The only way to do art for art's sake with no interest in money at all is to be getting your money from a non art related source(federal grants don't count as a non art source, if you stopped doing art you'd still starve).
There's nothing wrong with creating art in exchange for money. The people who talk about art for art's sake are really just saying "I believe that you made the decision to create that art based on financial outcomes and I don't like that piece of art".
Most of the time with web applications a lot of the checking is pointless(one of the things I like about.NET). If I'm doing a get in a Servlet and writing to the HttpResponse fails due to an IOException then there's not really any remotely sensible place to try to handle that. If I'm doing a post, that's a very different scenario. In Java I have to handle both or override the default behaviour for the post.
I'm also aware of the.NET doco(I'm not a fan of the formatting, but I'm aware of it), it would just be nice to be able to get a list of potential exceptions via the IDE, in an interpreted language like.NET or Java it's not even remotely impossible to actually do that.
LAMP is great if all you want is something basic, but MySQL sucks as a database(it's not even the best open source one), and I've yet to encounter a project that could keep a loosely typed scripting language project under control past a certain point. There are a few forums and some mediocre CMSs, but if you want enterprise code, use an enterprise language.
Linux and Apache are perfectly fine for enterprise code of course, I've written quite a few Linux/Tomcat/Java/Oracle applications.
I can and have configured Tomcat, and yes, if all you want is out of the box you can unzip it(there's even an installer which will set it up as a windows service). If you want it to actually perform properly under enterprise level loads it's rather a different story.
I don't want to target multiple.NET runtimes or multiple JVMs because I write internal code and I get to put whatever the hell version of.NET or Java I want onto my servers.
I meant primarily in the ORM sphere. If you use nHibernate you need to install either the full Oracle Client or the ODAC on your IIS server, Java just takes a small JAR file copied into the right location.
For entity framework as far as I can work out you need to actually pay for something that works remotely well.
C# is really more sort of the averaging of Java and C++ than anything else, and VB is now C# with a slightly different syntax(sort of wish Microsoft had the balls to just end it rather than farting around with putting god awful VB syntax onto a language which is nothing like it.
I do agree that Microsoft needs to do something about the exceptions though, not necessarily checked exceptions cause those are a pain, but some easy way in Visual Studio to get a list of exceptions that can be thrown by a call so you know what you could check for. You're also right about javadoc.
That said, LINQ is just incredible, and IIS with.NET is a hell of a lot easier to configure and tune than Tomcat, it's really 6 of one and a half dozen of the other with Java and.NET at the moment, which is why what Oracle does is so important.
Oracle will not let Java languish, they need Java to exist because it's part of their ecosystem now whether they wanted it or not. It's a lot easier to connect to an Oracle database using Java than it is with.NET, and Oracle really doesn't want.NET to win since MS SQL is now a viable alternative(and substantially cheaper) than Oracle for all but the largest of data sets.
The issues for Java are either Oracle getting into a fight with IBM and resulting in a fork of Java or distrust of Oracle pushing a critical mass of developers away from Java and onto.NET. As to the first, Oracle has to suppress their natural desire to charge like wounded bulls for everything they own, and try not to interfere with the JCP much at all, which is a big ask really. For the second, it's already starting to happen in certain areas. There are shops out there who have spent an awful lot of time and money getting Oracle out of their DC and they don't want it back again.
This is more like SELinux than about resource restriction. UAC does it's best to ensure that even admin users(nothing wrong with them for single user pcs) have to explicitly grant privilege escalation(admin is more like wheel now), and in 7 it's actually tolerable to leave it on.
Unfortunately most desktop apps don't conform to those kind of rules in windows any more than they do in Linux so it doesn't enforce by default any more than selinux is generally enabled by default.
They don't have a proprietary form factor. They just don't have ATX anymore. BTX(which is what it is), isn't common outside of Dell, but it's not proprietary either.
Explorer and IE use the same underlying libraries, and the help system(among other things) uses the HTML engine provided by IE to function. IE is definitely integrated into the OS(which was what Microsoft always claimed). Whether it should be or not is another matter, but there is a certain amount of logic in having only one html engine, and the file/web browser combo isn't exactly unknown in the open source world either (Konqueror).
Just because Microsoft can replace an existing version of IE with another one doesn't mean that Windows would actually work if you completely removed it.
