Algebra Rizing

[Peder O. Klingenberg]

What's your speakeasy.net timing to DC?

From home: 9/4 Mbit down/up. I didn't see anywhere on speakeasy.net to
measure latency, but I know from experience that rtt to the US east
coast is usually in the 150-200 ms range.

Is that a 32-bit computer? Tho my old XP does fine.

I haven't used a 32-bit computer for years. 64-bit Ubuntu at work,
64-bit OSX at home. Though FF on the mac is a 32 bit application.

Oh, I thought I fixed that. Maybe it is in the next release.

This was a few days ago, as I said. Maybe it was fixed in the
meantime. On second thought, I was a bit imprecise. I think I may have
been able to edit the text, but not to advance to the next step in the
process.

The whole application went down tools. I restarted a couple of hours agao.

Right. It was back for a moment, but none of the choices on the
freestyle tab did anything, so I never got to editing anything. A
page reload gave me infinite "waiting for teamalgebra.com", and further
reloads gave me server resets or the rather boring empty gray page.

You were not demoing Cells.

I thought this was about hooking cells up to the js gui stuff? As I
have zero interest in the webgui stuff, I was hoping to get a glimpse of
how cells could drive an application efficiently.

....Peder...

 

[russell_mcmanus]

If it makes you feel better, performance is indeed a mission-critical
concern in my mind and I have my eye out for problems. An initial big
concern was indeed the per-key round-trip. So far I have seen zero
problems.

If someone is far away from the web server network wise, then they are
going to see dramatically worse responsiveness then you.

-russ

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Am 2010-07-02 20:55, Kenneth Tilton meinte:


Indeed. The incompetence oozing from your "project" and the underlying
library seems utterly threatening. That said, why don't you bugger off
and troll somewhere else?

Troll? With reviews like this?

http://www.stuckonalgebra.com/fan_mail.html

From real teachers in real classrooms? And you call me a troll? I think
you just called yourself <your epithet here>.

Meanwhile, your widgets look nice. (Really!) You have about six. Here is
qooxdoo: http://demo.qooxdoo.org/current/demobrowser/#

See the problem?

I suspect you also do not have a complete application framework. Please
get in touch when you do, you do nice stuff.

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

From home: 9/4 Mbit down/up. I didn't see anywhere on speakeasy.net to
measure latency, but I know from experience that rtt to the US east
coast is usually in the 150-200 ms range.


I haven't used a 32-bit computer for years. 64-bit Ubuntu at work,
64-bit OSX at home. Though FF on the mac is a 32 bit application.

Well, it sounds like you are getting one minute where I am getting 4s
and our environments are exactly the same.

My thinking is that we can get one minute because of some issue
somewhere but we cannot get 4s by accident, not reliably and repeatedly
on many browsers and many OSes, so I am not worrying about this just yet.

Ah, that was definitely the old version.

I clicked the "solved" button

This was a few days ago, as I said. Maybe it was fixed in the
meantime. On second thought, I was a bit imprecise. I think I may have
been able to edit the text, but not to advance to the next step in the
process.

Hmmm, I do think I pushed the new version in the past 2-3 days. The old
version definitely did not let me resume work after I had mistakenly
said I had reached the answer.

Right. It was back for a moment, but none of the choices on the
freestyle tab did anything, so I never got to editing anything.

Did you try clicking "OK"?

A
page reload gave me infinite "waiting for teamalgebra.com", and further
reloads gave me server resets or the rather boring empty gray page.

How recently? I restarted the server/app a few hours agao and it is
still up and responding, no backtrace in sight.

I thought this was about hooking cells up to the js gui stuff? As I
have zero interest in the webgui stuff, I was hoping to get a glimpse of
how cells could drive an application efficiently.

You need the source for RoboCells, the application that does nothing but
talk to a soccer server over a socket. Pure Cells (plus football).

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Dude, just work from first principles. Cells would let me specify:

(make-instance 'thing-1 :d (the-formula (if a b c))

(if a b c) being the rule.

Dependencies are decided dynamically each time a rule runs, so if a is
true there is no dependency on c (in the cells world or in the real
world). Thus if c changes there is no real-world reason to run this
rule. If a goes to false there will be no dependency on b and vice versa.

The beauty is there is no explicit declaration of dependency by the
hard-working programmer -- we just write code naturally and efficient
recalculation results. In the face of change, the system updates that
absolute minimum of state.

But! I get a kick out of the fact that this breaks that efficiency:

(let ((x (based-on b))
(y (based-on c)))
(if a x y))

....because b and c are always read and reading something is used to
denote dependency. ie, Somehow Cells punishes bad code (why calculate
both x and y before knowing which will be needed?). When things like
that emerge I know I have tapped into fundamental soundness: ie, we
should have been programming like this from day one.

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Troll? With reviews like this?

http://www.stuckonalgebra.com/fan_mail.html

From real teachers in real classrooms? And you call me a troll? I think
you just called yourself <your epithet here>.

btw, what troll killfiles his antagonists? If I am still flaming someone
it means they are making interesting points, like the one about XHR
requests per keystroke.

