I am running this exact combination on a multitude of 4 and 8 cpu boxes without any problems (for as far as mysql is concerned, there are some other problems some of which are indeed related to locking. Most notably, bind 9 sucks)
That's one reason why radeons are the best supported with free 3D drivers.
I suggest you go talk to some DRI developers some day, oh and while at it, try to get a 9600 or up supported by an opensource driver...
If anything, the Matrox Gxxx cards are still the best supported cards around, but are not too usable maybe to modern standards (and not talking about any of their Pxxx cards here)
No modern radeon card is supported by the DRI project, only pre Radeon 9600 cards.
With a Modern Radeon card you have NO WAY WHATSOEVER to get hardware accelerated OpenGL on FreeBSD, no matter what the rest of your hardware is.
But then, for your use that is probably not too important, which means that you could have done with nvdia hardware and xorg's nv driver just as well as with ati hardware and xorgs radeon driver, you would get virtually the same thing.
FreeBSD gives up control over portions of it's system in return for some limited additonal functionality.
They accept certain optional components as a binary. That is nowhere near giving up control over their system, none of those components are reqzured parts of the system, rather, they are things that help make the system more convenient for users.
Theo cares about freedom, sure, but he also really only cares about the things he happens to need himself.
I happen to have been involved in the Open Graphics project. I approached Theo early this year to see if there would be a possibility of OpenBSD participating in a project to create a fully documented and supported piece of graphics hardware. Obviously he has no need for it since the reply was a one word email saying NO. (and I am not surprised by getting a somewhat blunt response from him, thats not the point, the point is that he simply has no nterest in things if they do not directly serve his own needs, so much for him and his fight for freedom)
One could also point at the hilarious situation regarding SMP. Till recently suggesting OpenBSD could use SMP support would get you anything between a somwhat polite "we disagree" to a flamy "fuck off". Yet it has (abeit limited) SMP support now since one (or more?) of its core team members had a need for it.
Dont get me wrong btw, its their good right to support the things they want and to ignore everything else. When I need an OS for some purpose I will go to people who actually care about what others then themselves might want to do with their product however.
Hmm, SGIs bottomline looks really good indeed.. Intel seems to be quite happy to support whatever happens to run on their CPUs and did quite a bit to get FreeBSD's ACPI support working for example. IBM is not saying so very loudly, but they happen to have bought a company that makes hardware that uses FreeBSD. I wont bother with the rest of your examples, but the world is by far not as simple and black/white as you seem to believe.
I suggest you go take a look at the code and see how it is in need of a total rewrite.
This is a problem shared between the BSDs, things like ip_input.c being a file containing one function that is hundreds of lines long for example.
This is only a real problem now in FreeBSD because of needing fine grained locking in the kernel for better SMP support, something that Dragonfly is trying to prevent, and something that none of the other BSDs have come close to yet because their SMP support is for now extremely primitive, and they are still completely based on giant lock. Net and Open will have to do a similar job at a certain point if they want their SMP support to become more usable.
This has of course been a minor problem in the past for other reasons, mostly the ordering of p filters in the specific function I mentiuoned has been a bit messy, again a problem shared between all the BSDs.
Yes, Microsoft is going to try to compete, one element of that is the long-discussed-never-seen Project Sparkle. From the discussions of Vista, it sounds to me like they're going to make Avalon scriptable from "Trusted" webpages. If it's worth giving up the Flash install base for those features I'll be surprised.
It looks like they went for this AJAX thing for now also.. which in a way competes with Flash.
Before the Adobe merger/aquisition, there was always a concern that Microsoft would buy Macromedia. Now that they'll be Adobe, I really don't think Microsoft could aquire them without anti-trust problems
That has never stopped MS, and with some reason. They are a convicted monopolist, but the slap on the wrist they got means that it has been quite proffitable still to behave in an anti competative way for them.
I run quite a bunch of servers, some of which happen to have a SATA based raid 1 configuration.
Now, I have had some disks break, and in cases where the primary disk in a raid 1 fails, Gentoo refuses to boot untill you manually change things. FreeBSD on the other hand just boots. Stick in a new disk, tell it that it has a new disk in its raid 1, and it syncs it nicely in the background. With SATA this is fully hotpluggable.
