Seriously? Have you ever been to the Boston area? It's incredibly diverse and welcoming. And unlike Silicon Valley, it's even welcoming to people who aren't rich.
Agree, in my experience Clonezilla does as well in this arena as the commercial offerings. Be wary, however. All of these products can behave a little funny sometimes in certain environments. Whatever you choose, test it out all the way through a backup and recovery before relying on it.
The 18th Annual Halloween Ghost Story Contest on Saugus.net was just held too and had a winning interactive fiction entry. It's also been accepting horror interactive fiction entries for years.
I've worked on and off in the medical devices field for a long time, and have been directly involved with the FDA approval process of several products. One thing I can add to this discussion is that anyone who has been through this process recognizes that "not legally enforceable guidelines" still need to be addressed before one can actually get a product released. Sure, maybe an organization could argue around them, but there are so many ways that the FDA can hold up a release or generally cause an organization grief that it's simply not practical to do so.
The bigger issues are 1) that these guidelines are relatively new and have only fairly recently been getting enforced, and 2) the people doing the reviewing don't always have enough security knowledge. For #1 it looks like loss of privacy is now starting to get acknowledged as a form of harm to the patient and so security is starting to get lumped in with other risk analysis, and for #2 consider that "FDA" stands for "Food and Drug Administration" -- "Medical Devices" isn't even in the title and it's certainly not the prime focus of the agency.
Alternatively you could try using a modern language like Nim that'll give you the same sorts of benefits as Rust, but allows compilation into C so you have the same expectations and performance as you would with C.
What I see on the other coast is that many times ordinary gas cars are taking the electric car charging spots making it impossible for the electric cars to charge. The electric car spots (at least over here) are like the "parents with infant" spots and have no enforcement.
They never have before, and in fact the FDA would actually consider the existence of such a backdoor a risk that'd have to be evaluated as part of the process.
As someone who has released network-capable medical products professionally, I can say that the FDA has already been requiring companies to provide all this information anyway. All that's new here is that there's now a final guidance in place that means less guesswork in trying to determine exactly what information they care about and what format to provide it in.
When are you going to add support for table, inline-table, table-row-group, table-column, table-column-group, table-header-group, table-footer-group, table-row, table-cell, and table-caption? These will make a lot of standards-compliant fluid-width site designs practical as they already work reasonably well everywhere else.
Poor, poor Microsoft not being able to get a browser that meets 1998's standards by 2007. As the article pointed out, it takes years to get it right. Of course, if they hadn't let MSIE rot to begin with, they'd be okay now.
As it stands, it's already been demonstrated that:
Large, well-organized open source projects (Mozilla) can do it.
Well-organized corporate / open source collaborations can do it (Safari)
Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, is trying to claim they don't have at least equal development muscle to these groups?
Seriously, the problem is of their own making. Now they're trying to fix the biggest bugs in IE6, but they're ignoring some of the biggest features of CSS that it lacks (like display: table*). It's hard to feel any sympathy.
I wrote a bit about this before. The Newton does a lot of things well as it was designed from the ground up to be a hand-held device. As a consequence it's still seeing use, still seeing third-party development, and still more usable than some devices currently getting produced.
It's not ideal, either; it could definitely use a diet to shed some weight, and these days features like wireless, bluetooth, etc. shouldn't have to be added via cards. An evolutionary development of the Newton platform could easily beat almost any other device on the market today, though.
Ask 5 pilots to fly in a formation. They can figure it out just as easily as 5 people on the ground. It requires a bit more skill as you have a third dimension plus speed to work out but every military trained pilot can do it.
Right, five pilots can, but they've had training, whereas the simple case of queueing up on the ground can be quickly handled by anyone. That's my point -- we're talking about two different levels of difficulty. The 3D case is more complicated than the 2D one.
But there's a problem: Flying in formation is trickier than it sounds. Ask a crowd of people to line up single file, and they'll be able to figure it out and do it rather easily. Getting a group of orbiting satellites to do the same thing, it turns out, is extremely hard.
This isn't really comparing two similar things. The human example is a 2D case on the ground with friction and easy maneuvering, the satellite one a 3D case in space where inertia rules the day. Ask a crowd of people to navigate little orbs into a line in open space and see how long it takes them.
In other words, you're a Java bigot that looks down upon those that don't agree with your choice of tools. It used to be C bigots that irritated me the most
That's just as messed-up a statement as the one you were responding to. VB6 is a single-sourced language that has actually been end-of-lifed. There are many software professionals who won't consider any single-sourced language as more than a toy language. Certainly any language that can be end-of-lifed by the single action of a single company should never be relied upon for anything serious.
