If you wrote a webmail client in "PHP-GTK", could I drag&drop a file into the email window to attach it to the email? Until you can, web-apps will never be of the same quality as regular applications. If I'm writing an email in your hypothetical "PHP-GTK" client, and I correct a misspelled word by saying "Add to Dictionary," will it add it to the OS X system-wide dictionary?
Outlook/Exchange has a nice online webmail client, but do you know anybody who uses it instead of Outlook when sitting at their desk at work? No, because actual Outlook is quicker, more integrated with the OS, can pop up reminders in the system tray when your meeting is coming up, etc... it does more than a web-app does, and it does it faster and easier.
I'm not *using* any of this technology, not by choice anyway. I worked for a company that chose to purchase this technology, and I had to support it on people's desktops.
It's great that you're telling me to not use Java for web-apps, but I already knew that. Tell it to the huge companies out there that are using Java all over the place in their bloated, awful web-apps and giving all web-apps a horrible name. (Personally, the only decent web-app I've used is Gmail by Google, I've never seen one in a corporation as nice.)
No, I just had to support some nightmarish hell of a Siemens web-app. Unfortunately, in the healthcare field, IBM and Siemens are like the twin Gods of IT even though neither of them can make a decent piece of software to save their life.
The problem isn't one of marketing (well, ok, that's part of it), but of ease of use.
Remember, if you have a feature that people can't figure out how to use, for all practical purposes that feature does not exist.
If you want to make X popular, first of all give it a decent name. Secondly, write an extension to Firefox so that a specially-tagged HTML page can call an X application over the Internet to run it. Add in all the bells and whistles I described in the grandparent post, and bam, you have a winner... assuming you can make it work without requiring gobs of Linux knowledge like it does now. Now when I visit Gmail, Google can put up a highly interactive email client which lets me drag&drop a file into the email window to add an attachment, and I'm happier and Google's happier and Firefox has a huge selling point.
From what I understand, though, X isn't suited for this for a couple reasons: 1) It's designed to run an entire desktop over the network link, not just one single application. i.e. you define a rectangle as "the desktop" and all windows/etc that X opened would have to be contained in it... that's not ideal. 2) It's bandwidth-heavy. Maybe not when competing with Citrix, but if Google started using it they would see their bandwidth bill skyrocket. 3) X doesn't solve the problem of native widgets. X applications run in OS X look like crap because the widgets are simple greyscale things that look like they were rejected from Windows 95, and not the nice-looking OS X buttons and widgets. Additionally, X applications in OS X still can't accept drag&drop, or use the OS X spell checker, or communicate with other apps, etc etc.
If it's going to happen, I think a new protocol needs to come forth. Perhaps something that transmits VB-like "forms" to the client on demand, and the "forms" can contain scripting in Python to accomplish the task, with a network protocol to stream-in new "forms" as needed and to interface with a remote ODBC connection through this psuedo-app. You could design the "forms" to take up minimal bandwidth and use native widgets by giving instructions like "draw a pushbutton with a label 'hello' at this coords" instead of sending bitmaps (like X does.) You'd also be able to script a form to modify itself to some extent, so you wouldn't need to make a round-trip to the server every time you hit a disclosure triangle.
If anybody builds this, put my name in the credits.;)
It's well known that the US is one of the most religious countries on the face of the earth.
A little bit of evidence, please?
Are you seriously telling me that the US is more religious than, say, Vatican City? (Ok, stupid example.) But still, most African and Middle Eastern countries are far more religious than the US. Despite the US being "one of the most religious countries on the face of the earth" we don't have the populous attempting to enact a code of laws that are defined by the religion. Unlike, say, Iran or Afghanistan.
Even if you have the best web-app in the universe, it still can't accept drag&drop files from the desktop, nor can it safely open multiple windows, nor can it interact with any other application on the system (i.e. by using AppleScript on Mac for example), nor can it use any OS widget other than the most basic few, it'll never be as responsive as a desktop app, and will never have any of the graphical capabilities of a desktop app.
If you think back, way back when Windows 95 was out people were making the same prediction that web-apps would replace OSes and in the future the only OS would be the web-browser. It didn't happen then, and it won't happen now-- because web-apps suck. The only solution is to write a new internet protocol (not HTTP) designed specifically to run apps from a server... but by that point, you might as well just run the Windows app over a fileshare because it's the same thing.
There are a lot of reasons that web-apps suck, I was just barely scratching the surface.
