$996; Sony Vaio DVD+RW, 2.8GHz P4, 512M RAM, 120G HD
I bought the Sony, it easily out-guns and way under-prices the others. Sorry Apple, I really like your products but the fact that you can't entice an Apple fan like me to buy one of your desktops is not saying much for your pricing strategy.
For what it's worth, there's nothing in the Windows world that touches your laptops, but they're still a little too pricy for me. (Also, I'm simply *not* interested in that hideous eMac -- especially since I already have a 17" CRT.)
True that since ActiveX controls were developed the same way as Windows apps, developers had access to all the neat GUI widgets Windows development tools provided. (I remember building ActiveX controls in Delphi way back when.) However, ActiveX was Windows-specific so it would *only* work in IE. This pretty much made it a non-starter technology in the days when Netscape had more than 50% of the browser market.
But you could make powerful GUI apps with Java AWT (check out games.yahoo.com for some great examples of AWT applets). With Java 2 came Swing with more GUI widgets. But by that time the Microsoft machine had done too effective job confusing perception of Java and Applet technology, and doing their best to make sure Windows users weren't going to easily get themselves a Java 2 VM for their browser.
It's clear that Microsoft's ActiveX strategy was to kill Applets which threatened the dominance of the Windows platform. Creating the perception of Applets as "insecure" by constraining them to ActiveX's brain-dead security model was just one battle in their little war.
I think the writer meant ActiveX was Microsoft's response to Java *Applets*.
Java Applets had a well-defined and flexible security API that provided fine-grained set of privaleges for what an Applet could do on the user's system.
To combat Applets, Microsoft implemented ActiveX with brain-dead all-or-nothing approach that is still used today ("Do you want to trust whoever wrote this to do anything they want to your system? Yes / No"). Then Microsoft forced Java Applets to work the same brain-dead all-or-nothing way in IE.
Either the world of God is immutable and cannot be changed even by the hands of the foolish when written down, or it is not. Now, which is it?
I don't see the contradition. I mean, God isn't going to stike me down if I decide to write and publish my own version, let's see... "thou SHALT steal"... but that doesn't make it a valid translation.
While the wordings of the popular english versions have subtle variations, all are valid translations of the original texts. All valid translations are useful to the student who sincerely wants to learn the message.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath-water because of a subtle differences. And it's not as though valid translations are completely contradictory; one saying, "thou shalt NOT kill", and another says, "thou SHALT kill".
The passage in question is regarding witches and goes "Do not suffer a poisoner to live", which for various reasons is often translated into "Do not suffer a witch to live". How does this fit in with your "consitent word of God" theory?
Translating from one language to another will likely result in different wording, but the message in the text can be determined by the sincere student. My point is that the original word is from God, and without faith in its accuracy and divinity, the faith has no foundation.
Please send me the verses you're referring to, I'd like to learn more. And feel free to email me if you'd like to continue the discussion: stephen "at" rightclick.ca
Your God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob didn't give you the internet, science did. Now have some fucking respect.
Wow. Your foul-mouthed reply is really not worth dignifying, but since you *completely* missed my point, I'll try and clarify.
From a religious and theological stand-point, a Christian must rely on the Bible. If you conclude that the Bible is not dependable due to centuries of manipulation and re-writes, then you have to throw the whole thing out as fiction. If you do that, the Christian has nothing on which to base his beliefs. Nothing, that is, except opinion.
I'm talking about the foundations Christian theology from one Christian to another. I'm not talking about science, technology, or the internet (get out of your defensive atheist mid-set, uber-geek).
I do believe the the bible is based on God's word. and did at one time contain 100% his word, but it is not 100% fact anymore due to the evil and selfishness of man.
If you believe in God and his power to create the world, surely you can believe he's powerful enough to ensure the Bible remain consistant with his original word. Also refreshing is that archeological evidence such as the dead sea scrolls bears this out.
