Just so we stay clear about this: MS was the first to support AJAX via XMLHttpRequest, so this is only a change in how they do it.
Correct. I'm aware of that. But this goes way beyond just XMLHttpRequest. Think PNG support, SVG support and other technologies that IE6 does not support (or at least didn't for a very long time).
Hoq do implementing XmlHttpRequest support via non-ActiveX render other browser that already have it obsolete? This isn't some weird "lock out" strategy. Please lose your tinfoil hat, at least in discussions where there's absolutely no need to use it.
A simpler interface to XMLHttpRequest is just a start. MS has also adopted many web "standards" that it did not come up with. It even adopted the Firefox RSS icon. Again, this is only speculation from my side, but I really doubt that MS is just doing all of this to "play nice." There is way too much money in this market for them to simply follow other browsers. Once they recapture the market, they will extend the browser in such ways as to destroy competition. I guess only time will tell.
It's good that MS is supporting web standards, but I doubt the reason is to play nice and make the lives of web developers easier. IMHO, MS realized that they have lost a lot of ground, credibility and following in the browser market. Any new "innovations" coming from MS will NOT be adopted very easily these days unless Firefox, Safari and Opera endorse it. So, before it can repeat what it did to Netscape, MS needs to re-capture its lost browser market share. The easiest way to do that is to come up with a really great browser that supports all the current web technologies, and that is easier to code for than other browsers. Classic 'embrace'. Once it has done that, and it has all the time and money in the world for it to do that, only then can it can start phase 2, the 'extend' phase where it renders all other browsers obsolete.
The only way to combat MS on this front is to keep innovating, staying a step in front of it. Netscape made the mistake of not updating their browser soon enough, and they paid dearly. I hope Opera, Firefox and Safari have learned that lesson.
When I close a tab I expect the one to left of the tab i just closed to be active, not for the damn browser to activate some other lame random tab...
Actually, Opera uses tabs the Correct Way (as opposed to FF's broken way). Browsing through tabs (via Ctrl-Tab) is based on history: the tabs are ordered according to the last visit. So, when a tab is closed, the tab that had the focus last gets the focus. Simple and convenient. This makes it easy to Ctrl-Tab between two "distant tabs", which is impossible in FF.
Google managed to grab the lion's share of the online ad market by supplying non-obtrusive, relevant ads. People liked it, and used it. If you don't like it, don't use it. It's that simple.
When (or if?) competition catches up with Google, then they (Google) will be forced to come up with something new or different. Again, if you still don't like it, or think it's unethical, then don't use it. This will put more pressure on Google to change (not that I, personally, see anything wrong with the current incarnation of Adwords).
I recently had to use SBC's automatic phone menu system and was very pleasantly surprised.
I wasn't.
In my case, I live in an apartment, with 2 kids. When I called SBC a few days ago, my kids were screaming, and the TV was on. The stupid IVR was trying to figure out what Dora the Explorer was saying! Currently, IVRs need a very controlled environment to function correctly. Otherwise they suck. Moreover, I don't see the advantage over 'press 1 for customer support, 2 for billing, etc..'.
Maybe if they add some AI so that it recognizes the voice of the person talking to it, and filters out background noise, then it might become more useful. But, in its current incarnation, it plainly sucks, and doesn't really add anything.
The difference was that we acted on the same, shared bad intel.
And the UN was acting on the same intelligence. There is a big misconception in the US that the UN hasn't been punishing Saddam. The truth is that it has been doing that for years, ever since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, through economic sanctions, in a bid to limit Saddam's power, and save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Most of the world wasn't against the US in punishing Saddam. They were against the use of force without convincing evidence. Turns out they were right.
I don't really understand why the American public looks down at the UN. Probably because they don't understand its role. Over the years it has done a great job in many places. It's not perfect, of course, but it's always ready to take on the dirty jobs that no one else wants.
[Note: I'm referring mainly to the Gulf countries]
7-11s run by Indian guys
Yes. They're not called 7-11s, but smaller "supermarkets" are usually run by Indians. There are many more Indians over there than in the US (at least in terms of percentage).
Nuclear Power Plants
Nope.
Catholic or Christian churches with Evangelical stereotypes
Yes. Not as openly as in the West, but they exist.
Comic book stores
Definitely. But most comic books are found in normal libraries.
Nursing homes
Yes.
donuts
Yes. They're not associated with policemen, though. And not as popular as in the west.
Tom and Jerry
Hell yeah!
American Football, Politics, National Forests, and dive bars?
No, of course, not in the gulf, only in few cities (like Dubai).
Why can't you just keep your own cultural identity instead of trying to be the same as us?
