Its seems to me that its time for a major shakeup in HTML. While CSS and other things make bold attempts at making the WWW usefull for something other then very basic page display it does seem rather lacking.
Page inclusion based on simple tests! The machinations one has to go through to make what seems like an obvious feature like if(X=Y,this.html,that.html) actualy happen require scripting and all sorts of PHP like occurances, java, javascript and what have you.
CSS gets ever more complex to simply accomplish a text area on the rendered page.
So now the idea HyperScope gets trotted out from a dust filled closet. I can't really see how that is going to help matters rather then just muddy the waters even more.
Isn't it really time for a MAJOR overhaul of HTML and the HTTP protocol? HTML as it was created was sufficient for the basic exchange of information, formatting was limited and things worked fairly well. Microsoft came along and realized that this could be taken MUCH farther and started doing things their own way, which was good for them, not so good for everyone else and was properly derided for doing so in a uncooperative way. But was it really? I agree that MS did what they did out of pure self interest, but did they suggest these things to various committies only to have them shot down because it was MS centric only? I don't know the answer.
I for one think its time to just scratch HTML as it currently exists and scratch CSS right along with it, and come up with something that actualy works smoothly and works as designed!
Basic fundemental layout strategies like Areas, Menus, Images, scrolling, layers and all the primitives sould be part and parsle of an HTML-Like specifcation, not an add-on cludge like CSS. The specification for this should rightly be decided upon by the major browser venders and fully supported by all the web server vendors. It should be code modules written to the specification that are freely available to anyone who wants to link them into their rendering engine. Further more, they should be written in ANSI C and all supporting libraries are included also written in ANSI C.
I have used it, and quite frankly I find it rather lackiing and the binaries are just HUGE. Perhaps after a few more times around the track it will be worth another look.
I will program in C++ if you pay me a boat load of CASH otherwise I create quite functional and very slick looking windows and Linux apps in Delphi, and almost without fail I can acomplish a given task in 50% of the time a C++ or Java programmer can. Their performance is on par with programs created in any other language. I will program in ANSI C for very very low level code and you can write me a check for that thank you very much.
Just remember, its not about the language, its about the compiler and the linker, everything else is just a set of verbs and nouns that are basicaly irrelivent to the end product.
I can't say that your wrong; however, using simple tools while trying to remember what that method you want to call in some little used Object can lead to a lot of time not spent programming but spent rambling through help files trying to track down the relavent method.
After a while with an object like a text box, or things of that nature they are pretty much embeded in or memory so as you type along you just know the method or property name and you moev on to the next line.
I cut my teeth on Borlands IDE Products, I like them and I am most comfortable with them, they don't get in my way. The compilers are blazingly fast so they can be used as a syntax checker if you like. This may induce some amount of laziness on my part but I think thats ok. My idea of programming is to focus on the problem and logic at hand, not to spend hours writing Emacs or VI macro's.
Kylix had potential and it still might. Those guys over at Borland might have a trick or two left up their sleeves.
I picked up an in the shrink wrap copy of Kylix 3 Enterprise from e-bay for 100 bucks and istalled it on SLES 9 and it works pretty damn fine in either C++ or Delphi mode.
Software patents are bad, unless, in a patent application you specificaly lay out the code that you are patenting. Not the idea, not the "process" but the actual code. I don't really know the ramifications of this, but it wouls stop things like the NTP/RIM problem, when some fool claims they have a patent that is really nothing more then a concept rather than and actualy working device.
I can see RIM patenting the RIM handheld, or Palm with the Treo, Seagate with their newest Hard drive read/write heads that give them higher density on a drive platter.
I can see company X patenting their particular implementation of an IP stack, but not the idea of an IP stack.
Well perhaps the slot is a one size fits all, everything from the MONDO maxed out 10,000 song model ( or is it 5,000 ) down to the smallest Nano.
They are all different sizes but I think all use the same interconnect. The hole in your dash would have to accomodate the largest to the smallest. Somewhat unsightly I think.
If your boss makes the tech decisions anyways what are you doing there?
