A question, then: which takes more CPU overhead - running "grep foo.xml; zip curdir" or opening a heavyweight client such as OOo or MS Office and scripting it to perform the same edits?
With a pointless comparison like this, you'll be great asset in the ODF FUD campaign group at Microsoft.
They take two popular office packages (theirs and OOo) and make unsupported assumptions about how fast the formats are, and you compare full featured GUI office packages created for people to work with, and compare it with the length of a command line command. Essentially non-sense.
You don't need an office package to parse or create a DOC, they are small, fast components that can do this for you.
Neither is typing "zip curdir" guaranteed to work fast, mind you I can show you zipping operations that take quite a while.
Let's compare two optimized C++ classes that create ODF and DOC written by professional programmers familiar with the formats and compare that.
While that isn't valuable to the average user, it's extremely handy for those of us who want to generate documents dynamically with as little overhead as possible (example: sending quotes based on form input on a website).
Depends what you mean by overhead. It's less overhead for the programmer, but more for the program. You know binary formats are usually compact and compression can help but not a lot to reduce size further.
If you compress an XML, it remarkably shrinks to a tiny percentage if its initial size. All this redundancy is avoided in binary formats by design.
If you think sending extra bytes or wasting CPU to zip and unzip XML files is not more overhead... dunno what is.
XML is a miserable failure on both counts. It may technically be readable, but it is excruciating. Easy to parse, it most certainly is not. About the only thing it has going for it, is that it is an extensible standard.
You could say this - XML is truly an anomaly. There are far more efficient ways to express a binary tree, and the human readable argument is no longer true, as new XML dialects (like W3C's own XHTML2) are so complex that they are labelled machine readable only.
I remember in my first experiences with XML wondering "why the hell is everyone using this: it's bloated, redundant as hell and not strict enough", yet XML has wild success.
I'm kinda used to it being around, and I even use it here and there, but I'll never stop wondering why people love it so much.
It's open, true, but a standard doesn't have to be bloated to be open, does it.
It's actually likely they're slightly faster for spreadsheets. For example:
* they use single-letter tag names, for the most part, to reduce parsing time
* they remove all strings and put them in a look-up table
Thing is XML was desgiend to be readable and easy to parse. If you start doing hacks like embedding tons of binary data (OpenXML has images embeded in the XML), using one letter tags and look-up tables, you've essentially a bloated binary format.
You can call it an XML, it's technically XML, but it really isn't.
It would be better that Microsoft offers an open binary format, but truly open, patent free. XML is really heavy compared to efficient binary formats. Compressing the resulting XML makes XML formats on par with binary as to size, but that's just faking it: the program will have to decompress it and parse an XML, which is tons harder that directly parsing binary offsets and bits (for a machine).
Also, having the developers using Vista and having grandma use Vista are 2 entirely different things. I don't have any problems running windows 2k and keeping it free from viruses/spyware/bloat. Yet this seems to be the biggest problem for home users.
Well, have you asked if your grandma considers to apply for a job at MS?
I personally fear the day that a machine or algorithm can better determine the purpose for my keyword-based search than I can.
I fear the day where typing on an electronic device will produce better looking text and typography than me painstakingly painting every letter and produce one book a year.
The thing is, their browser doesn't even support PNG properly yet (even ie7 I believe), so why would I believe that a) they could support this properly or b) everyone else would.
IE7 supports the full spec of PNG properly, I guess the rest of your argument falls flat.
Dude, I think you're more afraid of standing up for your own words, than you're afraid of me.... You made a lot of big mistakes, so I posted several replies to correct you.
Ok here's my last attempt, and I swear you're pissing me off, because I'll have to repeat myself AGAIN:
Regarding speed and framework:
I've said two or three times they don't target the same player. Technically they target a thing called "Flash Player" but they target different runtimes inside the player with a different rendering engine and a different runtime, for Flex 2 it's a JIT engine that has a lot more elegant programming model and it's a lot faster. The fact that Laszlo has an initiative (with no actual product at the moment) to support: this is great, I'm not slamming Laszlo, just correcting you about saying Flex 2 isn't producing faster and more elegantly designed content.
Regarding FREE:
All you need to develop fully functional applications is the SDK. The SDK contains the compiler, the components *source* and the documentation. It's just like the, say, free Intel compilers,.NET compilers, DirectX SDK, QuickTime SDK and so on.
With this free SDK alone you can develop Flex 2 commercial (or non-commercial) applications. There are few projects underway for existing open source ActionScript editors to support the SDK so that you don't need the sub $1000 IDE from Macromedia. This means, your cost of entry is $0.
