Posted on by lhl

I don’t think anybody who was at ETCON (and stayed for the entire keynote) this year has forgotten about iRobot and its military bots. Discussion has hit mefi, here’s a good point from Hidalgo:

I’m sorry, does our military need robots now? It seems like technology is making war easier to stomache for those who have it, and more deadly and (for lack of a better word) unfair to those who don’t.

The nature of war changes when there is a reasonable expectation on one side of being totally annihilated on the battlefield, and on the other side, the reasonable expectation that you won’t lose any soldiers on the battlefield.

What it changes into is a situation where the powerful side no longer has any fear of going to war, and the weak side no longer has any options but to pursue terrorism.

Posted on by lhl

Yep, passing up seeing Danger Mouse for free b/c I’m too busy. What has this world come to? Quick RIA linkywinks:

Hmm, so my take on the whole thing… The RIA-space is pretty targeted to the corporate market right now. If Macromedia can leverage the Flex platform (say, allowing compile out to Flash Lite) they could have a winner. If not, they’re going to get slaughtered come ’06 when XAML comes out. Two years is a long time however, more than enough for the FOSS community to get together and put something together. The Flash-based solutions (Flex, Laszlo) are really compelling because, well, because the Flash plug-in is just waaaay faster and better at rendering custom widgets/graphics then JVMs out there.

Now, for the rest of us (WWW), I’m not sure how much of an effect this will have in the near future (next 2 years). Laszlo has been around for the past 2 years, and groups have tried to push pretty decent webapp clients (XWT, Thinlets) with pretty limited success. Does this have to do w/ not being tied into server-side frameworks? Just that it’s easier to develop REST-based web apps?

(to interrupt for a second: for web applications (vs sites), the arguments of Google searchability, bookmarking, etc. don’t really apply; most of the time those ‘features’ are in fact liabilities that need to be worked around)

While I’d like to think that there’s a chance for DHTML to actually fulfill its promise, with 3-years of 90%+ modern-browser marketshare, we’re still pretty much nowhere. I think actually, a lot of it can be tied to the immense popularity of scripting languages like PHP (scoff all you want, it’s the most popular web development language on the web; and despite its deficiencies, not without good reason) — and the failure of anyone to create a framework that makes it as easy (or easier!) to build a more robust interface w/in PHP. The pieces are there: mod_pubsub, jsrs, a gazillion widget sets, windowing kits, but none of it seems to tie together in a complete, easy to use, integrated (w/ the backend) way.

Some thoughts on tying it all together:

  • integrated PHP/JS ‘application state’ engine (handling noncing, transactions, etc)
  • transparently translate REST actions into remote scripting style actions
  • smart/easy complex gui-widget data binding
  • dynamic key/event binding

In theory, properly designed and constructed, this could *probably* be made to degrade into traditional REST if proper JS support isn’t found…

Posted on by lhl

I’ve been looking for a new laptop bag (or bag and sleeve combo) today. I’m trying to find something that is as compact as possible, that my 12″ PB and related junk. Ideally I’d like something that could fit my 10D (w/ a short prime) as well, but I haven’t seen anything out there that fits .

  • Timbuk2 Detour (eBags reviews) – $100, shoulder + backpack straps, probably would fit 10D
  • Booq Mamba.XS – $70, works as shoulder+sling+back pack, compact, but not as good looking as their sleeves, might fit 10D disassembled, made especially for 12″ PB + iBooks
  • Chrome Sputnik3 (eBags reviews) – $75, non-padded shoulder + backpack straps, one big pocket w/ laptop sleeve, probably not a good fit (but it looks cool)

Other options include keeping my old Trager (or getting a new larger bag) and just using some raps on them. Any thoughts? (trying out this comment system I wrote a while back)

Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl