To avoid having two different version go out of sync use an abstraction layer that divides content from presentation. Create the pages dynamically from some sort of database, and output them depending on the user agent.
This does make sense, too, you might be able to avoid having own versions for each graphic browser, but an own version for Lynx gives you freedom in the graphic layout, while an own layout for WAP is mandatory if you intend to use it.
Of course, that kind of effort is only suited for larger projects.
(and whats up with flash animations that are of a set size? IT IS VECTOR FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. IT SCALES. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, set the size of the window to an absolute value! And don't make it 'widescreen' either, it is dynamicaly generated, all you are doing is friggin LIMITING the number of pixels you have to work with!)
Agreed, generally. However, many Flash animations include some portion of bitmaps, which don't scale well at all. I'd still prefer to scale than looking at a thumbnail animation, though, and using bitmaps in Flash should be avoided like hell, of course. Finally, IMHO widescreen does look cool sometimes, so I don't mind it being used, really.
You can open-source books no problem. There was a similar discussion some weeks ago, referencing a New Scientist article.
I'm not really well informed on license technicalities, but I'd really like to know whether quoting parts of GPL'd work in documentation would require it to be GPL'd, too.
Exploring everything2 is great, but it's that way because of the wealth of information, not because the navigation is crippled. OTOH I suppose it's in good humour for the Matrix website to have obfusciating navigation, since you'll hardly really/need/ to know every single bit of advertisement on it.
I have a TiVO box and think it's great, but still watch ordinary TV because otherwise how would I ever find out what's new in the world?
Papers? Radio? Net news?
And IF they release them on tape/DVD they make it so ridiculously expensive - I think the price is 20 for 3 Simpsons eps on tape around here. Jeez. Even music albums have a better value than that.
IE isn't "the fastest browser out there". Opera, at least, is way faster in basically all respects. Most actions in Opera are done quite simply instantly - opening a new window, switching between open windows. IE (nor any other brother I tried so far) does not even come remotely close to that. That's not to say the current IE is a bad browser - it's quite good, and displays more pages the way they were intended to be by their owners (be it according to standards or not). It's just not fast.
Just fill it with bogus data. Make it semi-bogus and they'll likely never filter you out. Takes about a minute to do and, seeing how often the NYT is linked to, worth the trouble.
No need for a floppy drive, even, boot the firewall remotely over LAN.:P All the system would need would be CPU + NIC + 4 MB RAM (graphics? who needs 'em!).
This solution is more secure than a floppy would be. Write-access to the flopy can be forbidden, but all the other processes and security holes remain as possible targets.
Yes, that's the theory which probably everyone already knew about. The problem is, it doesn't work. It might work in some cases, but it likely won't in many others. Charging for updates won't work since you can pirate them just as you could pirate the original software. Charging for support won't work, or won't work very well, since there is a huge community online already willing to help you in case of problems, for free. Support is more relevant in the business sector, but on the private market, I doubt a company could live on it.
"While for you and me, we don't care, but for their company, that is over $3200 in revenue."
No it isn't. It would be, assuming everyone who owns a pirated copy also paid for it. That's a big assumption (and an extremely common error), and probably untrue.
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
on
AOL vs. Trillian
·
· Score: 1
I already mentioned it above, but what I had hoped would be revealed by thinking again is that AOL probably doesn't get a whole lot of money from the AIM ads. Certainly not enough to pay for the service.
You are right, and I was wrong. It'd have been more appropriate to talk about badly designed web mail accounts - such as the one offered by Yahoo. Any piece of client software (be it web based or a "real" program) promoting advertising should not be used, IMO.
Given that you can't always predict, in advance, when you may wish to access your mail in such an environment, that does make web-based mail a valid alternative for an everyday account.
I did acknowledge that web based mail services have their uses. In most cases, I'd advocate an email provider which lets you do both - access your mail using your own client software over IMAP or POP3, and, if you are for instance travelling, offers an own web based interface to you. I think this is actually the norm with better email providers.
