Maybe Johnny doesn't want to "stream". Maybe Johnny just wants video that play backs immediately/without delay, and smoothly. And Johnny thinks that's what "streaming" means. Maybe Johnny thinks that "downloading" means he has to wait.
Does Johnny know that when he watches YouTube he's downloading? Or does he think he's "streaming"? As long as Johnny does not have to wait for playback, and playback is smooth, does Johnny really care about whether he's "streaming" or "downloading?
All else being equal (i.e. speed to fill a buffer or a disk block is the same and in neither case does Johnny have to wait for playback longer than in the other), I'd bet Johnny would prefer "downloading" over "streaming", since then he can watch the video again later. Just like a VHS or DVD rental.
Assuming you have the storage space, all else being equal, "streaming" video when you can "download" it seems "insane" to use the Professor's term.
Unless of course your business model is traditional "broadcasting" of the pre-digital, pre-internet variety.
This strategy of collecting email addresses without delivering anything first never seems to die down.
The reason is simple: it works. Many people will hand over their email address with no guarantee of anything in return. A shockingly large number of people will do that. And then the opt-in spam begins. It's a never ending email campaign for who knows what. Does the spam work? Surprisingly, yes. Enough to be worth paying to keep sending it out. Legalised spam.
Is an email address worth something? Gather enough of them and yes, absolutely it is.
This is all pure speculation. Or is it?
If I had a dime for every site that collects email addresses without delivering anything first...
As if Mozilla didn't have enough data about users already.
Anyway, if you wanna see what this thing is here you go:
I am 100% in agreement. I would never make users jump through hoops like that. Or assume that Redis would be their choice of database. That's a choice for the user.
But Lord knows I spend an inordinate amount of time jumping through hoops like these just to try evaluate software. It's just unavoidable.
A small, simple program with no dependencies or assumptions about your software preferences is like a breath of fresh air.
I wonder if there's an easy way to filter all of Github for these types of programs. Say, C programs with less than N LOC, and having no external dependencies.
Show me an honest company with a solid service or product and I will be more than willing to support them financially.
At the end of the day I think people who work for companies like that feel better about what they're doing than [famous lying CEO] wannabes.
When you rely on lying over and over again, your whole life becomes a lie. Maybe you are worth something to a market, but to many people you are worthless. As a liar you have no value to them.
There is huge value in honesty. Maybe it can't be measured in financial terms. But I personally will pay a premium for honesty. It's of limited supply and always in demand.
I save ESC2J to a file and my "cls" is simply another file consisting of
cat file1
in my PATH. Only because sometimes printf or some other way to print ESC's might not be available.
The idea of starting up X11 so I can start the super-sized code complexity experiment that calls itself "Firefox", all just to get to a command line struck me. The fact they are calling the approach at Mozilla as "responsive design" I found insulting.
Are they in denial about just how big and complex Firefox is? This is not how you attain responsive design.
They identified the Mozilla home page as an example of responsive design, not Firefox. The feature being demonstrated with that example was the ability to "resize" the browser window to see how a page built with "responsive design" in mind would be rendered with, say, a mobile device with a smaller screen. Pretty useful, if you ask me.
Definitely. I just wish they would make some changes so that we can use the "70's style command line" more with Firefox. In other words, options and arguments we can pass to Firefox (the xulrunner app) via the Linux/BSD/OSX/Windows commandline.
For example if I have Firefox running in Xvfb it would be nice to be able to issue remote commands (an early version of Mozilla did have something like this if I recall correctly: -remote), such as the commands they are implementing for this "graphical command line". It would be convenient to easily dump screenshots to image files without having to run something like Crowbar.
Anyway at least they are starting to acknowledge that not everyone uses a mouse or prefers using a trackpad over hitting keys. I mean keys as tactile buttons, not images of onscreen keyboard, like the iPhone or iPad.
I fail to understand why this phrase is offending you so badly.
Let’s look at a more interesting example. The current design of
mozilla.org is a responsive design. I want to see how the headings
will show up on a smaller screen. If I’ve been working on the page, I
would likely know some of the IDs and structure used in the page, so
I could enter a command like:
"Responsive design" is a fairly established noun in the web design world. This is an article about new developer features in a web browser. Inside the context of the sentence, it's obvious they're talking about how a web page is constructed.
This is how web devs use "responsive design". It's being used by a web dev, in an article for other web devs. You might find it slightly confusing, but that's your problem, not theirs.
