And Apples does protect its users - you can set up parental controls and disable in-app purchases. In fact, I'm using parental controls on my own device to disable Ping.
If you give your kids free reign with your credit card, you shouldn't be surprised when they actually, you know, spend money on it. Sheez.
On the other topic, though, I do agree. Apple should remove games with in-app purchases from the "free" list, because they really aren't. Many of them are just demos for the real game with an in-app purchase to unlock the full version, much like the old shareware concept. Others are social media games that allow you to spend the better part of a car on crap.
The only ones I support are the ones where the in-app purchase feels more like a "hey, I really liked this game, here's a couple bucks". There's a few, for example, where you get some 20 or so levels with the game and can buy another 5 or so for money. Yes, I didn't reverse the numbers there, you get the largest part of the game for free and if you enjoy it so much, can buy a bit extra.
But still, I'd love to see a search or filter option for really free games.
While MS has its research department thinking up old thoughts everyone and his dog has had for the past 20 years, we already have metadata in half a dozen non-MS filesystems, and we have resource forks, extended attributes and user-presentation layers that will happily show the user a directory as the application contained inside because really that's what he cares about.
What we don't have is some of the other interesting ideas we had 40 years ago. Some of them went out rightfully, some of them we simply lost because they were good ideas that weren't ported to our modern operating systems.
So, you want to re-invent the file? How about you come up with one idea that's actually new? Because otherwise it's re-hashing, not re-inventing.:-)
A game that is zero-sum over consequtive rounds, but not zero-sum in its entirety? I can't imagine how such a thing would even be possible.
No, even in the short term, the economy is not zero-sum. And there is still the flawed assumption that I'm making the additional income at the expense of those who have less than I have. Maybe I'm making my money at the expense of those who have even more?
There is still the flawed core assumption that somehow the total amount of income is sitting there in a pot, waiting to be distributed to everyone on the planet. If that were so, then deviations from the average would benefit one and be to the detriment of the other. But it isn't that way. There's no pot that is being distributed.
He was just trying to emphasize how most of the "99%" protesters live as a 1%'er when considering the global wealth distribution.
And I am questioning his core assumptions. Maybe the 99% in Europe and the US are the 10% (let's not exaggerate the population numbers of the 3rd world, they're not 99% of the world population) on the global scale. That makes the protests more valid, not less. It means that the 1% who own most of the wealth are even more ahead of the global poor than if the west had a more equal wealth distribution.
And I am questioning the insulting request to shut up and be happy just because we are comparatively well-off. Sorry, justice doesn't work that way. We don't tell the wrongly imprisoned to suck it up because a thousand years ago they would've been killed, so they should be happy to be alive, do we? An injustice is an injustice, even in the face of even greater injustices.
Nonsense, all of it. I'll pick out just some common points:
a) Economy doesn't work on a "fixed average" principle. The thought that for every $ that I make above some arbitrary average (which one, arithmetic, geometric, median? why?) someone else makes a $ less is just bonkers. Apparently, there's somewhere an assumption in there that the total amount of global wages is coming out of one fixed source, i.e. the same bank account pays all wages on the globe, so whenever I take something out, there's less in it. But the economy doesn't work that way. Economy is not the product of money storage, it is the process of money flow. The $ I make is not vanishing from anywhere, it is going to go somewhere else, i.e. I will be spending it again. Possibly on some sweatshop product. In other word, some poor working is going to get his $ exactly because I got mine first and could spend it. Yes, I realize he's going to get maybe a cent of the $ I spend. But if I hadn't had that $, he wouldn't even have gotten that cent. I didn't take a $ from him, and frankly, if I hadn't gotten the raise and had not gotten my $, do you really think some poor people somewhere else would have gotten it instead?
b) Being well-off does not disallow you to protest against the injustice you see. Having some justice does not preclude you from demanding real justice. That's a stupid argument. Basically, you could tell anyone who protests against anything today that he should up because somewhere someone else is certainly worse off. It's a trap. It's a "shup up" strategy. Fortunately, the 99% have finally avoided that trap, which has stopped movements for decades. "Think globally, act locally" was a good principle, but not thought through. If you beat me with a stick, that is not ok just because someone somewhere is getting beaten with a bigger stick. I can still demand you stop beating me, and take action to stop you. The argument "someone else is getting beaten worse" is stupid at best.
