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can someone with a camand flash installed, confirm if this example 
work please?
http://box.lebeda.ws/~hmm/rswf/example/mx-webcam

I was only trying to fins a solution to run examples with /core 8)

I can make a core version probably. Not today.

Hopefully we get a R3 with rebcode not too far in the near future 
;-)

Look... I'm not making a factory standard like an Adobe... I'm not 
factory..

Terry was arguing here, that he can make guis with flex in a few 
minutes:)

I have this idea that the second more installed browser plugin is 
quicktime, it once had wired actions, etc, but then apple went ipod 
adn moveis.. There was a company totallyhip.com wich did LiveStage 
to build wired movies, they are now about dead, quicktime still has 
a whole lot od codecs and I dream that RT will work with apple , 
embed rebol in quicktime plugin or as a codec so that we can program 
stuff in rebol with aac and mpeg4... 8)

and now this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/24/microsoft_gazelle_browser/


The Gazelle technology would be slower than the current IE, holds 
an entire operating system for sandboxing. Could things possible 
be going in a more wrong direction for webbrowsing?

One day people will realize, that it's a bad idea to build applications 
within a browser, and then all this browser war is over. :-) (And 
I at the same time have a feeling, there's a slight chance, I'm wrong, 
and everything will end up in browsers. I hope, it's not become that.)

Geomol, I agree. And I think it will happen. The first company breaking 
out of the stupid "web-app" path, delivering a product that adds 
so much more value for customers that they use, gaining market momentum 
will win the game.

Robert, Geomol - I am not sure you are right, even if I do understand 
your message. The thing is, that the browser is not just html interpreter. 
It is nowadays a container for native technologies. JS is a glue. 
So, if HTML 5 adds video, it is done in native level, hence there 
is no reason why it should be slow, etc. It is just that so far guys 
did not agree upon media formats.

I think they will never get all the different technologies playing 
together in such a smooth way. It's just to complex, hence to expensive. 
If you can provide a solution in 1/5 of time and budget, showing 
everyone it works as good or even better, youwill win.

I think, that for the sake of the world, it is a bad news, that JS 
is getting better and better. Guys trying to claim web-apps can be 
real-time, are almost true. However - hopefully no matter how they 
try, JS (web) based app will be crappy stuff even for few years coming, 
no matter how fast they get it running, as the problem is overall 
complexity of the whole web aproach ...

See, Graham, this is why there wasn't a JavaScript group before and 
there isn't much discussion in it now: People will discuss JavaScript 
everywhere else, regardless of group topic :)

The thing is, that the browser is not just html interpreter. It is 
nowadays a container for native technologies.
And

The Gazelle technology would be slower than the current IE, holds 
an entire operating system for sandboxing.


See, the browser is becoming the OS. I just hope, people will someday 
realize, this is a bad idea. It's better to run the application in 
the OS than running the application in an "OS" on top of a browser 
within an OS.

Really? I thought that's a pretty cool idea, and than wrap it inside 
a VM running on a host OS.

Geomol, can you point me to the time when people realized that Windows 
was a bad idea, or that MS Office was a bad idea, or that KDE or 
Gnome were bad ideas?

I just hope, people will someday realize, this is a bad idea. It's 
better to run the application in the OS than running the application 
in an 

OS" on top of a browser within an OS." - Ah, so REBOL was a bad idea 
after all. Who wants to run a OS (REBOL) inside another OS? Better 
to use the native services the OS provides. :-)

But, there is still a chance. REBOL was made for what it was made 
for - lightweight distributed apps. We are scrapping "the bad", and 
remedying situation with R3. Does web in general throws away bad 
ideas? Mostly not. Where situation will get more interesting is the 
compatibility. In the past, there was IE, then FF, and Opera. Now 
Apple and Google entered the game, with more significant browser 
market share. We will see, what headache all those new browser cause 
to developers - I mean - various incompatibilities between browsers. 
Not to mention mobile browser incarnations, which are often separate 
projects ...

Ah, so REBOL was a bad idea after all. Who wants to run a OS (REBOL) 
inside another OS?


As I see it, REBOL is a language with some OS-related parts. The 
Viewtop for example. But that never became a huge success. Maybe 
because it's not such a good idea with another desktop on top of 
the OS desktop?