If you want to buy the Macromedia IDE: then good, if you don't want to, you don't have to. You'll have plenty of alternatives. One thing is certain though, Macromedia did a hell of a lot of a better job doing their IDE than Laszlo did. I urge you to install Flex 2's Eclipse plugin beta and try it.
What does the server do? The server makes developing huge interconnected services and applications a lot easier. It's tightly integrated with the rest of the Macromedia product and Macromedia provides support for those who order the server.
There's no one-size-fits-all here, and the server is mostly useful for bigger enterprises, I personally as a Flash/AJAX/Flex 2 developer find some interesting stuff in it, but nothing I can't do with the free open source AMFPHP already, so I'll just pass on the server, but a lot of enterprises might be interested in it for reasons I as a leader of a small team don't care.
From your posts it's obvious you don't have programming experience with Flex 2, but I have programming experience with both Flex 1 and 2, and also Laszlo, claiming Laszlo is more features is totally unfounded. You're just throwing FUD "out there" in the blind in the hope it'll sound right enough.
But... but the server is free with Laszlo!!!
For a long time it wasn't free. Laszlo was a commercial closed source project created with the intent to profit. Apparently it didn't really work so they opened it as a part of a strategy to keep the project alive.
The fact that product "X" offers some sort of free server and product "Y" offers a commercial server, doesn't mean both servers do remotely the same as a purpose or features. And again, Laszlo wanted to *sell* the server, but failed, so they made it free after some time. Your view is extremely naive.
Flex 2 teh vendor lock-in! 1111
When you program for Linux, they don't offer direct Windows.EXE output. When you get an AJAX framework from Yahoo, Google or SourceForge, it doesn't output Flash. There are different tools for different frameworks. Is every single one of them a conspiracy effort to lock you in?
Am I not locked into Laszlo's IDE and framework, never mind my output? My end users may pick the slow (and currently buggy), limited DHTML support, but if I have 10 MB of Laszlo code, do *I* as a developer get to choose?
Unless I port my code, I don't. And this is not an evil conspiracy, it's a natural effect: all frameworks differ in some ways, we all have a different vision
Dude, I'm afraid of you. You've posted 22 comments in the Laszlo thread regurgitating basically the same thing like a lunatic, and now spilling it over in other threads.
Are you obsessed with me or something? You can't get on with your life unless I agree Flex is teh evil vendor lock-in?
I could speak for hours how Laszlo's DHTML is merely a beta and doesn't really work well (tested it), or how it existed for ages with just Flash support, or how Laszlo wouldn't exist if Macromedia didn't open the specs of Flash and invited the community to write SWF compatible apps, or how many open-source Flash players are out there and so on and so on.
But I'll just pass, since apparently you have some sort of bigger problem that I doubt talking with me will solve.
Girlfriend, going out, meeting people: why bother with all the hassles.
Lead a healthy Alternative live, just bash Microsoft daily on Slashdot. No matter the context, no matter the reason, bashing daily Microsoft on Slashdot is always easy and gives you all you've ever wanted from social life and more!
Call now 0-800-I-AM-NERD and bash Microsoft daily on Slashdot and you receive our special lifestyle tip of the year: Bash Sony daily on Slashdot!"
You're not even reading what I'm writing, just repeating points I've killed in my very first post. I just don't have the time to waste talking with what is a perfect example of a troll.
. Then they made a new compiler which turns it into DHTML so youd on't need Flash any more.
You don't need Flash any more if you're willing to give up the advanced functionality, speed, and expect various quirks to pop-up in the different browsers you'll run it in.
Right now the DHTML version is a lot slower than Flash 7's version. And given the massive rendering and script running speed improvements of Flash 9 (Flex 2 targets), you can expect the difference to be even more drastic.
"*FREE*" does not mean "free (for non-commercial use only) (sub $1000) (plus an unannounced but high per-server licensing fee)".
Dude, why don't you spend some time researching instead of ranting. Flex 2 doesn't need a server nor does its framework, it produces standalone SWF files you can deploy on a server of your desire.
The compiler/framework and the rest of the SDK is not "free non-commercial sub $1000" it's "free commercial or non-commercial $0", get it?
How much will Adobe charge for the server license?
The server component in this release was isolated and its functionality is very limited. It offers mostly connectivity useful for big enterprises and its functionality is duplicated by open source project like AMFPHP.
Macromedia has officially announced that the new version of AMF (AMF3) will be published in the upcoming Flash 9 format specification (the spec we always get after each release) and it's free to be implemented by 3rd party projects.
