Enemy Territory: Quake Wars didn't sell because it's a bad game. I've played every team-based multiplayer game since Tribes (the golden standard), and ETQW didn't even stand up to the original Enemy Territory, not by a long shot.
and nice UIs with non-native (although, the latter is rarer I will concede.)
I've seen... Firefox (not a "nice UI", but at least passable which is much better than most other apps that don't use native widgets.) I've yet to see any application in Java with a half-decent UI, native widgets or otherwise.
iRate and Neuros DB Manager use Java, so it's probably a lost cause, usability-wise. That's not to say nothing can be done, of course, but it does mean that no matter what you do, you're at the mercy of Sun to make sure your program's widgets behave correctly on each OS. Considering Sun has had over a decade to do that, and hasn't even gotten close... well, that's a problem. Also, I'm not willing to install JavaVM to test it.
This is the point where someone comes in to say "hey Java can use OS-native widgets!" These people may or may not be right, but they always seem to point to examples with god-awful usability to defend their point. (The typical one is Azureus.) All I can say is that the widgets might kind of look native, then try running them on a tablet PC, or using voice recognition... then it becomes abundantly clear where they fall short. (It's even easier in OS X; just check whether the OS X spellchecker works or not.)
The other products on your site don't appear to have UIs, unless I'm missing something.
In any case, rule #1 of making usable software: use OS-native widgets. (Or, if you're going to make your own widgets, at least make them 99.99% compatible like the Firefox people managed. But it's far easier to just use native ones.)
Well, duh. And no Linux distro would ever add a progress bar to the cp command, that's retarded. I was just responding to the grandparent (who thinks, for some reason, that that is likely to happen.)
Look, "PC" means "PC-compatible." As in, "compatible with the IBM 5150 computer." Among other things, to be PC-compatible, a computer needs to have a x86 CPU on it. Until very recently, Macintosh computers did not have x86 CPUs, and thus were not PC-compatible. What part of this is difficult? And what the hell does Linux have to do with it?
FYI, Frontpage has turned into Expression Web, pretty much the best HTML editor around right now. (For Windows, at least.) You're going to have to find something new to make fun of.
Apples have only been PC-compatible for, what, 3 years now? GOD FORBID you use a term a whole 3 years out-of-date! (Frankly you'll be lucky if people aren't still saying "PC" in 20 years, it's so established.)
But if you're running VNC over a Hamachi VPN then the risks of being intruded upon really are minimal - especially if you create a Hamachi network where the only machines allowed in it are the ones that need to be there. Plus you use an "unguessable" network name and strong password to access it.
And nothing in Windows prevents you from doing that. If RDC isn't meeting your needs, then just don't use it. The simple fact is that once you've installed VNC server on your buddy's computers, the only thing standing between that computer and an intruder seeing every action your friend takes is a plain-text password. I don't think that's sufficient, personally.
But at the same time, Microsoft's screen-locking isn't some weird mysterious event that only god-like aliens understand: Microsoft's preventing RDC from being used as spyware, that's it. You disagree with them; fine! But stop acting like they're doing something wrong.
It's actually very simple to tunnel VNC over PuTTY - just Google for it.
You're way missing my point.
Even if it's only 1 step (and it's not, it's a pain in the ass regardless of how much you "Google for it"), it's still 1 MORE step than you need to do with RDC. So it's actually infinitely more difficult to get a secure VNC connection.
Is there any technical reason VNC can't just automatically encrypt like RDC does? No. They just don't give a shit that their product is less secure and/or more difficult to use than the alternative. So I use the alternative.
The process of writing documentation almost always also questions the whole "why was it done this way?" Open source developers always get defensive when they hear something like that, and instead of improving the usability of their product, they generally are just dismissive of the problem.
The issue in the tracker *is* a bug in every GUI I've ever seen that has pull-down menus. The developer, instead of even slightly examining the issue, just responds rudely with an insufficient work-around. When the defense of the bug is posted beyond a shadow of a doubt, nothing happens. Will this bug ever be fixed? Unlikely.
But most of the people I support obviously have documents on their PCs that they view as confidential and whilst they trust me in what I do, they are much happier in being able to watch the desktop while I work on it - it could be argued that because RDP doesn't let the PC owner see what the other party is doing, that also is a major security issue.
Not a convincing argument. If they wanted to be paranoid about what you were doing, they could just create a user account for you and set its permissions any way they liked. If they really didn't trust you, they wouldn't let you fix the computer in the first place. At least, not while their files were accessible.
