While you raise a valid concern which undoubtedly is shared by many like-minded indivduals, what your argument fails to take on board is RESISTANCE IS FUTILE - YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!
Buy out Trolltech. Release Qt under the GPL. Use KDE in Solaris.
I recently installed RedHat 6.1 on a machine at work, first with Gnome, then with KDE. It is hard to be objective about which was better: Gnome's reliability makes it hard to be objective, very hard:-). We are now using KDE...
As a former Amiga owner, my take on the demise of that radical machine is that it was manufactured by a company who bought the technology in from another company, never really believed in it, and didn't develop it enough so that it could maintain its technological lead.
When Commodore went belly up, it was in a large part due to their failed attempt to get into the IBM clone business. They were a company that wanted to be like IBM, not like Apple. They even called their company Commodore Business Machines...
He is a business genius. That the best way of describing him. When IBM were the big bad guys (most of you probably don't remember this, but they invented both FUD and Embrace & Extend), Bill and Microsoft spanked them good. Now IBM is a very different company...
...which means people are going to be getting their heads around functional programming soon, whether they like it or not:-)
Also, according to FOLDOC, http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/, LISP and SCHEME aren't strictly functional - they're declaritive languages with a functional subset, by that I mean you can write functional programs if you don't use certain features.
IT WAS A JOKE! For example, I know that fish aren't built by people, and that the point of this work was historical, not to find out the secret of floatation.
Clearing some things up...
on
WAP Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
I am not a WAP zealot, but their are a few empty arguments against WAP made again and again, and I'd like to address them. As you will see my post is balanced (if you read down), and I have a lot of criticism of aspects of the WAP forum.
Firstly you guys ought to remember the state mobile technology in Europe is much better than in the US, and Japan is further ahead again. You didn't develop a standard like GSM, and are behind as a result.
Secondly, a standard such as LEAP or a subset of XHTML isn't going to replace WAP on mobile phones while Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola are behind WAP.
The first article is clueless. (http://cic.ucscarb.ac.uk/techbriefs/wapdead.pdf ) The guy says WAP is dead because GPRS will be out shortly with higher bandwidth. I've heard this so many times... This is like saying HTML is dead because 56k modems are about to be replaced by ADSL. What WML addresses is how to display hypertext on a mobile phone. These have small screens. Higher bandwidth won't change this. Here's the deal: nobody wants bigger mobile phones. And PDAs are seperate issue. Not everyone wants a Palm pilot, they want a mobile phone that they can occasionally use for surfing.
The second article has been misleadingly described. "IcesTorm-I sent us an IETF document criticizing the format". This IS NOT an IETF document, rather a post to an IETF mailing list. The points contained in it about WAP not being a truly open format are valid. The technical arguements are a mixed bag - yes, some of the wheels reinvented by the WAPForum definetly have corners.:-)
The third article about Microsoft says "Microsoft compares Wap with Dos Microsoft won't support Wap in its handheld device software because it says the mobile internet protocol's functionality is limited and has compared it with the text-based Dos operating system."
Don't they remember they used to sell DOS a while back?:-) Anyway, you probably can provide a richer experience on a PDA than WAP provides - the capabilities of a PDA fall between those of a mobile phone and a PC (in terms of screen size and ease of input).
My own take on WAP is as follows: WML is developer friendly and a good design for its intended market. You really do need very different design to allow people to browse easily on a device with only 90*50 pixel screen, and numeric/directional keys.
The other parts of WAP I'm not so hot on. The way encryption is done is very broken - you can't have end-to-end encryption from your site to the phone. You have to talk to the phone company to use their gateways capabilities, or else provide your own gateway. Using your own gateway is not very practical as you need o dialup lines o modems o your user has to reconfigure their phone AND possibly have to make a international call to your gateway (if they are abroad, and their phone co. won't let them connect to other gateways using their dialup - usually the case).
The upshot of all this is that you are very dependent on the phone company if you want to do secure e-commerce.
This leads to my final point: The WAPForum is comprised of mainly phone companies, phone manufacturers, and gateway vendors. As a result, their decisions don't always reflect the best interests of content providers or end users.
"Oh come on. ActiveX is a nice script kiddie hacking tool...."
Fair is fair, you hit the nail on the head. Too many people slag off MS products around here, saying they are good for nothing. You on the other hand have shown that there is always someone who finds these technologies useful, in this case, malicious crackers.