That's it. I'm tired of trying to get some plain basic facts through your thick skull. Think whatever you wanna think. I think the rest of the Slashdot readers who will read my posts will understand clearly what I meant.
And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"?
Because it's free. The compiler and the framework is free as in beer: for commercial and non-commercial projects, forever.
The IDE is sub $1000, but you can expect plenty of free IDE-s to pop-up that use the compiler, just like it happened with the free.NET compilers.
I won't even comment on the "it locks you" argument, but you probably realize that in your quest to put Flex in a bad light you've written few quite ridiculous posts. Grow up.
Flex 1's licensing sucked, I hated it as well most of the Flash developers did. But now Macromedia is part of Adobe, Adobe has money, Macromedia is not desperate for short term cash, so their new long term profit strategy is far more friendly towards their consumers than you try to spin it.
But, "the story sucks" is mindless arm-waving at the expense of the hard work of others. It accomplishes nothing.
This is what happens when you hype up something and it quickly deflates upon closer inspection. You're saying I'm bashing it since it's vaguely off-center from mainstream, but that's not the reason I bash it and you know that.
If they wanna try themselves at matching Hollywood (see the context of the entire "campaign") then I'll act as if I watch a commercial short movie.
Only thing it'll spur is another "landgrab" fiasco where thousands of cybersquatters trip over themselves in a hurry to register all.mobi domains they could think of and fill them with google ads.
Slashdot Mirror
A question, then: which takes more CPU overhead - running "grep foo.xml; zip curdir" or opening a heavyweight client such as OOo or MS Office and scripting it to perform the same edits?
With a pointless comparison like this, you'll be great asset in the ODF FUD campaign group at Microsoft.
They take two popular office packages (theirs and OOo) and make unsupported assumptions about how fast the formats are, and you compare full featured GUI office packages created for people to work with, and compare it with the length of a command line command. Essentially non-sense.
You don't need an office package to parse or create a DOC, they are small, fast components that can do this for you.
Neither is typing "zip curdir" guaranteed to work fast, mind you I can show you zipping operations that take quite a while.
Let's compare two optimized C++ classes that create ODF and DOC written by professional programmers familiar with the formats and compare that.
While that isn't valuable to the average user, it's extremely handy for those of us who want to generate documents dynamically with as little overhead as possible (example: sending quotes based on form input on a website).
Depends what you mean by overhead. It's less overhead for the programmer, but more for the program. You know binary formats are usually compact and compression can help but not a lot to reduce size further.
If you compress an XML, it remarkably shrinks to a tiny percentage if its initial size. All this redundancy is avoided in binary formats by design.
If you think sending extra bytes or wasting CPU to zip and unzip XML files is not more overhead... dunno what is.
XML is a miserable failure on both counts. It may technically be readable, but it is excruciating. Easy to parse, it most certainly is not. About the only thing it has going for it, is that it is an extensible standard.
You could say this - XML is truly an anomaly. There are far more efficient ways to express a binary tree, and the human readable argument is no longer true, as new XML dialects (like W3C's own XHTML2) are so complex that they are labelled machine readable only.
I remember in my first experiences with XML wondering "why the hell is everyone using this: it's bloated, redundant as hell and not strict enough", yet XML has wild success.
I'm kinda used to it being around, and I even use it here and there, but I'll never stop wondering why people love it so much.
It's open, true, but a standard doesn't have to be bloated to be open, does it.
It's actually likely they're slightly faster for spreadsheets. For example:
* they use single-letter tag names, for the most part, to reduce parsing time
* they remove all strings and put them in a look-up table
Thing is XML was desgiend to be readable and easy to parse. If you start doing hacks like embedding tons of binary data (OpenXML has images embeded in the XML), using one letter tags and look-up tables, you've essentially a bloated binary format.
You can call it an XML, it's technically XML, but it really isn't.
It would be better that Microsoft offers an open binary format, but truly open, patent free. XML is really heavy compared to efficient binary formats. Compressing the resulting XML makes XML formats on par with binary as to size, but that's just faking it: the program will have to decompress it and parse an XML, which is tons harder that directly parsing binary offsets and bits (for a machine).
I will have to either abandon ODF in favor of MS Office, or upgrade my 386... What to do!!!
Also, having the developers using Vista and having grandma use Vista are 2 entirely different things. I don't have any problems running windows 2k and keeping it free from viruses/spyware/bloat. Yet this seems to be the biggest problem for home users.
Well, have you asked if your grandma considers to apply for a job at MS?
