"Not most". Some rural areas are still waiting for optic fiber. The last time I checked DSL subscriptions. France was one of the leading countries in Europe (Second if I remind well. The first is Finland).
I still remember how mad French were about their Internet connections around 2001. Extremely expensive Dial-up connections. You couldn't read anything about Internet without a reference over South Korea or scandinavian countries. They have made a lot of investments, they forced France Telecom (in bad shape after investments in foreign mobile phone companies and UMTS) to open its infrastructure to competitors. What you see is the result of this good policy.
When I was a teenager I was (and still is) a Greg LeMond Fan. He was extremely popular (Landis seems to have the same profile). I even supported him when he won the tour against Fignon (French). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_LeMond
Armstrong was quite different. He looked extremely arrogant in the interviews. Rumors say that he is a completly different person in private.
My all time favorites are: - Merckx (Belgian) - LeMond (American) - Hinault (French)
We aren't talking about Microsoft US here. We are talking about its European branches. Microsoft doesn't work with importers for decades. They have branches, these branches are controlled by the US headquarter directly (through shares) or undirectly (a holding in a fiscal friendly country).
The EU isn't threatenning Microsoft Seattle. The EU is threatenning its various European properties/assets.
Basically They can do whatever they want to enforce their decision. They ask member countries to enforce their decision (they are bound to do so). Their decision may be to freeze/resell the company assets. Split the MS European branches into several units. Basically the EU has the power of a state, EU members states will do the dirty job.
They will be just like any citizen who didn't pay his/her fiscal debt/fines.
No one (Volkswagen, Schneider, Allianz to name few corporations who had to face the EU recently) has ever dared to push the EU to that limit. No politicians could intefer with the EU. The EU is a bureaucratic monster made by various treaties and completly independant once it has received its orders from the council of ministers (one of them is to favor competition and to track unfair practices).
Olivier
I don't agree with your point one.
A product equation is features compared to price .
If the features are null, then whatever your price is, you won't sell anything.
If the features are rich, but the price is too high, you won't sell anything.
A lot of MS office features are unknown to lambda users. But the price is high.
Open Office has certainly less features, but it's free.
Then Open office can find its place at its current stage in the market.
There millions of people out there who could use open office without noticing any missing features. As a business owner would you be happy to save...Let's say $200 per computer? I will and i've done it.
Olivier
The message is totally irrelevant. The message is aimed at "open source" geeks. Most of them (if not all) have already tried (and somes use open office).
Lambda citizens don't care at all about the "Microsoft Evil empire". They don't even consider it as evil. They don't think their freedom is threatenned by it. A large fraction in the corporate world even admires Microsoft for its achievment. It is a well managed US company, its market share is the best evidence. Trying to place founding fathers/presidents (ie US mythology) against an US successful project is completly stupid (and I'm not American, I already use Firefox and openoffice). The message is alienating a large fraction of potential users.
The real issues for them are: - Price - user-Friendliness - Compatibility (with existing documents, mainly MS Word) - Features - Security
I think Openoffice.org should hire a marketing manager ASAP. When a marketing guy tries to influence the application architecture, it becomes a mess. When a developper tries to define the marketing message, it leads to the same mess.
Get the big picture and stop to think that you are messiah. The whole world doesn't turn around computer technology. Today it is merely a commodity.
And frankly the lay-out is plain ugly, I hope they won't sign it with "made with open office...".
In 1999 the last time I had to deal with patents. You had to buy patents for every single country where you plan to make business. An extremely expensive operation. Most young firms prefer to concentrate their capital on key markets such as the US, Japan and the European Union. I knew firms which proposed a world package for patents. But it doesn't change the fact that legally you have to buy patents for each market.
see:
http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=26Today, all patents in the world are national documents granted under national rules and procedures. The PCT allows patentees to shortcut some of that process, if they wish to seek protection internationally, by allowing for preliminary examination of the application. (An invention must fulfill three criteria to be patentable: novelty, inventive step/non-obviousness and utility/industrial application. These are tested against a review of already existing inventions.) If the application holds up as valid, the inventor proceeds with national filing. The countries in which the application is filed may evaluate the patent independently or accept the findings of WIPO's examiners -- it's up to them.
