If we're going to use "sessionStorage, localStorage, and client-side databases" (as per TFA), why not just use an executable? Write the thing in.NET or Java or C
One of the appealing reasons for transitioning everything to the web is ease of portability (when standards are followed) the browser is your middleware. You do bring up a good point about the fat client. In the days of yore there was mainframe computing and arguably like real estate there are cycles, however, client/server model never really disappeared (Citrix). Thin clients are once again in the spotlight but the market isn't fully there yet (see the chrome book) and may not jump on it. The merits of these systems is another discussion. Regarding going the "traditional" binary route for (web) applications, you are now supporting multiple platforms. There is a lot of work involved to make this happen. QA for installers is an instant turn off personally, and now you've got Win32 & Win64, OSX, iOS (7 is coming), Android (Many flavors) and the churn of progress for each of these platforms with depricated apis, exceptions etc.
Traditional development aside there are many exciting things happening on the web side of things, I'm not sure if you've kept up with ASM.js or Emscripten. The gist, this allows compilers to export to JS where the application (written in C or Qt for example) is accessed via your browser. It's still in its infancy. However, with the increases made to JS engines in browsers these things are now possible and gaining traction. We shall see what the future holds, from an academic standpoint I think it's cool to see Quake done in JS.
There are also client heavy sites (take a look at USAToday.com) which use Backbone.js or other variants to achieve something really slick.
Another question: do modern day browsers encrypt cookies? I don't know for sure, but I suspect they don't.
No, this is left up to the developer. As an aside, there are frameworks which provide functionality like this out of the box.
I'm a programmer, but not a web developer.
I'm not certain what your background is, but if you're a Java guy you might be interested in the Play Framework. Fast iteration and you can get started pretty quickly. For the record I'm not affiliated with this project. If you're interested in something typesafe and different check out a Haskell based framework such as snap.
Nothing wrong? From the previous/. article: "Starting last summer, however, AMD began having trouble with high-profile game releases that performed badly or had visual artifacts. Rage was one high-profile example, but there have been launch-day issues with a number of other titles, including Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, Bat Man: Arkham City, and Battlefield 3".
Those are all recent popular titles. You need to look a bit harder;)
I'm not even sure what to say to that. Look, this has nothing to do with ego this is all about equipment and if you want to pay top dollar for Nike's when some decent shoes will do the same job, good for you.
You realize what you're arguing about is the equivalent of a sports car? What is the most common burn for people driving flashy cars? And here you are making a penis reference about a computer.
Cool, thanks for the insight. I'm very amused with the responses. So far it's (arguably) viable to build your own machine if you're a tinkerer nerd whose time is worthless while discussing a system marketed for gamers. The whole DOA thing is another reason I prefer to buy components at physical stores so if trouble arises it's a matter of minutes/hours instead of days/weeks.
So it's either convenience or your time is worthless? Nice black and white world you live in. I'm not faulting those people, but these aren't exactly cheap workstation systems so the whole bit about their time being valuable while discussing a gaming system is amusing.
And buying Ikea makes someone a tinkerer redneck? There are more pieces involved in assembling a dresser than putting together PC. Not to mention saving money, you know that thing that makes Walmart so attractive?
I don't really understand the appeal of pre-built "high end" Alienware machines besides the case (if you're into that sort of thing). Building a machine can be a lot of fun, and it's not exactly hard. I realize not everyone has the time/ability for these things, hence these offerings. I view it as (highly) over paying for something which can be done better. Also, why the bragging about including steam "big picture mode"? It's not unique to Alienware... is Steam still obscure after being around for 9+ years?
While the topic of the discussion is about DragonFly BSD, I'd like to expand upon your broad post concerning all BSDs and "everything" being compiled from source.
The regular package management for BSDs, the ports collection, is not like.rpm or.deb at all...Everything there is compiled from source based on some pretty beefy makefiles.