Your web site was too pretty for me to kill you, tho.

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Well, it sounds like you are getting one minute where I am getting 4s
and our environments are exactly the same.

My thinking is that we can get one minute because of some issue
somewhere but we cannot get 4s by accident, not reliably and repeatedly
on many browsers and many OSes, so I am not worrying about this just yet.

Hmmm. This would not affect the initial load because they are brought
over one character at a time, but unless one has installed TeX fonts:

http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsmath/download/jsMath-fonts.html

....jsMath falls back on image fonts. I /do/ have the TeX fonts installed
(and I had failed to provide all the image fonts where jsMath could find
them, which is why you did not see > and < when I was seeing them) so
that would explain at least different typing speed. A little. As I said,
jsMath brings characters over one at a time on demand.

kt

--
http://teamalgebra.com
http://www.stuckonalgebra.com

"The best Algebra tutorial program I have seen... in a class by itself."
Macworld

 

[Antony]

Imho, JS libraries for "RIAs" are complete bullshit. They basically
rewrite everything down to the layout manager, not leveraging the
browser at all...

The part about layout manager. I haven't done much CSS, every time I saw
the tricks needed to create a simple column layout I gave up (I had the
luxury mostly cause I wasn't responsible for the UI).

On one hand I have forever heard don't use tables, use divs and css,
on the other hand one needs disproportionate effort doing the same thing
using divs and css. And then it is usually not flexible if you wnat add
a couple of more columns.

Then there is span which seems to be utterly useless cause you can't put
any block elements in it. People talk about content and representation
separation, yet div and span are tied to visuals cause one says 'block'
and allows certain DOM strcuture and the other does not.

AFAIK there isn't a layout manager built into a web browser from the web
developer point of view.

What should one do if one needs a RIA and it has to be web based

Are we saying HTML+CSS+Javascript only RIA solution is still way off

Does HTML5 change anything above.

Is there any popular book for managing layouts using HTML/CSS/Javascript
(unlike common lisp, this web stuff is way too popular, means way too
much effort to find the good stuff out of the mountain of things google
brings up)


-Antony

 

[Peder O. Klingenberg]

Did you try clicking "OK"?

Of course. Repeatedly. Nothing happened.

How recently? I restarted the server/app a few hours agao and it is
still up and responding, no backtrace in sight.

As in while as I was typing the last message. Check the date header and
subtract up to a minute.

Tried again just now, with much better results. I can edit just fine.
The initial rendering of the page was a bit messy as the bits arranged
themselves and not exactly blazing fast, but no slower than some
of the more ad-riddled newspaper sites I visit from time to time.

You need the source for RoboCells, the application that does nothing
but talk to a soccer server over a socket. Pure Cells (plus football).

Yes, probably, but then I also need to get hold of some round tuits.
They're in short supply. It seemed much easier to just click around on
a website.

....Peder...

 

[HVS]

The part about layout manager. I haven't done much CSS, every time I saw
the tricks needed to create a simple column layout I gave up (I had the
luxury mostly cause I wasn't responsible for the UI).

On one hand I have forever heard don't use tables, use divs and css,
on the other hand one needs disproportionate effort doing the same thing
using divs and css. And then it is usually not flexible if you wnat add
a couple of more columns.

Then there is span which seems to be utterly useless cause you can't put
any block elements in it. People talk about content and representation
separation, yet div and span are tied to visuals cause one says 'block'
and allows certain DOM strcuture and the other does not.

AFAIK there isn't a layout manager built into a web browser from the web
developer point of view.

What should one do if one needs a RIA and it has to be web based

Are we saying HTML+CSS+Javascript only RIA solution is still way off

Does HTML5 change anything above.

Is there any popular book for managing layouts using HTML/CSS/Javascript
(unlike common lisp, this web stuff is way too popular, means way too
much effort to find the good stuff out of the mountain of things google
brings up)


-Antony

As someone who works on web applications on a day-to-day basis, I agree
with your assessment of the tables vs. divs/css model.

For enterprise-level web applications, the company I work at uses Ext JS
(http://www.sencha.com/products/js/) which, once you understand the
model, allows you to layout fairly robust (and heavy) web applications.
It is not a "light" framework, though, and also requires quite a bit of
work to customize the look and feel. It does, however, allow you to
avoid a lot of the annoying CSS layout issues that you mention.

CSS3 allows for better control of layout than previous versions. For
example: http://ejohn.org/blog/css3-template-layout/

/Hans

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Of course. Repeatedly. Nothing happened.


As in while as I was typing the last message. Check the date header and
subtract up to a minute.

Tried again just now, with much better results. I can edit just fine.
The initial rendering of the page was a bit messy as the bits arranged
themselves and not exactly blazing fast, but no slower than some
of the more ad-riddled newspaper sites I visit from time to time.


Yes, probably, but then I also need to get hold of some round tuits.
They're in short supply. It seemed much easier to just click around on
a website.

Oh, sorry, I made the mistake of taking you seriously! Hence the
detailed response. My bad. Won't happen again.