All it means is that before we act, we need to know what he hell's happening so we know our action is worthwhile. Especially when it's an action that our entire economy would be affected by (anything involving oil.) We *know* that the economy affects human survival, we're not sure about this whole carbon thing.
I've had to support a lot of web-apps, and I can say a web browser is *never* a better interface than a GUI application.
If they meet the following restrictions, they *might* be considered equal:
1) Does not use Java. 2) Works on multiple browser, including future versions of IE which may have more strict security settings. 3) Does not require any client-side settings to work. (For instance, lowering security settings, turning off the pop-up blocker, etc.)
But every web-app I've ever had to maintain in a corporate environment violated every one of these rules. And I'm talking about big companies making these web-apps, like IBM and Siemens. The end affect was:
1) Some only used MS Java, some only used Sun Java, meaning that if a browser had one web-app installed you couldn't install the second one because the Java version would be incompatible. 2) They worked on IE only, which only exaggerated the downfall of the previous point. (You can only have 1 IE per computer, and 1 Java per IE, web developers!!) In addition, it meant that the company I worked for had to freeze IE upgrades to prevent breaking web-app features. 3) We had tons of security problems because of web-apps that required the pop-up blocker to be turned off, or security features to be turned off. (You can only have one set of settings per browser, web developers!! And most of the time, trusted sites doesn't cut it, from my experience.)
Even if all these conditions are met, there's still a good chance that the interface of the web-app might plain suck. The web-based ticketing system "feetimpressions" (not naming names because I still have to work with it, but I think you can figure it out) has a terrible interface. It would be equally terrible as a desktop app, but at least it would run quicker so when you made a mistake you could undo it quicker.
* To be fair, one of the web-apps above was basically a Lotus Notes database converted into a web-app, and Lotus Notes has its own enormous GUI blackhole which seems to suck in any good GUI and mutilate it into something frightening.
It isn't. None of those affected applications have anything to do with your internet service, those are just the crappy pack-ins that come on the ISP's CD. Your internet service works just as well without any of them installed.
And yes, my 14" G4 iBook frequently gets 5 hours+ battery life, plus it has one of the best wireless antennas of any laptop I've used. (From what I understand, Apple was the first company to use the wireless technique of wrapping an antenna around the monitor bezel, making for a much larger antenna than previous laptops.) It's a great piece of hardware. Used to get 6 hours out of it, but the battery isn't as new as it once was.
This came up in another Slashdot thread a few days ago, but the problem basically sums to:
1) Ubuntu can use the wireless card, but it requires downloading some file from the Internet. 2) I can't get on the Internet because a plain Ubuntu install doesn't include the file and my laptop only has wifi Internet access.
The college degree is to get the interview, not the job.
I have no degree (although I spent 4 years in a CS program), and I was able to get a great job once I got my foot in the door on the strength of the skills I could demonstrate and my personality alone. Getting your foot in the door is the hard part, if you don't have a degree, and that's where networking takes over.
Lean on all the friends you had in high school. Sign up to a site like http://www.linkedin.com/ which is basically a job search site that uses networking to help you be more successful in your search... you'll be surprised how many people you know are "linked" with people offering jobs. (Or "linked" with people in the kind of big companies who are always hiring talent, regardless of their job listings.)
It seems pointless to seek ideas and feedback if you're going to ignore and delete the opinions you don't like.
Maybe it's pointless but everybody does it all the time. Half the time, if I say, "hey, what do you think of X?" I'm looking for, "X is really great, you did a good job on it." It's psychological, don't tell me you don't do the same.
Dell deleted a post linking to an article that criticizes its handling of the 'pre-installed Linux' issue.
Sounds to me that they deleted a post linking to a whiny bitch. Let's try this little summary mixer;
"It seems pointless to submit ideas and feedback to Dell if you're going to write a whiny article because they don't do exactly what you want."
Besides, Dell is a huge corporation. They're investigating a process to get their hardware approved by Linux distributers. For a huge corporation, that's a major undertaking... I'm sure whoever wrote that whiny article was looking for, "yes sir, we'll have those on shelves tomorrow!" as a response.
Then why do I have people in this forum recommending that I, a linux newbie, use a "test release?"
I'm sorry, this is a huge cultural problem in the Linux community. If it's a test release, there shouldn't be end users anywhere near it... that's kind of the point: only testers should be using it. If the test release is the only way that Ubuntu *works* on an iBook, then they shouldn't say that it works with an iBook at all. If it doesn't work for the one thing 99% of people use their computer for (Internet), then it doesn't work. Why even bother offering the download?