On my workstation on the other hand, I do run both Linux (Gentoo) and FreeBSD. I run both because neither supports all the hardware I have, both support a different subset.
if you write software to "just work" then you're missing out.
I am sure MS would agree with that, specifically, their bank account is really missing out..
You may not like it, but good enough will do the job in 99% of the cases. OpenBSD and its approach are more suitable for the remaining one percent.
You want it to do more than work -- you want it to work well and actually be robust.
Yeah, the workstation I am at now was just upgraded from FreeBSD 5.3 patchlevel 20 to FreeBSD 6.0 beta 2.
An extremely painless upgrade )from source no less). It works very well, andwas only upgraded because of wanting wireless support.
OpenBSD does not even manage to finish a compile of the world on that machine (and after quite a few discussions in the last 4 years about build problems I have given up even arguing about it on the OpenBSSD lists. If they have nothing else to say then "your hardware must be broken" while it works perfectly fine with everything else, then they are not anzwhere close to working, let alone working well for as far as I am concerned)
OpenBSD has that philsophy, FreeBSD does not. (I'll give you a hint: it has to do with more than drivers.) That's the context of the quote that you and other trolls are parroting. Software developers should know exactly what he's talking about. Good ones, anyway.
Software developers who actually have to get some result instead of trying to achieve software utopia know that good enough is good enough.
If you want something that is designed well, works well, and lacks some of the uncleanness of FreeBSD then look at NetBSD.
There is one and only one thing in which you have a bit of a point, OpenBSD and even more so NetBSD have a cleaner design for the things they added to the BSD codebase. On the other hand, neither runs extremely well on most modern hardware and can take good advantage of that hardware. FreeBSD does in many cases.
You may have your doubts but history simply proves that they do (not all of them, but quite a few still)
FreeBSD has a thing called netgraph, from its manpage:
HISTORY
The netgraph system was designed and first implemented at Whistle Commu-
nications, Inc. in a version of FreeBSD 2.2 customized for the Whistle
InterJet.
Then, from man jail:
AUTHORS
The jail feature was written by Poul-Henning Kamp for R&D Associates http://www.rndassociates.com/ who contributed it to FreeBSD.
Of course PHK is a core member of the fbsd team, but that doesn't change that it was written and payed for by a commercial user of the system and then contributed to it.
There is a simple very good reason for companies to contribute their changes, given that they get accepted:
It saves them the cost on maintaining such a component and keeping up with the development of the system.
Hmm.. replying to my own post.. anyway, I think it would have been better to say that whenever something is usefull for the Windows environment MS tries to either own it or eliminate it. Bundled software may not be the best example of this, but there it happened as well.
I'm not sure what you're referring to - most bundled Windows elements were created by Microsoft. The only shifts I remember were from one Microsoft product to another. Netscape wasn't bundled with computers by Microsoft, it was bundled in by OEMs
You may not be aware of this, but many of the components of Windows are in fact not written by them at all.
In case of flash, MS is still trying to go for an alternative, and for video has had an alternative for like a decade. If they can push that and eliminate flash )and other alternatives, ie realplayer) they will do so.
Even most of Office does not originate at MS, was not written by them originally, but was bought and basicly changed into what we know as word and excel and such now.
They have a long history of trying to eliminate everything they do not control when they believe it is proffitable to do so, and I see no reason why that would not apply to flash.
It indeed does come with Windows, it is an optional component however and for all I can tell not installed by default, and you usually end up with an outdated version.
That said, one can indeed argue that IE and Flash are available in one bundle (called Windows)
That of course also points at why Flash might not have sucha bright future.. virtually anything that comes bundled with Windows becomes MS property over time, and if they have what they consider something better (more profittable) then that means it will go down the drain.
You know, this is the exact same argument that was originally made against developing apps on the web. Hey, look at Mirskey's Worst of the Web - HTML sucks, not everyone has an Internet connection you're leaving people out. It's the same argument, different tune.