While it's true that VB.net has not yet been end-of-lifed, how long would you seriously want to bet your life on its support? You know that some day it's going to go away, too, and there will be some point that its existing development tools start to behave a little erratically when used alongside newer MS products.
The fact that is completely non-portable is a huge argument against it, but I believe it pales before the whole single-sourced issue. For some products, it's okay to build with tools that may only be supported for five years or some other undetermined amount of time. For other products, it makes sense to try and find build tools that are supported by multiple vendors.
It's not just "Java bigots"; it's anyone who doesn't want to deal with vendor lock-in.
There already is a smaller scale version of Silicon Valley roughly centered on Boston, Massachusetts. The partial circle defined by Route 128 (and to a lesser extent the larger one surrounding it defined by Route 495) has most of the required properties already. Heck, it even has the same elevated levels of Asperger's Syndrome that Silicon Valley has.
I think a bigger point is the number of colleges and universities in the Massachusetts area (like MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University, to name just a few). Plus, besides Boston, there are numerous other technologically advanced places in that ring (including Cambridge, Saugus, Waltham, and Billerica, to name just a few). If you do a look-up on the saga of ODF and the history of OASIS and/or GNU you'll find a lot of these places mentioned -- OASIS originated in Massachusetts, the Free Software Foundation is headquartered in Massachusetts, and AFAIK Massachusetts was the first government to sanction a special "Open Source Software Trough" to encourage the usage of open source software within both its own branches as well as its local community governments. It's not clear to me where the weird view that Massachusetts is somehow against free software, open source and information sharing that some are espousing is coming from...
... including LIT, Palm, RTF, HTML, anything. (IT doesn't have to support DRM tho. I won't be buying any books with DRM.)...
Don't forget Newton books (as are freely available without DRM on Newton's Library) and Z-Machine works (as are freely available without DRM on the Interactive Fiction Archive). I definitely want at least these two formats in my dream e-book reader. A few other less common ones (like TADS, for example) would also be nice, but I'd personally settle for the ones you list plus PDF, Newton book, and Z-Machine.
How well would this work with non-Mozilla-based browsers (such as Opera or Internet Explorer)?
If you know your users are going to be using a bunch of different browsers, it'd probably make sense to build your system around XULRunner. That way it'd be pretty much like a stand-alone app, but you (as the developer) would still get the advantages of having a built-in system to handle HTML, XML, CSS, RDF, etc. and the user would be none the wiser (although it'd be pretty almost trivially easy to provide a browser-like interface for the user, reducing learning curves for your app). You should be able to make it so they could even run it directly off the CD / DVD by just double-clicking an icon. They wouldn't really even need to install anything.
What sort of performance would this give for data access? Comparable to database? And would this allow for arbitrary text string searches in any of the lyrics or annotated fields in a reasonably efficient way?
I've personally not used it in this way for my own apps so I can't give you a straight answer with the certainty of one who's directly done it (my own work with RDF data stores in Mozilla has pretty much been just for user preferences and the like). However, I can say that:
It's the system that Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. all use and they seem reasonably fast.
The new SQL option mentioned by T-Ranger definitely won't weaken any of the platform's existing capabilities in this department, but it could conceivably make things quite a bit better for you if you find that the performance isn't currently what you'd want.
RDF's capabilities in the way of metadata may lead you down some interesting paths that you've not yet considered regarding methods of indexing / searching lyrics beyond the straight raw text search.
I think it'll do everything you need and then some. You'll probably even be able to find some existing Mozilla-based programs that will get you part of the way there. You should be able to view the source of all of the products on Mozilla Add-ons to find sample code to do all manner of things.
Finally, since I am not at all up on the Mozilla platform, RDF, XUL, CSS, etc., what would be a good resource (or resources) for me to start learning this?
There's a ton of good info for free online for all of these topics. The Mozilla Developer Center will provide you with lots of tips and an invaluable reference to the Mozilla platform, XUL, RDF, JavaScript, XML, XULRunner, etc. The W3C will provide you with probably all you'll need to know about CSS, as well as further information on RDF, XML, and HTML. There are also loads of books out there; I've personally read and found Rapid Application Development with Mozilla and Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide to be pretty much all I needed to start writing Mozilla apps, but a quick glance through Amazon brings up entries like
Copyright issues aside (I'm assuming that you're talking about lyrics that you have the legal right to use) I'd say that there's a pretty simple answer to your problem. You're thinking through the pros and cons of using a back-end database versus a browser front-end, and you're not keen on running any flavor of server.
You can get both the database and browser advantages without having to set up a separate server by building your app on the Mozilla platform. You can utilize its built-in RDF capabilities to store your data in a clean, extensible way, and fairly quickly put together a user interface using XUL and CSS that can work with Firefox, Seamonkey, Flock, etc., or even just the XUL app runner for a more stand-alone user experience.
