13 Jun 2006
An axe to grind with Ajax

I've been putzing about with AJAX myself of late, and I must say I'm pretty impressed. The author's right in that there's nothing really new about it: AJAX is as much of an attitude and a process as it is a technology. As for why Java never really caught on to do the same things that AJAX is now doing, well ...

Java applications (and applets) tend to look very different on different platforms, and they are not nearly as cross platform as the specs would have you believe. The real problem here is adherence to standards and maintaining a standard implementation across platforms. Java is practically native code on Mac's with OS X, but on Windows, well, it depends which system you have and how Microsoft implemented the runtime engine for that version.

Java has a much bigger footprint than AJAX, and since it's excluded from browser caching in many instances, can consume bandwidth and other resources all out of proportion to it's real needs.

About the only thing that Java can do that AJAX can't is write files on the client: and that's considered a security hazard anyway!

My money's on AJAX for Web 2.0 applications - Java's so 1990's. Given the position of the author in a "code integration" company, methinks the ax being ground here is as much an economic as a technological one.

A lot of people believe AJAX will revolutionize the software world. CodeMesh co-founder Alex Krapf is not among them.

(link) [CNET News.com]

Update: Thudfactor grabbed a bit of inspration from this and really ran with it! A much more thorough defense of the rationale behind AJAX than I presented here, that's for sure. And it's screamingly funny to boot! Check it out!

21:39 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Some Ohio families refuse to claim bodies

This is quite possibly the most horrible story I've ever mentioned here. Anthropologists generally date the arrival of "humanity" from the time our ancestors began to bury their dead and treat the bodies with a modicum of respect and even reverence.

This was not only the moment religion was born in the human spirit, but the moment that a human community began to mean something more than it's animal counterparts: a tribe is not a flock or a herd, and anyone who thinks differently is welcome to roam my pasture for a few days and see firsthand for themselves.

I wonder if the lady who used the insurance money provided to bury her family member to redecorate her kitchen has considered her own chances of dying alone, and being laid to eternal rest unmourned and unremembered? I doubt it - that would require her to think beyond the immediate moment and plan a bit for the future, which is also a defining human trait.

Truly this represents the human race reverting to our base primate nature, and reflects a "Who cares?" attitude that does not bode well for the future of our so-called civilization.

AP - Thomas Tellis died in March, but his cremated remains are still waiting to be claimed at a Canton funeral home. Shortly after the 89-year-old's death, investigators located Tellis' daughter, but the woman, who was born out of wedlock and raised by another man, refused to claim Tellis' body.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

06:42 /Asatru | 2 comments | permanent link

Maine adopts meat purchasing policy

At least somebody out there gets it. Let's hope that other states follow suit, and that large producers don't run crying "Foul!" to the FDA or USDA, and try to pervert the commerce clause to strip these progressive areas of their right to insure consumer safety.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Maine’s Agriculture Committee took historic action to make Maine the first state to adopt a meat purchasing policy to address the antibiotic resistance crisis in human medicine.

(link) [The Prairie Star]

06:18 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link