DHTML seems like reinventing the wheel to me. What ever happened to Java? Google Maps is the main thing that got me thinking, I tried it in IE, and Map24's Java implementation in Opera, and frankly, I like the Java better. It seems smoother, faster and overall IS more cross browser compatible.
Opera has 2 bugs that are starting to drive me crazy though. BIG Pages. Be they pages with a lot of images (Fark photoshop contests make Opera unuseable unless I close the page) or Large text documents (again, as I get past the first 25% the whole machine freezes up.
And my specs aren't light weight really - WinXP Pro SP2, Athlon 64 3400+, 1GB PC3200 RAM... 100% CPU usage on those pages.
Oh, and the slow typing in textarea's before the page is fully loaded sucks on dial-up.
One more thing - if you, as you state, own your copy of a work, why would it be infringement for you to rent out that CD or DVD or book even? Doesn't right of first sale come in here somewhere? No one is copying it, and you own that copy as a physical item - and no one has started saying you can't rent out other physical items yet...
As many courts seem to recently be upholding them as licenses... But you say they are not.
Can a EULA give you the right to a backup copy of software? I remember back around 1996 or so, when I actually tried to read some EULAs several actually said you could make one copy for backup purposes. If a EULA says that, am I breaking copyright law if I then make a backup?
Opera seems to be the other browser that doesn't support XSLT. I'm not sure why Opera doesn't support it, but given the response to GMail, I figure Opera will implement it soon.
Yes, but is FedEx or UPS any cheaper in any way than the $0.37 stamp for a letter? I certainly can't see how, unless perhaps you are taking 15 or so letters to the same place that for some reason you were going to mail in separate envelops via USPS...
I think the main difference is that most people want something that works, and don't want to rent things if they can avoid it.
Hardware wears out - that's true, but for a long time (until the last two years anyway) in computers the hardware upgrades weren't because anything broke, but because it was so outperformed by the new stuff that you wanted to upgrade for new features and abilities etc...
Software is like this as well - but not as much. Some people are still ok with GEOS write or BankStreet author??) (only real old Word Processors I've used myself). I would find them quite restrictive today.
Lotus 123 (last updated in 2000) is feeling old finally. I find I need to use Excel for features like merging cells, and accounting formats... Plus the interface seems so Win98 compared to Excel 2k3. I know, but would you want to still be using win 3.1 software with it's horrible looking UI?
I'm finally starting to face the facts that Lotus SmartSuite is dead, and is reaching the end of it's useful life... I'm trying to figure out what I'll do for word processing once I can no longer get along with only Word 97/2000 compatibility...
So software does eventually "wear out" to some extent, but it's totally based on new features or backwards compatibility. Eventually I won't be able to run Win32 apps anymore (unless I want to forever work to keep a legacy system running - I imagine it's fun for the few still running some DOS 3.3 app on a 286) so I'll have to dump it.
Well XmlHttpRequest is not a standard(the issue with GMail) but I guess it's become a defacto standard as IE, Gecko, and soon Presto will support it due to Google using it. I worry about defacto standards as that was what brought us ActiveX.
Personally I do think MS makes some very good software - they just also make (and have made) some horrendous software.
Personally I like Visio, VS6 and WinXP(SP2) - I think they are better than any alternatives I've tried so far. Let me explain - it's the ease of use and compatibility compared with alternative solutions. Visio is about the only product in that market I know of (I just started looking into SmartDraw).
VS6 is one of the best IDE's I've ever seen - VC++ IDE is much nicer than say bloodshed dev (italicized comments??? who thought that was a good idea - very difficult to read. And RED for strings? Save RED for errors please. I can go on and on here.)
WinXP wins because it actually is halfway stable(I can leave it running for days without a problem) and very easy to use for the "power user" or even just the "install stuff" user compared to Linux (and OSX is really a different arena as it's a different hardware platform alltogether). It's also not hard to secure now that we have SP2, and the prolifieration of software personal firewalls.
Excel is one that I think has matured a lot in recent revisions - the one I know is 2k3, and it's very user friendly. I think most of what it does can be done in say 123, but that hasn't been updated in years(not a bad thing necessarily, I figure spreadsheets probably have been feature complete for a few years now) but it is far harder to make nice looking spreadsheets in 123, and I have to go figure out how it's functions work (and if it does anything like vlookup). The = to precede a function is quite intuitave... It's easy to learn the relative vs absolute cell reference features. The easy integration with Access is pretty nice also.
However IE is unusable for most in the know people.
Word - I can't stand. I really think there are a lot of UI problems (at least OOTB, a reason I dislike FF too) like no easy feedback on margins, header/footer, columns etc... It's menus are pretty hard to figure out for me as well.
