Dirty displays, painful mouses - it's all a parody on what I really need. So what do I need?
It's all about information. To originate it, to transfer it, to process it. Computer makes a data processing in electronic way - in way that has nothing to do with real optical images. In fact, all images we see are not real - they are some sort of reflections recognized by neural cells in our brains.
Why would I need to display the image optically using unperfect devices (for example LCD), then watch the image using my nonperfect biological eyes, and only after that recognize the "neuralized" imgae in the brains? I want to get the image directly, without any optical hardware. The image was originated electrically - let it stay electrically until my brains will do anything with it. I want to recognize the image right after it's originated and transfered.
How to do that? Very "simple" (smile) - just implant some electrods into neural cells somewhere between my eyes and my brains. Of course it will take some training to get to use it - similar to training we do while we are toddlers.
How would it look like? I come to my head-less PC, connect the cable from my head to TNG-display socket and work!
That's about output. Some similar (with difference of where to implant the cable) should be done about input - no keyboard, no mouse, no joystick - just think what you want from PC and PC will help to imaging what you get.
I think that should be the target for the industry to achieve by the end of the centure:)
I've been using both Linux and BSD for about 5 years.
My own impression is that Linux developers try harder to make system work on various hardware. That includes both motherboard? CPU platforms and perepherial devices. Linux recognised USB and Firewire long before BSD did. Linux has been ported to PPC (die MacOS, die!) long before BSD did. Same for SMP.
The other point is that Linux vendor did not ignore X11 configuration problems. Comparing to typical nightmare on BSD. For years all my BSD-addicted friends used BSD mostly as head-less servers. For years Linux-addicted (like myself) guys enjoyed X11 console on Linux boxes (both servers and workstations).
Portability is third reason to mention. I've tried Oracle, Java and win32 applications on Linux 3-5 years ago. But even today I doubt anyone will trust such applications running on BSD.
I hate the speed of interpreter combined with convinience of extra compilation step - too bad price for cross-patfom-ness.
I hate to get tough-coupled "spagetti" application from other developers and apply GoF patterns hoping it help and understanding it doesn't. By the way, using GoF from the beginnig doesn't help either - the language is neither lazy evaluated, nor dynamically typed. It's even not enough strong typed.
I hate to know that "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." (Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming) and that it's perfectly applied to Java.
I hate to feel myself like a sheep blindy following Sun Microsystems.
And I hate the job market stupidly demanding mostly only Java programmers.
I probably came too early and I should wait another 10 years when the computer market will recognize that GOTO was only a part of the problem. ANY distructive coding is not a programming.
This article provides a survey of most currently available Mozilla browsers, so you can try them out and find the one that works best for you.
It's exactly what I need, let's scroll down looking for any useful info.
Other Gecko-based browsers include SkipStone and Q.Bati.
This article was not supposed to be a bookmark list - it's supposed to be "survey", remember? Where is any comparison of SkipStone or Q.Bati to Galeon and K-Meleon?
Other XUL-based custom browsers include Project Piglet, MercurySpider, and Dino.
Again, why to mention it here if you don't compare?
Drawing two groups, XUL and native-toolkit based, is the only thing I can learn from the article. For everything else I should try download every mentioned browser and try myself.
By the way, as a bookmark list the article is also far from being complete.
This project needs a few people with lots of time, not many people with a little time.
My own opinion:
self-organized programmers are useful only to find the way or the direction when noone can see it. When the way is clearly seen and defined and the project is well managed and organized then the crowd will be alway beaten by the team. So, if Microsoft will decide to really address the really defined problem - they have their whole chances and open source should stay away and look for someting that Microsoft is either overlooked or ignored. Open source is effective to invent something conceptually new. Microsoft is professional to re-invent the wheel, by shaping it better and wrapping it nicier. No matter that it won't runoff-road, although:)
This problem is much bigger than just a spam. We beging to live in the world of global technologies and global markets. Global here means international. How are you going to enforce anything internationally when the powerest country in the world ignores International Crime Court?
All such laws will fail until we'll have a *WORKING* and international legal system. Better spend resource on it, rather than on local-wide legal "patches".