Hehe, I thought that is what the US government is trying to do!:)
Anyway, as for TFA quote on Arabs being impressionable and aspiring to be like the West, then it's not completely true. First of all, Sherine El-Hakim is the "head of Arabic content at VSI Ltd, a London-based company that dubs and subtitles TV shows for broadcasters and corporations." So, it's her job to sell dubbed shows. Do you expect her to say anything different?
Secondly, while Arabs are becoming more westernized, it's not really because they "aspire" to be like the West. It's simply the natural progression, as civilization advances. For example, the local dress in the Arabian Gulf is the dishdasha. That kind of dress code was dictated mainly by the weather: it offers the best protection against the blowing sand, while keeping the person as cool as possible. But, with the advent of air conditioners, cars, stronger homes, etc, more and more people are wearing pants, not because they want to be American/European/etc, but simply because it's more fashionable, and there is no real need for dashadeesh (plural of dishdasha) anymore.
what you've got is a really, really expensive pencil and paper.
Since when can you download E-Books onto a regular piece of paper?
This thing has tremendous potential. Too bad we've been hearing about these "breakthroughs" for such a long time, that I'm starting to feel that e-paper is the Duke Nukem Forever of the electronic display industry:-/
I would prefer to keep my documents secure and local.
I wonder how people still make this argument when most of us are using web-based email. Don't you have any confidential data in your yahoo/gmail/hotmail/whatever account? Why aren't you concerned about that?
In my view, storing my documents on a web server of a reputable company like Yahoo or Google is infinitely more secure that keeping them on my local machine. Since even one security breach will cost them big time, they will take security much more seriously than I will. So, unless I have a dedicated machine for office applications that is never connected to the internet, I will never have the resources (money, time, etc) to keep my machine as secure as Yahoo's or Google's servers. But that's just me..
And I have Open Office to solve the open source office suite issue.
Please excuse my ignorance, but isn't open office written in Java? Can it be embedded in a website through some applet?
... what would the average slashdotter need such a machine for?
(This is a serious question. I'm curious to know)
Now, don't misunderstand me. Those machines look amazing, and I would love to get my hands on one. But, apart from the initial 5-minute infatuation, I think I would simply place it in a drawer, where I would eventually forget that it ever existed. But, maybe that's just me.
Re:What's Perl being used for today?
on
Perl Best Practices
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
While it was once very big for web scripting, that arena now seems to be dominated by PHP, Ruby-on-Rails, ASP, JSP, and so forth.
Which, IMHO, is the best thing to happen to Perl. One of the main reasons why Perl got such a bad reputation is because it is very easy to pick up. The web was (and still is) littered with a huge amount of Perl snippets written by teenage script kiddies who think that Perl and CGI are synonyms (Matt's Script Archive comes to mind).
Personally, I have been using Perl professionally on an almost daily basis (and I'm NOT in IT or software) for over 7 years now, and have never written a single CGI program.
Just because you don't see any web scripts written in Perl doesn't mean Perl is finished. I would actually consider that a new beginning.
It is a great language, and has been used successfully by many huge companies (Amazon for one), but I think if those companies had to redo it again today, I don't think they would choose Perl again.
Why do you think that? Do you have any data to support those thoughts? What difficulties are they facing today due to their choice of using Perl? Most companies usually care about reducing cost (money). Had they used a different language, would their total costs went down? I don't think so. It is also definitely much easier to find a Perl programmer than Python/Ruby/etc.
One common fallacy that people repeat is that Perl encourages sloppy programming. That is false. Perl tolerates it, but no where in the docs, or on comp.lang.perl.misc and other Perl forums, has sloppy programming been encouraged.
I think that purely as a language, it has been surpassed.
Surpassed how exactly? What precise features do you think are missing from Perl that other languages have?
One of the things I like about Python is that they're willing to deprecate and then *remove* features to help combat cruft.
That's mostly a taste issue, and a very debatable one too. One of Larry Wall's design goals is backward compatibility, which is the main reason why Perl5 is the complicated monster that it is today. Perl1 programs run perfectly fine under Perl5 today. Whether or not this is a good thing largely depends on who you ask.
i was really actually looking forward to something new and dareing from microsoft.
They let me and themselves down.
Frankly it looks like Windows XP with a new UI and alpha tranceparancy.
From Microsoft's marketing point of view, this is actually a good thing. Think about it. Most of the people using Windows are non-technical. By changing the UI, MS will add a new learning curve that might discourage some people from upgrading, at least until winXP is phased out. It's good for them to eliminate this barrier, and simply add eye candy that doesn't require any additional learning. This gives winXP users a sense of familiarity to Longhorn, and hence they will feel more attached to it.