The scenario far more likely than yours is where an attacker opens RDP ports, allowing a bad guy access to view activities on their computer any time they like. VNC has no defenses against this (in OSes where it's installed by default). You're arguing that a security hole is a good thing in some very limited specific scenario; I don't buy it.
As for SSH tunnels, it only really applies to accessing a Linux/UNIX machine and it's not difficult configuring PuTTY (from a Windows client) or an SSH command-line client to get it to work.
I consider myself pretty computer savvy, and I've never been able to get this to successfully work. Regardless of how difficult it is to configure PuTTY, the real point is that RDC doesn't require that at all-- it just works, like you'd expect it to, on the first try.
As far as I know, there's no technical reason why RDP can't show the same desktop on two screens simultaneously, it's a Windows licensing issue.
It's a security issue, to prevent RDC from becoming, quite literally, spyware. Absolutely nothing to do with licensing.
Speaking of security, the grandparent glosses over the hardest thing about using X11 or VNC remotely: setting up the SSH tunnel in the first place. RDC just does it, automatically, with no work required. Even the most dense office worker can securely use another person's machine with RDC, if they had to use X11 or VNC they wouldn't get past step 1.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The foolish part of this subject is that while the Windows registry provides a standardized access to the data store, it only defines types and not what they are supposed to be. Lunux configuration files under/etc are, IHO, better and can be backed up and diff-ed.
Yah, but the Registry also enables reasonably-intelligent remote administration in Windows, which isn't really currently available in Linux (or OS X). It also deals reasonably-intelligently with race conditions, i.e. two simultaneously-running instances of the same program saving over each other's settings. The registry might not be the best implementation in the world, but it's certainly not a bad idea.
Bzzt. Its called automatic backup people. This is a relatively new feature in Macs and barely working in Windows. Would be nice, but can't characterize it as something that's broken.
"Barely working?" Have you actually tried it, or are you talking out of your ass?
(Given, the "single computer" version in Vista doesn't work quite as well as the Active Directory version we've had since Windows 2000, but that's mostly just due to lack of disk space. The technology works fine.)
He complains the distribution differences make life hard for people selling software. Well, tough, if they want money maybe they should work for it?
Yes, but right now it's HARDER to write software for Linux than Windows, and your reward for going through this extra effort is a tiny market of open source believers who wouldn't buy your software anyway. (They'll just use the buggy, incomplete open source implementation some 14-year-old made during his break from World of Warcraft. Because it's free.)
At least make Linux distribution "as easy as" Windows, it not easier. Companies still won't do it, but at least they'll need to come up with some more clever reasons.
I know! Let's recreate the windows registry, but this time better!. Yawn.
Attention: every difference of opinion is now "FUD." It's not possible for two people to believe different things without one of them spreading "fear, uncertainty, and doubt." That is all.
He wants a versioning filesystem. Like Windows has. (Does it?) I want a poney.
Yes, it does. For Active Directory on Windows 2000+, and now for everybody in Vista. While you sit on your ass waiting for your "poney", Windows and OS X users enjoy the benefits of versioning filesystems.
The real irony is that OS X's version was made using hacked-together technologies that all exist in Linux, and you're still sitting here asking for "poneys" instead of replicating their effort.
Apple had that in the form of AppleScript in System 7, but they've kind of pissed it away over time. Sad but true, there just doesn't seem to be much demand for such a thing, although as a Mac OS power-user I *loved* the capability.
But fuck that! If I ever see programs like cp become bloated with X library calls because some news reporter needs to see a GUI progress bar, I'm going to be very angry.
But here's the difference: you're a power-user. If you open up Ubuntu, and find out that when you type "cp file1 file2" you suddenly see a new window with a progress bar pop up (which is extremely ridiculously unlikely, but hey I'm just going by your assumption)... you're in a position to configure the computer to NOT do that.
The "news reporter" (news reporter?), however, they don't know how to configure cp to show a progress bar, and they really want to see one. The OS should always cater to the non-power-user, for the sole reason that the power-user already knows how to get what they want: that's why they're called power-users!
I get into this debate sometimes with people who gripe about Microsoft "removing" telnet from Vista. If you know what the telnet even *is*, you're more than capable of opening up Add/Remove Programs and restoring it in less than a minute. Compare that to the millions of people who have no clue what telnet is, and yet it sits there idle as a possible vector for malware. It was a good decision on their part, if you get past the knee-jerk stage.
