In reality, none of these are that important. You see, there's one thing everybody here failed to mention, and it's the fact that the thing using the USER INTERFACE is a human. As much as this is widely disputed at some points during the software development lifecycle, the fact remains that PEOPLE will be using this product. And you have to pay more attention to human psychology!
Be careful in choosing the right colors, know what a color means, and which feelings it induces to the user. There's an important difference in perception of even hard vs. oval edges. Know how users tend to use the program and try to solve their problem first. Then minimize things, see what you can automate, but not annoyingly smart -- like Word's Clippy. Then, make the thing look good. That's how you should design a good user interface. Never the other way around.
There's one more thing I'd like to point out. A lot of people here pointed out HCI as a good starting point. Well... It's nice to know the things already done on this, but If you have a radical new idea that you think can "shift the paradigm of user interfaces", don't just ignore it. Obviously don't just put anything in, do some testing, prototyping first, see if it fits the above, but don't just let it go, because it's not standard practice!
This comes in real handy if you have a camera that does not have a wireless transmitter or an avaiable component (like the Canon EOS 1D series does, or the Nikon D200 and above).
You see, for us "photographers", when shooting in the studio, it's realy handy to get a GOOD look at the picture on a good, preferably calibrated screen (like... a laptop) but definetely not the in-built LCD.
Assuming that the card will be semi fast, it will allow (at least in part) the photographer, make up artist, model... to see the image and correct flaws. It won't support tethered shooting (which also allows the photographer to see things like focus points, live preview, immediate settings, etc.), but it's a good start. And as far as amater photography goes, it's going to improve the amount of "home made movies and pictures":-).
Don't forget these are the guys who INVENTED the internet. It would be as you know it today if it wasn't for them. So I wouldn't be surprised if they actually do something über amazing to transfer all that data.
This really is a strange figure. It might reference anything but the consumption, most notably, the "energy" inside the ring. Or maybe the consumption of ONLY the ring itself, becaue when you start looking at the magnets, and vacuum pumps, and control system infrastructure you quickly find out that you need to be connected to at least 2 power grids:-). At least that's the case with DESY if I remember correctly.
If only somebody would actually read the original document. Microsoft never intended to really drop the product. They themselves said it was a (refering to the Mac Office 97 called into question here), is a *good* product. Blatantly taking something out of context does harm for the poster, the community...
The reason, as stated in the mail, is that Apple was unresponsive in regards to getting the Office ready for shipping and MS decided to "trheaten" them by pulling out.
I know this is/., but please, read TFA and the links inside.
You do realize that this is, what is effectively known as monopoly practice and what most of Slashdot would expect from companies like Microsoft, bot not Google. In any case, abusing power in one field to gain momentum (make a point) in another is monopoloy practice. So no, Google will not do that if they have anything in their heads.
Obviously the true reason behind it is that the penguins are binary only, with no source avaiable and are being banned one by one by Martin Bligh Greg Kroah-Hartman!
Note: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3501846795.html
Actually, Vista is not out yet, it's just RTM! Which means it's released to manufacturing. Sure, companies can download it, but it's not meant for production use. But your average Joe cannot get it (at least not legally!). As such Vista is also not supported officially by Microsoft (at least not fully), and companies should obviously not move production machines to Vista. That would be idiotic.
As far as compatibility goes, I think it's fair to expect this kind of behaviour. It was the same with Visual tudio; it doesn't work. The reason behing it AFAIK is the security that is said to be Vista. I obviously don't know how much of that is true, but If you think about it from a LOGICAL perspective instead of flamebait-one, you'll see that if they really made improvments on various low-level things than it's only logical they broke software which could potentially be unsafe.
This though raises another issue, why is SQL server unsafe, but hey... that's another issue.
I also agree with a lot of previous posters who think that such articles should not be posted to Slashdot simply because the editors think that Vista is not good. If you have a founded base for an article, great, but wrtting in sensationalist style will leave a lot of us stop reading this page. It's long since stop being news that matters and is more like Yellow pages for geek news.