Yahoo account? Log on? How about using one of the two tried and proven protocols which are available for the purpose of receiving and retrieving email instead of relying on web mail? It has its uses, but not for the average everyday account.
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
on
AOL vs. Trillian
·
· Score: 1
Those ads are what pay for the servers, the infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the software, etc. Think again.
AOL's ads don't pay the network. They might sell part of it, but it's a tiny one at best. I don't think AOL is earning any money with AIM, I'd guess it's more a thing of brand recognition. Which is completely irrelevant to the issue that they're legally (and, arguably, morally) allowed to ban non-AIM users, of course.
The question wasn't whether they could do so, but rather if they should.
As for Trillian's connectivity problem, maybe they could offer some sort of community-managed protocol. They don't do open source (and thus I am actually quite surprised too see Trillian be accepted here), but maybe they could implement some sort of scripting language which manages connecting to AOL's servers. I figure a large community could react to AOL's tries at locking Trillian out faster than the two programmers can. Perhabs it'd also make it more difficult to sue, since a connectivity script would be a community effort and harder to track down.
New Scientist is not "some dumbfuck magazine", it's a respected and well-founded source quoted and linked to regularily on Slashdot. It's not like articled on the GPL are abundant in the prominent non-IT press, especially not ones considering wider effects of copyleft. Incidently, German c't (computer mag, as you might know) ran a similar, long article in one of their past issues, describing how the open source could affect other parts of the social and economic world.
So what happens when you need to boot from something other than your hard drive? How easy will it be to make a boot cd?
What do you mean, "make a boot cd"? Windows comes with a boot CD, which happens to be the same one you insert for setup. More isn't required by most people buying the OS.
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To avoid having two different version go out of sync use an abstraction layer that divides content from presentation. Create the pages dynamically from some sort of database, and output them depending on the user agent.
This does make sense, too, you might be able to avoid having own versions for each graphic browser, but an own version for Lynx gives you freedom in the graphic layout, while an own layout for WAP is mandatory if you intend to use it.
Of course, that kind of effort is only suited for larger projects.
(and whats up with flash animations that are of a set size? IT IS VECTOR FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. IT SCALES. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, set the size of the window to an absolute value! And don't make it 'widescreen' either, it is dynamicaly generated, all you are doing is friggin LIMITING the number of pixels you have to work with!)
Agreed, generally. However, many Flash animations include some portion of bitmaps, which don't scale well at all. I'd still prefer to scale than looking at a thumbnail animation, though, and using bitmaps in Flash should be avoided like hell, of course. Finally, IMHO widescreen does look cool sometimes, so I don't mind it being used, really.You can open-source books no problem. There was a similar discussion some weeks ago, referencing a New Scientist article.
I'm not really well informed on license technicalities, but I'd really like to know whether quoting parts of GPL'd work in documentation would require it to be GPL'd, too.
Exploring everything2 is great, but it's that way because of the wealth of information, not because the navigation is crippled. OTOH I suppose it's in good humour for the Matrix website to have obfusciating navigation, since you'll hardly really /need/ to know every single bit of advertisement on it.
No, as in copyright infringement. Look up the definitions. Illegally copying information is not the same as stealing stuff in the real world.
Huh? It still doesn't qualify as theft. This is copyright infringement, no matter what way you twist it.
What makes the network execs think anybody is watching the ads at all?
Studies, polls, etc. Lots of people do still watch ads.
I have a TiVO box and think it's great, but still watch ordinary TV because otherwise how would I ever find out what's new in the world?
Papers? Radio? Net news?
And IF they release them on tape/DVD they make it so ridiculously expensive - I think the price is 20 for 3 Simpsons eps on tape around here. Jeez. Even music albums have a better value than that.
unless someone has the entire first season of farscape for me? ...
