If you are looking for an excellent web-oriented IDE, I highly recommend Aptana Studio. It's available as an Eclipse plugin, or, if you are like me and just want Aptana, as a standalone app (Eclipse pre-built with Aptana modules).
It has excellent support for most of the JavaScript libraries out of the box (as well as PHP, Ruby, and more), and you can add SVN and other features through plugins. (The JavaScript editor can even run a trimmed-down version of jslint over your code in real time.) The paid version adds SFTP support.
Combine all that with a very powerful syncing tool, and my productivity has literally doubled (or tripled).
I have nothing to do with the company, but having switched from DreamWeaver (I know, I know... well, I was used to CFStudio/HomeSite+ before I switched away from Windows), I was very impressed with it.
I've always wondered why we don't adjust the incentives for the patent reviewers better. (Forgive me if this is stupid, I have never personally applied for, nor looked into the process of applying for, a patent.)
Increase the cost for getting a patent approved to something fairly serious. I mean, if it cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, then spending $10K to get it patented (or whatever amount is appropriate) would be worth it. If you only spent $1000 to produce it, the dang thing shouldn't be patented anyway.
If you submit a patent, you lose the money, period, whether it is approved or not.
If the patent is not approved, you get fined double the cost of the original patent. This would prevent nut jobs from trying to patent everything under the sun.
You cannot submit another patent if you have any outstanding fines.
Of course, this is on top of fixing the patent system itself (no software patents, shorter limits, etc). The goal above is to make it more worth it for the reviewer to reject a patent than approve it, since apparently the opposite is currently true.
My guess is apple reviewers have a list of words in a file (that only the lawyers are allowed to read). Then they take the compiled app and do something like
If it returns something, then click the INSTANT BANISHMENT OF DOOM button. The app never even has to be run! They can probably ban 2000-3000 apps per day this way, and they probably get a bonus.
In all seriousness, my guess at the problems with Apple is a bad metrics or punishment/reward system for the reviewers. Reviewers probably don't get any benefit for approving, but if they approve an app that gets them in trouble later, they get punished.
First, they list the 6 (6? Still? Sigh...) versions of Windows 7 as:
Microsoft is offering six versions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, OEM and Enterprise.
Then they immediately say:
The three versions that Redmond will be promoting most heavily are Home Premium, Professional and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor
(Emphasis mine)
I assume they meant "Ultimate", but it is still a pretty silly mistake.
Another question I have (as a Mac user who is excited for the industry competition, if not the OS): is the new Windows 7 Taskbar resizable the way the OS X Dock is? With the dock, I have the option of instantly gaining more room (both on-screen and within the dock itself) by scaling it down, or back up when preferred. The magnification feature ensures that I can easily tell which icon I am hovering over. I haven't spent much time with Windows 7 because almost all of the new visual features are disabled in a VM, making the new taskbar significantly less useful than the old one.:-(
The argument with piracy isn't that your are "not taking anything physical", but that you are not taking a thing, period.
If I "take" a copy of something from someone, but leave the original, that is copyright infringement. The owner still has the original item, therefore it isn't theft. However, they have lost the ability to control copies, therefore it is the very legitimate crime of copyright infringement.
In this case, the original owner lost out on both the access to the domain, potential profit from the use of said domain, as well as the virtual asset of the ability to sell the rights to the domain. That is, very clearly, theft, since the original owner was deprived of the use of the domain.
It is very important for us to be clear on our terminology, so that when we make arguments, the arguments are solid and understandable. When you confuse "theft" with "copyright infringement", all of the sudden taking a photograph of an item can be equated to taking that item. Which, I hope, is obviously different.
If you login then of course you need a cookie. And using them for stats within one site is not much different to using IP addresses.
While I agree that there a significant benefit in using login cookies, they are not remotely âoenecessaryâ. Java-based servers have had a fantastic technique using a little-known part of the URI shceme where every segment can have parameters. It looks like this:
Don't ever store a cookie by default on websites that don't have a login.
Don't ever, ever, ever store cookies on a different domain than the one in the address bar.
If you want to store something in a cookie, make it opt-in (as mentioned above).
