From my experience, there will be a point dring development where the question about whether to display off-site links or not will arise. At this point, IF the client is somewhat reasonable he/she will agree that the Web is an open ended environment, that NOT giving all information a customer needs to decide on a deal is unproductive.
If, and this is frequently the case, you are meeting with an EMMM (see title), specially if the said EMMM consider itself a computer/internet power-user, things tend to degenerate fairly quick.
"No outside links" is just the starting point. They will then suggest tricks like this one (disable back-buttons) and go ahead to things like opening the page full-screen without address, menu or status bars (nearly hijacking the user's computer).
Sometimes it is possible to prevent this kind of crap, specially if you are dealing with a group. If, on the other hand, the EMMM is the sole or main responsible for the site, you usually end up being forced to develop a site with lots of user-enemy features.
Follow the links, I was only joking about other news about genetic experiments done to rats. Obviously the bird in question here is probably far more intelligent than any rat.
So the smarter, bigger rats have already noticed that the Web is the wave of the future and decided to carve their place into it, haven't they?
After all, although the bird is far less intelligent than the rats, it is probably a superb choice as a test animal for a browser to be used by smaller mammals.
In France, home of the world's best wines, most producers expect a fair year, not as good as to produce classics but good enough to keep tradition intact.
In California, on the other hand, the wine will probably keep its distinct "american" mood. Californian wine will keep being the (upper/middle) middle-class favourite all around the world, due to its cheaper price and sweeter flavour (when compared to its French counterpart).
The "niche" wines (Italian, Portuguese), of course, will always have a place in the drinker's heart and this year will be no different from the others. A Port after dinner is still a distinctive mark of good taste.
As for the less famous wines (Chilean, German come to mind), they will keep being what they are, poor but sometimes acceptable substitutes to the real thing, their consumption growing steadly with globalization and the access to new markets.
Disclaimer: all above information was made up on the fly.
It wasn't open source, it was for the Apple II and I can not remember the name.
In Brazil we had a lot of good Apple software for teaching math, biology, vocabulary etc coming from universities and some independent groups during the eoghties. Some were amazing.
Yes, I remember my Apple. I also remember my Commodore ColorComputer, where I first learned to code.
But no, I do not agree with you. First, I think BASIC is not a suitable language to teach to kids. Second, the distractions are only so if the teacher lets the computer take his/her place. To use your own examples, even if it is hard to come up with an educationally valid use of Quake, the Web is certanly one of the largest sources of educational opportunities out there.
(As for the box, the Apple was Woz Magic in the highest sense. I am yet to see a design so open, so clean, so downright "hackable". The Apple II external and internal design is probably responsible for the awakening of more computer careers than all other machines after it taken together).
First, coding was part of the original poster argument, and that was the point I was answering to.
I would agree that not everybody NEEDS to learn how to program a computer. OTH, we could consider that, as computers are a central piece of any modern society, all kids SHOULD have a basic understanding about them, including basic programming skills.
Also, I agree that email and word-processing are essential skills, but I really think computers have a place as tool for teaching almost everything. The real problem is to find good educational software for Social Studies, for instance. But I have already seen some.
And just because you don't get a crappy implementation of BASIC in your ROM anymore?
There are lots of very good K-12 packages to teach programming principles and practice to the kids. Some of them, like Logo, have a tradition going back to the sixties. There dozens of good Logo systems, most of then very affordable.
For older kids you can use Python, for instance, and let they reach new albeit turtleless, places. And Python, IDE included, is free as in beer.
Unless, of course, the sys-admin from Hell that seens to work at your school forbids any software instalation for whatsoever reason. Then you should fire him/her and hire some of the kids to run the network for you.
But before that you should consider taking a look at the problem from his/her point of view. Lots of computer savvy teens and pre-teens, lots of clueless adults taking care of the said kids and as you pointed, very few resources. Under these circunstances anyone would consider running the network very, very carrefully.
One system to rule them all, one system to find them, One system to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Redmond, where the Shadows lie.
DISCLAIMER: I do not believe in a God or in a First Cause whatsoever. Nevertheless, the comment that follows tried not to be much of a flamebait. I am not sure that it succeded
Albeit touchy, the question that comes to mind is if this book is worth discussing at all. From the review it is clear that the book is nothing much beyond a religious fairy tale with a thin layer of sci-fi (aliens).