I also think it's pathetic most people say "Vista sucks" before they actually even tried it out. So what if you use Linux? Who cares? So what If I use Windows? WHO CARES! But give the opposite side a benefit of doubt (which regularly fanbody don't).
It doesn't really seem like you have experience in this. Becuase if you did, you would know that there are a lot of things you cannot test simply with JUnit. for example, does the GUI block if an operation is in progress? Does it show a progress bar? Does it allow you to cancel tasks? Are the menus inaccessible? Stuff that matters to the user, but is not a part of a function (which you test using JUnit).
They have to do with how the run time enviornemnt written for these specific OSes is handled. Java on Windows and Linux behaves differently. Some people consider the Windows behavior wrong while some people consider the Linux behavior wrong. The point is that there are minor differences due to OS specifics that you need to handle, there can also be differences due to version specifics. that's why testing, even on multiple distributions / versions of the same platform. That was my point.
This is not true. Testing is time consuming because in a commercial environemnt you HAVE TO test ALL THE FEATUREs on ALL THE SUPPORTED PLATFORMS. Testing is not what most users think, that you just run the app, click a few buttons and that's it. The common mentality is, as it appears:
"Ok, let's test this on OS A, and if there are errors fix them, otherwise, see if the program also runs on other OSes and that's it".
Sorry to dissapoint you, wrong! You need a test plan. The test plan specifies how to test each feature (steps to acomplish it). These test plans have to be carried out on any given platform that you mark as SUPPORTED. There is the obvious difference between supported and "it also runs on". Maybe a quick example of why testing the features is important. Java for example, on Windows and on Linux behaves differently. In particular, it treats String objects differently. On Windows it is legal to compare two strings like this:
if(str1 == str2)
But this approach fails on Linux. And it's also technically more correct to write:
Even testing between different distrbutions can be a problem due to versions and "uncontrolled" API of open source applications. In our company we had to test (this is execute the test plan) on a few different Linux distributions because we tested it on Debian and it didn't work on Red Hat!
"We're a silo. Apple employees find out about new products when they're being announced. Or online. Nobody knows anything."
Frankly, I'd be concerned if I had a CEO that said "we will do this and that" and only then ask the developers who in the end will end up making them, if it is possible, how much it'll cost, etc.
Also, just for a "side-comment", this is a common tactic in politics. They give a false informant to the press who leaks something out saying it's coming from a reliable source near the point of origin. Only part of it is usually true, and it's usually manipulated. I would bet that if Apple's empployees are in a silo and know nothing of what is being anounced, then how does this source know? Is she at the source? Is she making it up? Is she a plant by the marketing team to cause a stirr? I think this is the case. But that's just IMHO.
Basically, because Microsoft supports OpenGL as far as I know. So it's not something that is closed to competitors. In my opinion, it's the same with everything else Microosft does, it's good, it's friendly, lots of people use it, so more bugs are found. However, looking at the brower, you can see it was hard for a new one to enter but the game developers do have a choice. It's not their fault OpenGL doesn't support half the stuff DirectX does. Or that it's easier to program in one than the other. But they can use both, and they can deploy both to their largest market, Windows.
The game makers, the one that accept the decisions over which platform they will use do not really care which technology they're using AS LONG AS it supports this and that, and this kind of shading, and that kind of shading, and as long as they can reach their largest market possible; which in all fairness is Windows users. Ok, so people use Linux, and people use Mac, and you also have to admit, a lot of us do, but the ones that play games, mostly don't. So why bother learning new technology? Why bother extending something to support something that something already has? I don't care what runs underneath when I'm playing a game. When I play a game (and I do so very very very rarely) I want it to play smooth and to work on Windows.
Anyway, to go back on topic, I believe it's unfair to say that Microsoft can even dominate this market. Because there is no market to dominate. It would be ok to say so IF, and only IF Microsoft actually wrote games and set them as defaults on Windows and wouldn't allow you to install anything else. THEN, we could talk about Antitrust violation.
What exactly is the correleation between lack of HDMI and ICT usage?
HDMI according to Wikipedia is an interface, and ICT is one of the AACS guidelines that limits resolution depending on the carrier used (if it is not capable of secure transmission).
