I've lived 26 years without a cell phone and I don't intend to get one. Most people do not need a cell phone. And I have lived 7 years without a POTS line (land line if you prefer). Most people don't need a POTS line.
Regardless of those facts (since no one even needs a phone) Local TelCos have far more of a monopoly than mobile providers. In my home I have 2 choices in land lines, either the local phone company which has been a monopoly for as long as I can remember, or the local cable company, which is also a monopoly. For mobile service I can chose between a half a dozen providers, though that is shrinking faster than it is growing.
I normally ignore grammar nazis, but really, beyond the misuse of "no" vs "know", using "my" instead of "by", a couple miss-capitalizations and possibly a missing comma or two what exactly are all these typos? I'm only seeing two typos that actually effect the readability of the post.
Just a couple things to clarify
The difference in size between the MackBook and the Pro is less than 220 Cubic Centimeters (that 7.5 fluid ounces for those that would like a real world comparison) and.18 kilograms. These are not exactly astronomical figures. The technical differences are not.33mhz but 330mhz per core or 660mhz of processing power (660 million instructions per second is a significant number) The Pro display has over a quarter of a million more pixels spread across more than 2 additional diagonal inches. But the real kicker is the comparison in graphics processing with the MackBook having only 64 megs of shared DDR2 memory (using up a minimum of 80megs of your main memory) as compared to 256 megs of dedicated GDRR3 memory (I'll leave it to you to look up the memory specs). Add to that the max memory of the MacBook at 2gigs and the max memory of the Pro at 3gigs and you see that these machines are not even in each others league.
Now I'm not saying not to get a MacBook, I would just hate for someone to buy one thinking it was comparable to the Pro. The MacBook is no replacement for a high end sub notebook so it is going to be interesting to see what apple comes up with.
Offtopic, but is there anything for the mac that is comparable to streets and trips? Mapquest, or Google Maps. All three will give you incorrect locations of an address, with streets and trips being the worst of them. Yes I do no the added functionality that you get with streets and trips but having spent hours trying to find places based on the maps that thing spits out has really jaded me against the product. My guess is that they all share the same source for their data since every single one is wrong about the placement of my house (and not my one or two lots, but a noticeable distance). The advantage to mapquest and google maps is that they are free and are more likely to be updated regularly.
Deal is, we made it clear and obvious that if anything even remotely resembling a nation state sponsors or protects terrorists, we'll disassemble the government and install our own. Considering the basic fundamentals of game theory, I'm pretty happy with that.
Yes the invasion of Afghanistan did do wonders for the world. It has gone on to create one country that is now free from unwanted US intervention (N.Korea) and another that is working hard on the same thing (Iran). What the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did prove, with the utmost clarity, is that to be free from US invasion you must actually maintain Weapons of Mass Destruction, and if the US claims you have WMD you better actually get them soon or run like hell.
Walmart's dominance in the marketplace (and indeed, calling them a "niche" retailer is hysterical) means that all those grandmothers, aunts, uncles, significant others, friends, etc which we have spent time convincing to use some other browser ("It works with almost everything, PLEASE use it instead of Internet Explorer") hit walmart.com and get a big "I DO NOT WORK WITH THIS SILLY LITTLE BROWSER."
Next time you are over at "grandmothers, aunts, uncles, significant others, friends" houses you might want to try convincing them to not to shop at wal-mart since that is a far more significant change than switching browsers.
However, when a DEVELOPER OF THE GAME comes in and deliberately tips the balance in favor of an alliance he's not only friendly with, but helped RUN, then there's a real problem.
How is this any different than other forms of capitalistic market manipulation. Those with power and resources tend to stay in power and maintain control of resources. I think this is a perfect example of capitalism at work. With all the MMO players out there trying to defend peoples right to use real life resources for in game benefit I just can't see how a developer using their resources for in game benefit is any different. Just consider the Developers to be like the Rockefellers or Kennedys of the real world, they had a better starting position than you, not much you can do about it.
The economic model is no longer cut-throat and capitalistic, it's just unfair.
Who ever said that cut-throat and capitalistic was fair. You are a bit foolish (a.k.a. middle class) if you believe this.
