That's exactly the point GP was trying to make. Languages never die. Nothing that was used to great extent ever goes away completely. The fact lots of COBOL and Fortran code still lives today proves the point Perl will never go away either.
I'm not saying the one cancels out the other. I'm just saying people like a thing that works and is easy to use. The iPhone is that. Whether it's open or free doesn't matter to most consumers. This answers the question why people buy these sort of systems in the first place.
why, again, is everyone so keen to buy devices that obey someone else?
Because a lot of people care more about usability and functionality than openness and freedom. As long as people can use Facebook and Youtube on their iPhone, they're perfectly fine with it.
Steve Jobs did fire a guy based on a single conversation in an elevator. But the guy he fired was in management, certainly not a developer. It was the time when Jobs was asked back as iCEO in '96 or '97. He realized Apple was full of suits, doing lots of talking but added very little to the company. A lot of people were fired at that time, but mostly at the top. Almost the entire board was replaced, new senior VPs were appointed, the way the company was structured changed a lot. All of that was needed because Jobs wanted Apple to take a new course and adopt a new strategy and he figured that couldn't be done as long as the old folks were in charge. He was a dick to a lot of people, but at that time mostly to the people who had screwed up the company, not the people who were just doing what they were hired to do.
The problem is not so much in computers still being 32 bits in 25 years time, but 32 bit computers right now doing calculations involving dates 25 years in the future.
Javascript is a special case because it is used almost exclusively for writing front-end code for websites. Not because front-end web developers love Javascript, but because browsers do not support any other language.
So in one specific field (front-end web applications), Javascript is king because developers have no other choice. But next to nobody uses the language for anything else than that. It could be used for other stuff (node.js etc.), but that's not significant by a long shot.
That's mainly Intels own fault. With the Pentium they started to promote their own brands and try to keep competition from copying their products. Before that, you could get your 80386 or 80486 from lots of vendors, including but not limited to Intel and AMD.
I'm not saying SC and TT aren't games. Of course they are games. They are in fact great games:-)
I was merely trying to say that a game can be great, even if they don't contain any of the elements which traditionally make up a game, as a reply to the people who think Zynga's products aren't games. They are games. You might not like them, but they are games nonetheless, otherwise SC and TT wouldn't be games either.
Civ is very different and does quite a few "traditional gaming elements". You can win a game of Civ. You can be beaten in a game of Civ. You can be removed from the game before the game is over, you can win the game but not beat your high score etc. etc.
All of that doesn't apply to either SC or TT. In those games, you simply build until you don't feel like building anymore.
There isn't much of a gaming element in Transport Tycoon or SimCity either, but still those titles are fun to play and highly successful. Not having all of the (or even any) of the traditional components that make up a game doesn't mean the result can't be good.
Secret key? What? That's just the boot menu key, because apparently he hadn't set up his boot sequence properly. I he had, he wouldn't have to press to key, obviously.
And ignoring a warning, are you serious? When were us geeks ever impressed by some corporate bullshit message?
Long story short, yes, I think this is all fairly basic stuff. It's just changing a little option in your BIOS before you install your operating system, since when did that become a hassle for the Slashdot crowd?
Sigh, it's 2012 and when I write a piece of software now, I'm still not sure it will run everywhere.
When were you ever sure of that?
Native applications are anything but a guarantee other people will be able to run them, they are strictly bound to the same exact device they were written for. Even releasing the source code isn't a guarantee it will run on other people's system.
Meanwhile, web applications run on anything from a PC to a phone, from a tablet to a TV set. Sure it's a living "standard" with huge gaps, sure some implementations slightly differ (and some not so slightly). But all of that is being worked on. Even now, as HTML5 is still in its infancy and nothing is released formally there is already great consensus amongst web developers on how things should be built and how they should work.
If I had to bet on whether an application would run in different time and/or space, my bet would be on the modern web application.
Meanwhile, in reality, mobile browsers are the most advanced browsers out there. It's the desktop ones *cough* from Microsoft *cough* that are causing problems, not the mobile space.
The fact Flash is "a real application" is part of the problem. The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another. This means the public cannot decide which platforms are supported, only Adobe can.
Web applications are so great because they are made up from a collection of parts that have nothing to do with each other, but are all available on different platforms. This ensures the web is completely platform independent, which makes it a great environment for applications. Sure, they might be wonky sometimes. But at least they'll run on your every single device you own, including your TV.
Isn't the fact Office runs on the Surface their biggest USP? Why would they want to offer Office on other tablets as well? Wouldn't that just make the Surface even more irrelevant than it already is?
The fact they're even asking for DNA again is evidence in itself they actually do destroy the material.
They already asked about 20.000 people for their DNA in 2000. They wanted to test again now, because recent developments in both technology and legalization have made it possible to search for family relations as well in the found DNA material from the crime scene. They couldn't use any of the material they gathered in the previous investigation for this new test, because it was all destroyed.
They might not have deliberately chosen not to use vendor prefixes, but they definitely made the conscious decision to render differently from both how the competition did it and what the standards described.
The goal was to create a web which would work better with IE than with Netscape, with the long term goal of creating a web which would work better with Windows than with anything else. We are very fortunate to not have ended up in that reality.
Slashdot Mirror
It's so much cleaner than perl
Wow, EVEN cleaner than Perl. Who thought it possible?
Woosh.
That's exactly the point GP was trying to make. Languages never die. Nothing that was used to great extent ever goes away completely. The fact lots of COBOL and Fortran code still lives today proves the point Perl will never go away either.
It took you days to fiddle with the audio buttons on the side of your phone when you had an issue with the sound?