Look at the following. In one piece of code they demonstrate the goto keyword, AND why you should never include it in a language:
1.7.2 Labeled statements and goto statements A labeled statement permits a statement to be prefixed by a label, and goto statements can be used to transfer control to a labeled statement. The example
using System; class Test { static void Main() { goto H; W: Console.WriteLine("world"); return; H: Console.Write("Hello, "); goto W; } }
is a convoluted version of the "Hello, world" program. The first statement transfers control to the statement labeled H. The first part of the message is written and then the next statement transfers control to the statement labeled W. The rest of the message is written, and the method returns.
And an IBM guy said it - what a shame. IBM are heavily committed to Java, he should have known the following:
C# = C++ and some new APIs.
That does not make it Java. Javas APIs aren't its only advantage over C++. Garbage collection, stronger type checking, threading & synchronization support, exception handling etc. which are in the Java syntax, save developer time and raise the software quality.
I know this article is going to lead into a religious language war, but lets get this much straight - C# uses C++ syntax.
What I don't get is Microsoft talking about using a VM. What, are they committed to cross platform capability? Maybe it is the only way to get apps running on NT and '95 and '98 etc. easily.:-)
XML is being used for similar roles (e.g. WML in WAP).
People are jumping on the bandwagon, and people like you are finding that it doesn't bring benfits for the particular thing they are doing. Here's the lowdown - you shouldn't have been using it to begin with. That's your fault, not XMLs.
XML isn't suitable for every purpose. For instance, when dealing information typically described in a binary format, XML may not be the best choice. Some people use it anyway...
XML is a modern version of ideas going back decades. It is particularly suitable for document type information. Examples of this are HTML, Docbook, NITF etc. The further you get from these types of information, the less applicable XML is.
XML has been hyped. Yes, some of it is overblown, but XML is going to be important. People have started backlashes against other movements such as Hypertext, OO, Java etc. Older programmers could probably add more to the list e.g. relational databases, them new fangled "assemblers", ASCII...:-)
"but with rifle shooting what you should do is "simply" to line up the three circles (target and sights) so they're perfectly concentric, then pull the trigger carefully to not move the rifle"
Do you not have to compensate for gravity & wind, or is the sight calibrated for this (or for gravity for a given range, atleast)?
...but it cracked me up when I read anyway. Surely when the whole IP area descends into farce like this it can only help promote and change of peoples attitudes & reform.
XML is a META-MARKUP LANGUAGE, a language for defining markup languages. It is not a single file format, that every application will understand. For example, an app. for chemistry will read CML (Chemical Markup Language) and will never be able to make sense of a document in HRML (Human Resources Markup Language). The fact that so many different standards are being built upon XML is a testament to its success. The benefit brought by XML is that it removes low-level file format, encoding etc. issues, and allows the creation of structured documents/data. The fact remains, however, that a chemistry program is needed to understand what a element means, and HR software is needed to understand what a tag means. The fact that in some cases industries can't haven't developed a single schema for their domain, is unfortunate, but not catastrophic. There will be a shakeout that will remove many formats, and those that remain can be transformed into one another (e.g. via XSLT). This Tower of Babel nonsense is standard issue XML FUD. The fact that say, GM and Volkswagen, haven't decided on a single format for car components and what it means, is not a failure of XML or an issue that can be solved by any technology.
>On a related note I have been wondering about >using XML for more things. Theoretically you can >convert almost all of your data into any >language format that you want. However it seems >like the stuff out there about xml is rather >cryptic. In fact I still can't get a xml >document converted into just plain text (ie the >freenet documentation that comes with the >server).
You can use XSL transformations to convert XML to either a different XML, HTML or Text, but the source must be XML. To create text, use the text output method: <xsl:output method="text"/> Surround your text with <xsl:text> tags.
It reads an awful lot into things, and views everything from a ridiculously skewed bias, with the speakers presented as weirdos who are suddenly discovering the existance of society.
41,000 Linux Kernels running - how about putting them in a Beowulf cluster?:-) Then you would have something nearly as powerful as big mainframe, wait... er, forget about that one.
Slashdot Mirror
While you raise a valid concern which undoubtedly is shared by many like-minded indivduals, what your argument fails to take on board is RESISTANCE IS FUTILE - YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!
Sorry about that, don't know what came over me...
Ahh! Now I remember. He is the meanest kernel bandit in Mexico. :-)
Now that Qt is GPL'd Sun can do what I said they should in my previous post and switch to KDE.
Why? Is it someones birthday?