c) Protests by the middle class are, historically speaking, a ton more effective than protests by the poor. If you look at revolutions throughout history, the ruling class was overthrown way, way more often by the middle class than by the poor. And most often when the middle class and the poor were united against the ruling class. That is when the rulers become afraid, because usually, they position the middle class as a defensive system against the poor - with arguments like yours. That they should be happy with what they have, because others have less. With the addendum that if they want to keep it, they should defend it against the poor. But when the middle class turns around and says "hey, wait. Why fight the poor? You have more than we do, we could take it and split it up between the poor and us, and a lot of people would be very happy" - that's when palaces get stormed and regimes toppled.
d) Sweatshops have a bad rep, but I dare say it is overrated. Oh, I certainly wouldn't want to work there - but a lot of the poor voluntarily do. There are many who leave their farms and go to the cities in order to work in factories. It's a miserable lot, but it beats the alternatives. And that's what so many of us forget when we compare it to our own lives. Sure it would suck to be a factory worker in China today. But China is lifting several millions of its people out of even worse poverty every year. Sweatshops are how it works. Maybe the alternative would be $250 jeans - but it would also mean more poor people, because if the wages are the same in Europe and China, you'd probably buy the jeans from some European company, and the hypothetical chinese factory worker would not end up having the same wage - he would end up having none. Yes, our desire to buy stuff cheaply is contributing to low wages elsewhere. However, it is also contributing to there being wages for this stuff at all. And those wages would be higher if we would be paying more, yes. They would also be higher if the 1% had a yearly income of, say, 20 ti
If you want things to change, the first thing you need to do is get your ass up and take some personal risks. And I'm not even talking "bullet in the head" risk like people in the near east did when they got rid of their dictators. I'm talking "being denied the flight" risk.
But if enough people do it, things will change. That's what this Occupy movement is all about. You can agree or disagree with them as much as you like, but one thing is true about it: The people, united, have the power.
In the end, lobbyism and everything rely on your dollars. Whether it's you as the customer giving them your money, you as the employee generating company value, or you as the taxpayer funding the government.
Now in many places the system is intentionally set up so that you don't really have an alternative. That's not a conspiracy - it does make a lot of sense to have centralized security in airports instead of each airline running their own. However, if people take the train instead of flying where possible, and let the airline know that it was because of TSA, and enough people do that, then the airlines will do the math and bring their lobbyists into the game.
And if they include the trains, too, use the car instead.
Yes, it means accepting some inconvenience.
Ask yourself if, when your kids or grandkids ask you why you did nothing when the police state was put into place, you want your answer to be "I was too lazy" or "it would've been inconvenient".
You don't have to be a drop-out, radical or full-time protester to make some change happen. I personally think the Occupy movement is a good thing. I can't pitch my tent out there with them for many reasons and yes, for some convenience. But I was there at the protests and I've made it a point to swing by the camp and ask if they need anything whenever I'm nearby. It's not much. But it beats whining on the Internet how you can't do anything about it. (And before you ask why I don't do anything against TSA: I don't live in the US, so I don't have the TSA problem. If I had, I sure would.)
A policeman on every corner and all that. Except that they won't be police, exactly - they're much cheaper and less well trained.
With all their flaws and mistakes, I still respect the police in general. My respect for private security companies and crap like the TSA can only be seen with a very strong microscope. You can become a guy like that in a week, with a total of two days of training, did you know that? Most of those who ask you the "would you like fries with that?" question know more about their jobs than many of those bullies.
Yes, there are some good men and women in there as well. I have no idea what they're doing there, but they exist. They're the exceptions that don't invalidate the rule.
I've actually worked with that one. Not a brilliant piece of software. Not horrible either, windows is definitely far worse and a lot more buggy. Then again, it's also a lot more complicated.
Ah, so basically, they've cannibalized another standard, and then abuse the dead corpse as an excuse for leveraging their monopoly yet again, yes?
Look, they aren't dumb. They know why IE has a minority market share on home PCs by now, and has been constantly falling for a decade, but is still the majority player in the corporate environment. Because an IT department tries to support as little different software as possible, and if there's already a browser in there that you can't get out easily, then the choice is absolutely clear and unless there is a really, really compelling reason not to, IE will be the offical company standard.
