I have to disagree on a couple points. First, I don't think it's the exception at all. I'm not going to provide a list of great Ajax applications, as that's been done a million times on Slashdot. What I have *not* seen is a reasonable list of Ajax failures. I am inclined to believe that a lot of criticism of Ajax is merely theoretical.
As for Google Earth v Google Maps, sure Google Earth is an interesting app. Is it a better app? Well, not really in terms of usefulness. Most of the time if I'm looking for an address, it's much easier to go to a web address than it is to launch another app. Then too, if you want to talk about excess, how about the time you spend waiting for Google Earth to zoom in on a location? How about the degradability you value? Will GE run on a machine that won't support Firefox? (And I'd should point out that GE doesn't do maps, at least the OSX version doesn't. Nor does it do directions. And it doesn't have a nifty API that allows people to make their own variations.)
Quite frankly, pretty much any information could be better "if it didn't have to be crammed into a browser." I like reading a book or a magazine better than reading a screen. However, that magazine isn't available everywhere, on every computer, all the time. Try going down to your local library and installing Google Earth on their machines. Ain't gonna happen. The reason all this functionality is being added to the browser is because the browser is convenient. I don't buy the notion that the browser will become people's entire OS, but if you think of the internet as being a big computer, which, in a sense, it is, then the browser is the UI. And like any UI, it needs to be capable and flexible, which is what we're seeing here.
Ok, let's consider an example: Google Maps. Are you suggesting that Google Maps prevents you from browsing a map the way you dictate? What exactly was it about MapQuest that was so flexible? Look, Ajax at its worst is no better than Flash at its worst, but at its best it provides *more* options, not fewer. And without the performance hit of reloading a page header and a bunch of navigation over and over.
Yeah, I was doing pages on paper way back in 1984, and now we've got to go calling it "the web." Goddamn buzzwords.
Seriously, everyone here clearly understands what is meant by Ajax, and it's less clunky than "asynchronously send/receive bits of data, dynamically update tables without refreshing the whole page," so I can't complain. You, however, are welcome to bitch until the cows come home.
because it works well for me, as a computer programmer and resonates with the ideas that I have about this universe.
I guess profundity is exclusive of universality. Given that most people are not computer programmers, "the most profound" is more than a bit of a stretch. Especially given that you are talking to a computer programmer who finds it trite.
All the other movie directors you used as examples, are all well, just too plain for my taste. So I should have said AFAIAC.
Fellini is plain? Kurosawa is plain? You have a strange notion of the word "plain."
I don't particularly like the Latin spelling of his name
Well then, by all means, just make up whatever spelling you like. I did my master's in music history, and I would have been slapped down had I ever written anything about someone named Chikoffski or Struvinskee.
But I did spend twenty nine years (that I remember) reading various books, and I mean I read more in a month than most people in years. Again, from my point of view Don Quixote is the most profound book and comedy of all times.
Your humilty is duly noted, as is your frantic backpedaling.
In this specific case you will have tough time giving me a counterexample.
The Canterbury Tales. Perhaps you need to narrow it down more. How about "the most profound Spanish comedy of the 17th century?" That I will accept unequivocally.
I got 133 yesterday that got hooked by my Apple Mail filter, which is a fairly light day -- usually I get around 200. About 20 or 30 make it to my inbox each day, but I'm too lazy to tweak the filter. Every now and then they find a new way through, and I get a spike until I do a little filter training, after which, back to 20 a day.
Then there are wierd floods of spam that occur every now and then. Sometimes I'll get like 500 in a few hours, all with almost identical subject lines.
Granted, I have five email accounts, and one of them is used for sending out a 1600+ subscriber newsletter. (I always get a massive flood of spam after the newsletter -- which is totally a sign-up affair -- goes out.)
It would really be pointless of me to start dragging out movies I think are more profound than The Matrix, so I'll just say that practically any random selection from Kubrick, Scorsese, Truffaut, Godard, Bertolucci, Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Peckinpah, Woody Allen, or Altman would have a good chance of eclipsing the Wachowsky's movie insofar as insight on the human condition is concerned.
I like The Matrix, and I think it's a fun movie, but philosophically it's a bunch of twadle. Just because the main character is a Christ figure doesn't make it profound. The Matrix raises a lot of questions that have been raised repeatedly (and more subtly) throughout the history of film (and philosophy), and then answers them in totally concrete terms. Q: How do we know what's real? A: Reality is gray and rusty, and machines are trying to kill you. What's profound about that?