RDBMS is primitive for content managemen as it help to manege mostly only attributes. I agree.
XML is not the answer as it good only for hierarchical data and the real world is more complicated than a tree. Let's say its more like a graph.
Perhaps, RDF is way to go as:
RDF is good manage relationships in a way similar to Prolog predicates;
RDF, being still XML, is still good to manage trees.
Ontology is a better way (than DOM and than ERD) to describe "unpredicted" data, which is a typical case for content syndications.
The problems of RDF:
it is more complicated to be understood by most average programmers;
there are not enough of effective and stable RDF-based databases;
Finally, I'd like to comment the original statement:
Everithing is "content"
I'd like to add here:... and everything in content is functional and/or logical and/or object-based. It means that "content" might be a data, it might be a program and it might be both at the same time.
That's why when I do some content management programming I usually look for solutions at functional and logical paradigms. Which is also helpful when you work with RDF:)
The major problem with LDAP is that it's complex to manage and primitive to use at same time. You cannot explain to average users (even to average programmers) how to manage LDAP.
The other very important problem of LDAP is that it's for hierarchies/ However, the real world information in the best case of scenaria is DAG.
Besides, LDAP is way too slow and its query language is way too primitive.
I believe that another database paradigm should be used to roam user's personal information. And I am more convienced that RDF is a solution when non-tree info doesn't go to "raw" XML, neither to LDAP.
I agree that Jabber is a good idea to start. What's good in Jabber? SOAP. That's it. Well, today XML is a key. As I mentioned, PIM requires not a "raw" XML - but rather its RDF dialect. Perhaps some RDF database with RDF-oriented query language and web/SOAP interfaces will serve well if user profile info is defined well in RDF ontologies.
Programming on languages like Haskell, ML, Mercury, Lisp and Prolog, involves a lot of math. But a language syntax is rather limitied in terms of expressiveness, comparing a poorly formatted fontless text to "vusualized" TeX articles, full of matrices, integral equations and so on.
The gap between graphical notation of math and even high-order programming languages is mostly caused by ASCII, UTF-8 and other character sets we use to represent a simple fontless text of programs. Anything more sophisticated elements like graphics, diagrams are coded, not represented.
There is a good attempt to solve the problem of file persistence of math notation in MathML. When I try MathML in Mozilla it looks great. But when I try to "code" it myself - it's not really productive process without some vsual IDE support. Same with SVG. So, we need tools for MathML and SVG formats.
MathML and SVG are not really revolutionary since Donald Knut invented TeX, another unversal language to represent such document components as fontful, graphically enriched and formatted texts. And Adobe gave us Postscript to represent diagams and pictures (of course Postscript is not only about that). But have you tried to "program" on TeX and Postcript manually, in simple text editor? Isn't it a nightmare?
Fortunately there was LyX for awhile around, and now there is also TeXmacs. Creating a document in LyX is really productive job as it is not just mimicing MS-Word, which has a low-level manner tending to edit style of characters rather than document components. LyX forces (and helps) you to think about whole document and it style from top to bottom. Isnt it a style of structured programming?
When I've been creating several math papers in LyX I was thinking - why not use it as IDE for some new programming language which syntax will be based not on flat fontless character sets, but on math-based notation?
Of course I remember Ration Rose and Together - classical UML editors. By the way, when my paper is about both math and program design, then I really need UML editing in LyX. Or I need math editing in Rose, or document formatting in Dia. Unfortunately I did not meet a tool with all 3 editing styles: math, UML and document.
Ok, something like LyX might be an editor. The syntax should be XML-based for being readable/writable by both human and machines. Let's say it should be based on a combination of Docbook, MathML and SVG, rather than on decent TeX and EPS. As for semantic, it should be something multi-paradigm, combining functional, logical and object paradigms, like in Curry, Mercury or Oz.
Programming on such "not-flat" language will be more transparent for students, better verifiable for rapid development, and closer connecting math theory and implementation practice.
That's the idea I give free to any who wants to create such IDE-based language.
