I think developers still have enough reason to form a union. For example, if there was a union, it could very effectively ban the use of IE6 on the web, or it could put an end to the anti-competitive moves of apple, or force the W3C/WHATWG to give up their hijacking of web-standards.
Interfaces should not be patentable. Look at the misery that came from the patents on the FAT (file allocation table) design. It is just bad for the overall market.
So now we have a standard for C++ which supports template-based programming a little better.
It's sad that we have to use different types of syntactical constructs for this meta type of programming. The whole template-based approach is turing-complete, but this is only a theoretical trait; in practice only the most stubborn programmers can do template meta programming, and they even don't understand their own code after a while (I'm speaking from personal experience).
It would be so much nicer if we could just do meta-programming in the language itself, so to speak.
- coroutines - multi-stage/active library programming (i.e., something that fixes the syntactical mess of most template libraries) - precise garbage collection (not that I'm missing it) - fully opening up of the memory model (allowing libraries to implement complex memory handling such as garbage collection or persistence)
The sad part about this joke is that W3C is really forcing stuff like this down our throats. Instead, they should be focusing on providing us with the bare-metal methods to get things done. For example, were they to provide a standard for an accelerated virtual machine (without garbage collection), like NaCl, then a wealth of open-source projects could actually get things moving on the web. Imagine all the nice replacements for javascript and HTML that could come from that. That would be much more efficient than letting one organization control everything. Besides, they would have more time to actually work on the more essential parts of the standards, IMO information interchange and meta-data formats.
If the spec is a jungle for web-developers it must be hell for browser-vendors. Honestly, I don't have much faith in this whole process: the spec is so difficult that no vendor will ever get it right anymore.
I'm just waiting for the day when google's NaCl is more mature and we can just send native instructions to an accelerated virtual-machine-like browser. I'm feeling it's about time for that old "keep it simple" mantra. And it's time web-developers got back into control actually.
...are we going to be seeing an epic east Texas showdown...?
Nah, probably Apple will introduce their own awkward communication "standards", and Google will implement their own awkward user-interface principles. Subsequently, the universe will split in two halves and everybody has to choose sides or be sucked into the vacuum thus formed in between.
The whole principle of evolution is that good ideas are copied and bad ideas die. This principle works so well that even mother nature uses it. Now, thanks to the patent system, this brilliant idea is basically being defeated.
UI-patents are just silly, because imagine somebody patented the "play" button on hifi equipment...
It nowadays is not necessary anymore to physically open up a product to see if there's a patent being infringed upon, you can just see it from the outside, which is ridiculous.
Anyone else feel that the last decade control has been taken out of the hands of developers, in return for a big increase in compatibility headaches? I personally feel as if I'm being taken hostage by all these new environments. I cannot even have the guarantee that the javascript/HTML code I write now will still work in 1 year from now. This is of course ridiculous and completely contrary to the idea that technology should improve our lives as developers. And I think it cannot continue in this way.
The main issue is that the more complex webbrowsers become, the bigger the compatibility headache for developers. I don't claim to have the solution, but what Mozilla could do is take a more layered approach:
layer 1: basic opengl type of graphics api layer 2: low-level NaCl-esque virtual machine (see google code) layer 3a: high-level garbage collected languages like javascript (in "user-space!) layer 3b: w3c rendering engine (in "user-space"!) layer 4: web apps
Now here's the crucial point: every layer above level 2 should be accessible and replaceable by any user (i.e., webdeveloper), thus also the rendering engine layer (heck even the W3C specs could be replaced).
An architecture like this would (imho) solve a lot of development headaches and allow for a much richer open-source ecosystem.
-- Please clean up your code behind you. Thank you.
...it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy.
I never understood the appeal to highly educated people; I mean, 1. they are an advertisement company 2. the software they create is hardly revolutionary, it's all office software; I don't want to bash anyone but imho the paperclip is at the same level on the revolutionarity scale; well yeah, it's "on the internet", but that is something we are used to by now.
Why aren't these so called smart people not working in physics, or medicine? That would make more sense.
