I did in fact mean to say more or less what I said. I had only made a single assumption, that the discussion was rational.
For any current definition of "God" there is no rational argument for existence. This doesn't mean that one should stop believing in God, just that one should stop arguing that it is rational to do so.
This is allowed pretty much everywhere in the West
BZZT! WRONG! Take it from someone who lived ten years in the US and have now moved back to Europe. We do not have a fraction of the free speech practiced every day in the US. Europe is moving faster and faster into a totalitarian state with a more and more socialist bureaucracy at the helm. Look at how they threatened and threatened the Irish to accept the European constitution. Only because the Irish government actually dared oppose the bureaucrats and actually hold a referendum on it. In the rest of Europe the governments bent to the will of the tyrants and eventually disallowed any public input into the process at all, let alone giving the public an opportunity to vote on it.
Sorry, but Europe is a long step away from democracy, and moving further and further away from it as we speak.
I think the arguments for the existence of God are more compelling than the opposite
Which is the exact description of your delusion. You see, there is not a single argument for the existence of God. Not one. Simply because the "existence of God" idea is not even close to being defined to the level where an argument for or against it can be made.
As someone smart once said - and I am paraphrasing - you are not even wrong.
History has shown it works just fine: Russia went from a failed state to a global superpower in a few decades under communism
You must have a very different definition of success than I do. Development is not something that can be looked at in isolation, it must be judged relative to the overall development in the same time period. If you look at the Soviet Union from the revolution and the day it collapsed, its societal, economical and all other measurable development was stuck in reverse and the gas pedal was being pushed harder and harder over the decades.
I can't imagine a single area where the USSR did not seriously regress as compared to the development in for example Europe and the US in those years.
Many have hailed the fact that the USSR was first into space, for example, as one major achievement of the USSR and their technology. It was not. They did not beat the US into space due to better technology but due to a complete and utter disregard for the safety of the individuals involved. It is (and was long before Mercury) easy to put someone into space, doing it safely is harder.
Many joke that the US spent millions inventing a pen that could be used in space while the Russians brought pencils. This is used to show the KISS principle and how technology-romanticized societies like the US tend to love unnecessary technology where they should use what is available. Well, the MIR was a horrible mess because of (among other things) pencil dust covering everything, clogging up stuff etc. A pen would have been much better.
The production of food in the USSR in the years after the revolution was a mess. Again, production stuck permanently in reverse (relative to the rest of the civilized world). The government controlled cooperative farms were a disaster with nothing useful happening anywhere.
I would really be interesting to hear where the USSR had a positive development in those years. Specifics.
Most people experience this, and it is a Good Thing. The rebel attitude of your youth is critical to societal development and the conservative attitude of your adulthood prevents society from falling apart under the massive forward momentum desired by the young. Or, as someone once so nicely put it: A young conservative has no heart
An old socialist has no brains.
He has announced it, and he has paid. Many times. For some reason people rarely cached his checks but stuck them in frames instead. Since pictures of these ended up on the web, Knuth had to stop sending out checks. These days you can get a check from the Bank of San Seriffe instead.
Basically all aspects of the above "OO" can be replicated, almost line for line, in C. That doesn't mean C is an OO language, it means you can develop OO code with C. You do the above with a struct and a function pointer. The fact that you can create a "class" or a prototype in a language doesn't make the language as such OO.
Things like inheritance and polymorphism can essentially be done in Javascript, but there are several differnt ways of implementing them. Douglas Crockford advocates one way, Kevin Lindsey a different. This is because the language as such is not OO. That I can do OO in assembly - again, I have done it with the appropriate libraries - doesn't mean that it is supported in the language.
Hell, the easiest way to create OO Javascript is to use GWT and write in Java. This is by the way the only way a sane developer would do Javascript.
If a developer is going to put together a complex LOB app, one that maintains state, does wizard-like stuff and so on, and said developer suggests Javascript as the language, he should be fired on the spot. It will take far more effort to do it in JS than in the alternatives, and as it is an LOB app, there is no need to consider which browsers "everybody" is running. A Javascript app will also be a nightmare to maintain compared to something running in a plug in. Even Google can not make apps look the same in IE and Firefox except in the most simple of cases. Anything semi-advanced with GWT and it will look different in IE and FF. No such worries with a plugin.