I did not work with it by myself, but my friend told me that he used to work with FS as with SQL DB in a manner you described. I wonder if there are any plans to port OS/400's FS to Linux.
Yeah, I had same troubles when I've tried to subscribe to internet using either Mac OS or Linux box. AOL, Simpatico, some other local ISPs in North America - they all bind their customer support "knowledge" to "Start" button and similar "concepts" rather than just to explain what to do in terms of simple routing tables or commands like nslookup.
The other type of situations happened when I've tried to get a support for either Linux or Solaris commercial software fromsome partner companies. Same thing just instead of binding to "Start menu" they bind to specific versions of commands, libraries.
So, I decided that the problem is not with OS or desktop but rather with customer support management - they don't think when they create support instructions and they don't want their people to think when they read the document. Such practice worked well in an environment of one single OS with one single GUI. And with good installation script hiding all details not only form customers - but also from a customer support. When the situation requires to see such details - traditional customer support fails.
At some point I thought that they might need some special "customer geek support" experts - actually regular engineers who can speak on normal language with engineering terms rather than on keenky language without engineering terms. But then I discovered then they actually have it. They call it second line of the customer support.
Now, when I call to some customer support I just ask for that second line and usually it works well.
"mainstream"? Whay is it mainstream? Can you explain or prove it?
great GUI? What is so great in Aqua? I've tried it and did not find any thng better than I have in Gnome 2. It's even worse as it's not X11 - I hate GUI without remote access. We live in the internet age - both win32 and Mac OS (X) looks like old legacy dinos.
I wonder if I can find *classical* used Unix workstations for a better price/performance ratio than used G4.
By the way, Linux will work exactly same way (or even better ) as it will run on PPC. Either way, Sparc, Alpha or PPC, no need to buy any proprietary OS, especially that crappy Mac OS *:)
Conclusion: I know what I am talking about. But I am not that "expert" as you may think about me. Here is an example of what real experts are saying:
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
Will you argue with Dijkstra? I won't. Although he is talking about myself as well - I am poisoned with PHP experience as you do. I just aware of that fact and you don't.
I might understand why BSD license wouldbe better for software which potentially might be forked to the product with fee and without source.
But I doubt that it is a case here. Hardware vendors make money on hardware and on consulting. Their software is just a demonstration how their hardware is great. And therefore there is nothing wrong with the business model when such software (typically hardware drivers, control panels and interface modules) is GPLized.
I think there should be another reason why HP is so bad with open source community. And it is most likely that some internal political reasons.
There is no programming in PHP
on
Programming PHP
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
What kind of programming are you talking about? There is no such thing as a "programming" on a file format, which is not really a programming *language*. I might be poisoned by other programming languages, but I did try PHP for mid-size projects. And I don't call that effort as a programming. Perl (another obscurity lang) may - they have nothing better to compare with. But after years on Java, Python, Lisp and C++ I use the word "hacking" about the process of writing the PHP code.
Hacking is the coding without thinking, without preliminary and formal analysis and design - what is the essence of real programming as a part of software engineering.
There is no such thing as Design or Analysis to apply or PHP hacking. You write the code and see what's happened. But even that part is terrible as there is no good debugging and logging.
Aspects (logical and UI) are not separated. It's same bad as ASP. And thus it has no future. It is as dead as ASP.
Unfortunately, there was a strong point about the budget in start-up web companies. They hired un-educated "programmers" who use such a "programming language". It was ok for small projects, such as few web pages. But the real project is far way from being a set of linked web-pages. That requires a real and general programming language, not just a scripting inside HTML tags.
No language - no programming. It is just a file format and therefore the PHP coding is just a hacking.
EPSON is very pro open source, they provide programming information for their scanners (and printers for the gimp-print project) and if I run into problems they even provide hardware to debug problems.
I know, I might be off-topic, but I wish HP would be so friendly to open source as Epson. Today they stopped any support of HP 990 cse printer driver for gimp/lpd. HP ScanJet 4470c backend is even not listed in Sane. I found another day a feedback of another unlucky HP hardware user that HP doesn't see any business to support Linux platform. I'll never buy anything from HP.