Why don't you just turn off the crazy configuration and just use the damned laptop the way everybody else on earth does? I guarantee it'll fix your issue.
IPv6 isn't backwards-compatible with IPv4, and a lot of networks have been really slow to convert over. In most case, they have to spend money to do this conversion, because they have older hardware without full IPv6 compatibility.
Adoption is slow because IPv6 isn't backwards-compatible, and because it doesn't have enough benefits to outweigh that problem. No conspiracy or anything. (I think it's damn stupid that IPv6 has approx. 40 kajillion IP addresses, and yet they didn't bother to map the existing 4 billion there anywhere.)
So? If you believe the philosophy for Wikipedia works for 100,000 articles, what makes you think it won't work for 10,000,000 articles?
Hell, what if you actually (for example) add tons and tons of Star Wars articles to Wikipedia, and those Star Wars fans you just attracted actually started following links and looking at and editing other Wikipedia sections, and you've actually gained "editors."
In any case, Wikipedia isn't effective at stopping vandalism now, so it could hardly make things worse. Idiotic vandalism like "OMG THIS ARTICLE SUX!!!" sure, but subtle vandalism Wikipedia just doesn't catch on the vast majority of articles.
Oh? Because the bullshit on the homepage says it's the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Are you saying that Wikipedia could get so big that it would run out of "anyones?"
Of course, we all know it's a lie anyway. It should read something like, "the encyclopedia that anybody can spend a lot of time and effort creating an article, only to have some other jackass delete it for no good reason."
Windows is not without it's own choices mind you either, fat(fat16), fat32, ntfs, WinFS(cancelled). As time pass, even microsoft attempts to create a new and improved fs (key-word: attempt). Sure they tend to force the latest fs on you but that's microsoft way VS linux way of choice.
Fat16 has been deprecated for ages (decades, I think). Windows only supports it for old floppy disks you have hanging around; it won't let you format any new devices in Fat16. Fat32 is only there for compatibility with Windows 98 and ME; the only reason XP lets you format a new disk as Fat32 is that it's (supposedly) possible to upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and so it needs the ability to use the same filesystem.
WinFS isn't a filesystem in the same way Ext2 or NTFS is. It's more of a database-backed meta-data layer sitting atop NTFS.
Since Windows 2000, the only real Windows filesystem is NTFS.
Sure they tend to force the latest fs on you but that's microsoft way VS linux way of choice.
1) XP will install and run on Fat32, if you really want to. (Windows 2000 also, IIRC, but it's been awhile.)
2) But would any sane person do that? Seriously, sometimes there's an obvious "best approach". Criticize Microsoft all you want when they deserve it, but that's ridiculous.
To change the background I have to use Java Script to interrogate DOM to get to the right CSS selector and change that and my god what a pain that is! Would it not be simpler to just do this?
A "real" language has been classically defined to mean "a language which can compile itself."
If you say so...
Perl, Python, and Ruby cannot do that (to my knowledge).
Sure they can. They're Turing-complete, and they have functions to read/write files. What's stopping them? (Well, as far as they can be compiled in the first place; see below.)
I think you're confusing "can not" with "don't". Big difference. The only reason ECMAScript isn't "real" (according to your definition) is that the ECMAScript spec doesn't include any file system interfaces.
Javascript (and Ruby and Python and possibly Perl) compilation is kind of a unusual situation, though, where even compiled Javascript would need some kind of run-time engine to re-compile portions of the code on-the-fly, since those languages have reflection features. But if that's your issue, you'd also have to decree that C# (and even possibly C++, if you consider Templates) can't be compiled, and then you're into a whole weird world of hurt.
Slashdot Mirror
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars didn't sell because it's a bad game. I've played every team-based multiplayer game since Tribes (the golden standard), and ETQW didn't even stand up to the original Enemy Territory, not by a long shot.
I've seen plenty of crap-UIs with native widgets,
Possible.
and nice UIs with non-native (although, the latter is rarer I will concede.)
I've seen... Firefox (not a "nice UI", but at least passable which is much better than most other apps that don't use native widgets.) I've yet to see any application in Java with a half-decent UI, native widgets or otherwise.