Tom, Seriously pal, show me an organization that the tech guys aren't reporting to the the bean counter. You want to shove M$ out the door, then you have to have something that the suits can talk about. Having been in this business for a few years I can tell you first hand that the best tech does not win the day.
I started my career at Security Pacific Leasing Corp. They were running HP 3000. It worked, we had two full time HP 3000 programmers and the job got done. Then the guy running IT managed to convince people the a system from Ultimate Computers running the Ultimate Operating System ( a PICK derivitive ) was brought in. It lasted about 2 years before they went to an AS/400.
Very Sadly, in large organizations its not the tech, its the sales pitch. Linux can make inroads and it will at some point be able to find its way to the desktop, but it wont happen without a major name behind it. Red Hat has been around long enough to be recognized as a player that will be around. Novell has given SuSe cred and its getting into more places.
Now I dont trust M$ any farther then I could pitch a Cray but...
Interesting thing about this after a gloss over the terms is that this could very well be a method of owning SPAM generation system(s) or technology(ies) and therefor denying it as a method to others. This seems to cover most of the methods of delivering advertising.
"Never do it in software, if you can do it hardware".
Just adding to all the other replies that talked about bandwidth, etc. etc.
Support. You gotta have support. I dont care HOW good this thing has the potential to be, unless I can call an engineer 24/7 including christmas, I wouldn't even let it in the building.
Its like choosing MySQL or MS-SQL over Oracle, yeah it may cost you less upfront, but your going to pay in the end.
I had an oracle server just go completely brain dead. I called Oracle support at 4:30pm, on a Thursday. I was talking to the Denver support Center. Now Denver closed at 8pm, central time. I was still on the phone with an engineer at closing. The very nice lady says, "Ok its closing time and I have to go get my kids, so I have Sam on the line, he is in England, he will be taking it from here, I have briefed him on everything we have done." so on with Sam from England I went. When England closed down, I was shifted to China, then to Australia. When the problem was finally solved, I was talking to California.
This is why when your IP throughput to your customers is worth 30 or 40 thousand dollars a minute, you dont screw around, you pay the money for the best combination of hardware / support you can afford. I could care less if under the hood they are running a linux, Novell, M$ or Apple kernel, its just has to work, and when it doesn't the support just has to be there 24/7.
And this proves what? The only thing it proves is the M$ likes to write their own history. The seed code was all Sybase. Yeah they went out and hired the best they could find, but it all started with Sybase, they had the Sybase code to read through, to look at and takes the best bits from it and then move on from their.
Your argument is a straw man. M$ has never yet built anything from _scratch_, well except maybe for BOB, and well we all know where that went.
1. M$: A somewhat derogitory, but rather well know abbreviation for MicroSoft.
2. I also mentioned MySQL, or did you miss that part?
3. OR Data mapping really has no place in tighly coupled, hi performance systems. This concept imparts vast amounts of additional overhead.
4. And are therefor pretty much useless, unless you buy into the notion that M$ is the end all be all.
5. The credentials can be forged, it imparts more un-needed overhead, if you want a secure login use SSL.
6. Think about it for two minutes, its not that hard, physical access _is_ required.
7. ADO.Net. Yeah now there is a bit of code, makes BDE look positively brilliant! An abstraction layer, should be as small as reasonably possible. It should abstract the most inconvienient bits of getting the information back from the database, but nothing more! Loading more and more into the abstraction layer simply adds to already bloated code. Abstraction should be done in layers, individual parts that are only loaded by the developer of the application in question, instead of just throwing in the kitchen sink as it were.
MS-SQL has been slow, cumbersome and insecure from the very beginning. Now on M$'s behalf, they are beginning to get to place in its development life where its becomming usefull, but only just beginning. Sadly this point of enlightenment is being overshadowed by their really bad ideas. An SQL server is NOT an integrel part of windows, its a database machine. If you want an example of something that was built along those lines, look back to Pick. In Pick the Database was the O/S and vice versa and we all know where that landed, even though it was blazingly fast and very very efficient.
Why not just hit yourself in the face with a shovel, it would be less painfull.
As to all those other comments. And you would replace SQL with what?
