Not that I agree with the Belgian government, but this makes it easy to see why they don't want Google to display their news. If this story gets put up like this on a popular edited Web site like Slashdot, it would appear to be safe to assume that many people believe that Google News, Yahoo! News, and MSN news are all authoring their own stories.
You have some good points, but you need to clarify your terms.
For example, what is an "antibac?"
I bring this up because resistant strains of bacteria are resistant to antibiotic treatment, which is a term used to describe specifically-designed microparticles that attack weaknesses in the bacteria biological makeup. For example, penicillin is a chemical that binds with transpeptidase, which is an enzyme that certain bacteria use to build cell walls. When this enzyme is bound to by the penicillin, it becomes useless in the creation of the cell wall during reproduction; get enough penicillin in action, and weak areas in the cell wall start to form. Eventually, the cell wall stops doing its job of protecting the bacterium (e.g. the wall bursts), and it dies.
Resistance to penicillin in particular happens when the bacterium can produce penicillinase, which is an enzyme that binds with penicillin, preventing it from binding with transpeptidase and weakening the bacterium's cell walls. If only one in 100,000 bacteria can produce this enzyme, and it survives, it will replicate to form a colony of 100,000 bacteria that now have the potential ability to resist penicillin.
Anyway, my point is that this type of chemical is called an antibiotic, whereas a chemical such as chlorine bleach has no such presumptions. It is not designed as such, but it tends to have powerful general anticellular properties. Because of the way in which it so aggressively attacks the organic structure of bacteria (and your own skin, and many things), it is difficult for bacteria to become resistant to this type of chemical.
Please note that I am not advocating injecting chlorine bleach in order to eliminate a bacterial infection, or any other internal use for that matter (I'm sure we all saw Heathers).
By the way, in the future, please make every effort not to confuse works based on the works of J.K. Rowling with works based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
It is unfortunate that your experience was a bad one. What you said was true; the experience does rely on the speed of the network connection as well as the resources available to the server. However, today's thin client, accessing a properly configured server with adequate network bandwidth (none too scarce these days), will run very well for most applications, including video. Considering that Microsoft's Media Center Extender boxes are built around their Terminal Services technology, thin client video is ready for the mainstream.
Granted, there are certain applications for which this is not suited, but no one in their right mind is buying these boxes to play Oblivion via Terminal Server. Also, if you are doing drafting or non-linear video editing, you probably have dedicated workstations. For the average office, three main applications tend to do the trick (Web, Word, E-mail), and a properly-configured thin client does that quite well.
Of course it's possible to build a site or application that is backwards compatible and accessible and thus uses Ajax only as a enhancement. But if the site works just fine without Ajax, why would you waste time implementing a few extra Ajax features just for show?
Most of your comments are right on the money - if you are building a site that relies on AJAX, you are building incompatibility into the site (for now).
However, I must take exception with your last statement. Just because a site "works fine" without AJAX doesn't mean that it is a waste of time to add it. I developed a live search page recently that has users raving about how useful it is. This page was a static enter-your-criteria-and-hit-search page until recentl, which was fine, but it now allows you to return results while you are selecting criteria, which has an immense usability benefit when trying to sift through thousands of search results. Thus, it looks cool AND works great - not "just for show." Of course, the page still works "just fine" if the necessary AJAX components (Javascript, et al) are not present.
Overall, however, you are right. AJAX is simply another technology that should be used as it is appropriate as a solution to a problem rather than for its own sake.
If I were a proponent of genetic engineering (I am not), I would suggest that this is the opportunity for bioengineering to contribute to the energy crisis with a genetically modified version of this hardy blue-green algae that also produces twice as much bio-diesel as the other.
While we're at it, let's engineer it to stay off of public beaches and out of local swimming holes.
I think the user community along with the technical community approaches the tipping point with Microsoft, especially with more and more alternatives like web based applications. Microsoft may join that fray, but they've sandbagged themselves, and they may not recover so nimbly this time (though I'll never count Microsoft out).
