Your damn right about Microsoft only supporting what it wants to support, an issue with PNG images has existed for years..
To get PNG images with an 8bit alpha channel (also known as super-cool translucent stuff for those of you that are non-technical), you had to use a microsoft specific CSS property that manipulated the DHTML/DirectX attributes of the image... All of that instead of just correctly implementing the PNG standard.
Without full support for CSS2, less and less web developers will be pushing the limits of what CSS2 can do (lets face it.. MS/IE still has the majority). Without a wide adoption of CSS2 the W3C won't be pushed as much to revise and improve CSS2 to create CSS3 (or an intermediate version)
As a web developer I'm seeing this as a major kick in the teeth from Microsoft, we've been waiting for years for a version of IE that actually works towards standards, instead of yet another botched implementation.
Hell, if they made IE 7 open-source i'd implement as much of CSS2 as a lone developer could, but thats just wishful thinking:)
Is it just me? Or am I seeing the whole Netscape/Microsof fiasco happening again, but with different players?
What you've mentioned is one of the major problems of what I call the 'Dreamweaver generation'.
If you go to any website template site (such as 4templates) you'll notice that 90% of the templates are high res, table-based and mostly based around a Photoshopped design with Flash and extra gizmos added to wow the clients into buying them.
Then you look at your competitors sites, how many high-profile websites have +70kb of images on the first page?
The problem we're facing in the web design and development industry is a lack of knowledge on the buyers behalf of what really makes a good website. For example I've just finished deploying a mid-sized college website, the previous site was an 'All Flash Solution' with a 400kb intro animation, dance music playing in the background, buzzing when you roll over the menus etc. And the only reason that developer was chosen was because 'The Suites' fell for the wow-factor.
My tips for anybody looking for web design and development are simply: Would your grandma on her 32kbit dialup be able to browse the site easily? And have you ever thought to yourself 'yes, but why do I need to have a dynamic one of those'.
If you answered Yes, then No... add them to your list of prospective companies, and remember, if you don't like their own website, you probably won't like yours.
Hah, as you suggested DRM has some serious issues (+inurl:"slashdot.org" +DRM). But you seriously have to consider one thing: USERS DONT CARE
I've seen a lot of people who really wouldn't care - they can all share music & videos with their friends. Most are suckers for buying the 'Real Thang®', and most of them won't notice a lot of the things your talking about (unless they buy their computers from the local dodgy comp shop).
Until your mom & dad get a clue - the only thing we can do is spread FUD amongst our relatives, and install InsertNonMsPlatformHere on their machines the next time we're round there removing all that junk
You wanna know the kinda people I'm talking about? I got a call at 9:30pm from somebody saying 'My machines gone nutz'... When I got there 2 days later the machine was still on - showing that wonderful Windows XP BSOD, explicitly saying 'Reboot the machine and see if it happens again' sorta thing!
Thats probably because Uncle Bob or Aunty Mary will go for the cheapest on the market.. It's not as if they need dual CPU machines to do performance hungry spreadsheet authoring or whatever the latest sales motives are
Mind you, knowing that Microsoft® are known to drive a lot of the hardware upgrade with newer versions of Windows®, when we see Longhorn® coming out it'll probably need a multiprocessor machine - One for Windows and one for your programs!
You haven't seen anything Different? May I mention one word.. Dyson
The world is full of innovation, and Intel and the other big guys are just waiting for the next big thing (aka Cell processors), sure they'll do exactly the same as before - but internally will be completely different
I bet my boss will have a great idea, he'll insist I take my laptop along on fishing/camping holidays so he can bug me even when i'm off work.
Seriously though, wireless internet + national parks should not mix! Why do you think so many of us decide to take holidays right after major system upgrades, then 'forget' to take our mobile phones?
When it comes to spammers.. I'm not even going to go there.. my karma is positive, lets keep it that way.
I agree, most software developers have 'a clue' about software patents. But most 'normal' people and MPs or government officials really don't (do you remember some of those whacky government schemes to introduce 'dont spam me' whitelists?).
The last thing India needs right now is for software patents to be introduced, this for one will mean that large american/european corporations will be investing in patents in India, whereas most small Indian software firms will be locked out due to the legal costs involved.
I was expecting to see a major growth in software innovation from India over the next 5 years, but now I'm having second thoughts about who will really be controlling the industry
Yes, I beleave it is worth the trouble in offering services like this. In rural Britain where there are more sheep than people it's often hard to find fast internet services, so people started doing similar things to what your suggesting (but mostly with satellite connections).
I doubt anybody would come after you for trying to 'steal' their business, as long as your only charging the minimum amount allowing you to cover the costs involved in providing the service (e.g. electricity and service charge spread between however many people your offering it to).