Rationale: web browsers are WAY too complicated to be ever secure; virtual machines, on the other hand need to support only a relatively small set of base instructions; as extra advantages, virtual machines are also more flexible and may relieve developers from the browser-compatibility headaches they've been having for years. Let's do it:)
Google should just convince the government (FTC) that Facebook has its users locked-in.
An analogy: society doesn't accept it when a telephone company prohibits or hinders its users from switching providers, so why not impose the same rules on social networks?
By the way, we also don't allow that telephone companies spy on their users (record conversations, etc.), but that's a different story.
Something that deserves more study is the question of why a large monolithic company can outcompete an ecosystem of smaller units in the first place.
Probably because of its anti-competitive advantage... a large conglomerate has the strength to lock its customers in, lock their competitors out. Heck, they create their own "ecosystem" and completely control it (look at the Apple "app" ecosystem).
How about limiting the number of employees of a company?:)
Then they can produce any locked-down stuff they want, except that they will not be able to reap society from intelligent workers, and any base products they use (bought from other companies) will be available to any other market-player.
Any conglomerate should be split up. It just make sense. Like modular programming does.
The output of any division of a conglomerate should be accessible to the whole market, not just the big encompassing company that holds the division.
Letting companies grow bigger and bigger only leads to near-monopolistic situations, and eventually less choice for the consumer. If, for example, Apple were split into two companies, one for software, one for hardware, this would probably lead to a much richer variety of products. And, also important, more opportunities for users to tinker:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually why I got myself a job in the pr0n industry.
I think developers still have enough reason to form a union. For example, if there was a union, it could very effectively ban the use of IE6 on the web, or it could put an end to the anti-competitive moves of apple, or force the W3C/WHATWG to give up their hijacking of web-standards.
Interfaces should not be patentable. Look at the misery that came from the patents on the FAT (file allocation table) design.
It is just bad for the overall market.
In retrospect, I guess they should have patented everything they could. But of course, legal departments are always lagging behind.
So now we have a standard for C++ which supports template-based programming a little better.
It's sad that we have to use different types of syntactical constructs for this meta type of programming. The whole template-based approach is turing-complete, but this is only a theoretical trait; in practice only the most stubborn programmers can do template meta programming, and they even don't understand their own code after a while (I'm speaking from personal experience).
It would be so much nicer if we could just do meta-programming in the language itself, so to speak.
List of missing features:
- coroutines
- multi-stage/active library programming (i.e., something that fixes the syntactical mess of most template libraries)
- precise garbage collection (not that I'm missing it)
- fully opening up of the memory model (allowing libraries to implement complex memory handling such as garbage collection or persistence)
are you really so stupid as to think that NaCl will be better?
You should read up on their approach to security. They have multiple rings of defense. Very interesting actually.
Native code is much simpler than any scripting language can ever be, and therefore it is actually much simpler to keep things safe in a provable way.
Besides, did you ever hear about software running inside VirtualBox or VMWare infecting the host system?
The sad part about this joke is that W3C is really forcing stuff like this down our throats. Instead, they should be focusing on providing us with the bare-metal methods to get things done. For example, were they to provide a standard for an accelerated virtual machine (without garbage collection), like NaCl, then a wealth of open-source projects could actually get things moving on the web. Imagine all the nice replacements for javascript and HTML that could come from that. That would be much more efficient than letting one organization control everything. Besides, they would have more time to actually work on the more essential parts of the standards, IMO information interchange and meta-data formats.
Very nice idea. Except, nobody is going to implement this because the stakes are too high.
Better come up with a solution for that problem first.
If the spec is a jungle for web-developers it must be hell for browser-vendors. Honestly, I don't have much faith in this whole process: the spec is so difficult that no vendor will ever get it right anymore.
I'm just waiting for the day when google's NaCl is more mature and we can just send native instructions to an accelerated virtual-machine-like browser. I'm feeling it's about time for that old "keep it simple" mantra. And it's time web-developers got back into control actually.
...are we going to be seeing an epic east Texas showdown...?
