CSS a dead technology - XSL the way to go
on
Gecko under Review
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· Score: 3
Thanks for the kind words. With regards to DSSSL, I have to say that DSSSL is maybe the most complicated standard I have ever read for any technology. Its sort of a moot point seeing that it is basically dead. Its very elegant (uses Scheme as a descriptive language), but like SGML, overkill.
I agree that XSL can also be very messy. I agree that it is hard to understand. Tools will be needed to develop this kind of content. CSS and XSL are too complex to code by hand on a large site. Vanilla HTML 3.2 is still the way to go.
CSS a dead technology - XSL the way to go
on
Gecko under Review
·
· Score: 2
oops, i missed a closing i tag. my bad.
CSS a dead technology - XSL the way to go
on
Gecko under Review
·
· Score: 3
What does HTML/CSS lack (from a document point of view) that XML/XSL can do / can do better?
To which I respond, what does CSS give that HTML is missing (considering the number of users you will lose in the process)?
You use style sheets if you have a necessarily complicated presentation model. This would most likely only occur if your data model was also somewhat necessarily complex. In this case you should be definitely using XML. It is the only way to model data and present it simultaneously. CSS gives complex layouts to inherently simple strcutures. This mismatch has already killed CSS.
Given that, I repeat that I would never recommend any of the current style sheet technologies for use right now. User adoption rates are so low, and browser compliance is so random, it is not worth losing users.
CSS a dead technology - XSL the way to go
on
Gecko under Review
·
· Score: 3
CSS was born, promoted, and bascially died in the nursery without ever being adopted on a popular site.
XSL support is the way to go if you're even considering supporting intelligent style sheet technology.
Of course, I wouldn't use any of the current style sheet technologies on a popular page right now - conformance in browsers is simply way too low to bother. Its going to be a long long time before developers of popular sites are going to be able to get beyond pushing html 3.2. Its simply not worth it to alienate users by implementing a whiz-bang technology.
hysterical environmentalists
on
Gene Leakage
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· Score: 3
Last week it was reported that the polar caps are melting faster than ever. Do you think this is "FUD"?
The amount of pollution in the air is increasing yearly. Do you think this is a scheme to put the Green party in government?
I can't get over this notion that environmentalism is a political movement. Do capitalists live on another planet? Their mountains of trash and waste are as close to them as to the hippies and tree huggers. This is not a political issue.
What is so great about this comment?
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 2
I had a 3 from a comment in another thread long ago. until someone changes your rank, it appears to stay the same from then on. i wouldn't have ranked my own comment that highly either.
The Obvious Looming Bio-Catastrophe
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 3
Human civilization has been on a major collision course with ecological disaster for decades. Consumption, waste, manipulation of nature/natural processes, global warming, etc.
Behind it lies the dubious economics of growth and consumption as practiced and preached by the G-7.
It can be summed as simply as this (from Adbusters.org):
Economists need to learn how to subtract
Until you reduce demand, you cannot stop the cycle of consumption that is killing the planet.
While ecological conditions have continuously plagued African regions, it should be mentioned that much of the poverty in Central America and Africa itself is due to good old fashioned American meddling.
Haiti has been manipualted, invaded, and controlled by the United States for nearly a century.
Several Central American "client states" are now violent rural cesspools thanks to American meddling during the cold war.
I'm not talking about nasty leaflets or McDonald's, but direct, violent involvement in vote tampering, fruad, assassination, etc.
I think if most Americans knew what they were responsible for in places like Nicaragua and Chile, it would make them sick.
All of the plaititudes the US government applies to its foreign policies are designed simply to pacify and molify the unwashed masses who pay the bills for all this hypocrisy.
The subject line may be harsh, but is basically spot on. We could feed everyone on the planet right now, easily. The fact that we don't, and that we in North America waste so much food, must tell us something.
We give resources to those who will pay for them. Its as simple as that. New technologies will only result in more options for those who can pay.
Dyson advances a radical, new and very powerful notion of the Net as a political force
Huh? This idea isn't new at all.