There is no single answer to why software is hard and there won't be until the industry matures and people start to get thrown out of the business for acting unprofessionally
You really your statement is fallacy. You state that "there is no single answer" but then answer you self by stating the problem is the fields immaturity. Personally I agree with you 100% that the problem with software is the industrial approach, or in reality the lack thereof. I have often stated that schools are training Engineers but companies expect magicians. If we built physical structures the way we build software we would be killing people every day, and the industry would fall apart do to lack of profitability and lack of physical resources to keep wasting. Software Engineering, if there is ever to be such a thing, needs to be treating like any other form of engineering. Prototyping is fine, but expecting to turn around and use the materials in your prototype as the basis for the final product is a disaster waiting to happen. Allowing your artists to drive the functionality is yet another place that needs to change if we wish to have good software. We need to treat software like any other structure and use sound engineering practices if we ever expect to improve.
This hack does not require any bytecode to be spoken. Simply put, through voice commands (and they don't even have to be understand by a human listener as voice commands, they just need to meet the required wave form signature) you can easily download and install a file from a web site. So a web site that starts up a sound file on page load could hide those commands in music to download and install a trojan, root kit or other software. Since vista does not require any authentication to install software this is a potential exploit. I don't know that it is what I would call a serious exploit, nor do I think it only effects vista, since Apples have voice command capability as well, but that does not make it any less an potential exploit.
dont give notice when I quit because if I was fired my employer wouldnt give me two weeks notice that I was out of a job in two weeks.
I have always treated employers with the same respect that I would hope to get from them. I think this has paid off since most of the recent lay offs or terminations have come with either significant notice (2 weeks or more) or fair severance pay. Heck I even worked at a company that let me go once and was the only person in history to receive severance from them. If I had an employee that just stopped showing up and got called about a reference I might say they were a good employee (assuming they actually were) but I would also be clear that they just stopped showing up one day without notice.
Also, Microsoft lying under oath doesn't put a rootkit on my computer.
You are correct. Getting a root kit (at least the one you are obviously referring too) on your computer requires running Microsoft products and listening to crappy music.
but when they start needing everyone who bought their discounted system to buy an average of 30+ games (or whatever)
It's not 30+ games (I realize you said "or whatever" just think it needs clarification), it's a number of licensed products that yields the same profit as 30+ games. Over the next 10 years this is easy. I am a relative casual gamer and I have well over 30 licensed products that I purchased solely based on my PS2 purchase. For the PS 3 this will be retail and downloaded games, Blu-Ray disks, controllers, memory sticks and other peripherals over the next 10 years. Even if it was only over the next 5 years that is only 6 products a year, which would be easy for your average PS3 owning household to accomplish. Most the true gamers I know purchase at least one game related product a month, that turns out to be 70 in five years and 140 in 10. I think Sony can do just fine there (not saying they will since I'm not into predictions, just that making a profit using there model is certainly feasible).
Couldn't the system simply have a filter that removes the wave signature of what it is outputting before processing input as a command? This is relatively simple technology, as compared to voice recognition itself. You might have to re-calibrate if you move your speakers but I would think that is a small price to pay to not leave open the ability for a web site to control your system through an auto-playing wave file.
Mind you this won't stop your roommate from yelling "Shut Down...Yes" just to piss you off. Or worse yet the guy you just fired yelling something more destructive on his way out of the office.
I use gmail, and I find it to be just as responsive as a regular client.
Sorry, being a mac user I don't fully understand how crappy other mail clients may be. Mine happens to be a hundred times faster than Gmails web client with no need for pagination or round trip connections to a remote server just to read an email. I can view many types of attachments with explicitly requesting them and certainly with out, yet another remote request. My messages are available offline as well as online and have the capability to leave them on the server or remove them and store them only on my local machine. My mail client also shows conversation threads very clearly. All that being said, my mail client has never crashed on me, not once, while I have witnessed Gmail, which I will admit is one of the better web applications, not only crash but take down the entire browser it is being executed in on more than one occasion. I'm willing to concede that those crashes may have been the browsers fault but that only proves that browsers are not suited for web applications and AJAX in general.
So if the endless patches don't break the original purpose at all, then what's wrong with having them?