Buy out Trolltech. Release Qt under the GPL. Use KDE in Solaris.
:-). We are now using KDE...
I recently installed RedHat 6.1 on a machine at work, first with Gnome, then with KDE. It is hard to be objective about which was better: Gnome's reliability makes it hard to be objective, very hard
As a former Amiga owner, my take on the demise of that radical machine is that it was manufactured by a company who bought the technology in from another company, never really believed in it, and didn't develop it enough so that it could maintain its technological lead.
When Commodore went belly up, it was in a large part due to their failed attempt to get into the IBM clone business. They were a company that wanted to be like IBM, not like Apple. They even called their company Commodore Business Machines...
He is a business genius. That the best way of describing him. When IBM were the big bad guys (most of you probably don't remember this, but they invented both FUD and Embrace & Extend), Bill and Microsoft spanked them good. Now IBM is a very different company...
...which means people are going to be getting their heads around functional programming soon, whether they like it or not :-)
Also, according to FOLDOC, http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/,
LISP and SCHEME aren't strictly functional - they're declaritive languages with a functional subset, by that I mean you can write functional programs if you don't use certain features.
SQL is declarative, but it is not functional.
IT WAS A JOKE!
For example, I know that fish aren't built by people, and that the point of this work was historical, not to find out the secret of floatation.
I am not a WAP zealot, but their are a few empty arguments against WAP made again and again, and I'd like to address them. As you will see my post is balanced (if you read down), and I have a lot of criticism of aspects of the WAP forum.
f )
:-)
:-) Anyway, you probably can provide a richer experience on a PDA than WAP provides - the capabilities of a PDA fall between those of a mobile phone and a PC (in terms of screen size and ease of input).
Firstly you guys ought to remember the state mobile technology in Europe is much better than in the US, and Japan is further ahead again. You didn't develop a standard like GSM, and are behind as a result.
Secondly, a standard such as LEAP or a subset of XHTML isn't going to replace WAP on mobile phones while Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola are behind WAP.
The first article is clueless.
(http://cic.ucscarb.ac.uk/techbriefs/wapdead.pd
The guy says WAP is dead because GPRS will be out shortly with higher bandwidth. I've heard this so many times... This is like saying HTML is dead because 56k modems are about to be replaced by ADSL.
What WML addresses is how to display hypertext on a mobile phone. These have small screens. Higher bandwidth won't change this. Here's the deal: nobody wants bigger mobile phones.
And PDAs are seperate issue. Not everyone wants a Palm pilot, they want a mobile phone that they can occasionally use for surfing.
The second article has been misleadingly described. "IcesTorm-I sent us an IETF document criticizing the format". This IS NOT an IETF document, rather a post to an IETF mailing list. The points contained in it about WAP not being a truly open format are valid. The technical arguements are a mixed bag - yes, some of the wheels reinvented by the WAPForum definetly have corners.
The third article about Microsoft says "Microsoft compares Wap with Dos
Microsoft won't support Wap in its handheld device software because it says the mobile internet protocol's functionality is limited and has compared it with the text-based Dos operating system."
Don't they remember they used to sell DOS a while back?
My own take on WAP is as follows: WML is developer friendly and a good design for its intended market. You really do need very different design to allow people to browse easily on a device with only 90*50 pixel screen, and numeric/directional keys.
The other parts of WAP I'm not so hot on. The way encryption is done is very broken - you can't have end-to-end encryption from your site to the phone. You have to talk to the phone company to use their gateways capabilities, or else provide your own gateway.
Using your own gateway is not very practical as you need
o dialup lines
o modems
o your user has to reconfigure their phone
AND possibly have to make a international call to your gateway
(if they are abroad, and their phone co. won't let them connect to other gateways using their dialup - usually the case).
The upshot of all this is that you are very dependent on the phone company if you want to do secure e-commerce.
This leads to my final point: The WAPForum is comprised of mainly phone companies, phone manufacturers, and gateway vendors. As a result, their decisions don't always reflect the best interests of content providers or end users.
I've seen the langspec, the reason I posted the above is that I'd read an erroneous news report yesterday which said it was just new APIs.
What I don't get is how they can claim to have derived a language purely from C and C++ and still come up with something so close to Java.
"Oh come on. ActiveX is a nice script kiddie hacking tool...."
Fair is fair, you hit the nail on the head. Too many people slag off MS products around here, saying they are good for nothing. You on the other hand have shown that there is always someone who finds these technologies useful, in this case, malicious crackers.