Binary packages are also available for many ports, this is not a new thing for the ports collection or pkgsrc which is what DragonFly BSD uses. In addition to the various formats software may be obtained from the ports collection there are various branches one may follow: unstable, stable, and release. With regards to staying up to date, FreeBSD uses a rolling release for their ports so staying on top of things can become involved if one is using a release machine in a desktop role, ya know with lots of client side libraries for Gnome/KDE/etc. If you're updating multiple machines a build server is one way to go, here is an interesting discussion addressing updating FreeBSD.
While I like FreeBSD keeping it up to date requires more effort, than say Debian, this will become apparent when there are multiple machines to tend to.
Cheap-ass guys li9ke you who basically let the console gamers subsidize game development.
As someone who enjoys new and original things by funding indie developers and Kickstarter projects and buys into stuff prior to them becoming the "next big thing," your claims are laughable. Console gamer multiplayer is a cesspool and titles are rapidly devolving into the always on, single use (registration code!) restrictive crap which was first foisted upon the PC players by none other than the same companies you proudly hand over money to. One of the strengths of giving gamers the ability to host their own servers as well as extend games is the communities that may form around these things enabling public or private bastions (complete with admins!) where an awesome experience awaits, but good luck getting that on a console).
Surely you're not one who buys from Game Stop who we all know make a significant profit at buying back games and selling them for a few bucks less than full price? Also, not paying full price is now being a cheap ass? Laughable! Does that include not buying release day DLC or a season pass making the 59.99 price balloon up another 29.99? As an aside, you are aware that the whole point of sales is to stimulate the amount of units moved? Crazy enough there are instances where a title is put on sale and moves more units than the day it originally debut.
There is a glut of entertainment out there. I've got a massive back log of games to play and many of my peers are this way, too. If you haven't noticed lots of people haven't been spending as much as they were 5 years ago. If the games are so good why do the prices drop so fast? Could it be cheap thrills that have nothing to do with which platform it was released on? Skyrim held its value for quite some time and curiously enough it has a massive community around it and boasts a wealth of user created content hosted in several different places (Steamworks, Skyrimnexus etc.). Unfortunately that's available only on the PC, including their high res texture pack. Maybe you can rebuy it on the next console?
You want to know why some developers treat the PC as an afterthought?
There are plenty of reasons, most of them being budget related. Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick two. You are aware that the designs of the new systems essentially are standard PC architectures? Why would they want that, unless it applies to the fast and cheap! Also, Let's see you play 360/PS3/etc. games in 10 years without having to rebuy them, or have support dropped from the unit someway including the game servers. Are these the same developers that are busy porting real time strategy titles, mod tools, dedicated servers to console users too? RTS is a mature and rich but curiously vacant genre on the consoles.
Maybe if you didn't spend so much on your "gaming rig", you'd have money to, you know, actually buy games.
Excellent point, but the devices have significant differences in what they can do, like say burning disks, expand-ability (can you upgrade your console to support 10TB, or drop in another graphics card for SLI, install a SSD, use your choice of input etc.?), and let's not forget reliability (looks at XBOX360). Since you're referring to the whole setup, factor in the cost of your TV and sound system and let's see how they compare now. That said, how many of your games will you be able to play on your next system without paying for the privilege? PC support goes back to the crusty days of yore, back before authentication servers, serial numbers, and hint books. All without an additional purchase. Although the publishers are doing their best to prevent this crap the responsibility ultimately lies with all the people who support them by continuing to purchase their wares.
I subscribe to 3DWorld. I do not have a subscription to 2600, but I pick up copies from the store and have since the late 90s. I do read a lot of "news" stuff my tablet but I prefer learning stuff (think references) with physical books. I prefer Pulse News for the tablet. Apparently USAToday has a pretty good app for their content, and I dig their website. I don't say that often, especially about newspaper websites. It spurred my interest in Backbone.js.
Printing is not "cheap" unless its done in house. Depending on the binding and the number of pages the costs may range between a few bucks and up. Let's say there isa modest run of 20,000 and you have a healthy up front cost which borders on an annual salary.