I'm an old diehard of Lotus Word Pro (this could very well be because I learned it first, but I've learned many wordprocessors in my life). I like the "pallette" interface for text/page options - very similar to Adobe interfaces which work well IMO. Have everything you can do to the text in one box with some tabs accross the top is easy to use for me. You may not think that way. I usually prefer the way Word Pro does columns - They are like 2 separate table cells that extend forever(or until you end them). That way if you want comparative items you can just click to the right hand column for instance. In word (as far as I could figure out) you'd have to enter through the entire first column on the page to get to the second one. My heaven would be a way to choose between the two(though right now I think I may have given my self the answer with Word - a Table with only one row).
I personally dislike PowerPoint, I find some features in Freelance Graphics very useful(though maybe I haven't found them in PP yet) - such as the speaker notes tied to a slide.
One thing that makes me dislike Office is the need to download huge WINDOWS updates after installing it. No such issue with Lotus Smartsuite - I'd have to use the old fashioned open a dangerous file with that. (I don't think I've ever seen a SmartSuite infected file though.)
Well, the thing is I guess I'm old fashioned. Web apps seem to break far more often IME than plain web pages. Plain web pages just WORK (assuming some standards complience which I've seen for a while) and I can even "fix" them on the fly with proxomitron.
Web apps also seem slower to me, see streamloads members area for what I'm thinking of.
Granted I only use IE and Opera, so it's possible that FF has this down pat.
I'm also just very suspicious about the need for web apps at all. Finally, what's wrong with Java based apps? Runs on the three major OSs, is sandboxed, runs in every browser I've heard of, is pretty fast on average machines now adays...
I would hope that people would know that there are MORE than two browsers competing.
I mean, (depending on how you count) There is: IE Maxathon(and various other IE Shells) - I recently had a long debate with someone on dsl reports I think about whether an IE shell constitutes another browser from IE. Mozilla FireFox (similar to above...) Opera Safari Konqurer(sp?) Lynx Lin ks Dillo
What I'm kind of annoyed about is this doesn't work in Opera or Safari... I guess there is some standard out there Google is using (like with GMail and XHTTPRequest) that Opera doesn't support...
I had hoped the increase in FF users would get sites to realize there were more than 1 browser out there, but nope, they just figure, hey there are 2!
Why is it impossible to just write standard code (oh, and stop trying to make APPLICATIONS in web pages) so any browser can access it?
Let me also continue my whole hearted disgust with APPLICATIONS based on webpages (excepting perhaps Java, which seems to work well, and works cross browser and platform).
Well, the thing that is driving me nuts recently is I finally stopped seeing many sites that were IE only, so I was fine using Opera for browsing. Now I'm seeing all these new Google(for gods sake) services that don't work with Opera - GMail, Google Maps, Google Suggest...
And look - it's take 4 months or so for Opera to finally change things around (assuming v8 does ship this month) so GMail works in Opera. Will it be 4 more months to get Google Maps working?
I don't know who is at fault, but as I recall, Opera is pretty standard complient. Is google going out of it's way to find standards to code to that Opera doesn't support for ALL it's new features?
This may be stupid of me, but it seems like Google has become Evil, and is no longer coding for cross browser compatibility - or has taken the worse stance(as this article perputiates) that there are only 2 browsers...
Actually that is one reason I don't use Mozilla based browsers. The downside is that to *not* have an exploitable archetecture leaves you in Opera's shoes.
You are pretty secure from browser hijacking/search toolbars - but you also cannot have a Google Toolbar easily, or a stumble(something). You lose features...
You also have issues with fixing problems... Something like proxomitron is almost a necessity with Opera, to add many of the features lost back in, like adblocking, fixing that recent spoof error, etc...
I think all these blocking downloads from the net, or PVR blocks with a broadcast flag are going to be like Prohibition. Sure, there will be a "war" on illegial copying, but you can't arrest 60 million people and put them in jail.
I have no doubt breaking DRM or working around the broadcast flag, even with something like mythTV is/will be illegial. I think it being illegial will be as effective as prohibition was. Some will go to jail. The vast majority will not. Some more will be fined, still the vast majority will not be caught. Morally, most of americans don't appear to give a rats ass. Just like Wal-Mart, it's price that matters, and free will win.
Now, the entertainment industry may still be able to get some customers, like Opera gets some paying users - those who feel the going price is worth it for quality and convienience. But as DVD-R rips get more widespread, and MP3 bitrates rise, the industry will have to keep lowering prices or raising content on the media they are trying to sell.