It has been proven time and time again that "the crowd" has almost no intelligence whatsoever. Every politician on earth can show you that this is true. That's why FUD campaigns work.
The issue of contention is what constitutes a crowd. If you have 50 people sitting in a room listening attentively and trying to learn you do not have a crowd, you have 50 individuals. You might not communicated with them as effectively as one individual, but they're still individuals and for the most part they haven't devolved into a crowd.
For a good example see wikipedia. On some articles you get really good content because you're only really dealing with individuals, on other issues the group think gets together and you see craziness.
Some of that is flash sucking, but a lot of it is just the fact that flash runs interpreted code, it's one of those trade off things. You let people do what they want to do and sometimes they do it wrong and kill your browser. That said, even if Flash was 100% stable it'd be better to have plugins in their own processes.
The fundamental issue with HTML5(aside from all the political, ideological BS), is that it only allows for streaming of content, not control of content, which will mean that it will never really take off for people who need control of their content.
Personally my prediction is that Apple will do a deal with Microsoft to allow silverlight onto the phone to handle that particular market space.
Depending on what they're using the room for and how many people are expected to be in it, 500k doesn't seem to be all that ludicrous. VC setups aren't exactly cheap, and if you want to be able to connect to multiple locations without an external bridge, encrypt the content, have enough cameras, microphones and screens to cover the room properly, have more than one person participate in the meeting, and generally have anything that is even remotely like having a meeting with everyone being in the same room, it's even more expensive.
Just because you can spend a couple of grand and stick a camera on top of your television set and make someone feel like they're not being totally excluded from the meeting doesn't mean it's a functional solution.
You're probably right, though perhaps not for the reasons you think.
The iPad is a horrible productivity tool, moving files between applications requires iTunes and jumping through a few dozen hoops, its bluetooth is crippled, iWork sucks, and the prohibitions on running interpreted code(at least without express Apple permission), cuts into a lot of the areas where productivity tools can be particularly useful. Last I checked the iTunes ToS expressly prohibits business use of apps anyway. There is a market for this thing if it performs even remotely well as a productivity tool.
The fundamental obstacle for a device like this is the way that businesses purchase company equipment. For the most part, your average employee is, if they're lucky, going to have to choose between this and a laptop, they won't get budget for both, and, while both could have a use, this thing would be easier to live without than a laptop. Executives on the other hand, can generally get whatever toys they want, but generally speaking only seem to want shiny toys. These folks will want an iPad because the iPad is cool, cool is what Apple sells and they're damned good at it(I think that both the iPad and the Macbook Air are pointless, but when I watch the ads for them even I hear the proverbial voice in the back of my head saying "oooooh shiny" and trying to turn off all rational thought.
Just about the only way that this will sell is if people who do actual work pay for it themselves, which just isn't likely to happen unless it's at least close to the iPad's performance in all the non productivity ways(which it won't be).
I have no idea how I used the wrong spelling that many times, it's a tiny bit humiliating, the point still stands though. Presentation is as important if not more important than content. Otherwise advertisers, marketing and public relations departments and an awful lot of other people wouldn't have jobs.
I'm not advocating it, I'm saying that it's reality.
How you display your information is dreadfully important, this is only becoming more and more the case now that the internet is being treated somewhat seriously by organizations and marketing and PR departments are getting involved in it.
The idea of not controlling the display of information is positively terrifying to people, they're jobs and they're livelihoods depend(rationally or not) on things looking the right way they want them to look.
In my experience, most Marketing departments would rather people not be able to see a site at all than see it improperly.
Like I said in another post though, this particular issue is almost certainly due to them using an ajax framework which hasn't been updated recently. That list of browsers is a dead giveaway.
The publicity of this issue is certainly the reason they're backing out, but it's not the important bit.
The important bit is not allowing you to cancel your contract when you move to an area where the company does not provide service. I know for a fact that US Cellular does(or at least did) provide that as a loophole out of your contract because I have actually utilized it, so it's not unknown in US carriers.
It's an important one, it doesn't really matter that her husband died(at least from this point of view), it matters that she's moving to where Verizon cannot provide service, the contract is for her to pay and them to provide service, if they cannot it should end the contract(one might argue that they should be required to pay an early termination fee, but since she's the one initiating the move it's a bit of a wash).