You may be right, but I suspect you will not be right for a while. Unless Web-based applications gain mainstream notoriety, local apps will still be king for the near term (5 years). Even after that, there will probably be a multitude of apps still requiring a local machine to run. Ultimately, if people discover that they want to run their lives from any computer rather than just one, I think we will find ourselves in a world of remote, but not necessarily Web-based, apps that will utilize some other sort of universal platform (maybe Java will finally get its day in the sun).
But, I digress. The point is that only a few people are aware of Web-based apps, fewer use them, and fewer still require them. This tipping point you speak of is still a long way off, and may not come at all in that manner if the raison d'ètre for Web-based apps (central data storage, run anywhere, no installation) doesn't blossom.
And as long as local apps are king, familiarity (someone said vendor-lock in, which I would define as "whatever Best Buy put on my PC," but it's really all related) will determine which ones receive the lion's share of the market. I still have conversations like this more often than not:
Me: What operating system are you currently using?
Client: Windows!
Me: Windows XP?
Client: Um... Windows 2000 Me.
Me: Windows Me?
Client: Yes. Windows 2000 Me. Or is it called Word? I use Excel too. Does that matter?
Me:...
Client: So, can I install [latest and greatest software] if I have Word?
Me: I would recommend upgrading to Windows XP for that.
Client: Yeah, that's it! I have Microsoft XP.
Me: Windows XP or Office XP?
Client: You know, you should ask the guys at the store. They installed it. Also, my brother did some stuff on it to so that I could read everyone's documents.
Like joekampf, I have an HP Pavillion ZD8000. Truthfully, the only thing I haven't used on it is the firewire port, but that may change soon as I am running out of USB ports. Everything is useful on it, but that is because I use it for almost everything. I bought it so that I could plunk it down on the living room coffee table and do real work there (my wife found that more agreeable than me having to retreat to the basement for hours on end). Like mentioned before, the wide screen is great, it includes an actual, built-in number pad, and the Radeon X600 video tears through Half-Life 2 (although, sadly, performs only adequately on Battlefield 2).
Perhaps the point you are making is that most people don't need all of these features in their desktop, let alone their "desktop replacement." Fair enough. But everyone's requirements are different. I don't often take my monstrous excuse for a laptop on the road (to be fair, it's smaller than some), but I didn't buy it for that - I bought it because it has a slim form factor that looks good in the middle of a well-decorated room, and I can tuck it away whenever I need to. Having said that, I am about to buy a laptop for my wife (she found out that having a computer wherever you spend the most time is actually highly convenient), but her requirements will not include burning CDs or playing games; portability is the main desired feature, with a 12- or 14-inch screen that can easily fit in her backpack. She won't need the built-in 7-in-1 media reader to write her book or check her e-mail.
Or, you could release it so others can learn how it works and perhaps come up with improvements or more sophisicated algorithms/systems that are rank scrambler proof.
They may not be perfect, but the smart money says that the Google engineers are pretty good at what they do, and if they aren't confident that PageRank is capable of being both open and secured, I believe them. It would take a lot to convince me that some open source coder or two is going to do better.
But that's not the issue. We aren't talking about buffer overflows here. We're talking about releasing a "technique" to the world saying "this is how important element 'x' is to how your page is ranked." Pretty hard to obfuscate that without actually, well, obfuscating it.
You are partly right, but your statement reveals that you have, in fact, never met my father.
I believe he is in good company. To explain: In a way, what you are saying is like saying that sex doesn't carry a stigma. It is at least as old as mankind.
The truth is that certain kinds of sex carry a stigma, and all sex is viewed as having some sort of specific purpose and level of appropriateness for a given situation.
Likewise, you will find that my father does not mind playing Sequence or Skip-Bo during Christmas, but the same man viewed my dozens of hours roaming through King's Quest (during my younger years) as wasted time.
Part of that is because he did not receive the same enjoyment out the activity that I did, but another part is because he felt that there were more productive ways to spend time, each one of which involved more a) physical activity (preferably outside), b) social interaction, c) potential for earning a living, or d) any combination of the above.
I think you will find that most people who are non-gamers (electronic) would share the same view. This is called a stigma.