And that's why it's survived this long, despite being a horrible excuse for a browser (though I'll admit that IE9 appears to be somewhat workable).
Actually, according to the article the car was leased. Giving him a new one every 6 months is basically making a shorter contract than usually (I think most car leases go for 2 years). Since after half a year they could still easily lease the car to someone else, though at a reduced rate, I don't think the deal was all that expensive. At that price level, I'd be surprised if special deals according to customer wishes weren't a pretty normal thing.
He can code, yes. I've yet to see evidence of anything even resembling brilliance. What code of his is actually known to be written by him (and not bought elsewhere) is well within the capabilities of average programmers of the respective time.
(which Steve Jobs could never do)
AFAIK he never claimed to. He's most definitely not the nicest guy around. Then again, neither is Gates. Oh yeah, he's trying to whitewash his name now with billions that he's taken from society in the form of monopoly rent. When people give away money, never forget where they got it in the first place. Al Capone also gave money to charities.
I'm tired of this "my hero" blabla, no matter who he is. All these people are first and foremost humans - flawed and all. None of them are heroes, and you should make individual traits of them your inspiration, never the whole man (or woman). With real people, who have flaws, make mistakes, sometimes act too emotionally or too rationally, you can always paint the picture this way or that way. It's been done in many examples: A short biography of exclusively 100% true statements about someone, and at the end the name is revealed and it turns out that the seemingly great, compassionate man was a bloodthirsty dictator, or the apparently evil sociopaths is a revered historical hero.
It's not only that you see what you want to see, it's also that sometimes the very same trait can be seen as positive ("focussed and determined") or negative ("obsessed maniac with no life").
Frankly, those handicapped parking spots are more politics than anything. I think there's an episode of Bullshit! about them, go check it out. I don't agree with everything (not in general and not on that episode), but they do make a number of good points.
I can totally understand his disgust at them. Over here, I've been to a few places where I'm not so certain anymore the people responsible are joking or on their way to insanity. There's parking spaces for handicapped people, for women with children, for single women, and some others. What's next, segregation by hair colour, or are we already at skin colour again?
I don't park in handicapped spots, because a) I understand that there's a 0.1% chance someone who actually needs it might come by during the time I'm there and b) the risk of a fine is real. But I don't support them in 90% of the cases. There are some rare exceptions.
I know the end-user probably doesn't care, but there's quite a difference there.
An IP stack is a purely internal beast. It's a protocol, data exchange, etc.
I'm sure nobody would complain if MS had, say, added a HTML or DOM library to the OS. But a browser is an application, no matter how desperately you try to muddy the waters by "integrating" it with the OS.
But really, 10 years later, do we really have to revisit this point again and again? Even after political intervention, they were still/b found guilty.
That they do what HTML5 is supposed to allow - not worry about which browser is used for them?
Win8 will certainly detect if a "default browser" has been set up, just like Win7 and previous do. So it could easily find upon launching a "Metro" app if no default browser is installed and complain then. And if a default browser is set up use that.
Betting on WP7 is a gamble, but it does have the chance of a big payoff, and Microsoft's backing isn't something to be sneezed at.
Contrary to Apple and Google, however, Nokia isn't better some department that may or may not grow big. They're betting the farm.
If I had Nokia stocks, I'd be selling them as fast as I can. But maybe that's just because I'm not a gambler and don't particularily enjoy the thrill of maybe losing everything.
I've been writing stuff that runs on anything but IE for the last 6 years, it's a pleasure. Who gives a fuck about IE?
Those of us who deal with corporate customers. For my private online stuff, my attitude is pretty much yours. A browser game of mine actually displays an "some features won't work, please upgrade to a real browser" notice if it detects IE.
But IE is still the default and often only browser in many company networks. If that's where your customers are, you need to support IE. Sadly.
Google creating programming languages is sort of like Yahoo or Facebook creating programming languages. In Google's case, I suspect that these creations have little to do with their actual corporate mission and more to do with their wildly undisciplined engineering management.
(That doesn't indicate they're good or bad languages, of course.)
It also doesn't indicate that "undisciplined" is bad in any way. A lot of the successful Google projects have come out of their "long leash" attitude towards their coders.
Clearly it doesn't actually affect the quality or the usability of the language - JS seems to be used just fine.