Also, XBOX has a high-definition output, so I don't see your point. What is missing is the HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) which is a DRM for HDMI developed by Intel.
As far as the PS3 goes, I'm not sure, but according to this it will also have an HDMI interface.
Taking a look at list of bugs for space exploration and particuallry things like Mars Climate Orbiter I wonder how NASA could make so many mistakes in their software. It seems that no mission actually goes as planned without a computer glitch that is mission-threatning.
In contrast to, for example, the Shuttle, which has had only a few computer failures, and none of them fatal, it's hard for me to understand why they pay so little attention to testing these systems. I mean, maybe there are no lives at stake, but that doesn't give them the right to forget about testing it and probably letting some junior programmer write the algorithm. Then we get stupidities like:
String s = new String(""); if(a == "some text comparison")
... and the likes of. Or someone forgetting the metric conversion, I mean, hello, that should be checked! The software should have run first inside a simulator run! Only then should it be deployed onto the device.
I have a server capable of running both Java or.NET. Why would I be more prone to using the Google toolkit again? The toolkit is NOT OBVIOUS to the end user! Only to the developer.
Ok, that's all great and stuff, but it does not answer my question. I asked for objective differences between the two toolkits. The though of you being more likely to use the first toolkit does not offer me any reason why I should also use it. If you were to say to me, what are the differences between Winamp and Windows Media Player, and I'd say I use the latter, would you use it just because?
This is exactly the problem with quick responses that are so common here on Slashdot. Instead of people actually trying to answer the question, they go for a blatant flame war on Java vs.NET... I don't care which one you use, I care about what each of them has to offer me and then I choose the one I NEED AT A GIVEN TIME. It's the same with OS really, or with a development IDE, or with a text editor. I don't care which one people use, I use whatever I feel I need (based on the features).
So yeah, Java is more avaiable, but is it? I mean, mono's been around for a while, and people could use it, the fact that they don't doesn't really say anything except that I attribute it to the hate for MS from Linux users (sorry to be so general, I realize that not all *nix users hate MS, that much).
As far as the client part is concerened. You do realize that what you develop in, for example C#, is compiled into a HTML page, and viewable in, for example, Firefox? Yeah, it's supported by DLLs in the background, but that's none of your concern if you are a visitor. Have you ever visited live.com ? It's built around AJAX... In particular, it's built around Atlas... How about Google's personalized home. Last time I checked I can use Firefox or IE 7 to view them and use their functionallity. The question here is, how simple is it to make, i.e. D&D in C# & Atlas, or in Java & Google's Toolkit. And what I can do with either of them.
Java or.NET is the technology on the server. A lot of people actually use ASP.NET/ASP so that's really not the most persuasive argument I've heard. You see, If I write my special program with ATLAS, sure enough I'll be using C# (ASP.NET) to develop it, and I'll use MS server to deploy it, but it'll be accessible from all clients (which is the purpose of Ajax if I remember correctly).
Hm, for the first time ever, Google is playing catch-up with Microsoft. Microsoft has in fact released an AJAX toolkit a long time ago -- see ATLAS which is currently in community technology preview.
It's also free, so can anyone tell my Google's is better (and I don't want to hear arguments like "it's google's!")? Has anybody done a comparison?
Great thoughts! I totally agree with you! However, the only problem is this station is huge! In fact, according to the NASA Mission Page it's 404,069 pounds with a width Across Solar Arrays of 240 feet. It's 146 feet long from Destiny Lab to Zvezda; 171 feet with a Progress docked and 90 feet high!
Whilst if you take a peek at the
Shuttle info page you'll find that the cargo bay is 60 ft long, 15 ft in diameter. so there's almost no way you could get that station anywhere inside the orbiter. The only possible way to get it down, is the same way we got it up there in the first place. Which means dismantling it ! I found a nice array of photos showing the process here.
I find the station has cost billions already and is a decade behind schedule. Here's a summary:
INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.