In other words, you are saying that this is irrelevant, I agree.
I wonder why the ease of development and better user satisfaction was brought in in the grantparent post when you agree that it is at best of minor relevance.
As a Flash developer, I've heard this before, and it's never proven to be true. A few years back there was a study of Internet client capabilities and by a very small percent more clients were supporting Flash than were supporting Javascript. Should I have read that and sworn off Javascript?
That study is either 10 years old, complete bullshit or both.
Since NS 2.0 and some very early version OF IE, both supported (slightly incompatible of course) variations on javascript. This was in a time when few people had heard about flash at all.
Of the modern browsers that dont support javascript or a close variation, name me exactly one that does support flash.
I have 15 years of experience with supporting networks in large corporate environments, and was there before browsers existed at all. I have been involved in the building and testing of the first and second generation of 'public' webbrowsers, and from that I can say that the research you are pointing at (maybe provide a reference?) is simply bullshit now, and most likely has been for the last decade. Can I point at research to prove this? no, but simple logic will tell you this: IE, Opera, all Mozilla variations and even some of the palmtop based browsers support javascript, and NONE, I repeat NONE of them natively support flash.
I have worked a lot with banks, financial institutions and such, and none of them allow installation of any software by endusers, and very few of them install flash.
I've heard that claim about Ajax, but I've lived it with Flash. Over the past 6 years I've never had a compatibility problems with Flash. I sure can't say that about my experience with HTML or Javascript
As long as your client has a flash plugin from Macromedia you do not have a compatibility problem. This is one of the reasons why it is easier to develop for Flash (see the first argument, which you yourself are arguing is irrelevant)
As long as you keep to standards, thereare very few compatibility problems with html and javascript, but they do exist of course.
Now, go try an alternative flash plugin (they do exist) and see how it goes there.
Bottomline, I can use html+javascript on any platform I use, from palmtop to modern PC to my smp sparc machine etc. I can use flash on exactly one of those hardware platforms, and only when running one of 2 specific operating systems.
If you want to develop for flash, be my guest, and I hope it does make yo a good living. There is nothing wrong with it as such, but if you believe it is the technically best solution then you really need a few hits with a cluestick. If you believe it is a longterm solution, well, then you depend on the future of Macromedia, if they go under your market is gone.
In my experience Flash is the easiest to develop, and has the highest user satisfaction. That's why I'm curious why there's so much excitement over Ajax when it seems so sub-optimal to me.
Since flash is easy to develop for, it is a lot easier for a mediacore developer to make an application that is satisfying to the end-userm (not trying to imply that you are a mediacore developer here btw). This obviously results in better user satisfaction... for those users that can use your application that is.
AJAX (I hate that name) promisses to provide almost the same ease of development over time, without limiting yourself to those who actually installed the plugin required for using flash applications.
You may believe that that only concerns a very tiny fraction of the market when you assume that it only concerns those for which there is no flash plgin available (Linux on PPC was given as an example by another poster, there are many more such examples).
You should realize that in quite a few corporate environments users cannot )and are not allowed to) install a plugin, and many such environments regard flash as a potential security risk. As a consequence, there is a substantial part of the market that cannot use Flash based apps.
Then, AJAX is extendible without depending on a single vendor to hear and forfill your desired extentions, or put differently, you do not depend on the whims of a single provider.
So, Flash is only a better solution when: 1. You can guarantee that your clients have installed or can install the required plugin and 2. You don't and will never need things that Flash currently cant do.
In other words, FLash is a short-term solution with a limited scope and limited support, AJAX is an extendible technology with a broad scope and multiple vendors supporting it.
Yeah, it takes a bit more efford, but that is payed for by the solution lasting longer.
Trying to stop people from using the back button means interfering with their ability to navigate the web. If you believe that is a good idea then you really should start from scratch and try to understand what the web is and why it works.
As others have mentioned, if resubmission of a form is a problem, generate a proper error page that explains this.
There is one thing I want to comment on however because it is a common misconception )and not just in the USA)
The only people who really use mass transit are those too poor to buy their own cars, and if you're too poor to buy a car, you're certainly too poor to buy a politician.