:( jeez I really feel bad about you
Which is my biggest concern with the lifetime of my laptop and my sperm count.
:)
You still put the laptop lifetime first though. Typical
Regarding the sperm problem, I wonder we still don't see pants with radiators and fans built-in. They'll sell like hot... err.. cool... anyways.
200 or 225, does it matter :) The news is the confirmation it'll not be $400 nor $600 :)
I personally fear the day that a machine or algorithm can better determine the purpose for my keyword-based search than I can.
I fear the day where typing on an electronic device will produce better looking text and typography than me painstakingly painting every letter and produce one book a year.
The thing is, their browser doesn't even support PNG properly yet (even ie7 I believe), so why would I believe that a) they could support this properly or b) everyone else would.
IE7 supports the full spec of PNG properly, I guess the rest of your argument falls flat.
The Independent Games festival
That answers the question "what is with India producing all those games.." and why I've not seen games from India for sale around.
Goddam' reporters and their slang... slang.... stuff!
Dude, I think you're more afraid of standing up for your own words, than you're afraid of me. ... You made a lot of big mistakes, so I posted several replies to correct you.
.NET compilers, DirectX SDK, QuickTime SDK and so on.
.EXE output.
Ok here's my last attempt, and I swear you're pissing me off, because I'll have to repeat myself AGAIN:
Regarding speed and framework:
I've said two or three times they don't target the same player. Technically they target a thing called "Flash Player" but they target different runtimes inside the player with a different rendering engine and a different runtime, for Flex 2 it's a JIT engine that has a lot more elegant programming model and it's a lot faster. The fact that Laszlo has an initiative (with no actual product at the moment) to support: this is great, I'm not slamming Laszlo, just correcting you about saying Flex 2 isn't producing faster and more elegantly designed content.
Regarding FREE:
All you need to develop fully functional applications is the SDK. The SDK contains the compiler, the components *source* and the documentation. It's just like the, say, free Intel compilers,
With this free SDK alone you can develop Flex 2 commercial (or non-commercial) applications.
There are few projects underway for existing open source ActionScript editors to support the SDK so that you don't need the sub $1000 IDE from Macromedia. This means, your cost of entry is $0.
If you want to buy the Macromedia IDE: then good, if you don't want to, you don't have to. You'll have plenty of alternatives. One thing is certain though, Macromedia did a hell of a lot of a better job doing their IDE than Laszlo did. I urge you to install Flex 2's Eclipse plugin beta and try it.
What does the server do? The server makes developing huge interconnected services and applications a lot easier. It's tightly integrated with the rest of the Macromedia product and Macromedia provides support for those who order the server.
There's no one-size-fits-all here, and the server is mostly useful for bigger enterprises, I personally as a Flash/AJAX/Flex 2 developer find some interesting stuff in it, but nothing I can't do with the free open source AMFPHP already, so I'll just pass on the server, but a lot of enterprises might be interested in it for reasons I as a leader of a small team don't care.
From your posts it's obvious you don't have programming experience with Flex 2, but I have programming experience with both Flex 1 and 2, and also Laszlo, claiming Laszlo is more features is totally unfounded. You're just throwing FUD "out there" in the blind in the hope it'll sound right enough.
But... but the server is free with Laszlo!!!
For a long time it wasn't free. Laszlo was a commercial closed source project created with the intent to profit. Apparently it didn't really work so they opened it as a part of a strategy to keep the project alive.
The fact that product "X" offers some sort of free server and product "Y" offers a commercial server, doesn't mean both servers do remotely the same as a purpose or features. And again, Laszlo wanted to *sell* the server, but failed, so they made it free after some time. Your view is extremely naive.
Flex 2 teh vendor lock-in! 1111
When you program for Linux, they don't offer direct Windows
When you get an AJAX framework from Yahoo, Google or SourceForge, it doesn't output Flash.
There are different tools for different frameworks. Is every single one of them a conspiracy effort to lock you in?
Am I not locked into Laszlo's IDE and framework, never mind my output? My end users may pick the slow (and currently buggy), limited DHTML support, but if I have 10 MB of Laszlo code, do *I* as a developer get to choose?
Unless I port my code, I don't. And this is not an evil conspiracy, it's a natural effect: all frameworks differ in some ways, we all have a different vision
I'm still waiting for you to answer
Dude, I'm afraid of you. You've posted 22 comments in the Laszlo thread regurgitating basically the same thing like a lunatic, and now spilling it over in other threads.
Are you obsessed with me or something? You can't get on with your life unless I agree Flex is teh evil vendor lock-in?