Actually, JS sucks things I can't write without pissing off the profanity filter. Very few people use it without some library (prototype, jquery, etc.) shielding them from its worst. And it still blows. But it's there in all the browsers, so if you need web-applications with client-side functionality, that's what you use.
If anyone were to replace JS with a real programming language, with the same amount of browser-support, you can count me in on jumping ship.
Like any other new programming language of the past decade, Dart sounds like a solution to problems I don't have.
Show me something that I can't do in existing, established languages. Or show me something that works considerably easier, faster or better - with the stress on considerably.
Otherwise, no matter what your pitch is, I simply don't need it.
From his remarks, I don't see any actual research results. Applying what works in one field to another is not automatically a recipe for success. Try applying your Counterstrike skills to your love life...
There is certainly a lot that can be improved in education. As I said, I know people in the field, people who have degrees in the subject. Their feedback is that a lack of funding and resources in general is main problem #1, combined with a huge increase of responsibilities and demands on teachers, because parents increasingly outsource the whole "raising a child" thing. Teachers aren't expected to just teach, they also need to cover a lot of bases that parents used to. That's problem #2. These two issues combined - more and more complex work with fewer resources - results in a very predictable outcome.
Making the teachers better certainly is a good idea. But if you want to improve education it's like buying a new graphics card when your problem really is that you don't have enough RAM.
So what, exactly, are Bill's credentials to talk about education? I know people who studied the subject (yes, you study it - teachers aren't some random dofuses who go around talking crap, there's actually quite a lot that goes into teaching.
When I remember Bill's ghostwritten books, and his public speeches, my impression is that he really doesn't know all that much, and if he weren't filthy rich, few people would listen to him. Somehow, we equate success in one field with knowledge in all fields, and that's nonsense.
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And Apples does protect its users - you can set up parental controls and disable in-app purchases. In fact, I'm using parental controls on my own device to disable Ping.
If you give your kids free reign with your credit card, you shouldn't be surprised when they actually, you know, spend money on it. Sheez.
On the other topic, though, I do agree. Apple should remove games with in-app purchases from the "free" list, because they really aren't. Many of them are just demos for the real game with an in-app purchase to unlock the full version, much like the old shareware concept. Others are social media games that allow you to spend the better part of a car on crap.
The only ones I support are the ones where the in-app purchase feels more like a "hey, I really liked this game, here's a couple bucks". There's a few, for example, where you get some 20 or so levels with the game and can buy another 5 or so for money. Yes, I didn't reverse the numbers there, you get the largest part of the game for free and if you enjoy it so much, can buy a bit extra.
But still, I'd love to see a search or filter option for really free games.
While MS has its research department thinking up old thoughts everyone and his dog has had for the past 20 years, we already have metadata in half a dozen non-MS filesystems, and we have resource forks, extended attributes and user-presentation layers that will happily show the user a directory as the application contained inside because really that's what he cares about.
What we don't have is some of the other interesting ideas we had 40 years ago. Some of them went out rightfully, some of them we simply lost because they were good ideas that weren't ported to our modern operating systems.
So, you want to re-invent the file? How about you come up with one idea that's actually new? Because otherwise it's re-hashing, not re-inventing. :-)
A game that is zero-sum over consequtive rounds, but not zero-sum in its entirety? I can't imagine how such a thing would even be possible.
No, even in the short term, the economy is not zero-sum. And there is still the flawed assumption that I'm making the additional income at the expense of those who have less than I have. Maybe I'm making my money at the expense of those who have even more?
There is still the flawed core assumption that somehow the total amount of income is sitting there in a pot, waiting to be distributed to everyone on the planet. If that were so, then deviations from the average would benefit one and be to the detriment of the other. But it isn't that way. There's no pot that is being distributed.
He was just trying to emphasize how most of the "99%" protesters live as a 1%'er when considering the global wealth distribution.
And I am questioning his core assumptions. Maybe the 99% in Europe and the US are the 10% (let's not exaggerate the population numbers of the 3rd world, they're not 99% of the world population) on the global scale. That makes the protests more valid, not less. It means that the 1% who own most of the wealth are even more ahead of the global poor than if the west had a more equal wealth distribution.