US or not the patent is useless outside the national border.
Swift is Belgian based. Nobody cares about the fourth US amendment. IMHO the Swift data centre is located in Brussels (Uccle suburb).
I don't know how they found an agreement with the US intelligence... Normally your bank account is protected. A judge has to order the bank to give relevant information to the police (based on fraud evidences only). That's all I know. I don't know if SWIFT is legally considered as a bank. and Frankly I don't care. As a US official pointed out: they save lives. they could track some terrorists down to Pakistan.
Back in 2001 everybody on the old continent was eager to help the USA and obscure laws were certainly not the biggest concern at that time (see CIA flights for examples).
The human body isn't adapted for such an environment. Solar radiations is already a very big problem for space travel. We need a very specific athmosphere, temperature, pression...It looks like our body is more a burden that an efficient tool. Medicines and/or genetic engineering should evolve drastically before being able to consider that our specy may flourish in the galaxy.
I work with Perl, Java, C# regularly. A crappy coder can use C, C++, JAVA or whatever , he will still produce crappy code. I use these languages because I'm more familiar with C related languages.
Assuming that the guy is working on VB.NET, the end result will be just like C#.NET.
Instead of wasting your time on syntax matter, better to focus on the application architecture.
I'm sure that half of the negative comment came from the simple reason that VB means virtual "BASIC". Most of them still remember their early experiences on their 80's microcomputers and consider this family of languages as toys.
Concerning the original question: - His boss knows VB - He knows VB
An application has been already released and if the boss was able to hire him, it means also that this application has already convinced several customers. Problems: using VB isn't "cool". The guy doesn't want to tell to his friend that he uses VB at work.
If you choose another language: - Make sure your boss (the other coder I guess) knows it. - Find new friends (IE less stupid). - Find another job.
MS Windows a non certified system in the Airbus 380? I suspect your mysterious instrumentation (if any) is a non critical device (ie the passenger "Media center" DVD player).
Let me remind you that the EU is the biggest trading block of the world. The Atlantic is the biggest source of wealth for both America and Europe.
If the US ban flights from the EU, it will hurt the US economy as badly as the EU ones. US and EU economies are depending on each other. there are "billions" of dollars per second between US and EU entities. A lot of these deals have been done thanks to a face to face meeting. A big part of the US mutual funds are invested in the EU...A big part of the EU citizens savings are invested in US stocks. US companies have their most profitable branches in the EU. This isn't privacy anymore, this is your money and mine.
US & EU Politicians will have to find a solutions quickly. Populists/nationalists from both continents should be kept at bay. Any of them trying to use this event as a mediatic opportunity should receive a kick in the arse. Any tensions on such a crucial trading zone could be catastrophic.
Concerning the threat to stop financial aid...I guess the EU will be able to manage such a terrible loss:-).
PS2 production couldn't face the demand during the first months. I'm maybe naive:-) but...Maybe they set the price at $600 to face the demand and few months later they will drop the price to challenge the XBOX 360.
Only fools, fanatics or wealthy people will buy it at such a price.
Anyway I may consider it...If it has a keyboard, a mouse, a VGA/DVI output, USB to a printer and a well known operating system with tons of applications (ie: if it is a PC).
The only console right now that fits to my budget is the Wii. I'm 30, working, a nice job...Bu I've got a house to pay, a car to pay...Blue ray or not;-).
Well I have only reason against Ipod so far. The price: Around 50% more for a Ipod versus a similar device. Sure they have a nice design...But I don't care:-).
So I bought a MP3 player from another vendor with AAA rechargeable batteries.
Re:Rumors that they're 'upgrading' from Ada.
on
Mars Rover Upgraded
·
· Score: 1
could anybody explain why java isn't a good choice for such a mission?
Is it related to the JVM? The language structure? the fact that it is less "strict" than ADA?
