"Web Access Over Power Lines"... why, whith an Internet Protocol (IP) packet exchange capability this technology could provide any Internet service, not just HTTP Web access! (Please mod +1 Insightful)
Believe it or not, I agree with your pencil argument. Consider this for argument's sake:
Wouldn't Michelangelo have welcomed an advance in paint application technology when creating the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Let's say we offer him an airbrush. Yes, it would take some engineering to build, would require an air source and special paint. It would also break down (clogged nozzle, broken tubes) more often than a brush. Also, it would require him to adjust his painting style (*), but wouldn't he welcome a technology that would make his painting (lying on his back day after day) more efficient?
(*) OK, under this analogy the impact to the final result would be very disturbing. Can any/. artist paint us an airbrush version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling?
The focus of email-as-life-manager within this article concerns me. To me, this article is a cry for help: WSJ is in desperate need of a software system engineered to meet their actual work environment. It sounds like they need some type of dynamic workflow and collaboration tool. Discovering and documenting their work environment would be very challenging and interesting. Further, deriving software requirements and architecting a software system to aid in their daily jobs would be a very valuable undertaking. This could help everyone at WSJ communicate and collaborate more effectively.
My resume is available upon request.
What do other/. folks feel about this type of "abuse" (i.e., not using/developing the right tool for the right job)? Should we just use what is immediately available or take the time to develop tailored solutions? Does anyone know of a Free and open source system for building workflow and collaboration systems? Does JBoss fit these scenarios, or should we start from scratch?
As another comment stated, I'm glad to see folks promoting Firefox, but...
These videos are filmed well, but they don't deliver ANY meaningful message. WHY should I use Firefox - so my office blows up, so I eat my cell phone, so my head falls off? These films are like those generic royalty-free images you can purchase to attach to any product web page; they work with any "computer user" product (as another post pointed out), then "attach logo here."
In addition to providing no message there is no humor. There is mild amusement, but nothing that would qualify as a joke. "404 Not Funny" is funnier than these ads.
This is, of course, all my opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if it is wrong.
Wow! What amazing breakthroughs Web developers come up with! Why, soon there might be a good way to maintain client-side state for Web applications. What I will coin as "client-side applications" could provide endless opportunity for rich, dynamic user interaction. These "client-side applications" could even do their own processing and have storage from the local host. If only there were some type of, what I'll call, "socket" to maintain a persistent data connection for protocols designed to fit the needs of the "client" and "server." Some clever web developer will figure how to accomplish this over HTTP...
... It'll take a lot of work, layer upon layer of protocols (all riding on HTTP), and countless new "web technologies," but some day Web-based applications might just become as usable as my hypothetical vision of "client-side applications."
IMO the other replies to the parent are too harsh. It is frustrating when web designers think they know what size windows should be. All too often it's wrong, which hides content outside of a non-resizable, non-scrollable window. I should be able to render web content any way I see fit (as a client of that content).
Opera corporation understands this. The Opera browser does not obey the dictates of window sizing. It also allows me to apply my own style to pages. Any web page that becomes unusable with a different style is poorly designed.
The web is NOT a medium for magazine-style layout publishers. It is a medium for information distribution. HTML offers 'hints' on how the content is structured and CSS offers 'suggestions' on how to make it pretty.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Origin Systems, 1992)
Not an extremely extreme emotion, but this was the first game in which I really _felt_ I was the character in the dank, gloomy caves. The sounds, visuals, adaptive music, physics, and environment rendering/interaction all fused in my mind to form a whole experience.
The emotion: I was frightened for my character as I crept through the abyss. A sound startled me and I (er, my character) ran back down a hall to hide around the corner. (Also, the demo offers no save game, which raises the stakes.)
After purchasing an audio CD at a Best Buy, I left with no alarms, as expected. However, walking into another store set off their alarm. The clerk volunteered to erase the security tag. His theory was that Best Buy purposfully releases random samples of un-erased security tagged items, providing other stores with an opportunity to search bags.
Stick with your plan of being standards compliant. Consider HTTP a tool and understand how to correctly use it. Know what its limitations are.