Yes, perhaps 95% of what I do now existed then (probably more), but the remaining few percent saves a lot of time, and I suspect someone that uses Photoshop a couple hours a day would save over 100 hours a week
You must work some long weeks. "This day feels like an eternity!" I've heard of satellite offices but are you an outsourcer on Jupiter or something?
Sucks to live in San Diego, California, Yuma or Tucson Arizona etc. I wonder of the typical sarcastic response is along the lines of "It's cool, I wasn't using my rights anyway"
Because they shipped the prefixes in production versions, and didn't even remove them again later.
It has nothing to do with production versions because the standard itself is incomplete, but that isn't the crux, also it's disingenuous to imply that this only occurs with webkit. Proprietary exensions ARE the way to do non standard things (as long as you do support the standard) which is the case. The wrong way would be Microsoft's way, which still haunts us over a decade later, and uses proprietary by default in their older but still prevalent browsers. You'd be more on point if the markup, which uses mostly the proprietary extensions, was written by the browser's developers.
TLDR Poorly executed markup is the sole responsibility of the author (website developers) and may have many valid reasons for being executed in this fashion (budget, skill, time etc.)
(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)
As if the web designers are the arbiter of what the client (hopefully) pays for. I do what my clients want.
(2) Not to mention, if we DID put nonviolent criminals in prison, most of our political leadership and much of our corporate leadership would be in jail.
I'm pretty sure you didn't think this all the way through, what do you think drug offenses and white collar crime are?
But in fascism, you put the POOR in jail, on the pretext of nonviolent and violent crimes, many of which should be jailable offenses.
Fascism aside, poor people don't get a fair shake in general anyway.
the Release Preview for Win7 was actually a very slightly newer
Software released at a later date is newer than previous releases, I'm shocked =). In all seriousness the quicker IE8 (even IE9) and below fade away the better. HTML5 and CSS3 are wonderful when used properly and its a shame the past incarnations offer such poor support for wiz-bang features. Until then, yet another IE to support. The next 6 months should be enlightening with CSS nuances at least.
that just means that it's pretty much in final form
Traditionally Internet Explorer has supported "pretty much" the same things as everything else, yet those subtle differences added up significantly (Ex: DirectX filters). This browser will make more of a difference, once more people are using it, hopefully.
Software which isn't out of release candidate status doesn't count, IE10 for Windows 7 is a Release Preview. Until there is a release date it doesn't count since its still under active development.
Wouldn't it be just easier to use no prefixes and have it magically work on all browsers?
If they're competent developers worth their salt, they'll list the nonstandard prefixes first, followed by the standard supported so things degrade gracefully. Its not like management likes to spend more money than they have to on things, even if it means brittle software. Done in by their own greed? Web development is further from traditional software development than closer and the quality variations attest to the low barriers to entry.
THe point of the story was how great it would be if Webkit owned a HUGE part of the market and how MS will benefit and how webmasters would be happy
How great is it is where we are presently at. It's not about developers being happy, it's about users. Without users buying these products/using software with rich features (because there is a market for them) there wouldn't be services offered for them. Why do users use it (Safari, Chrome)? Because it does what they want (in most cases) better than the competition. Competition is great for the end user because better products are created. Competition is what stopped the cluster fuck from the last decade which Microsoft is still playing catch-up on. Until they've got one of the top 3 positions with their latest browser wouldn't you agree that they're still playing catch up?
Perhaps the reason people use webkit is because it is what comes with their tablets and phones and works everyone? Not because they love it.
I made no claims about love, simply choice. Mobile phones are not bastions of choice, they're the exact opposite of general purpose computers, apples to oranges. Microsoft is late to the party and as such must make extra effort to woo people from entrenched players. Additionally there aren't any 3rd party browser choices on Microsofts platform either. Perhaps if they had moved faster they would've be like BSD to Linux. Your comment ignores the larger desktop market which presently still offers more flexibility software wise. For the sake of argument let's look at Statcounter metrics. Mobile platform market share in the US is split between iPhone and Android. Mobile browser market share lists Safari, Android Browser, and Opera Mini as the top 3 showing how much of an outlier these alternative browsers really are and should illuminate developers and clients support priorities. Most of the companies I've been at, ~10% or less of the market and management decrees we don't make a concerted effort, it's great if it does, but it's not a priority. We're not alone in this either.