You forgot something. it's a Microsoft product:-). Anything coming from Microsoft is de facto bad on slashdot.
I'm glad they are trying to improve the UI. Things are too complex for the average Joe.
The only problems for me are :
The price (first version at $149 is way too expensive)
The number of versions. Student, standard, pro, pro+ and enterprise (?).
When you see 5 different versions for the same product with different limitations set by the marketing department. There is clearly a problem.
Do you remember the difference between XP pro and XP home? Sincerily I don't. They will select just one version in the retail shop. They won't waste their time trying to explain limitations to a lambda user.
The price is the biggest problem for me . I will stick to open office with thunderbird. It's free and I don't think that the new Ms office features are worth $200 (I'm not a student). Tell me $75 and I may consider it.
Make a full use of CSS. Use simple html elements with no color, border or any display related properties. Declare them with the proper style. If you don't know the difference between class and ID. I strongly suggest you to by a book about CSS.
If you have carefully design your stylesheet you will be able to fully manage the display through a CSS file. Things are really more simple that way.
Don't be too "extremist"...There are a lot of cases where a good old table is better than cascading DIV tags.
Too many developers are still using the old way (only HTML tags), or a part (text formatting) of CSS. Simply by a book about CSS you will be astonished by its power. People complain about IE CSS support...But there are already enough supported things to be fully part of your solution.
Well the problem is Google "suggests" keywords and this is a big difference IMHO. This isn't the result of a search done by the surfer. Google is pushing its own inputs.
When I browse for Porn...I would be furious if Google suggests me "Child porn".
On the marketing side. There is a very weak support for applications. J2ME market is mainly dedicated to video games. When you app is about financial stuff, personnal productivity or anything else...You are in trouble.
Concerning the "certification" of your MIDP app to be listed on most carriers. It was done by third parties Two years ago (I left that market I don't know if it's still the case). There were around 5 companies doing that.
It costs a lot of money. You have to be "certified" for every single models...And in every single language you support (Nokia, Motorolla and others, I guess more than 60 per year. My app supports three languages). It was around $250-500 US per model and per language if I remind well.
So I tested the process. I picked my own mobile phone (T610) in the list because I knew my application works on that device. It was developped, tested, tuned for it.
After two weeks I received a letter telling me that my application failed because the tester didn't find the "back" feature (to go back to the previous screen).
The funny side is that I sticked to the MIDP framework and my Back button was the default one. on the T610 the back button is a bit weird. You have to get used to the phone or read the manual. So the third party was in fact refusing the MIDP framework, or the Sony Ericsson implementation.
You multiply this experience by a factor 100 and you see the budget and the time you need to be fully "certified"...And it doesn't mean yet that you may access the market...You still have to convince carriers to list your apps. I suspect this is even a bigger challenge...I remember that Nokia was proposing its own list to carriers. You would need a budget of $4000 US or more per year To be listed. Then the carrier and Nokia takes around 70% of the revenue.
Mosts carriers proposes only video games to their clients.
When you see the modest turnover generated by most mobile applications, your clearly see that you are going to lose a lot of money. I left it and I joined the Blackberry market where things look more "business friendly". (you only need $100 US to be recognized by blackberry and access protected features on Blackberry APIs, there is a big distributor Handango and few others. Royalties are around 60%...Quite high but not other fees.)
On the technical side...Most J2ME mobile phones can't support floating point (CLDC 1.1). The first time in my life that I had to develop an application on such a backward system. And you that the hardware can support it...if you choose the Symbian framework you can easily access this feature.
MIDP 1.0 and 2.0 are relatively nice framework for video games and only video games. It is a dead end for anything else.
So let's see what MIDP 3.0 could do...Anyway I'm glad to see that I least one company recognizes that there is a "big" problem.
Why? I've read the article, European parliament report on Echelon and I'm afraid i've never found any favour back from the US. Some of the european partners have enjoyed an access to the US network on their own soil...But under the US supervision.
Just like they are free to move their "classified" prisonners from Germany to Romania. Even if it breaks every single articles of the European Human rights chart.