OS programmers and corn farmers use the word "kernel" to mean two different things, is this also a crime against nature?
the meaning is similar in both contexts you mention.
indeed if we asked someone who did not know what an "os kernel" was, they might think of the meaning they do know: e.g., the innermost part of a seed of a cereal or nut
and they might guess based on what they know.
have you ever heard the phrase "the computer program has become non-responsive"
e.g. a graphical web browser such as Firefox
Mozilla developers are not committing "crimes against nature". But nonetheless they do create some annoyances that millions of people have to endure. That's not the developers' problem, it's the users' problem. Some might search for solutions to the annoyances. Such solutions could be quite valuable to users. They might read things that are meant for "web developers" because that is where the annoyances come from. They are created by web developers.
Guess what, a responsive layout responds to media/container size variations, just like a computer program responds (or stops responding in your example) to user or system signals.
Developers want to pretend you[1] do not exist. "All users are idiots." Maybe the problem is with developers[2], not users.
1. The user who can learn to use vi and AWK.
2. In many cases it is they the developers who can't figure out how to use vi and AWK. Their solution is to conclude no one else will be able to use these programs either, because... "all users are idiots".
Non-interactive is far better than interactive. Faster, more efficient, more secure, less error-prone, less repeated effort. It's less work!
But there is an army of UI designers fighting against common sense. I'm sure we'll hear from some of them in this thread.
djb nailed this problem on the head when he wrote about the UNIX interfaces. Quoting rules, special characters... it's a minefield even if you are a "UNIX command line guru".
There's a high cognitive price to pay if you are trying to avoid all mistakes using this interface.
Solution: Remove the user interfaces. Programs interface with each other, not the user.
Non-interactive = less work. You start the system. It runs. There is no interaction. No ongoing cognitive price to pay other than monitoring.
And this is only the command line. Dare we look at the price imposed by GUI's?
Imagine a slide show where you had to click each and every time you want to see a new slide. Nice CSS! Wow, that Javascript is amazing! The page is so beautiful! Click, click, click. (Developers rejoice: We can track the clicks!) Now imagine you are the user and the slide show is 10,000 slides. Forget it.
Mechanize? Perl, Python, Ruby? JQuery? Give me a break. Why should people even have to waste their time writing such things?
Hey no problem! The kind developers decide to add an option to run the show on auto-pilot. Hurray. No more interaction is needed.
Think again.
Now imagine you have view 10,000 different slideshows to view and each one has a different way to start the auto-pilot mode based on the developer's own idea of "user experience".
You are right back where you started. Find the auto-pilot button. 10,000 times. Interaction.
A "slide show" is just a random example. You can apply this almost any sort of information intake where "interfaces" like GUI's are involved.
Go to a library and watch people trying to use various computer databases. In almost all cases, you will see them spending noticeable effort just to find things to click, and reading onscreen instructions. Every database is different. Every interface is unique. End-users: make 'em work.
The entire web is like this. Every web developer wants users to interact. Why? It's too much damn work. For users.
Will it ever change? Doubtful.
There is an entire industry built around forcing users to interact regardless of whether it is truly necessary.
For every person working to build an automated system there are two more building a system that forces user interaction.
Sometimes nerds, e.g. those familiar with Lisp or Scheme, say "everything is a list". Can mere mortals who know nothing of "programming" make lists? Is there any literate person on the planet who hasn't made a list?
"List processing".
Too _boring_. (It certainly isn't too _difficult_. Even the grandmother who can't use a computer can still make lists just fine.)
In answering that question, does it matter what I do, or only what the guys at example.com are doing?
What if my system is diskless and file.flv is downloaded to a RAM disk? What if I turn off the system after watching? What if I don't? What if I save file.flv to a USB stick and watch it later? What if I loan the stick to a friend?
Can the guys at example.com prohibit me from doing that? Based on intellectual property law? What if some user owns the IP rights to file.flv and uploaded it to example.com and the guys at example.com do not have any IP rights in file.mp3? What if the user did not give them any of her IP rights?
What if I never put file.mp3 into "iTunes"? What if I never put it into "Dropbox"? What if I never send it to "the cloud"? What if I just leave it on a USB stick? What if I play it back from the stick? What if I move it from the stick to my RAM disk and then play it back?
OK, enough.
Enjoy your media.
To get the most from the experience, it may be necessary to stear clear of people who willingly conceal the truth or, in the worst case, lie to you in order to suit their business model.
Does Johnny know that when he watches YouTube he's downloading? Or does he think he's "streaming"? As long as Johnny does not have to wait for playback, and playback is smooth, does Johnny really care about whether he's "streaming" or "downloading?
All else being equal (i.e. speed to fill a buffer or a disk block is the same and in neither case does Johnny have to wait for playback longer than in the other), I'd bet Johnny would prefer "downloading" over "streaming", since then he can watch the video again later. Just like a VHS or DVD rental.
Assuming you have the storage space, all else being equal, "streaming" video when you can "download" it seems "insane" to use the Professor's term.
Unless of course your business model is traditional "broadcasting" of the pre-digital, pre-internet variety.