I don't think adding additional content is getting many customers anymore either, as most people I know just want the movie, or the song and really don't care about the case or whatever - they just put the movie in their rack (soon on their HD array) or put the songs on their iPod.
Now, from a hypothetical sense, I'll buy a DVD from Wal-Mart for $1 as an impulse buy - I don't think about it. If it's something I actually want, $7 is about what I'll pay for convience (IE, I can rent rip and burn for that amount, but it's easier to buy). I will pay up to $25 if there's something cool in the DVD, I bought the LotR Extended editions for that(each) from Amazon. One of the few movies that had some extra features I cared about.
In the near future I think Netflix / Blockbuster will do well - renting out movies cheaply.
In the long term, the for profit will probably end up like movielink - or Napster/iTunes. Some online low price per item or even subscription.
You know, as crazy as this sounds - I actually think that would make a good ending. It certainly would fix up for me the disconuity between enterprise and the rest of the shows that supposedly happened after it.
Although, I'm just finishing watching the second season so...
I just installed GPG shell a week ago, and it was such a non-event on Windows XP, I don't remember if I ran 2 installers, or just the GPGShell one (I think it can currently install GPG as well, but don't remember exactly).
I find it rather easy to use once you spend a little time learning about keys. I don't think any real authentication can be user input free - until AI, how is the computer supposed to know any more than this person claims to be X, do you trust that?
And I want to rant a little about how everyone says all security software is too hard to use. Well, I'm sorry, but having the computer make decisions for you is far from perfect, and usually not at all what people want. Good programming can make PGP easier, but you still have to figure out keyexchange. You either have to manually pass over private keys or understand the key signing WOT concept.
Just like the SSL issue raised a little while, the computer is not better able to make a decision than you about what to trust - it's current record is spyware up the wazoo, obviously broken.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally MDI is far more useful than tabs, however in the Opera 8 Betas they have added a FF like tabbed browsing mode.
IMHO, you don't fake tabs with MDI, you fake MDI with tabs.
Progressive rendering makes a huge difference on dial-up. As does agressive caching.
Well, two things that I think - one:
DHTML seems like reinventing the wheel to me. What ever happened to Java? Google Maps is the main thing that got me thinking, I tried it in IE, and Map24's Java implementation in Opera, and frankly, I like the Java better. It seems smoother, faster and overall IS more cross browser compatible.
Opera has 2 bugs that are starting to drive me crazy though. BIG Pages. Be they pages with a lot of images (Fark photoshop contests make Opera unuseable unless I close the page) or Large text documents (again, as I get past the first 25% the whole machine freezes up.
And my specs aren't light weight really - WinXP Pro SP2, Athlon 64 3400+, 1GB PC3200 RAM... 100% CPU usage on those pages.
Oh, and the slow typing in textarea's before the page is fully loaded sucks on dial-up.
Not exactly. There are third party programs to do adblocking, one of the most suggested is proxomitron.
Could the point be that Opera is closed source?
One thing that might be far easier than that would be using proxomitron/privoxy (or an extension??) to turn those on/off automatically based on site.
One more thing - if you, as you state, own your copy of a work, why would it be infringement for you to rent out that CD or DVD or book even? Doesn't right of first sale come in here somewhere? No one is copying it, and you own that copy as a physical item - and no one has started saying you can't rent out other physical items yet...
My biggest question - Are EULAS Licenses or not?
As many courts seem to recently be upholding them as licenses... But you say they are not.
Can a EULA give you the right to a backup copy of software? I remember back around 1996 or so, when I actually tried to read some EULAs several actually said you could make one copy for backup purposes. If a EULA says that, am I breaking copyright law if I then make a backup?
Opera seems to be the other browser that doesn't support XSLT. I'm not sure why Opera doesn't support it, but given the response to GMail, I figure Opera will implement it soon.
Yes, but is FedEx or UPS any cheaper in any way than the $0.37 stamp for a letter? I certainly can't see how, unless perhaps you are taking 15 or so letters to the same place that for some reason you were going to mail in separate envelops via USPS...
I think the main difference is that most people want something that works, and don't want to rent things if they can avoid it.
Hardware wears out - that's true, but for a long time (until the last two years anyway) in computers the hardware upgrades weren't because anything broke, but because it was so outperformed by the new stuff that you wanted to upgrade for new features and abilities etc...
Software is like this as well - but not as much. Some people are still ok with GEOS write or BankStreet author??) (only real old Word Processors I've used myself). I would find them quite restrictive today.
Lotus 123 (last updated in 2000) is feeling old finally. I find I need to use Excel for features like merging cells, and accounting formats... Plus the interface seems so Win98 compared to Excel 2k3. I know, but would you want to still be using win 3.1 software with it's horrible looking UI?
