If we could look at the legislation being proposed and say that any unintended side effects will be outweighed by the abuses it aims to prevent, then I'd be all for it. There is no question in my mind that ISPs should not be throttling the bandwidth of companies that don't pay them protection money. However these kinds of laws always have unintended consequences and once in place may be extremely hard to remove. As it stands now, the system is working, and it's rarely a smart idea to fix something that isn't broken.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, but keep in mind that the system in place is non-legislated net neutrality (BT traffic throttling aside). Ma Bell hasn't started charging Google yet. The whole net neutrality thing is intended to force the status quo to remain the er... status quo.
So I'm reluctant to let the government enshrine net neutrality rules before we see what the big companies actually do. It restricts the ability to innovate, not just by big companies but also by small ones. Once the big companies actually start engaging in nightmare scenarios (e.g. forcing you to use their own download services rather than a competitor's), then regulation will be in order.
Sorry, but this got modded insightful?
Let's wait until we're in the middle of the problem before we look at fixing it? That's like saying don't fireproof your house until it's on fire.
This sort of reactive approach to legislation is moronic, since it's very hard to remove entrenched abuses of the public good as compared to precluding them from happening in the first place. The whole thing gets bogged down in the courts while the status quo persists in the real world.
It's obvious that what the telcos are after is revenue streams (nothing evil here, it's what all companies are after), and unless there exists legislation or profit-related reasons to prevent them they will exploit any and all control they have in any way they can conceive to further grow their revenues. Let's be clear, the only group in all this who could feasible stick up for the common good are the gov'ts involved, and only because if they don't they fear we'll vote them out of a job next election.
Diane Simmons: And in computer news, Netscape has announced another release. Tom Tucker: Really? Another release? Diane Simmons: Yes! Tom Tucker: Now I thought they were dead. Diane Simmons: Nope, they're alive. Tom Tucker: Fantastic! And now this...
Concurrency is hard, but so is Object Oriented programming... to those who aren't used to it.
Concurrency comes with its own set of hurdles, traps, etc... etc... and the reason why people fall into them is that the majority of programmers have only limited experience with multi-threading. One could also make the argument that existing mainstream API's are a little "thin", expecting a lot from each implementation.
The shift in hardware towards multi-threading precursors a shift in software towards the same. There will be growing pains, people will have to learn to spot and deal with the gamut of problems associated with multi-threading. However, this is not some impending crisis, and serious development (not "check outs my leetz Asteroids clone!!") will move fairly quickly to take advantage- it's already par for the course on most server and high end business apps (someone mentioned CAD programs as an example earlier).
Clearly this person hasn't heard of our lord and master (and commander) Tim O'Reilly. Web 2.0, with it's centralised software-as-a-service paradigm will synergize the blah blah blah.
Ok, ok, buzz words aside (synergize!), with the move to web apps, desktop terminals, people browsing on gaming consoles, etc... I just don't see what the person is whinging about.
Ok, so hardware is moving towards parellelism (new buzzword? It's mine, and I've trademarked it, use it and I'll sue you!!). Software will need to be engineered differently to take advantage. This is nothing new. Old games don't take advantage of 3d cards. Once the hardware became relatively available, they started to. It's the same thing here.
But what I find most ironic is that further down the/. main page is an article about how businesses should move to dumb terminals for most users, implying server software which implies software designed for parellelism. So I guess I don't see where there's some giant disconnect between software and hardware, there's just a shift coming up, and there'll be a "synching up" period. We've had these in the past and this won't be the last. Therefore, can we please put the rhetoric down, and step away from it, before someone loses an eye?
It's not really a question of good or evil. It's that the process you've outlined above is essentially the path of least resistance.
We can assume that for every piece of working, checking it against a given criteria (e.g. "Did we get this idea elsewhere?") costs money. Therefore adding a given check to their process implies a cost to each piece of work.
The rationale of balancing this goes something like:
1 For a piece of work does criteria X apply?
1.1 Yes Do we increase profit by performing the check?
1.1.1 Yes Include criteria check in process END 1.1.2 No Is there legislation requiring us to check?
1.1.2.1 Yes is probability of getting caught * cost of getting caught > cost of implementing check?
1.1.2.1.1 Yes Include criteria check in process END 1.1.2.1.2 No Ignore criteria check END 1.1.2.2 No Ignore criteria check END 1.2 No Ignore criteria check END
Note: I tried to get this rendering nicely with nested lists, but/. doesn't seem to let one nest more than 3 layers deep.
