The web browser has been the dominant thin client, now rich client, for almost two decades, but can it compete with a new thin client that makes better technical choices and avoids the glacial standards process? I don't think so, as the current web technology stack of HTML/Javascript/Flash has accumulated so many bad decisions over the years that it's ripe for a clean sheet redesign to wipe it out.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-05-10
Okay let's bring this back to the topic of the originating article: the author suggests many changes at a higher level. My point simply is that if you want to "change", it would be best to just be radical about it.
Now why is it a hack? (Although, I must admit that "hack" was too strong a word. My apologies.) Let me illustrate this with yet another protocol example:
SMTP is the most common protocol for sending mail. It was never intended to be *the ultimate solution*, considering the fact that it was called "SIMPLE mail transfer protocol". All it does is move things around. The problem with that is its spam handling, which was not anticipated at the time. So we went and created workarounds.
Now I'm not saying the current (E)SMTP implementation is necessarily bad - it works, so we can live with it. But my point is, again, that if you want to turn things around, why not start at the root, which has been left unattended for way too long?
There is no doubt about it that the pioneers of the Internet would have done things differently. They were, however, limited by the technological advances and insights at that time. But why is it so weird to claim that what I see more like a "firmware update" would vastly improve the Internet as we now know it?
HTTP *works*. Otherwise the Internet would not have become what it is today. But I'm not for the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" mentality. HTTP was not meant to do what it does today.
Besides, let's not only look at today. Let's consider what lies 10 years ahead of us. ZFS and other file systems are anticipating the increase of data load. Soon our Internet will be fast enough to not even need compressed video any longer. If OSes already have to turn their entire file system around, why should this not be necessary for the Internet? It will have its limitations in its current form.
I think the only reason why it has not been updated so far is because it will require everything and all to move on as backward compatibility would only add more problems over the solutions it would bring.
Member since:2008-08-19
In what way? As you say, HTTP works. In what way is it deficient, that you see the need for a replacement? Why would anyone use your replacement, if HTTP works?
Member since:2009-03-06
I'm not so sure that Internet bandwidth will continue to increase, at least to the point that compression will not be required. The technology to do it will probably come about, but whether the economic incentives to do it will be present is something that is not clear to me. Otherwise, we would all have 100Mbps fiber run to our homes (and HDTV would really be HD instead of the overcompressed crap that it is 
This has been an interesting discussion nonetheless. I haven't done much web development, primarily because my targets are a small-single-digit number of OSes on machines that often have access to a central server, and native client development with dynamic languages and GUI toolkits has been easier to do in that environment than learning the web stuff. But I've seen some really nice web apps -- though they run far better on PC-like hardware than on mobile devices, where I think the real future of web development lies.
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Member since:
2008-08-19
Um? So? Naming aside, what's the problem? HTTP really has nothing to do with hypertext - it's just a simple protocol for accessing files, much like FTP. In what way is it a hack?