If you want to store something in a cookie, but I block it, make sure the website still works correctly.
If you "need" to store a cookie, but I block it, make it obvious what has happened, and on what domain. Make sure I can see that domain in the address bar, and decide whether to unlock it.
Be aware that forcing a cookie on me has about a 75% guarantee that I'll leave and never return.
If you are incapable of developing to these standards, say, because you don't understand how session cookies should work, then please find another line of work.
Cookies are bad for the health of your website, news site, or blog. Cookies are good for the health of your web application.
Some occasional spot checking on my spam filter has shown no e-mail arriving to any plus addresses.
Hopefully you realize that any even slightly intelligent spammer would run a simple regex (s/(\+[^@])@//) on their list before sending it. Which means that not only do they get your address, but you'll never know the source.
Sadly, at this point, the only solution for ensuring that no-one gets your email is using an actual throwaway email address, as you mention.
Without an unsandboxed version of the win32 api, which is what ActiveX is, they would be unable to deny the ability to use the internet to those without a recent version of windows and office.
My head didn't stay unexploded while I wasn't unreading this unstatement.
What a shame that a fairly decent response would use Roughly Drafted for almost all of the citations. Roughly Drafted is, at best, a pile of vaguely coherent puff pieces. I would never rely on RD for backing up my viewpoint.
I'm a happy, somewhat die-hard Mac user. I'll probably never switch back to Windows since the demo of Windows 7 reminded me how much I hate the various pointless changes after XP. I recently discovered just how much I dislike Linux on the desktop with my recent netbook (the popular Dell Vostro A90 [well, the Mini 9 was popular]).
But I would never use RD for supporting why OS X makes me happy to use computers again.
Not just 3 browsers! Now, to be certain it will work right, I should test:
IE6
IE7
IE8 as IE7 (IE7 mode)
IE8 as IE7 (compatibility mode)
IE8 as IE8
Why the last three, you ask?
Because even if you specify the viewing mode with a meta tag, the user can change it. And IE8 has tiny JavaScript differences. (I definitely found one bug in IE8/IE7 vs IE8/compatibility, but of course, I've forgotten it.)
Of course, this will be even more fun when IE9 comes out, adding:
IE9 as IE7
IE9 as IE7 (compatibilty mode)
IE9 as IE8 as IE7
IE9 as IE8 as IE7 (compatibilty mode)
IE9 as IE8 (compatbility mode) as IE7
IE9 as IE8 (compatbility mode) as IE7 (compatibilty mode)
10 independent complaints about a robocaller within a 1 month span should be plenty to attack, and permanently revoke the right for a company to cold-call a person. Ever.
That would make them think twice before calling someone.
Personally, I don't give a flying **** whether that scares "legitimate" callers. I've had it with companies who are letting me know that my credit card/mortgage/car/whatever could be benefited from something that I DON'T WANT. There is NO legitimate reason to EVER use a robocaller. Period. This includes politicians, charities, or surveys.
If my money/information/bank account number is so important to you, hire someone to call me, and make sure they are sitting on that phone, listening to the ringing, when I pick up. I think the same rules should apply to those auto-dialers where the person on the other end starts saying "Hello? Hello?" 30 seconds after I pick up.
I don't understand why this isn't the case by default, but Firefox I think is going to need a permissions / sandbox environment for extensions. The idea of AdBlock looking through my histroy just gives me the willies.
Something similar to Java's JNLP/Webstart, where plugins could request permission to view specific features, and the user could decide to deny them. The request could come up when the extension is installed, and could also be prompted for a one-time use.
Specific areas that would really benefit from protection include:
History
Bookmarks
Form & Password DB
Preferences
about:config (outside the extension's own rules)
The ability to communicate with other extensions
Opening pages or Tabs
Adding Menus or Context Menus
An extension could have some or all of these blocked. For example, I'd like to be able to prevent an extension from ever opening a page or tab on restart (Thanks, I know I upgraded, I don't want to visit your page...), but still allow it to add a right-click menu item.