The additions to the web browser are, as has been said many times before, a solution looking for a problem. No one is doing anything in a browser application that hasn't been done other ways before. This need for platform independence is completely made up, it's not a real need at all. I run a minority OS and have yet to see a need to platform independence since all the applications I want to use are available for my chosen operating system. All of the additions to the web browser have made the typical browsing experience far more frustrating than it needs to be. We have even had to go so far as to create patches for the patches (i.e. Popup blockers to stop the popups that are only available because of the previous dynamic scripting extensions). The extensions to the web browser have allowed people to think that it is capable and suited for things other than serving static documents, which is the only part of the "Original Purpose" that actually works as designed.
a written or printed paper furnishing information or evidence, as a passport, deed, bill of sale, or bill of lading; a legal or official paper.
any written item, as a book, article, or letter, esp. of a factual or informative nature.
a computer data file.
Archaic. evidence; proof.
I guess I am missing the part where it talks about dynamic interactive applications. I too have written on documents, but I have yet to have one actually react. If documents could actually process the information you put on them it would really be the end of 8th grade math as we know it.
I really like online banking and webmail
I can only guess that you have never used a real mail client. I have used both rich mail clients and web mail clients, and there is absolutely to comparing them. Rich mail clients work fast with out the need for endless pagination, while web mail apps are slow, bug prone and not very user friendly. As for online banking, not exactly what I would call a web application since it tends to fit nicely into the document(form) completion and submission paradigm, which happens to require very little user interaction. The banking sites I have experienced contain considerably less dynamic contain than an application like Gmail so they are not exactly in the same classification.
Add beyond that, the original point was that the original web browsers were good for viewing static documents stored on remote servers, not Rich interactive User Interfaces, and no matter how many patches you throw on top of it, the web browser is still, at it's core, for viewing static documents.
As much as I am on your side I need to correct one thing.
Not to mention Javascript being just about the worst language for any computationally intensive task.
There is nothing in the ecmascript specification that says an implementation can not be optimized for computationally intensive task. The Mozilla and IE implementations of ECMAScript, being JavaScript and JScript respectively, are pretty horrible, that I will agree. Check out Safaris JS handling and you will see that it can certainly be faster than you are used to, and natively compiled JS can be even faster, assuming you avoid runtime script generation and evaluation.
The original design was not perfect! The original design was improved years ago! Leave the original design in the past where it belongs!
The Problem is that the original design was not left in the past. Instead a design that barely did it's job and certainly not well, was added on to do another job, as half-assed as the original. Sure the web browser worked fairly decent when it was used for display of static hypertext markup or more commonly, documents. Remember this term "Document," it permeates the whole "Browser as an Application Client" problem. The browser was eventually generalized so that it could display multiple forms of markup, which by definition is used to define documents. Web browsers, the people doing the browsing that is, wanted more content, and more interaction. Images where added as where a number of different layout elements, like tables and frames (both of which were eventually deemed plagues on the web browsing experience but we often find them hard to live with out). This is were we tried to take things a set further by deviating form the static format of a document, and to do so we added client side scripting, which were little programs that could be triggered to cause things to happen on the client without need to load a new page. That may all seem fine and dandy until you realize the core of the functionality of these scripts had to do with there ability to interact with the browsers display elements through what was to become known as the "Document" Object Model. Yes, there it is again, document. No mater how dynamic we try to make things, the core is still a document. So people where not satisfied with this document limitation and this is where the browser went complete schizo, by allowing the browser to execute "plug-ins," which are a separate program running inside the browser itself. How people didn't get that this is about the same as running a flight simulator in Excel (which is entirely possible) I will never understand, thought plugins in a web browser is common place where as the other is extremely rare. The initial implementations of these plug-ins, some of which allowed for dynamic client applications, were so poorly used that some web developers started thinking things over again, and brought into things the idea of a mark up language for creating application UIs. I can't even express how ridicules it is that the second most popular browsers, and the fastest growing, is actually am application written in markup, used to display markup, and runs in a markup client. Yes that is correct, when accessing a plug-in in FireFox, you are going through 3 applications, the pluging, the browser and the application engine the browser runs in. The same is true when using scripting languages in the afore mentioned browser. And all this with out even discussing the bandage that is CSS.
Now I have plenty more to say, but if you haven't yet realized that browsers are a monstrosity brought to life by pilling one bad idea on top of another then I really can't help you, but the wise among us will get it. As I have said before I worked with AJAX long before the term existed, and have written successful applications in the newer application markups, but just because it can be done does not mean it should be done. I have even been a part of multiple projects who's goal was to take out the middle man and write a direct "application browser" in the hopes of killing this document concept all together, but about halfway through each project you eventually realize to make a usable UI you might as well write it in a natively compiled language, since it will be fast, more stable and take no longer to create if created by skilled professionals.