The US is the biggest European power and act accordingly. We are all citizens from second class countries under a moderate foreign rule. If we use the XIXth vocabulary, I guess you may consider us as dominions.
I still prefer US underground activites than the "laissez faire" approach that terrorists have enjoyed for decades in countries like the UK, Belgium or Germany. A repulsive coktail of "real politik",cowardice and hypocrisy.
I sincerily doubt that my phone calls to my mother would be of any interest for the US government...I have already some difficulties to be interested anyway.
It's like saying that if you haven't a car adapted to your handicap, because gas powered cars aren't allowed anymore, only electic ones are... You should stop complaining...Study engineering and make your own one!
They are simply reminding leaders that they are pushing a bit too quickly the migration to the open standard. There aren't any commercial/non commercial solutions for them (yet). This is a legitimate claim. is it too difficult to understand for your copyleft GPLized brain?
Concerning FLASH a potential explanation is this real life experience.
The CMS was installed and running for weeks but our client was still requesting modifications after modifications on the lay-out. HTML+CSS and nice visual. Nothing really wrong with it. Until that contract, Our lay-outs would only suffer few modifications before being accepted.
Their profile: a medium interior design company.
We were about to lose money. We spent more money on the lay-out than on the tool in itself. What's puzzled me is that Visuals were more important than the content for them. They couldn't care less about the newsletter module or the stat modules or the e-commerce module we have installed for their product. They didn't care that the space dedicated for the text (the content) was around of a paragraph's size. they wanted a beautiful web site. It should be beautiful, not efficient nor informative nor easy to update and google was a "detail" for them (the biggest source of new visits is a "detail")
So...We end up with a bet: Use FLASH, make a lot of fanzy animations, and see what happens.
Our clients were looking like kids to the "standard" animations you can get with the SWISH Max (89 Euro) software. That's probably the best investment I have ever done. 89 Euro have saved a 15K+ contract. They were extremely impressed, they tought that we have all spent a lot of extra hours to please them. In fact It took me with our poor web designer a couple of hours (To select some predined animations). We have also used another product called SWISHPIC to make FLASH pictures galeries...And that's it.
Within a week the Lay-out/web site was accepted.
We told them that witht his new technologies, they will have to pay us to update their picture galeries (no problem), that they would have to type twice the text to make newsletter (no problem), the homepage will be static and the menu too (strange for a CMS, isn't it) again no problem.
They live in another world. FLASH has been made for customers like them.
And I forgot to mention that you will have Dutchmen as neighboors...;-)
Concerning the tax rate, do the following maths: 21% of indirect taxes (VAT) on any products that I need (with few exceptions) 33% of direct taxes on my revenues.
the rest: car tax, green taxes, taxes on gas (more than 50% VAT excluded) , on my cigarettes (more than 80% VAT excl.), on my home, and so on.
I think you could even assume that my tax rate is closer to 60% if you are really vigilant.
Note that the Netherlands was about to put a racist party led by Pim Fortuyn (Murdered.) at the head of the government. Once you will remind that fact you will be allowed to lecturate your neighboors about their lack of "tolerance".
Concerning the "North Africans" having a better life in Europe than in Texas. You simply illustrate my point, you still consider them as foreigners even if it is the third generations. I don't blame you, I've got the same feeling.
they would have been considered as Americans over there after three generations, hardly the case in Europe (the Netherlands included obivously).
Another extremely annoying stuff in Europe is that no matter what the topic is, the USA are worst.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not most". Some rural areas are still waiting for optic fiber. The last time I checked DSL subscriptions. France was one of the leading countries in Europe (Second if I remind well. The first is Finland).
I still remember how mad French were about their Internet connections around 2001. Extremely expensive Dial-up connections. You couldn't read anything about Internet without a reference over South Korea or scandinavian countries. They have made a lot of investments, they forced France Telecom (in bad shape after investments in foreign mobile phone companies and UMTS) to open its infrastructure to competitors. What you see is the result of this good policy.
When I was a teenager I was (and still is) a Greg LeMond Fan. He was extremely popular (Landis seems to have the same profile).