Making REBOL a real OS directly on the hardware might be a good idea 
at some point.

if it was just a language, you would be using directx, MFC, etc. 
on Windows, QT or the GTK or Linux, and Cocoa on OSX, regardless 
of whether you're writing the Viewtop or a little game.

How do you define a toolkit "native"?

I guess, one that doesn't pretend to be a toolkit :-)

this seems to be a pretty huge announcement - http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/

Reichart, does your friend at AdaptiveAI know about any of this do 
you think? Is he a friend of Stephen Wolfram by chance?

Adrian, there was an article about it that points out how it's not 
really AI, but rather a system that can compute answers. it is surely 
a breakthrough and it's going to change our lives maybe... but that 
is sort of like google, in that it is a support tool for intelligence, 
not intelligence. that is, it is a tool that intelligent beings use. 
so, AI systems will find things like Google and Wolfram Alpha extremely 
useful, because they allow independent learning (without humans having 
to teach).

I wonder if this is going to be a parser similar to Inform-7 ... 
without the gaming fun.  ;)

Wouldn't this be a good library to be used in replacement/combination 
with AGG?

I found it on a blog, so I don't have the original article.

The wrong semicolon in the FORTRAN program that made an explorer 
miss Jupiter by 100,000 kilometers is a good candidate

I'm going to put a proposal to Google.  What would one expect to 
pay for a full time top-notch REBOL programmer?  A web designer? 
 Some to do documentation?

Graham: I have a old Amiga buddy working for Google/I could ask him 
what the scale is

Sounds like they're following Paul Graham's VC model. 


How much people charge depends on a lot of things. Where they live, 
whether it's their main gig, and how long the contract is being important 
criteria. I've been quoted from USD$30/Hr to USD$125/Hr when I was 
looking for contractors.

It is a complex formula.... 


What hours total, length of contract, freedom to work which ever 
hours in the window, etc.

You might make $500 an hour, but you get one job a month doing this. 
 While there is an open slot to get $10 an hour, you can work when 
ever and where ever you want, and the work is stupid simple.  you 
might take both.

What's the average wage for a REBOL programmer at Qtask?

NYTimes: I.B.M. Reportedly Will Buy Rival Sun for $7 Billion (or 
9.50 a share)


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/technology/business-computing/03blue.html?_r=1&ref=technology&pagewanted=print

Still not final announcement yet.

in 20 years from now, we will be hearing a merger from software incorporated 
and hardware incorporated.  so there will only be one company with 
all patents for anyting related to digital processing.


and they'll say that its not an antitrust issue, cause there is another 
company called objects incorporated which rivals it.


these mega mergers are portents that the end of capitalism is looming. 
just like when rome had nothing new to conquer and that made their 
system obsolete.  capitalism NEEDs real competition.  not a two way 
brawl of giants for which the only real hope is annexation or swatting. 
 every merger of any company, means a lot of jobs get lost by way 
of cutting redundant services.   one walmart might employ 200 minimum 
wage people, but they destroy at least as many administration and 
middle paying jobs.


what can all the clients of sun and IBM gain from this? only the 
loss of a viable option to leverage in dealing lower costs for their 
machines, forcing IBM and sun to stay competitive.  Yess... you'll 
say there is still other companies... but the list is growing pretty 
short.  the industry "leaders" is starting to be more of a gang than 
a group.  :-(

A while ago I posted about a2i2, they are doing adaptive A.I.  I 
got to visit them today.

They are doing some fun stuff.  One of my friends is now on their 
team.


Looks like they are just a few months away from something we can 
"talk to" :)

...and, you never know, we might might find a way to allow Qtask 
to interact with it.

now imagine you make a phone call, and this "something you can talk 
to" responds, and has access to google, wolfram alpha... and qtask.

Wow, maybe the combination of these two technologies can find a way 
out of the mess the financial system is in - like, "Hang the bastards 
that caused it!"

Recently I've been speculating a lot, if it's a good idea, that humans 
save animals. Initially it seems like a very good idea. But fact 
is, that more than 90% of all species at any time have become extinct 
at a later time. Every time a species become extinct, it makes room 
for other species. Now if us people start to save species, that would 
else become extinct, what effect will this have over a longer time-scale?

John, I hear there was a meeting among the animals, all I can say 
is, there was a vote, and "we" better make plans for another planet.