Slashdot Mirror
it seems he is only demonstrating that it doesn't make sense to talk about one's velocity through time. I would agree.
... isn't that what we call acceleration?
Errr
Just so we stay clear about this: MS was the first to support AJAX via XMLHttpRequest, so this is only a change in how they do it.
Correct. I'm aware of that. But this goes way beyond just XMLHttpRequest. Think PNG support, SVG support and other technologies that IE6 does not support (or at least didn't for a very long time).
Hoq do implementing XmlHttpRequest support via non-ActiveX render other browser that already have it obsolete? This isn't some weird "lock out" strategy. Please lose your tinfoil hat, at least in discussions where there's absolutely no need to use it.
A simpler interface to XMLHttpRequest is just a start. MS has also adopted many web "standards" that it did not come up with. It even adopted the Firefox RSS icon. Again, this is only speculation from my side, but I really doubt that MS is just doing all of this to "play nice." There is way too much money in this market for them to simply follow other browsers. Once they recapture the market, they will extend the browser in such ways as to destroy competition. I guess only time will tell.
... embrace and extend.
It's good that MS is supporting web standards, but I doubt the reason is to play nice and make the lives of web developers easier. IMHO, MS realized that they have lost a lot of ground, credibility and following in the browser market. Any new "innovations" coming from MS will NOT be adopted very easily these days unless Firefox, Safari and Opera endorse it. So, before it can repeat what it did to Netscape, MS needs to re-capture its lost browser market share. The easiest way to do that is to come up with a really great browser that supports all the current web technologies, and that is easier to code for than other browsers. Classic 'embrace'. Once it has done that, and it has all the time and money in the world for it to do that, only then can it can start phase 2, the 'extend' phase where it renders all other browsers obsolete.
The only way to combat MS on this front is to keep innovating, staying a step in front of it. Netscape made the mistake of not updating their browser soon enough, and they paid dearly. I hope Opera, Firefox and Safari have learned that lesson.
When I close a tab I expect the one to left of the tab i just closed to be active, not for the damn browser to activate some other lame random tab...
Actually, Opera uses tabs the Correct Way (as opposed to FF's broken way). Browsing through tabs (via Ctrl-Tab) is based on history: the tabs are ordered according to the last visit. So, when a tab is closed, the tab that had the focus last gets the focus. Simple and convenient. This makes it easy to Ctrl-Tab between two "distant tabs", which is impossible in FF.
... instead of competing with Microsoft on their own turf.
Netscape did NOT compete with Microsoft on their own turf. It's the other way round.
Those questions are really absurd.
Google managed to grab the lion's share of the online ad market by supplying non-obtrusive, relevant ads. People liked it, and used it. If you don't like it, don't use it. It's that simple.
When (or if?) competition catches up with Google, then they (Google) will be forced to come up with something new or different. Again, if you still don't like it, or think it's unethical, then don't use it. This will put more pressure on Google to change (not that I, personally, see anything wrong with the current incarnation of Adwords).
Why? You will receive the same crappy service no matter who you talk to.
I wasn't.
In my case, I live in an apartment, with 2 kids. When I called SBC a few days ago, my kids were screaming, and the TV was on. The stupid IVR was trying to figure out what Dora the Explorer was saying! Currently, IVRs need a very controlled environment to function correctly. Otherwise they suck. Moreover, I don't see the advantage over 'press 1 for customer support, 2 for billing, etc ..'.
Maybe if they add some AI so that it recognizes the voice of the person talking to it, and filters out background noise, then it might become more useful. But, in its current incarnation, it plainly sucks, and doesn't really add anything.
And the UN was acting on the same intelligence. There is a big misconception in the US that the UN hasn't been punishing Saddam. The truth is that it has been doing that for years, ever since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, through economic sanctions, in a bid to limit Saddam's power, and save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Most of the world wasn't against the US in punishing Saddam. They were against the use of force without convincing evidence. Turns out they were right.
I don't really understand why the American public looks down at the UN. Probably because they don't understand its role. Over the years it has done a great job in many places. It's not perfect, of course, but it's always ready to take on the dirty jobs that no one else wants.
7-11s run by Indian guys
Yes. They're not called 7-11s, but smaller "supermarkets" are usually run by Indians. There are many more Indians over there than in the US (at least in terms of percentage).
Nuclear Power Plants
Nope.
Catholic or Christian churches with Evangelical stereotypes
Yes. Not as openly as in the West, but they exist.
Comic book stores
Definitely. But most comic books are found in normal libraries.
Nursing homes
Yes.
donuts
Yes. They're not associated with policemen, though. And not as popular as in the west.
Tom and Jerry
Hell yeah!