So what? Is it novell? No. It is yet another attempt revitalize an old myth. Does it have any outstanding literary value? Even the reviewer does not think so.
What is it then? Probably nothing much more than another religious book, this time aimed at the more scientifically minded religious person.
Deep in the wastes of Switzerland , surrounded by the eternally white peaks, entrenched in a hidden green valley, there is a place where the protocol mangling and the political division of bandwitdh is carried away by the high priests of an ever lower cult. Through its dark corridors, the life and death of multi-billion dollar companies is decided over cups of tea served by humble servants.
The mitical ITU halls, where no foolish sysadmin or teenager wanna-be hacker was ever admited, where the powers decided how and when the people of Earth will communicate.
Beware ya who speak the high name of ITU in vain. Your life, your sanity and that of your family may well depend on ITU's wisdom and justice.
So some of us are not americans and our english is not so kosher...
CF is worse than ASP in at least two ways: it is not free and it is not so well supported. Also, ASP has some heritage, being a bastardized VB.
But I really don't care. Allaire can do whatever it wants with its proprietary language. I mantain that the open source technologies out there are better and can get the job done. And many clients of my company seem to agree. That is enough for me.
I was not complainig about it costing money, just pointing out that there are open source platforms that can get the job done at least as well as CF. Actually, IMHO PHP and Python are far better than CF, but that is just my opinion.
I've been programming for the Web since 1995. PHP is by far the better language I used. It is fast, it is flexible and above all, it is easy to mantain.
I deployed PHP in more than 5 flavours of Unix and in NT. It runs flawlessly in all of them.
If you can't say PHP is fast, easy to deploy and gets the job done in a hurry, you probably haven't used it enough.
And just for the record, I stated up front that I have never used CF. But I saw a lot of CF code here and there, and from a programming language point of view it is even worst than ASP.
You really had me laughing on this one. I have to agree with the other replier, you are proposing to legalize extortion.
On the other hand, the same crazy idea could work like that:
a) My machine catch a virus. The virus somehow make it absolutely clear it got in and could have done me harm.
b) The message in gotcha.txt reads like: "THIS MACHINE HAS GOT VIRUS XYZ, FROM XYZ CORP. PLEASE SEND THE ATTACHED SIGNATURE TO XYZ@XYZ.COM TO RECEIVE A CLEANER. YOU ARE ALSO ENTITLED TO RECEIVE U$1 FROM THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE FOLLOWING SOFTWARE (WHOSE BUGS WERE USED TO ENTER YOUR SYSTEM): MS OUTLOOK EXPRESS, MS WINDOWS 2000.... [signature follows]
c) XYZ would also receive U$1 per system penetrated.
So now, instead of virus writers we are talking about "pervasive" security experts...:)). Still extortion, but now it is making some lazy designers think about security.
As Mr. Gates kindly informs us that "government lawyers were technologically unsophisticated", ABC goes out and ask Ms. and Mr. Doe from Bellamy, WI, what should be done with Microsoft. We all know that Ms. and Mr Doe are fantastically sophisticated when it comes to technology. Even the mighty Linus seeks their opinions about every major kernel decision. That is really reassuring, to know they are aware of the problem with Microsoft and that they are considering the options for us.
If I remember my history well, kevin was also the guy who broke into the japanese decoding machine, thus forcing them to reboot the machine (a 24 hour job back then) and preventing the japanese declaration of war from being decoded and delivered before the attack.
Also, Jane missed the other movie inspired by kevins activities, 2001. It is wildly known in the right circles that the NASA secret mission to Jupiter was aborted under undisclosed circunstancies, after kevin managed to invade the in-ship mission control AI. Kubrik and Clark just left the most secret parts out of the script.
If I remember my history well, kevin was also the guy who broke into the japanese decoding machine, thus forcing them to reboot the machine (a 24 hour job back then) and preventing the japanese declaration of war from being decoded and delivered before the attack.
Also, Jane missed the other movie inspired by kevins activities, 2001. It is wildly known in the roght circles that the NASA secret mission to Jupiter was aborted under undisclosed circunstancies, after he managed to invade the in-ship mission control AI. Kubrik and Clark just left the most secret parts out of the script.