So my point is to learn from your mistakes. Not repeat them and the more engines and adherence to a uniform way of functioning the better.
Even better, learn from the mistakes of others. The mistakes you're referring to should be attributed to the web developers, not the vendors, as the browsers support standards. Much like the situation where shoddily programmed applications require administrator rights to function and Microsoft incorrectly getting the ire of users when the developers are at fault for failing to follow proper coding conventions. Tools (markup) when wielded properly with experience and skill enable great things.
How is this a fault of webkit browsers? This sounds like development teams targeting the least common denominator/platforms their clients use. This speaks more about the budget the web team gets than their lack of ability. Perhaps Microsoft should get off their ass and release a real multiplatform browser if they're so interested in remaining relevant. The main reason for webkit kicking so much ass is it supports many whizzbang features and is extremely popular on both mobile AND desktop platforms. Android suffers from horrible fragmentation, and Windows phone is a minority and thus gets minority treatment. If budgets were infinite (something you bring up constantly whenever we discuss web) perhaps support for marginal devices would improve. An anecdotal example, the company I work at has a mobile software division and their targeted platforms are iOS and Android. On average 7% of our clients applications are downloaded by Android users. In the states, most mobile phone stuff IS iOS, and is the focus. It's not just us though, if you'll notice companies typically release iOS apps first, why would that be? It has everything to do with targeting your audience, something Microsoft could learn to do better.
Don't you see a problem with that?
This has everything to do with budget, and less to do with ability.
Recently, IE 10 is a great browser with good HTML 5 and CSS 3 and standards support.
A great browser which runs on only the newest plaform atm, it hasn't been released for Windows 7 yet. The jury is still out on adoption rates and realistically won't become a least common denominator until Vista support is dropped and IE9 fades, which by the numbers you provided last time was ~2020. How many websites do you think will still be running in their current incarnation by that time?
Webkit is too prevalient in my opinion.
Why is it so prevalent? It's multiplatform, supports many standards, fast, and has features users want. It may be found on mobile devices and all major "deskop" OS. It's popular because it supports the latest and greatest. Back when MS couldn't get their JS engine performance worth a squat, webkit browsers were taking the lead, in addition to not having the latest and greatest standards support IE was a clunky experience. Microsoft dug themselves into a hole, and a great thing about choice is people choosing what's best for them, and they're voting with their feet.
We need more engines so webmasters wont do anything stupid and vendors do not get greedy and do anything stupid as well. Webkit is bringing flashbacks from IE 5. Remember at one time it was the best browser too and was just starting to convert Netscape users at the time. Chrome is the way point today.
Says the guy who is championing IE which has terrrible (to non existent) multiplatform support. Greed is part of human nature and you won't change that. If there are big enough incentives to support platforms, efforts will be made. Microsoft mobile market share is marginal at best, and that they're being treated as a minority shouldn't come as a surprise. Case in point: Opera support.
The headset I have for example picks up everything including my voice. When someone uses Siri or Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the Windows voice software I can interrupt it by simply speaking. By all means, see for yourself. I'm curious about the products you're referring to, please list the consumer oriented commercial software package(s) which will pick your voice out of many, and is presently offered for dictation and automation. This is extremely interesting.
Stereo mics with an algo to pick out when a command is being directed to the tablet/computer/whatnot.
Stereo mics are not offered on any of the consumer devices I've seen. Do you have a list of manufacturers which tout such features with their consumer lines? I'm extremely curious.
Computationally expensive, but only needs to be activated when in the appropriate task. There's also these things called headsets, you might have seen them at some time?
How does it know when it needs to be activated? If you say button, why not speak directly into the machine? Headsets are not the panacea to this challenge.