As for illegal material and p2p file sharing, I suggest you setup some sort of per-ip bandwidth monitoring solution, and taking up abuse on a first come first serve basis:) Although depending on your juristiction and local authority, being the middle man in distributing mp3s or kiddy porn could be considered illegal. Perhaps talk to your layer about getting some sort of disclaimer that your friends/customers sign before using your service.
Oh geat, then I can trade warez, cracks, credit-cards, underage porn, sate secrets, [name something highly illegal here] and nobody will be able to prove that i've done it.
I must say the mathmatical theory behind it seems fairly sound, kudos to them for a truly innovative idea.
No doubt every paranoid delusional security consultant out there will be saying 'Ah Hah! But __THEY__ have a backdoor...' Akin to the secret 'NSA' keys distributed with Microsoft(r)(tm) Windows(r)(tm)(we break thumbs). But I see this as a great advance in personal security that will (possibly) spawn a whole new era in security services and applications.
What we have to think seriously about is, what happens when this becomes widespread? We all know that spammers follow new technology and trends, so then they will (possibly) be able to send you hundereds of spam emails a day, and then deny that they ever did..?
-- Have you ever left your cluster on overnight to generate 1073741824bit RSA keys.. If so - your officially a paranoid geek:)
What! What! I think you've got the wrong end of the stick.
I used to be one of those RedHat loving sysadmins, but only because it's what all our clients wanted. I have since moved onto SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and SuSE Professional.
You appear to have misconceptions about SuSE desktop systems, their for your average Joe - who wants to do word processing, spreadsheets & web browsing. If you need the standard GNU tool set - buy the professional edition!
I would love to see Novell/SuSE and Sun team up to make a 'GNU/Solaris' hybrid distribution, I would consider that to be the next area for Sun to expand in. (Solaris and Novell integration could completely dominate the corporate and educational sector, with Java Desktop/SuSE Desktop for 'users').
Flame if you will, but Sun have been stuck in a single market for too long, and from my opinion they could learn a lot from SGI in the past 5-10 years.
I'm all for regulation by the FCC, sure there will be flames about 'OMG their tring to take over the world' etc. etc.. But I think it will add aditional reliability to (what it is know as today) the 'intaweb thingie'
Yeah right! Their real reasons will soon become apartent, but for now we can only speculate.
For most office workers all they usually need is word processing, spread sheets, 'toy' databases (such as Microsoft® Access®). And all of that can be run from a thin terminal.. (or for the real cheapskates, an old green-on-black monitor). Most people think the good old days of thin terminals are over, I say their still to come!
Consider the average cost of your workers hardware, £500-£700 per head. Wouldn't that be better invested in one server per-department, because most thin terminals out-live the average desktop machine (3 year upgrade cycle, or 5-6 year upgrade cycle for a http://wwws.sun.com/thin terminal). In managers terms that could lead to thousands in savings on the IT budgetl
I'm in no way condoning going back to TSS-8 (or similar legacy systems), but a powerful BSD server running on commodity hardware would do the trick just fine!
What about the gamers on dialup connections, having PunkBuster auto-update it'self in the middle of play is bad enough. But from what i've heard - stream is even worse.
Although I strongly support the electronic software distribution model, sometimes it's easier to have a physical box & cd (as opposed to a 40 hour download). I feel the big game companies (EA & Friends) need to have input during a games development, since their investing a large amount of $$$, they should expect lots of $$$ in revenue. But it just becomes rediculous when you get copy protection, badly designed cd-key system etc that can sometimes ruin a games playability - or enforcing that 'Disney®' factor to be introduced to an otherwise great game - just to apeal to a wider audience.
Good idea, virus companies should start writing virii that lock down the 'average' users machine, patch holes in Windows, and replace the IE shortcut on the desktop with a Mozilla Firebird one:)
But wouldn't that put anti-virus makers out of business? (In my personal conspiracy theory, Symantec, Norton & Friends write the virii in the first place to generate even more revenue).
The alternative is for everybody to move over to Mac OSX - Making Unix user-friendly is easier than debugging Windows:)
Although Firefox is gaining popularity the fact is: IE 6 is the #1 browser. Until we (a combination of the open source community, and regular users) can pursuade a lot of ignorant web developers (dont get me wrong, not all web developers are stupid and ignorant, just a small minority that only design for IE) - then the web can still be a hostile environment for non-microsoft users.
<rant>
Personally I've been an Opera user for a few years (but reguarly use Mozilla/Firefox, Netscape 4 & IE to check the compatibility of my sites), and I was shocked when I went to a site that said 'You have to download the latest version of IE to view this site'... Sure.. I can run IE in wine, but some people really don't think when developing sites.
</rant>
Slashdot Mirror
Your damn right about Microsoft only supporting what it wants to support, an issue with PNG images has existed for years..