The story is from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. Pretending the planet was to be destroyed by this or that, a society managed to ship all the middle-class urban modern professionals (from phone-cleaners to hair-dressers to assistant productors to marketing people) away in a no-come-back trip to a distant planet. Naturally, they were told the A and C ships were soon to follow (but as they were the most important elements of the society, they would go first). Also naturally, their ship was fully automatic and programmed not to land, but to crash in the destination planet and destroy its flying capacity in the process (read the books, they are worth your time).
This one guy looks like a perfect choice for the B ship as soon as we manage to discover interstelar travel.
The Federation spaceships computers will not be running Linux anytime soon. Lt. Coronel John Francwitz, the officer in charge of all in-board systems explains that "while Linux is pretty much stable and clean, the lack of a clear (and suable) corporate sponsorship makes it impossible for us to even suggest its use". Francwitz also points that the cost to port the thousands of apps present even in a mid-range spaceship would make it economically impratical.
But that may not be the end of the story. Some Earth government officials are now saying that with the recent acquisition of the last remaining Microsoft by The Borg, the use of Windows SE (Space Editon) 4000 as the Federation's main spaceship OS is probably going to be questioned. But the same officials are fast to say that even if the Federation decides to stop using Windows, the logical choice for its sucessor would be Mac OS 5977.3 (that powers the Fleet's planetside Virtual Reality Servers).
You may well think whatever you want but what you think and the facts may also well diverge.
WinCE has absolutely nothing to do with Win3.1. CE is a modern OS, pretty modular (you can take out almost anything) and more akin to NT or 98 from an API point of view.
It was made to be run in a variety of environments, from palm-sized consumer devices to specialized machines. It also run in more than one precessor.
That said, I hardly believe MS will open-source any of it. And I really prefer my Palm.
I think the need for translation, while existent, should not be overrated.
Let's remember that most commercial products started and trived in Brazil without a portuguese version. This includes Windows and all MS Office apps. People who needed to use those would do whatever was necessary to overcome the language barrier.
There is also the globalization problem. More and more English is becoming the de facto world language. I am not saying that I like it this way, but this is a fact. I would certanly like to have every important book or paper translated to portuguese, but that is not going to happen. So, knowledge of the English language is a modern necessity.
Slashdot Mirror
From my experience, there will be a point dring development where the question about whether to display off-site links or not will arise. At this point, IF the client is somewhat reasonable he/she will agree that the Web is an open ended environment, that NOT giving all information a customer needs to decide on a deal is unproductive.
If, and this is frequently the case, you are meeting with an EMMM (see title), specially if the said EMMM consider itself a computer/internet power-user, things tend to degenerate fairly quick.
"No outside links" is just the starting point. They will then suggest tricks like this one (disable back-buttons) and go ahead to things like opening the page full-screen without address, menu or status bars (nearly hijacking the user's computer).
Sometimes it is possible to prevent this kind of crap, specially if you are dealing with a group. If, on the other hand, the EMMM is the sole or main responsible for the site, you usually end up being forced to develop a site with lots of user-enemy features.
Follow the links, I was only joking about other news about genetic experiments done to rats. Obviously the bird in question here is probably far more intelligent than any rat.
It seems to be the ONLY really serious comment around.
So the smarter, bigger rats have already noticed that the Web is the wave of the future and decided to carve their place into it, haven't they?
After all, although the bird is far less intelligent than the rats, it is probably a superb choice as a test animal for a browser to be used by smaller mammals.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
In France, home of the world's best wines, most producers expect a fair year, not as good as to produce classics but good enough to keep tradition intact.
In California, on the other hand, the wine will probably keep its distinct "american" mood. Californian wine will keep being the (upper/middle) middle-class favourite all around the world, due to its cheaper price and sweeter flavour (when compared to its French counterpart).
The "niche" wines (Italian, Portuguese), of course, will always have a place in the drinker's heart and this year will be no different from the others. A Port after dinner is still a distinctive mark of good taste.
As for the less famous wines (Chilean, German come to mind), they will keep being what they are, poor but sometimes acceptable substitutes to the real thing, their consumption growing steadly with globalization and the access to new markets.
Disclaimer: all above information was made up on the fly.
It wasn't open source, it was for the Apple II and I can not remember the name.
:(
In Brazil we had a lot of good Apple software for teaching math, biology, vocabulary etc coming from universities and some independent groups during the eoghties. Some were amazing.
Now, naturally, it is all over...
Yes, I remember my Apple. I also remember my Commodore ColorComputer, where I first learned to code.