The only reason I tried Linux is that I have a bunch of buddies who basically prodded me into trying Linux. I'm satisfied with Mac OS X at home and Windows at work.
I'm not using it now because the damned wireless drivers don't work. Because they require an internet connection to install and I only have wifi connections. I think I've typed that 4 times now in this one thread.
Wouldn't it be about 50,000,000 times easier if Ubuntu just regression-tested their product to make sure they didn't break shit? Sorry, I'm just looking at that maze of commands, and sadly I'm inclined to agree with the troll who replied to my original post: why would I bother? Apple actually QAs their product (at least a little bit.) "Linux for humans" my ass.
Yes, but it requires a wired Internet connection. I only have Wifi. Thus the Catch-22. It's impossible for me to get Internet with Ubuntu unless I already have Internet.
How come these reviews never mention Apple's.Mac service? That's what I'm currently using, and I'd LOVE to find an alternative, as iDisk seizes up Finder all the freakin' time, but I have no clue which of those services integrate with OS X. But even a basic review showing how.Mac compares to the other options would be nice.
Does anybody have any advice for Mac-compatible (preferably Finder-integrated, like.Mac) online storage?
I know these posts are annoying, but since you brought it up...
Can anybody speak to wireless support for PPC iBook laptops?
What killed my Ubuntu experience the last time was that it: 1) didn't support the wireless card in my iBook, and 2) installing support for the wireless card required internet access... and I only have wireless access.
Unless you're using one of Microsoft's built-in drivers to run it, why make a distinction between "hardware" and "drivers?" That just lets hardware makers get away with packaging in shitty software, and we already get enough shitty software... they should be held accountable for everything that comes in the package, including the drivers and including whatever utility apps they throw in.
Slashdot Mirror
If you wrote a webmail client in "PHP-GTK", could I drag&drop a file into the email window to attach it to the email? Until you can, web-apps will never be of the same quality as regular applications. If I'm writing an email in your hypothetical "PHP-GTK" client, and I correct a misspelled word by saying "Add to Dictionary," will it add it to the OS X system-wide dictionary?
Outlook/Exchange has a nice online webmail client, but do you know anybody who uses it instead of Outlook when sitting at their desk at work? No, because actual Outlook is quicker, more integrated with the OS, can pop up reminders in the system tray when your meeting is coming up, etc... it does more than a web-app does, and it does it faster and easier.
I'm not *using* any of this technology, not by choice anyway. I worked for a company that chose to purchase this technology, and I had to support it on people's desktops.
It's great that you're telling me to not use Java for web-apps, but I already knew that. Tell it to the huge companies out there that are using Java all over the place in their bloated, awful web-apps and giving all web-apps a horrible name. (Personally, the only decent web-app I've used is Gmail by Google, I've never seen one in a corporation as nice.)
No, I just had to support some nightmarish hell of a Siemens web-app. Unfortunately, in the healthcare field, IBM and Siemens are like the twin Gods of IT even though neither of them can make a decent piece of software to save their life.
The problem isn't one of marketing (well, ok, that's part of it), but of ease of use.
;)
Remember, if you have a feature that people can't figure out how to use, for all practical purposes that feature does not exist.
If you want to make X popular, first of all give it a decent name. Secondly, write an extension to Firefox so that a specially-tagged HTML page can call an X application over the Internet to run it. Add in all the bells and whistles I described in the grandparent post, and bam, you have a winner... assuming you can make it work without requiring gobs of Linux knowledge like it does now. Now when I visit Gmail, Google can put up a highly interactive email client which lets me drag&drop a file into the email window to add an attachment, and I'm happier and Google's happier and Firefox has a huge selling point.
From what I understand, though, X isn't suited for this for a couple reasons:
1) It's designed to run an entire desktop over the network link, not just one single application. i.e. you define a rectangle as "the desktop" and all windows/etc that X opened would have to be contained in it... that's not ideal.
2) It's bandwidth-heavy. Maybe not when competing with Citrix, but if Google started using it they would see their bandwidth bill skyrocket.
3) X doesn't solve the problem of native widgets. X applications run in OS X look like crap because the widgets are simple greyscale things that look like they were rejected from Windows 95, and not the nice-looking OS X buttons and widgets. Additionally, X applications in OS X still can't accept drag&drop, or use the OS X spell checker, or communicate with other apps, etc etc.