Slashdot Mirror
If we're going to use "sessionStorage, localStorage, and client-side databases" (as per TFA), why not just use an executable? Write the thing in .NET or Java or C
One of the appealing reasons for transitioning everything to the web is ease of portability (when standards are followed) the browser is your middleware. You do bring up a good point about the fat client. In the days of yore there was mainframe computing and arguably like real estate there are cycles, however, client/server model never really disappeared (Citrix). Thin clients are once again in the spotlight but the market isn't fully there yet (see the chrome book) and may not jump on it. The merits of these systems is another discussion. Regarding going the "traditional" binary route for (web) applications, you are now supporting multiple platforms. There is a lot of work involved to make this happen. QA for installers is an instant turn off personally, and now you've got Win32 & Win64, OSX, iOS (7 is coming), Android (Many flavors) and the churn of progress for each of these platforms with depricated apis, exceptions etc.
Traditional development aside there are many exciting things happening on the web side of things, I'm not sure if you've kept up with ASM.js or Emscripten. The gist, this allows compilers to export to JS where the application (written in C or Qt for example) is accessed via your browser. It's still in its infancy. However, with the increases made to JS engines in browsers these things are now possible and gaining traction. We shall see what the future holds, from an academic standpoint I think it's cool to see Quake done in JS.
There are also client heavy sites (take a look at USAToday.com) which use Backbone.js or other variants to achieve something really slick.
Another question: do modern day browsers encrypt cookies? I don't know for sure, but I suspect they don't.
No, this is left up to the developer. As an aside, there are frameworks which provide functionality like this out of the box.
I'm a programmer, but not a web developer.
I'm not certain what your background is, but if you're a Java guy you might be interested in the Play Framework. Fast iteration and you can get started pretty quickly. For the record I'm not affiliated with this project. If you're interested in something typesafe and different check out a Haskell based framework such as snap.
Nothing wrong? From the previous /. article: "Starting last summer, however, AMD began having trouble with high-profile game releases that performed badly or had visual artifacts. Rage was one high-profile example, but there have been launch-day issues with a number of other titles, including Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, Bat Man: Arkham City, and Battlefield 3".
;)
Those are all recent popular titles. You need to look a bit harder
I'm not even sure what to say to that. Look, this has nothing to do with ego this is all about equipment and if you want to pay top dollar for Nike's when some decent shoes will do the same job, good for you.
You realize what you're arguing about is the equivalent of a sports car? What is the most common burn for people driving flashy cars? And here you are making a penis reference about a computer.
So that's why you're proud to pay more? Because yours is bigger?
Cool, thanks for the insight. I'm very amused with the responses. So far it's (arguably) viable to build your own machine if you're a tinkerer nerd whose time is worthless while discussing a system marketed for gamers. The whole DOA thing is another reason I prefer to buy components at physical stores so if trouble arises it's a matter of minutes/hours instead of days/weeks.
So it's either convenience or your time is worthless? Nice black and white world you live in. I'm not faulting those people, but these aren't exactly cheap workstation systems so the whole bit about their time being valuable while discussing a gaming system is amusing.
Because not everyone is a tinkerer nerd?
And buying Ikea makes someone a tinkerer redneck? There are more pieces involved in assembling a dresser than putting together PC. Not to mention saving money, you know that thing that makes Walmart so attractive?
I don't really understand the appeal of pre-built "high end" Alienware machines besides the case (if you're into that sort of thing). Building a machine can be a lot of fun, and it's not exactly hard. I realize not everyone has the time/ability for these things, hence these offerings. I view it as (highly) over paying for something which can be done better. Also, why the bragging about including steam "big picture mode"? It's not unique to Alienware... is Steam still obscure after being around for 9+ years?
The regular package management for BSDs, the ports collection, is not like .rpm or .deb at all...Everything there is compiled from source based on some pretty beefy makefiles.
Binary packages are also available for many ports, this is not a new thing for the ports collection or pkgsrc which is what DragonFly BSD uses. In addition to the various formats software may be obtained from the ports collection there are various branches one may follow: unstable, stable, and release. With regards to staying up to date, FreeBSD uses a rolling release for their ports so staying on top of things can become involved if one is using a release machine in a desktop role, ya know with lots of client side libraries for Gnome/KDE/etc. If you're updating multiple machines a build server is one way to go, here is an interesting discussion addressing updating FreeBSD.