But no, I do not agree with you. First, I think BASIC is not a suitable language to teach to kids. Second, the distractions are only so if the teacher lets the computer take his/her place. To use your own examples, even if it is hard to come up with an educationally valid use of Quake, the Web is certanly one of the largest sources of educational opportunities out there.
(As for the box, the Apple was Woz Magic in the highest sense. I am yet to see a design so open, so clean, so downright "hackable". The Apple II external and internal design is probably responsible for the awakening of more computer careers than all other machines after it taken together).
First, coding was part of the original poster argument, and that was the point I was answering to.
I would agree that not everybody NEEDS to learn how to program a computer. OTH, we could consider that, as computers are a central piece of any modern society, all kids SHOULD have a basic understanding about them, including basic programming skills.
Also, I agree that email and word-processing are essential skills, but I really think computers have a place as tool for teaching almost everything. The real problem is to find good educational software for Social Studies, for instance. But I have already seen some.
And just because you don't get a crappy implementation of BASIC in your ROM anymore?
There are lots of very good K-12 packages to teach programming principles and practice to the kids. Some of them, like Logo, have a tradition going back to the sixties. There dozens of good Logo systems, most of then very affordable.
For older kids you can use Python, for instance, and let they reach new albeit turtleless, places. And Python, IDE included, is free as in beer.
Unless, of course, the sys-admin from Hell that seens to work at your school forbids any software instalation for whatsoever reason. Then you should fire him/her and hire some of the kids to run the network for you.
But before that you should consider taking a look at the problem from his/her point of view. Lots of computer savvy teens and pre-teens, lots of clueless adults taking care of the said kids and as you pointed, very few resources. Under these circunstances anyone would consider running the network very, very carrefully.
One system to rule them all, one system to find them,
One system to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond, where the Shadows lie.
:)
DISCLAIMER: I do not believe in a God or in a First Cause whatsoever. Nevertheless, the comment that follows tried not to be much of a flamebait. I am not sure that it succeded
Albeit touchy, the question that comes to mind is if this book is worth discussing at all. From the review it is clear that the book is nothing much beyond a religious fairy tale with a thin layer of sci-fi (aliens).
So what? Is it novell? No. It is yet another attempt revitalize an old myth. Does it have any outstanding literary value? Even the reviewer does not think so.
What is it then? Probably nothing much more than another religious book, this time aimed at the more scientifically minded religious person.
Deep in the wastes of Switzerland , surrounded by the eternally white peaks, entrenched in a hidden green valley, there is a place where the protocol mangling and the political division of bandwitdh is carried away by the high priests of an ever lower cult. Through its dark corridors, the life and death of multi-billion dollar companies is decided over cups of tea served by humble servants.
The mitical ITU halls, where no foolish sysadmin or teenager wanna-be hacker was ever admited, where the powers decided how and when the people of Earth will communicate.
Beware ya who speak the high name of ITU in vain. Your life, your sanity and that of your family may well depend on ITU's wisdom and justice.
The post is obviously an example of fair use. The poster quotes a small amount of text from the original text to support his/her comment.
Besides, as the original poster noted, there is no "trade secret" clause now.
So some of us are not americans and our english is not so kosher...
CF is worse than ASP in at least two ways: it is not free and it is not so well supported. Also, ASP has some heritage, being a bastardized VB.
But I really don't care. Allaire can do whatever it wants with its proprietary language. I mantain that the open source technologies out there are better and can get the job done. And many clients of my company seem to agree. That is enough for me.
I was not complainig about it costing money, just pointing out that there are open source platforms that can get the job done at least as well as CF. Actually, IMHO PHP and Python are far better than CF, but that is just my opinion.
I've been programming for the Web since 1995. PHP is by far the better language I used. It is fast, it is flexible and above all, it is easy to mantain.
I deployed PHP in more than 5 flavours of Unix and in NT. It runs flawlessly in all of them.
If you can't say PHP is fast, easy to deploy and gets the job done in a hurry, you probably haven't used it enough.
And just for the record, I stated up front that I have never used CF. But I saw a lot of CF code here and there, and from a programming language point of view it is even worst than ASP.
You really had me laughing on this one. I have to agree with the other replier, you are proposing to legalize extortion.
:)). Still extortion, but now it is making some lazy designers think about security.