The Web has been polluted by the ever increasing crop of "web applications." HTTP is not designed for session-based, interactive applications. Yes, some limited session support is very powerful (as exemplified by Slashdot.org). Amazon also has it right - lots of back-end processing to present useful dynamic (but not "Active") data. Gmail has it wrong because it relies on client-side code - they're trying to provide an interactive experience with a technology base that does not support it.
Anyone else have problems with web applications these days? Should someone provide a framework to deliver real software to a common container application (similar to Applets or Java Web Start application delivery; even apt-get could be seen as this type of application delivery)?
My dream come true!! Thank you Cubricon and/. for posting this post-haste.
You used to be able to order raw parts direct from Bandai's warehouse. That dried up about 10 years ago. If Tanomi makes 1000 more, I'll buy them all! Hmmm, now I have to quit my job, sell all my belongings (except SpaceWarp), and fly to Japan.
(Seriously, I actually have a recurring dream where I discover a cache of SpaceWarp at some old lady's garage sale.)
I tend to agree that these technologies could exist in ten years. In fact, I think many of them could be supported by current technology. However,"the future" (personified) doesn't spawn improvements to the human condition just because it is possible. Two arguments why this future won't happen (in the short term, i.e., 10 years):
Captialism: Just because you can build a better coffee maker doesn't mean there's a market for it. If it doesn't sell, it won't change the world in the short term. Companies will continue to produce the status quo until forced to advance.
Software: Software drives all of this processing and storage horsepower. The current state of software quality is wretched. All those chips in the concrete might work great, until the car's operating system (MS_AUTO - see capitalism) blue-screens (in a beautifully rendered virtual core dump). Unless people (developers and consumers) learn to care about software quality, these systems will never operate as elegantly as the author described.
True! I think we're making the distinction between high-level design (a.k.a. architecture) and detailed design (class, sequence diagrams).
"Being able to program" (at a very basic level, as you correctly point out) is an oft-overlooked quality. I should assume that, but experience has trained me to doubt mere competence.
Crunching at the end of a project seems the norm. The article (you read that, right) talks about crunching all night just to provide some good design practices to the code.
This thread is all about hobby-shop coding. Thanks for the insight into the commercial world, though. This is why commercial software is, on the whole, terrible. OSS has the potential to be much better than commercial software BECAUSE it is not driven over a cliff in the garbage truck of marketing. (Unfortunately, too many OSS projects are tainted by the same attitude you have toward software development. I'm sorry for your disgust of the craft.)
Of couse, you'd hope this wouldn't work. That's part of the experiment. Does the IT staff employ software that does not protect user passwords? Even if the software was written well enough, does the IT staff actively circumvent this to get your passwords (for any of the reasons listed above)?
Here's another way to conduct the experiment, with more direct results: ask the IT staff. If they have no clue whatsoever, they'll likely flat out tell you they harvest plaintext passwords - for "administrative purposes."
Another givaway is finding a sheet of paper with everyone's name and password written on it, in the clutches of an IT staff member. Has anyone ever experienced this? What is the proper business ediquite for following up on this?
Experiment in Password Abuse
on
Fun With Passwords?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Hypothesis:
IT staff regularly reads user passwords (for fun, profit, bogus administration, lack of professionalism, total misunderstanding of why security requires the sanctity of private passwords).
Try this experiment:
1. Change your password(s) to something abusive toward the IT staff. 2. Observe the IT staff (watch for them to become irate, agitated, angry, or any other such synonyhm). 3. Change this password everywhere you've used it across the Internet
Step 3, of course, brings into question the diligence of the user.
In defense of good software design, there is something to be said for system components that are not inter-dependent. Good design means there is some hope of debugging the system. Achieving this should not take a "bleary-eyed programmer" all night to do it. If this is the case, your software design phase failed.
Oh, wait, there is no mention of software design in this article...
I keep forgetting that game development is not about producing good software, but about efficiently pipelining your artistic assets. This misconception transcends this little article. For example, Game Developer Magazine is a worthwhile publication, but should really be called Game Artist Magazine.
Thank you for the apology. You have renewed my faith in the quality of the slashdot community!
Regarding the important stuff (technical): There have been many improvements since the early releases. Remember when teams got shuffled between rounds and there wasn't even a good way to pick teams?