I'm finally starting to face the facts that Lotus SmartSuite is dead, and is reaching the end of it's useful life... I'm trying to figure out what I'll do for word processing once I can no longer get along with only Word 97/2000 compatibility...
So software does eventually "wear out" to some extent, but it's totally based on new features or backwards compatibility. Eventually I won't be able to run Win32 apps anymore (unless I want to forever work to keep a legacy system running - I imagine it's fun for the few still running some DOS 3.3 app on a 286) so I'll have to dump it.
I meant the streamload file management and download interface for members/subscribers/customers is like a web app in Javascript/Java/ActiveX.
Well XmlHttpRequest is not a standard(the issue with GMail) but I guess it's become a defacto standard as IE, Gecko, and soon Presto will support it due to Google using it. I worry about defacto standards as that was what brought us ActiveX.
Personally I do think MS makes some very good software - they just also make (and have made) some horrendous software.
Personally I like Visio, VS6 and WinXP(SP2) - I think they are better than any alternatives I've tried so far. Let me explain - it's the ease of use and compatibility compared with alternative solutions. Visio is about the only product in that market I know of (I just started looking into SmartDraw).
VS6 is one of the best IDE's I've ever seen - VC++ IDE is much nicer than say bloodshed dev (italicized comments??? who thought that was a good idea - very difficult to read. And RED for strings? Save RED for errors please. I can go on and on here.)
WinXP wins because it actually is halfway stable(I can leave it running for days without a problem) and very easy to use for the "power user" or even just the "install stuff" user compared to Linux (and OSX is really a different arena as it's a different hardware platform alltogether). It's also not hard to secure now that we have SP2, and the prolifieration of software personal firewalls.
Excel is one that I think has matured a lot in recent revisions - the one I know is 2k3, and it's very user friendly. I think most of what it does can be done in say 123, but that hasn't been updated in years(not a bad thing necessarily, I figure spreadsheets probably have been feature complete for a few years now) but it is far harder to make nice looking spreadsheets in 123, and I have to go figure out how it's functions work (and if it does anything like vlookup). The = to precede a function is quite intuitave... It's easy to learn the relative vs absolute cell reference features. The easy integration with Access is pretty nice also.
However IE is unusable for most in the know people.
Word - I can't stand. I really think there are a lot of UI problems (at least OOTB, a reason I dislike FF too) like no easy feedback on margins, header/footer, columns etc... It's menus are pretty hard to figure out for me as well.
I'm an old diehard of Lotus Word Pro (this could very well be because I learned it first, but I've learned many wordprocessors in my life). I like the "pallette" interface for text/page options - very similar to Adobe interfaces which work well IMO. Have everything you can do to the text in one box with some tabs accross the top is easy to use for me. You may not think that way. I usually prefer the way Word Pro does columns - They are like 2 separate table cells that extend forever(or until you end them). That way if you want comparative items you can just click to the right hand column for instance. In word (as far as I could figure out) you'd have to enter through the entire first column on the page to get to the second one. My heaven would be a way to choose between the two(though right now I think I may have given my self the answer with Word - a Table with only one row).
I personally dislike PowerPoint, I find some features in Freelance Graphics very useful(though maybe I haven't found them in PP yet) - such as the speaker notes tied to a slide.
One thing that makes me dislike Office is the need to download huge WINDOWS updates after installing it. No such issue with Lotus Smartsuite - I'd have to use the old fashioned open a dangerous file with that. (I don't think I've ever seen a SmartSuite infected file though.)
So, there is good and bad.
Well, the thing is I guess I'm old fashioned. Web apps seem to break far more often IME than plain web pages. Plain web pages just WORK (assuming some standards complience which I've seen for a while) and I can even "fix" them on the fly with proxomitron.
Web apps also seem slower to me, see streamloads members area for what I'm thinking of.
Granted I only use IE and Opera, so it's possible that FF has this down pat.
I'm also just very suspicious about the need for web apps at all. Finally, what's wrong with Java based apps? Runs on the three major OSs, is sandboxed, runs in every browser I've heard of, is pretty fast on average machines now adays...
I would hope that people would know that there are MORE than two browsers competing.
n ks
I mean, (depending on how you count) There is:
IE
Maxathon(and various other IE Shells) - I recently had a long debate with someone on dsl reports I think about whether an IE shell constitutes another browser from IE.
Mozilla
FireFox (similar to above...)
Opera
Safari
Konqurer(sp?)
Lynx
Li
Dillo
Etc...
What I'm kind of annoyed about is this doesn't work in Opera or Safari... I guess there is some standard out there Google is using (like with GMail and XHTTPRequest) that Opera doesn't support...
