I never understood why DomainKeys hasn't taken off like wildfire. I would have expected by now we could simply blacklist all non-DK mail, but it doesn't seem to be getting pushed into email systems... *cough* exchange *cough*. I mean, we went through the "spec wars" for this stuff around the turn of the millenium. It seems to me in lo these many years all of the mainstream email servers should have made setting up DK pretty much mandatory. - Robert Cooper via twhirl
Found this courtesy of Paul Kedrosky's blog. Very interesting take on the final days of Bear Stearns - first time I've heard an in-depth analysis that includes the role that CNBC might have played in fanning the flames. - Charles Hudson via Bookmarklet
"The browser isn't broken, and doesn't need to be "fixed", either by a proprietary platform, or by a shiny new language. Instead it needs to be extended, and functionality gaps need to be plugged. That's why I don't care about JS2: its fundamental message is "the Browser of Tomorrow is the Browser of Today, just with different syntax." This is spinning our wheels, and won't do anything to advance the web.
So what is the right solution? Well, in my opinion what we need is to formalize and standardize the DOM API, agree on a single vector model and API, and specify an intermediate compilation format. That is, specify the boundaries, and let existing languages do what they're good at." - Jason Chen
JS2 is a huge improvement over JavaScript 1x if you are doing more than just writing small snippets of code. The mechanisms for easier to read, write, and debug code, including object-oriented programming are pretty well understood. So much, that they've been added to most modern scripting languages, including Python and PHP. I'm just surprised it has taken so long to actually make this change. This should have been done back in 2002. Now Flash has a better language than web browsers. - Chris White
Just so everyone is clear on this, JS2 is backward compatible with the current version of JS (1.5-9) in browsers. I don't buy the argument that JS2 has a fundamental message about the browser which says there should be no new functionality added except for a syntax change. The two improvements are mutually exclusive, and it seems misleading to imply one impacts the other. My comment about Flash is because ActionScript 2.0 is an implementation of JS2., and has been around for a while now. - Chris White
From the original post: "So in a way I guess I should be interested in JS2. And to whatever extent JS2 is better than JS1, then the web benefits. I guess. I don't really know though, because I haven't even so much as glanced at a spec. People whose opinion I respect think it's an improvement, but like I said, I don't care. " - Chris White
@Chris I believe the point the article is making is that web browser implementers should not be betting on a single language like JavaScript. Instead, the author is recommending that something like a standard language-independant bytecode and VM be the focus of the efforts to extend the platform. There is no reason that JS2 could not be the dominant language that gets interpreted to run on this VM. - scott anderson
They're exclusive in that there's a limited amount of effort to develop, test, implement, push, evangelize, and teach new browser features. There's only so much shelf space on the books-for-webmasters section of the bookstore. I would certainly rather those books be about some DOM that's actually standard than about class syntax for JS. But, you know, I think OO is basically a mistake, so... - ⓞnor
Why I don't like hybrid cars: The reason is because we should be using all electric cars. Burning fossil fuels is bad, so we shouldn't be spending our limited resources on building this intermediate solution. Instead we should be building solar, wind, and nuclear plants and infrastructure to power our electric cars. - Chris White
@Chris Your analogy re: hybrids is a spurious straw man. If your goal is a fully-electric car economy, hybrids are an intermediate step and therefore helpful. If your goal is to actually advance the browser state of the art in some way and not just replace one syntax with another, then JS2 is *not* an intermediate step, it's wasted effort. JS2 does not in any way enhance the browser. JS2 will not make it possible to write a new class of application that you cannot write with JS1. That is my complaint. - Dan Morrill
I understand that both JS1 and JS2 are Turing complete languages, and therefore equivalent in capability at some level. I don't agree that syntax changes are trivial in value and wasted effort, and I actually think class oriented programming is a major improvement over what was there before. Not using the latest version of the language seems like a shame to me. Better software engineering often leads to better user experience. - Chris White
Also a couple disputes: 1) JS2 is not a "replacement syntax" for JS1, it was designed to be an enhancement of the original syntax. 2) Having multiple language support with a byte-code VM does not appear to me to provide the capability for a new class of applications either, although I am not against the idea. I'd be fine using Python in the browser, but I'm tired of dealing with the prototype syntax in JS1. - Chris White
I am looking for suggestions for guests to have on this weekly program that I am launching together with Joseph Smarr, David Recordon, and Chris Messina. - John McCrea
Robert Scoble, will you come on to our show to help people understand the pain associated with using lots of different social media tools in an era in which we (as vendors) have not yet delivered on the vision of data portability and interoperability? - John McCrea
Robert: Sweet! How about July 17 (when we shoot Episode 2)? (11:00am, Mountain View) - John McCrea
Sounds good, send me details in email. scobleizer@gmail.com to get it on my calendar. - Robert Scoble
Watching right now, really enjoying it, John! Congratulations - Matt Harwood
Although it's hard to say, I think I was a 'connector' here.. that makes me feel good. I want to get better at connecting people. A talent Louis Gray has in spades. - J. Phil
So how are your Twitter tweets licensed? Am guessing it's indeterminate, placing any dependent service in jeopardy. If you're going to federate microblogging, you need clear understanding of content licensing. It's a prerequisite. - Edd Dumbill via twhirl
Well, the Twitter TOS does say "We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours", so it's not indeterminate. But that definitely impedes federation. People seem to be missing the entire point of what laconi.ca was developed to do. - Earle Martin
"This page documents the time-complexity of various operations in current CPython" - Adewale Oshineye
I have NO IDEA what this is about but I felt I owed you a "like" or two - thing is you are just so damned hardcore! But you're on the right side of the force, Jedi - that I know ;) - melmcbride
Love it! I wish that every library, data structure, and algorithm publicly documented their average and worst case asymptotic time and space complexity, as well as their constant factors. Languages would be so much the better for it. - DeWitt Clinton
Some good detail here, including the potential domain name. - Louis Gray
A social network and Tech oriented were both mentioned as possibilities for the focus of the company in the article. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with. - Jeff P. Henderson
Whatever it is, they'll use Engadget to make it popular. - Michael Narciso
Geez, that Steve Gillmor guy is off his meds or his rocker or both with that TechCrunch article! Can't believe I wasted 5 minutes reading that drivel. - Lawrence Liu
@Erica Baker: Building any app for "Google scale" is not trivial. Try inserting millions of records simultaneously in and RDBMS and see what happens :-) - Panayotis Vryonis
Panayotis, a URL redirector is a problem that partitions beautifully so a RDBMS based solution should work just fine. In addition, people won't be creating millions of tinyurls simultaneously. They'll likely be accessing millions of them simultaneously but that is a problem that is easily solved with judicious use of caching. - Dare Obasanjo
Dare, I didn't say it can't be done (actually, I believe I've built something like this on AppEngine, called urlborg.com). Google doesn't rely on RDBMS, because it's hard to replicate, distribute, etc. Building an app on AppEngine that will survive heavy usage, without transaction collisions, etc, wasn't trivial -not rocket science either, don't get me wrong :-) - Panayotis Vryonis
Let us take a moment to check out the artwork of Yiying Lu, the artist behind Twitter's fail whale. Her other artwork is equally impressive. Check out the Misc (Hand Generated) gallery. - Erica Baker via Bookmarklet
She's a really good illustrator/designer. - Tsega D
I hope she is getting a cut of the various failwhale products that are showing up on Zazzle, CafePress, etc. - Mike Doeff
thanks for crediting her. I have been trying to find out who did this work. it is very fresh. I love it. it is strange I love this design work equally: http://www.astierdevillatte.co... Very different; worlds apart. - terra210