Because all of your data (and even interfaces) will be XML-compliant, you'll even be making it easier for third party apps to work with your stuff.
As much as I'd like to see a Mac-branded FrameMaker, I doubt Apple will buy Adobe outright. I wouldn't be too surprised to see them acquire a significant amount of Adobe stock, though, for leverage...
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously? Have you ever been to the Boston area? It's incredibly diverse and welcoming. And unlike Silicon Valley, it's even welcoming to people who aren't rich.
Agree, in my experience Clonezilla does as well in this arena as the commercial offerings. Be wary, however. All of these products can behave a little funny sometimes in certain environments. Whatever you choose, test it out all the way through a backup and recovery before relying on it.
The 18th Annual Halloween Ghost Story Contest on Saugus.net was just held too and had a winning interactive fiction entry. It's also been accepting horror interactive fiction entries for years.
I've worked on and off in the medical devices field for a long time, and have been directly involved with the FDA approval process of several products. One thing I can add to this discussion is that anyone who has been through this process recognizes that "not legally enforceable guidelines" still need to be addressed before one can actually get a product released. Sure, maybe an organization could argue around them, but there are so many ways that the FDA can hold up a release or generally cause an organization grief that it's simply not practical to do so. The bigger issues are 1) that these guidelines are relatively new and have only fairly recently been getting enforced, and 2) the people doing the reviewing don't always have enough security knowledge. For #1 it looks like loss of privacy is now starting to get acknowledged as a form of harm to the patient and so security is starting to get lumped in with other risk analysis, and for #2 consider that "FDA" stands for "Food and Drug Administration" -- "Medical Devices" isn't even in the title and it's certainly not the prime focus of the agency.
It's unusual for the Rt. 128 Ring (including Boston and Cambridge) to not be included in a list of the top technology hubs in the U.S.
Alternatively you could try using a modern language like Nim that'll give you the same sorts of benefits as Rust, but allows compilation into C so you have the same expectations and performance as you would with C.
What I see on the other coast is that many times ordinary gas cars are taking the electric car charging spots making it impossible for the electric cars to charge. The electric car spots (at least over here) are like the "parents with infant" spots and have no enforcement.
It sounds almost like an early form of block-transfer computations as described in Doctor Who.
Theoretical should not imply untestable.
Definitely my playing of interactive fiction led to my creation of interactive fiction which in turn led to my career as a software developer.
They never have before, and in fact the FDA would actually consider the existence of such a backdoor a risk that'd have to be evaluated as part of the process.
As someone who has released network-capable medical products professionally, I can say that the FDA has already been requiring companies to provide all this information anyway. All that's new here is that there's now a final guidance in place that means less guesswork in trying to determine exactly what information they care about and what format to provide it in.
When are you going to add support for table, inline-table, table-row-group, table-column, table-column-group, table-header-group, table-footer-group, table-row, table-cell, and table-caption? These will make a lot of standards-compliant fluid-width site designs practical as they already work reasonably well everywhere else.
Poor, poor Microsoft not being able to get a browser that meets 1998's standards by 2007. As the article pointed out, it takes years to get it right. Of course, if they hadn't let MSIE rot to begin with, they'd be okay now.
As it stands, it's already been demonstrated that:
Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, is trying to claim they don't have at least equal development muscle to these groups?
Seriously, the problem is of their own making. Now they're trying to fix the biggest bugs in IE6, but they're ignoring some of the biggest features of CSS that it lacks (like display: table*). It's hard to feel any sympathy.
I wrote a bit about this before. The Newton does a lot of things well as it was designed from the ground up to be a hand-held device. As a consequence it's still seeing use, still seeing third-party development, and still more usable than some devices currently getting produced.
It's not ideal, either; it could definitely use a diet to shed some weight, and these days features like wireless, bluetooth, etc. shouldn't have to be added via cards. An evolutionary development of the Newton platform could easily beat almost any other device on the market today, though.
I think I personally would have visualized the character of "Analog Hole" as a lot older... certainly not a kid.
Right, five pilots can, but they've had training, whereas the simple case of queueing up on the ground can be quickly handled by anyone. That's my point -- we're talking about two different levels of difficulty. The 3D case is more complicated than the 2D one.
This isn't really comparing two similar things. The human example is a 2D case on the ground with friction and easy maneuvering, the satellite one a 3D case in space where inertia rules the day. Ask a crowd of people to navigate little orbs into a line in open space and see how long it takes them.