I took a look at your homepage.
iRate and Neuros DB Manager use Java, so it's probably a lost cause, usability-wise. That's not to say nothing can be done, of course, but it does mean that no matter what you do, you're at the mercy of Sun to make sure your program's widgets behave correctly on each OS. Considering Sun has had over a decade to do that, and hasn't even gotten close... well, that's a problem. Also, I'm not willing to install JavaVM to test it.
This is the point where someone comes in to say "hey Java can use OS-native widgets!" These people may or may not be right, but they always seem to point to examples with god-awful usability to defend their point. (The typical one is Azureus.) All I can say is that the widgets might kind of look native, then try running them on a tablet PC, or using voice recognition... then it becomes abundantly clear where they fall short. (It's even easier in OS X; just check whether the OS X spellchecker works or not.)
The other products on your site don't appear to have UIs, unless I'm missing something.
In any case, rule #1 of making usable software: use OS-native widgets. (Or, if you're going to make your own widgets, at least make them 99.99% compatible like the Firefox people managed. But it's far easier to just use native ones.)
Well, duh. And no Linux distro would ever add a progress bar to the cp command, that's retarded. I was just responding to the grandparent (who thinks, for some reason, that that is likely to happen.)
And Vista has gone from 0 to 20% of the computer market in less than 2 years. Despite "everybody" hating it.
Microsoft's not going anywhere. Well, maybe to the bank. Laughing.
Christ.
Look, "PC" means "PC-compatible." As in, "compatible with the IBM 5150 computer." Among other things, to be PC-compatible, a computer needs to have a x86 CPU on it. Until very recently, Macintosh computers did not have x86 CPUs, and thus were not PC-compatible. What part of this is difficult? And what the hell does Linux have to do with it?
FYI, Frontpage has turned into Expression Web, pretty much the best HTML editor around right now. (For Windows, at least.) You're going to have to find something new to make fun of.
That's more of a remote-control reception desk, not a robotic receptionist. Close, though.
Apples have only been PC-compatible for, what, 3 years now? GOD FORBID you use a term a whole 3 years out-of-date! (Frankly you'll be lucky if people aren't still saying "PC" in 20 years, it's so established.)
But if you're running VNC over a Hamachi VPN then the risks of being intruded upon really are minimal - especially if you create a Hamachi network where the only machines allowed in it are the ones that need to be there. Plus you use an "unguessable" network name and strong password to access it.
And nothing in Windows prevents you from doing that. If RDC isn't meeting your needs, then just don't use it. The simple fact is that once you've installed VNC server on your buddy's computers, the only thing standing between that computer and an intruder seeing every action your friend takes is a plain-text password. I don't think that's sufficient, personally.
But at the same time, Microsoft's screen-locking isn't some weird mysterious event that only god-like aliens understand: Microsoft's preventing RDC from being used as spyware, that's it. You disagree with them; fine! But stop acting like they're doing something wrong.
It's actually very simple to tunnel VNC over PuTTY - just Google for it.
You're way missing my point.
Even if it's only 1 step (and it's not, it's a pain in the ass regardless of how much you "Google for it"), it's still 1 MORE step than you need to do with RDC. So it's actually infinitely more difficult to get a secure VNC connection.
Is there any technical reason VNC can't just automatically encrypt like RDC does? No. They just don't give a shit that their product is less secure and/or more difficult to use than the alternative. So I use the alternative.
All I can say to this is: ditto.
The process of writing documentation almost always also questions the whole "why was it done this way?" Open source developers always get defensive when they hear something like that, and instead of improving the usability of their product, they generally are just dismissive of the problem.
This is my favorite example:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=1865630&group_id=95717&atid=612382
The issue in the tracker *is* a bug in every GUI I've ever seen that has pull-down menus. The developer, instead of even slightly examining the issue, just responds rudely with an insufficient work-around. When the defense of the bug is posted beyond a shadow of a doubt, nothing happens. Will this bug ever be fixed? Unlikely.
But most of the people I support obviously have documents on their PCs that they view as confidential and whilst they trust me in what I do, they are much happier in being able to watch the desktop while I work on it - it could be argued that because RDP doesn't let the PC owner see what the other party is doing, that also is a major security issue.
Not a convincing argument. If they wanted to be paranoid about what you were doing, they could just create a user account for you and set its permissions any way they liked. If they really didn't trust you, they wouldn't let you fix the computer in the first place. At least, not while their files were accessible.