If it's going to happen, I think a new protocol needs to come forth. Perhaps something that transmits VB-like "forms" to the client on demand, and the "forms" can contain scripting in Python to accomplish the task, with a network protocol to stream-in new "forms" as needed and to interface with a remote ODBC connection through this psuedo-app. You could design the "forms" to take up minimal bandwidth and use native widgets by giving instructions like "draw a pushbutton with a label 'hello' at this coords" instead of sending bitmaps (like X does.) You'd also be able to script a form to modify itself to some extent, so you wouldn't need to make a round-trip to the server every time you hit a disclosure triangle.
If anybody builds this, put my name in the credits.
It's well known that the US is one of the most religious countries on the face of the earth.
A little bit of evidence, please?
Are you seriously telling me that the US is more religious than, say, Vatican City? (Ok, stupid example.) But still, most African and Middle Eastern countries are far more religious than the US. Despite the US being "one of the most religious countries on the face of the earth" we don't have the populous attempting to enact a code of laws that are defined by the religion. Unlike, say, Iran or Afghanistan.
Even if you have the best web-app in the universe, it still can't accept drag&drop files from the desktop, nor can it safely open multiple windows, nor can it interact with any other application on the system (i.e. by using AppleScript on Mac for example), nor can it use any OS widget other than the most basic few, it'll never be as responsive as a desktop app, and will never have any of the graphical capabilities of a desktop app.
If you think back, way back when Windows 95 was out people were making the same prediction that web-apps would replace OSes and in the future the only OS would be the web-browser. It didn't happen then, and it won't happen now-- because web-apps suck. The only solution is to write a new internet protocol (not HTTP) designed specifically to run apps from a server... but by that point, you might as well just run the Windows app over a fileshare because it's the same thing.
There are a lot of reasons that web-apps suck, I was just barely scratching the surface.
All it means is that before we act, we need to know what he hell's happening so we know our action is worthwhile. Especially when it's an action that our entire economy would be affected by (anything involving oil.) We *know* that the economy affects human survival, we're not sure about this whole carbon thing.
I've had to support a lot of web-apps, and I can say a web browser is *never* a better interface than a GUI application.
If they meet the following restrictions, they *might* be considered equal:
1) Does not use Java.
2) Works on multiple browser, including future versions of IE which may have more strict security settings.
3) Does not require any client-side settings to work. (For instance, lowering security settings, turning off the pop-up blocker, etc.)
But every web-app I've ever had to maintain in a corporate environment violated every one of these rules. And I'm talking about big companies making these web-apps, like IBM and Siemens. The end affect was:
1) Some only used MS Java, some only used Sun Java, meaning that if a browser had one web-app installed you couldn't install the second one because the Java version would be incompatible.
2) They worked on IE only, which only exaggerated the downfall of the previous point. (You can only have 1 IE per computer, and 1 Java per IE, web developers!!) In addition, it meant that the company I worked for had to freeze IE upgrades to prevent breaking web-app features.
3) We had tons of security problems because of web-apps that required the pop-up blocker to be turned off, or security features to be turned off. (You can only have one set of settings per browser, web developers!! And most of the time, trusted sites doesn't cut it, from my experience.)
Even if all these conditions are met, there's still a good chance that the interface of the web-app might plain suck. The web-based ticketing system "feetimpressions" (not naming names because I still have to work with it, but I think you can figure it out) has a terrible interface. It would be equally terrible as a desktop app, but at least it would run quicker so when you made a mistake you could undo it quicker.
* To be fair, one of the web-apps above was basically a Lotus Notes database converted into a web-app, and Lotus Notes has its own enormous GUI blackhole which seems to suck in any good GUI and mutilate it into something frightening.
It isn't. None of those affected applications have anything to do with your internet service, those are just the crappy pack-ins that come on the ISP's CD. Your internet service works just as well without any of them installed.
And yes, my 14" G4 iBook frequently gets 5 hours+ battery life, plus it has one of the best wireless antennas of any laptop I've used. (From what I understand, Apple was the first company to use the wireless technique of wrapping an antenna around the monitor bezel, making for a much larger antenna than previous laptops.) It's a great piece of hardware. Used to get 6 hours out of it, but the battery isn't as new as it once was.