To get PNG images with an 8bit alpha channel (also known as super-cool translucent stuff for those of you that are non-technical), you had to use a microsoft specific CSS property that manipulated the DHTML/DirectX attributes of the image... All of that instead of just correctly implementing the PNG standard.
Without full support for CSS2, less and less web developers will be pushing the limits of what CSS2 can do (lets face it.. MS/IE still has the majority). Without a wide adoption of CSS2 the W3C won't be pushed as much to revise and improve CSS2 to create CSS3 (or an intermediate version)
As a web developer I'm seeing this as a major kick in the teeth from Microsoft, we've been waiting for years for a version of IE that actually works towards standards, instead of yet another botched implementation.
Hell, if they made IE 7 open-source i'd implement as much of CSS2 as a lone developer could, but thats just wishful thinking :)
Is it just me? Or am I seeing the whole Netscape/Microsof fiasco happening again, but with different players?
What you've mentioned is one of the major problems of what I call the 'Dreamweaver generation'.
If you go to any website template site (such as 4templates) you'll notice that 90% of the templates are high res, table-based and mostly based around a Photoshopped design with Flash and extra gizmos added to wow the clients into buying them.
Then you look at your competitors sites, how many high-profile websites have +70kb of images on the first page?
The problem we're facing in the web design and development industry is a lack of knowledge on the buyers behalf of what really makes a good website. For example I've just finished deploying a mid-sized college website, the previous site was an 'All Flash Solution' with a 400kb intro animation, dance music playing in the background, buzzing when you roll over the menus etc. And the only reason that developer was chosen was because 'The Suites' fell for the wow-factor.
My tips for anybody looking for web design and development are simply: Would your grandma on her 32kbit dialup be able to browse the site easily? And have you ever thought to yourself 'yes, but why do I need to have a dynamic one of those'.
If you answered Yes, then No... add them to your list of prospective companies, and remember, if you don't like their own website, you probably won't like yours.
Hah, as you suggested DRM has some serious issues (+inurl:"slashdot.org" +DRM). But you seriously have to consider one thing: USERS DONT CARE
I've seen a lot of people who really wouldn't care - they can all share music & videos with their friends. Most are suckers for buying the 'Real Thang®', and most of them won't notice a lot of the things your talking about (unless they buy their computers from the local dodgy comp shop).
Until your mom & dad get a clue - the only thing we can do is spread FUD amongst our relatives, and install InsertNonMsPlatformHere on their machines the next time we're round there removing all that junk
You wanna know the kinda people I'm talking about? I got a call at 9:30pm from somebody saying 'My machines gone nutz'... When I got there 2 days later the machine was still on - showing that wonderful Windows XP BSOD, explicitly saying 'Reboot the machine and see if it happens again' sorta thing!
Thats probably because Uncle Bob or Aunty Mary will go for the cheapest on the market.. It's not as if they need dual CPU machines to do performance hungry spreadsheet authoring or whatever the latest sales motives are
Mind you, knowing that Microsoft® are known to drive a lot of the hardware upgrade with newer versions of Windows®, when we see Longhorn® coming out it'll probably need a multiprocessor machine - One for Windows and one for your programs!
You haven't seen anything Different? May I mention one word.. Dyson
The world is full of innovation, and Intel and the other big guys are just waiting for the next big thing (aka Cell processors), sure they'll do exactly the same as before - but internally will be completely different
I bet my boss will have a great idea, he'll insist I take my laptop along on fishing/camping holidays so he can bug me even when i'm off work.
Seriously though, wireless internet + national parks should not mix! Why do you think so many of us decide to take holidays right after major system upgrades, then 'forget' to take our mobile phones?
When it comes to spammers.. I'm not even going to go there.. my karma is positive, lets keep it that way.
I agree, most software developers have 'a clue' about software patents. But most 'normal' people and MPs or government officials really don't (do you remember some of those whacky government schemes to introduce 'dont spam me' whitelists?).
The last thing India needs right now is for software patents to be introduced, this for one will mean that large american/european corporations will be investing in patents in India, whereas most small Indian software firms will be locked out due to the legal costs involved.
I was expecting to see a major growth in software innovation from India over the next 5 years, but now I'm having second thoughts about who will really be controlling the industry
-- :)
My £0.2p
Yes, I beleave it is worth the trouble in offering services like this. In rural Britain where there are more sheep than people it's often hard to find fast internet services, so people started doing similar things to what your suggesting (but mostly with satellite connections). I doubt anybody would come after you for trying to 'steal' their business, as long as your only charging the minimum amount allowing you to cover the costs involved in providing the service (e.g. electricity and service charge spread between however many people your offering it to). As for illegal material and p2p file sharing, I suggest you setup some sort of per-ip bandwidth monitoring solution, and taking up abuse on a first come first serve basis :) Although depending on your juristiction and local authority, being the middle man in distributing mp3s or kiddy porn could be considered illegal. Perhaps talk to your layer about getting some sort of disclaimer that your friends/customers sign before using your service.