The scenario far more likely than yours is where an attacker opens RDP ports, allowing a bad guy access to view activities on their computer any time they like. VNC has no defenses against this (in OSes where it's installed by default). You're arguing that a security hole is a good thing in some very limited specific scenario; I don't buy it.
As for SSH tunnels, it only really applies to accessing a Linux/UNIX machine and it's not difficult configuring PuTTY (from a Windows client) or an SSH command-line client to get it to work.
I consider myself pretty computer savvy, and I've never been able to get this to successfully work. Regardless of how difficult it is to configure PuTTY, the real point is that RDC doesn't require that at all-- it just works, like you'd expect it to, on the first try.
As far as I know, there's no technical reason why RDP can't show the same desktop on two screens simultaneously, it's a Windows licensing issue.
It's a security issue, to prevent RDC from becoming, quite literally, spyware. Absolutely nothing to do with licensing.
Speaking of security, the grandparent glosses over the hardest thing about using X11 or VNC remotely: setting up the SSH tunnel in the first place. RDC just does it, automatically, with no work required. Even the most dense office worker can securely use another person's machine with RDC, if they had to use X11 or VNC they wouldn't get past step 1.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The foolish part of this subject is that while the Windows registry provides a standardized access to the data store, it only defines types and not what they are supposed to be. Lunux configuration files under /etc are, IHO, better and can be backed up and diff-ed.
Yah, but the Registry also enables reasonably-intelligent remote administration in Windows, which isn't really currently available in Linux (or OS X). It also deals reasonably-intelligently with race conditions, i.e. two simultaneously-running instances of the same program saving over each other's settings. The registry might not be the best implementation in the world, but it's certainly not a bad idea.
Bzzt. Its called automatic backup people. This is a relatively new feature in Macs and barely working in Windows. Would be nice, but can't characterize it as something that's broken.
"Barely working?" Have you actually tried it, or are you talking out of your ass?
(Given, the "single computer" version in Vista doesn't work quite as well as the Active Directory version we've had since Windows 2000, but that's mostly just due to lack of disk space. The technology works fine.)
He complains the distribution differences make life hard for people selling software. Well, tough, if they want money maybe they should work for it?
Yes, but right now it's HARDER to write software for Linux than Windows, and your reward for going through this extra effort is a tiny market of open source believers who wouldn't buy your software anyway. (They'll just use the buggy, incomplete open source implementation some 14-year-old made during his break from World of Warcraft. Because it's free.)
At least make Linux distribution "as easy as" Windows, it not easier. Companies still won't do it, but at least they'll need to come up with some more clever reasons.
I know! Let's recreate the windows registry, but this time better!. Yawn.
The registry solves a lot of problems that text-based configurations don't, many of them relating to remote administration features Linux has barely gotten around to replicating:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/11/26/6523907.aspx
Unstable Kernel ABI. FUD.
Attention: every difference of opinion is now "FUD." It's not possible for two people to believe different things without one of them spreading "fear, uncertainty, and doubt." That is all.
He wants a versioning filesystem. Like Windows has. (Does it?) I want a poney.
Yes, it does. For Active Directory on Windows 2000+, and now for everybody in Vista. While you sit on your ass waiting for your "poney", Windows and OS X users enjoy the benefits of versioning filesystems.
The real irony is that OS X's version was made using hacked-together technologies that all exist in Linux, and you're still sitting here asking for "poneys" instead of replicating their effort.
Apple had that in the form of AppleScript in System 7, but they've kind of pissed it away over time. Sad but true, there just doesn't seem to be much demand for such a thing, although as a Mac OS power-user I *loved* the capability.
But fuck that! If I ever see programs like cp become bloated with X library calls because some news reporter needs to see a GUI progress bar, I'm going to be very angry.
But here's the difference: you're a power-user. If you open up Ubuntu, and find out that when you type "cp file1 file2" you suddenly see a new window with a progress bar pop up (which is extremely ridiculously unlikely, but hey I'm just going by your assumption)... you're in a position to configure the computer to NOT do that.
The "news reporter" (news reporter?), however, they don't know how to configure cp to show a progress bar, and they really want to see one. The OS should always cater to the non-power-user, for the sole reason that the power-user already knows how to get what they want: that's why they're called power-users!
I get into this debate sometimes with people who gripe about Microsoft "removing" telnet from Vista. If you know what the telnet even *is*, you're more than capable of opening up Add/Remove Programs and restoring it in less than a minute. Compare that to the millions of people who have no clue what telnet is, and yet it sits there idle as a possible vector for malware. It was a good decision on their part, if you get past the knee-jerk stage.