The restrictions could be an intelligent hierarchy, so that an extension could pick a subset of them, and request them. The more features an extension wants to accept, the higher the warning level when being installed. (i.e.: if an extension wants , then it gets flagged red, if it only wants one or two [excluding history, bookmarks, forms, or passwords], then it gets no flag at all.)
Yeah, I knew about that. But did you notice the killall Finder? This means you lose all open Finder windows just to show hidden files.
Of course, you can just leave it on. Really, it's just another minor annoyance. There's enough ways around it that it only is a problem occasionally (like the back restoration)...
Well, if you knew the name of it you could have just done View > Go to Folder (Command-Shift-G), and typed (for example) ~/.subversion.
True, however, that doesn't help with the fact that Time Machine still won't show you hidden files. At all. The best you can hope for is to find a non-hidden parent directory to restore.
In my case I was lucky, but there is no way that I know of, just as an example, to restore ~/.bash_profile without restoring your entire home directory.
Of course, the number of times Time Machine has saved me headaches, not to mention possible data loss, makes up for just about any deficiencies on a Mac. And I never had to "set it up" or "back up" anything.
Interesting, I was assuming that Macs would have the same issue, but I just checked. Not only does it force the showing of.doc.app, but it also doesn't allow you to hide it, period (even under Get Info).
Sadly, there is no easy way to enable the viewing of hidden files and folders (dot-files) in Finder. That's probably one of my biggest gripes. I was trying to restore a corrupted config directory for Aptana Studio (Eclipse), and I had to open it from the command line.
I love OOo. I've been promoting it whenever possible to anyone who can use it. It handles a lot of things very well.
Also, I am aware that the Mac version is fairly recent, so I expect some quirks. But it's been long enough, and they still haven't gotten basic editing keystrokes working in Calc. In fact, there is no way to even change those keystrokes. When I'm editing, I regularly use (Shift) Opt-Left/Right to navigate text. In OOo, I now have to use the mouse (ack) or arrow around letter-by-letter.
It was bad enough when only Shift-Cmd-Left/Right worked, but now just about all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely missing on Macs.
And before you suggest Tools > Customize, there are no commands for navigating tokens within Calc. In fact, as far as I can tell, Calc completely ignores text-editing keystrokes now, which is a real shame, since Writer handles them all with aplomb.
Slashdot Mirror
Ability to change your number for a fee.
I just checked, Google Voice has a $10 fee to change your phone number. That's very inexpensive, but certainly not free.
If you are looking for an excellent web-oriented IDE, I highly recommend Aptana Studio. It's available as an Eclipse plugin, or, if you are like me and just want Aptana, as a standalone app (Eclipse pre-built with Aptana modules).
It has excellent support for most of the JavaScript libraries out of the box (as well as PHP, Ruby, and more), and you can add SVN and other features through plugins. (The JavaScript editor can even run a trimmed-down version of jslint over your code in real time.) The paid version adds SFTP support.
Combine all that with a very powerful syncing tool, and my productivity has literally doubled (or tripled).
I have nothing to do with the company, but having switched from DreamWeaver (I know, I know... well, I was used to CFStudio/HomeSite+ before I switched away from Windows), I was very impressed with it.
Aptana's Website
I've always wondered why we don't adjust the incentives for the patent reviewers better. (Forgive me if this is stupid, I have never personally applied for, nor looked into the process of applying for, a patent.)
Of course, this is on top of fixing the patent system itself (no software patents, shorter limits, etc). The goal above is to make it more worth it for the reviewer to reject a patent than approve it, since apparently the opposite is currently true.
My guess is apple reviewers have a list of words in a file (that only the lawyers are allowed to read). Then they take the compiled app and do something like
strings NinjaDictionary.app | grep --file=naughtywords.txt
If it returns something, then click the INSTANT BANISHMENT OF DOOM button. The app never even has to be run! They can probably ban 2000-3000 apps per day this way, and they probably get a bonus.
In all seriousness, my guess at the problems with Apple is a bad metrics or punishment/reward system for the reviewers. Reviewers probably don't get any benefit for approving, but if they approve an app that gets them in trouble later, they get punished.
First, they list the 6 (6? Still? Sigh...) versions of Windows 7 as:
Microsoft is offering six versions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, OEM and Enterprise.