This situation reflects a social view that is held on almost any subject. Most activity is acceptable under certain circumstances, but not when that boundary of benefit and/or appropriateness is crossed. For example, if you were to gamble at a casino as much as some of us play Counter Strike or WoW, you would be considered compulsive and be recommended to seek treatment. Even a nightly bridge club is considered excessive by many.
Any activity that one does not understand/enjoy/deem-to-be-of-value bears the burden of disapproval. This is a view that we all carry, as the GP proved so eloquently by stating that he views his parents' TV-watching as wasteful.
I'm seeing this as less than a game and more of yet another cross-promotion strategy. Remember when movie studios realized that they could make millions by selling the soundtrack, and then realized that they could make billions by selling said soundtrack the day the movie was released?
These days, single-player games based on media licenses are just another form of marketing to extend the brand of the movie or TV property. It's almost a given that you will see a game based on a Disney movie, no matter how lame the mini-games end up being. Curiously, in that case they work because the audience of those particular movies want something basic that allows them to simply interact a bit more with Timon and Pumbaa (and even I liked the Burper).
I think this is a bit different, however. The principle is the same as above (allow the audience to interact a bit more), except that instead of a "video game," it's now a 3D chatroom with objectives (which pretty much describes the appeal of most MMOGs in the first place). Plus, you get to influence the course of the show.
I didn't see anything in TFA about "Eve Online." Submitter's speculation?
A technology that has been around since WWII, water injection is a lost art, in my opinion. Mostly used by hot-rodders to cool their turbos, I remember hearing stories of farmers who would regularly mod their tractors' diesel engines to inject water directly into the engine or carb to reduce fuel consumption without losing power.
I applaud Microsoft for identifying that user confusion has caused a lot of inadvertent invulnerabilities.
The idea of trusted and untrusted sites seems good on the surface, since it is a balance between open access to the Web and unplugging your DSL modem. Nevertheless, allowing the intranet zone to return means that there can still be zone spoofing, as you stated. Maybe less likely, but the problem with security is that a hole is a hole. Once you find it, it's now a problem, regardless of how hard it was to find it in the first place. Also, with managed installations allowing it to be on by default (at the sysadmin's discretion) means that a certain part of the corporate world will still be vulnerable. This is an important issue when you consider that malware attacks are becoming more targeted as hackers single out specific organizations.
I think the "Protected Mode" is also on the right track, but still allows the user to bypass the protection if they desire. This still leaves user-spoofing attacks (such as phishing or other subversion - "Click Here To Scan Your PC!"). Maybe it's more difficult, but given the statistics these days on the increase in sucception to such attacks, you can't really trust the user to make the right choice eight times out of ten. Remember that it's Uncle Bob using most of the Windows machines out there rather than the average/. reader.
It's doubtfull it will scan "through" your firewall; rather it will require you to locally install an ActiveX app that will update its signature files before launching and scanning "locally."
See the above posts on Trend Micro's version, McAfee's version, and now Microsoft's version.
Slashdot Mirror
In the greater sense, you are right. I stand corrected.
Not that I agree with the Belgian government, but this makes it easy to see why they don't want Google to display their news. If this story gets put up like this on a popular edited Web site like Slashdot, it would appear to be safe to assume that many people believe that Google News, Yahoo! News, and MSN news are all authoring their own stories.
You have some good points, but you need to clarify your terms.
For example, what is an "antibac?"
I bring this up because resistant strains of bacteria are resistant to antibiotic treatment, which is a term used to describe specifically-designed microparticles that attack weaknesses in the bacteria biological makeup. For example, penicillin is a chemical that binds with transpeptidase, which is an enzyme that certain bacteria use to build cell walls. When this enzyme is bound to by the penicillin, it becomes useless in the creation of the cell wall during reproduction; get enough penicillin in action, and weak areas in the cell wall start to form. Eventually, the cell wall stops doing its job of protecting the bacterium (e.g. the wall bursts), and it dies.
Resistance to penicillin in particular happens when the bacterium can produce penicillinase, which is an enzyme that binds with penicillin, preventing it from binding with transpeptidase and weakening the bacterium's cell walls. If only one in 100,000 bacteria can produce this enzyme, and it survives, it will replicate to form a colony of 100,000 bacteria that now have the potential ability to resist penicillin.
