This Makes Me Angry
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Here is a bit of news.[^] I'm not angry at what Google is attempting to do. I'm angry because the horse shit that is the HTML stack is widely known to be just that, horse shit, and yet somehow Microsoft has been bullied into giving up on their own solutions to this problem. In an article I read just yesterday Google announced that Chrome would be dropping support for some browser extensions - we're getting played here. So it's great that Google is going to be pushing this stuff but it is the Chromites who were part of the chorus decrying things like Flash and Silverlight. Here is the salient point: 'The Standards' have never been about creating a single, open source solution to the web. 'The Standards' are a tool to bully the other browser vendors into pushing out an inferior product (HTML 5 compliance) while you work on your own extensions/clients/etc. Silverlight is a brilliant product. Bring it back and make it the hottest web plugin possible. If Microsoft won't force the world to play it's game we'll all end up playing Google's game. And that would be okay - I want to program using tools by a company that isn't afraid to win.
MehGerbil wrote:
I want to program using tools by a company that isn't afraid to win.
Microsoft is not afraid of win, but every time it does it, it gets a nice letter from an antitrust regulator.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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Anyone remember Bill Gates being hauled into court for the crime of having lots and lots of customers? Anti-trust is wrong. Anti-trust punishes companies for winning.
Anti-trust is not wrong - it is the guard that keeps us from being bullied too much. And Microsoft was hit by anti-trust not because they won, but because they won unfairly.
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IndifferentDisdain wrote:
You're assuming MSFT is still an innovator...
Agreed, Microsoft doesn't have anyone to copy from for this. MS-DOS, copied from CP/M Windows, copied from Macintosh and Xerox Star Office, copied from AppleWorks and Ashton-Tate's Frameworks, although broken into interoperable pieces to maximize sales MSIE, copied from Netscape Surface, copied from iPad WinPhone Mango/Metro, their first innovation, but hey, accidents happen It's no wonder why they seem to have lost their way, they never had one to begin with. Even Billy's BASIC was copied from Dartmouth's design. Maybe I've been in the industry too long and watched it develop instead of being dropped into the middle and buying all the PR (although I have another compound word in mind).
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
BrainiacV wrote:
It's no wonder why they seem to have lost their way, they never had one to begin with.
True, that. I remember when "folders" was the way of the future, but Mac was beating the @#$p out of them. Then they swooped up some former Mac developers and WOW! windows came into being. I will admit that they are really good at hiring good lawyers who can pass @#$p to the bench and it is swallowed as the truth.
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That's not even a relevant comparison. Of course you can't wash clothes with a dishwasher or watch TV on a microwave. They're different tools for completely different problem spaces, but that's not whats being discussed. A closer comparison is you *can* open any text document with any text editor, you can open any RTF document with any RTF editor, and you can open any GIF with your choice of image editing program. You only run into "you can only open this with MS Word" when you get into MS's proprietary formats, and surely you're not advocating the web get splintered amongst proprietary formats. This is also the argument against silverlight and flash. Giving that much control to one commercial company to control the standard is suicide. MS starts gaining grown and suddenly if they don't want to adequately support other users/browsers, tough **** for the user. Have we forgotten IE's dominance just a decade or so ago? Have we forgotten that because MS didn't want to go forward, everyone else was held back? The web was littered with "Site best browsed in FF" or "Site best browsed in IE" tags. And I know you aren't ignorant of the fact that not everyone is on, or can run, an MS browser. There should be a central standard, different products should implement that standard and bring their own flavor of features. But the standards organization has to move faster than the current snails pace they operate at. One step toward that will be when the major browsers are all supprting auto-update cycles so the standards can move at a faster pace and the users will move along with it. No more lagging IE 6 users preventing the dollar-conscious big sites from upgrading.
Jadoti wrote:
Giving that much control to one commercial company to control the standard is suicide
Whatever is it that makes you think that it is so important that you bring in the idea of people taking their own lives? For one thing, making a tool that works with stuff that you have developed is not "taking control" of anything other than the tools that you develop. For another, forcing everyone to make programs that work exactly the same way and that are capable of exactly the same things is ridiculous. Ever heard of competition? Ever heard of innovation? Your "Final Solution" of central standards will send them both to the gas chamber. Having an external committee decide how companies and innovators should make their products is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, not to mention that such a committee will immediately turn into a vipers' nest (which it has), that will yet further stifle any creativity and innovation. If you want everyone in the world to view your web pages, don't use Flash, don't use Silverlight, don't use HTML5, etc. Problem sorted. However, anyone who wants everyone in the world to view their web pages probably needs psychiatric attention, so this "connecting everyone to everyone" concept for browser design should not be taken seriously, and the focus has to be that of connecting content providers to content consumers. Once you get back to the demesne of supplier > customer, the whole standards argument starts to look a little childish and ridiculous, and rightly so.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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BrainiacV wrote:
It's no wonder why they seem to have lost their way, they never had one to begin with.