MyQUery = New.Query; MyQuery.ConvertToXML; MyQuery.Parse40KofXML; MQuery.GetTheChildren.Of.TheChildren.Of.TheChildre n.of.the.root.objects.children; etc.
I mean get a clue. SQL is consise, it works. OBJECTS are not the end all be all, and you are all fools if you think they are!
And you would replace a statement like:
Select * from Invoice_Line_Items
With? You could make it shorter and more concise with an object how? Ohhhhh whate, I know, lets write a 5.8 meg XML parsers to give you what that single line statement gives you so you can output in your freekin piss ass web page?
If you cant buy a clue, then at least borrow one. SQL is a tight little language with a very small amount of overhaed. You get the column names,tyes and sizes then you get the data. But of course with all the code weenies out there that only want pretty pictures, well I guess we have to give them pretty pictures to fumble their way through doing actual database work.
MySQL although not even close to the level of Oracle in terms of scaleability, performance, flexibility and reliability, is a great little SQL engine. Oracle is still the undisputed king of the mountain when it comes to SQL based databases. If M$ hadn't stolen the code from Sybase they would still be wondering around in the dark with their thumbs up their asses.
M$'s security model for their SQL server is an absolute joke. They want us to trust credentials floating around on individual workstations, I mean just how fucking stupid is that?! I dont trust any credentials that come from any desktop system, they are just to week and especialy in the case of M$ just so easy to crack.
Think about it. All I need is an install disk of win2k,winxp,win2k3, physical access and I can clobber any SQL server that relies of the credentials from a local workstation, its just horribly designed and its once again M$'s utterly stupid attempt at global credentials. Its like roaming profiles, a really bad idea that should have been aborted long before it was born.
Rarely does M$ do much of anything correctly because their development is driven by the insanity of people like Balmer who's single objective is "beating THEM", and them is the rest of anyone. Can I run MS-SQL on anything besides a Windows Box? Nope. Can I talk to an SQL server, effectively and efficiantly from any kind of box, nope, not even a windows box.
So now they are screwing it up even more by wrapping it in C#?! What the hell are they thinking? I mean Anders was once my hero, now he is a zero. C# could have been something really cool, but a decent enough idea was totaly shit upon when he decided to go to the dark side and work for M$ and developed it the "Microsoft Way", which as we have all discovered, over the years, its just flat out the worst way ever devised
In Pascal... for i:= 1 to 100 do begin // Do something end;
In Basic... 100 for i% = 1 to 100 110 Do Something 120 next i%
All of these are lexicaly different, yet all result in the same set of assembler instructions when the complier or interpreter is well designed and written. The issue is not <b>language</b> rather the issue is the supporting compiler and linker. I could easily write the following, call it a new language, say "Slash":
Perform //Do Something 100 times
Lexicaly different from C, Pascal or Basic but it performs the function and with a compiler I wrote for "Slash" I would make sure it generated the appropriate assembler or machine code.
What all of this boils down to is what people find either interesting, challanging, or fun to frustrate others with. The <b><i>implementation</i></b> makes all the difference. If the implementation of your development environment is bad, then the C,C++,VB,Delphi,.Net,FORTRAN,COBOL,ADA,LISP,Modula 2,Prolog,Turbo Prolog, etc. etc your writing in will also be bad when the end result is executed.
My personal preference is Delphi, I can X-Compile it without too many headaches to Linux. I can write in C,Assembler, Basic ( Basica,Vbasic,Qbasic,DBasic ) and am thinking of learning ADA just for the sake of learning it. When I do a programming task I pick the lanugage that makes sense for what I am doing, although I will admit I find java rather distastefull.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh yes, but it IS broken, thats the problem
Ohh wait this IS> /. after all...
Now here's something we hope you'll really like!
Its seems to me that its time for a major shakeup in HTML. While CSS and other things make bold attempts at making the WWW usefull for something other then very basic page display it does seem rather lacking.
Page inclusion based on simple tests! The machinations one has to go through to make what seems like an obvious feature like if(X=Y,this.html,that.html) actualy happen require scripting and all sorts of PHP like occurances, java, javascript and what have you.