I think there are certainly ways you Should Not use AJAX.
I don't think the problem is that there are ways you should not use AJAX, but more that there are NO ways that you should use AJAX. And this is coming form a, Pre AJAX as a term, AJAX developer. I'm not talking without knowing what I am talking about. I was the driving force behind a very successful XUL/AJAX based application. It worked cross platform, with the platform specific UI, was relatively fast and extremely scalable. The was one "Page Load" in the entire application which loaded all the UI elements and then used xml http requests to handle all the server interaction. The application works well and even has a completely separated API that can be used by any UI that is built for it.
My point was never that you can't make a usable ajax application, I'm just saying that it requires just as much work, or more, as other client/server options, is harder to maintain and causes endless amount of confusion. It is limited and slower that a native client, by noticeable amounts. No matter how hard you try, GMail will not be as fast, as secure or as stable as a local, native, mail client. And as much as I think ECMAScript is actually one of the, if not the, best high level language available, it's runtime evaluation as implemented in the current browsers is to slow for real use. Complicate that with parsing the overly verbose XML and you get more wasted cycles(of the human kind) than running excel on a windows emulator on a vic 20.
But alas, I wouldn't have been able to write this post if I wasn't waiting for an AJAX applications to complete it's crash.
There are other, better, solutions to the client server paradigm.
And pray tell what are they? By the way, they must fulfill these needs,
Gee why don't you just say "By the way, it must be pessimised to the lowest common denominator using poorly supported and poorly implemented standards"
I'll just throw out one suggestion that is older than anything you mentioned and certainly a better solution for remote applications than AJAX:
Terminal and Telnet
Write your server side in any language you would like, just make sure your server supports the telnet protocol. It worked over 20 years ago and still works today. Do I think it's the best solution, not at all, but you wanted vendor independence.
Having been there working on Asynchronous XML request long before the term AJAX was dreamt up I can tell you that it was just a bandaid for the plague that is browser applications, and still is to this day. The only thing AJAX has succeeded at is keeping the belief going that browser applications are a viable solution. The more we add to the web browser and the more dynamic and complex our client side scripting becomes the more we head toward having application clients and dumb terminals rather than PCs with Browsers. I only hope that someone with the influence to change things figures this out and stops this web based madness. There are other, better, solutions to the client server paradigm.
Slashdot Mirror
Regardless of those facts (since no one even needs a phone) Local TelCos have far more of a monopoly than mobile providers. In my home I have 2 choices in land lines, either the local phone company which has been a monopoly for as long as I can remember, or the local cable company, which is also a monopoly. For mobile service I can chose between a half a dozen providers, though that is shrinking faster than it is growing.
Thanks
I normally ignore grammar nazis, but really, beyond the misuse of "no" vs "know", using "my" instead of "by", a couple miss-capitalizations and possibly a missing comma or two what exactly are all these typos? I'm only seeing two typos that actually effect the readability of the post.
Just a couple things to clarify .18 kilograms. These are not exactly astronomical figures. The technical differences are not .33mhz but 330mhz per core or 660mhz of processing power (660 million instructions per second is a significant number) The Pro display has over a quarter of a million more pixels spread across more than 2 additional diagonal inches. But the real kicker is the comparison in graphics processing with the MackBook having only 64 megs of shared DDR2 memory (using up a minimum of 80megs of your main memory) as compared to 256 megs of dedicated GDRR3 memory (I'll leave it to you to look up the memory specs). Add to that the max memory of the MacBook at 2gigs and the max memory of the Pro at 3gigs and you see that these machines are not even in each others league.
The difference in size between the MackBook and the Pro is less than 220 Cubic Centimeters (that 7.5 fluid ounces for those that would like a real world comparison) and
Now I'm not saying not to get a MacBook, I would just hate for someone to buy one thinking it was comparable to the Pro. The MacBook is no replacement for a high end sub notebook so it is going to be interesting to see what apple comes up with.
Who ever said that cut-throat and capitalistic was fair. You are a bit foolish (a.k.a. middle class) if you believe this.