As an aside, your assertion that Cervantes' (if you're going to cite him, for God's sake learn to spell it) book was "the most profound book of all times" is just breathtakingly silly. I mean, have you even read every book that's ever been written? I rather doubt it. Don Quixote is one great book among many. Art is not a race. There is no winner, and only teenagers and magazine feature editors waste their time making top ten lists. Don Quixote is clearly better than, say, Quantum Leap: The Novel, but Don Quixote vs. Frankenstein? Apples and oranges.
The Matrix is definitely one of the most profound movies of all time.
Oh please, let's not ejaculate on ourselves, alright? The Matrix was a good movie with a nice little brain tingler at the center, but "one of the most profound movies of all time?" Next thing you'll be telling me that Socrates has got nothing on the Wachowsky brothers. Agent Smith made a metaphor that works ok if you are willing to ignore a few basic facts, like, say that the whole notion of "classification" and "species" is a human one. Good for him. What that speech really boils down to is "humans suck." Not exactly groundbreaking philosophy there.
especially considering that there's been no substantiated evidence of willful fraud
If you believe that, I've got some land in Baghdad you might be interested in.
Seriously, there's been plenty of substantiated evidence, most of it printed in an interesting type of document known as a "newspaper." A recommendation: go read Mark Crispin Miller's article "None Dare Call it Stolen" in the August 2005 issue of Harper's, of which a lengthy excerpt is posted here. Miller catalogs all of this substantiated evidence you so lightly toss aside, and if you can read the whole article without ever harboring a doubt, you should probably get fitted for glasses.
George Bush isn't the sole "jackass" responsible for any of these.
I feel I should make a small emendation here. Bush isn't the sole jackass, but as head of the organization, he sets the tone, and the tone he has set has certainly been one of jackass-hood. Organizations tend to reflect the qualities of their leaders down the chain, and the U.S. government has been every bit the blundering, arrogant, incurious, secretive, pushy fool that the guy at the top is.
I can't remember who it was wrote the other day that if you heard your boss saying the kind of stupid, ignorant, and ungrammatical things that Bush has said every day for five years, how would it affect your attitute toward your job? Indeed.
I for one am happy that each security flaw that appears on the OSX platform gets this much attention. I hope it stays that way. Windows users may think they have a reason to gloat, but security flaws and new viruses there are so commonplace that no one even seems to care -- it's just another iteration of a larger problem. As long as we get this kind of uproar over easily-fixed flaws, OSX will always be a more secure platform.
Before human culture became subsumed under the term "content," these used to just be called "people." As the existence of the Internet attests, there are plenty of people who contribute to culture and couldn't care less whether they get paid for it.
But, you might have a point. The next time I have a conversation with someone, I think I'll suggest to them that I'm "providing content" and ask for a small fee.
Why do so many people think they have a right to dictate the terms of other people's businesses?
It has nothing to do with their business, and everything to do with mine. Once I own something they made, they shouldn't have any right to tell me what I can do to it. If I buy a Honda Civic and put a Ford V6 in it, neither company has any right to tell me that I've violated any laws. Once the money changes hands, it's my stuff.
So much for all the Slashdotters who solemnly proclaim, "I want the Internet to supply me with *information,* not gaudy Flash cartoons." I've said it before and I'll say it again -- broad though the Slashdot userbase is, there are other people with other concerns.
One nitpick: who "goes" online anymore? Hey everybody, let's go online!
Do you know how much energy is required to grow the food that powers your legs??? Cycling is ridiculously inefficient. Take a look at some real conservationists: dead people!
(Actually, this is the OP's post taken to its logical extreme.)
Reality and perception are two entirely different things.
Yeah, and the reality is that this is a retarded statement, not worthy of the average couch potato. You probably aren't worth the response, but in a nutshell, this is tantamount to walking into a literature seminar and shouting, "All French novels are shit." Hey everybody, look at me! I have this totally poorly considered and shockingly unoriginal idea about the nature of existence! Put me in the pantheon of the Great Minds!
IMHO, blah blah.
Strike the "H." You're about as humble as Joseph Stalin.
Slashdot Mirror
Ouch.
They're never right. Why should I be?
Get it? Huh? Huh?
I have to disagree on a couple points. First, I don't think it's the exception at all. I'm not going to provide a list of great Ajax applications, as that's been done a million times on Slashdot. What I have *not* seen is a reasonable list of Ajax failures. I am inclined to believe that a lot of criticism of Ajax is merely theoretical.