Besides, if you can't believe what's written in the Bible, you got nothin'. Everything else is human philosiphy and opinion. One opinion is as good as the next.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing..." - D. Vader
The article is right. What is dying are "fat clients". For example, a VB or PowerBuilder application that reads data from a SQL database, performs business logic on it, and then writes back to the database -- this is a "fat" client. If you later needed to write a different client to access the database, say a web-based client, you'd have to re-write all of the logic that is in the "fat" PowerBuilder app.
What we programmers should build today are "thin clients". That is, a GUI or web-based client that talks to a middle-layer (servlets, EJBs, or web-services) that handle all the business logic and controlling of data. That way you can write whatever kind of client you want, VB, Swing, web-based, and talk to the middle-layer of the n-tier application which handles all the business logic.
Your clients can still be rich (fully fleshed out GUI apps) but they should be "thin".
This spin is typical of Microsoft. Not at all unexpected since Apple now has a opportunity to be the killer app in this category.
I remember when iTunes first came out, I thought "this is was Napster *should* have been". And since name recognition is ultra-important in marketing, the already household name "napster" (2.0) is the only thing that can kill iTunes on Windows.
Hind-sight conclusion: Apple should have bought "napster" when it was down and that's what "iTunes for Windows" should have been called.
Because they're making a build or buy decision. It's easier for them to write you a check than it is to hire and maintain employees, provide them office space, a desk, computers, and manage them everyday.
Assuming it will cost them $20,000 to build it themselves, if you can do the same job for even a little bit less money that's already a more attractive proposition for them (especially if they don't already have the technical people who can do the work).
Remember, I'm saying the $19,500 is your opening asking price. You may not get that much for the job, but there's no need to go in at 25% their build cost. That's way too low.
I was gearing up to buy a Mac -- a 17" iMac or a 12" PowerBook, but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.
Apple sales guys must hate this kind of press.
Isn't the Matrix about Christianity?
on
Harry Potter with Guns
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I only saw the Matrix once when it came out on DVD, but I always thought it was sci-fi metaphor for Christianity.
Anderson (which means "Son of Man") is the messiah/Christ who is going to save humanity from the illusion that life on earth is all there is.
In the Matrix (just as in Chrsitianity's teachings) there are good angels and bad angels in our world who are in a constant battle for our everlasting lives.
Some guy came to Keanu's apartment early on and said something like "you're my savior, man"; and later Neo was resurrected by "Trinity" (Father/Son/HolySpirit), reinforcing Neo as the Christ character.
There are plenty of other references like the name of the ship Nebecanezzer (sp) who was the king in the book of Daniel who wanted his dreams interpreted. The traiter's name was "Cipher" (ie. Lucifer). And there's probably a lot more that I have since forgotten.
The most poignent moment in the film for me was when Fishbourne was tied to the chair and the "bad angel" was saying something about how he hates people, that he hates their smell -- and he equates them to a virus. To me, this sounded like something a "fallen angel" or Satan would say to a real person in the same situation.
Anyway, just one guy's opinion. I spotted references to some web sites in the article, "Messiah in Matrix" and knowthematrix.com -- maybe I'll check them out.
I think "The Living Daylights" is one of the best James Bond movies ever. It is sadly under-appreciated mainly, I think, because of the inexplicable unpopularity of Timothy Dalton who was very good and Connery-esq in the 007 role.
It seems to be missing some sort of activity indicator (like the flashing N in netscape or the flashing lizard or the flashing E. This is a bit annoying since you dont know if you should click again or not when a link is sluggish
Actually, the address bar seems to act as an activity indicator. The text in the address bar gets blocked (as though selected) from left to right like a progress bar as the page loads. The progress starts with "http://" section turning blue (progress can stall here for some time, however.
Using the app's compass icon and spinning the needles around might be a appropriate image, though.
Adult ticket is $13.50 in Ottawa. Popcorn and drink for two will run about $11.
That's $38 for my wife and I to go to a movie. *That's* why we don't go very often. When you compare that to $20 to BUY previously viewed DVD, you're getting seriously screwed at the cinema.