True, that. I remember when "folders" was the way of the future, but Mac was beating the @#$p out of them. Then they swooped up some former Mac developers and WOW! windows came into being. I will admit that they are really good at hiring good lawyers who can pass @#$p to the bench and it is swallowed as the truth.
Yeah, it always amazes me to hear people sing the praises of Microsoft. I guess I just remember a snot nosed Billg calling us all pirates because we thought $400.00 for $0.40 of papertape was too much to spend on a computer that cost $400.00. I wasn't one to make copies, I just refused to buy the product, but I was offended that Bill tarred us all with the same brush. It showed his priority was money first, product a distant second. Microsoft made us suffer with the one line editor, EDLIN, and didn't improve the product until DR-DOS came out with a full screen editor. I just had to shake my head at the FUD when Windows would pop out with a "This product may be unstable" error message when it detected it was not running on top of MS-DOS, as though it was the operating system's fault that Windows wasn't working right. But it scared enough people into dropping DR-DOS so they could still watch Windows crash, but on top of MS-DOS. But that was better because they didn't get that upfront warning. :doh: My spousal-unit would defend Microsoft by saying their product works. Yeah, like IBM computers just worked, The phrased used to be "You can buy better than IBM, but you can't pay more." Everyone in the know knew that their computers were middle of the road. They just had a massive sales and support organization. Microsoft has been the same, but with software. But all the dirty tricks Bill did to build Microsoft into what it is today seems to have been lost to history.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Jadoti wrote:
Giving that much control to one commercial company to control the standard is suicide
Whatever is it that makes you think that it is so important that you bring in the idea of people taking their own lives? For one thing, making a tool that works with stuff that you have developed is not "taking control" of anything other than the tools that you develop. For another, forcing everyone to make programs that work exactly the same way and that are capable of exactly the same things is ridiculous. Ever heard of competition? Ever heard of innovation? Your "Final Solution" of central standards will send them both to the gas chamber. Having an external committee decide how companies and innovators should make their products is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, not to mention that such a committee will immediately turn into a vipers' nest (which it has), that will yet further stifle any creativity and innovation. If you want everyone in the world to view your web pages, don't use Flash, don't use Silverlight, don't use HTML5, etc. Problem sorted. However, anyone who wants everyone in the world to view their web pages probably needs psychiatric attention, so this "connecting everyone to everyone" concept for browser design should not be taken seriously, and the focus has to be that of connecting content providers to content consumers. Once you get back to the demesne of supplier > customer, the whole standards argument starts to look a little childish and ridiculous, and rightly so.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Suicide wasn't literal. I'm sure you got that, though. I didn't say force everyone to work the same way, I said a standards board and everyone implements the standards with their unique features. What your advocating is the exact opposite of competition and innovation, it's pushing for a dominant company to monopolize because of their position. You might like have 20 browsers and choosing between them for their unique characteristics, most other people don't. If Google, being the dominant search engine, decided that they were just going to write for Chrome, then practically overnight users would end up switching to chrome because who in their right mind would want to search in one browser and switch to another browser to use the site they're going to? Who in their right mind wants to have to remember "this site uses this browser, this site uses that browser"? Once users switch to chrome, developers will switch to chrome (because yes, public facing websites DO want wide reach), and you'll have a defacto monopoly. If Google then decides to not support certain platforms with chrome, those users are hosed. Look at early Flash on Linux days, it wasn't supported (and when it was, it wasn't supported well) and the users were left out from sites dominated with Flash. The web is not the only place that uses this concept. Could you imagine if auto manufacturers did what you propose? Every car having it's own features, roads designed for the cars that the designer likes? Apologists like you would say "I use this car for driving down this road, and I use that car for that road, my truck for this dirt road and my bike for this narrow road... who needs standards?!" No one mandates that steering wheels go on the left side of the car, gas on the right, brake on the left, but they all adopt it because it works best for the consumers. No one mandates the size of the cars, but there's a standard, and therefor almost all vehicles can drive down almost all roads. Motorcycle manufacturers tried breaking from this many years ago, too, putting gas where they wanted, brake and clutch where they wanted, and it was chaos. They too standardized, and it didn't kill innovation. There has to be standards, or the web gets splintered. The slow-moving W3C might not be the right group, but it doesn't mean the model is wrong. They don't have to dictate the end product, just promote and evolve the standard. Doesn't stop browsers from doing their own thing, but given browser A that supports feature X, developers can still