And I am questioning the insulting request to shut up and be happy just because we are comparatively well-off. Sorry, justice doesn't work that way. We don't tell the wrongly imprisoned to suck it up because a thousand years ago they would've been killed, so they should be happy to be alive, do we? An injustice is an injustice, even in the face of even greater injustices.
Nonsense, all of it. I'll pick out just some common points:
a) Economy doesn't work on a "fixed average" principle. The thought that for every $ that I make above some arbitrary average (which one, arithmetic, geometric, median? why?) someone else makes a $ less is just bonkers. Apparently, there's somewhere an assumption in there that the total amount of global wages is coming out of one fixed source, i.e. the same bank account pays all wages on the globe, so whenever I take something out, there's less in it.
But the economy doesn't work that way. Economy is not the product of money storage, it is the process of money flow. The $ I make is not vanishing from anywhere, it is going to go somewhere else, i.e. I will be spending it again. Possibly on some sweatshop product. In other word, some poor working is going to get his $ exactly because I got mine first and could spend it. Yes, I realize he's going to get maybe a cent of the $ I spend. But if I hadn't had that $, he wouldn't even have gotten that cent. I didn't take a $ from him, and frankly, if I hadn't gotten the raise and had not gotten my $, do you really think some poor people somewhere else would have gotten it instead?
b) Being well-off does not disallow you to protest against the injustice you see. Having some justice does not preclude you from demanding real justice. That's a stupid argument. Basically, you could tell anyone who protests against anything today that he should up because somewhere someone else is certainly worse off.
It's a trap. It's a "shup up" strategy. Fortunately, the 99% have finally avoided that trap, which has stopped movements for decades. "Think globally, act locally" was a good principle, but not thought through. If you beat me with a stick, that is not ok just because someone somewhere is getting beaten with a bigger stick. I can still demand you stop beating me, and take action to stop you. The argument "someone else is getting beaten worse" is stupid at best.
c) Protests by the middle class are, historically speaking, a ton more effective than protests by the poor. If you look at revolutions throughout history, the ruling class was overthrown way, way more often by the middle class than by the poor. And most often when the middle class and the poor were united against the ruling class. That is when the rulers become afraid, because usually, they position the middle class as a defensive system against the poor - with arguments like yours. That they should be happy with what they have, because others have less. With the addendum that if they want to keep it, they should defend it against the poor. But when the middle class turns around and says "hey, wait. Why fight the poor? You have more than we do, we could take it and split it up between the poor and us, and a lot of people would be very happy" - that's when palaces get stormed and regimes toppled.
d) Sweatshops have a bad rep, but I dare say it is overrated. Oh, I certainly wouldn't want to work there - but a lot of the poor voluntarily do. There are many who leave their farms and go to the cities in order to work in factories. It's a miserable lot, but it beats the alternatives. And that's what so many of us forget when we compare it to our own lives. Sure it would suck to be a factory worker in China today. But China is lifting several millions of its people out of even worse poverty every year. Sweatshops are how it works. Maybe the alternative would be $250 jeans - but it would also mean more poor people, because if the wages are the same in Europe and China, you'd probably buy the jeans from some European company, and the hypothetical chinese factory worker would not end up having the same wage - he would end up having none.
Yes, our desire to buy stuff cheaply is contributing to low wages elsewhere. However, it is also contributing to there being wages for this stuff at all. And those wages would be higher if we would be paying more, yes. They would also be higher if the 1% had a yearly income of, say, 20 ti
Take the bus, find someone to share a ride with, be creative.
If you want things to change, the first thing you need to do is get your ass up and take some personal risks. And I'm not even talking "bullet in the head" risk like people in the near east did when they got rid of their dictators. I'm talking "being denied the flight" risk.
But if enough people do it, things will change. That's what this Occupy movement is all about. You can agree or disagree with them as much as you like, but one thing is true about it: The people, united, have the power.
In the end, lobbyism and everything rely on your dollars. Whether it's you as the customer giving them your money, you as the employee generating company value, or you as the taxpayer funding the government.
Now in many places the system is intentionally set up so that you don't really have an alternative. That's not a conspiracy - it does make a lot of sense to have centralized security in airports instead of each airline running their own. However, if people take the train instead of flying where possible, and let the airline know that it was because of TSA, and enough people do that, then the airlines will do the math and bring their lobbyists into the game.