While this book sounds amusing, it doesn't appear that Dyson is revelaing much. We all understand the power of the Internet - most users here probably understand it much better than Dyson. As for genetics, I also see this as relatively old news. We've known for at least a decade that genetics will lead us into new and dangerous territory.
Save yourself the $15. You can download real hard data about genetics for free. As for learning about the web, I would think that it is a moot point for most readers here.
All of this pseudo-analysis is worthless. The market will sort out the validity of open-source. This of course, will take time.
One distinction that should be made I think is that demand for linux is not fueled by its open-source nature. Demand is fueled by the fact that it is a very inexpensive way to get a solid unix-like OS on to commodity hardware. Most users couldn't even tell you what path the source code is in.
Commercialism will most certainly be decried throughout following comments as a vile stain on linux, but I see the commercial and free influences balancing out.
Primarily, I see the free market as diluting and dispersing resources in a way that allows developers to be creative in the most unencumbered manner, but does not focus and group resources quite efficiently.
The commercial market focuses resources, but eventually tries to move towards one or two solutions, which hinders creativity (and innovation).
Nurturing both is an excellent way to foster new innovation while focusing resources where and when necessary.
The idea of a memory stick sounds slightly suspicious (why not just stick with MiniDisc?) but I think you'll need someone like Sony (which also produces records) to get real artists behind a new medium.
MP3 is a great technology, but all of the artists listed on the legit MP3 sites are no-names. And no, I don't want to hear has-beens like Public Enemy or Ice-T.
I know that sounds like a slightly immature thing to say about a great new format, but I think it is safe to say the artists that are in demand right now are not releasing full listings on MP3. CD is still the king.
Just when I'm having fun reading constructive discussion in here, I come across crap like
I would suggest you stop pretending to be an "experienced" programmer and go back and read the book.
Oh Chad, you don't know how many times (a day, perhaps) you benefit from my programming. How droll. And no, I won't tell you what it is or who I am, but if you use a web browser you'll catch the hint.
I found this book to be useful, but if you're a halfway experienced programmer, I think you will have dealt with all of these issues and settled on solutions that you are satisfied with.
Everyone has an opinion on variable names, but once you've made up your mind, do you really care how someone else deals with them? Would any advice make you change? This is the sort of thing I am talking about.
This is a good book for someone to look at after completing a few undergrad courses (when they only know enough to be dangerous, and could use the "realignment").
For more experienced programmers, I don't see too much of use.
Open Source useless in this and similar cases
on
Open Source Windows
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· Score: 4
Simply releasing 30 million lines of code out to developers isn't going to be of much use to anyone.
It wold be impossible to comprehend and modify in a useful way unless you had a team of literally thousands working in very close conjunction with you (i.e. in the same building as you 8 hours a day). In other words, unless you are working at Microsoft, it is unlikely your organization will be able to make sense of the code.
As for individuals downloading the code, 30 million lines of code might as well be in hex. You'll never comprehend it in your lifetime.
This is a similar dilemma to Mozilla - developers have very little interest in delving deep into cruft, whether it be documented or not.
The practice of explicitly making a method "virtual" isn't there just to make C++ hard. Its part of the theory of its design. You only incur the overhead of a vtable if you want one. Java forces one on you whether you want it or not.
Has Java Progressed wrt Generic Programming?
on
Java for EGCS
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· Score: 2
If I remember correctly, one of Bjarne Stroustrop's chief criticisms of Java was its initial inability to support generic programming (as well as its apparent portability problems).
I haven't kept up with "Java2". Can anyone tell me if Java has improved in this regard?
This is a clear advantage of C++ that Java needs to address.
And no, they can't raise prices at will. There will be a point that it will be cheaper to rewrite everything over the long term than to stick with a vendor that is gouging you
This applies to Microsoft too though, blowing your argument. Really, most serious data wharehouses are more closely tied to their RDBMS than their OS.
Oracle users, for example, can move between HPUX and Solaris and still use OCI. Moving away from Oracle would be far more costly than switching OSs.