Slashdot Mirror
No question: Batman And Robin
$2799 for a dual 1.8? Where the hell did you pull that number from? The Apple store has them for $1,999 with the exact same configuration.
Here: http://tinyurl.com/4853k
As I said, all prices are Canadian.
SLL
Here here! I really like OS X and Apple products but here's what happened when I bought a new PC last month, my choices were (all prices Canadian):
$2399; 12" Powerbook, DVD+RW;
$2099; 15" Compaq Laptop, DVD+RW;
$2429; 17" iMac DVD+RW, 1.25GHz G4, 256M RAM, 80G HD;
$2799; PowerMac DVD+RW, Dual 1.8GHz, 256M RAM, 80G HD;
$996; Sony Vaio DVD+RW, 2.8GHz P4, 512M RAM, 120G HD
I bought the Sony, it easily out-guns and way under-prices the others. Sorry Apple, I really like your products but the fact that you can't entice an Apple fan like me to buy one of your desktops is not saying much for your pricing strategy.
For what it's worth, there's nothing in the Windows world that touches your laptops, but they're still a little too pricy for me. (Also, I'm simply *not* interested in that hideous eMac -- especially since I already have a 17" CRT.)
SLL
But you could make powerful GUI apps with Java AWT (check out games.yahoo.com for some great examples of AWT applets). With Java 2 came Swing with more GUI widgets. But by that time the Microsoft machine had done too effective job confusing perception of Java and Applet technology, and doing their best to make sure Windows users weren't going to easily get themselves a Java 2 VM for their browser.
It's clear that Microsoft's ActiveX strategy was to kill Applets which threatened the dominance of the Windows platform. Creating the perception of Applets as "insecure" by constraining them to ActiveX's brain-dead security model was just one battle in their little war.
SLL
I think the writer meant ActiveX was Microsoft's response to Java *Applets*.
Java Applets had a well-defined and flexible security API that provided fine-grained set of privaleges for what an Applet could do on the user's system.
To combat Applets, Microsoft implemented ActiveX with brain-dead all-or-nothing approach that is still used today ("Do you want to trust whoever wrote this to do anything they want to your system? Yes / No"). Then Microsoft forced Java Applets to work the same brain-dead all-or-nothing way in IE.
SLL
I don't see the contradition. I mean, God isn't going to stike me down if I decide to write and publish my own version, let's see ... "thou SHALT steal" ... but that doesn't make it a valid translation.
While the wordings of the popular english versions have subtle variations, all are valid translations of the original texts. All valid translations are useful to the student who sincerely wants to learn the message.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath-water because of a subtle differences. And it's not as though valid translations are completely contradictory; one saying, "thou shalt NOT kill", and another says, "thou SHALT kill".
SLL
Sorry, I'm confused. Are you saying that the Bible teachings are against witchcraft? No argument here, that's clear.
Are you saying that Bible describes encounters between Bible characters and "witches/sorcerors/mediums"? Again, no argument. That's true too.
Not really sure what your point is, but I'll definately send you an email.
Thanks, SLL
Translating from one language to another will likely result in different wording, but the message in the text can be determined by the sincere student. My point is that the original word is from God, and without faith in its accuracy and divinity, the faith has no foundation.
Please send me the verses you're referring to, I'd like to learn more. And feel free to email me if you'd like to continue the discussion: stephen "at" rightclick.ca
SLL
Wow. Your foul-mouthed reply is really not worth dignifying, but since you *completely* missed my point, I'll try and clarify.
From a religious and theological stand-point, a Christian must rely on the Bible. If you conclude that the Bible is not dependable due to centuries of manipulation and re-writes, then you have to throw the whole thing out as fiction. If you do that, the Christian has nothing on which to base his beliefs. Nothing, that is, except opinion.
I'm talking about the foundations Christian theology from one Christian to another. I'm not talking about science, technology, or the internet (get out of your defensive atheist mid-set, uber-geek).