This hack does not require any bytecode to be spoken. Simply put, through voice commands (and they don't even have to be understand by a human listener as voice commands, they just need to meet the required wave form signature) you can easily download and install a file from a web site. So a web site that starts up a sound file on page load could hide those commands in music to download and install a trojan, root kit or other software. Since vista does not require any authentication to install software this is a potential exploit. I don't know that it is what I would call a serious exploit, nor do I think it only effects vista, since Apples have voice command capability as well, but that does not make it any less an potential exploit.
Couldn't the system simply have a filter that removes the wave signature of what it is outputting before processing input as a command? This is relatively simple technology, as compared to voice recognition itself. You might have to re-calibrate if you move your speakers but I would think that is a small price to pay to not leave open the ability for a web site to control your system through an auto-playing wave file.
Mind you this won't stop your roommate from yelling "Shut Down...Yes" just to piss you off. Or worse yet the guy you just fired yelling something more destructive on his way out of the office.
- a written or printed paper furnishing information or evidence, as a passport, deed, bill of sale, or bill of lading; a legal or official paper.
- any written item, as a book, article, or letter, esp. of a factual or informative nature.
- a computer data file.
- Archaic. evidence; proof.
I guess I am missing the part where it talks about dynamic interactive applications. I too have written on documents, but I have yet to have one actually react. If documents could actually process the information you put on them it would really be the end of 8th grade math as we know it. I can only guess that you have never used a real mail client. I have used both rich mail clients and web mail clients, and there is absolutely to comparing them. Rich mail clients work fast with out the need for endless pagination, while web mail apps are slow, bug prone and not very user friendly. As for online banking, not exactly what I would call a web application since it tends to fit nicely into the document(form) completion and submission paradigm, which happens to require very little user interaction. The banking sites I have experienced contain considerably less dynamic contain than an application like Gmail so they are not exactly in the same classification.Add beyond that, the original point was that the original web browsers were good for viewing static documents stored on remote servers, not Rich interactive User Interfaces, and no matter how many patches you throw on top of it, the web browser is still, at it's core, for viewing static documents.
I just finished writing this exact same post. Very well put. Now if anyone will actually catch on.
Now I have plenty more to say, but if you haven't yet realized that browsers are a monstrosity brought to life by pilling one bad idea on top of another then I really can't help you, but the wise among us will get it. As I have said before I worked with AJAX long before the term existed, and have written successful applications in the newer application markups, but just because it can be done does not mean it should be done. I have even been a part of multiple projects who's goal was to take out the middle man and write a direct "application browser" in the hopes of killing this document concept all together, but about halfway through each project you eventually realize to make a usable UI you might as well write it in a natively compiled language, since it will be fast, more stable and take no longer to create if created by skilled professionals.
My point was never that you can't make a usable ajax application, I'm just saying that it requires just as much work, or more, as other client/server options, is harder to maintain and causes endless amount of confusion. It is limited and slower that a native client, by noticeable amounts. No matter how hard you try, GMail will not be as fast, as secure or as stable as a local, native, mail client. And as much as I think ECMAScript is actually one of the, if not the, best high level language available, it's runtime evaluation as implemented in the current browsers is to slow for real use. Complicate that with parsing the overly verbose XML and you get more wasted cycles(of the human kind) than running excel on a windows emulator on a vic 20.
But alas, I wouldn't have been able to write this post if I wasn't waiting for an AJAX applications to complete it's crash.
I realize you were being sarcastic, but you are so close to the truth it's scary.
I'll just throw out one suggestion that is older than anything you mentioned and certainly a better solution for remote applications than AJAX:
Terminal and Telnet
Write your server side in any language you would like, just make sure your server supports the telnet protocol. It worked over 20 years ago and still works today. Do I think it's the best solution, not at all, but you wanted vendor independence.
Having been there working on Asynchronous XML request long before the term AJAX was dreamt up I can tell you that it was just a bandaid for the plague that is browser applications, and still is to this day. The only thing AJAX has succeeded at is keeping the belief going that browser applications are a viable solution. The more we add to the web browser and the more dynamic and complex our client side scripting becomes the more we head toward having application clients and dumb terminals rather than PCs with Browsers. I only hope that someone with the influence to change things figures this out and stops this web based madness. There are other, better, solutions to the client server paradigm.