Javascript is certainly the right tool for some jobs. Any scripting language is the right language for small automation tasks. Anything that requires a few lines of code.
Once you are to develop any serious application, typically those run into thousands, tens of thousands or more lines of code, a toy scripting language will not do. There are for example no OO features in Javascript (really, none) which makes it an absurd choice for anything serious. In the same way that you would not use C today for an LOB app, you would not use Javascript. Basic from 1985 is better than Javascript.
Really? There is nothing wrong with Javascript per se? So all the language advancements that we have had in computer languages since 1976 are irrelevant? Get real. Javascript is a horrifying joke of a software development nightmare.
Why do we think deploying applications on HTML/CSS is a good idea?
Aside from my personal experience, there is that (by now years-old) video where a guy builds a complete database-enabled blog using RoR, from the ground up, in 15 minutes. Do that (or something like it) with Silverlight? Flex? No way
No problem. Have done it several times. You can watch the following set of videos where the guy creates a SOAP enabled server app with a relational database, including what amounts to a reservation system, a management system etc, in what amounts to far less than an hour of work.
The videos are somewhat longer than 15 minutes, but they are educational not demonstrations.
I agree that RoR is a great tool and I have done a lot of work with it. I have even done quite a bit of work with Flex on Rails which I would heartily recommend (I didn't do any of what's on the site, just used their excellent book) - apart from the fact that Flex is not 100% appropriate for REST apps (at least not the previous version, I have not tried the latest). Until earlier this year, for complex business apps, Flex and Rails was in fact my tool of choice for such apps. The reason I used Flex was that it gave both an advanced UI (of the type that can not be accomplished with Javascript) and it dramatically reduced network and server load. AJAX-based Javascript apps hit the server way too much.
With the release of Silverlight 4 Microsoft leaped far past Adobe though. C# is a much better environment than is Actionscript.
I still think Flex might be a viable option
If you think Flex might be a viable option, give the videos above a whirl. Make sure you get the MVVM video too and compare the utter simplicity of Silverlight compared to a Flex app with Cairngorm. If you have any experience with delivering LOB apps where integration is paramount (think SOAP) the videos above should perhaps not blow, but seriously rattle your mind.
If they are not owned nor managed by me, the worst possible solution is to commit myself to one technology which I have no idea if they're equiped with
Actually. No. It is not. If, as is the case for most of these situations, they need to use your app to get access to a service or product you deliver and they depend on, then you can easily determine what they need to run the app. This has always been the case, but before the net the usual method was to ship them a CD (or tape if you are as old as I am) and have them install it. Having a requirement like: "A Windows or Mac computer with 1G of memory and a 1024 by 768 display possibility" is not a problem.
The purpose of the net here is the delivery of the app and the fact that you do not have to become their IT manager just to make it run. I have worked for companies who had 5-10 dedicated engineers who spent all of their time supporting the dealer chain maintaining the supplier provided software. That is not an issue when you can deliver using a browser, and "Windows or Mac bought some time in the last five years" is not a requirement you have to worry about.
then I cannot make any assumptions about the technology they have at hand.
Sure you can, you can even put it in as a requirement. Something like: You wanna sell Ford cars, you need a Windows or Mac computer bought later than 2005 with Windows XP, Mac OSX or better.
Google pretty much does it. Is Google absurd?
Google has to cater to more or less everybody. An LOB app developer doesn't care about anyone except the small group of people who are to run his app. That group of people can be given a set of requirements and then all is well.
The system that these Silverlight or Flex apps are replacing are custom solutions on, for example, Sun or IBM hardware that previously had to be managed by this client. Using Silverlight or Flex he can now keep all his engineers in-house working on real solutions rather than run around his dealer network managing the AS/400 systems he previously had installed with them.
The fact that Silverlight in the long run keeps his network traffic and server load at about 10-20% of what a standard Web app would do is just an added bonus.
If you are developing a complicated LOB app you can more often than not define as a requirement which browser the user is to use. These applications, though available over the net, are not meant for general consumption.