Oh geat, then I can trade warez, cracks, credit-cards, underage porn, sate secrets, [name something highly illegal here] and nobody will be able to prove that i've done it.
I must say the mathmatical theory behind it seems fairly sound, kudos to them for a truly innovative idea.
No doubt every paranoid delusional security consultant out there will be saying 'Ah Hah! But __THEY__ have a backdoor...' Akin to the secret 'NSA' keys distributed with Microsoft(r)(tm) Windows(r)(tm)(we break thumbs). But I see this as a great advance in personal security that will (possibly) spawn a whole new era in security services and applications.
What we have to think seriously about is, what happens when this becomes widespread? We all know that spammers follow new technology and trends, so then they will (possibly) be able to send you hundereds of spam emails a day, and then deny that they ever did..?
-- :)
Have you ever left your cluster on overnight to generate 1073741824bit RSA keys.. If so - your officially a paranoid geek
What! What! I think you've got the wrong end of the stick.
I used to be one of those RedHat loving sysadmins, but only because it's what all our clients wanted. I have since moved onto SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and SuSE Professional.
You appear to have misconceptions about SuSE desktop systems, their for your average Joe - who wants to do word processing, spreadsheets & web browsing. If you need the standard GNU tool set - buy the professional edition!
I would love to see Novell/SuSE and Sun team up to make a 'GNU/Solaris' hybrid distribution, I would consider that to be the next area for Sun to expand in. (Solaris and Novell integration could completely dominate the corporate and educational sector, with Java Desktop/SuSE Desktop for 'users').
Flame if you will, but Sun have been stuck in a single market for too long, and from my opinion they could learn a lot from SGI in the past 5-10 years.
I'm all for regulation by the FCC, sure there will be flames about 'OMG their tring to take over the world' etc. etc.. But I think it will add aditional reliability to (what it is know as today) the 'intaweb thingie'
Yeah right! Their real reasons will soon become apartent, but for now we can only speculate.
My $0.02
At least you didn't call up the Slashdot helpdesk 10 times pleading that they recover lost posts from the backup tapes from weeks ago.
For most office workers all they usually need is word processing, spread sheets, 'toy' databases (such as Microsoft® Access®). And all of that can be run from a thin terminal.. (or for the real cheapskates, an old green-on-black monitor). Most people think the good old days of thin terminals are over, I say their still to come!
Consider the average cost of your workers hardware, £500-£700 per head. Wouldn't that be better invested in one server per-department, because most thin terminals out-live the average desktop machine (3 year upgrade cycle, or 5-6 year upgrade cycle for a http://wwws.sun.com/thin terminal). In managers terms that could lead to thousands in savings on the IT budgetl
I'm in no way condoning going back to TSS-8 (or similar legacy systems), but a powerful BSD server running on commodity hardware would do the trick just fine!
What about the gamers on dialup connections, having PunkBuster auto-update it'self in the middle of play is bad enough. But from what i've heard - stream is even worse.
Although I strongly support the electronic software distribution model, sometimes it's easier to have a physical box & cd (as opposed to a 40 hour download). I feel the big game companies (EA & Friends) need to have input during a games development, since their investing a large amount of $$$, they should expect lots of $$$ in revenue. But it just becomes rediculous when you get copy protection, badly designed cd-key system etc that can sometimes ruin a games playability - or enforcing that 'Disney®' factor to be introduced to an otherwise great game - just to apeal to a wider audience.
Just my two cents
Good idea, virus companies should start writing virii that lock down the 'average' users machine, patch holes in Windows, and replace the IE shortcut on the desktop with a Mozilla Firebird one :)
But wouldn't that put anti-virus makers out of business? (In my personal conspiracy theory, Symantec, Norton & Friends write the virii in the first place to generate even more revenue).
The alternative is for everybody to move over to Mac OSX - Making Unix user-friendly is easier than debugging Windows :)
Although Firefox is gaining popularity the fact is: IE 6 is the #1 browser. Until we (a combination of the open source community, and regular users) can pursuade a lot of ignorant web developers (dont get me wrong, not all web developers are stupid and ignorant, just a small minority that only design for IE) - then the web can still be a hostile environment for non-microsoft users.
<rant> Personally I've been an Opera user for a few years (but reguarly use Mozilla/Firefox, Netscape 4 & IE to check the compatibility of my sites), and I was shocked when I went to a site that said 'You have to download the latest version of IE to view this site'... Sure.. I can run IE in wine, but some people really don't think when developing sites. </rant>