The thing is, most browsers display stuff differently because they're not adhering to a common standard. There is less reason for me to develop for IE if they're going to belligerently never fix a compatibility issue with their browser.

But, on the other hand, most browsers are moving to a common standard. Ultimately speaking, needing to cross-platform a webapp is going to be eliminated - or all but. Robustness is a useful quality, but spending time on something now that is going to not be an issue in the future is not a useful pursuit. In most cases, designing for these compatibility issues falls into that category.

In short; you easily could be relying on a common bug, but you just as easily might not be. There is no reason to second guess yourself for such a small return.

I think you're going to see an explosion of standalone applications tethered to a web-based datasource or back-end. iPhone and Android basically do this already - taking their cue from email programs since the dawn of the internet. Programs like Steam allow you to install local, fat clients through a thin client interface. Each of those pieces has a reason for being fat or thin, and you want to take advantage of that.

I think, in the end, the point is that you want to be confident your interface is usable where-ever, and that your backend can be swapped up without version issues, and that either way the program can do everything it needs to. The web is very good at the first two, it's just that the domain of problems it can manage has not yet expanded to the third. Is that anything but a matter of time?

Note that a lot of companies (*cough*AOL*cough*) do this already. It was all the rage in the very late 90s to create your company-specific browser; precisely because stand-alone apps were well known, and web apps were a disorientingly new domain.

Fair enough. I misread. Take it, then, as a reinforcement of what you were saying. ;)

Why is it worth their time? Most game companies build games for Windows - why not also OSX? They even port to consoles more often than they do OSX. Simply put; you put the most work into where there is most gain. You might get around to smaller markets later, but likely only if there is a convenient way to do so.

By the same logic, one shouldn't program at all. After all, different operating systems handle the same source code differently. Add into that different versions, etc; you'll never have a standard audience and therefore all programs everywhere will always be the lowest common denominator.

Srsly, browser rendering is a well specified standard. To claim it's a barrier to good software is silly.

You're flat out wrong, unless the incandescent bulbs you buy were created in a factory that didn't use electricity, and you never plugged them in.

But, given your generalized name-calling, I suspect you don't bother to really understand how anything works.

Quite honestly, if the law cannot be made to serve against literally any citizen that breaks it, then we are all diminished in our freedoms. Even if he made decisions with the best of intentions, if he chose to break the law, he should be held accountable.

If the right thing to do was break the law - that is what appeal is for, so that we can examine the law and decide if it is just. But to avoid the judicial process entirely - regardless of it's length or apparent vindictiveness - is to remove a primary protection that each of us, as citizens, count up to sustain our freedoms.

It is neither petty nor irresponsible. It is quite the opposite; it is the only way we have to shed light on the truth, be that what it may. In what other manner are we to operate this democracy? Or are some truly more equal than others?

I think it's a highly erroneous policy stance to say that once someone is removed from office, we should let slide their misdeeds. If Bush committed felonies - or warcrimes - while in office, or anyone in the administration did, then they should like everyone else be judged in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

Note that for Clinton, we didn't move on. We dragged an ultimately silly sexual interaction out for years - and he still gets crap about it. We like to pretend, though, that Bush didn't authorize illegal wiretaps, didn't authorize torture, didn't authorize a war and cover it with false evidence. Frankly, I think people are too afraid to face the fact we, as a nation, aren't perfect. But we all need to get over that, and deal out justice where justice is due.

Honestly, me too. ;)

Well, an ip address only requires four bytes - say another one for a port number. That gives you ten bytes, or five characters to code additional data in. Yeah, that's not very much. You could work with it, but it'd be more than trivially difficult.

Still, that's not very much right now. I suppose I could accept the idea that the service would serve a purpose for a short period of time - but I do worry about lock-in if the technology took off and the resolution became better. As an open protocol this seems much more useful to me.

In fact, I think the real place to monetize this is in the applications provided. Take, for instance, parking meter situation. Microsoft serves as the quick middleman in the transaction; but your phone's program needs to know how to make the transaction, even once it's been connected to the service. That software is worth something to you as a consumer - perhaps even as a service itself.

You might note that I, in fact, suggested the pay-to-park scheme, and the subway ticket scheme. It's actually quite simple a concept; you scan the 'meter', and that tells your device to connect with the metering company, give it the meter data and your car data, which of course is connected to some account or bill. Perhaps more easily, your car could have a tag on it that the meter reads.