99% of the time however you will be faced with the: "It has to work in Internet Explorer 7 and also maybe in Firefox. It has to run on Windows". Again, we are talking about LOB apps here, the bread and butter of the vast majority of software developers out there, and those are not for general consumption by the internet population at large.
But of course, you see, all clients are infected with exactly the same absurd religious views that the poster you responded to. The client couldn't care less what it costs as long as it works well in Lynx.
I could say I didn't want to burst your bubble here, but I do. Pop. Consider it burst.
Try to do what most software developers do once. Go into a company that has very complex requirements for their application. Try to do it in any of the more popular web-technologies today, Richfaces, JSF, Struts (you can see where I am coming from I guess) and develop this vertical LOB app. Sorry to tell you, you will spend at least 5-10 times as much time to get it to work than if you use something like Silverlight or Flex and put a SOAP interface on your server. Not only that, but it will easily scale 100 times better than you can possibly manage with an app that keeps all state on the server including conversation state.
In typical LOB apps you can easily cut network traffic and server hits by 50-90% over an Ajax solution by going with Flex or Silverlight. In most cases such things matter. Not for toy applications though.
Anyone stating that the whole point of something is one particular thing needs to grow up a little. The whole point of the web is nothing at all. The whole point of software development is to use the best tools for the job at hand.
If you, for example, are creating an app that is to be used by a select group of people unknown to you, on unknown networks all over the place, then the web is a great app delivery platform. Say for instance that you need to distribute an app to all of your dealers, none of them actually owned or managed by you. Then Flex, Silverlight etc are excellent alternatives and generic web apps are an insane alternative. You are not trying to reach the population in general, you are trying to reach a select few of them with a very, very specific need, they need to be able to use your particular application. You'd be insane not to distribute it over the web and you'd be equally insane trying to develop it using "standard" web tools, since they are anything but.
The idea that everything you do on the internet has to be available to every possible thing that can interface with said internet is absurd if what you are doing is only meant to reach a small subset of the internet population.
I agree, and utterly disagree with you. You have to use the best tool for the job, and for complex applications, the browser simply is not the tool for the job. People advocating using Javascript, should be flogged and dragged backwards into 1972 and shown how a BASIC interpreter beats the living daylights out of the junk that is Javascript, mostly because BASIC of 1972 is honest about what it is and what it is not, whilst Javascript advocates actually think that horrible piece of junk is useful for anything real.
Java applets and Silverlight are the - IMNSHO - real alternatives. Flex is OK, but it is still just Javascript on steroids, and that simply won't do for complex applications.
One could argue that if you need the power of a real programming language you should not try to develop for the browser, but the browser is still a rather wonderful application delivery method.
To the OP, go for Silverlight. There is nothing like it in the market today. Not even close IMNSHO. And that is from someone who is not particularly fond of Microsoft.
Had I quoted you out of context, you'd have a point - but I quoted you exactly.
Interesting comment. You don't even know what it means to quote someone out of context, do you? The fact that you quoted him exactly doesn't mean you didn't quote him out of context. You need to get some more facts straight than what is obviously a lack in knowledge about Android development. Basic language skills would be a good place to start.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that recent events are in any way connected to capitalism. They are not. The lead-up to the crisis was the opposite of capitalism, and the rescue is antithetical to anything that has to do with capitalism.
The reality is that in capitalism you can not run out of other peoples money since in a capitalist society you do not have access to other peoples money for spending. Not unless they hand them over to you of their own volition, and then the quote from Thatcher isn't relevant, since once other people hand their money to you out of their own volition, it is no longer "their" money.
The founding father's never really agreed on anything.
Slightly exaggerated, I am sure they agreed on some things. They did perhaps not agree on the exact meaning of "free" in "free speech", but probably agreed that once "free" was defined it was OK with free speech too. Also, it is interesting that a unanimous Senate in 1796 agreed on the following text:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States... See Morenever entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (my emphasis).
Slashdot Mirror
As regards to Kreeft, that is basically the Tooth Fairy arguments. No, they are not valid, rational or reasonable. They are infantile and silly.
I did in fact mean to say more or less what I said. I had only made a single assumption, that the discussion was rational.
For any current definition of "God" there is no rational argument for existence. This doesn't mean that one should stop believing in God, just that one should stop arguing that it is rational to do so.