Why don't you just turn off the crazy configuration and just use the damned laptop the way everybody else on earth does? I guarantee it'll fix your issue.
IPv6 isn't backwards-compatible with IPv4, and a lot of networks have been really slow to convert over. In most case, they have to spend money to do this conversion, because they have older hardware without full IPv6 compatibility.
Adoption is slow because IPv6 isn't backwards-compatible, and because it doesn't have enough benefits to outweigh that problem. No conspiracy or anything. (I think it's damn stupid that IPv6 has approx. 40 kajillion IP addresses, and yet they didn't bother to map the existing 4 billion there anywhere.)
So? If you believe the philosophy for Wikipedia works for 100,000 articles, what makes you think it won't work for 10,000,000 articles?
Hell, what if you actually (for example) add tons and tons of Star Wars articles to Wikipedia, and those Star Wars fans you just attracted actually started following links and looking at and editing other Wikipedia sections, and you've actually gained "editors."
In any case, Wikipedia isn't effective at stopping vandalism now, so it could hardly make things worse. Idiotic vandalism like "OMG THIS ARTICLE SUX!!!" sure, but subtle vandalism Wikipedia just doesn't catch on the vast majority of articles.
Oh? Because the bullshit on the homepage says it's the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Are you saying that Wikipedia could get so big that it would run out of "anyones?"
Of course, we all know it's a lie anyway. It should read something like, "the encyclopedia that anybody can spend a lot of time and effort creating an article, only to have some other jackass delete it for no good reason."
Windows is not without it's own choices mind you either, fat(fat16), fat32, ntfs, WinFS(cancelled). As time pass, even microsoft attempts to create a new and improved fs (key-word: attempt). Sure they tend to force the latest fs on you but that's microsoft way VS linux way of choice.
Fat16 has been deprecated for ages (decades, I think). Windows only supports it for old floppy disks you have hanging around; it won't let you format any new devices in Fat16. Fat32 is only there for compatibility with Windows 98 and ME; the only reason XP lets you format a new disk as Fat32 is that it's (supposedly) possible to upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and so it needs the ability to use the same filesystem.
WinFS isn't a filesystem in the same way Ext2 or NTFS is. It's more of a database-backed meta-data layer sitting atop NTFS.
Since Windows 2000, the only real Windows filesystem is NTFS.
Sure they tend to force the latest fs on you but that's microsoft way VS linux way of choice.
1) XP will install and run on Fat32, if you really want to. (Windows 2000 also, IIRC, but it's been awhile.)
2) But would any sane person do that? Seriously, sometimes there's an obvious "best approach". Criticize Microsoft all you want when they deserve it, but that's ridiculous.
Right now what Linux needs is to survive in the face of Billions of Windows users who want to see us disappear.
What makes you think that the majority of Windows users want to see Linux disappear?
To change the background I have to use Java Script to interrogate DOM to get to the right CSS selector and change that and my god what a pain that is! Would it not be simpler to just do this?
Or you could write:
var obj = document.getElementById( 'desiredDiv' );
obj.style.border = "3px solid black";
Is that really so hard? If you have the border attached to a class, modify the second line to:
obj.className += ' ' + 'desiredClass';
And of course, using a library like prototype.js or jquery.js, both of those operations can ditch the first step and become even easier.
Further all since java scipt is loaded when the page is loaded it should be trivial to have static events pre-built for each component eg:
You can do that. Are you sure it's Javascript/DOM you're thinking of and not something else?
A "real" language has been classically defined to mean "a language which can compile itself."
If you say so...
Perl, Python, and Ruby cannot do that (to my knowledge).
Sure they can. They're Turing-complete, and they have functions to read/write files. What's stopping them? (Well, as far as they can be compiled in the first place; see below.)
I think you're confusing "can not" with "don't". Big difference. The only reason ECMAScript isn't "real" (according to your definition) is that the ECMAScript spec doesn't include any file system interfaces.
Javascript (and Ruby and Python and possibly Perl) compilation is kind of a unusual situation, though, where even compiled Javascript would need some kind of run-time engine to re-compile portions of the code on-the-fly, since those languages have reflection features. But if that's your issue, you'd also have to decree that C# (and even possibly C++, if you consider Templates) can't be compiled, and then you're into a whole weird world of hurt.