As for Google Earth v Google Maps, sure Google Earth is an interesting app. Is it a better app? Well, not really in terms of usefulness. Most of the time if I'm looking for an address, it's much easier to go to a web address than it is to launch another app. Then too, if you want to talk about excess, how about the time you spend waiting for Google Earth to zoom in on a location? How about the degradability you value? Will GE run on a machine that won't support Firefox? (And I'd should point out that GE doesn't do maps, at least the OSX version doesn't. Nor does it do directions. And it doesn't have a nifty API that allows people to make their own variations.)
Quite frankly, pretty much any information could be better "if it didn't have to be crammed into a browser." I like reading a book or a magazine better than reading a screen. However, that magazine isn't available everywhere, on every computer, all the time. Try going down to your local library and installing Google Earth on their machines. Ain't gonna happen. The reason all this functionality is being added to the browser is because the browser is convenient. I don't buy the notion that the browser will become people's entire OS, but if you think of the internet as being a big computer, which, in a sense, it is, then the browser is the UI. And like any UI, it needs to be capable and flexible, which is what we're seeing here.
Ok, let's consider an example: Google Maps. Are you suggesting that Google Maps prevents you from browsing a map the way you dictate? What exactly was it about MapQuest that was so flexible? Look, Ajax at its worst is no better than Flash at its worst, but at its best it provides *more* options, not fewer. And without the performance hit of reloading a page header and a bunch of navigation over and over.
Me thinks his knee jerketh too much.
Yeah, I was doing pages on paper way back in 1984, and now we've got to go calling it "the web." Goddamn buzzwords.
Seriously, everyone here clearly understands what is meant by Ajax, and it's less clunky than "asynchronously send/receive bits of data, dynamically update tables without refreshing the whole page," so I can't complain. You, however, are welcome to bitch until the cows come home.
Yeah, but no built in support for errors or callbacks.
Not even one mention of "Web 2.0"!
You can always count on slashdotters to shoot down anything that smacks of enthusiasm.because it works well for me, as a computer programmer and resonates with the ideas that I have about this universe.
I guess profundity is exclusive of universality. Given that most people are not computer programmers, "the most profound" is more than a bit of a stretch. Especially given that you are talking to a computer programmer who finds it trite.All the other movie directors you used as examples, are all well, just too plain for my taste. So I should have said AFAIAC.
Fellini is plain? Kurosawa is plain? You have a strange notion of the word "plain."I don't particularly like the Latin spelling of his name
Well then, by all means, just make up whatever spelling you like. I did my master's in music history, and I would have been slapped down had I ever written anything about someone named Chikoffski or Struvinskee.But I did spend twenty nine years (that I remember) reading various books, and I mean I read more in a month than most people in years. Again, from my point of view Don Quixote is the most profound book and comedy of all times.
Your humilty is duly noted, as is your frantic backpedaling.In this specific case you will have tough time giving me a counterexample.
The Canterbury Tales. Perhaps you need to narrow it down more. How about "the most profound Spanish comedy of the 17th century?" That I will accept unequivocally.I got 133 yesterday that got hooked by my Apple Mail filter, which is a fairly light day -- usually I get around 200. About 20 or 30 make it to my inbox each day, but I'm too lazy to tweak the filter. Every now and then they find a new way through, and I get a spike until I do a little filter training, after which, back to 20 a day.
Then there are wierd floods of spam that occur every now and then. Sometimes I'll get like 500 in a few hours, all with almost identical subject lines.
Granted, I have five email accounts, and one of them is used for sending out a 1600+ subscriber newsletter. (I always get a massive flood of spam after the newsletter -- which is totally a sign-up affair -- goes out.)
So there's that. My 2 cents.
It would really be pointless of me to start dragging out movies I think are more profound than The Matrix, so I'll just say that practically any random selection from Kubrick, Scorsese, Truffaut, Godard, Bertolucci, Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Peckinpah, Woody Allen, or Altman would have a good chance of eclipsing the Wachowsky's movie insofar as insight on the human condition is concerned.
I like The Matrix, and I think it's a fun movie, but philosophically it's a bunch of twadle. Just because the main character is a Christ figure doesn't make it profound. The Matrix raises a lot of questions that have been raised repeatedly (and more subtly) throughout the history of film (and philosophy), and then answers them in totally concrete terms. Q: How do we know what's real? A: Reality is gray and rusty, and machines are trying to kill you. What's profound about that?