CSS gets ever more complex to simply accomplish a text area on the rendered page.
So now the idea HyperScope gets trotted out from a dust filled closet. I can't really see how that is going to help matters rather then just muddy the waters even more.
Isn't it really time for a MAJOR overhaul of HTML and the HTTP protocol? HTML as it was created was sufficient for the basic exchange of information, formatting was limited and things worked fairly well. Microsoft came along and realized that this could be taken MUCH farther and started doing things their own way, which was good for them, not so good for everyone else and was properly derided for doing so in a uncooperative way. But was it really? I agree that MS did what they did out of pure self interest, but did they suggest these things to various committies only to have them shot down because it was MS centric only? I don't know the answer.
I for one think its time to just scratch HTML as it currently exists and scratch CSS right along with it, and come up with something that actualy works smoothly and works as designed!
Basic fundemental layout strategies like Areas, Menus, Images, scrolling, layers and all the primitives sould be part and parsle of an HTML-Like specifcation, not an add-on cludge like CSS. The specification for this should rightly be decided upon by the major browser venders and fully supported by all the web server vendors. It should be code modules written to the specification that are freely available to anyone who wants to link them into their rendering engine. Further more, they should be written in ANSI C and all supporting libraries are included also written in ANSI C.
Just use Novell Directory Services, or EDirectory as it is now named.
Nope it aint free, nope it aint open source. But it DOES rock the house!
Scales to over a billion objects. Easy administration and setup.
Runs on practicaly everything Form Linux, Unix, Solaris, Windows, Copiers, Printers to Toasters and Web Servers.
Why yes I am a Novell Fan Boy. Whats your fucking point!
NOW I really want mod points, cause I would mod this into the afterlife.
How about something that is ACTUALY news, thats important!
CowboyNeal, OBVIOUSLY one of the editors because this post is remarkably content free.
I have used it, and quite frankly I find it rather lackiing and the binaries are just HUGE. Perhaps after a few more times around the track it will be worth another look.
I will program in C++ if you pay me a boat load of CASH otherwise I create quite functional and very slick looking windows and Linux apps in Delphi, and almost without fail I can acomplish a given task in 50% of the time a C++ or Java programmer can. Their performance is on par with programs created in any other language. I will program in ANSI C for very very low level code and you can write me a check for that thank you very much.
Just remember, its not about the language, its about the compiler and the linker, everything else is just a set of verbs and nouns that are basicaly irrelivent to the end product.
I can't say that your wrong; however, using simple tools while trying to remember what that method you want to call in some little used Object can lead to a lot of time not spent programming but spent rambling through help files trying to track down the relavent method.
After a while with an object like a text box, or things of that nature they are pretty much embeded in or memory so as you type along you just know the method or property name and you moev on to the next line.
I cut my teeth on Borlands IDE Products, I like them and I am most comfortable with them, they don't get in my way. The compilers are blazingly fast so they can be used as a syntax checker if you like. This may induce some amount of laziness on my part but I think thats ok. My idea of programming is to focus on the problem and logic at hand, not to spend hours writing Emacs or VI macro's.
Kylix had potential and it still might. Those guys over at Borland might have a trick or two left up their sleeves.
I picked up an in the shrink wrap copy of Kylix 3 Enterprise from e-bay for 100 bucks and istalled it on SLES 9 and it works pretty damn fine in either C++ or Delphi mode.
Software patents are bad, unless, in a patent application you specificaly lay out the code that you are patenting. Not the idea, not the "process" but the actual code. I don't really know the ramifications of this, but it wouls stop things like the NTP/RIM problem, when some fool claims they have a patent that is really nothing more then a concept rather than and actualy working device.
I can see RIM patenting the RIM handheld, or Palm with the Treo, Seagate with their newest Hard drive read/write heads that give them higher density on a drive platter.
I can see company X patenting their particular implementation of an IP stack, but not the idea of an IP stack.
This just shows the dedication to OSS!
I would imagine they got permission from the farmer or at least I would have. Farmers up that way tend to carry guns!
Great pics, especialy the good looking lil geek babe in pic #77. Bonus!