I could speak for hours how Laszlo's DHTML is merely a beta and doesn't really work well (tested it), or how it existed for ages with just Flash support, or how Laszlo wouldn't exist if Macromedia didn't open the specs of Flash and invited the community to write SWF compatible apps, or how many open-source Flash players are out there and so on and so on.
But I'll just pass, since apparently you have some sort of bigger problem that I doubt talking with me will solve.
Shit it's looking totally different, this is at least the fifth "final design" of this little machine I've seen announced :)
It looks hot, though, I don't agree I gotta pay triple the price and donate 2, however, they're pushing it.
The initial plans of selling it for $200 and donating one were more sane.
work for us without working for us
I watched this ad on the TV the other day:
"Social life? You don't need it.
Girlfriend, going out, meeting people: why bother with all the hassles.
Lead a healthy Alternative live, just bash Microsoft daily on Slashdot. No matter the context, no matter the reason, bashing daily Microsoft on Slashdot is always easy and gives you all you've ever wanted from social life and more!
Call now 0-800-I-AM-NERD and bash Microsoft daily on Slashdot and you receive our special lifestyle tip of the year: Bash Sony daily on Slashdot!"
I predict that because of ... monoculture... whatever... err microbiology, nanoparticles and so on, a virus for Vista will be created.
That's it. In one year Slashdot will write about me and my amazing prediction came true, how the hell I can be so smart to ever guess this coming?!
I'll probably be in my 60's when the sexy Japanese carnivorous wall climbing robots with super strength come to get me.
It'll take them only 10 minutes to walk in through the open windows and another 20 to walk to the sofa where you sit in terror awaiting your destiny.
But if you decide to go to the bathroom, the robot is pretty much screwed, his battery won't last as long to hunt you that far.
You're not even reading what I'm writing, just repeating points I've killed in my very first post. I just don't have the time to waste talking with what is a perfect example of a troll.
. Then they made a new compiler which turns it into DHTML so youd on't need Flash any more.
You don't need Flash any more if you're willing to give up the advanced functionality, speed, and expect various quirks to pop-up in the different browsers you'll run it in.
Right now the DHTML version is a lot slower than Flash 7's version. And given the massive rendering and script running speed improvements of Flash 9 (Flex 2 targets), you can expect the difference to be even more drastic.
"*FREE*" does not mean "free (for non-commercial use only) (sub $1000) (plus an unannounced but high per-server licensing fee)".
Dude, why don't you spend some time researching instead of ranting. Flex 2 doesn't need a server nor does its framework, it produces standalone SWF files you can deploy on a server of your desire.
The compiler/framework and the rest of the SDK is not "free non-commercial sub $1000" it's "free commercial or non-commercial $0", get it?
How much will Adobe charge for the server license?
The server component in this release was isolated and its functionality is very limited. It offers mostly connectivity useful for big enterprises and its functionality is duplicated by open source project like AMFPHP.
Macromedia has officially announced that the new version of AMF (AMF3) will be published in the upcoming Flash 9 format specification (the spec we always get after each release) and it's free to be implemented by 3rd party projects.
That's it. I'm tired of trying to get some plain basic facts through your thick skull. Think whatever you wanna think. I think the rest of the Slashdot readers who will read my posts will understand clearly what I meant.
I don't think my responses are actually being read, here
Are you offended of not appreciating your work up there?
And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"?
.NET compilers.
Because it's free. The compiler and the framework is free as in beer: for commercial and non-commercial projects, forever.
The IDE is sub $1000, but you can expect plenty of free IDE-s to pop-up that use the compiler, just like it happened with the free
I won't even comment on the "it locks you" argument, but you probably realize that in your quest to put Flex in a bad light you've written few quite ridiculous posts. Grow up.
Flex 1's licensing sucked, I hated it as well most of the Flash developers did. But now Macromedia is part of Adobe, Adobe has money, Macromedia is not desperate for short term cash, so their new long term profit strategy is far more friendly towards their consumers than you try to spin it.
But, "the story sucks" is mindless arm-waving at the expense of the hard work of others. It accomplishes nothing.
This is what happens when you hype up something and it quickly deflates upon closer inspection. You're saying I'm bashing it since it's vaguely off-center from mainstream, but that's not the reason I bash it and you know that.
If they wanna try themselves at matching Hollywood (see the context of the entire "campaign") then I'll act as if I watch a commercial short movie.
Only thing it'll spur is another "landgrab" fiasco where thousands of cybersquatters trip over themselves in a hurry to register all .mobi domains they could think of and fill them with google ads.