I had hoped the increase in FF users would get sites to realize there were more than 1 browser out there, but nope, they just figure, hey there are 2!
Why is it impossible to just write standard code (oh, and stop trying to make APPLICATIONS in web pages) so any browser can access it?
Let me also continue my whole hearted disgust with APPLICATIONS based on webpages (excepting perhaps Java, which seems to work well, and works cross browser and platform).
Well, the thing that is driving me nuts recently is I finally stopped seeing many sites that were IE only, so I was fine using Opera for browsing. Now I'm seeing all these new Google(for gods sake) services that don't work with Opera - GMail, Google Maps, Google Suggest...
And look - it's take 4 months or so for Opera to finally change things around (assuming v8 does ship this month) so GMail works in Opera. Will it be 4 more months to get Google Maps working?
I don't know who is at fault, but as I recall, Opera is pretty standard complient. Is google going out of it's way to find standards to code to that Opera doesn't support for ALL it's new features?
This may be stupid of me, but it seems like Google has become Evil, and is no longer coding for cross browser compatibility - or has taken the worse stance(as this article perputiates) that there are only 2 browsers...
Actually that is one reason I don't use Mozilla based browsers. The downside is that to *not* have an exploitable archetecture leaves you in Opera's shoes.
You are pretty secure from browser hijacking/search toolbars - but you also cannot have a Google Toolbar easily, or a stumble(something). You lose features...
You also have issues with fixing problems... Something like proxomitron is almost a necessity with Opera, to add many of the features lost back in, like adblocking, fixing that recent spoof error, etc...
So is this listed in the product descriptions - say on newegg?
Like where it says "Max Load: +3.3@32A, +5@40A, +12@24A, -5@0.5A, -12@0.8A, +5vsb@2A" is that good/bad/not answering the question?
I think all these blocking downloads from the net, or PVR blocks with a broadcast flag are going to be like Prohibition. Sure, there will be a "war" on illegial copying, but you can't arrest 60 million people and put them in jail.
I have no doubt breaking DRM or working around the broadcast flag, even with something like mythTV is/will be illegial. I think it being illegial will be as effective as prohibition was. Some will go to jail. The vast majority will not. Some more will be fined, still the vast majority will not be caught. Morally, most of americans don't appear to give a rats ass. Just like Wal-Mart, it's price that matters, and free will win.
Now, the entertainment industry may still be able to get some customers, like Opera gets some paying users - those who feel the going price is worth it for quality and convienience. But as DVD-R rips get more widespread, and MP3 bitrates rise, the industry will have to keep lowering prices or raising content on the media they are trying to sell.
I don't think adding additional content is getting many customers anymore either, as most people I know just want the movie, or the song and really don't care about the case or whatever - they just put the movie in their rack (soon on their HD array) or put the songs on their iPod.
Now, from a hypothetical sense, I'll buy a DVD from Wal-Mart for $1 as an impulse buy - I don't think about it. If it's something I actually want, $7 is about what I'll pay for convience (IE, I can rent rip and burn for that amount, but it's easier to buy). I will pay up to $25 if there's something cool in the DVD, I bought the LotR Extended editions for that(each) from Amazon. One of the few movies that had some extra features I cared about.
In the near future I think Netflix / Blockbuster will do well - renting out movies cheaply.
In the long term, the for profit will probably end up like movielink - or Napster/iTunes. Some online low price per item or even subscription.
You know, as crazy as this sounds - I actually think that would make a good ending. It certainly would fix up for me the disconuity between enterprise and the rest of the shows that supposedly happened after it.
...
Although, I'm just finishing watching the second season so
I think in that case, you are effectively taking the Median, not the Average(Mean).
But not very trusted, Their cert has expired, throwing errors on connection in Opera at least. Not too promising for supposed security software.
I just installed GPG shell a week ago, and it was such a non-event on Windows XP, I don't remember if I ran 2 installers, or just the GPGShell one (I think it can currently install GPG as well, but don't remember exactly).
I find it rather easy to use once you spend a little time learning about keys. I don't think any real authentication can be user input free - until AI, how is the computer supposed to know any more than this person claims to be X, do you trust that?
And I want to rant a little about how everyone says all security software is too hard to use. Well, I'm sorry, but having the computer make decisions for you is far from perfect, and usually not at all what people want. Good programming can make PGP easier, but you still have to figure out keyexchange. You either have to manually pass over private keys or understand the key signing WOT concept.
Just like the SSL issue raised a little while, the computer is not better able to make a decision than you about what to trust - it's current record is spyware up the wazoo, obviously broken.