Yeah, it's the anarchists! And the commies! And the terrorists! And Kin Jong Il! And Mahmoud Ahmadieboldsucksdonkeyballsinejad! They all want to hax0|2 Diebold, and elect the democrats!
Then by the same token, neither Descent, TIE Fighter, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, etc... belong on that list.
I would like to see a Fallout sequel. Bethesda has the ip rights, but there hasn't been much movement yet that's visible to consumers. They might do a good job, they certainly did well with elder scrolls.
Well, not to flame you too much, but to be honest you're off the deep end. Your biggest complaint is an issue that's been around in IE since IE5 according to the site you linked to. So your whinging about IE7 in relation to this is misleading.
I recently needed to rewrite a web site so it works on firefox too...
The fact that you had to rewrite a site for firefox leads me to believe you aren't really familiar with modern cross-browser coding techniques, graceful degradation, etc... If you had to rewrite one of your sites to work in firefox, it doesn't surprise me one bit that you had to rewrite a lot of your code for IE7.
As well as the dingbat mod who let this crap summary get on/. unedited?
I hate all this crap about "ZOMG, once I can inject javascript into a page, something else makes it totally insecure!!!"
Once someone can inject javascript onto a page, you're toast. The article itself is valid, and isn't complaining about ajax so much as prototyping (despite the title of the paper).
My god, blogs are pushing web 2.0, and web 2.0 is made up in part of blogs ("blag juice")!
Ladies and gents, I think we've finally found the business model version of a perpetual motion machine!! Let's all invest before anyone looks to closely! Should I just make the cheque out to Tim O'Reilly directly?
To ascribe human characteristics to things not human.
This is something cooked by people who have watched or read too much sci fi, and not enough science. Trying to blur the lines via some semantics argument doesn't hide the fact that the only behaviours machines have are the behaviours we instruct them to have.
Google claims most of their stuff is beta, so that's hardly a defense.
I guess I see what you're getting at, but google's also really the only group in a position to make the call about when the term beta is applicable. I guess the incident above supports their having this app still in beta.
I agree with what you're getting at, eventually the "perpetual beta" (goddam you Tim Reilly) becomes pointless. However, google has been known to de-beta some of their stuff, and when to de-beta something is a decision generally based upon amount of testing done and likelihood of changes weighed against complexity of the app.
The "innate problem in web apps" is probably closer to reality than you want to admit
It's entirely possible. Many (most?) webapps have a certain immaturity to them which undoubtedly carries over, at least generally, to their robustness. I guess my point is that I'm not seeing any real difference in the immaturity of "released" web app vs. desktop software. Neither are perfect, and the immaturity across both are fairly consistent, at least as far as I can tell. Granted this is just my personal perception.
If you think all of the massive online media sites (think Flickr, for example) have backups of all of your photos, you're probably mistaken. They certainly have basic protection against single disk failure, but that's not always going to save the data in the event of a catastrophe.
I totally agree with you here, but I think the gap is that people expect Flickr/whoever to act as an enterprise-level ASP-type provider for their photos. The only way I can fault the sites providing the services if they aren't properly communicating the risks.
Flickr shouldn't store all my photos in several redundant hardened locations and guarantee me 99.5% uptime for pics of my pet goldfish, we'll never get there, my photos just aren't important enough, but if I expect that, I've either assumed too much, Flickr's misled me, or some combination thereof.
Parent is exactly right. Moreso, GMail is still in beta, maybe for a reason?
Has anyone ever lost data due to an error in a beta desktop app?
The fact that the article claims (or insinuates, with that aggravating CNN & FOXNEWS technique of posing statements as questions, e.g. "Pakistan supporting Taleban troops?" to get around backing them up) that this incident demonstrates some innate problem in web apps is idiotic. It's like saying "it's colder than normal on the west coast, so global warming doesn't exist".
Is that someone clicks on it when their boss is standing behind them. It's meant to be embarassing. I don't really get what this will solve. It's not like pr0n sites will use it.
Besides the much populised but low occurence incidents of people getting fired for reading an article with a cussword in it or some such, the kind of sites someone generally gets fired for browsing are exactly the sites that won't use this.