You can pass this message to your friends in Epson - they should be proud of really great job they are doing.
New bot design ideas would follow after new arena design ideas. It is boring to see the flat arena, even with small odds around. "Robotica" has much more interesting competition conditions. That's the way to go. Build big and complicated mazes, put there more agressive arena bots, change maze planning all the time. Or begone!
Slashdot Mirror
The point was to compare performance and features (read: a product value) of equally priced products, dis-regarding with the age.
It's all about information. To originate it, to transfer it, to process it. Computer makes a data processing in electronic way - in way that has nothing to do with real optical images. In fact, all images we see are not real - they are some sort of reflections recognized by neural cells in our brains.
Why would I need to display the image optically using unperfect devices (for example LCD), then watch the image using my nonperfect biological eyes, and only after that recognize the "neuralized" imgae in the brains? I want to get the image directly, without any optical hardware. The image was originated electrically - let it stay electrically until my brains will do anything with it. I want to recognize the image right after it's originated and transfered.
How to do that? Very "simple" (smile) - just implant some electrods into neural cells somewhere between my eyes and my brains. Of course it will take some training to get to use it - similar to training we do while we are toddlers.
How would it look like? I come to my head-less PC, connect the cable from my head to TNG-display socket and work!
That's about output. Some similar (with difference of where to implant the cable) should be done about input - no keyboard, no mouse, no joystick - just think what you want from PC and PC will help to imaging what you get.
I think that should be the target for the industry to achieve by the end of the centure :)
My own impression is that Linux developers try harder to make system work on various hardware. That includes both motherboard? CPU platforms and perepherial devices. Linux recognised USB and Firewire long before BSD did. Linux has been ported to PPC (die MacOS, die!) long before BSD did. Same for SMP.
The other point is that Linux vendor did not ignore X11 configuration problems. Comparing to typical nightmare on BSD. For years all my BSD-addicted friends used BSD mostly as head-less servers. For years Linux-addicted (like myself) guys enjoyed X11 console on Linux boxes (both servers and workstations).
Portability is third reason to mention. I've tried Oracle, Java and win32 applications on Linux 3-5 years ago. But even today I doubt anyone will trust such applications running on BSD.
Make conclusions yourself :)
I hate to get tough-coupled "spagetti" application from other developers and apply GoF patterns hoping it help and understanding it doesn't. By the way, using GoF from the beginnig doesn't help either - the language is neither lazy evaluated, nor dynamically typed. It's even not enough strong typed.
I hate to know that "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." (Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming) and that it's perfectly applied to Java.
I hate to feel myself like a sheep blindy following Sun Microsystems.
And I hate the job market stupidly demanding mostly only Java programmers.
I probably came too early and I should wait another 10 years when the computer market will recognize that GOTO was only a part of the problem. ANY distructive coding is not a programming.
Bad compliance both to CORBA and to EJB. Slow. Buggy. Expensive. Bad support.
Compare it to 5 seconds for Apache/CGI, 10 seconds for Zope, and 45 seconds for stand-alone Tomcat :)
So, the general rule for Java development (and EJB especially) - don't do mistakes if you don't have time to debug :))
It's exactly what I need, let's scroll down looking for any useful info.
Other Gecko-based browsers include SkipStone and Q.Bati.
This article was not supposed to be a bookmark list - it's supposed to be "survey", remember? Where is any comparison of SkipStone or Q.Bati to Galeon and K-Meleon?
Other XUL-based custom browsers include Project Piglet, MercurySpider, and Dino.
Again, why to mention it here if you don't compare?
Drawing two groups, XUL and native-toolkit based, is the only thing I can learn from the article. For everything else I should try download every mentioned browser and try myself.
By the way, as a bookmark list the article is also far from being complete.
It missed Mozilla Kiosk - "a kiosk style browser".
It missed Nareau - a collaboration web-based framework.
And it missed many other interesting projects from mozdev.
This project needs a few people with lots of time, not many people with a little time.