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Yeah, it always amazes me to hear people sing the praises of Microsoft. I guess I just remember a snot nosed Billg calling us all pirates because we thought $400.00 for $0.40 of papertape was too much to spend on a computer that cost $400.00. I wasn't one to make copies, I just refused to buy the product, but I was offended that Bill tarred us all with the same brush. It showed his priority was money first, product a distant second. Microsoft made us suffer with the one line editor, EDLIN, and didn't improve the product until DR-DOS came out with a full screen editor. I just had to shake my head at the FUD when Windows would pop out with a "This product may be unstable" error message when it detected it was not running on top of MS-DOS, as though it was the operating system's fault that Windows wasn't working right. But it scared enough people into dropping DR-DOS so they could still watch Windows crash, but on top of MS-DOS. But that was better because they didn't get that upfront warning. :doh: My spousal-unit would defend Microsoft by saying their product works. Yeah, like IBM computers just worked, The phrased used to be "You can buy better than IBM, but you can't pay more." Everyone in the know knew that their computers were middle of the road. They just had a massive sales and support organization. Microsoft has been the same, but with software. But all the dirty tricks Bill did to build Microsoft into what it is today seems to have been lost to history.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
I had to look up FUD. First thing that came up directly matched the context of what you were saying, but then I hit the urban dictionary which also came up with that definition as the second meaning. I'd never have guessed the first meaning they had for it. Then I remembered another term I'd heard when I was quite a bit younger: fuddy duddy, a slightly pejorative term for someone too straight laced to be comfortable with. Then wondered if it came from the very pejorative first meaning of fud. I've worked with machines that booted with papertape in college, but never bought any tape for it, I do remember the teacher getting mad when the boot tape got a rip in it and got the impression it was expensive. Never knew Billy had anything to do with the tape. (I was too busy working with REAL computers by the time Bill showed up to have any interest in toy computers.) Man, those toy computers grew up fast.
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I always feel silly being angry. I don't take myself seriously enough to believe it matters. Oh look, MehGerbil is angry - and there is a squirrel running up a tree...
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I had to look up FUD. First thing that came up directly matched the context of what you were saying, but then I hit the urban dictionary which also came up with that definition as the second meaning. I'd never have guessed the first meaning they had for it. Then I remembered another term I'd heard when I was quite a bit younger: fuddy duddy, a slightly pejorative term for someone too straight laced to be comfortable with. Then wondered if it came from the very pejorative first meaning of fud. I've worked with machines that booted with papertape in college, but never bought any tape for it, I do remember the teacher getting mad when the boot tape got a rip in it and got the impression it was expensive. Never knew Billy had anything to do with the tape. (I was too busy working with REAL computers by the time Bill showed up to have any interest in toy computers.) Man, those toy computers grew up fast.
In high school we were lucky enough to have ASR-33 teletypes connected via acoustic coupler to a DEC PDP-8/I running TSS-8/I (Timesharing System). I was further lucky that I attended a high school in the district with a dedicated computer room with TWO(!) teletypes. I heard most of the other high schools kept their teletypes locked in the closet and were only used for special occasions. Fine by me, more CPU for us. All our storage was papertape. Even the site with the hardware, they didn't pop for the DECtape drives so we had to load the OS from papertape via a highspeed reader (200 cps), OK, highspeed compared to the 10 cps on the teletypes. Took at least an hour, maybe two as I recall. When the Altair and such came out, it was a mad scramble to come up with converters between RS-232 and the 20 milliamp current loop that the ASR-33's used. They were few and far between. One of the kids in the class managed to score some mylar tape, which was hard to tear, but discouraged because it was hard on the punch unit.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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MehGerbil wrote:
I'm no longer angry, I'm confused.
I hadn't read CBadger's missive before I sent mine. I probably wouldn't have sent mine if I had. Mine is much simpler than C's but basically says the same thing in a very abbreviated form. (And you just answered my question about you being in a continual state of angry. NOT) The Hulk is kind of strange, he can stop being The Hulk or get angrier (and stronger) when he gets confused. Depends on whether or not he is getting hurt at the same time. Like someone else said, you aren't The Hulk.