I even supported him when he won the tour against Fignon (French).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_LeMond
Armstrong was quite different. He looked extremely arrogant in the interviews. Rumors say that he is a completly different person in private.
My all time favorites are:
- Merckx (Belgian)
- LeMond (American)
- Hinault (French)
- Overpriced (cool!)
- Weird DVD format (Kewl!)
- Expensive video games (respect! )
Wait... there are a new ones!- No way to buy second hand games! (Sony We luv u!)
- If your console crashed, your games collection is lost (Thanks Sony!)
Sony Marketing motto : "You don't own a Playstation 3. Playstation 3 owns you."Can't wait to have mine!
We aren't talking about Microsoft US here. We are talking about its European branches. Microsoft doesn't work with importers for decades. They have branches, these branches are controlled by the US headquarter directly (through shares) or undirectly (a holding in a fiscal friendly country). The EU isn't threatenning Microsoft Seattle. The EU is threatenning its various European properties/assets. Basically They can do whatever they want to enforce their decision. They ask member countries to enforce their decision (they are bound to do so). Their decision may be to freeze/resell the company assets. Split the MS European branches into several units. Basically the EU has the power of a state, EU members states will do the dirty job. They will be just like any citizen who didn't pay his/her fiscal debt/fines. No one (Volkswagen, Schneider, Allianz to name few corporations who had to face the EU recently) has ever dared to push the EU to that limit. No politicians could intefer with the EU. The EU is a bureaucratic monster made by various treaties and completly independant once it has received its orders from the council of ministers (one of them is to favor competition and to track unfair practices). Olivier
I don't agree with your point one. A product equation is features compared to price . If the features are null, then whatever your price is, you won't sell anything. If the features are rich, but the price is too high, you won't sell anything. A lot of MS office features are unknown to lambda users. But the price is high. Open Office has certainly less features, but it's free. Then Open office can find its place at its current stage in the market. There millions of people out there who could use open office without noticing any missing features. As a business owner would you be happy to save...Let's say $200 per computer? I will and i've done it. Olivier
The message is totally irrelevant. The message is aimed at "open source" geeks. Most of them (if not all) have already tried (and somes use open office).
Lambda citizens don't care at all about the "Microsoft Evil empire". They don't even consider it
as evil. They don't think their freedom is threatenned by it. A large fraction in the corporate world even admires Microsoft for its achievment. It is a well managed US company, its market share is the best evidence. Trying to place founding fathers/presidents (ie US mythology) against an US successful project is completly stupid (and I'm not American, I already use Firefox and openoffice). The message is alienating a large fraction of potential users.
The real issues for them are:
- Price
- user-Friendliness
- Compatibility (with existing documents, mainly MS Word)
- Features
- Security
I think Openoffice.org should hire a marketing manager ASAP. When a marketing guy tries to influence the application architecture, it becomes a mess. When a developper tries to define
the marketing message, it leads to the same mess.
Get the big picture and stop to think that you are messiah. The whole world doesn't turn around computer technology. Today it is merely a commodity.
And frankly the lay-out is plain ugly, I hope they won't sign it with "made with open office...".
Olivier
I don't agree.
In 1999 the last time I had to deal with patents. You had to buy patents for every single country where you plan to make business. An extremely expensive operation. Most young firms prefer to concentrate their capital on key markets such as the US, Japan and the European Union. I knew firms which proposed a world package for patents. But it doesn't change the fact that legally you have to buy patents for each market.
see: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=26 Today, all patents in the world are national documents granted under national rules and procedures. The PCT allows patentees to shortcut some of that process, if they wish to seek protection internationally, by allowing for preliminary examination of the application. (An invention must fulfill three criteria to be patentable: novelty, inventive step/non-obviousness and utility/industrial application. These are tested against a review of already existing inventions.) If the application holds up as valid, the inventor proceeds with national filing. The countries in which the application is filed may evaluate the patent independently or accept the findings of WIPO's examiners -- it's up to them.
US or not the patent is useless outside the national border.