While I like FreeBSD keeping it up to date requires more effort, than say Debian, this will become apparent when there are multiple machines to tend to.
Cheap-ass guys li9ke you who basically let the console gamers subsidize game development.
As someone who enjoys new and original things by funding indie developers and Kickstarter projects and buys into stuff prior to them becoming the "next big thing," your claims are laughable. Console gamer multiplayer is a cesspool and titles are rapidly devolving into the always on, single use (registration code!) restrictive crap which was first foisted upon the PC players by none other than the same companies you proudly hand over money to. One of the strengths of giving gamers the ability to host their own servers as well as extend games is the communities that may form around these things enabling public or private bastions (complete with admins!) where an awesome experience awaits, but good luck getting that on a console).
Surely you're not one who buys from Game Stop who we all know make a significant profit at buying back games and selling them for a few bucks less than full price? Also, not paying full price is now being a cheap ass? Laughable! Does that include not buying release day DLC or a season pass making the 59.99 price balloon up another 29.99? As an aside, you are aware that the whole point of sales is to stimulate the amount of units moved? Crazy enough there are instances where a title is put on sale and moves more units than the day it originally debut.
There is a glut of entertainment out there. I've got a massive back log of games to play and many of my peers are this way, too. If you haven't noticed lots of people haven't been spending as much as they were 5 years ago. If the games are so good why do the prices drop so fast? Could it be cheap thrills that have nothing to do with which platform it was released on? Skyrim held its value for quite some time and curiously enough it has a massive community around it and boasts a wealth of user created content hosted in several different places (Steamworks, Skyrimnexus etc.). Unfortunately that's available only on the PC, including their high res texture pack. Maybe you can rebuy it on the next console?
You want to know why some developers treat the PC as an afterthought?
There are plenty of reasons, most of them being budget related. Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick two. You are aware that the designs of the new systems essentially are standard PC architectures? Why would they want that, unless it applies to the fast and cheap! Also, Let's see you play 360/PS3/etc. games in 10 years without having to rebuy them, or have support dropped from the unit someway including the game servers. Are these the same developers that are busy porting real time strategy titles, mod tools, dedicated servers to console users too? RTS is a mature and rich but curiously vacant genre on the consoles.
Maybe if you didn't spend so much on your "gaming rig", you'd have money to, you know, actually buy games.
Excellent point, but the devices have significant differences in what they can do, like say burning disks, expand-ability (can you upgrade your console to support 10TB, or drop in another graphics card for SLI, install a SSD, use your choice of input etc.?), and let's not forget reliability (looks at XBOX360). Since you're referring to the whole setup, factor in the cost of your TV and sound system and let's see how they compare now. That said, how many of your games will you be able to play on your next system without paying for the privilege? PC support goes back to the crusty days of yore, back before authentication servers, serial numbers, and hint books. All without an additional purchase. Although the publishers are doing their best to prevent this crap the responsibility ultimately lies with all the people who support them by continuing to purchase their wares.
TL;DR You're a good customer =)
I subscribe to 3DWorld. I do not have a subscription to 2600, but I pick up copies from the store and have since the late 90s. I do read a lot of "news" stuff my tablet but I prefer learning stuff (think references) with physical books. I prefer Pulse News for the tablet. Apparently USAToday has a pretty good app for their content, and I dig their website. I don't say that often, especially about newspaper websites. It spurred my interest in Backbone.js.
Printing is not "cheap" unless its done in house. Depending on the binding and the number of pages the costs may range between a few bucks and up. Let's say there isa modest run of 20,000 and you have a healthy up front cost which borders on an annual salary.
Yes, perhaps 95% of what I do now existed then (probably more), but the remaining few percent saves a lot of time, and I suspect someone that uses Photoshop a couple hours a day would save over 100 hours a week
You must work some long weeks. "This day feels like an eternity!" I've heard of satellite offices but are you an outsourcer on Jupiter or something?