And if they include the trains, too, use the car instead.
Yes, it means accepting some inconvenience.
Ask yourself if, when your kids or grandkids ask you why you did nothing when the police state was put into place, you want your answer to be "I was too lazy" or "it would've been inconvenient".
You don't have to be a drop-out, radical or full-time protester to make some change happen. I personally think the Occupy movement is a good thing. I can't pitch my tent out there with them for many reasons and yes, for some convenience. But I was there at the protests and I've made it a point to swing by the camp and ask if they need anything whenever I'm nearby. It's not much. But it beats whining on the Internet how you can't do anything about it.
(And before you ask why I don't do anything against TSA: I don't live in the US, so I don't have the TSA problem. If I had, I sure would.)
A policeman on every corner and all that. Except that they won't be police, exactly - they're much cheaper and less well trained.
With all their flaws and mistakes, I still respect the police in general. My respect for private security companies and crap like the TSA can only be seen with a very strong microscope. You can become a guy like that in a week, with a total of two days of training, did you know that? Most of those who ask you the "would you like fries with that?" question know more about their jobs than many of those bullies.
Yes, there are some good men and women in there as well. I have no idea what they're doing there, but they exist. They're the exceptions that don't invalidate the rule.
Why use a flying car? I would just catch a pig and use it a flying mount.
Cars have trunks, pigs not so much.
That's well known.
I've actually worked with that one. Not a brilliant piece of software. Not horrible either, windows is definitely far worse and a lot more buggy. Then again, it's also a lot more complicated.
So, come again?
Ah, so basically, they've cannibalized another standard, and then abuse the dead corpse as an excuse for leveraging their monopoly yet again, yes?
Look, they aren't dumb. They know why IE has a minority market share on home PCs by now, and has been constantly falling for a decade, but is still the majority player in the corporate environment. Because an IT department tries to support as little different software as possible, and if there's already a browser in there that you can't get out easily, then the choice is absolutely clear and unless there is a really, really compelling reason not to, IE will be the offical company standard.
And that's why it's survived this long, despite being a horrible excuse for a browser (though I'll admit that IE9 appears to be somewhat workable).
Actually, according to the article the car was leased. Giving him a new one every 6 months is basically making a shorter contract than usually (I think most car leases go for 2 years). Since after half a year they could still easily lease the car to someone else, though at a reduced rate, I don't think the deal was all that expensive. At that price level, I'd be surprised if special deals according to customer wishes weren't a pretty normal thing.
Gates. This guy is a brilliant programmer
Err, what?
He can code, yes. I've yet to see evidence of anything even resembling brilliance. What code of his is actually known to be written by him (and not bought elsewhere) is well within the capabilities of average programmers of the respective time.
(which Steve Jobs could never do)
AFAIK he never claimed to. He's most definitely not the nicest guy around. Then again, neither is Gates. Oh yeah, he's trying to whitewash his name now with billions that he's taken from society in the form of monopoly rent. When people give away money, never forget where they got it in the first place. Al Capone also gave money to charities.
I'm tired of this "my hero" blabla, no matter who he is. All these people are first and foremost humans - flawed and all. None of them are heroes, and you should make individual traits of them your inspiration, never the whole man (or woman).
With real people, who have flaws, make mistakes, sometimes act too emotionally or too rationally, you can always paint the picture this way or that way. It's been done in many examples: A short biography of exclusively 100% true statements about someone, and at the end the name is revealed and it turns out that the seemingly great, compassionate man was a bloodthirsty dictator, or the apparently evil sociopaths is a revered historical hero.
It's not only that you see what you want to see, it's also that sometimes the very same trait can be seen as positive ("focussed and determined") or negative ("obsessed maniac with no life").
Frankly, those handicapped parking spots are more politics than anything. I think there's an episode of Bullshit! about them, go check it out. I don't agree with everything (not in general and not on that episode), but they do make a number of good points.
I can totally understand his disgust at them. Over here, I've been to a few places where I'm not so certain anymore the people responsible are joking or on their way to insanity. There's parking spaces for handicapped people, for women with children, for single women, and some others. What's next, segregation by hair colour, or are we already at skin colour again?