Slashdot Mirror
With Real in the partnership, maybe they have a chance, but IBM has never been very good at marketing to consumers. In fact, they suck at it.
Microsoft also has a *bit* of an advantage in the consumer OS market, which is the platform all this stuff depends on.
who could possibly care enough to bother?
Thanks for the kind words. With regards to DSSSL, I have to say that DSSSL is maybe the most complicated standard I have ever read for any technology. Its sort of a moot point seeing that it is basically dead. Its very elegant (uses Scheme as a descriptive language), but like SGML, overkill.
I agree that XSL can also be very messy. I agree that it is hard to understand. Tools will be needed to develop this kind of content. CSS and XSL are too complex to code by hand on a large site. Vanilla HTML 3.2 is still the way to go.
oops, i missed a closing i tag. my bad.
What does HTML/CSS lack (from a document point of view) that XML/XSL can do / can do better?
To which I respond, what does CSS give that HTML is missing (considering the number of users you will lose in the process)?
You use style sheets if you have a necessarily complicated presentation model. This would most likely only occur if your data model was also somewhat necessarily complex. In this case you should be definitely using XML. It is the only way to model data and present it simultaneously. CSS gives complex layouts to inherently simple strcutures. This mismatch has already killed CSS.
Given that, I repeat that I would never recommend any of the current style sheet technologies for use right now. User adoption rates are so low, and browser compliance is so random, it is not worth losing users.
CSS was born, promoted, and bascially died in the nursery without ever being adopted on a popular site.
XSL support is the way to go if you're even considering supporting intelligent style sheet technology.
Of course, I wouldn't use any of the current style sheet technologies on a popular page right now - conformance in browsers is simply way too low to bother. Its going to be a long long time before developers of popular sites are going to be able to get beyond pushing html 3.2. Its simply not worth it to alienate users by implementing a whiz-bang technology.
Last week it was reported that the polar caps are melting faster than ever. Do you think this is "FUD"?
The amount of pollution in the air is increasing yearly. Do you think this is a scheme to put the Green party in government?
I can't get over this notion that environmentalism is a political movement. Do capitalists live on another planet? Their mountains of trash and waste are as close to them as to the hippies and tree huggers. This is not a political issue.
I had a 3 from a comment in another thread long ago. until someone changes your rank, it appears to stay the same from then on. i wouldn't have ranked my own comment that highly either.
Human civilization has been on a major collision course with ecological disaster for decades. Consumption, waste, manipulation of nature/natural processes, global warming, etc.
Behind it lies the dubious economics of growth and consumption as practiced and preached by the G-7.
It can be summed as simply as this (from Adbusters.org):
Economists need to learn how to subtract
Until you reduce demand, you cannot stop the cycle of consumption that is killing the planet.
Self-elected. Self-promoting. Questionable anti-social tendencies.
It was different before we came along?
Yes, quite a bit so. People weren't butchering each other to uphold US policies, for starts.
While ecological conditions have continuously plagued African regions, it should be mentioned that much of the poverty in Central America and Africa itself is due to good old fashioned American meddling.
Haiti has been manipualted, invaded, and controlled by the United States for nearly a century.
Several Central American "client states" are now violent rural cesspools thanks to American meddling during the cold war.
I'm not talking about nasty leaflets or McDonald's, but direct, violent involvement in vote tampering, fruad, assassination, etc.
I think if most Americans knew what they were responsible for in places like Nicaragua and Chile, it would make them sick.
All of the plaititudes the US government applies to its foreign policies are designed simply to pacify and molify the unwashed masses who pay the bills for all this hypocrisy.
The subject line may be harsh, but is basically spot on. We could feed everyone on the planet right now, easily. The fact that we don't, and that we in North America waste so much food, must tell us something.
We give resources to those who will pay for them. Its as simple as that. New technologies will only result in more options for those who can pay.
Dyson advances a radical, new and very powerful notion of the Net as a political force
Huh? This idea isn't new at all.