Sucks to live in San Diego, California, Yuma or Tucson Arizona etc. I wonder of the typical sarcastic response is along the lines of "It's cool, I wasn't using my rights anyway"
>legal advise
>advise
Because they shipped the prefixes in production versions, and didn't even remove them again later.
It has nothing to do with production versions because the standard itself is incomplete, but that isn't the crux, also it's disingenuous to imply that this only occurs with webkit. Proprietary exensions ARE the way to do non standard things (as long as you do support the standard) which is the case. The wrong way would be Microsoft's way, which still haunts us over a decade later, and uses proprietary by default in their older but still prevalent browsers. You'd be more on point if the markup, which uses mostly the proprietary extensions, was written by the browser's developers.
TLDR Poorly executed markup is the sole responsibility of the author (website developers) and may have many valid reasons for being executed in this fashion (budget, skill, time etc.)
(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)
As if the web designers are the arbiter of what the client (hopefully) pays for. I do what my clients want.
(2) Not to mention, if we DID put nonviolent criminals in prison, most of our political leadership and much of our corporate leadership would be in jail.
I'm pretty sure you didn't think this all the way through, what do you think drug offenses and white collar crime are?
But in fascism, you put the POOR in jail, on the pretext of nonviolent and violent crimes, many of which should be jailable offenses.
Fascism aside, poor people don't get a fair shake in general anyway.
the Release Preview for Win7 was actually a very slightly newer
Software released at a later date is newer than previous releases, I'm shocked =). In all seriousness the quicker IE8 (even IE9) and below fade away the better. HTML5 and CSS3 are wonderful when used properly and its a shame the past incarnations offer such poor support for wiz-bang features. Until then, yet another IE to support. The next 6 months should be enlightening with CSS nuances at least.
that just means that it's pretty much in final form
Traditionally Internet Explorer has supported "pretty much" the same things as everything else, yet those subtle differences added up significantly (Ex: DirectX filters). This browser will make more of a difference, once more people are using it, hopefully.
Software which isn't out of release candidate status doesn't count, IE10 for Windows 7 is a Release Preview. Until there is a release date it doesn't count since its still under active development.
Wouldn't it be just easier to use no prefixes and have it magically work on all browsers?
If they're competent developers worth their salt, they'll list the nonstandard prefixes first, followed by the standard supported so things degrade gracefully. Its not like management likes to spend more money than they have to on things, even if it means brittle software. Done in by their own greed? Web development is further from traditional software development than closer and the quality variations attest to the low barriers to entry.
THe point of the story was how great it would be if Webkit owned a HUGE part of the market and how MS will benefit and how webmasters would be happy
How great is it is where we are presently at. It's not about developers being happy, it's about users. Without users buying these products/using software with rich features (because there is a market for them) there wouldn't be services offered for them. Why do users use it (Safari, Chrome)? Because it does what they want (in most cases) better than the competition. Competition is great for the end user because better products are created. Competition is what stopped the cluster fuck from the last decade which Microsoft is still playing catch-up on. Until they've got one of the top 3 positions with their latest browser wouldn't you agree that they're still playing catch up?
Perhaps the reason people use webkit is because it is what comes with their tablets and phones and works everyone? Not because they love it.
I made no claims about love, simply choice. Mobile phones are not bastions of choice, they're the exact opposite of general purpose computers, apples to oranges. Microsoft is late to the party and as such must make extra effort to woo people from entrenched players. Additionally there aren't any 3rd party browser choices on Microsofts platform either. Perhaps if they had moved faster they would've be like BSD to Linux. Your comment ignores the larger desktop market which presently still offers more flexibility software wise. For the sake of argument let's look at Statcounter metrics. Mobile platform market share in the US is split between iPhone and Android. Mobile browser market share lists Safari, Android Browser, and Opera Mini as the top 3 showing how much of an outlier these alternative browsers really are and should illuminate developers and clients support priorities. Most of the companies I've been at, ~10% or less of the market and management decrees we don't make a concerted effort, it's great if it does, but it's not a priority. We're not alone in this either.