Practical digital subway tokens seem harder to implement.

Note, too, that in the GP post of mine, I noted after my first use of "Microsoft"; (or other service provider). Props to MS and any of the other half dozen companies who have been working on the implementation, but I can still question it's design. Simply put, there are several layers to this; one is the scanning of the image, being able to do it accurately and precisely under a wide variety of conditions. Another is the creation of the tag. Another is using tag data to reach a digital resource.

I'm simply trying to posit that maybe there is no service to be offered here. If the tag can contain a GUID, then software ought to be able to use that to find the resource in question. That software could, in theory, be written by anyone, and have any number of additional features. I see no theoretical reason it needs to talk to a server to achieve this. The server seems extraneous to me. I don't see what function it is providing, and if it is providing none, you don't need to keep anything 'up'. All you have to do is write (and sell) the software that lets you connect a 2D tag to a data resource.

Security wise, well, I could care less. But in theory, MS would know. Of course your ISP also has this data - but in that case it hasn't stated up front it is collecting your data to sell. Google sells it's data, and some people are unhappy about that. It feels wrong somehow, on a gut level. But I'm not sure, as you say, that that is important.

Anyway; I can see your frustration that people are being naysayers, but don't take it out on poor ol' me! I'm with you on the front that the company, regardless of who they are, that can bring this to market is doing something neat. I do, however, see this particular implementation as having an extraneous revenue stream - and by that I mean 'cost to the end user'. With a public protocol the businesses using tags wouldn't need to pay for the server to route traffic. (Assuming that is all it does.) They don't have to increase their prices to the end user. MS isn't doing a service to society in general here, it's generating cash - and it's not clear to me that it's generating it by providing a service to a legitimate need. It's creating a need by wiring the technology a particular way. That doesn't seem cool. *shrug*

Anyway, I think the use of this is pretty comprehensive. Professors can encourage kids to show up to class, because then they get their 'reading material tag', that they scan to see their books on their iPhone. Putting a tag on historical sites is a far less obtrusive way of making data about that site available. You could use a tag as a timecard for sites for which that infrastructure would be cumbersome; the supervisor or whatever just 'takes a photo' of your card, and the phone checks in with the accounting software. School teachers can make sure their kids are all together on their field trips by scanning their tags. Virtual graffiti can be left by having locational tags link to forums. You could use them in third world countries with limited infrastructure (limited bureaucracy tracking you) to identify people, or things that they should get. (Food, medicine, money, what have you.) But mostly I think it would make parking easier. ;)

Anyway, good point; naysaying gets you nowhere. But feel free to take a breath.

On the other hand, if I go to Delta's website to see my flight information, only Delta really knows I did so - and may not know it's me specifically if I'm not required to log in. In this case, though, Microsoft (or other service provider) knows I 'went to Delta's website' - or whatever else the tag-shortcut did for me.

On the whole, I think that the ability to have real-world hyperlinks (because, face it, that's what they are) is really valuable. On the other hand, I don't think that it needs to be a monetized service. I can't think of a reason that a protocol couldn't be developed that scanning apps would implement; for that matter, given text recognition software, how hard is it to program a phone to read in a url and tell it's onboard browser to go to it? Or any of the other diverse possible applications?

Essentially; what is Microsoft's role in this? Is it a critical role (you *need* the centralized server for some reason), or are they creating a false market segment?

I've long thought that being able to scan an image with my iPhone that lets me 'pay for parking' or get on a subway would be a really great use for the technology.

So you're saying in order to be worthy of owning a nice TV, you must first live in a nice neighborhood with a nice house and a nice car?

One of the best ways to gather wealth is to cut one of your biggest expenses; your housing. Who is to say that's not what the people in these 'poorer' neighborhoods are doing?

But even if they're not, lets look at all those white-bread suburbs, with people who've leveraged their debt out their eyeballs because they have the expectation in living in a McMansion with Plasma TVs and huge SUVs. But you make no generalized critical statement of them? It's only poor people who deserve to be lambasted for over-consumption?

Face it, you live in America. You're as much a part of that problem as anyone else. You can pretend you're not, that someone else is somehow less deserving of 'stuff', and thus shouldn't have it. But, in the end, you aren't any more deserving of it. Chances are, if you work harder, it's no more than 10% harder. Chances are, you're not doing a significant amount more for the world than they are. The people who are doing more, and are more deserving aren't on /. complaining about the proles.