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Suicide wasn't literal. I'm sure you got that, though. I didn't say force everyone to work the same way, I said a standards board and everyone implements the standards with their unique features. What your advocating is the exact opposite of competition and innovation, it's pushing for a dominant company to monopolize because of their position. You might like have 20 browsers and choosing between them for their unique characteristics, most other people don't. If Google, being the dominant search engine, decided that they were just going to write for Chrome, then practically overnight users would end up switching to chrome because who in their right mind would want to search in one browser and switch to another browser to use the site they're going to? Who in their right mind wants to have to remember "this site uses this browser, this site uses that browser"? Once users switch to chrome, developers will switch to chrome (because yes, public facing websites DO want wide reach), and you'll have a defacto monopoly. If Google then decides to not support certain platforms with chrome, those users are hosed. Look at early Flash on Linux days, it wasn't supported (and when it was, it wasn't supported well) and the users were left out from sites dominated with Flash. The web is not the only place that uses this concept. Could you imagine if auto manufacturers did what you propose? Every car having it's own features, roads designed for the cars that the designer likes? Apologists like you would say "I use this car for driving down this road, and I use that car for that road, my truck for this dirt road and my bike for this narrow road... who needs standards?!" No one mandates that steering wheels go on the left side of the car, gas on the right, brake on the left, but they all adopt it because it works best for the consumers. No one mandates the size of the cars, but there's a standard, and therefor almost all vehicles can drive down almost all roads. Motorcycle manufacturers tried breaking from this many years ago, too, putting gas where they wanted, brake and clutch where they wanted, and it was chaos. They too standardized, and it didn't kill innovation. There has to be standards, or the web gets splintered. The slow-moving W3C might not be the right group, but it doesn't mean the model is wrong. They don't have to dictate the end product, just promote and evolve the standard. Doesn't stop browsers from doing their own thing, but given browser A that supports feature X, developers can still
Jadoti wrote:
If Google, being the dominant search engine, decided that they were just going to write for Chrome, then...
... No board of self-appointed experts would be able to a damned thing about it, so your argument is ridiculous.
Jadoti wrote:
Apologists like you would say "I use this car for driving down this road, and I use that car for that road, my truck for this dirt road and my bike for this narrow road... who needs standards?!"
Unfortunately for your argument, that is Precisely what people do -- "I use a bike for cycle paths, an off-road machine for off road, a town car for driving around town, a limo for weddings, and a tank for invading Poland". If cars were the same price as Internet browsers, you could bet your life that each family would have a dozen, for different purposes.
Jadoti wrote:
No one mandates that steering wheels go on the left side of the car, gas on the right, brake on the left, but they all adopt it because it works best for the consumers.
Wrong. The pedals are positioned because that is what consumers Want. No-one has decided "what is best", at all; although if some idiot decided to put the pedals in different positions, accidents would happen, and safety standards would be established -- but no-one in the industry wants yet more standards, so no-one rocks the boat (my wife spent a number of years as a project manager on high-end German cars, so she can tell you how much they desire and look forward to new standards). How you think you can get away using that as an example to show that standards are wanted, I don't know -- the reality, in the real world, is that no-one wants standards, so they avoid doing anything that might make someone create them.
Jadoti wrote:
There has to be standards, or the web gets splintered.
Say what? What you're saying is that everyone must be able to view every web page, no matter its content, in every browser, otherwise the Internet is "splintered"? Think hard on that concept, and try to include the real world in your thinking. If one person predominantly uses a browser for comms (e-mail, etc.) then why should that person use a browser that is loaded down to five times its weight with libraries that optimise it for watching videos? Etc. Etc. Etc. What you appear to want is
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MehGerbil wrote:
and there is a squirrel running up a tree...
That makes me think of the movie "UP"
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I like Russ Meyer films, too. Don't really see the connection here, though.
GenJerDan wrote:
I like Russ Meyer films, too.
I don't really see the connection either. I quoted Mehgerbil saying "and there is a squirrel running up a tree..." I think of the movie UP: http://movies.disney.com/up[^] Oh... just looked up Russ because I was clueless, I may have watched his movies when I was in my 20's but at that time I didn't care who created the movie. I could see him creating a movie called UP, but there wouldn't be any connection with the movie I was thinking of. There's quite a difference between what he and Pixar would cook "up" (See, multiple meanings for the word) for a movie. For a fan of Russ, I could see why you wouldn't have watched a Pixar film and therefore miss the connection I had made.
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GenJerDan wrote:
I like Russ Meyer films, too.
I don't really see the connection either. I quoted Mehgerbil saying "and there is a squirrel running up a tree..." I think of the movie UP: http://movies.disney.com/up[^] Oh... just looked up Russ because I was clueless, I may have watched his movies when I was in my 20's but at that time I didn't care who created the movie. I could see him creating a movie called UP, but there wouldn't be any connection with the movie I was thinking of. There's quite a difference between what he and Pixar would cook "up" (See, multiple meanings for the word) for a movie. For a fan of Russ, I could see why you wouldn't have watched a Pixar film and therefore miss the connection I had made.
On the other hand, maybe I was just yanking someone's chain. Which, as far as I know, was not a Russ Meyer movie. ;P Hmm. Feel like watching Beneath The Valley of the Ultra-Vixens now. Sigh.
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On the other hand, maybe I was just yanking someone's chain. Which, as far as I know, was not a Russ Meyer movie. ;P Hmm. Feel like watching Beneath The Valley of the Ultra-Vixens now. Sigh.
GenJerDan wrote:
On the other hand, maybe I was just yanking someone's chain.
Which I suspected at the beginning, but started the reply like you weren't. As soon as I saw Russ's profile, I was pretty certain that was happening. Well, may as well yank back. ;P