My own opinion:
self-organized programmers are useful only to find the way or the direction when noone can see it. When the way is clearly seen and defined and the project is well managed and organized then the crowd will be alway beaten by the team. So, if Microsoft will decide to really address the really defined problem - they have their whole chances and open source should stay away and look for someting that Microsoft is either overlooked or ignored. Open source is effective to invent something conceptually new. Microsoft is professional to re-invent the wheel, by shaping it better and wrapping it nicier. No matter that it won't runoff-road, although :)
--
Edsger W. Dijkstra
All such laws will fail until we'll have a *WORKING* and international legal system. Better spend resource on it, rather than on local-wide legal "patches".
XML is not the answer as it good only for hierarchical data and the real world is more complicated than a tree. Let's say its more like a graph.
Perhaps, RDF is way to go as:
- RDF is good manage relationships in a way similar to Prolog predicates;
- RDF, being still XML, is still good to manage trees.
- Ontology is a better way (than DOM and than ERD) to describe "unpredicted" data, which is a typical case for content syndications.
The problems of RDF:- it is more complicated to be understood by most average programmers;
- there are not enough of effective and stable RDF-based databases;
Finally, I'd like to comment the original statement:Everithing is "content"
I'd like to add here: ... and everything in content is functional and/or logical and/or object-based. It means that "content" might be a data, it might be a program and it might be both at the same time.
That's why when I do some content management programming I usually look for solutions at functional and logical paradigms. Which is also helpful when you work with RDF :)
The other very important problem of LDAP is that it's for hierarchies/ However, the real world information in the best case of scenaria is DAG.
Besides, LDAP is way too slow and its query language is way too primitive.
I believe that another database paradigm should be used to roam user's personal information. And I am more convienced that RDF is a solution when non-tree info doesn't go to "raw" XML, neither to LDAP.
I agree that Jabber is a good idea to start. What's good in Jabber? SOAP. That's it. Well, today XML is a key. As I mentioned, PIM requires not a "raw" XML - but rather its RDF dialect. Perhaps some RDF database with RDF-oriented query language and web/SOAP interfaces will serve well if user profile info is defined well in RDF ontologies.
Here are some links I found about RDF:
The gap between graphical notation of math and even high-order programming languages is mostly caused by ASCII, UTF-8 and other character sets we use to represent a simple fontless text of programs. Anything more sophisticated elements like graphics, diagrams are coded, not represented.
There is a good attempt to solve the problem of file persistence of math notation in MathML. When I try MathML in Mozilla it looks great. But when I try to "code" it myself - it's not really productive process without some vsual IDE support. Same with SVG. So, we need tools for MathML and SVG formats.
MathML and SVG are not really revolutionary since Donald Knut invented TeX, another unversal language to represent such document components as fontful, graphically enriched and formatted texts. And Adobe gave us Postscript to represent diagams and pictures (of course Postscript is not only about that). But have you tried to "program" on TeX and Postcript manually, in simple text editor? Isn't it a nightmare?
Fortunately there was LyX for awhile around, and now there is also TeXmacs. Creating a document in LyX is really productive job as it is not just mimicing MS-Word, which has a low-level manner tending to edit style of characters rather than document components. LyX forces (and helps) you to think about whole document and it style from top to bottom. Isnt it a style of structured programming?
When I've been creating several math papers in LyX I was thinking - why not use it as IDE for some new programming language which syntax will be based not on flat fontless character sets, but on math-based notation?
Of course I remember Ration Rose and Together - classical UML editors. By the way, when my paper is about both math and program design, then I really need UML editing in LyX. Or I need math editing in Rose, or document formatting in Dia. Unfortunately I did not meet a tool with all 3 editing styles: math, UML and document.
Ok, something like LyX might be an editor. The syntax should be XML-based for being readable/writable by both human and machines. Let's say it should be based on a combination of Docbook, MathML and SVG, rather than on decent TeX and EPS. As for semantic, it should be something multi-paradigm, combining functional, logical and object paradigms, like in Curry, Mercury or Oz.
Programming on such "not-flat" language will be more transparent for students, better verifiable for rapid development, and closer connecting math theory and implementation practice.