As an aside, your assertion that Cervantes' (if you're going to cite him, for God's sake learn to spell it) book was "the most profound book of all times" is just breathtakingly silly. I mean, have you even read every book that's ever been written? I rather doubt it. Don Quixote is one great book among many. Art is not a race. There is no winner, and only teenagers and magazine feature editors waste their time making top ten lists. Don Quixote is clearly better than, say, Quantum Leap: The Novel, but Don Quixote vs. Frankenstein? Apples and oranges.
The Matrix is definitely one of the most profound movies of all time.
Oh please, let's not ejaculate on ourselves, alright? The Matrix was a good movie with a nice little brain tingler at the center, but "one of the most profound movies of all time?" Next thing you'll be telling me that Socrates has got nothing on the Wachowsky brothers. Agent Smith made a metaphor that works ok if you are willing to ignore a few basic facts, like, say that the whole notion of "classification" and "species" is a human one. Good for him. What that speech really boils down to is "humans suck." Not exactly groundbreaking philosophy there.What, is it too much to expect a book on a specialized topic to contain specialized jargon?
I would like to thank the MPAA for alerting me (and uncounted others) to some good torrent sites.
especially considering that there's been no substantiated evidence of willful fraud
If you believe that, I've got some land in Baghdad you might be interested in.
Seriously, there's been plenty of substantiated evidence, most of it printed in an interesting type of document known as a "newspaper." A recommendation: go read Mark Crispin Miller's article "None Dare Call it Stolen" in the August 2005 issue of Harper's, of which a lengthy excerpt is posted here. Miller catalogs all of this substantiated evidence you so lightly toss aside, and if you can read the whole article without ever harboring a doubt, you should probably get fitted for glasses.
George Bush isn't the sole "jackass" responsible for any of these.
I feel I should make a small emendation here. Bush isn't the sole jackass, but as head of the organization, he sets the tone, and the tone he has set has certainly been one of jackass-hood. Organizations tend to reflect the qualities of their leaders down the chain, and the U.S. government has been every bit the blundering, arrogant, incurious, secretive, pushy fool that the guy at the top is.
I can't remember who it was wrote the other day that if you heard your boss saying the kind of stupid, ignorant, and ungrammatical things that Bush has said every day for five years, how would it affect your attitute toward your job? Indeed.
I for one am happy that each security flaw that appears on the OSX platform gets this much attention. I hope it stays that way. Windows users may think they have a reason to gloat, but security flaws and new viruses there are so commonplace that no one even seems to care -- it's just another iteration of a larger problem. As long as we get this kind of uproar over easily-fixed flaws, OSX will always be a more secure platform.
people who produce content want to be paid.
Before human culture became subsumed under the term "content," these used to just be called "people." As the existence of the Internet attests, there are plenty of people who contribute to culture and couldn't care less whether they get paid for it.
But, you might have a point. The next time I have a conversation with someone, I think I'll suggest to them that I'm "providing content" and ask for a small fee.
Why do so many people think they have a right to dictate the terms of other people's businesses?
It has nothing to do with their business, and everything to do with mine. Once I own something they made, they shouldn't have any right to tell me what I can do to it. If I buy a Honda Civic and put a Ford V6 in it, neither company has any right to tell me that I've violated any laws. Once the money changes hands, it's my stuff.
When I was a boy, I had to walk 18 miles, uphill, in the snow, with no shoes on, just to get to Yahoo.com. And back then, it only had 4 links.
Dammit dude, don't you realize I have work to do?!
So much for all the Slashdotters who solemnly proclaim, "I want the Internet to supply me with *information,* not gaudy Flash cartoons." I've said it before and I'll say it again -- broad though the Slashdot userbase is, there are other people with other concerns.
One nitpick: who "goes" online anymore? Hey everybody, let's go online!
And we can always fall back on nuclear energy.
Are we going to have nuclear plants in our vehicles? Are our Lunchables going to come in nuclear blister packs?Do you know how much energy is required to grow the food that powers your legs??? Cycling is ridiculously inefficient. Take a look at some real conservationists: dead people!
(Actually, this is the OP's post taken to its logical extreme.)
Reality and perception are two entirely different things.
Yeah, and the reality is that this is a retarded statement, not worthy of the average couch potato. You probably aren't worth the response, but in a nutshell, this is tantamount to walking into a literature seminar and shouting, "All French novels are shit." Hey everybody, look at me! I have this totally poorly considered and shockingly unoriginal idea about the nature of existence! Put me in the pantheon of the Great Minds!IMHO, blah blah.
Strike the "H." You're about as humble as Joseph Stalin.