World: r3wp

That should read 'that there is *at least* one markup language...', 
not that there is only one markup language.  One of the commenters 
suggested instead of inventing new tags for roles, why not have a 
'role' attribute that serves the same function?  That way you can 
expand the list of roles without brewing tag soup...

<div role="section"> <ul role="navigation"> -- much more adaptable.

Though I admit, I've never liked the word 'div'.

Ruby on Rails 2.0 released - http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2007/12/7/rails-2-0-it-s-done

Sigh .....

=> -- do most Ruby coders have a shortcut for this?

You mean hash syntax?

Yep, or do they type out 'equals' 'less-than' each time?

(sorry, greater-than - d'oh!)

It's just >=

Basically the only thing different from REBOL is != for the more 
traditional <>

And == because = is taken for assignment

My point is, it's not exactly convenient -- and it appears key to 
Ruby's 'dialects'.  I know that Rebol is designed primarily for US 
English keyboards, and other layouts the [ ] symbols are harder to 
reach.  But => is so clumsy, seems like a design flaw.

Or simply pure symbology, without regard to a physical limitation.


Korean for example was designed to encode the phoneme in the least 
number of brush strokes, what would it have looked like had they 
not needed to use a brush?

Sometimes you have to pick your constraints.

Chris, I don't understand. Greater-than-or-equals is just >= in Ruby, 
just like in REBOL. => is used in specifying a hash constant, as 
in PERL

Ruby doesn't really have dialects, only some syntax sugar

I know, that's why I put 'dialects' in quotes.  My understanding 
is they call groups of functions with bracketless hashes DSLs which 
we use as a synonym for Dialect.

Re: => - I wouldn't consider this sugar -- it's a awkward key combination 
for such a core piece of syntax.  I only ask as I was trying out 
IRB and it seemed weird.

R: => does look good in examples, indeed Ruby (in examples, if not 
slightly deeper into source) looks better than most languages.  imo 
Rebol, at least when you get used to the types upon which the language 
is built, just feels right.

I hope we will create visual apps like following for R3 plug-in one 
day - http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/

You mean such a tutorial? The framework itself is not interesting 
for me. He made just a bitmap slideshow with tons of files required. 
All of this is made just in Flash IDE with some template used.

ah, looked like visual thing to me ...

IE8 passes ACID2 tests. That's cool :-) http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/19/internet-explorer-8-and-acid2-a-milestone.aspx

oh no. does that mean we have to root for IE now?

No, just a nice "golf clap" for them joining the race...

Apple pushes Think Secret to close the site - so much for your beloved 
Mac ... that sounds worse than MS ....

I'm not in defense on Apple here, but they do have really strict 
contractual obligations on what you can say to anyone when working 
for them. Apple employees are not allowed to talk to the press, family 
members, friends and even other Apple employees. If they do, they 
are fired immediately. The way Thinksecret obtained information was 
through breach of contract by Apple employees, similarly to how industrial 
espionage can be conducted. Because of this, they can prosecute.

The secrecy around products is very strong, because Steve Jobs just 
doesn't want products disclosed before time. That's how they do things, 
it's their business strategy and that's what Apple users must accept.

Well, so they should solve it themselves inside their structures, 
that goes against the free speach.

Well, I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. Thinksecret were known 
to have the deepest sources. Closing down was a settlement they made 
in exchange for not revealing the sources. The site became largely 
useless anyway after the first hints that Apple were going after 
Thinksecret.

I wonder why they didn't try to undermine the site by seeding false 
information?

http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/19/3419292.html

Chris, I believe the Asteroid product that caused them to sue was 
either fake or was pulled from development after being revealed on 
Thinksecret.

It's OK for Apple to behave like they want, because, you know, it's 
Apple. If Steve Jobs starts to eat babies they probably have very 
high nutritious value, are really healthy and very tasty. Man, it's 
Steve Jobs! Who are you to argue with him?

Yes, how can one argue with him? They are successful today because 
of him. :-) That makes going against Apple more difficult.

Very cool http://www.gapminder.org

An interesting website I found http://www.curehunter.com/public/showTopPage.do


Just look around, it is kind of fun little examples of tech spewed 
on a site.

Intel quietly pulled out of support for the XO One Laptop Per Child 
program.  Hmm.  More in chat.

http://www.eye.fi/	Nice idea.

kind of hoax.

so eye-fi card has some kind of radio. In order to proceed, you have 
to put it in card reader, put it into usb on your pc, configure upload 
site, then you return it back to your DC, start shooting, and eye-fi 
card transfers photos to the station connected to usb port? I would 
save the hassle and just use card reader. Or buy decend DC supporting 
wi-fi :-)

Anyone checked out Links?  University of Edinburgh  http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/links/
   I'm not a real fan of AJAX but Links is being built to produce 
web frontend (Javascript), middle bit (SQL)  and backend (Java server) 
code from a single source.  I don't really care, but it may fit with 
the current Silverlight thread in REBOL Marketing.

Hey, that's from Philip Wadler. Very interesting

He's getting old :-)

Waah, he writes Java books now? He's really getting old...

Links looks quite clean. It has HTML interspersed in the source code, 
though. I have found that to be an unproductive approach in most 
cases because it does not allow a web designer to work on it

http://www.sun.com/

ah, it doesn't show every time you load it: Sun has acquired MySQL.

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/2008-0116/index.jsp?intcmp=hp2008jan16_mysql_learn

And Oracle acquires BEA


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alI8qN7k9lQU&refer=home

Amazing! So much money in databases. I should use more time on my 
own.