You might actually find that the whole issue was of someone in customer service not listening very clearly and her focusing on her sob story to try and get better treatment. If she'd just said "I'm moving to town X you don't provide service in town X, I need to end my contract", they might very well have not charged her in the first place.
They(or a company which makes software they license) bought a bloody ajax framework.
Whenever you see that particular list of supported browsers, you're looking at an out of date AJAX framework. They were really popular for a while, and I've had the displeasure of working with several of them. They're essentially rapid deployment tools for AJAX web interfaces, and they were really popular for a while(and still are). The idea is that you use a library which takes care of all of the "how do I do this in browser X" stuff for you. The problem of course is that with the notable exception of JQuery, every single one of them sucks. They don't update often enough, and when they do they tend to drastically change their API so that all the stuff you did in the old one doesn't work. I've had to work with a number of them, and they're really rather disastrous.
Generally speaking, they check the browser agent and do something based on what it returned. When most of them were written, Chrome didn't exist and so it's not listed. There's no conspiracy here, it's just the way it is. Even support for Safari doesn't fix things because it doesn't use the same Javascript engine so it may or may not work.
For one, presentation is king, not content. Content is important, and necessary, but if it isn't presented well it's worthless. People will generally get more out "nothing" presented well than "everything" presented poorly. That may make you sad, but it's real.
For another, two browsers with the same rendering engine may, or may not, be identical in performance and display. Most Gecko based browsers are, Safari and Chrome are not, aside from not always using the same version of webkit, they have totally different javascript engines which can lead to rather major differences.
In the old days you did it by rocking up in person, now you do it on paper, it's a public statement of support, and public statements of support should be public.
That doesn't change the fact that when the news calls it a "bloodless coup", they don't mean that "no one got shot or stabbed", they mean "it didn't get nasty and Rudd didn't fight back". The news media might be sensationalist and stupid, but they do know that.
Slashdot Mirror
Libraries do not make copies. They loan out the original they purchased and paid for.
Does that mean that he loses out on some revenue, yes, would he probably rather that it wasn't the case, possibly, is it the same thing, no
The only way to do art for art's sake with no interest in money at all is to be getting your money from a non art related source(federal grants don't count as a non art source, if you stopped doing art you'd still starve).
There's nothing wrong with creating art in exchange for money. The people who talk about art for art's sake are really just saying "I believe that you made the decision to create that art based on financial outcomes and I don't like that piece of art".
Most of the time with web applications a lot of the checking is pointless(one of the things I like about .NET). If I'm doing a get in a Servlet and writing to the HttpResponse fails due to an IOException then there's not really any remotely sensible place to try to handle that. If I'm doing a post, that's a very different scenario. In Java I have to handle both or override the default behaviour for the post.
I'm also aware of the .NET doco(I'm not a fan of the formatting, but I'm aware of it), it would just be nice to be able to get a list of potential exceptions via the IDE, in an interpreted language like .NET or Java it's not even remotely impossible to actually do that.
LAMP is great if all you want is something basic, but MySQL sucks as a database(it's not even the best open source one), and I've yet to encounter a project that could keep a loosely typed scripting language project under control past a certain point. There are a few forums and some mediocre CMSs, but if you want enterprise code, use an enterprise language.
Linux and Apache are perfectly fine for enterprise code of course, I've written quite a few Linux/Tomcat/Java/Oracle applications.
I can and have configured Tomcat, and yes, if all you want is out of the box you can unzip it(there's even an installer which will set it up as a windows service). If you want it to actually perform properly under enterprise level loads it's rather a different story.
I don't want to target multiple .NET runtimes or multiple JVMs because I write internal code and I get to put whatever the hell version of .NET or Java I want onto my servers.
I meant primarily in the ORM sphere. If you use nHibernate you need to install either the full Oracle Client or the ODAC on your IIS server, Java just takes a small JAR file copied into the right location.
For entity framework as far as I can work out you need to actually pay for something that works remotely well.
C# is really more sort of the averaging of Java and C++ than anything else, and VB is now C# with a slightly different syntax(sort of wish Microsoft had the balls to just end it rather than farting around with putting god awful VB syntax onto a language which is nothing like it.