That's the idea I give free to any who wants to create such IDE-based language.
XFS and ReserFS are not general filesystems - they should be used only for very specific applications.
EXT3 is reliable, fast enough and compatible with EXT2, but i doesn't give transaction API to applications.
JFS support ACID transactions, but it's very new and still not very reliable.
Personally, I use EXT3 and wait for JFS. Unless/untill someone will not port/contribute the code of ACID-type FS from IBM OS/400 :)
I did not work with it by myself, but my friend told me that he used to work with FS as with SQL DB in a manner you described. I wonder if there are any plans to port OS/400's FS to Linux.
The other type of situations happened when I've tried to get a support for either Linux or Solaris commercial software fromsome partner companies. Same thing just instead of binding to "Start menu" they bind to specific versions of commands, libraries.
So, I decided that the problem is not with OS or desktop but rather with customer support management - they don't think when they create support instructions and they don't want their people to think when they read the document. Such practice worked well in an environment of one single OS with one single GUI. And with good installation script hiding all details not only form customers - but also from a customer support. When the situation requires to see such details - traditional customer support fails.
At some point I thought that they might need some special "customer geek support" experts - actually regular engineers who can speak on normal language with engineering terms rather than on keenky language without engineering terms. But then I discovered then they actually have it. They call it second line of the customer support.
Now, when I call to some customer support I just ask for that second line and usually it works well.
great GUI? What is so great in Aqua? I've tried it and did not find any thng better than I have in Gnome 2. It's even worse as it's not X11 - I hate GUI without remote access. We live in the internet age - both win32 and Mac OS (X) looks like old legacy dinos.
Cut $120 that I don't want to pay for Mac OS X - Linux PPC is much a better choice.
By the way, Linux will work exactly same way (or even better ) as it will run on PPC. Either way, Sparc, Alpha or PPC, no need to buy any proprietary OS, especially that crappy Mac OS * :)
Because YDL is better adapted for PPC.
It's exactly what I am doing using Java implementation of XML-FOP. Check Apache FOP. By the way it is free :)
The other free PDF libraries are available for Common Lisp, Python, C
Conclusion: I know what I am talking about. But I am not that "expert" as you may think about me. Here is an example of what real experts are saying:
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
Will you argue with Dijkstra? I won't. Although he is talking about myself as well - I am poisoned with PHP experience as you do. I just aware of that fact and you don't.
But I doubt that it is a case here. Hardware vendors make money on hardware and on consulting. Their software is just a demonstration how their hardware is great. And therefore there is nothing wrong with the business model when such software (typically hardware drivers, control panels and interface modules) is GPLized.
I think there should be another reason why HP is so bad with open source community. And it is most likely that some internal political reasons.
Hacking is the coding without thinking, without preliminary and formal analysis and design - what is the essence of real programming as a part of software engineering.
There is no such thing as Design or Analysis to apply or PHP hacking. You write the code and see what's happened. But even that part is terrible as there is no good debugging and logging.
Aspects (logical and UI) are not separated. It's same bad as ASP. And thus it has no future. It is as dead as ASP.
Unfortunately, there was a strong point about the budget in start-up web companies. They hired un-educated "programmers" who use such a "programming language". It was ok for small projects, such as few web pages. But the real project is far way from being a set of linked web-pages. That requires a real and general programming language, not just a scripting inside HTML tags.
No language - no programming. It is just a file format and therefore the PHP coding is just a hacking.
I know, I might be off-topic, but I wish HP would be so friendly to open source as Epson. Today they stopped any support of HP 990 cse printer driver for gimp/lpd. HP ScanJet 4470c backend is even not listed in Sane. I found another day a feedback of another unlucky HP hardware user that HP doesn't see any business to support Linux platform. I'll never buy anything from HP.
You can pass this message to your friends in Epson - they should be proud of really great job they are doing.
New bot design ideas would follow after new arena design ideas. It is boring to see the flat arena, even with small odds around. "Robotica" has much more interesting competition conditions. That's the way to go. Build big and complicated mazes, put there more agressive arena bots, change maze planning all the time. Or begone!