So, multiply this by two and you get the cost of bringing it down. Are you a tax payer? If so, I'm guessing you don't want to pay that:). Hope this clears the question of why they let sattelites burn up there too... In case it doesn't, it costs around 2000 USD per pound to send a sattelite to space. It costs twice as much to recover it (sending an empty shuttle, a space walk, operating the hand, bringing it down) and we're taking a serious risk here, I mean, sending it up requires no humans, so if something goes wrong, we just blew up a few millions, but hey, if a shuttle explodes -- all hell breaks lose. So I say, leave them to burn out!
Hm, I fail to see the point in having written such an article. It helps me solve nothing I couldn't really have solved myself, it explicitly states that the average user can't do this because they don't know how -- rather insulting them than helping them.
But what's even more funny is that, in the end of the article the author says that in his final instalment he will write a few suggestions HOW MICROSOFT COULD SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. Ok, that's something we really need, a smart-ass teaching MS developers how to do something... I mean, why waste valuable internet space. I hope the author realizes that nobody at MS will even consider his solutions.
I think this is a blatant attempt to just get paid by the page, even if the page contains nothing more than an image, I mean, come on, and a blatant attempt at free advertising on slasdhot. I fail to see why this even makes good news. But, that's just my two cents.
I've posted a story about this, the day that Microsoft ACTUALLY announced the service which was 2006-03-15. What's interesting about it is that Microsoft has actually been using some time now -- if you take a look at their corporate website and all those images on the front page, and the images in the lower left corner, these are by definition ads, granted ads for their products but still.
Personally I don't think this is just a case of playing catch-up. It is the next logical step. It's like with mobile providers, first there was WAP, and everybody hated it, then one wise guy thought of providing content, then it was the big hit in telco market, wap content provider, which has currently grown to a HUGE market (sorry I can't post a number, or a link to the reports, they're proprietory). It's the same here. Ads are the next big thing. Google is making a fortune, and in a previous article on slashdot someone said Office is going down (yeah, right). Well, MS won't repell a good cash flow IMHO. But then again, would you? Cause I wouldn't!
Slashdot Mirror
In reality, none of these are that important. You see, there's one thing everybody here failed to mention, and it's the fact that the thing using the USER INTERFACE is a human. As much as this is widely disputed at some points during the software development lifecycle, the fact remains that PEOPLE will be using this product. And you have to pay more attention to human psychology!
Be careful in choosing the right colors, know what a color means, and which feelings it induces to the user. There's an important difference in perception of even hard vs. oval edges. Know how users tend to use the program and try to solve their problem first. Then minimize things, see what you can automate, but not annoyingly smart -- like Word's Clippy. Then, make the thing look good. That's how you should design a good user interface. Never the other way around.
There's one more thing I'd like to point out. A lot of people here pointed out HCI as a good starting point. Well... It's nice to know the things already done on this, but If you have a radical new idea that you think can "shift the paradigm of user interfaces", don't just ignore it. Obviously don't just put anything in, do some testing, prototyping first, see if it fits the above, but don't just let it go, because it's not standard practice!
But you have to uninstall only the monitoring software, not Vista for example, or Encarta, or Office...
This comes in real handy if you have a camera that does not have a wireless transmitter or an avaiable component (like the Canon EOS 1D series does, or the Nikon D200 and above).
:-).
You see, for us "photographers", when shooting in the studio, it's realy handy to get a GOOD look at the picture on a good, preferably calibrated screen (like... a laptop) but definetely not the in-built LCD.
Assuming that the card will be semi fast, it will allow (at least in part) the photographer, make up artist, model... to see the image and correct flaws. It won't support tethered shooting (which also allows the photographer to see things like focus points, live preview, immediate settings, etc.), but it's a good start. And as far as amater photography goes, it's going to improve the amount of "home made movies and pictures"
Don't forget these are the guys who INVENTED the internet. It would be as you know it today if it wasn't for them. So I wouldn't be surprised if they actually do something über amazing to transfer all that data.
This really is a strange figure. It might reference anything but the consumption, most notably, the "energy" inside the ring. Or maybe the consumption of ONLY the ring itself, becaue when you start looking at the magnets, and vacuum pumps, and control system infrastructure you quickly find out that you need to be connected to at least 2 power grids :-). At least that's the case with DESY if I remember correctly.