The fox will eat the explorer and spoil the opera.
Well perhaps the slot is a one size fits all, everything from the MONDO maxed out 10,000 song model ( or is it 5,000 ) down to the smallest Nano.
They are all different sizes but I think all use the same interconnect. The hole in your dash would have to accomodate the largest to the smallest. Somewhat unsightly I think.
If your boss makes the tech decisions anyways what are you doing there?
Tom, Seriously pal, show me an organization that the tech guys aren't reporting to the the bean counter. You want to shove M$ out the door, then you have to have something that the suits can talk about. Having been in this business for a few years I can tell you first hand that the best tech does not win the day.
I started my career at Security Pacific Leasing Corp. They were running HP 3000. It worked, we had two full time HP 3000 programmers and the job got done. Then the guy running IT managed to convince people the a system from Ultimate Computers running the Ultimate Operating System ( a PICK derivitive ) was brought in. It lasted about 2 years before they went to an AS/400.
Very Sadly, in large organizations its not the tech, its the sales pitch. Linux can make inroads and it will at some point be able to find its way to the desktop, but it wont happen without a major name behind it. Red Hat has been around long enough to be recognized as a player that will be around. Novell has given SuSe cred and its getting into more places.
No wonder your posted as an Anonymous Coward...
You are one, ASSHOLE.
Note: not ended in a preposition.
Now I dont trust M$ any farther then I could pitch a Cray but...
Interesting thing about this after a gloss over the terms is that this could very well be a method of owning SPAM generation system(s) or technology(ies) and therefor denying it as a method to others. This seems to cover most of the methods of delivering advertising.
Pondering life as I know it...
"Never do it in software, if you can do it hardware".
Just adding to all the other replies that talked about bandwidth, etc. etc.
Support. You gotta have support. I dont care HOW good this thing has the potential to be, unless I can call an engineer 24/7 including christmas, I wouldn't even let it in the building.
Its like choosing MySQL or MS-SQL over Oracle, yeah it may cost you less upfront, but your going to pay in the end.
I had an oracle server just go completely brain dead. I called Oracle support at 4:30pm, on a Thursday. I was talking to the Denver support Center. Now Denver closed at 8pm, central time. I was still on the phone with an engineer at closing. The very nice lady says, "Ok its closing time and I have to go get my kids, so I have Sam on the line, he is in England, he will be taking it from here, I have briefed him on everything we have done." so on with Sam from England I went. When England closed down, I was shifted to China, then to Australia. When the problem was finally solved, I was talking to California.
This is why when your IP throughput to your customers is worth 30 or 40 thousand dollars a minute, you dont screw around, you pay the money for the best combination of hardware / support you can afford. I could care less if under the hood they are running a linux, Novell, M$ or Apple kernel, its just has to work, and when it doesn't the support just has to be there 24/7.
You are an asshole!]
I dont giev a rats ass how they ( whomever they are ) mod this.
Your still an asshole.
And this proves what? The only thing it proves is the M$ likes to write their own history. The seed code was all Sybase. Yeah they went out and hired the best they could find, but it all started with Sybase, they had the Sybase code to read through, to look at and takes the best bits from it and then move on from their.
Your argument is a straw man. M$ has never yet built anything from _scratch_, well except maybe for BOB, and well we all know where that went.
1. M$: A somewhat derogitory, but rather well know abbreviation for MicroSoft.
2. I also mentioned MySQL, or did you miss that part?
3. OR Data mapping really has no place in tighly coupled, hi performance systems. This concept imparts vast amounts of additional overhead.
4. And are therefor pretty much useless, unless you buy into the notion that M$ is the end all be all.
5. The credentials can be forged, it imparts more un-needed overhead, if you want a secure login use SSL.
6. Think about it for two minutes, its not that hard, physical access _is_ required.
7. ADO.Net. Yeah now there is a bit of code, makes BDE look positively brilliant! An abstraction layer, should be as small as reasonably possible. It should abstract the most inconvienient bits of getting the information back from the database, but nothing more! Loading more and more into the abstraction layer simply adds to already bloated code. Abstraction should be done in layers, individual parts that are only loaded by the developer of the application in question, instead of just throwing in the kitchen sink as it were.