This is allowed pretty much everywhere in the West
BZZT! WRONG! Take it from someone who lived ten years in the US and have now moved back to Europe. We do not have a fraction of the free speech practiced every day in the US. Europe is moving faster and faster into a totalitarian state with a more and more socialist bureaucracy at the helm. Look at how they threatened and threatened the Irish to accept the European constitution. Only because the Irish government actually dared oppose the bureaucrats and actually hold a referendum on it. In the rest of Europe the governments bent to the will of the tyrants and eventually disallowed any public input into the process at all, let alone giving the public an opportunity to vote on it.
Sorry, but Europe is a long step away from democracy, and moving further and further away from it as we speak.
I think the arguments for the existence of God are more compelling than the opposite
Which is the exact description of your delusion. You see, there is not a single argument for the existence of God. Not one. Simply because the "existence of God" idea is not even close to being defined to the level where an argument for or against it can be made.
As someone smart once said - and I am paraphrasing - you are not even wrong.
History has shown it works just fine: Russia went from a failed state to a global superpower in a few decades under communism
You must have a very different definition of success than I do. Development is not something that can be looked at in isolation, it must be judged relative to the overall development in the same time period. If you look at the Soviet Union from the revolution and the day it collapsed, its societal, economical and all other measurable development was stuck in reverse and the gas pedal was being pushed harder and harder over the decades.
I can't imagine a single area where the USSR did not seriously regress as compared to the development in for example Europe and the US in those years.
Many have hailed the fact that the USSR was first into space, for example, as one major achievement of the USSR and their technology. It was not. They did not beat the US into space due to better technology but due to a complete and utter disregard for the safety of the individuals involved. It is (and was long before Mercury) easy to put someone into space, doing it safely is harder.
Many joke that the US spent millions inventing a pen that could be used in space while the Russians brought pencils. This is used to show the KISS principle and how technology-romanticized societies like the US tend to love unnecessary technology where they should use what is available. Well, the MIR was a horrible mess because of (among other things) pencil dust covering everything, clogging up stuff etc. A pen would have been much better.
The production of food in the USSR in the years after the revolution was a mess. Again, production stuck permanently in reverse (relative to the rest of the civilized world). The government controlled cooperative farms were a disaster with nothing useful happening anywhere.
I would really be interesting to hear where the USSR had a positive development in those years. Specifics.
Most people experience this, and it is a Good Thing. The rebel attitude of your youth is critical to societal development and the conservative attitude of your adulthood prevents society from falling apart under the massive forward momentum desired by the young. Or, as someone once so nicely put it:
A young conservative has no heart
An old socialist has no brains.
He has announced it, and he has paid. Many times. For some reason people rarely cached his checks but stuck them in frames instead. Since pictures of these ended up on the web, Knuth had to stop sending out checks. These days you can get a check from the Bank of San Seriffe instead.
You missed the car analogy. It'd be like a car enthusiast who's never heard of Ford. You always have to have a car analogy. It's the law!
It is 3 - always has been, always will be. Anyone who says it isn't hasn't read his (obviously not hers since that gender should not read) Bible!
Basically all aspects of the above "OO" can be replicated, almost line for line, in C. That doesn't mean C is an OO language, it means you can develop OO code with C. You do the above with a struct and a function pointer. The fact that you can create a "class" or a prototype in a language doesn't make the language as such OO.
Things like inheritance and polymorphism can essentially be done in Javascript, but there are several differnt ways of implementing them. Douglas Crockford advocates one way, Kevin Lindsey a different. This is because the language as such is not OO. That I can do OO in assembly - again, I have done it with the appropriate libraries - doesn't mean that it is supported in the language.
Hell, the easiest way to create OO Javascript is to use GWT and write in Java. This is by the way the only way a sane developer would do Javascript.
If a developer is going to put together a complex LOB app, one that maintains state, does wizard-like stuff and so on, and said developer suggests Javascript as the language, he should be fired on the spot. It will take far more effort to do it in JS than in the alternatives, and as it is an LOB app, there is no need to consider which browsers "everybody" is running. A Javascript app will also be a nightmare to maintain compared to something running in a plug in. Even Google can not make apps look the same in IE and Firefox except in the most simple of cases. Anything semi-advanced with GWT and it will look different in IE and FF. No such worries with a plugin.