Nah, probably Apple will introduce their own awkward communication "standards", and Google will implement their own awkward user-interface principles. Subsequently, the universe will split in two halves and everybody has to choose sides or be sucked into the vacuum thus formed in between.
Doesn't matter. Lawyers (being good friends with law-makers) are making money, that's all that counts.
The whole principle of evolution is that good ideas are copied and bad ideas die. This principle works so well that even mother nature uses it. Now, thanks to the patent system, this brilliant idea is basically being defeated.
Fine. I just hope the engineers at Apple that read Slashdot feel good about themselves.
UI-patents are just silly, because imagine somebody patented the "play" button on hifi equipment...
It nowadays is not necessary anymore to physically open up a product to see if there's a patent being infringed upon, you can just see it from the outside, which is ridiculous.
Anyone else feel that the last decade control has been taken out of the hands of developers, in return for a big increase in compatibility headaches? I personally feel as if I'm being taken hostage by all these new environments. I cannot even have the guarantee that the javascript/HTML code I write now will still work in 1 year from now. This is of course ridiculous and completely contrary to the idea that technology should improve our lives as developers. And I think it cannot continue in this way.
The main issue is that the more complex webbrowsers become, the bigger the compatibility headache for developers.
I don't claim to have the solution, but what Mozilla could do is take a more layered approach:
layer 1: basic opengl type of graphics api
layer 2: low-level NaCl-esque virtual machine (see google code)
layer 3a: high-level garbage collected languages like javascript (in "user-space!)
layer 3b: w3c rendering engine (in "user-space"!)
layer 4: web apps
Now here's the crucial point: every layer above level 2 should be accessible and replaceable by any user (i.e., webdeveloper), thus also the rendering engine layer (heck even the W3C specs could be replaced).
An architecture like this would (imho) solve a lot of development headaches and allow for a much richer open-source ecosystem.
--
Please clean up your code behind you. Thank you.
...it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy.
I never understood the appeal to highly educated people; I mean, 1. they are an advertisement company 2. the software they create is hardly revolutionary, it's all office software; I don't want to bash anyone but imho the paperclip is at the same level on the revolutionarity scale; well yeah, it's "on the internet", but that is something we are used to by now.
Why aren't these so called smart people not working in physics, or medicine? That would make more sense.
Yes, but it seems that as long as lawyers can make more money with something, we're stuck with the game.
Replace web browsers by virtual machines.
Rationale: web browsers are WAY too complicated to be ever secure; virtual machines, on the other hand need to support only a relatively small set of base instructions; as extra advantages, virtual machines are also more flexible and may relieve developers from the browser-compatibility headaches they've been having for years. Let's do it :)
And of course in the pyramid is a stargate.
Nah, they'd need real physicists to develop such a thing, whereas google has only half-nerd software engineers capable only of making office software.
Google should just convince the government (FTC) that Facebook has its users locked-in.
An analogy: society doesn't accept it when a telephone company prohibits or hinders its users from switching providers, so why not impose the same rules on social networks?
By the way, we also don't allow that telephone companies spy on their users (record conversations, etc.), but that's a different story.
And, from a commercial perspective, the exact opposite is always much better.
As seen by that single company, that is. But from the perspective of the global economy it certainly is not.
Something that deserves more study is the question of why a large monolithic company can outcompete an ecosystem of smaller units in the first place.
Probably because of its anti-competitive advantage... a large conglomerate has the strength to lock its customers in, lock their competitors out. Heck, they create their own "ecosystem" and completely control it (look at the Apple "app" ecosystem).
How about limiting the number of employees of a company? :)
Then they can produce any locked-down stuff they want, except that they will not be able to reap society from intelligent workers, and any base products they use (bought from other companies) will be available to any other market-player.
Welcome to the open-economy.
Any conglomerate should be split up. It just make sense. Like modular programming does.
The output of any division of a conglomerate should be accessible to the whole market, not just the big encompassing company that holds the division.
Letting companies grow bigger and bigger only leads to near-monopolistic situations, and eventually less choice for the consumer. :)
If, for example, Apple were split into two companies, one for software, one for hardware, this would probably lead to a much richer variety of products. And, also important, more opportunities for users to tinker