Anyway, my point is that this type of chemical is called an antibiotic, whereas a chemical such as chlorine bleach has no such presumptions. It is not designed as such, but it tends to have powerful general anticellular properties. Because of the way in which it so aggressively attacks the organic structure of bacteria (and your own skin, and many things), it is difficult for bacteria to become resistant to this type of chemical.
Please note that I am not advocating injecting chlorine bleach in order to eliminate a bacterial infection, or any other internal use for that matter (I'm sure we all saw Heathers).
Perhaps you are thinking of a different actor in a different movie:
Richard Harris (1930-2002, knighted - is that Sir Richard Harris?)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
By the way, in the future, please make every effort not to confuse works based on the works of J.K. Rowling with works based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Granted, there are certain applications for which this is not suited, but no one in their right mind is buying these boxes to play Oblivion via Terminal Server. Also, if you are doing drafting or non-linear video editing, you probably have dedicated workstations. For the average office, three main applications tend to do the trick (Web, Word, E-mail), and a properly-configured thin client does that quite well.
I am not selling thin clients.
Most of your comments are right on the money - if you are building a site that relies on AJAX, you are building incompatibility into the site (for now).
However, I must take exception with your last statement. Just because a site "works fine" without AJAX doesn't mean that it is a waste of time to add it. I developed a live search page recently that has users raving about how useful it is. This page was a static enter-your-criteria-and-hit-search page until recentl, which was fine, but it now allows you to return results while you are selecting criteria, which has an immense usability benefit when trying to sift through thousands of search results. Thus, it looks cool AND works great - not "just for show." Of course, the page still works "just fine" if the necessary AJAX components (Javascript, et al) are not present.
Overall, however, you are right. AJAX is simply another technology that should be used as it is appropriate as a solution to a problem rather than for its own sake.
If I were a proponent of genetic engineering (I am not), I would suggest that this is the opportunity for bioengineering to contribute to the energy crisis with a genetically modified version of this hardy blue-green algae that also produces twice as much bio-diesel as the other.
While we're at it, let's engineer it to stay off of public beaches and out of local swimming holes.
You may be right, but I suspect you will not be right for a while. Unless Web-based applications gain mainstream notoriety, local apps will still be king for the near term (5 years). Even after that, there will probably be a multitude of apps still requiring a local machine to run. Ultimately, if people discover that they want to run their lives from any computer rather than just one, I think we will find ourselves in a world of remote, but not necessarily Web-based, apps that will utilize some other sort of universal platform (maybe Java will finally get its day in the sun).
But, I digress. The point is that only a few people are aware of Web-based apps, fewer use them, and fewer still require them. This tipping point you speak of is still a long way off, and may not come at all in that manner if the raison d'ètre for Web-based apps (central data storage, run anywhere, no installation) doesn't blossom.
And as long as local apps are king, familiarity (someone said vendor-lock in, which I would define as "whatever Best Buy put on my PC," but it's really all related) will determine which ones receive the lion's share of the market. I still have conversations like this more often than not:
Me: What operating system are you currently using? ...
Client: Windows!
Me: Windows XP?
Client: Um... Windows 2000 Me.
Me: Windows Me?
Client: Yes. Windows 2000 Me. Or is it called Word? I use Excel too. Does that matter?
Me:
Client: So, can I install [latest and greatest software] if I have Word?
Me: I would recommend upgrading to Windows XP for that.
Client: Yeah, that's it! I have Microsoft XP.
Me: Windows XP or Office XP?
Client: You know, you should ask the guys at the store. They installed it. Also, my brother did some stuff on it to so that I could read everyone's documents.
;)
Perhaps the point you are making is that most people don't need all of these features in their desktop, let alone their "desktop replacement." Fair enough. But everyone's requirements are different. I don't often take my monstrous excuse for a laptop on the road (to be fair, it's smaller than some), but I didn't buy it for that - I bought it because it has a slim form factor that looks good in the middle of a well-decorated room, and I can tuck it away whenever I need to. Having said that, I am about to buy a laptop for my wife (she found out that having a computer wherever you spend the most time is actually highly convenient), but her requirements will not include burning CDs or playing games; portability is the main desired feature, with a 12- or 14-inch screen that can easily fit in her backpack. She won't need the built-in 7-in-1 media reader to write her book or check her e-mail.