I do agree that Microsoft needs to do something about the exceptions though, not necessarily checked exceptions cause those are a pain, but some easy way in Visual Studio to get a list of exceptions that can be thrown by a call so you know what you could check for. You're also right about javadoc.
That said, LINQ is just incredible, and IIS with .NET is a hell of a lot easier to configure and tune than Tomcat, it's really 6 of one and a half dozen of the other with Java and .NET at the moment, which is why what Oracle does is so important.
Oracle will not let Java languish, they need Java to exist because it's part of their ecosystem now whether they wanted it or not. It's a lot easier to connect to an Oracle database using Java than it is with .NET, and Oracle really doesn't want .NET to win since MS SQL is now a viable alternative(and substantially cheaper) than Oracle for all but the largest of data sets.
The issues for Java are either Oracle getting into a fight with IBM and resulting in a fork of Java or distrust of Oracle pushing a critical mass of developers away from Java and onto .NET. As to the first, Oracle has to suppress their natural desire to charge like wounded bulls for everything they own, and try not to interfere with the JCP much at all, which is a big ask really. For the second, it's already starting to happen in certain areas. There are shops out there who have spent an awful lot of time and money getting Oracle out of their DC and they don't want it back again.
This is more like SELinux than about resource restriction. UAC does it's best to ensure that even admin users(nothing wrong with them for single user pcs) have to explicitly grant privilege escalation(admin is more like wheel now), and in 7 it's actually tolerable to leave it on.
Unfortunately most desktop apps don't conform to those kind of rules in windows any more than they do in Linux so it doesn't enforce by default any more than selinux is generally enabled by default.
They don't have a proprietary form factor. They just don't have ATX anymore. BTX(which is what it is), isn't common outside of Dell, but it's not proprietary either.
And if browsers still cost $60-100 there wouldn't be 90% of the web we have today.
Explorer and IE use the same underlying libraries, and the help system(among other things) uses the HTML engine provided by IE to function. IE is definitely integrated into the OS(which was what Microsoft always claimed). Whether it should be or not is another matter, but there is a certain amount of logic in having only one html engine, and the file/web browser combo isn't exactly unknown in the open source world either (Konqueror).
Just because Microsoft can replace an existing version of IE with another one doesn't mean that Windows would actually work if you completely removed it.
It has been proven time and time again that "the crowd" has almost no intelligence whatsoever. Every politician on earth can show you that this is true. That's why FUD campaigns work.
The issue of contention is what constitutes a crowd. If you have 50 people sitting in a room listening attentively and trying to learn you do not have a crowd, you have 50 individuals. You might not communicated with them as effectively as one individual, but they're still individuals and for the most part they haven't devolved into a crowd.
For a good example see wikipedia. On some articles you get really good content because you're only really dealing with individuals, on other issues the group think gets together and you see craziness.
Some of that is flash sucking, but a lot of it is just the fact that flash runs interpreted code, it's one of those trade off things. You let people do what they want to do and sometimes they do it wrong and kill your browser. That said, even if Flash was 100% stable it'd be better to have plugins in their own processes.
The fundamental issue with HTML5(aside from all the political, ideological BS), is that it only allows for streaming of content, not control of content, which will mean that it will never really take off for people who need control of their content.
Personally my prediction is that Apple will do a deal with Microsoft to allow silverlight onto the phone to handle that particular market space.
Yes, most companies do have an external bridge, but do you really want the DoD using the local telco's bridge?
Depending on what they're using the room for and how many people are expected to be in it, 500k doesn't seem to be all that ludicrous. VC setups aren't exactly cheap, and if you want to be able to connect to multiple locations without an external bridge, encrypt the content, have enough cameras, microphones and screens to cover the room properly, have more than one person participate in the meeting, and generally have anything that is even remotely like having a meeting with everyone being in the same room, it's even more expensive.
Just because you can spend a couple of grand and stick a camera on top of your television set and make someone feel like they're not being totally excluded from the meeting doesn't mean it's a functional solution.
You're probably right, though perhaps not for the reasons you think.
The iPad is a horrible productivity tool, moving files between applications requires iTunes and jumping through a few dozen hoops, its bluetooth is crippled, iWork sucks, and the prohibitions on running interpreted code(at least without express Apple permission), cuts into a lot of the areas where productivity tools can be particularly useful. Last I checked the iTunes ToS expressly prohibits business use of apps anyway. There is a market for this thing if it performs even remotely well as a productivity tool.