Not having the money for buying a car is one of the 2 major reasons why people do not drive one. The other one is being incapable of driving a car for example due to a visual (or other) impairment. Such people have a choice between not going anywhere, always depending on others, or go live in one of the few places with good enough public transport and hope they never have to goto places without it. (and no, this situation is not that much better in Europe either)
Please note that U.S. provider do not have download limits
Neither do most overhere, tho many do offer cheaper accounts with a limit also.
Then, what you describe is quite nice, but from all I can tell, it is rather the exception and not the norm. What I described is the norm here throughout most of the country
The really odd ones commute once a week between rural home and city home to work compressed work-week schedules. This may sound like having a weekend home, but I assure you it is a completely different thing.
You will find the same in a country like Germany (with the difference that many will go by train there since the train system actually works, is fast and is reliable)
I live in the 4th biggest city in the Netherlands (which is approx the size of Austin, TX).
I have a choice between 1 cable ISP, an almost infinite number of dialup ISPs (with all kinds of different conditions and price ranges) and at least 6 large DSL providers that I know of (and most likely a few smaller ones that I do not know about, and not all of them use the same telco for the last mile either).
Currently the best offer I can get is approx $50 on a 24/1 mbit adsl2 conection.
As said, this is only the 4rth largest city in the country, and its not a major city by any standards. Go to one of the 2 biggest cities and things will be better.
Now.. for all I can tell, most people living in a major city in the USA have at best a choice between cable and dsl, and with a lot of luck they may be able to pick between 2 or 3 dsl providers...
Slashdot Mirror
Even with Linux threads in mysql its still buggy.
I suggest you read this.
I am running this exact combination on a multitude of 4 and 8 cpu boxes without any problems (for as far as mysql is concerned, there are some other problems some of which are indeed related to locking. Most notably, bind 9 sucks)
That's one reason why radeons are the best supported with free 3D drivers.
I suggest you go talk to some DRI developers some day, oh and while at it, try to get a 9600 or up supported by an opensource driver...
If anything, the Matrox Gxxx cards are still the best supported cards around, but are not too usable maybe to modern standards (and not talking about any of their Pxxx cards here)
Thank $DEITY I bought a Radeon.
No modern radeon card is supported by the DRI project, only pre Radeon 9600 cards.
With a Modern Radeon card you have NO WAY WHATSOEVER to get hardware accelerated OpenGL on FreeBSD, no matter what the rest of your hardware is.
But then, for your use that is probably not too important, which means that you could have done with nvdia hardware and xorg's nv driver just as well as with ati hardware and xorgs radeon driver, you would get virtually the same thing.
FreeBSD gives up control over portions of it's system in return for some limited additonal functionality.
They accept certain optional components as a binary. That is nowhere near giving up control over their system, none of those components are reqzured parts of the system, rather, they are things that help make the system more convenient for users.
Theo cares about freedom, sure, but he also really only cares about the things he happens to need himself.
I happen to have been involved in the Open Graphics project. I approached Theo early this year to see if there would be a possibility of OpenBSD participating in a project to create a fully documented and supported piece of graphics hardware. Obviously he has no need for it since the reply was a one word email saying NO. (and I am not surprised by getting a somewhat blunt response from him, thats not the point, the point is that he simply has no nterest in things if they do not directly serve his own needs, so much for him and his fight for freedom)
One could also point at the hilarious situation regarding SMP. Till recently suggesting OpenBSD could use SMP support would get you anything between a somwhat polite "we disagree" to a flamy "fuck off". Yet it has (abeit limited) SMP support now since one (or more?) of its core team members had a need for it.
Dont get me wrong btw, its their good right to support the things they want and to ignore everything else. When I need an OS for some purpose I will go to people who actually care about what others then themselves might want to do with their product however.
Hmm, SGIs bottomline looks really good indeed..
Intel seems to be quite happy to support whatever happens to run on their CPUs and did quite a bit to get FreeBSD's ACPI support working for example. IBM is not saying so very loudly, but they happen to have bought a company that makes hardware that uses FreeBSD. I wont bother with the rest of your examples, but the world is by far not as simple and black/white as you seem to believe.