On the other hand, the same crazy idea could work like that:
a) My machine catch a virus. The virus somehow make it absolutely clear it got in and could have done me harm.
b) The message in gotcha.txt reads like:
"THIS MACHINE HAS GOT VIRUS XYZ, FROM XYZ CORP. PLEASE SEND THE ATTACHED SIGNATURE TO XYZ@XYZ.COM TO RECEIVE A CLEANER. YOU ARE ALSO ENTITLED TO RECEIVE U$1 FROM THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE FOLLOWING SOFTWARE (WHOSE BUGS WERE USED TO ENTER YOUR SYSTEM): MS OUTLOOK EXPRESS, MS WINDOWS 2000....
[signature follows]
c) XYZ would also receive U$1 per system penetrated.
So now, instead of virus writers we are talking about "pervasive" security experts...
As Mr. Gates kindly informs us that "government lawyers were technologically unsophisticated", ABC goes out and ask Ms. and Mr. Doe from Bellamy, WI, what should be done with Microsoft. We all know that Ms. and Mr Doe are fantastically sophisticated when it comes to technology. Even the mighty Linus seeks their opinions about every major kernel decision. That is really reassuring, to know they are aware of the problem with Microsoft and that they are considering the options for us.
Look here.
If I remember my history well, kevin was also the guy who broke into the japanese decoding machine, thus forcing them to reboot the machine (a 24 hour job back then) and preventing the japanese declaration of war from being decoded and delivered before the attack.
Also, Jane missed the other movie inspired by kevins activities, 2001. It is wildly known in the right circles that the NASA secret mission to Jupiter was aborted under undisclosed circunstancies, after kevin managed to invade the in-ship mission control AI. Kubrik and Clark just left the most secret parts out of the script.
If I remember my history well, kevin was also the guy who broke into the japanese decoding machine, thus forcing them to reboot the machine (a 24 hour job back then) and preventing the japanese declaration of war from being decoded and delivered before the attack.
Also, Jane missed the other movie inspired by kevins activities, 2001. It is wildly known in the roght circles that the NASA secret mission to Jupiter was aborted under undisclosed circunstancies, after he managed to invade the in-ship mission control AI. Kubrik and Clark just left the most secret parts out of the script.
The story is from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. Pretending the planet was to be destroyed by this or that, a society managed to ship all the middle-class urban modern professionals (from phone-cleaners to hair-dressers to assistant productors to marketing people) away in a no-come-back trip to a distant planet. Naturally, they were told the A and C ships were soon to follow (but as they were the most important elements of the society, they would go first). Also naturally, their ship was fully automatic and programmed not to land, but to crash in the destination planet and destroy its flying capacity in the process (read the books, they are worth your time).
This one guy looks like a perfect choice for the B ship as soon as we manage to discover interstelar travel.
The Federation spaceships computers will not be running Linux anytime soon. Lt. Coronel John Francwitz, the officer in charge of all in-board systems explains that "while Linux is pretty much stable and clean, the lack of a clear (and suable) corporate sponsorship makes it impossible for us to even suggest its use". Francwitz also points that the cost to port the thousands of apps present even in a mid-range spaceship would make it economically impratical.
But that may not be the end of the story. Some Earth government officials are now saying that with the recent acquisition of the last remaining Microsoft by The Borg, the use of Windows SE (Space Editon) 4000 as the Federation's main spaceship OS is probably going to be questioned. But the same officials are fast to say that even if the Federation decides to stop using Windows, the logical choice for its sucessor would be Mac OS 5977.3 (that powers the Fleet's planetside Virtual Reality Servers).
Inspired by:This fine Segfault piece by Rob " The Hitman " Cormick
You may well think whatever you want but what you think and the facts may also well diverge.
WinCE has absolutely nothing to do with Win3.1. CE is a modern OS, pretty modular (you can take out almost anything) and more akin to NT or 98 from an API point of view.
It was made to be run in a variety of environments, from palm-sized consumer devices to specialized machines. It also run in more than one precessor.
That said, I hardly believe MS will open-source any of it. And I really prefer my Palm.
I think the need for translation, while existent, should not be overrated.
Let's remember that most commercial products started and trived in Brazil without a portuguese version. This includes Windows and all MS Office apps. People who needed to use those would do whatever was necessary to overcome the language barrier.
There is also the globalization problem. More and more English is becoming the de facto world language. I am not saying that I like it this way, but this is a fact. I would certanly like to have every important book or paper translated to portuguese, but that is not going to happen. So, knowledge of the English language is a modern necessity.