Javascript is certainly the right tool for some jobs. Any scripting language is the right language for small automation tasks. Anything that requires a few lines of code.
Once you are to develop any serious application, typically those run into thousands, tens of thousands or more lines of code, a toy scripting language will not do. There are for example no OO features in Javascript (really, none) which makes it an absurd choice for anything serious. In the same way that you would not use C today for an LOB app, you would not use Javascript. Basic from 1985 is better than Javascript.
Really? There is nothing wrong with Javascript per se? So all the language advancements that we have had in computer languages since 1976 are irrelevant? Get real. Javascript is a horrifying joke of a software development nightmare.
Why do we think deploying applications on HTML/CSS is a good idea?
We don't.
Aside from my personal experience, there is that (by now years-old) video where a guy builds a complete database-enabled blog using RoR, from the ground up, in 15 minutes. Do that (or something like it) with Silverlight? Flex? No way
No problem. Have done it several times. You can watch the following set of videos where the guy creates a SOAP enabled server app with a relational database, including what amounts to a reservation system, a management system etc, in what amounts to far less than an hour of work.
The videos are somewhat longer than 15 minutes, but they are educational not demonstrations.
I agree that RoR is a great tool and I have done a lot of work with it. I have even done quite a bit of work with Flex on Rails which I would heartily recommend (I didn't do any of what's on the site, just used their excellent book) - apart from the fact that Flex is not 100% appropriate for REST apps (at least not the previous version, I have not tried the latest). Until earlier this year, for complex business apps, Flex and Rails was in fact my tool of choice for such apps. The reason I used Flex was that it gave both an advanced UI (of the type that can not be accomplished with Javascript) and it dramatically reduced network and server load. AJAX-based Javascript apps hit the server way too much.
With the release of Silverlight 4 Microsoft leaped far past Adobe though. C# is a much better environment than is Actionscript.
I still think Flex might be a viable option
If you think Flex might be a viable option, give the videos above a whirl. Make sure you get the MVVM video too and compare the utter simplicity of Silverlight compared to a Flex app with Cairngorm. If you have any experience with delivering LOB apps where integration is paramount (think SOAP) the videos above should perhaps not blow, but seriously rattle your mind.
If they are not owned nor managed by me, the worst possible solution is to commit myself to one technology which I have no idea if they're equiped with
Actually. No. It is not. If, as is the case for most of these situations, they need to use your app to get access to a service or product you deliver and they depend on, then you can easily determine what they need to run the app. This has always been the case, but before the net the usual method was to ship them a CD (or tape if you are as old as I am) and have them install it. Having a requirement like: "A Windows or Mac computer with 1G of memory and a 1024 by 768 display possibility" is not a problem.
The purpose of the net here is the delivery of the app and the fact that you do not have to become their IT manager just to make it run. I have worked for companies who had 5-10 dedicated engineers who spent all of their time supporting the dealer chain maintaining the supplier provided software. That is not an issue when you can deliver using a browser, and "Windows or Mac bought some time in the last five years" is not a requirement you have to worry about.
then I cannot make any assumptions about the technology they have at hand.
Sure you can, you can even put it in as a requirement. Something like: You wanna sell Ford cars, you need a Windows or Mac computer bought later than 2005 with Windows XP, Mac OSX or better.
Google pretty much does it. Is Google absurd?
Google has to cater to more or less everybody. An LOB app developer doesn't care about anyone except the small group of people who are to run his app. That group of people can be given a set of requirements and then all is well.
The system that these Silverlight or Flex apps are replacing are custom solutions on, for example, Sun or IBM hardware that previously had to be managed by this client. Using Silverlight or Flex he can now keep all his engineers in-house working on real solutions rather than run around his dealer network managing the AS/400 systems he previously had installed with them.
The fact that Silverlight in the long run keeps his network traffic and server load at about 10-20% of what a standard Web app would do is just an added bonus.
If you are developing a complicated LOB app you can more often than not define as a requirement which browser the user is to use. These applications, though available over the net, are not meant for general consumption.