I suggest you go take a look at the code and see how it is in need of a total rewrite.
This is a problem shared between the BSDs, things like ip_input.c being a file containing one function that is hundreds of lines long for example.
This is only a real problem now in FreeBSD because of needing fine grained locking in the kernel for better SMP support, something that Dragonfly is trying to prevent, and something that none of the other BSDs have come close to yet because their SMP support is for now extremely primitive, and they are still completely based on giant lock. Net and Open will have to do a similar job at a certain point if they want their SMP support to become more usable.
This has of course been a minor problem in the past for other reasons, mostly the ordering of p filters in the specific function I mentiuoned has been a bit messy, again a problem shared between all the BSDs.
Yes, Microsoft is going to try to compete, one element of that is the long-discussed-never-seen Project Sparkle. From the discussions of Vista, it sounds to me like they're going to make Avalon scriptable from "Trusted" webpages. If it's worth giving up the Flash install base for those features I'll be surprised.
It looks like they went for this AJAX thing for now also.. which in a way competes with Flash.
Before the Adobe merger/aquisition, there was always a concern that Microsoft would buy Macromedia. Now that they'll be Adobe, I really don't think Microsoft could aquire them without anti-trust problems
That has never stopped MS, and with some reason. They are a convicted monopolist, but the slap on the wrist they got means that it has been quite proffitable still to behave in an anti competative way for them.
Yeah, come back when OpenBSD can consistently build a world (even when it is for a different version then what you are currently running)
I run quite a bunch of servers, some of which happen to have a SATA based raid 1 configuration.
Now, I have had some disks break, and in cases where the primary disk in a raid 1 fails, Gentoo refuses to boot untill you manually change things. FreeBSD on the other hand just boots. Stick in a new disk, tell it that it has a new disk in its raid 1, and it syncs it nicely in the background. With SATA this is fully hotpluggable.
On my workstation on the other hand, I do run both Linux (Gentoo) and FreeBSD. I run both because neither supports all the hardware I have, both support a different subset.
if you write software to "just work" then you're missing out.
I am sure MS would agree with that, specifically, their bank account is really missing out..
You may not like it, but good enough will do the job in 99% of the cases. OpenBSD and its approach are more suitable for the remaining one percent.
You want it to do more than work -- you want it to work well and actually be robust.
Yeah, the workstation I am at now was just upgraded from FreeBSD 5.3 patchlevel 20 to FreeBSD 6.0 beta 2.
An extremely painless upgrade )from source no less). It works very well, andwas only upgraded because of wanting wireless support.
OpenBSD does not even manage to finish a compile of the world on that machine (and after quite a few discussions in the last 4 years about build problems I have given up even arguing about it on the OpenBSSD lists. If they have nothing else to say then "your hardware must be broken" while it works perfectly fine with everything else, then they are not anzwhere close to working, let alone working well for as far as I am concerned)
OpenBSD has that philsophy, FreeBSD does not. (I'll give you a hint: it has to do with more than drivers.) That's the context of the quote that you and other trolls are parroting. Software developers should know exactly what he's talking about. Good ones, anyway.
Software developers who actually have to get some result instead of trying to achieve software utopia know that good enough is good enough.
If you want something that is designed well, works well, and lacks some of the uncleanness of FreeBSD then look at NetBSD.
There is one and only one thing in which you have a bit of a point, OpenBSD and even more so NetBSD have a cleaner design for the things they added to the BSD codebase. On the other hand, neither runs extremely well on most modern hardware and can take good advantage of that hardware. FreeBSD does in many cases.
You may have your doubts but history simply proves that they do (not all of them, but quite a few still)
FreeBSD has a thing called netgraph, from its manpage:
HISTORY
The netgraph system was designed and first implemented at Whistle Commu-
nications, Inc. in a version of FreeBSD 2.2 customized for the Whistle
InterJet.
Then, from man jail:
AUTHORS
The jail feature was written by Poul-Henning Kamp for R&D Associates
http://www.rndassociates.com/ who contributed it to FreeBSD.