MS-SQL has been slow, cumbersome and insecure from the very beginning. Now on M$'s behalf, they are beginning to get to place in its development life where its becomming usefull, but only just beginning. Sadly this point of enlightenment is being overshadowed by their really bad ideas. An SQL server is NOT an integrel part of windows, its a database machine. If you want an example of something that was built along those lines, look back to Pick. In Pick the Database was the O/S and vice versa and we all know where that landed, even though it was blazingly fast and very very efficient.
I mean get a clue. SQL is consise, it works. OBJECTS are not the end all be all, and you are all fools if you think they are!
And you would replace a statement like:
With? You could make it shorter and more concise with an object how? Ohhhhh whate, I know, lets write a 5.8 meg XML parsers to give you what that single line statement gives you so you can output in your freekin piss ass web page?
If you cant buy a clue, then at least borrow one. SQL is a tight little language with a very small amount of overhaed. You get the column names,tyes and sizes then you get the data. But of course with all the code weenies out there that only want pretty pictures, well I guess we have to give them pretty pictures to fumble their way through doing actual database work.
MySQL although not even close to the level of Oracle in terms of scaleability, performance, flexibility and reliability, is a great little SQL engine. Oracle is still the undisputed king of the mountain when it comes to SQL based databases. If M$ hadn't stolen the code from Sybase they would still be wondering around in the dark with their thumbs up their asses.
M$'s security model for their SQL server is an absolute joke. They want us to trust credentials floating around on individual workstations, I mean just how fucking stupid is that?! I dont trust any credentials that come from any desktop system, they are just to week and especialy in the case of M$ just so easy to crack.
Think about it. All I need is an install disk of win2k,winxp,win2k3, physical access and I can clobber any SQL server that relies of the credentials from a local workstation, its just horribly designed and its once again M$'s utterly stupid attempt at global credentials. Its like roaming profiles, a really bad idea that should have been aborted long before it was born.
Rarely does M$ do much of anything correctly because their development is driven by the insanity of people like Balmer who's single objective is "beating THEM", and them is the rest of anyone. Can I run MS-SQL on anything besides a Windows Box? Nope. Can I talk to an SQL server, effectively and efficiantly from any kind of box, nope, not even a windows box.
So now they are screwing it up even more by wrapping it in C#?! What the hell are they thinking? I mean Anders was once my hero, now he is a zero. C# could have been something really cool, but a decent enough idea was totaly shit upon when he decided to go to the dark side and work for M$ and developed it the "Microsoft Way", which as we have all discovered, over the years, its just flat out the worst way ever devised
What matters is the compiler or the interpreter.
// Do something
:= 1 to 100 do
// Do something
//Do Something
a 2,Prolog,Turbo Prolog, etc. etc your writing in will also be bad when the end result is executed.
In C...
for(i=1,i<=100;i++){
}
In Pascal...
for i
begin
end;
In Basic...
100 for i% = 1 to 100
110 Do Something
120 next i%
All of these are lexicaly different, yet all result in the same set of assembler instructions when the complier or interpreter is well designed and written. The issue is not <b>language</b> rather the issue is the supporting compiler and linker. I could easily write the following, call it a new language, say "Slash":
Perform
100 times
Lexicaly different from C, Pascal or Basic but it performs the function and with a compiler I wrote for "Slash" I would make sure it generated the appropriate assembler or machine code.
What all of this boils down to is what people find either interesting, challanging, or fun to frustrate others with. The <b><i>implementation</i></b> makes all the difference. If the implementation of your development environment is bad, then the C,C++,VB,Delphi,.Net,FORTRAN,COBOL,ADA,LISP,Modul
My personal preference is Delphi, I can X-Compile it without too many headaches to Linux. I can write in C,Assembler, Basic ( Basica,Vbasic,Qbasic,DBasic ) and am thinking of learning ADA just for the sake of learning it. When I do a programming task I pick the lanugage that makes sense for what I am doing, although I will admit I find java rather distastefull.