Swift is Belgian based. Nobody cares about the fourth US amendment.
IMHO the Swift data centre is located in Brussels (Uccle suburb).
I don't know how they found an agreement with the US intelligence...
Normally your bank account is protected. A judge has to order the bank to give relevant information to the police (based on fraud evidences only). That's all I know. I don't know if SWIFT is legally considered as a bank. and Frankly I don't care. As a US official pointed out: they save lives. they could track some terrorists down to Pakistan.
Back in 2001 everybody on the old continent was eager to help the USA and obscure laws were certainly not the biggest concern at that time (see CIA flights for examples).
Most spams I received are aimed at US citizens. I live in Europe.
Spammers are difficult to catch...Ok but you can catch their so called "sponsors" and break the business model.
For example Mortgage...Sooner or later a real "brick & mortar" company has to appear. Money has to be borrowed from a registered company.
A lot of SPAMs contain a US toll-free phone number. Why is it so difficult to find the owner/user?
Cialis (unless they are fake)...I guess you can easily track their origin from the factory to the company responsible for the shipment.
Things like Porn and illegal softwares are impossible to track. I agree but those proposing "real products" can be tracked.
Why can't US administrations do that? This is a honest question, i really can't understand their lack of reaction.
The human body isn't adapted for such an environment. Solar radiations is already a very big problem for space travel. We need a very specific athmosphere, temperature, pression...It looks like our body is more a burden that an efficient tool. Medicines and/or genetic engineering should evolve drastically before being able to consider that our specy may flourish in the galaxy.
Olivier
I totally agree with that.
.NET, the end result will be just like C# .NET.
I work with Perl, Java, C# regularly. A crappy coder can use C, C++, JAVA or whatever , he will still produce crappy code. I use these languages because I'm more familiar with C related languages.
Assuming that the guy is working on VB
Instead of wasting your time on syntax matter, better to focus on the application architecture.
I'm sure that half of the negative comment came from the simple reason that VB means virtual "BASIC". Most of them still remember their early experiences on their 80's microcomputers and consider this family of languages as toys.
Concerning the original question:
- His boss knows VB
- He knows VB
An application has been already released and if the boss was able to hire him, it means also that this application has already convinced several customers.
Problems: using VB isn't "cool". The guy doesn't want to tell to his friend that he uses VB at work.
If you choose another language:
- Make sure your boss (the other coder I guess) knows it.
- Find new friends (IE less stupid).
- Find another job.
MS Windows a non certified system in the Airbus 380? I suspect your mysterious instrumentation (if any) is a non critical device (ie the passenger "Media center" DVD player).
Let me remind you that the EU is the biggest trading block of the world.
:-).
The Atlantic is the biggest source of wealth for both America and Europe.
If the US ban flights from the EU, it will hurt the US economy as badly as the EU ones. US and EU economies are depending on each other. there are "billions" of dollars per second between US and EU entities. A lot of these deals have been done thanks to a face to face meeting. A big part of the US mutual funds are invested in the EU...A big part of the EU citizens savings are invested in US stocks. US companies have their most profitable branches in the EU.
This isn't privacy anymore, this is your money and mine.
US & EU Politicians will have to find a solutions quickly. Populists/nationalists from both continents should be kept at bay. Any of them trying to use this event as a mediatic opportunity should receive a kick in the arse. Any tensions on such a crucial trading zone could be catastrophic.
Concerning the threat to stop financial aid...I guess the EU will be able to manage such a terrible loss
PS2 production couldn't face the demand during the first months. I'm maybe naive :-) but...Maybe they set the price at $600 to face the demand and few months later they will drop the price to challenge the XBOX 360.
;-).
Only fools, fanatics or wealthy people will buy it at such a price.
Anyway I may consider it...If it has a keyboard, a mouse, a VGA/DVI output, USB to a printer and a well known operating system with tons of applications (ie: if it is a PC).
The only console right now that fits to my budget is the Wii. I'm 30, working, a nice job...Bu I've got a house to pay, a car to pay...Blue ray or not
Well I have only reason against Ipod so far. The price: Around 50% more for a Ipod versus a similar device. Sure they have a nice design...But I don't care :-).