Or, you could release it so others can learn how it works and perhaps come up with improvements or more sophisicated algorithms/systems that are rank scrambler proof.
They may not be perfect, but the smart money says that the Google engineers are pretty good at what they do, and if they aren't confident that PageRank is capable of being both open and secured, I believe them. It would take a lot to convince me that some open source coder or two is going to do better.
But that's not the issue. We aren't talking about buffer overflows here. We're talking about releasing a "technique" to the world saying "this is how important element 'x' is to how your page is ranked." Pretty hard to obfuscate that without actually, well, obfuscating it.
What stigma?
You are partly right, but your statement reveals that you have, in fact, never met my father.
I believe he is in good company. To explain: In a way, what you are saying is like saying that sex doesn't carry a stigma. It is at least as old as mankind.
The truth is that certain kinds of sex carry a stigma, and all sex is viewed as having some sort of specific purpose and level of appropriateness for a given situation.
Likewise, you will find that my father does not mind playing Sequence or Skip-Bo during Christmas, but the same man viewed my dozens of hours roaming through King's Quest (during my younger years) as wasted time.
Part of that is because he did not receive the same enjoyment out the activity that I did, but another part is because he felt that there were more productive ways to spend time, each one of which involved more a) physical activity (preferably outside), b) social interaction, c) potential for earning a living, or d) any combination of the above.
I think you will find that most people who are non-gamers (electronic) would share the same view. This is called a stigma.
This situation reflects a social view that is held on almost any subject. Most activity is acceptable under certain circumstances, but not when that boundary of benefit and/or appropriateness is crossed. For example, if you were to gamble at a casino as much as some of us play Counter Strike or WoW, you would be considered compulsive and be recommended to seek treatment. Even a nightly bridge club is considered excessive by many.
Any activity that one does not understand/enjoy/deem-to-be-of-value bears the burden of disapproval. This is a view that we all carry, as the GP proved so eloquently by stating that he views his parents' TV-watching as wasteful.
These days, single-player games based on media licenses are just another form of marketing to extend the brand of the movie or TV property. It's almost a given that you will see a game based on a Disney movie, no matter how lame the mini-games end up being. Curiously, in that case they work because the audience of those particular movies want something basic that allows them to simply interact a bit more with Timon and Pumbaa (and even I liked the Burper).
I think this is a bit different, however. The principle is the same as above (allow the audience to interact a bit more), except that instead of a "video game," it's now a 3D chatroom with objectives (which pretty much describes the appeal of most MMOGs in the first place). Plus, you get to influence the course of the show.
I didn't see anything in TFA about "Eve Online." Submitter's speculation?
Lots of links on this page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/message/1477 0
So, submit your own.
I applaud Microsoft for identifying that user confusion has caused a lot of inadvertent invulnerabilities.
The idea of trusted and untrusted sites seems good on the surface, since it is a balance between open access to the Web and unplugging your DSL modem. Nevertheless, allowing the intranet zone to return means that there can still be zone spoofing, as you stated. Maybe less likely, but the problem with security is that a hole is a hole. Once you find it, it's now a problem, regardless of how hard it was to find it in the first place. Also, with managed installations allowing it to be on by default (at the sysadmin's discretion) means that a certain part of the corporate world will still be vulnerable. This is an important issue when you consider that malware attacks are becoming more targeted as hackers single out specific organizations.
I think the "Protected Mode" is also on the right track, but still allows the user to bypass the protection if they desire. This still leaves user-spoofing attacks (such as phishing or other subversion - "Click Here To Scan Your PC!"). Maybe it's more difficult, but given the statistics these days on the increase in sucception to such attacks, you can't really trust the user to make the right choice eight times out of ten. Remember that it's Uncle Bob using most of the Windows machines out there rather than the average /. reader.
It's doubtfull it will scan "through" your firewall; rather it will require you to locally install an ActiveX app that will update its signature files before launching and scanning "locally." See the above posts on Trend Micro's version, McAfee's version, and now Microsoft's version.