Slashdot Mirror
"You infringed my patent!" "Never! I recompiled!"
Post it's kill trees. To be more environmentally friendly, maybe you should send yourself an email about it.
Yeah I think you're right.
My recollections of high school are a bit... er... hazy, but I believe the teacher was quoting someone else at the same time.
"Most important discoveries are not accompanied with a 'Eureka!', rather with a 'Hmmm, that's odd....'"
That's the funniest comment I've read all day. You win @ slashdot.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, but keep in mind that the system in place is non-legislated net neutrality (BT traffic throttling aside). Ma Bell hasn't started charging Google yet. The whole net neutrality thing is intended to force the status quo to remain the er... status quo.
Sorry, but this got modded insightful?
Let's wait until we're in the middle of the problem before we look at fixing it? That's like saying don't fireproof your house until it's on fire.
This sort of reactive approach to legislation is moronic, since it's very hard to remove entrenched abuses of the public good as compared to precluding them from happening in the first place. The whole thing gets bogged down in the courts while the status quo persists in the real world.
It's obvious that what the telcos are after is revenue streams (nothing evil here, it's what all companies are after), and unless there exists legislation or profit-related reasons to prevent them they will exploit any and all control they have in any way they can conceive to further grow their revenues. Let's be clear, the only group in all this who could feasible stick up for the common good are the gov'ts involved, and only because if they don't they fear we'll vote them out of a job next election.
Diane Simmons: And in computer news, Netscape has announced another release.
Tom Tucker: Really? Another release?
Diane Simmons: Yes!
Tom Tucker: Now I thought they were dead.
Diane Simmons: Nope, they're alive.
Tom Tucker: Fantastic! And now this...
Concurrency is hard, but so is Object Oriented programming... to those who aren't used to it.
Concurrency comes with its own set of hurdles, traps, etc... etc... and the reason why people fall into them is that the majority of programmers have only limited experience with multi-threading. One could also make the argument that existing mainstream API's are a little "thin", expecting a lot from each implementation.
The shift in hardware towards multi-threading precursors a shift in software towards the same. There will be growing pains, people will have to learn to spot and deal with the gamut of problems associated with multi-threading. However, this is not some impending crisis, and serious development (not "check outs my leetz Asteroids clone!!") will move fairly quickly to take advantage- it's already par for the course on most server and high end business apps (someone mentioned CAD programs as an example earlier).
Clearly this person hasn't heard of our lord and master (and commander) Tim O'Reilly. Web 2.0, with it's centralised software-as-a-service paradigm will synergize the blah blah blah.
Ok, ok, buzz words aside (synergize!), with the move to web apps, desktop terminals, people browsing on gaming consoles, etc... I just don't see what the person is whinging about.
Ok, so hardware is moving towards parellelism (new buzzword? It's mine, and I've trademarked it, use it and I'll sue you!!). Software will need to be engineered differently to take advantage. This is nothing new. Old games don't take advantage of 3d cards. Once the hardware became relatively available, they started to. It's the same thing here.
But what I find most ironic is that further down the /. main page is an article about how businesses should move to dumb terminals for most users, implying server software which implies software designed for parellelism. So I guess I don't see where there's some giant disconnect between software and hardware, there's just a shift coming up, and there'll be a "synching up" period. We've had these in the past and this won't be the last. Therefore, can we please put the rhetoric down, and step away from it, before someone loses an eye?
It's not really a question of good or evil. It's that the process you've outlined above is essentially the path of least resistance.
/. doesn't seem to let one nest more than 3 layers deep.
We can assume that for every piece of working, checking it against a given criteria (e.g. "Did we get this idea elsewhere?") costs money. Therefore adding a given check to their process implies a cost to each piece of work.
The rationale of balancing this goes something like:
1 For a piece of work does criteria X apply?
1.1 Yes Do we increase profit by performing the check?
1.1.1 Yes Include criteria check in process END
1.1.2 No Is there legislation requiring us to check?
1.1.2.1 Yes is probability of getting caught * cost of getting caught > cost of implementing check?
1.1.2.1.1 Yes Include criteria check in process END
1.1.2.1.2 No Ignore criteria check END
1.1.2.2 No Ignore criteria check END
1.2 No Ignore criteria check END Note: I tried to get this rendering nicely with nested lists, but
Yeah, it's the anarchists! And the commies! And the terrorists! And Kin Jong Il! And Mahmoud Ahmadieboldsucksdonkeyballsinejad! They all want to hax0|2 Diebold, and elect the democrats!
Wizardry declined into so-so. Wizardry 8was decent considering they ran out of money halfway through dev.
I'd buy a wizardry 9 if it came out.
Does anyone know where the closest Taco Bell is?
This was my first computer game. I got it when I was six. I still have it tooin all its bootable 5.25 disk glory.
So if I go jumping around in Darnassus, does that count as a sequel?
Then by the same token, neither Descent, TIE Fighter, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, etc... belong on that list.
I would like to see a Fallout sequel. Bethesda has the ip rights, but there hasn't been much movement yet that's visible to consumers. They might do a good job, they certainly did well with elder scrolls.
It's not necessarily based on it, it may just interact with it.
If I write a word processor that interacts with a printer driver, I'm not basing my work on the printer driver.
Well, not to flame you too much, but to be honest you're off the deep end. Your biggest complaint is an issue that's been around in IE since IE5 according to the site you linked to. So your whinging about IE7 in relation to this is misleading.
I recently needed to rewrite a web site so it works on firefox too...The fact that you had to rewrite a site for firefox leads me to believe you aren't really familiar with modern cross-browser coding techniques, graceful degradation, etc... If you had to rewrite one of your sites to work in firefox, it doesn't surprise me one bit that you had to rewrite a lot of your code for IE7.
As well as the dingbat mod who let this crap summary get on /. unedited?
I hate all this crap about "ZOMG, once I can inject javascript into a page, something else makes it totally insecure!!!"
Once someone can inject javascript onto a page, you're toast. The article itself is valid, and isn't complaining about ajax so much as prototyping (despite the title of the paper).
My god, blogs are pushing web 2.0, and web 2.0 is made up in part of blogs ("blag juice")!
Ladies and gents, I think we've finally found the business model version of a perpetual motion machine!! Let's all invest before anyone looks to closely! Should I just make the cheque out to Tim O'Reilly directly?
Virtual Memory and Pagefile set to 0 MB.
"Why does it keep crashing?" - Sysadmin
This is something cooked by people who have watched or read too much sci fi, and not enough science. Trying to blur the lines via some semantics argument doesn't hide the fact that the only behaviours machines have are the behaviours we instruct them to have.
Great reply!
I guess I see what you're getting at, but google's also really the only group in a position to make the call about when the term beta is applicable. I guess the incident above supports their having this app still in beta.
I agree with what you're getting at, eventually the "perpetual beta" (goddam you Tim Reilly) becomes pointless. However, google has been known to de-beta some of their stuff, and when to de-beta something is a decision generally based upon amount of testing done and likelihood of changes weighed against complexity of the app.
It's entirely possible. Many (most?) webapps have a certain immaturity to them which undoubtedly carries over, at least generally, to their robustness. I guess my point is that I'm not seeing any real difference in the immaturity of "released" web app vs. desktop software. Neither are perfect, and the immaturity across both are fairly consistent, at least as far as I can tell. Granted this is just my personal perception.
I totally agree with you here, but I think the gap is that people expect Flickr/whoever to act as an enterprise-level ASP-type provider for their photos. The only way I can fault the sites providing the services if they aren't properly communicating the risks.
Flickr shouldn't store all my photos in several redundant hardened locations and guarantee me 99.5% uptime for pics of my pet goldfish, we'll never get there, my photos just aren't important enough, but if I expect that, I've either assumed too much, Flickr's misled me, or some combination thereof.
Parent is exactly right. Moreso, GMail is still in beta, maybe for a reason?
Has anyone ever lost data due to an error in a beta desktop app?
The fact that the article claims (or insinuates, with that aggravating CNN & FOXNEWS technique of posing statements as questions, e.g. "Pakistan supporting Taleban troops?" to get around backing them up) that this incident demonstrates some innate problem in web apps is idiotic. It's like saying "it's colder than normal on the west coast, so global warming doesn't exist".
Is that someone clicks on it when their boss is standing behind them. It's meant to be embarassing. I don't really get what this will solve. It's not like pr0n sites will use it.
Besides the much populised but low occurence incidents of people getting fired for reading an article with a cussword in it or some such, the kind of sites someone generally gets fired for browsing are exactly the sites that won't use this.