Then they immediately say:
The three versions that Redmond will be promoting most heavily are Home Premium, Professional and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor
(Emphasis mine)
I assume they meant "Ultimate", but it is still a pretty silly mistake.
Another question I have (as a Mac user who is excited for the industry competition, if not the OS): is the new Windows 7 Taskbar resizable the way the OS X Dock is? With the dock, I have the option of instantly gaining more room (both on-screen and within the dock itself) by scaling it down, or back up when preferred. The magnification feature ensures that I can easily tell which icon I am hovering over. I haven't spent much time with Windows 7 because almost all of the new visual features are disabled in a VM, making the new taskbar significantly less useful than the old one. :-(
The argument with piracy isn't that your are "not taking anything physical", but that you are not taking a thing, period.
If I "take" a copy of something from someone, but leave the original, that is copyright infringement. The owner still has the original item, therefore it isn't theft. However, they have lost the ability to control copies, therefore it is the very legitimate crime of copyright infringement.
In this case, the original owner lost out on both the access to the domain, potential profit from the use of said domain, as well as the virtual asset of the ability to sell the rights to the domain. That is, very clearly, theft, since the original owner was deprived of the use of the domain.
It is very important for us to be clear on our terminology, so that when we make arguments, the arguments are solid and understandable. When you confuse "theft" with "copyright infringement", all of the sudden taking a photograph of an item can be equated to taking that item. Which, I hope, is obviously different.
Provided completely without any copyrights withheld, I present, a better MS icon:
The Microsoft Flying Chair
Download several sizes, including transparent PNG images, in a ZIP
(Admittedly, the icon had a lot more motion blur before I shrunk it. :-( I could enhance it if there is interest from the Slashdot gang.
If you login then of course you need a cookie. And using them for stats within one site is not much different to using IP addresses.
While I agree that there a significant benefit in using login cookies, they are not remotely âoenecessaryâ. Java-based servers have had a fantastic technique using a little-known part of the URI shceme where every segment can have parameters. It looks like this:
http://www.example.com/app;sessionid=ABC123DEF456/<whatever>
This allows cookie-like storage in a way that isn't able to be tracked across multiple domains.
This is my general policy:
If you are incapable of developing to these standards, say, because you don't understand how session cookies should work, then please find another line of work.
Cookies are bad for the health of your website, news site, or blog. Cookies are good for the health of your web application.
Some occasional spot checking on my spam filter has shown no e-mail arriving to any plus addresses.
Hopefully you realize that any even slightly intelligent spammer would run a simple regex (s/(\+[^@])@//) on their list before sending it. Which means that not only do they get your address, but you'll never know the source.
Sadly, at this point, the only solution for ensuring that no-one gets your email is using an actual throwaway email address, as you mention.
Without an unsandboxed version of the win32 api, which is what ActiveX is, they would be unable to deny the ability to use the internet to those without a recent version of windows and office.
My head didn't stay unexploded while I wasn't unreading this unstatement.
What a shame that a fairly decent response would use Roughly Drafted for almost all of the citations. Roughly Drafted is, at best, a pile of vaguely coherent puff pieces. I would never rely on RD for backing up my viewpoint.
I'm a happy, somewhat die-hard Mac user. I'll probably never switch back to Windows since the demo of Windows 7 reminded me how much I hate the various pointless changes after XP. I recently discovered just how much I dislike Linux on the desktop with my recent netbook (the popular Dell Vostro A90 [well, the Mini 9 was popular]).
But I would never use RD for supporting why OS X makes me happy to use computers again.
I think they should include DARPA in the acronym, so you get to spend all this money on a DUH PC.
Maybe it could even run WinDUHs!
It would be an induhspensible part of our computing future, duhtermining the ability of our government's uhbility to duhrive new induhstries!
I discovered that housepaint is made from latex. Condoms are made from latex.
Now I keep a can of Sears Weather-beater next to my bed.
So, just Dip It 'N' Stick It?
Not just 3 browsers! Now, to be certain it will work right, I should test:
Why the last three, you ask?