SLL
If you believe in God and his power to create the world, surely you can believe he's powerful enough to ensure the Bible remain consistant with his original word. Also refreshing is that archeological evidence such as the dead sea scrolls bears this out.
Besides, if you can't believe what's written in the Bible, you got nothin'. Everything else is human philosiphy and opinion. One opinion is as good as the next.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing..." - D. Vader
SLL
SLL
Otherwise, anyone in the US up for taping it and sending me a copy?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
stephen@rightclick.ca
The article is right. What is dying are "fat clients". For example, a VB or PowerBuilder application that reads data from a SQL database, performs business logic on it, and then writes back to the database -- this is a "fat" client. If you later needed to write a different client to access the database, say a web-based client, you'd have to re-write all of the logic that is in the "fat" PowerBuilder app.
What we programmers should build today are "thin clients". That is, a GUI or web-based client that talks to a middle-layer (servlets, EJBs, or web-services) that handle all the business logic and controlling of data. That way you can write whatever kind of client you want, VB, Swing, web-based, and talk to the middle-layer of the n-tier application which handles all the business logic.
Your clients can still be rich (fully fleshed out GUI apps) but they should be "thin".
SLL
I remember when iTunes first came out, I thought "this is was Napster *should* have been". And since name recognition is ultra-important in marketing, the already household name "napster" (2.0) is the only thing that can kill iTunes on Windows.
Hind-sight conclusion: Apple should have bought "napster" when it was down and that's what "iTunes for Windows" should have been called.
SLL
Assuming it will cost them $20,000 to build it themselves, if you can do the same job for even a little bit less money that's already a more attractive proposition for them (especially if they don't already have the technical people who can do the work).
Remember, I'm saying the $19,500 is your opening asking price. You may not get that much for the job, but there's no need to go in at 25% their build cost. That's way too low.
SLL
Then your opening asking price is $19,500, not $5k.
SLL
Apple sales guys must hate this kind of press.
I only saw the Matrix once when it came out on DVD, but I always thought it was sci-fi metaphor for Christianity.
Anderson (which means "Son of Man") is the messiah/Christ who is going to save humanity from the illusion that life on earth is all there is.
In the Matrix (just as in Chrsitianity's teachings) there are good angels and bad angels in our world who are in a constant battle for our everlasting lives.
Some guy came to Keanu's apartment early on and said something like "you're my savior, man"; and later Neo was resurrected by "Trinity" (Father/Son/HolySpirit), reinforcing Neo as the Christ character.
There are plenty of other references like the name of the ship Nebecanezzer (sp) who was the king in the book of Daniel who wanted his dreams interpreted. The traiter's name was "Cipher" (ie. Lucifer). And there's probably a lot more that I have since forgotten.
The most poignent moment in the film for me was when Fishbourne was tied to the chair and the "bad angel" was saying something about how he hates people, that he hates their smell -- and he equates them to a virus. To me, this sounded like something a "fallen angel" or Satan would say to a real person in the same situation.
Anyway, just one guy's opinion. I spotted references to some web sites in the article, "Messiah in Matrix" and knowthematrix.com -- maybe I'll check them out.
Stephen Legge
I think "The Living Daylights" is one of the best James Bond movies ever. It is sadly under-appreciated mainly, I think, because of the inexplicable unpopularity of Timothy Dalton who was very good and Connery-esq in the 007 role.
I think the SNL sketch "Nick Burns the Computer Guy" is an accurate portrayal of most UNIX users I know.
Actually, the address bar seems to act as an activity indicator. The text in the address bar gets blocked (as though selected) from left to right like a progress bar as the page loads. The progress starts with "http://" section turning blue (progress can stall here for some time, however.
Using the app's compass icon and spinning the needles around might be a appropriate image, though.
That's $38 for my wife and I to go to a movie. *That's* why we don't go very often. When you compare that to $20 to BUY previously viewed DVD, you're getting seriously screwed at the cinema.