That's just as messed-up a statement as the one you were responding to. VB6 is a single-sourced language that has actually been end-of-lifed. There are many software professionals who won't consider any single-sourced language as more than a toy language. Certainly any language that can be end-of-lifed by the single action of a single company should never be relied upon for anything serious.
While it's true that VB.net has not yet been end-of-lifed, how long would you seriously want to bet your life on its support? You know that some day it's going to go away, too, and there will be some point that its existing development tools start to behave a little erratically when used alongside newer MS products.
The fact that is completely non-portable is a huge argument against it, but I believe it pales before the whole single-sourced issue. For some products, it's okay to build with tools that may only be supported for five years or some other undetermined amount of time. For other products, it makes sense to try and find build tools that are supported by multiple vendors.
It's not just "Java bigots"; it's anyone who doesn't want to deal with vendor lock-in.
Nah, at this point he's still in charge of GEOCOMTEX. The "someplace beginning with 'S' bit comes later.
BTW, any relation to Rufus T. Firefly?
I think a bigger point is the number of colleges and universities in the Massachusetts area (like MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University, to name just a few). Plus, besides Boston, there are numerous other technologically advanced places in that ring (including Cambridge, Saugus, Waltham, and Billerica, to name just a few). If you do a look-up on the saga of ODF and the history of OASIS and/or GNU you'll find a lot of these places mentioned -- OASIS originated in Massachusetts, the Free Software Foundation is headquartered in Massachusetts, and AFAIK Massachusetts was the first government to sanction a special "Open Source Software Trough" to encourage the usage of open source software within both its own branches as well as its local community governments. It's not clear to me where the weird view that Massachusetts is somehow against free software, open source and information sharing that some are espousing is coming from...
Don't forget Newton books (as are freely available without DRM on Newton's Library) and Z-Machine works (as are freely available without DRM on the Interactive Fiction Archive). I definitely want at least these two formats in my dream e-book reader. A few other less common ones (like TADS, for example) would also be nice, but I'd personally settle for the ones you list plus PDF, Newton book, and Z-Machine.
You're welcome.
If you know your users are going to be using a bunch of different browsers, it'd probably make sense to build your system around XULRunner. That way it'd be pretty much like a stand-alone app, but you (as the developer) would still get the advantages of having a built-in system to handle HTML, XML, CSS, RDF, etc. and the user would be none the wiser (although it'd be pretty almost trivially easy to provide a browser-like interface for the user, reducing learning curves for your app). You should be able to make it so they could even run it directly off the CD / DVD by just double-clicking an icon. They wouldn't really even need to install anything.
I've personally not used it in this way for my own apps so I can't give you a straight answer with the certainty of one who's directly done it (my own work with RDF data stores in Mozilla has pretty much been just for user preferences and the like). However, I can say that:
It's the system that Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. all use and they seem reasonably fast.
The new SQL option mentioned by T-Ranger definitely won't weaken any of the platform's existing capabilities in this department, but it could conceivably make things quite a bit better for you if you find that the performance isn't currently what you'd want.
RDF's capabilities in the way of metadata may lead you down some interesting paths that you've not yet considered regarding methods of indexing / searching lyrics beyond the straight raw text search.
I think it'll do everything you need and then some. You'll probably even be able to find some existing Mozilla-based programs that will get you part of the way there. You should be able to view the source of all of the products on Mozilla Add-ons to find sample code to do all manner of things.
There's a ton of good info for free online for all of these topics. The Mozilla Developer Center will provide you with lots of tips and an invaluable reference to the Mozilla platform, XUL, RDF, JavaScript, XML, XULRunner, etc. The W3C will provide you with probably all you'll need to know about CSS, as well as further information on RDF, XML, and HTML. There are also loads of books out there; I've personally read and found Rapid Application Development with Mozilla and Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide to be pretty much all I needed to start writing Mozilla apps, but a quick glance through Amazon brings up entries like
Copyright issues aside (I'm assuming that you're talking about lyrics that you have the legal right to use) I'd say that there's a pretty simple answer to your problem. You're thinking through the pros and cons of using a back-end database versus a browser front-end, and you're not keen on running any flavor of server.
You can get both the database and browser advantages without having to set up a separate server by building your app on the Mozilla platform. You can utilize its built-in RDF capabilities to store your data in a clean, extensible way, and fairly quickly put together a user interface using XUL and CSS that can work with Firefox, Seamonkey, Flock, etc., or even just the XUL app runner for a more stand-alone user experience.
Because all of your data (and even interfaces) will be XML-compliant, you'll even be making it easier for third party apps to work with your stuff.
As much as I'd like to see a Mac-branded FrameMaker, I doubt Apple will buy Adobe outright. I wouldn't be too surprised to see them acquire a significant amount of Adobe stock, though, for leverage...