If only somebody would actually read the original document. Microsoft never intended to really drop the product. They themselves said it was a (refering to the Mac Office 97 called into question here), is a *good* product. Blatantly taking something out of context does harm for the poster, the community...
/., but please, read TFA and the links inside.
The reason, as stated in the mail, is that Apple was unresponsive in regards to getting the Office ready for shipping and MS decided to "trheaten" them by pulling out.
I know this is
You do realize that this is, what is effectively known as monopoly practice and what most of Slashdot would expect from companies like Microsoft, bot not Google. In any case, abusing power in one field to gain momentum (make a point) in another is monopoloy practice. So no, Google will not do that if they have anything in their heads.
Obviously the true reason behind it is that the penguins are binary only, with no source avaiable and are being banned one by one by Martin Bligh Greg Kroah-Hartman! Note: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3501846795.html
Actually, Vista is not out yet, it's just RTM! Which means it's released to manufacturing. Sure, companies can download it, but it's not meant for production use. But your average Joe cannot get it (at least not legally!). As such Vista is also not supported officially by Microsoft (at least not fully), and companies should obviously not move production machines to Vista. That would be idiotic. As far as compatibility goes, I think it's fair to expect this kind of behaviour. It was the same with Visual tudio; it doesn't work. The reason behing it AFAIK is the security that is said to be Vista. I obviously don't know how much of that is true, but If you think about it from a LOGICAL perspective instead of flamebait-one, you'll see that if they really made improvments on various low-level things than it's only logical they broke software which could potentially be unsafe.
This though raises another issue, why is SQL server unsafe, but hey... that's another issue.
I also agree with a lot of previous posters who think that such articles should not be posted to Slashdot simply because the editors think that Vista is not good. If you have a founded base for an article, great, but wrtting in sensationalist style will leave a lot of us stop reading this page. It's long since stop being news that matters and is more like Yellow pages for geek news.
I also think it's pathetic most people say "Vista sucks" before they actually even tried it out. So what if you use Linux? Who cares? So what If I use Windows? WHO CARES! But give the opposite side a benefit of doubt (which regularly fanbody don't).
...imagine a beowolf cluster of these!
It doesn't really seem like you have experience in this. Becuase if you did, you would know that there are a lot of things you cannot test simply with JUnit. for example, does the GUI block if an operation is in progress? Does it show a progress bar? Does it allow you to cancel tasks? Are the menus inaccessible? Stuff that matters to the user, but is not a part of a function (which you test using JUnit).
You're right, sorry, I should have written, it used to be legal (1.4.2). Still, the point is the same yet even more enforced I think.
They have to do with how the run time enviornemnt written for these specific OSes is handled. Java on Windows and Linux behaves differently. Some people consider the Windows behavior wrong while some people consider the Linux behavior wrong. The point is that there are minor differences due to OS specifics that you need to handle, there can also be differences due to version specifics. that's why testing, even on multiple distributions / versions of the same platform. That was my point.
This is not true. Testing is time consuming because in a commercial environemnt you HAVE TO test ALL THE FEATUREs on ALL THE SUPPORTED PLATFORMS. Testing is not what most users think, that you just run the app, click a few buttons and that's it. The common mentality is, as it appears:
"Ok, let's test this on OS A, and if there are errors fix them, otherwise, see if the program also runs on other OSes and that's it".
Sorry to dissapoint you, wrong! You need a test plan. The test plan specifies how to test each feature (steps to acomplish it). These test plans have to be carried out on any given platform that you mark as SUPPORTED. There is the obvious difference between supported and "it also runs on". Maybe a quick example of why testing the features is important. Java for example, on Windows and on Linux behaves differently. In particular, it treats String objects differently. On Windows it is legal to compare two strings like this:
if(str1 == str2)
But this approach fails on Linux. And it's also technically more correct to write:
if(str1 == null || str2 == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException();
if(str1.equals(str2))...
Even testing between different distrbutions can be a problem due to versions and "uncontrolled" API of open source applications. In our company we had to test (this is execute the test plan) on a few different Linux distributions because we tested it on Debian and it didn't work on Red Hat!