Because even if you specify the viewing mode with a meta tag, the user can change it. And IE8 has tiny JavaScript differences. (I definitely found one bug in IE8/IE7 vs IE8/compatibility, but of course, I've forgotten it.)
Of course, this will be even more fun when IE9 comes out, adding:
<just kidding>
Mod parent up.
This is a clear, level-headed response to the general "fanboy" problem, for any product line.
I think it's simple.
10 independent complaints about a robocaller within a 1 month span should be plenty to attack, and permanently revoke the right for a company to cold-call a person. Ever.
That would make them think twice before calling someone.
Personally, I don't give a flying **** whether that scares "legitimate" callers. I've had it with companies who are letting me know that my credit card/mortgage/car/whatever could be benefited from something that I DON'T WANT. There is NO legitimate reason to EVER use a robocaller. Period. This includes politicians, charities, or surveys.
If my money/information/bank account number is so important to you, hire someone to call me, and make sure they are sitting on that phone, listening to the ringing, when I pick up. I think the same rules should apply to those auto-dialers where the person on the other end starts saying "Hello? Hello?" 30 seconds after I pick up.
I don't understand why this isn't the case by default, but Firefox I think is going to need a permissions / sandbox environment for extensions. The idea of AdBlock looking through my histroy just gives me the willies.
Something similar to Java's JNLP/Webstart, where plugins could request permission to view specific features, and the user could decide to deny them. The request could come up when the extension is installed, and could also be prompted for a one-time use.
Specific areas that would really benefit from protection include:
An extension could have some or all of these blocked. For example, I'd like to be able to prevent an extension from ever opening a page or tab on restart (Thanks, I know I upgraded, I don't want to visit your page...), but still allow it to add a right-click menu item.
The restrictions could be an intelligent hierarchy, so that an extension could pick a subset of them, and request them. The more features an extension wants to accept, the higher the warning level when being installed. (i.e.: if an extension wants , then it gets flagged red, if it only wants one or two [excluding history, bookmarks, forms, or passwords], then it gets no flag at all.)
Yeah, I knew about that. But did you notice the killall Finder ? This means you lose all open Finder windows just to show hidden files.
Of course, you can just leave it on. Really, it's just another minor annoyance. There's enough ways around it that it only is a problem occasionally (like the back restoration)...
Well, if you knew the name of it you could have just done View > Go to Folder (Command-Shift-G), and typed (for example) ~/.subversion.
True, however, that doesn't help with the fact that Time Machine still won't show you hidden files. At all. The best you can hope for is to find a non-hidden parent directory to restore.
In my case I was lucky, but there is no way that I know of, just as an example, to restore ~/.bash_profile without restoring your entire home directory.
Of course, the number of times Time Machine has saved me headaches, not to mention possible data loss, makes up for just about any deficiencies on a Mac. And I never had to "set it up" or "back up" anything.
Interesting, I was assuming that Macs would have the same issue, but I just checked. Not only does it force the showing of .doc.app, but it also doesn't allow you to hide it, period (even under Get Info).
Sadly, there is no easy way to enable the viewing of hidden files and folders (dot-files) in Finder. That's probably one of my biggest gripes. I was trying to restore a corrupted config directory for Aptana Studio (Eclipse), and I had to open it from the command line.
I love OOo. I've been promoting it whenever possible to anyone who can use it. It handles a lot of things very well.
Also, I am aware that the Mac version is fairly recent, so I expect some quirks. But it's been long enough, and they still haven't gotten basic editing keystrokes working in Calc. In fact, there is no way to even change those keystrokes. When I'm editing, I regularly use (Shift) Opt-Left/Right to navigate text. In OOo, I now have to use the mouse (ack) or arrow around letter-by-letter.
It was bad enough when only Shift-Cmd-Left/Right worked, but now just about all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely missing on Macs.
And before you suggest Tools > Customize, there are no commands for navigating tokens within Calc. In fact, as far as I can tell, Calc completely ignores text-editing keystrokes now, which is a real shame, since Writer handles them all with aplomb.
^^ You owe me about an hour 8-P
If you use Firefox, try Better YouTube.
With it you get:
(I have no association with this, I just finally can stand YouTube now.)
I just want the April Fool achievement.