We are adapted to a certain (now existent ?) environment. If it changes 
maybe we will change or get extincted too.

Looks like the spammers have found a way to get thru gmail's filters 
... finding a lot more spam now in the last few days in my inbox.

I don't know how to tell the difference.  They simply like ot register 
on my sites and then leave a website link in their profile.  Seems 
they are just looking for backlinks.

I thought of a great idea to stop forum spammers and probably others. 
 I don't know how it can be thwarted.

But that might not be a good idea.  Need something almost other than 
javascript.

My idea involves having the backend generate a random code that gets 
presented as a draggable item in a javascript driven page.  The user 
must drag the code to a randoming placed box.  The code i s also 
randoming placed.  The script will generate a value based on the 
direction and length of the drag.  This gets compared on the server 
end along with the code.

How about this.  You  display a rather large image and the user must 
click the very center of image (hold down button) and drag to a border 
speciied within the image.  The image changes.

For example say the image is just a picture of a large ball or circle. 
 The person clicks the center of the circle and holds down to expand 
to the perimeter of the circle in the image and releases and this 
gets interpretes as radius back to the server.

I don't think there is any bot just browsing around searching for 
another captcha to break in:) I can call it "a script" which someone 
could use to break gmail captcha, but not "a bot". Anyway... I bet 
they used many people to just click and  traslate the images.

Yes... also there is a prove that someone pay for recognizing pictures. 
Anyway... if you have a normal site and don't want links in your 
form fields as Paul has.. using simple JS document.write is enough 
to hide the submit button ans stop the bots. At least that's my experience.

They might close mySQL, but I think that the licence forbids them 
doing so. They might close further mySQL developments, but in such 
a case, I think that some ppl would fork it anyway ...

Oracle moves away from a one-product company. Strategically a good 
step. And owning a lot of datastorage infrastructure within the companies 
makes them a logical choice for the other layers.

Nothing. I'm using it on OSX. My message referrs to two topics:
1. Oracle buys Sun -> I don't like it
2. Maybe ZFS will now become more a DB thing than a FS thing.

O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications 
in the browser.


Wow, 3D games in the browser! It just gets better and better! What 
a wonderful world! ;-)

I like O3D alot. It makes me nostalgic, a 3D simulator right out 
of 1995 with the single digit framerates and all. Every day, new 
and amazing ways to slow down your computer.

3D layers for the web have been around for years... but it seems 
people don't really care en masse.  I wonder if its the technology 
or if its a culture thing.

Was just a few days ago.

I may have my ALTME settings on a greater buffer than you but the 
conversation in there was quite brisk for a day or two.  What was 
it that you wanted to discuss on the topic?

I've really only come across it - it seems a shame that it is being 
used in ways View has not (but could have).  That said, it seems 
to solve problems that View has not (yet) in rich text, cross-platform 
use of native menus - generally good desktop/web hybrids.

You're stuck, of course, with web/ajax/flash, which I trust is as 
much a pain as traditional web development, yet is well documented.

Note that these are first impressions - I really don't know how much 
of a drag these apps are, or how much polish went into the particular 
apps I tried.

It's just because it's hard to prove "never". On a structural basis 
Flash doesn't have near the potential of R3 or Silverlight, but of 
these three only Silverlight is heading towards that potential quickly. 
Only time will tell.

Buf it hat is true that you believe Silverlight will overtake Flex 
then I'm not sure how you have a problem with the word "never" when 
comparing the momentum behind Flex to that of REBOL.

It's just  that I can see the end of Flash/Flex's path - it's right 
there in the system architecture. There isn't much potential left 
there, just a lot of actual. Flash isn't going to lose much of its 
installed base, not while what's there still works, but it's reaching 
the end of its potential capabilities. One federally mandated accessibility 
law and it's obsolete.


Silverlight is still advancing rapidly, and Moonlight is part of 
why. Some of the Silverlight 3 beta features are already in the Moonlight 
2 preview. By the time S3 comes out, Moonlight may be caught up. 
And Silverlight is much faster for RIAs.

I'm not saying REBOL will never catch Flex, I'm just saying there's 
a lot to admire there.