American Football, Politics, National Forests, and dive bars?
No, of course, not in the gulf, only in few cities (like Dubai).
Hehe, I thought that is what the US government is trying to do! :)
Anyway, as for TFA quote on Arabs being impressionable and aspiring to be like the West, then it's not completely true. First of all, Sherine El-Hakim is the "head of Arabic content at VSI Ltd, a London-based company that dubs and subtitles TV shows for broadcasters and corporations." So, it's her job to sell dubbed shows. Do you expect her to say anything different?
Secondly, while Arabs are becoming more westernized, it's not really because they "aspire" to be like the West. It's simply the natural progression, as civilization advances. For example, the local dress in the Arabian Gulf is the dishdasha. That kind of dress code was dictated mainly by the weather: it offers the best protection against the blowing sand, while keeping the person as cool as possible. But, with the advent of air conditioners, cars, stronger homes, etc, more and more people are wearing pants, not because they want to be American/European/etc, but simply because it's more fashionable, and there is no real need for dashadeesh (plural of dishdasha) anymore.
Exceptions exist, of course.
Since when can you download E-Books onto a regular piece of paper? :-/
This thing has tremendous potential. Too bad we've been hearing about these "breakthroughs" for such a long time, that I'm starting to feel that e-paper is the Duke Nukem Forever of the electronic display industry
Microsoft must be peeing in their pants.
I wonder how people still make this argument when most of us are using web-based email. Don't you have any confidential data in your yahoo/gmail/hotmail/whatever account? Why aren't you concerned about that?
In my view, storing my documents on a web server of a reputable company like Yahoo or Google is infinitely more secure that keeping them on my local machine. Since even one security breach will cost them big time, they will take security much more seriously than I will. So, unless I have a dedicated machine for office applications that is never connected to the internet, I will never have the resources (money, time, etc) to keep my machine as secure as Yahoo's or Google's servers. But that's just me ..
And I have Open Office to solve the open source office suite issue.
Please excuse my ignorance, but isn't open office written in Java? Can it be embedded in a website through some applet?
(This is a serious question. I'm curious to know)
Now, don't misunderstand me. Those machines look amazing, and I would love to get my hands on one. But, apart from the initial 5-minute infatuation, I think I would simply place it in a drawer, where I would eventually forget that it ever existed. But, maybe that's just me.
Which, IMHO, is the best thing to happen to Perl. One of the main reasons why Perl got such a bad reputation is because it is very easy to pick up. The web was (and still is) littered with a huge amount of Perl snippets written by teenage script kiddies who think that Perl and CGI are synonyms (Matt's Script Archive comes to mind).
Personally, I have been using Perl professionally on an almost daily basis (and I'm NOT in IT or software) for over 7 years now, and have never written a single CGI program.
Just because you don't see any web scripts written in Perl doesn't mean Perl is finished. I would actually consider that a new beginning.
Since the iPod mini was discontinued, what will Apple do with any excess inventory?
Will they sell them for cheaper?
Why do you think that? Do you have any data to support those thoughts? What difficulties are they facing today due to their choice of using Perl? Most companies usually care about reducing cost (money). Had they used a different language, would their total costs went down? I don't think so. It is also definitely much easier to find a Perl programmer than Python/Ruby/etc.
One common fallacy that people repeat is that Perl encourages sloppy programming. That is false. Perl tolerates it, but no where in the docs, or on comp.lang.perl.misc and other Perl forums, has sloppy programming been encouraged.
I think that purely as a language, it has been surpassed.
Surpassed how exactly? What precise features do you think are missing from Perl that other languages have?
That's mostly a taste issue, and a very debatable one too. One of Larry Wall's design goals is backward compatibility, which is the main reason why Perl5 is the complicated monster that it is today. Perl1 programs run perfectly fine under Perl5 today. Whether or not this is a good thing largely depends on who you ask.
Small correction:
Water => Life as we know it, not life as it could be.
Afterall, who says that all "living creatures" must be carbon-based? Let's not limit ourselves to our limited experience.
Correction:
6. (copied from Safari, which copied it from Opera) 2 In 1 Cancel/Refresh button.
Upside down or right side up?
They let me and themselves down.
Frankly it looks like Windows XP with a new UI and alpha tranceparancy.
From Microsoft's marketing point of view, this is actually a good thing. Think about it. Most of the people using Windows are non-technical. By changing the UI, MS will add a new learning curve that might discourage some people from upgrading, at least until winXP is phased out. It's good for them to eliminate this barrier, and simply add eye candy that doesn't require any additional learning. This gives winXP users a sense of familiarity to Longhorn, and hence they will feel more attached to it.