
foo = bar means copy the value of "bar" into "foo"
SET foo = bar means make the variable "foo" point to the same value as "bar"
>Incidentally IMO default properties are evil. Really evil. They make the code less explicit.
Yes, but they can make it more readable. I'm not a huge fan of default properties either, but they do have their place.
In one sense, BASIC has lost its way in that it is not a "Beginner's" language any more. I shudder to think of a starting programmer booting up VB.NET and expecting to be able to write even a simple program.
I guess VBA is now the entry-level BASIC for many people. BASIC in the past has been a good "learn by doing" language - that is, you learn to code by just getting in there and coding. Nowadays I guess people learn by recording VBA macros and then modifying those macros. Gone are the days of typing programs out of a magazine into the VIC20:-)
Slashdot Mirror
> oohooh apocolypse pony!
The worst kind.
Nah, they just discovered that "Crime and Punishment" is now abandonware
Accepted Answer!
You forgot
0. God Dam
I reckon M$ would be happy to continue to pour money down the IE hole if it meant people were using Frontpage. IMHO, the browser wars were never about making IE profitable, they were about controlling web standards so that they could sell their development tools.
.DOC files and MS Word). That hasn't happened. The WWW is now more of an application delivery system with complicated web-sites written by professionals. The document publishing side of the WWW has been changed so that non-techy people use blogs, wikis and so forth to publish documents - for free.
Perhaps they initially thought that the web was going to be a document delivery system and that everyone would be publishing web pages using a package like Frontpage (cf.
M$ has recently announced the "Expression" web designer, so we'll have to see how that shakes things up.
omfgbbq skynet ftw
I tried that link but it was all garbled. I'm using Internet Explorer 6.
All they need to do is call it "Star Trek XI: Kobayashi Maru" and you know we'll go and watch it.
...because there is an inherent tension in the system. Page authors want you to view their web page as they have designed it, and users want to view it the way that suits them.
Has everyone forgotten that the original purpose of HTML was to separate content from presentation? All of this stuff is tacked on to HTML to overcome the "limitation" that HTML can't guarantee what the page will look like on the client device. I've got news for you, guys, this "limitation" is part of the original design.
It is far better for Wikipedia users to know that anyone at all can change an article, and to be critical when reading articles there. In fact, I would suggest that people should always be critical of everything they read anyway.
--~~~~
...if it was a half-elf butterfly.
If I understand you correctly, this system you've described encapsulates a database engine to provide the functionality of... a crippled database engine! More to the point, if you are mixing data from different user "databases" in the one table, you, by definition, have a de-normalised database. Also, your users are learning database skills that only work with your particular app, not general skills that are useful throughout their career. You are also reinventing the wheel since you'll need to write a whole bunch of code to parse their queries through the encapsulation layer. Lemme guess... you've written either a homebrew cut-down version of SQL that isn't standards compliant, or a visual query interface that the users keep asking for improvements to, right?
What is the benefit of all this crapola? The IT department maintains control. Something I am sure almost every IT department forgets is that they are a SUPPORT department. The "ID-10-T"s you are talking about are actually the guys performing the core business of your company. Your job is to make these users MORE productive, not limit them. You should be teaching them how to use technology such as Access, mySQL etc, not simply act as a highwayman by stopping them from creating useful business tools.
What kind of troll article is this anyway? Some guy gets a job in a VB software house, to re-write a VB app in VB and then complains because he doesn't know VB? And starts heaping on it, even though he's never used it much? How is this newsworthy?
I am not a medical researcher, but my understanding is that a stem cell is a primitive type of cell that can grow into another type of cell. The fuss about stem cell research is that human foetuses have a large supply of stem cells, because they have not finished growing yet. So harvesting aborted foetuses would be one way to provide stem cells for research. This is controversial for obvious reasons.
I'd buy one, but I am sure the robo-gecko will be full of bugs.
>Ventria's rice produces two human proteins found in mother's milk
I always wondered where rice milk comes from. Now I know.
Water FTW.
Apart from being good for you, I find that drinking a glass of water between coffees/cokes actually extends my caffeine buzz. Too much coffee/coke dehydrates you and actually makes you sleepy as a result.
That part of the article about sensory deprivation was interesting. The old Infocom game "Suspended" had something similar, and this aspect made it the best Infocom game of all time, IMHO.
What is it with tagging pretty much every story on Slashdot "evil"? Is Evil the new black* or something?
-SurturZ
*Which was the old pink, which was the new black when black was the old black
Of course, I am sure spamming will still be against the EULA, but it sure will be hypocritical.
*yawn*
:-)
I've been programming in BASIC for around 15 years. I don't know why, but during that whole 15 years BASIC has copped flak.
The reasons have changed over the years. Originally, the complaints were that it didn't have variable declarations and encouraged "spaghetti code" through the GOTO command. Variable declarations were added, and SUBs/Functions and even classes/objects were added to the language.
Then there was a complaint that you couldn't make "true executables", so M$ added that option.
Then the complaints were about its lack of providing object inheritance. Now we have that. But the flames continue.
Why?
It's clear that the flames are not due to any particular aspect of the language, since the arguments have changed over time. And so has the language. I can tell you that modern BASIC has almost nothing in common with the original ANSI BASIC except for a few legacy keywords (FOR..NEXT, GOTO, DIM etc). Modern object-oriented computer languages are so similar that I have more than once been reading a bit of code in a magazine article and only realised half way through that it was a different language from VB.
I wonder if other languages get as persistently flamed. I believe the real reason is due to the language's very name: BASIC. I suspect that if the language was instead called "Visual Complex.NET", all of this flaming of the language would cease.
[waves hand] This is not the repost you are looking for.
P.S. People can actually tell the difference between C# and VB code?
Oh, wait...
That said, I actually support charging people for sending email. I think it will at last improve the quality of the spam. It's interesting that it is the recipient mailserver (AOL) charging, though, not the sending ISP (although I wouldn't be surprised if AOL require mass-mailers to use them as the sender too). They could even implement a bidding war, charging subscribers a premium for not receiving the ads.
It's my observation that any organisation or community tends to develop its own jargon and modes of communication.
This is partly for better communication within its members. Constructs such as well-known abbreviations (e.g. CRM, OOP), or normal english words that are used in a specific way e.g. object, delegate.
At some point, this novel use of the language also becomes a way of distinguishing those inside the community and those outside. It can also become a form of innuendo, or even a dialect of its own designed to exclude muggles.
Some of the bad spelling and grammar is simply that, but I suspect much of it is also jargon used in this manner. I know this because I am teh 1337 h@xx0r & pwn u.
With the invention of Daylight Savings, we realise that politicians will lie to us even if we merely ask them what time it is.
Well, the real reason for the "Set" command was because it was a way to get around the lack of access to pointers.
:-)
foo = bar means copy the value of "bar" into "foo"
SET foo = bar means make the variable "foo" point to the same value as "bar"
>Incidentally IMO default properties are evil. Really evil. They make the code less explicit.
Yes, but they can make it more readable. I'm not a huge fan of default properties either, but they do have their place.
In one sense, BASIC has lost its way in that it is not a "Beginner's" language any more. I shudder to think of a starting programmer booting up VB.NET and expecting to be able to write even a simple program.
I guess VBA is now the entry-level BASIC for many people. BASIC in the past has been a good "learn by doing" language - that is, you learn to code by just getting in there and coding. Nowadays I guess people learn by recording VBA macros and then modifying those macros. Gone are the days of typing programs out of a magazine into the VIC20