The fundamental obstacle for a device like this is the way that businesses purchase company equipment. For the most part, your average employee is, if they're lucky, going to have to choose between this and a laptop, they won't get budget for both, and, while both could have a use, this thing would be easier to live without than a laptop. Executives on the other hand, can generally get whatever toys they want, but generally speaking only seem to want shiny toys. These folks will want an iPad because the iPad is cool, cool is what Apple sells and they're damned good at it(I think that both the iPad and the Macbook Air are pointless, but when I watch the ads for them even I hear the proverbial voice in the back of my head saying "oooooh shiny" and trying to turn off all rational thought.
Just about the only way that this will sell is if people who do actual work pay for it themselves, which just isn't likely to happen unless it's at least close to the iPad's performance in all the non productivity ways(which it won't be).
Depends how bad your presentation is.
I have no idea how I used the wrong spelling that many times, it's a tiny bit humiliating, the point still stands though. Presentation is as important if not more important than content. Otherwise advertisers, marketing and public relations departments and an awful lot of other people wouldn't have jobs.
I'm not advocating it, I'm saying that it's reality.
How you display your information is dreadfully important, this is only becoming more and more the case now that the internet is being treated somewhat seriously by organizations and marketing and PR departments are getting involved in it.
The idea of not controlling the display of information is positively terrifying to people, they're jobs and they're livelihoods depend(rationally or not) on things looking the right way they want them to look.
In my experience, most Marketing departments would rather people not be able to see a site at all than see it improperly.
Like I said in another post though, this particular issue is almost certainly due to them using an ajax framework which hasn't been updated recently. That list of browsers is a dead giveaway.
The publicity of this issue is certainly the reason they're backing out, but it's not the important bit.
The important bit is not allowing you to cancel your contract when you move to an area where the company does not provide service. I know for a fact that US Cellular does(or at least did) provide that as a loophole out of your contract because I have actually utilized it, so it's not unknown in US carriers.
It's an important one, it doesn't really matter that her husband died(at least from this point of view), it matters that she's moving to where Verizon cannot provide service, the contract is for her to pay and them to provide service, if they cannot it should end the contract(one might argue that they should be required to pay an early termination fee, but since she's the one initiating the move it's a bit of a wash).
You might actually find that the whole issue was of someone in customer service not listening very clearly and her focusing on her sob story to try and get better treatment. If she'd just said "I'm moving to town X you don't provide service in town X, I need to end my contract", they might very well have not charged her in the first place.
They(or a company which makes software they license) bought a bloody ajax framework.
Whenever you see that particular list of supported browsers, you're looking at an out of date AJAX framework. They were really popular for a while, and I've had the displeasure of working with several of them. They're essentially rapid deployment tools for AJAX web interfaces, and they were really popular for a while(and still are). The idea is that you use a library which takes care of all of the "how do I do this in browser X" stuff for you. The problem of course is that with the notable exception of JQuery, every single one of them sucks. They don't update often enough, and when they do they tend to drastically change their API so that all the stuff you did in the old one doesn't work. I've had to work with a number of them, and they're really rather disastrous.
Generally speaking, they check the browser agent and do something based on what it returned. When most of them were written, Chrome didn't exist and so it's not listed. There's no conspiracy here, it's just the way it is. Even support for Safari doesn't fix things because it doesn't use the same Javascript engine so it may or may not work.
You're fooling yourself.
For one, presentation is king, not content. Content is important, and necessary, but if it isn't presented well it's worthless. People will generally get more out "nothing" presented well than "everything" presented poorly. That may make you sad, but it's real.
For another, two browsers with the same rendering engine may, or may not, be identical in performance and display. Most Gecko based browsers are, Safari and Chrome are not, aside from not always using the same version of webkit, they have totally different javascript engines which can lead to rather major differences.
In the old days you did it by rocking up in person, now you do it on paper, it's a public statement of support, and public statements of support should be public.
Yes, I'm fully aware of this.
That doesn't change the fact that when the news calls it a "bloodless coup", they don't mean that "no one got shot or stabbed", they mean "it didn't get nasty and Rudd didn't fight back". The news media might be sensationalist and stupid, but they do know that.