Of course PHK is a core member of the fbsd team, but that doesn't change that it was written and payed for by a commercial user of the system and then contributed to it.
There is a simple very good reason for companies to contribute their changes, given that they get accepted:
It saves them the cost on maintaining such a component and keeping up with the development of the system.
Hmm.. replying to my own post.. anyway, I think it would have been better to say that whenever something is usefull for the Windows environment MS tries to either own it or eliminate it. Bundled software may not be the best example of this, but there it happened as well.
I'm not sure what you're referring to - most bundled Windows elements were created by Microsoft. The only shifts I remember were from one Microsoft product to another. Netscape wasn't bundled with computers by Microsoft, it was bundled in by OEMs
You may not be aware of this, but many of the components of Windows are in fact not written by them at all.
In case of flash, MS is still trying to go for an alternative, and for video has had an alternative for like a decade. If they can push that and eliminate flash )and other alternatives, ie realplayer) they will do so.
Even most of Office does not originate at MS, was not written by them originally, but was bought and basicly changed into what we know as word and excel and such now.
They have a long history of trying to eliminate everything they do not control when they believe it is proffitable to do so, and I see no reason why that would not apply to flash.
It indeed does come with Windows, it is an optional component however and for all I can tell not installed by default, and you usually end up with an outdated version.
That said, one can indeed argue that IE and Flash are available in one bundle (called Windows)
That of course also points at why Flash might not have sucha bright future.. virtually anything that comes bundled with Windows becomes MS property over time, and if they have what they consider something better (more profittable) then that means it will go down the drain.
You know, this is the exact same argument that was originally made against developing apps on the web. Hey, look at Mirskey's Worst of the Web - HTML sucks, not everyone has an Internet connection you're leaving people out. It's the same argument, different tune.
In other words, you are saying that this is irrelevant, I agree.
I wonder why the ease of development and better user satisfaction was brought in in the grantparent post when you agree that it is at best of minor relevance.
As a Flash developer, I've heard this before, and it's never proven to be true. A few years back there was a study of Internet client capabilities and by a very small percent more clients were supporting Flash than were supporting Javascript. Should I have read that and sworn off Javascript?
That study is either 10 years old, complete bullshit or both.
Since NS 2.0 and some very early version OF IE, both supported (slightly incompatible of course) variations on javascript. This was in a time when few people had heard about flash at all.
Of the modern browsers that dont support javascript or a close variation, name me exactly one that does support flash.
I have 15 years of experience with supporting networks in large corporate environments, and was there before browsers existed at all. I have been involved in the building and testing of the first and second generation of 'public' webbrowsers, and from that I can say that the research you are pointing at (maybe provide a reference?) is simply bullshit now, and most likely has been for the last decade. Can I point at research to prove this? no, but simple logic will tell you this:
IE, Opera, all Mozilla variations and even some of the palmtop based browsers support javascript, and NONE, I repeat NONE of them natively support flash.
I have worked a lot with banks, financial institutions and such, and none of them allow installation of any software by endusers, and very few of them install flash.
I've heard that claim about Ajax, but I've lived it with Flash. Over the past 6 years I've never had a compatibility problems with Flash. I sure can't say that about my experience with HTML or Javascript
As long as your client has a flash plugin from Macromedia you do not have a compatibility problem. This is one of the reasons why it is easier to develop for Flash (see the first argument, which you yourself are arguing is irrelevant)
As long as you keep to standards, thereare very few compatibility problems with html and javascript, but they do exist of course.
Now, go try an alternative flash plugin (they do exist) and see how it goes there.
Bottomline, I can use html+javascript on any platform I use, from palmtop to modern PC to my smp sparc machine etc. I can use flash on exactly one of those hardware platforms, and only when running one of 2 specific operating systems.
If you want to develop for flash, be my guest, and I hope it does make yo a good living. There is nothing wrong with it as such, but if you believe it is the technically best solution then you really need a few hits with a cluestick. If you believe it is a longterm solution, well, then you depend on the future of Macromedia, if they go under your market is gone.
It comes with Windows, not with IE.