I don't park in handicapped spots, because a) I understand that there's a 0.1% chance someone who actually needs it might come by during the time I'm there and b) the risk of a fine is real. But I don't support them in 90% of the cases. There are some rare exceptions.
I know the end-user probably doesn't care, but there's quite a difference there.
An IP stack is a purely internal beast. It's a protocol, data exchange, etc.
I'm sure nobody would complain if MS had, say, added a HTML or DOM library to the OS. But a browser is an application, no matter how desperately you try to muddy the waters by "integrating" it with the OS.
But really, 10 years later, do we really have to revisit this point again and again? Even after political intervention, they were still/b found guilty.
how can MS make sure that Firefox would render Metro style UI apps correctly?
By making them properly standards-compliant. You know, HTML5 isn't exactly a Firefox add-on.
That they do what HTML5 is supposed to allow - not worry about which browser is used for them?
Win8 will certainly detect if a "default browser" has been set up, just like Win7 and previous do. So it could easily find upon launching a "Metro" app if no default browser is installed and complain then. And if a default browser is set up use that.
Betting on WP7 is a gamble, but it does have the chance of a big payoff, and Microsoft's backing isn't something to be sneezed at.
Contrary to Apple and Google, however, Nokia isn't better some department that may or may not grow big. They're betting the farm.
If I had Nokia stocks, I'd be selling them as fast as I can. But maybe that's just because I'm not a gambler and don't particularily enjoy the thrill of maybe losing everything.
What I'd like to see is a way to write the client and the server components of a typical AJAXy application as a single work
This.
There are some frameworks that go a good bit of the way towards something like this, but it would be extremely cool to have this really integrated.
I've been writing stuff that runs on anything but IE for the last 6 years, it's a pleasure. Who gives a fuck about IE?
Those of us who deal with corporate customers. For my private online stuff, my attitude is pretty much yours. A browser game of mine actually displays an "some features won't work, please upgrade to a real browser" notice if it detects IE.
But IE is still the default and often only browser in many company networks. If that's where your customers are, you need to support IE. Sadly.
Google creating programming languages is sort of like Yahoo or Facebook creating programming languages. In Google's case, I suspect that these creations have little to do with their actual corporate mission and more to do with their wildly undisciplined engineering management.
(That doesn't indicate they're good or bad languages, of course.)
It also doesn't indicate that "undisciplined" is bad in any way. A lot of the successful Google projects have come out of their "long leash" attitude towards their coders.
you are supposed to increase the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream inbetween looks...
Clearly it doesn't actually affect the quality or the usability of the language - JS seems to be used just fine.
Actually, JS sucks things I can't write without pissing off the profanity filter. Very few people use it without some library (prototype, jquery, etc.) shielding them from its worst. And it still blows. But it's there in all the browsers, so if you need web-applications with client-side functionality, that's what you use.
If anyone were to replace JS with a real programming language, with the same amount of browser-support, you can count me in on jumping ship.
Like any other new programming language of the past decade, Dart sounds like a solution to problems I don't have.
Show me something that I can't do in existing, established languages. Or show me something that works considerably easier, faster or better - with the stress on considerably.
Otherwise, no matter what your pitch is, I simply don't need it.
Well, the question is: Does he?
From his remarks, I don't see any actual research results. Applying what works in one field to another is not automatically a recipe for success. Try applying your Counterstrike skills to your love life...
There is certainly a lot that can be improved in education. As I said, I know people in the field, people who have degrees in the subject. Their feedback is that a lack of funding and resources in general is main problem #1, combined with a huge increase of responsibilities and demands on teachers, because parents increasingly outsource the whole "raising a child" thing. Teachers aren't expected to just teach, they also need to cover a lot of bases that parents used to. That's problem #2.
These two issues combined - more and more complex work with fewer resources - results in a very predictable outcome.
Making the teachers better certainly is a good idea. But if you want to improve education it's like buying a new graphics card when your problem really is that you don't have enough RAM.
So what, exactly, are Bill's credentials to talk about education? I know people who studied the subject (yes, you study it - teachers aren't some random dofuses who go around talking crap, there's actually quite a lot that goes into teaching.
When I remember Bill's ghostwritten books, and his public speeches, my impression is that he really doesn't know all that much, and if he weren't filthy rich, few people would listen to him. Somehow, we equate success in one field with knowledge in all fields, and that's nonsense.