This came up in another Slashdot thread a few days ago, but the problem basically sums to:
1) Ubuntu can use the wireless card, but it requires downloading some file from the Internet.
2) I can't get on the Internet because a plain Ubuntu install doesn't include the file and my laptop only has wifi Internet access.
It's a nasty Catch-22 issue.
Tell that to the Airport card in my iBook. ... ... ...
You insensitive clod! (Sorry, had to.)
The college degree is to get the interview, not the job.
I have no degree (although I spent 4 years in a CS program), and I was able to get a great job once I got my foot in the door on the strength of the skills I could demonstrate and my personality alone. Getting your foot in the door is the hard part, if you don't have a degree, and that's where networking takes over.
Not the computer kind.
Lean on all the friends you had in high school. Sign up to a site like http://www.linkedin.com/ which is basically a job search site that uses networking to help you be more successful in your search... you'll be surprised how many people you know are "linked" with people offering jobs. (Or "linked" with people in the kind of big companies who are always hiring talent, regardless of their job listings.)
It seems pointless to seek ideas and feedback if you're going to ignore and delete the opinions you don't like.
Maybe it's pointless but everybody does it all the time. Half the time, if I say, "hey, what do you think of X?" I'm looking for, "X is really great, you did a good job on it." It's psychological, don't tell me you don't do the same.
Dell deleted a post linking to an article that criticizes its handling of the 'pre-installed Linux' issue.
Sounds to me that they deleted a post linking to a whiny bitch. Let's try this little summary mixer;
"It seems pointless to submit ideas and feedback to Dell if you're going to write a whiny article because they don't do exactly what you want."
Besides, Dell is a huge corporation. They're investigating a process to get their hardware approved by Linux distributers. For a huge corporation, that's a major undertaking... I'm sure whoever wrote that whiny article was looking for, "yes sir, we'll have those on shelves tomorrow!" as a response.
Then why do I have people in this forum recommending that I, a linux newbie, use a "test release?"
I'm sorry, this is a huge cultural problem in the Linux community. If it's a test release, there shouldn't be end users anywhere near it... that's kind of the point: only testers should be using it. If the test release is the only way that Ubuntu *works* on an iBook, then they shouldn't say that it works with an iBook at all. If it doesn't work for the one thing 99% of people use their computer for (Internet), then it doesn't work. Why even bother offering the download?
The only reason I tried Linux is that I have a bunch of buddies who basically prodded me into trying Linux. I'm satisfied with Mac OS X at home and Windows at work.
I'm not using it now because the damned wireless drivers don't work. Because they require an internet connection to install and I only have wifi connections. I think I've typed that 4 times now in this one thread.
Wouldn't it be about 50,000,000 times easier if Ubuntu just regression-tested their product to make sure they didn't break shit? Sorry, I'm just looking at that maze of commands, and sadly I'm inclined to agree with the troll who replied to my original post: why would I bother? Apple actually QAs their product (at least a little bit.) "Linux for humans" my ass.
I should have mentioned that I'm not a Linux brain.
I have no idea how to "boot into" 2.6.20-6... in fact, I don't really even know what that number is. A version number for something?
Yes, but it requires a wired Internet connection. I only have Wifi. Thus the Catch-22. It's impossible for me to get Internet with Ubuntu unless I already have Internet.
14" iBook G4. That's about all I know about it... if there were different revisions of that, I can look it up when I get home.
So don't use it if you don't like it. What's the point of commenting on a topic you're not interested in just to say that it sucks?
How come these reviews never mention Apple's .Mac service? That's what I'm currently using, and I'd LOVE to find an alternative, as iDisk seizes up Finder all the freakin' time, but I have no clue which of those services integrate with OS X. But even a basic review showing how .Mac compares to the other options would be nice.
.Mac) online storage?
Does anybody have any advice for Mac-compatible (preferably Finder-integrated, like
I know these posts are annoying, but since you brought it up...
Can anybody speak to wireless support for PPC iBook laptops?
What killed my Ubuntu experience the last time was that it:
1) didn't support the wireless card in my iBook, and
2) installing support for the wireless card required internet access... and I only have wireless access.
Talk about Catch-22!
Hardware == drivers.
Unless you're using one of Microsoft's built-in drivers to run it, why make a distinction between "hardware" and "drivers?" That just lets hardware makers get away with packaging in shitty software, and we already get enough shitty software... they should be held accountable for everything that comes in the package, including the drivers and including whatever utility apps they throw in.