"We're a silo. Apple employees find out about new products when they're being announced. Or online. Nobody knows anything."
Frankly, I'd be concerned if I had a CEO that said "we will do this and that" and only then ask the developers who in the end will end up making them, if it is possible, how much it'll cost, etc.
Also, just for a "side-comment", this is a common tactic in politics. They give a false informant to the press who leaks something out saying it's coming from a reliable source near the point of origin. Only part of it is usually true, and it's usually manipulated. I would bet that if Apple's empployees are in a silo and know nothing of what is being anounced, then how does this source know? Is she at the source? Is she making it up? Is she a plant by the marketing team to cause a stirr? I think this is the case. But that's just IMHO.
Basically, because Microsoft supports OpenGL as far as I know. So it's not something that is closed to competitors. In my opinion, it's the same with everything else Microosft does, it's good, it's friendly, lots of people use it, so more bugs are found. However, looking at the brower, you can see it was hard for a new one to enter but the game developers do have a choice. It's not their fault OpenGL doesn't support half the stuff DirectX does. Or that it's easier to program in one than the other. But they can use both, and they can deploy both to their largest market, Windows.
The game makers, the one that accept the decisions over which platform they will use do not really care which technology they're using AS LONG AS it supports this and that, and this kind of shading, and that kind of shading, and as long as they can reach their largest market possible; which in all fairness is Windows users. Ok, so people use Linux, and people use Mac, and you also have to admit, a lot of us do, but the ones that play games, mostly don't. So why bother learning new technology? Why bother extending something to support something that something already has? I don't care what runs underneath when I'm playing a game. When I play a game (and I do so very very very rarely) I want it to play smooth and to work on Windows.
Anyway, to go back on topic, I believe it's unfair to say that Microsoft can even dominate this market. Because there is no market to dominate. It would be ok to say so IF, and only IF Microsoft actually wrote games and set them as defaults on Windows and wouldn't allow you to install anything else. THEN, we could talk about Antitrust violation.
Well, just my two cents.
What exactly is the correleation between lack of HDMI and ICT usage?
HDMI according to Wikipedia is an interface, and ICT is one of the AACS guidelines that limits resolution depending on the carrier used (if it is not capable of secure transmission).
Also, XBOX has a high-definition output, so I don't see your point. What is missing is the HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) which is a DRM for HDMI developed by Intel.
As far as the PS3 goes, I'm not sure, but according to this it will also have an HDMI interface.
Taking a look at list of bugs for space exploration and particuallry things like Mars Climate Orbiter I wonder how NASA could make so many mistakes in their software. It seems that no mission actually goes as planned without a computer glitch that is mission-threatning.
... and the likes of. Or someone forgetting the metric conversion, I mean, hello, that should be checked! The software should have run first inside a simulator run! Only then should it be deployed onto the device.
In contrast to, for example, the Shuttle, which has had only a few computer failures, and none of them fatal, it's hard for me to understand why they pay so little attention to testing these systems. I mean, maybe there are no lives at stake, but that doesn't give them the right to forget about testing it and probably letting some junior programmer write the algorithm. Then we get stupidities like:
String s = new String("");
if(a == "some text comparison")
I have a server capable of running both Java or .NET. Why would I be more prone to using the Google toolkit again? The toolkit is NOT OBVIOUS to the end user! Only to the developer.
Ok, that's all great and stuff, but it does not answer my question. I asked for objective differences between the two toolkits. The though of you being more likely to use the first toolkit does not offer me any reason why I should also use it. If you were to say to me, what are the differences between Winamp and Windows Media Player, and I'd say I use the latter, would you use it just because?
.NET... I don't care which one you use, I care about what each of them has to offer me and then I choose the one I NEED AT A GIVEN TIME. It's the same with OS really, or with a development IDE, or with a text editor. I don't care which one people use, I use whatever I feel I need (based on the features).
This is exactly the problem with quick responses that are so common here on Slashdot. Instead of people actually trying to answer the question, they go for a blatant flame war on Java vs
So yeah, Java is more avaiable, but is it? I mean, mono's been around for a while, and people could use it, the fact that they don't doesn't really say anything except that I attribute it to the hate for MS from Linux users (sorry to be so general, I realize that not all *nix users hate MS, that much).