I actually resolved (well, found how to avoid) the map cycle GP fault. To clarify, the server never shut down - but when maps should cycle, all connected clients would GP fault. Every time I run the server it seems to re-write the config file (which is really annoying). It may be re-inserting fail-safe values where I had a typeo. I can't tell anymore because it changed what I had. I started from scratch, and map cycling worked! So, the real complaint is that the clients GP fault if there's a mistake in the server's config (try getting away with that in any production level software).
The fact that I've kept playing through all these woes is a testament to how good the gameplay is! I really like the rules and environment for this game (much better than die-respawn-die-respawn... ad nausium). Here's looking forward to 3.0.
Mark my words, MS is breaking backward compatibility because it's a good marketing move more than for security. It offers MS more control over what can run on their OS. Also, you're going to have to buy the new version of all that stuff that just broke.
Thank you for the attempt at clarification (Anonymous Coward), but I don't see things your way. Yes, I've learned how the interface operates and how to interact with it to get what I want. However, just because 'lots of games' are like that doesn't mean it's good interface design!
No, just being in game is not the only time you go online. When you want to get your personnel jacket, you must connect. While doing training, you must reconnect to update your jacket. If this fails, you've completed the mission, but your record is lost. To start training, you must connect - if remote servers are down you can't even train locally.
What if you start up the game and don't care about your personnel jacket, and just want to join a freinds server? Well, you have to fill in the name field in the first screen even if you don't connect. The lan connection just picks up your name from there.
When I want to connect to a friend's personal server, I cannot use the LAN screen. It's technically a LAN game, but doesn't work there. Instead, I must open the console. How about a tab for "direct connect". It should include Player Name, Password, IP, Port.
I'm running the 2.1 version and a server on a dedicated machine. The server will not properly cycle maps. It's all over the forums - it's broken. Maybe leased servers do, but that does me no good. Furthermore, when the server starts it CHANGES MY CONFIG FILE SETTINGS, removing the map cycle list! This is just plain wrong. Even worse, it makes every client (all fresh 2.1 installs) GP fault. Simply the truth. We mitigate this by setting high number of rounds per match. When the match is over and the clients GP fault, I restart the server manually with a new map on the command line.
I recognize that most people get used to crappy software. Yes, we do learn to work with it no matter how unwieldy. My primary point transcends Americas Army - we should not be so lenient of trashy software. Demand better products.
Slashdot Mirror
"Web Access Over Power Lines" ... why, whith an Internet Protocol (IP) packet exchange capability this technology could provide any Internet service, not just HTTP Web access! (Please mod +1 Insightful)
Editorial note: Read with heavy sarcasm
Believe it or not, I agree with your pencil argument. Consider this for argument's sake:
/. artist paint us an airbrush version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling?
Wouldn't Michelangelo have welcomed an advance in paint application technology when creating the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Let's say we offer him an airbrush. Yes, it would take some engineering to build, would require an air source and special paint. It would also break down (clogged nozzle, broken tubes) more often than a brush. Also, it would require him to adjust his painting style (*), but wouldn't he welcome a technology that would make his painting (lying on his back day after day) more efficient?
(*) OK, under this analogy the impact to the final result would be very disturbing. Can any
The focus of email-as-life-manager within this article concerns me. To me, this article is a cry for help: WSJ is in desperate need of a software system engineered to meet their actual work environment. It sounds like they need some type of dynamic workflow and collaboration tool. Discovering and documenting their work environment would be very challenging and interesting. Further, deriving software requirements and architecting a software system to aid in their daily jobs would be a very valuable undertaking. This could help everyone at WSJ communicate and collaborate more effectively.
/. folks feel about this type of "abuse" (i.e., not using/developing the right tool for the right job)? Should we just use what is immediately available or take the time to develop tailored solutions? Does anyone know of a Free and open source system for building workflow and collaboration systems? Does JBoss fit these scenarios, or should we start from scratch?
My resume is available upon request.
What do other
As another comment stated, I'm glad to see folks promoting Firefox, but...
These videos are filmed well, but they don't deliver ANY meaningful message. WHY should I use Firefox - so my office blows up, so I eat my cell phone, so my head falls off? These films are like those generic royalty-free images you can purchase to attach to any product web page; they work with any "computer user" product (as another post pointed out), then "attach logo here."
In addition to providing no message there is no humor. There is mild amusement, but nothing that would qualify as a joke. "404 Not Funny" is funnier than these ads.