Wow.
I'm not saying the one cancels out the other. I'm just saying people like a thing that works and is easy to use. The iPhone is that. Whether it's open or free doesn't matter to most consumers. This answers the question why people buy these sort of systems in the first place.
why, again, is everyone so keen to buy devices that obey someone else?
Because a lot of people care more about usability and functionality than openness and freedom. As long as people can use Facebook and Youtube on their iPhone, they're perfectly fine with it.
Steve Jobs did fire a guy based on a single conversation in an elevator. But the guy he fired was in management, certainly not a developer. It was the time when Jobs was asked back as iCEO in '96 or '97. He realized Apple was full of suits, doing lots of talking but added very little to the company. A lot of people were fired at that time, but mostly at the top. Almost the entire board was replaced, new senior VPs were appointed, the way the company was structured changed a lot. All of that was needed because Jobs wanted Apple to take a new course and adopt a new strategy and he figured that couldn't be done as long as the old folks were in charge. He was a dick to a lot of people, but at that time mostly to the people who had screwed up the company, not the people who were just doing what they were hired to do.
The problem is not so much in computers still being 32 bits in 25 years time, but 32 bit computers right now doing calculations involving dates 25 years in the future.
Javascript is a special case because it is used almost exclusively for writing front-end code for websites. Not because front-end web developers love Javascript, but because browsers do not support any other language.
So in one specific field (front-end web applications), Javascript is king because developers have no other choice. But next to nobody uses the language for anything else than that. It could be used for other stuff (node.js etc.), but that's not significant by a long shot.
Simply get a group of tough guys together, wait for him after work, drag him into an alley and make him understand. Works every time.
That's mainly Intels own fault. With the Pentium they started to promote their own brands and try to keep competition from copying their products. Before that, you could get your 80386 or 80486 from lots of vendors, including but not limited to Intel and AMD.
I'm not saying SC and TT aren't games. Of course they are games. They are in fact great games :-)
I was merely trying to say that a game can be great, even if they don't contain any of the elements which traditionally make up a game, as a reply to the people who think Zynga's products aren't games. They are games. You might not like them, but they are games nonetheless, otherwise SC and TT wouldn't be games either.
Civ is very different and does quite a few "traditional gaming elements". You can win a game of Civ. You can be beaten in a game of Civ. You can be removed from the game before the game is over, you can win the game but not beat your high score etc. etc.
All of that doesn't apply to either SC or TT. In those games, you simply build until you don't feel like building anymore.
There is no competition in either SC or TT, that's my point. You can't win either of those games and there's no real score either.
I don't even really see the cost reduction. How much money would it take to keep a table online of flags saying which player has which objects?
There isn't much of a gaming element in Transport Tycoon or SimCity either, but still those titles are fun to play and highly successful. Not having all of the (or even any) of the traditional components that make up a game doesn't mean the result can't be good.
Secret key? What? That's just the boot menu key, because apparently he hadn't set up his boot sequence properly. I he had, he wouldn't have to press to key, obviously.
And ignoring a warning, are you serious? When were us geeks ever impressed by some corporate bullshit message?
Long story short, yes, I think this is all fairly basic stuff. It's just changing a little option in your BIOS before you install your operating system, since when did that become a hassle for the Slashdot crowd?
How is going into your motherboard's menu and disabling SecureBoot not easy?
That's still just the server-part though. Client-side code (i.e. Javascript) is compiled on every use.
Sigh, it's 2012 and when I write a piece of software now, I'm still not sure it will run everywhere.
When were you ever sure of that?
Native applications are anything but a guarantee other people will be able to run them, they are strictly bound to the same exact device they were written for. Even releasing the source code isn't a guarantee it will run on other people's system.
Meanwhile, web applications run on anything from a PC to a phone, from a tablet to a TV set. Sure it's a living "standard" with huge gaps, sure some implementations slightly differ (and some not so slightly). But all of that is being worked on. Even now, as HTML5 is still in its infancy and nothing is released formally there is already great consensus amongst web developers on how things should be built and how they should work.
If I had to bet on whether an application would run in different time and/or space, my bet would be on the modern web application.
Meanwhile, in reality, mobile browsers are the most advanced browsers out there. It's the desktop ones *cough* from Microsoft *cough* that are causing problems, not the mobile space.
The fact Flash is "a real application" is part of the problem. The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another. This means the public cannot decide which platforms are supported, only Adobe can.
Web applications are so great because they are made up from a collection of parts that have nothing to do with each other, but are all available on different platforms. This ensures the web is completely platform independent, which makes it a great environment for applications. Sure, they might be wonky sometimes. But at least they'll run on your every single device you own, including your TV.
Apparently some investors are thinking the same thing about Apple acquiring TomTom. I heard Robeco/Rabobank is very seriously considering this option.
Isn't the fact Office runs on the Surface their biggest USP? Why would they want to offer Office on other tablets as well? Wouldn't that just make the Surface even more irrelevant than it already is?
The fact they're even asking for DNA again is evidence in itself they actually do destroy the material.
They already asked about 20.000 people for their DNA in 2000. They wanted to test again now, because recent developments in both technology and legalization have made it possible to search for family relations as well in the found DNA material from the crime scene. They couldn't use any of the material they gathered in the previous investigation for this new test, because it was all destroyed.
They might not have deliberately chosen not to use vendor prefixes, but they definitely made the conscious decision to render differently from both how the competition did it and what the standards described.
The goal was to create a web which would work better with IE than with Netscape, with the long term goal of creating a web which would work better with Windows than with anything else. We are very fortunate to not have ended up in that reality.