As far as the client part is concerened. You do realize that what you develop in, for example C#, is compiled into a HTML page, and viewable in, for example, Firefox? Yeah, it's supported by DLLs in the background, but that's none of your concern if you are a visitor. Have you ever visited live.com ? It's built around AJAX... In particular, it's built around Atlas... How about Google's personalized home. Last time I checked I can use Firefox or IE 7 to view them and use their functionallity. The question here is, how simple is it to make, i.e. D&D in C# & Atlas, or in Java & Google's Toolkit. And what I can do with either of them.
Java or .NET is the technology on the server. A lot of people actually use ASP.NET/ASP so that's really not the most persuasive argument I've heard. You see, If I write my special program with ATLAS, sure enough I'll be using C# (ASP.NET) to develop it, and I'll use MS server to deploy it, but it'll be accessible from all clients (which is the purpose of Ajax if I remember correctly).
Hm, for the first time ever, Google is playing catch-up with Microsoft. Microsoft has in fact released an AJAX toolkit a long time ago -- see ATLAS which is currently in community technology preview.
It's also free, so can anyone tell my Google's is better (and I don't want to hear arguments like "it's google's!")? Has anybody done a comparison?
Great thoughts! I totally agree with you! However, the only problem is this station is huge! In fact, according to the NASA Mission Page it's 404,069 pounds with a width Across Solar Arrays of 240 feet. It's 146 feet long from Destiny Lab to Zvezda; 171 feet with a Progress docked and 90 feet high!
:). Hope this clears the question of why they let sattelites burn up there too ... In case it doesn't, it costs around 2000 USD per pound to send a sattelite to space. It costs twice as much to recover it (sending an empty shuttle, a space walk, operating the hand, bringing it down) and we're taking a serious risk here, I mean, sending it up requires no humans, so if something goes wrong, we just blew up a few millions, but hey, if a shuttle explodes -- all hell breaks lose. So I say, leave them to burn out!
Whilst if you take a peek at the Shuttle info page you'll find that the cargo bay is 60 ft long, 15 ft in diameter. so there's almost no way you could get that station anywhere inside the orbiter. The only possible way to get it down, is the same way we got it up there in the first place. Which means dismantling it ! I found a nice array of photos showing the process here.
I find the station has cost billions already and is a decade behind schedule. Here's a summary:
INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.
So, multiply this by two and you get the cost of bringing it down. Are you a tax payer? If so, I'm guessing you don't want to pay that
Hm, I fail to see the point in having written such an article. It helps me solve nothing I couldn't really have solved myself, it explicitly states that the average user can't do this because they don't know how -- rather insulting them than helping them.
But what's even more funny is that, in the end of the article the author says that in his final instalment he will write a few suggestions HOW MICROSOFT COULD SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. Ok, that's something we really need, a smart-ass teaching MS developers how to do something... I mean, why waste valuable internet space. I hope the author realizes that nobody at MS will even consider his solutions.
I think this is a blatant attempt to just get paid by the page, even if the page contains nothing more than an image, I mean, come on, and a blatant attempt at free advertising on slasdhot. I fail to see why this even makes good news. But, that's just my two cents.
I've posted a story about this, the day that Microsoft ACTUALLY announced the service which was 2006-03-15. What's interesting about it is that Microsoft has actually been using some time now -- if you take a look at their corporate website and all those images on the front page, and the images in the lower left corner, these are by definition ads, granted ads for their products but still.
Personally I don't think this is just a case of playing catch-up. It is the next logical step. It's like with mobile providers, first there was WAP, and everybody hated it, then one wise guy thought of providing content, then it was the big hit in telco market, wap content provider, which has currently grown to a HUGE market (sorry I can't post a number, or a link to the reports, they're proprietory). It's the same here. Ads are the next big thing. Google is making a fortune, and in a previous article on slashdot someone said Office is going down (yeah, right). Well, MS won't repell a good cash flow IMHO. But then again, would you? Cause I wouldn't!