This is, of course, all my opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if it is wrong.
IMO the other replies to the parent are too harsh. It is frustrating when web designers think they know what size windows should be. All too often it's wrong, which hides content outside of a non-resizable, non-scrollable window. I should be able to render web content any way I see fit (as a client of that content).
Opera corporation understands this. The Opera browser does not obey the dictates of window sizing. It also allows me to apply my own style to pages. Any web page that becomes unusable with a different style is poorly designed.
The web is NOT a medium for magazine-style layout publishers. It is a medium for information distribution. HTML offers 'hints' on how the content is structured and CSS offers 'suggestions' on how to make it pretty.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Origin Systems, 1992)
Not an extremely extreme emotion, but this was the first game in which I really _felt_ I was the character in the dank, gloomy caves. The sounds, visuals, adaptive music, physics, and environment rendering/interaction all fused in my mind to form a whole experience.
The emotion: I was frightened for my character as I crept through the abyss. A sound startled me and I (er, my character) ran back down a hall to hide around the corner. (Also, the demo offers no save game, which raises the stakes.)
After purchasing an audio CD at a Best Buy, I left with no alarms, as expected. However, walking into another store set off their alarm. The clerk volunteered to erase the security tag. His theory was that Best Buy purposfully releases random samples of un-erased security tagged items, providing other stores with an opportunity to search bags.
However, I personally think this is a publicity stunt for the upcomming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.
Stick with your plan of being standards compliant. Consider HTTP a tool and understand how to correctly use it. Know what its limitations are.
The Web has been polluted by the ever increasing crop of "web applications." HTTP is not designed for session-based, interactive applications. Yes, some limited session support is very powerful (as exemplified by Slashdot.org). Amazon also has it right - lots of back-end processing to present useful dynamic (but not "Active") data. Gmail has it wrong because it relies on client-side code - they're trying to provide an interactive experience with a technology base that does not support it.
Anyone else have problems with web applications these days? Should someone provide a framework to deliver real software to a common container application (similar to Applets or Java Web Start application delivery; even apt-get could be seen as this type of application delivery)?
Aaahh, I lowered my reading threshold to see if any of the 8 posts so far beat me to this scoop... you win.
My dream come true!! Thank you Cubricon and /. for posting this post-haste.
You used to be able to order raw parts direct from Bandai's warehouse. That dried up about 10 years ago. If Tanomi makes 1000 more, I'll buy them all! Hmmm, now I have to quit my job, sell all my belongings (except SpaceWarp), and fly to Japan.
(Seriously, I actually have a recurring dream where I discover a cache of SpaceWarp at some old lady's garage sale.)
... shortly after deployment of the $25,000 system, it started flashing and was destroyed by lightning.
I tend to agree that these technologies could exist in ten years. In fact, I think many of them could be supported by current technology. However,"the future" (personified) doesn't spawn improvements to the human condition just because it is possible. Two arguments why this future won't happen (in the short term, i.e., 10 years):
Captialism: Just because you can build a better coffee maker doesn't mean there's a market for it. If it doesn't sell, it won't change the world in the short term. Companies will continue to produce the status quo until forced to advance.
Software: Software drives all of this processing and storage horsepower. The current state of software quality is wretched. All those chips in the concrete might work great, until the car's operating system (MS_AUTO - see capitalism) blue-screens (in a beautifully rendered virtual core dump). Unless people (developers and consumers) learn to care about software quality, these systems will never operate as elegantly as the author described.
True! I think we're making the distinction between high-level design (a.k.a. architecture) and detailed design (class, sequence diagrams).
"Being able to program" (at a very basic level, as you correctly point out) is an oft-overlooked quality. I should assume that, but experience has trained me to doubt mere competence.
Crunching at the end of a project seems the norm. The article (you read that, right) talks about crunching all night just to provide some good design practices to the code.
This thread is all about hobby-shop coding. Thanks for the insight into the commercial world, though. This is why commercial software is, on the whole, terrible. OSS has the potential to be much better than commercial software BECAUSE it is not driven over a cliff in the garbage truck of marketing. (Unfortunately, too many OSS projects are tainted by the same attitude you have toward software development. I'm sorry for your disgust of the craft.)
This is part of software design!