(and yeah, I know about IE supposedly being an integral part of the OS)
I dont think IE comes with Flash really.
In my experience Flash is the easiest to develop, and has the highest user satisfaction. That's why I'm curious why there's so much excitement over Ajax when it seems so sub-optimal to me.
Since flash is easy to develop for, it is a lot easier for a mediacore developer to make an application that is satisfying to the end-userm (not trying to imply that you are a mediacore developer here btw). This obviously results in better user satisfaction... for those users that can use your application that is.
AJAX (I hate that name) promisses to provide almost the same ease of development over time, without limiting yourself to those who actually installed the plugin required for using flash applications.
You may believe that that only concerns a very tiny fraction of the market when you assume that it only concerns those for which there is no flash plgin available (Linux on PPC was given as an example by another poster, there are many more such examples).
You should realize that in quite a few corporate environments users cannot )and are not allowed to) install a plugin, and many such environments regard flash as a potential security risk. As a consequence, there is a substantial part of the market that cannot use Flash based apps.
Then, AJAX is extendible without depending on a single vendor to hear and forfill your desired extentions, or put differently, you do not depend on the whims of a single provider.
So, Flash is only a better solution when:
1. You can guarantee that your clients have installed or can install the required plugin and
2. You don't and will never need things that Flash currently cant do.
In other words, FLash is a short-term solution with a limited scope and limited support, AJAX is an extendible technology with a broad scope and multiple vendors supporting it.
Yeah, it takes a bit more efford, but that is payed for by the solution lasting longer.
Trying to stop people from using the back button means interfering with their ability to navigate the web. If you believe that is a good idea then you really should start from scratch and try to understand what the web is and why it works.
As others have mentioned, if resubmission of a form is a problem, generate a proper error page that explains this.
Wow, that was a fun and good read, thanks a lot.
There is one thing I want to comment on however because it is a common misconception )and not just in the USA)
The only people who really use mass transit are those too poor to buy their own cars, and if you're too poor to buy a car, you're certainly too poor to buy a politician.
Not having the money for buying a car is one of the 2 major reasons why people do not drive one. The other one is being incapable of driving a car for example due to a visual (or other) impairment. Such people have a choice between not going anywhere, always depending on others, or go live in one of the few places with good enough public transport and hope they never have to goto places without it. (and no, this situation is not that much better in Europe either)
Ask how many European DSL providers will let you download 100G in a month. I can already answer that...none.
The one I use (versatel) has no such limits, neither do xs4all, tiscali or other major providers overhere.
I regularely download such amounts a month, and that is no prob whatsoever (no hidden limits either)
You must be rather misinformed.
Just to be clear: 24mbit down, 1 up, NO LIMITS in time, bandwidth, data transfer or anything of that sort.
Indeed you do not need the high speed trains for that (tho they do help a lot)
Please note that U.S. provider do not have download limits
Neither do most overhere, tho many do offer cheaper accounts with a limit also.
Then, what you describe is quite nice, but from all I can tell, it is rather the exception and not the norm. What I described is the norm here throughout most of the country
The really odd ones commute once a week between rural home and city home to work compressed work-week schedules. This may sound like having a weekend home, but I assure you it is a completely different thing.
You will find the same in a country like Germany (with the difference that many will go by train there since the train system actually works, is fast and is reliable)
Hmm, lets see..
I live in the 4th biggest city in the Netherlands (which is approx the size of Austin, TX).
I have a choice between 1 cable ISP, an almost infinite number of dialup ISPs (with all kinds of different conditions and price ranges) and at least 6 large DSL providers that I know of (and most likely a few smaller ones that I do not know about, and not all of them use the same telco for the last mile either).
Currently the best offer I can get is approx $50 on a 24/1 mbit adsl2 conection.
As said, this is only the 4rth largest city in the country, and its not a major city by any standards. Go to one of the 2 biggest cities and things will be better.
Now.. for all I can tell, most people living in a major city in the USA have at best a choice between cable and dsl, and with a lot of luck they may be able to pick between 2 or 3 dsl providers...
I really think you have some way to go still..