Comment Password encryption program. (Score 1) 1007
This little program encrypts your passwords: http://islandlimited.net/download.php?file=3
Comment Why I still come here, not to the others.. (Score 1) 3
Well, high or higher, I still read Slashdot, but I have just had enough with the others.. Not only because of the waste of time, but also the strong political bias. It seems like news making the front page of these sites also alway come from the same group of people.
Submission + - News for Adults (over30news.com) 3
gilgsn writes: "We all frequent news sites like Digg, Reddit, and of course, Slashdot. While the later has a high standard of quality, most other sites leave me with the impression that I am wasting my time. Maybe I am just getting older. So, I am suggesting Over30News, for those of us who do not have time to read about the "ten most this or that..." Where do you guys go for "serious" news?"
Submission + - Boeing Airborne Laser Team Fires High-Energy Laser (planenews.com)
gilgsn writes: "Planenews has an article about the Boeing Company testing a high-energy laser (ABL, airborne laser) in flight. They used a modified Boeing 747-400F and fired into a calorimeter. The beam did not actually leave the airplane, but it was the first time the system was fired in flight. Northrop Grumman designed and built ABL's high-energy laser. Lockheed Martin developed the weapon system's beam control/fire control system, and Boeing provided the battle management system."
Submission + - Sonex Unveils an Electric Powered Private Plane. (planenews.com)
gilgsn writes: "Planenews has a press release from Sonex Aircraft unveiling their electric powered private plane, which is being displayed at the Oshkosh Air Show right now. Power comes from Li-Poly battery packs (Lithium Polymer). Imagine a silent airplane you recharge at night in the hangar! With the price of gas shooting up, this might be a viable solution for small private aircrafts. Not only is it cool, but it also looks great."
Submission + - Apple's Safari on Windows (bbc.co.uk)
comm2k writes: According to the BBC Apple has announced a windows version of its Safari browser.
Apple has launched a version of its web browser Safari for Windows, competing head to head with Microsoft's Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.
Submission + - Apple to port Safari to Windows (apple.com)
DaphneDiane writes: "Apple is releasing a version of Safari for windows. Claims it is faster than both IE and Firefox."
Submission + - Splitting dynamic and static parts of webpages?
LaurensVH writes: "While recently philosophising on how cool mod_parrot would be, I suddenly realised it would be even cooler if we took the idea one step further.
If anything, I'd say some of the most exciting stuff to happen in web development recently is all based on splitting up different tasks. First, markup was separated almost entirely from design through the wonders of CSS, used in combination with (X)HTML. I think we can safely say we're all glad we've managed to get rid of tablular page layouts. CSS implementations in some browsers (and especially non-browsers) are still a bit lacking (most notably ACID2 gets royally messed up). At any rate, they differ. Enough to force web designers (or developers, in cases where they overlap) into restorting to ugly kludges to get their shiny stylesheet to render a webpage correctly in most common browsers. For now, it's the best we have.
The second big advancement came with the dawn of the MVC model. MVC stands for "model, view, controller", a design paradigm applicable to dynamic web pages and their development. While CSS and (X)HTML separated markup from design, MVC separates the data model, the code that operates on the data model, and the way the content gets displayed (or, more accurately, gets passed to the HTML markup, where it eventually gets prettied up by CSS).
However, I feel there's room for even more improvement. Or, at the very least, there's plenty of interesting development still left to be done.
There are a number of really cool lightweight web servers out there, such as lighttpd (pronounced: "lighty"), fnord, and gatling. Those last two, besides both living at fefe.de, focus on delivering static content. A lot of static content, blazingly fast, while keeping server load minimal.
Most of you are probably thinking: "Well, obviously... But static content is so boring. Sure, we can put our images and even dynamically generated front pages made static (think lazy caching), but what's new?" right now. Well, if this is all you're going to be doing with it, yes, you're right, it ends here.
Imagine, however, that you combine this with the already existing technology of AJAX (well, more or less AJAX). Imagine all relevant static data, including information on how to get the dynamic data, beings erved by an extremely fast and efficient static web server.
The client then executes the javascript code that gets the dynamic data from a specialized "web" server. I'm not sure that's the correct term, because, in theory, it should never display any web pages. It simply returns JSON (or whatever object format is handiest in your particular setup) objects that the Javascript code uses to fill in the website content.
The most obvious downside is the Javascript requirement. It's the only feasible technology I'm aware of. It would be really cool if we could do this in arbitrary scripting languages. You could do this using XUL, but that isn't nearly as availible or commonplace as Javascript is, unfortunately.
The first person I told this said that superfluous AJAX usage has dramatic influences on website responsiveness, but that's in cases were you're fetching pieces of web page somewhere in the middle of user interaction with it. What I'm suggesting is doing it in on_load, meaning more or less the same amount of data has to be transferred.