Of couse, you'd hope this wouldn't work. That's part of the experiment. Does the IT staff employ software that does not protect user passwords? Even if the software was written well enough, does the IT staff actively circumvent this to get your passwords (for any of the reasons listed above)?
Here's another way to conduct the experiment, with more direct results: ask the IT staff. If they have no clue whatsoever, they'll likely flat out tell you they harvest plaintext passwords - for "administrative purposes."
Another givaway is finding a sheet of paper with everyone's name and password written on it, in the clutches of an IT staff member. Has anyone ever experienced this? What is the proper business ediquite for following up on this?
Hypothesis:
IT staff regularly reads user passwords (for fun, profit, bogus administration, lack of professionalism, total misunderstanding of why security requires the sanctity of private passwords).
Try this experiment:
1. Change your password(s) to something abusive toward the IT staff.
2. Observe the IT staff (watch for them to become irate, agitated, angry, or any other such synonyhm).
3. Change this password everywhere you've used it across the Internet
Step 3, of course, brings into question the diligence of the user.
In defense of good software design, there is something to be said for system components that are not inter-dependent. Good design means there is some hope of debugging the system. Achieving this should not take a "bleary-eyed programmer" all night to do it. If this is the case, your software design phase failed.
Oh, wait, there is no mention of software design in this article...
I keep forgetting that game development is not about producing good software, but about efficiently pipelining your artistic assets. This misconception transcends this little article. For example, Game Developer Magazine is a worthwhile publication, but should really be called Game Artist Magazine.
A bit much? That's several bytes too much!
Thank you for the apology. You have renewed my faith in the quality of the slashdot community!
Regarding the important stuff (technical): There have been many improvements since the early releases. Remember when teams got shuffled between rounds and there wasn't even a good way to pick teams?
I actually resolved (well, found how to avoid) the map cycle GP fault. To clarify, the server never shut down - but when maps should cycle, all connected clients would GP fault. Every time I run the server it seems to re-write the config file (which is really annoying). It may be re-inserting fail-safe values where I had a typeo. I can't tell anymore because it changed what I had. I started from scratch, and map cycling worked! So, the real complaint is that the clients GP fault if there's a mistake in the server's config (try getting away with that in any production level software).
The fact that I've kept playing through all these woes is a testament to how good the gameplay is! I really like the rules and environment for this game (much better than die-respawn-die-respawn... ad nausium). Here's looking forward to 3.0.
On the contrary, I imagine that MS will make sure all their own software works. It's all the "third party" software that will break.
(I'll resist the urge to call the Anonymous Coward a 'dullard' in response to his/her unneeded remark.)
Mark my words, MS is breaking backward compatibility because it's a good marketing move more than for security. It offers MS more control over what can run on their OS. Also, you're going to have to buy the new version of all that stuff that just broke.
Thank you for the attempt at clarification (Anonymous Coward), but I don't see things your way. Yes, I've learned how the interface operates and how to interact with it to get what I want. However, just because 'lots of games' are like that doesn't mean it's good interface design!
No, just being in game is not the only time you go online. When you want to get your personnel jacket, you must connect. While doing training, you must reconnect to update your jacket. If this fails, you've completed the mission, but your record is lost. To start training, you must connect - if remote servers are down you can't even train locally.
What if you start up the game and don't care about your personnel jacket, and just want to join a freinds server? Well, you have to fill in the name field in the first screen even if you don't connect. The lan connection just picks up your name from there.
When I want to connect to a friend's personal server, I cannot use the LAN screen. It's technically a LAN game, but doesn't work there. Instead, I must open the console. How about a tab for "direct connect". It should include Player Name, Password, IP, Port.
I'm running the 2.1 version and a server on a dedicated machine. The server will not properly cycle maps. It's all over the forums - it's broken. Maybe leased servers do, but that does me no good. Furthermore, when the server starts it CHANGES MY CONFIG FILE SETTINGS, removing the map cycle list! This is just plain wrong. Even worse, it makes every client (all fresh 2.1 installs) GP fault. Simply the truth. We mitigate this by setting high number of rounds per match. When the match is over and the clients GP fault, I restart the server manually with a new map on the command line.
I recognize that most people get used to crappy software. Yes, we do learn to work with it no matter how unwieldy. My primary point transcends Americas Army - we should not be so lenient of trashy software. Demand better products.