While this book sounds amusing, it doesn't appear that Dyson is revelaing much. We all understand the power of the Internet - most users here probably understand it much better than Dyson. As for genetics, I also see this as relatively old news. We've known for at least a decade that genetics will lead us into new and dangerous territory.
Save yourself the $15. You can download real hard data about genetics for free. As for learning about the web, I would think that it is a moot point for most readers here.
All of this pseudo-analysis is worthless. The market will sort out the validity of open-source. This of course, will take time.
One distinction that should be made I think is that demand for linux is not fueled by its open-source nature. Demand is fueled by the fact that it is a very inexpensive way to get a solid unix-like OS on to commodity hardware. Most users couldn't even tell you what path the source code is in.
Commercialism will most certainly be decried throughout following comments as a vile stain on linux, but I see the commercial and free influences balancing out.
Primarily, I see the free market as diluting and dispersing resources in a way that allows developers to be creative in the most unencumbered manner, but does not focus and group resources quite efficiently.
The commercial market focuses resources, but eventually tries to move towards one or two solutions, which hinders creativity (and innovation).
Nurturing both is an excellent way to foster new innovation while focusing resources where and when necessary.
The idea of a memory stick sounds slightly suspicious (why not just stick with MiniDisc?) but I think you'll need someone like Sony (which also produces records) to get real artists behind a new medium.
MP3 is a great technology, but all of the artists listed on the legit MP3 sites are no-names. And no, I don't want to hear has-beens like Public Enemy or Ice-T.
I know that sounds like a slightly immature thing to say about a great new format, but I think it is safe to say the artists that are in demand right now are not releasing full listings on MP3. CD is still the king.
Just when I'm having fun reading constructive discussion in here, I come across crap like
I would suggest you stop pretending to be an "experienced" programmer and go back and read the book.
Oh Chad, you don't know how many times (a day, perhaps) you benefit from my programming. How droll. And no, I won't tell you what it is or who I am, but if you use a web browser you'll catch the hint.
I found this book to be useful, but if you're a halfway experienced programmer, I think you will have dealt with all of these issues and settled on solutions that you are satisfied with.
Everyone has an opinion on variable names, but once you've made up your mind, do you really care how someone else deals with them? Would any advice make you change? This is the sort of thing I am talking about.
This is a good book for someone to look at after completing a few undergrad courses (when they only know enough to be dangerous, and could use the "realignment").
For more experienced programmers, I don't see too much of use.
Simply releasing 30 million lines of code out to developers isn't going to be of much use to anyone.
It wold be impossible to comprehend and modify in a useful way unless you had a team of literally thousands working in very close conjunction with you (i.e. in the same building as you 8 hours a day). In other words, unless you are working at Microsoft, it is unlikely your organization will be able to make sense of the code.
As for individuals downloading the code, 30 million lines of code might as well be in hex. You'll never comprehend it in your lifetime.
This is a similar dilemma to Mozilla - developers have very little interest in delving deep into cruft, whether it be documented or not.
In other words, this is obviously a PR move.
The practice of explicitly making a method "virtual" isn't there just to make C++ hard. Its part of the theory of its design. You only incur the overhead of a vtable if you want one. Java forces one on you whether you want it or not.
If I remember correctly, one of Bjarne Stroustrop's chief criticisms of Java was its initial inability to support generic programming (as well as its apparent portability problems).
I haven't kept up with "Java2". Can anyone tell me if Java has improved in this regard?
This is a clear advantage of C++ that Java needs to address.
you're being dense.
linux is the fastest growing server OS right now.
the biggest selling home pc is the iMac.
how much more obvious do you need it?
They have to give away service packs for OS/2 - no one would buy them.
And no, they can't raise prices at will. There will be a point that it will be cheaper to rewrite everything over the long term than to stick with a vendor that is gouging you
This applies to Microsoft too though, blowing your argument. Really, most serious data wharehouses are more closely tied to their RDBMS than their OS.
Oracle users, for example, can move between HPUX and Solaris and still use OCI. Moving away from Oracle would be far more costly than switching OSs.