Moderate that man up!
Look at the following. In one piece of code they demonstrate the goto keyword, AND why you should never include it in a language:
1.7.2 Labeled statements and goto statements
A labeled statement permits a statement to be prefixed by a label, and goto statements can be used to transfer control to a labeled statement.
The example
using System;
class Test
{
static void Main() {
goto H;
W: Console.WriteLine("world");
return;
H: Console.Write("Hello, ");
goto W;
}
}
is a convoluted version of the "Hello, world" program. The first statement transfers control to the statement labeled H. The first part of the message is written and then the next statement transfers control to the statement labeled W. The rest of the message is written, and the method returns.
And an IBM guy said it - what a shame. IBM are heavily committed to Java, he should have known the following:
C# = C++ and some new APIs.
That does not make it Java. Javas APIs aren't its only advantage over C++. Garbage collection, stronger type checking, threading & synchronization support, exception handling etc. which are in the Java syntax, save developer time and raise the software quality.
I know this article is going to lead into a religious language war, but lets get this much straight - C# uses C++ syntax.
What I don't get is Microsoft talking about using a VM. What, are they committed to cross platform capability? Maybe it is the only way to get apps running on NT and '95 and '98 etc. easily. :-)
Any others being left out?
XML is a simplified version of SGML.
SGML was used to create HTML. Is HTML useless?
XML is being used for similar roles (e.g. WML in WAP).
People are jumping on the bandwagon, and people like you are finding that it doesn't bring benfits for the particular thing they are doing. Here's the lowdown - you shouldn't have been using it to begin with. That's your fault, not XMLs.
XML isn't suitable for every purpose. For instance, when dealing information typically described in a binary format, XML may not be the best choice. Some people use it anyway...
XML is a modern version of ideas going back decades. It is particularly suitable for document type information. Examples of this are HTML, Docbook, NITF etc. The further you get from these types of information, the less applicable XML is.
XML has been hyped. Yes, some of it is overblown, but XML is going to be important. People have started backlashes against other movements such as Hypertext, OO, Java etc. Older programmers could probably add more to the list e.g. relational databases, them new fangled "assemblers", ASCII... :-)
"but with rifle shooting what you should do is "simply" to line up the three circles (target and sights) so they're perfectly concentric, then pull the trigger carefully to not move the rifle"
Do you not have to compensate for gravity & wind, or is the sight calibrated for this (or for gravity for a given range, atleast)?
...but it cracked me up when I read anyway.
Surely when the whole IP area descends into farce like this it can only help promote and change of peoples attitudes & reform.
He said words to the effect that someone didn't like winners, and the reply was "What? Like North Vietnam?"
XML is a META-MARKUP LANGUAGE, a language for defining markup languages. It is not a single file format, that every application will understand. For example, an app. for chemistry will read CML (Chemical Markup Language) and will never be able to make sense of a document in HRML (Human Resources Markup Language).
The fact that so many different standards are being built upon XML is a testament to its success. The benefit brought by XML is that it removes low-level file format, encoding etc. issues, and allows the creation of structured documents/data. The fact remains, however, that a chemistry program is needed to understand what a element means, and HR software is needed to understand what a tag means.
The fact that in some cases industries can't haven't developed a single schema for their domain, is unfortunate, but not catastrophic. There will be a shakeout that will remove many formats, and those that remain can be transformed into one another (e.g. via XSLT).
This Tower of Babel nonsense is standard issue XML FUD. The fact that say, GM and Volkswagen, haven't decided on a single format for car components and what it means, is not a failure of XML or an issue that can be solved by any technology.
...
>On a related note I have been wondering about
>using XML for more things. Theoretically you can
>convert almost all of your data into any
>language format that you want. However it seems
>like the stuff out there about xml is rather
>cryptic. In fact I still can't get a xml
>document converted into just plain text (ie the
>freenet documentation that comes with the
>server).
You can use XSL transformations to convert XML to either a different XML, HTML or Text, but the source must be XML.
To create text, use the text output method: <xsl:output method="text"/>
Surround your text with <xsl:text> tags.
It reads an awful lot into things, and views everything from a ridiculously skewed bias, with the speakers presented as weirdos who are suddenly discovering the existance of society.
41,000 Linux Kernels running - how about putting them in a Beowulf cluster? :-)
Then you would have something nearly as powerful as big mainframe, wait... er, forget about that one.
Very interesting implication regarding IE.