Another issue is that it's hard to develop pages like this here and now, mainly because there are no specialized servers that only return objects at the time of writing. I'm not here to impress people with cool existing technology, I'm just trying to see what could be done with it in the future. Regarding the "hard to develop" argument, I can only imagine that very, very good toolkits will emerge if this idea is good enough.
So, in closing, dear Slashdotters, I'd like to ask you: do you think this would work? Am I on to something? Is the end of Apache nigh? Or should I go and get started on mod_parrot? ;-)
Thanks for listening.
Laurens Van Houtven (lvh \at\ laurensvh \dot\ be"
If anything, I'd say some of the most exciting stuff to happen in web development recently is all based on splitting up different tasks. First, markup was separated almost entirely from design through the wonders of CSS, used in combination with (X)HTML. I think we can safely say we're all glad we've managed to get rid of tablular page layouts. CSS implementations in some browsers (and especially non-browsers) are still a bit lacking (most notably ACID2 gets royally messed up). At any rate, they differ. Enough to force web designers (or developers, in cases where they overlap) into restorting to ugly kludges to get their shiny stylesheet to render a webpage correctly in most common browsers. For now, it's the best we have.
The second big advancement came with the dawn of the MVC model. MVC stands for "model, view, controller", a design paradigm applicable to dynamic web pages and their development. While CSS and (X)HTML separated markup from design, MVC separates the data model, the code that operates on the data model, and the way the content gets displayed (or, more accurately, gets passed to the HTML markup, where it eventually gets prettied up by CSS).
However, I feel there's room for even more improvement. Or, at the very least, there's plenty of interesting development still left to be done.
There are a number of really cool lightweight web servers out there, such as lighttpd (pronounced: "lighty"), fnord, and gatling. Those last two, besides both living at fefe.de, focus on delivering static content. A lot of static content, blazingly fast, while keeping server load minimal.
Most of you are probably thinking: "Well, obviously... But static content is so boring. Sure, we can put our images and even dynamically generated front pages made static (think lazy caching), but what's new?" right now. Well, if this is all you're going to be doing with it, yes, you're right, it ends here.
Imagine, however, that you combine this with the already existing technology of AJAX (well, more or less AJAX). Imagine all relevant static data, including information on how to get the dynamic data, beings erved by an extremely fast and efficient static web server.
The client then executes the javascript code that gets the dynamic data from a specialized "web" server. I'm not sure that's the correct term, because, in theory, it should never display any web pages. It simply returns JSON (or whatever object format is handiest in your particular setup) objects that the Javascript code uses to fill in the website content.
The most obvious downside is the Javascript requirement. It's the only feasible technology I'm aware of. It would be really cool if we could do this in arbitrary scripting languages. You could do this using XUL, but that isn't nearly as availible or commonplace as Javascript is, unfortunately.
The first person I told this said that superfluous AJAX usage has dramatic influences on website responsiveness, but that's in cases were you're fetching pieces of web page somewhere in the middle of user interaction with it. What I'm suggesting is doing it in on_load, meaning more or less the same amount of data has to be transferred.
Another issue is that it's hard to develop pages like this here and now, mainly because there are no specialized servers that only return objects at the time of writing. I'm not here to impress people with cool existing technology, I'm just trying to see what could be done with it in the future. Regarding the "hard to develop" argument, I can only imagine that very, very good toolkits will emerge if this idea is good enough.
So, in closing, dear Slashdotters, I'd like to ask you: do you think this would work? Am I on to something? Is the end of Apache nigh? Or should I go and get started on mod_parrot?
Thanks for listening.
Laurens Van Houtven (lvh \at\ laurensvh \dot\ be"
Submission + - Open formats in portable music players
An anonymous reader writes: I've lately become interested in using open formats for music like Vorbis and FLAC. I know for a fact that my second-generation iPod doesn't support them, and that brought me to this question: What portable music players support Vorbis and/or FLAC out of the box (i.e., no hacking)?
Submission + - JetBlue Airline adds in-flight Google Maps. (pocket-lint.co.uk)
gilgsn writes: "It might be the end of boring, graphically challenged in-flight maps, as JetBlue Airline teamed-up with Google to offer passengers a way to follow their flight from their back-seat screen. I think Google Earth with zooming capability would have been more entertaining. Lets be hopeful, as "this wasn't the only feature the airline would be implementing from Google" the airline announced."
Submission + - NASA and FAA Encourage Aviation Careers
gilgsn writes: "Planenews.com has a press release about NASA and the FAA signing a memorandum to foster the development of students' skills in science, technology, engineering and math. The agreement, although emphasizing the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research, seems more like an attempt at recruiting air traffic controllers. I wonder if it is related to the FAA's new tax program.."