So I bought a MP3 player from another vendor with AAA rechargeable batteries.
could anybody explain why java isn't a good choice for such a mission?
Is it related to the JVM?
The language structure? the fact that it is less "strict" than ADA?
Just wondering.
Sony looks like Microsoft without the brain.
How many stupid things can you do when you truly believe that your loyal consumers will "never" leave you.
You forgot something. it's a Microsoft product :-). Anything coming from Microsoft is de facto bad on slashdot.
I'm glad they are trying to improve the UI. Things are too complex for the average Joe.
The only problems for me are :
The price (first version at $149 is way too expensive)
The number of versions. Student, standard, pro, pro+ and enterprise (?).
When you see 5 different versions for the same product with different limitations set by the marketing department. There is clearly a problem.
Do you remember the difference between XP pro and XP home? Sincerily I don't. They will select just one version in the retail shop. They won't waste their time trying to explain limitations to a lambda user.
The price is the biggest problem for me . I will stick to open office with thunderbird. It's free and I don't think that the new Ms office features are worth $200 (I'm not a student). Tell me $75 and I may consider it.
Here is my two cents.
CSS is there to help you.
Make a full use of CSS.
Use simple html elements with no color, border or any display related properties. Declare them with the proper style. If you don't know the difference between class and ID. I strongly suggest you to by a book about CSS.
If you have carefully design your stylesheet you will be able to fully manage the display through a CSS file. Things are really more simple that way.
Don't be too "extremist"...There are a lot of cases where a good old table is better than cascading DIV tags.
Too many developers are still using the old way (only HTML tags), or a part (text formatting) of CSS. Simply by a book about CSS you will be astonished by its power. People complain about IE CSS support...But there are already enough supported things to be fully part of your solution.
Well the problem is Google "suggests" keywords and this is a big difference IMHO.
This isn't the result of a search done by the surfer. Google is pushing its own inputs.
When I browse for Porn...I would be furious if Google suggests me "Child porn".
On the marketing side. There is a very weak support for applications. J2ME market is mainly dedicated to video games. When you app is about financial stuff, personnal productivity or anything else...You are in trouble.
Concerning the "certification" of your MIDP app to be listed on most carriers. It was done by third parties Two years ago (I left that market I don't know if it's still the case). There were around 5 companies doing that.
It costs a lot of money. You have to be "certified" for every single models...And in every single language you support (Nokia, Motorolla and others, I guess more than 60 per year. My app supports three languages). It was around $250-500 US per model and per language if I remind well.
So I tested the process. I picked my own mobile phone (T610) in the list because I knew my application works on that device. It was developped, tested, tuned for it.
After two weeks I received a letter telling me that my application failed because the tester didn't find the "back" feature (to go back to the previous screen).
The funny side is that I sticked to the MIDP framework and my Back button was the default one. on the T610 the back button is a bit weird. You have to get used to the phone or read the manual. So the third party was in fact refusing the MIDP framework, or the Sony Ericsson implementation.
You multiply this experience by a factor 100 and you see the budget and the time you need to be fully "certified"...And it doesn't mean yet that you may access the market...You still have to convince carriers to list your apps. I suspect this is even a bigger challenge...I remember that Nokia was proposing its own list to carriers. You would need a budget of $4000 US or more per year To be listed. Then the carrier and Nokia takes around 70% of the revenue.
Mosts carriers proposes only video games to their clients.
When you see the modest turnover generated by most mobile applications, your clearly see that you are going to lose a lot of money. I left it and I joined the Blackberry market where things look more "business friendly". (you only need $100 US to be recognized by blackberry and access protected features on Blackberry APIs, there is a big distributor Handango and few others. Royalties are around 60%...Quite high but not other fees.)
On the technical side...Most J2ME mobile phones can't support floating point (CLDC 1.1). The first time in my life that I had to develop an application on such a backward system. And you that the hardware can support it...if you choose the Symbian framework you can easily access this feature.