To reiterate, from a user perspective, it was painless to install, 
painless to add further apps, the apps 'look and feel' well-designed 
(top to bottom design has never been easy with View) including native 
menus.  For each, it seems that the designer/developer has been able 
to realise their concept (that's subjective, I suppose, and app-dependent).

then such a menu, which is completly off the look of the rest of 
your app, should be more of a config menu, even better if it can 
hide/slide (but that depend on the system), but not be menu for my 
app.

Of course, even Cyphre's menu has bad metrics and looks "cheap". 
But is it really a problem to design it correctly?

How do they solve context menus? Native too? I don't understand this 
obsession to have menu native, while the rest of the app might look 
as a painted fairy tale.

Take a look at the Air apps - you can see how it works - doesn't 
detract at all from the custom UIs.

Well, maybe I mix two things - being an open-sourced product and 
product costing a money ...

Petr, functionally you can do the same with VID in a relatively small 
amount of code - even with R2 - but what good is that when the experience 
is second or third rate?

Pekr: The Flex SDK is free open source software. It's a command line 
compiler with a few command line tools. The FlexBuilder IDE is a 
pay for extension to Ecilpse.

Chris - what do you mean by deployment-design-integration? I can 
understand design, maybe even a bit of deployment reasoning, but 
what about integration?

Pekr, I'm glad flex costs money.  It means that  people will actively 
be working on it for a long time to come.

Henrik, the lack of an IDE guarantees that I wont be able to produce 
a GUI faster than flex.

well, I hope the new guides system will allow creating an interactive 
editor in a few kbs. I haven't seen anything other than the specs 
yet, though.

To do this probably requires some extra style modes. Given the design 
of the R3 GUI, you can add special abilities globally to styles, 
such as the current debug red rectangle. You can probably add some 
actors to alter the behavior of styles to be suitable for a GUI editor.

A component for example is things like, textinput, textarea, list, 
combobox, etc..

Components are usually a class with methods that can be invoked for 
handling event processing.

Henrik, I would definately recommend you get your hands on Flex and 
try it out and see some of the advantages it brings.  It will change 
a great deal of how you look at REBOL.

Ah, those are called container styles here. They can be built a bit 
like LEGO bricks very easily. See this shot:

http://rebol.hmkdesign.dk/files/r3/gui/142.png

Design and naming is not finalized, however.

Yes, Henrik, a style in REBOL is like a component in Flex.

A container style implies to me something like the canvas component 
in Flex.  I'm not sure what a container style is.

If your talking about how a container is in R3 alpha's then I follow 
what your talking about.

The current design of a container style serves two purposes: Visual 
integration and actor integration. This means a container style is 
built from a derivative of the PANEL style as a decorative container 
and contains other styles that are directly built only to fit in 
that style.

Each of those styles may contain actors that allow them to interact 
with other styles automatically inside the container style. So if 
you put a numeric field together with a mouse drag knob, the mouse 
drag knob automatically is able to adjust the numeric 


Note that this ability is generally available also outside container 
styles, as there is no design replication, but the conditions will 
be slightly different inside a container style.

Yep that sounds like a CANVAS component in Flex.

Layout and styles in the R3 GUI are two very separate issues. That's 
a very nice thing, since I can build some styles, even though the 
layout engine is currently broken.

Flex is just a really ugly mix of XML, ActionScript and hardcoded 
SWF components. One thing is, that you can create forms quickly (with 
the Flex Builder IDE?) and another to create own complete application 
which does something more than submits data to java server.

any language that uses XML as its interface should not have the right 
to be called a language.

Henrik - what is this ip-field? I don't understand it a bit. Why 
should it be build based upon multiple separate styles? This seems 
overengineered to me, and not necessary. I would rather like to see 
simple field with some mask dialect. With your example - with 4 separate 
fields, how do you guarantee me, that my keyboard navigation (Arrows, 
hilighting) still works across 4 fields, as if it was just one field? 
Anything else is not acceptable ...

Paul, the point is that you don't see that as a casual user. You 
just use hbox and vbox.

Pekr: "I don't understand it a bit. Why should it be build based 
upon multiple separate styles? This seems overengineered to me, and 
not necessary"


Once you try building IP fields or any other field that is a bit 
more advanced for a basic field, you really will want this. :-)

Paul, the thing is: It takes about 3-4 minutes to implement those 
hbox/vbox styles. It's not a showstopper that the styles you may 
be looking for aren't there.

I think you should change a room.. it's far to be a Tech News discussion:)