The problem is that I can't see through the buzz-word hype-speak to see what they actually do. Can anybody?
TTL said:
It is supposedly some software component that, after detecting the user agent, automatically sends it either Flash video or HTML5 video depending on what the user agent is able to process.
I don't understand what the big deal with this product is. You can do the above in a couple of lines of PHP code.
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7 comments:
Someone please tell these guys there is no need to perpetuate polysyllabic obfuscation?
Anyway, it's way too late to be trying to get my head around their gobbledygook! :-)
...... and I just noticed that the clocks have not 'gone forward' on here! :-)
It is supposedly some software component that, after detecting the user agent, automatically sends it either Flash video or HTML5 video depending on what the user agent is able to process.
I don't understand what the big deal with this product is. You can do the above in a couple of lines of PHP code.
But as I recall, your websites do not contain any video. So you do not have to worry about this shit.
I had a feeling that would be it.
I'd say "why can't they just say things clearer?", but then I guess it would be apparent just how simple it is, and they'd have fewer customers.
I'd say "why can't they just say things clearer?" ...
Saying things clearly is difficult. This is because thinking clearly is difficult.
In fact, the whole computer industry has gone badly astray several times because someone came up with an unclear, complicated idea and no one noticed.
A primary example of this being the WIMP user interface. It's only now, 30 years after its introduction, that Apple, in the iPad, finally dumps this silly idea.
Or at least half of it: Windows and the mouse Pointer are gone. But Icons and Menus, unfortunately, still remain. Maybe in the next “revolutionary” iProduct Apple gets rid of those remaining complications.
If you have ideas which would work better (it's possible), then you should get a demo made, maybe you could help millions of people.
I am not talking about individual UI elements, or minor tweaks. I am talking about a fundamental lap or reason that made the whole industry take a 90° turn in the wrong direction decades ago. And because of that we are all now screwed!
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, is HAL operated using a mouse? Does it have pull-down menus? Icons? Overlapping windows?
No, it doesn't. You know why? The idea was that the computer would do stuff on behalf of us humans. Not the other way around, as is currently the case.
People think Arthur C. Clarke was over optimistic about the future of computing in 1968 when he wrote the story. No he wasn't. The industry was right on track in having autonomously operating, thinking computers by year 2001.
But then two “inventions” screwed up everything: relational database and WIMP user interface. Together, their detrimental effect is such that we are only now picking up where the guys (who knew what they were doing) left things in the 1960s.
Yes, we just lost four decades. Everything we have today they already had in the 1960s. Networking, object-oriented programming, hyperlinks, bitmapped graphics, everything.
Put another way: nothing of significance in computer science has been invented since 1960s.
It's so embarrassing that people have post hoc explained that the “2001” in the name of the novel wasn't really a reference to a year, but something else. Bah, I say.
Clarke wrote a sequel: 2010: Odyssey Two. It happens to be this year. What has computer science achieved during the last 10 years?
I won't be holding my breath (or fart) when waiting for the answers.
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