MIDP 1.0 and 2.0 are relatively nice framework for video games and only video games. It is a dead end for anything else.
So let's see what MIDP 3.0 could do...Anyway I'm glad to see that I least one company recognizes that there is a "big" problem.
Olivier
Why? I've read the article, European parliament report on Echelon and I'm afraid i've never found any favour back from the US. Some of the european partners have enjoyed an access to the US network on their own soil...But under the US supervision.
Just like they are free to move their "classified" prisonners from Germany to Romania. Even if it breaks every single articles of the European Human rights chart.
The US is the biggest European power and act accordingly.
We are all citizens from second class countries under a moderate foreign rule. If we use the XIXth vocabulary, I guess you may consider us as dominions.
I still prefer US underground activites than the "laissez faire" approach that terrorists have enjoyed for decades in countries like the UK, Belgium or Germany. A repulsive coktail of "real politik",cowardice and hypocrisy.
I sincerily doubt that my phone calls to my mother would be of any interest for the US government...I have already some difficulties to be interested anyway.
Olivier
It's like saying that if you haven't a car adapted to your handicap, because gas powered cars aren't allowed anymore, only electic ones are... You should stop complaining...Study engineering and make your own one!
They are simply reminding leaders that they are pushing a bit too quickly the migration to the open standard. There aren't any commercial/non commercial solutions for them (yet). This is a legitimate claim. is it too difficult to understand for your copyleft GPLized brain?
Concerning FLASH a potential explanation is this real life experience.
The CMS was installed and running for weeks but our client was still requesting modifications after modifications on the lay-out. HTML+CSS and nice visual. Nothing really wrong with it. Until that contract, Our lay-outs would only suffer few modifications before being accepted.
Their profile: a medium interior design company.
We were about to lose money. We spent more money on the lay-out than on the tool in itself. What's puzzled me is that Visuals were more important than the content for them. They couldn't care less about the newsletter module or the stat modules or the e-commerce module we have installed for their product. They didn't care that the space dedicated for the text (the content) was around of a paragraph's size. they wanted a beautiful web site. It should be beautiful, not efficient nor informative nor easy to update and google was a "detail" for them (the biggest source of new visits is a "detail")
So...We end up with a bet: Use FLASH, make a lot of fanzy animations, and see what happens.
Our clients were looking like kids to the "standard" animations you can get with the SWISH Max (89 Euro) software. That's probably the best investment I have ever done. 89 Euro have saved a 15K+ contract. They were extremely impressed, they tought that we have all spent a lot of extra hours to please them. In fact It took me with our poor web designer a couple of hours (To select some predined animations). We have also used another product called SWISHPIC to make FLASH pictures galeries...And that's it.
Within a week the Lay-out/web site was accepted.
We told them that witht his new technologies, they will have to pay us to update their picture galeries (no problem), that they would have to type twice the text to make newsletter (no problem), the homepage will be static and the menu too (strange for a CMS, isn't it) again no problem.
They live in another world.
FLASH has been made for customers like them.
And I forgot to mention that you will have Dutchmen as neighboors... ;-)
Concerning the tax rate, do the following maths:
21% of indirect taxes (VAT) on any products that I need (with few exceptions)
33% of direct taxes on my revenues.
the rest: car tax, green taxes, taxes on gas (more than 50% VAT excluded) , on my cigarettes (more than 80% VAT excl.), on my home, and so on.
I think you could even assume that my tax rate is closer to 60% if you are really vigilant.
Note that the Netherlands was about to put a racist party led by Pim Fortuyn (Murdered.) at the head of the government. Once you will remind that fact you will be allowed to lecturate your neighboors about their lack of "tolerance".
Concerning the "North Africans" having a better life in Europe than in Texas. You simply illustrate my point, you still consider them as foreigners even if it is the third generations. I don't blame you, I've got the same feeling.
they would have been considered as Americans over there after three generations, hardly the case in Europe (the Netherlands included obivously).
Another extremely annoying stuff in Europe is that no matter what the topic is, the USA are worst.