I'm pretty sure that's available on Morpheus, and most definitively on IRC
IE isn't "the fastest browser out there". Opera, at least, is way faster in basically all respects. Most actions in Opera are done quite simply instantly - opening a new window, switching between open windows. IE (nor any other brother I tried so far) does not even come remotely close to that.
That's not to say the current IE is a bad browser - it's quite good, and displays more pages the way they were intended to be by their owners (be it according to standards or not). It's just not fast.
Just fill it with bogus data. Make it semi-bogus and they'll likely never filter you out. Takes about a minute to do and, seeing how often the NYT is linked to, worth the trouble.
No need for a floppy drive, even, boot the firewall remotely over LAN. :P All the system would need would be CPU + NIC + 4 MB RAM (graphics? who needs 'em!).
This solution is more secure than a floppy would be. Write-access to the flopy can be forbidden, but all the other processes and security holes remain as possible targets.
Yes, that's the theory which probably everyone already knew about. The problem is, it doesn't work. It might work in some cases, but it likely won't in many others. Charging for updates won't work since you can pirate them just as you could pirate the original software. Charging for support won't work, or won't work very well, since there is a huge community online already willing to help you in case of problems, for free. Support is more relevant in the business sector, but on the private market, I doubt a company could live on it.
"While for you and me, we don't care, but for their company, that is over $3200 in revenue."
No it isn't. It would be, assuming everyone who owns a pirated copy also paid for it. That's a big assumption (and an extremely common error), and probably untrue.
I already mentioned it above, but what I had hoped would be revealed by thinking again is that AOL probably doesn't get a whole lot of money from the AIM ads. Certainly not enough to pay for the service.
You are right, and I was wrong. It'd have been more appropriate to talk about badly designed web mail accounts - such as the one offered by Yahoo. Any piece of client software (be it web based or a "real" program) promoting advertising should not be used, IMO.
Given that you can't always predict, in advance, when you may wish to access your mail in such an environment, that does make web-based mail a valid alternative for an everyday account.
I did acknowledge that web based mail services have their uses. In most cases, I'd advocate an email provider which lets you do both - access your mail using your own client software over IMAP or POP3, and, if you are for instance travelling, offers an own web based interface to you. I think this is actually the norm with better email providers.
Yahoo account? Log on? How about using one of the two tried and proven protocols which are available for the purpose of receiving and retrieving email instead of relying on web mail? It has its uses, but not for the average everyday account.
Those ads are what pay for the servers, the infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the software, etc.
Think again.
AOL's ads don't pay the network. They might sell part of it, but it's a tiny one at best. I don't think AOL is earning any money with AIM, I'd guess it's more a thing of brand recognition. Which is completely irrelevant to the issue that they're legally (and, arguably, morally) allowed to ban non-AIM users, of course.
The question wasn't whether they could do so, but rather if they should.
As for Trillian's connectivity problem, maybe they could offer some sort of community-managed protocol. They don't do open source (and thus I am actually quite surprised too see Trillian be accepted here), but maybe they could implement some sort of scripting language which manages connecting to AOL's servers. I figure a large community could react to AOL's tries at locking Trillian out faster than the two programmers can. Perhabs it'd also make it more difficult to sue, since a connectivity script would be a community effort and harder to track down.
New Scientist is not "some dumbfuck magazine", it's a respected and well-founded source quoted and linked to regularily on Slashdot. It's not like articled on the GPL are abundant in the prominent non-IT press, especially not ones considering wider effects of copyleft.
Incidently, German c't (computer mag, as you might know) ran a similar, long article in one of their past issues, describing how the open source could affect other parts of the social and economic world.
That might be true, but since Windows is currently the desktop OS, its users are far more likely to fall for such stuff.
So what happens when you need to boot from something other than your hard drive? How easy will it be to make a boot cd?
What do you mean, "make a boot cd"? Windows comes with a boot CD, which happens to be the same one you insert for setup. More isn't required by most people buying the OS.