99% of the time however you will be faced with the: "It has to work in Internet Explorer 7 and also maybe in Firefox. It has to run on Windows". Again, we are talking about LOB apps here, the bread and butter of the vast majority of software developers out there, and those are not for general consumption by the internet population at large.
But of course, you see, all clients are infected with exactly the same absurd religious views that the poster you responded to. The client couldn't care less what it costs as long as it works well in Lynx.
You really need to read what you respond to. Who cares which browser it works with if you are building a vertical LOB app?
Only an utter fool would let religious views like this come between him and the timely delivery of the application the client needs.
You really should read what you respond to before making a fool out of your self.
I could say I didn't want to burst your bubble here, but I do. Pop. Consider it burst.
Try to do what most software developers do once. Go into a company that has very complex requirements for their application. Try to do it in any of the more popular web-technologies today, Richfaces, JSF, Struts (you can see where I am coming from I guess) and develop this vertical LOB app. Sorry to tell you, you will spend at least 5-10 times as much time to get it to work than if you use something like Silverlight or Flex and put a SOAP interface on your server. Not only that, but it will easily scale 100 times better than you can possibly manage with an app that keeps all state on the server including conversation state.
In typical LOB apps you can easily cut network traffic and server hits by 50-90% over an Ajax solution by going with Flex or Silverlight. In most cases such things matter. Not for toy applications though.
Anyone stating that the whole point of something is one particular thing needs to grow up a little. The whole point of the web is nothing at all. The whole point of software development is to use the best tools for the job at hand.
If you, for example, are creating an app that is to be used by a select group of people unknown to you, on unknown networks all over the place, then the web is a great app delivery platform. Say for instance that you need to distribute an app to all of your dealers, none of them actually owned or managed by you. Then Flex, Silverlight etc are excellent alternatives and generic web apps are an insane alternative. You are not trying to reach the population in general, you are trying to reach a select few of them with a very, very specific need, they need to be able to use your particular application. You'd be insane not to distribute it over the web and you'd be equally insane trying to develop it using "standard" web tools, since they are anything but.
The idea that everything you do on the internet has to be available to every possible thing that can interface with said internet is absurd if what you are doing is only meant to reach a small subset of the internet population.
I agree, and utterly disagree with you. You have to use the best tool for the job, and for complex applications, the browser simply is not the tool for the job. People advocating using Javascript, should be flogged and dragged backwards into 1972 and shown how a BASIC interpreter beats the living daylights out of the junk that is Javascript, mostly because BASIC of 1972 is honest about what it is and what it is not, whilst Javascript advocates actually think that horrible piece of junk is useful for anything real.
Java applets and Silverlight are the - IMNSHO - real alternatives. Flex is OK, but it is still just Javascript on steroids, and that simply won't do for complex applications.
One could argue that if you need the power of a real programming language you should not try to develop for the browser, but the browser is still a rather wonderful application delivery method.
To the OP, go for Silverlight. There is nothing like it in the market today. Not even close IMNSHO. And that is from someone who is not particularly fond of Microsoft.
You really need to look up what science is dude. You are so far off it is scary.
Had I quoted you out of context, you'd have a point - but I quoted you exactly.
Interesting comment. You don't even know what it means to quote someone out of context, do you? The fact that you quoted him exactly doesn't mean you didn't quote him out of context. You need to get some more facts straight than what is obviously a lack in knowledge about Android development. Basic language skills would be a good place to start.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that recent events are in any way connected to capitalism. They are not. The lead-up to the crisis was the opposite of capitalism, and the rescue is antithetical to anything that has to do with capitalism.
The reality is that in capitalism you can not run out of other peoples money since in a capitalist society you do not have access to other peoples money for spending. Not unless they hand them over to you of their own volition, and then the quote from Thatcher isn't relevant, since once other people hand their money to you out of their own volition, it is no longer "their" money.
The founding father's never really agreed on anything.
Slightly exaggerated, I am sure they agreed on some things. They did perhaps not agree on the exact meaning of "free" in "free speech", but probably agreed that once "free" was defined it was OK with free speech too. Also, it is interesting that a unanimous Senate in 1796 agreed on the following text:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States ... See Morenever entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (my emphasis).