So my point is to learn from your mistakes. Not repeat them and the more engines and adherence to a uniform way of functioning the better.
Even better, learn from the mistakes of others. The mistakes you're referring to should be attributed to the web developers, not the vendors, as the browsers support standards. Much like the situation where shoddily programmed applications require administrator rights to function and Microsoft incorrectly getting the ire of users when the developers are at fault for failing to follow proper coding conventions. Tools (markup) when wielded properly with experience and skill enable great things.
THey use ---webkit prefixes.
How is this a fault of webkit browsers? This sounds like development teams targeting the least common denominator/platforms their clients use. This speaks more about the budget the web team gets than their lack of ability. Perhaps Microsoft should get off their ass and release a real multiplatform browser if they're so interested in remaining relevant. The main reason for webkit kicking so much ass is it supports many whizzbang features and is extremely popular on both mobile AND desktop platforms. Android suffers from horrible fragmentation, and Windows phone is a minority and thus gets minority treatment. If budgets were infinite (something you bring up constantly whenever we discuss web) perhaps support for marginal devices would improve. An anecdotal example, the company I work at has a mobile software division and their targeted platforms are iOS and Android. On average 7% of our clients applications are downloaded by Android users. In the states, most mobile phone stuff IS iOS, and is the focus. It's not just us though, if you'll notice companies typically release iOS apps first, why would that be? It has everything to do with targeting your audience, something Microsoft could learn to do better.
Don't you see a problem with that?
This has everything to do with budget, and less to do with ability.
Recently, IE 10 is a great browser with good HTML 5 and CSS 3 and standards support.
A great browser which runs on only the newest plaform atm, it hasn't been released for Windows 7 yet. The jury is still out on adoption rates and realistically won't become a least common denominator until Vista support is dropped and IE9 fades, which by the numbers you provided last time was ~2020. How many websites do you think will still be running in their current incarnation by that time?
Webkit is too prevalient in my opinion.
Why is it so prevalent? It's multiplatform, supports many standards, fast, and has features users want. It may be found on mobile devices and all major "deskop" OS. It's popular because it supports the latest and greatest. Back when MS couldn't get their JS engine performance worth a squat, webkit browsers were taking the lead, in addition to not having the latest and greatest standards support IE was a clunky experience. Microsoft dug themselves into a hole, and a great thing about choice is people choosing what's best for them, and they're voting with their feet.
We need more engines so webmasters wont do anything stupid and vendors do not get greedy and do anything stupid as well. Webkit is bringing flashbacks from IE 5. Remember at one time it was the best browser too and was just starting to convert Netscape users at the time. Chrome is the way point today.
Says the guy who is championing IE which has terrrible (to non existent) multiplatform support. Greed is part of human nature and you won't change that. If there are big enough incentives to support platforms, efforts will be made. Microsoft mobile market share is marginal at best, and that they're being treated as a minority shouldn't come as a surprise. Case in point: Opera support.
False. You just aren't thinking properly.
The headset I have for example picks up everything including my voice. When someone uses Siri or Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the Windows voice software I can interrupt it by simply speaking. By all means, see for yourself. I'm curious about the products you're referring to, please list the consumer oriented commercial software package(s) which will pick your voice out of many, and is presently offered for dictation and automation. This is extremely interesting.
Stereo mics with an algo to pick out when a command is being directed to the tablet/computer/whatnot.
Stereo mics are not offered on any of the consumer devices I've seen. Do you have a list of manufacturers which tout such features with their consumer lines? I'm extremely curious.
Computationally expensive, but only needs to be activated when in the appropriate task. There's also these things called headsets, you might have seen them at some time?
How does it know when it needs to be activated? If you say button, why not speak directly into the machine? Headsets are not the panacea to this challenge.
With the future of Windows as a major consumer OS up in there
Up in the air? Did you use some speech to text software to write your post or something?