 

[Mario S. Mommer]

Hi,

Thanks again for the report, but to anyone out there, please relax on
the bug reports. I have prominently announced that the thing is known
to be broken and incomplete and is being shared only for what does
work (which will expand in Algebra tutorial functionality before
anything else, except for tree bugs that make the tutorial forest
impossible to see).

Kenny, that kind of thing very rarely, if at all, works. If you publish
an unfinished prototype with a ten megawatt lightsign of a disclaimer,
people will still complain about how buggy it is. No idea why.

Same thing with text. If you send someone an unfinished text, clearly
saying it is just an early draft, asking to just check if the concept
has half a chance of going somewhere, you'll get even the spelling
corrected 95% of the time.

So, good luck with this. But please try not to insult all the nice folks
that have given you feedback.

Now feedback on the algebra app: I'm usually somewhat weary of telling
kids that maths is easy, because that does not correspond to what their
experience with it will be. After a while, when they don't get it, they
not only feel frustrated, but also stupid (because you claimed it was
/soooo/ easy, remember?). In my experience, an important part of the
difference between people who do better in math and those who do not do
that good is the level of tolerance to frustration.

Regards,
Mario.

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Hi,



Kenny, that kind of thing very rarely, if at all, works. If you publish
an unfinished prototype with a ten megawatt lightsign of a disclaimer,
people will still complain about how buggy it is. No idea why.

Human nature. I would do the same! It is impossible to look at something
broken and not point it out.

Same thing with text. If you send someone an unfinished text, clearly
saying it is just an early draft, asking to just check if the concept
has half a chance of going somewhere, you'll get even the spelling
corrected 95% of the time.

So, good luck with this. But please try not to insult all the nice folks
that have given you feedback.

You are confused. I have had a couple of perfectly pleasant exchanges
with people offering bug reports by email and I thanked them and
reassured them they could relax on that, tho there was at least one case
where something I thought worked did not (because I had TeX fonts
installed and did not notice I had cocked up the fallback image fonts).
Other stuff as well, I think.

The flaming you are seeing is me making life miserable for the js
library haters, who yell about anything they can because things like
qooxdoo do work. We have had fun before in c.l.js when I made the
mistake of coming here looking for help and got attacked because I was
using jsQuery (my first try, on an unrelated project).

Can you imagine someone coming to c.l.lisp asking for help with ASDF or
Slime and being attacked for using.... oops.

Now feedback on the algebra app: I'm usually somewhat weary of telling
kids that maths is easy, because that does not correspond to what their
experience with it will be. After a while, when they don't get it, they
not only feel frustrated, but also stupid (because you claimed it was
/soooo/ easy, remember?). In my experience, an important part of the
difference between people who do better in math and those who do not do
that good is the level of tolerance to frustration.

I agree that forewarned is forearmed, but in what we USians call
"Algebra I" their experience is a function of the process, not the
content. I explained it here: http://www.stuckonalgebra.com , tho it
sounds like you read that.

That is not me talking, that is what we learned when kids got exposed to
the software: as long as they get immediate feedback the math anxiety
goes away and they get quality practice (vs doing problems with no
feedback so they do not learn what is right and what is wrong -- no,
having a paper corrected the next day is not feedback, that is too
late). But we are laying teachers off, not hiring them, so there is just
no way the delivery model my software supports can be achieved without
automation.

The story from Margaret Lekse came as a surprise to me: failing students
used the software for a short time and not only did better but caught up
with the other kids. It seems a psychological hump got surpassed, after
which kids Just Got It(tm). Which is why I will have a (very small)
one-time fee, not charge by the month.

kt

 

[RobG]

Hi,



Kenny, that kind of thing very rarely, if at all, works. If you publish
an unfinished prototype with a ten megawatt lightsign of a disclaimer,
people will still complain about how buggy it is. No idea why.

The complaints here were specific issues related to the implementation
as that is what is on topic here. To summarise some of the more
important ones:

1. Very large download size, over 1MB that takes anywhere from 10 to
30 seconds and may leave the application dysfunctional.
2. Lack of built-in functionality like positioning the cursor with the
mouse, delete key, cut and paste, and so on. This functionality has to
be *removed* by application, it is built into the browser and so
should be available in any browser-based application.
3. Pressing keys quickly (particularly the tab key) can send the
application into an unresponsive state
4. Excessive number of HTTP requests

The tutorial itself was (as far as I could tell) completely
dysfunctional so it's impossible to make any bug reports other than
"it's dysfunctional". If the OP wants comments on the actual tutorial,
such as whether it simplifies or solves correctly, then a group
dedicated to teaching algebra would be suitable.

Same thing with text. If you send someone an unfinished text, clearly
saying it is just an early draft, asking to just check if the concept
has half a chance of going somewhere, you'll get even the spelling
corrected 95% of the time.

The link was posted without any notification about what should or
should not work, so how should those here have known what to expect?
What is written here will survive for a very long time, so it is
important to provide context as to what does and doesn't work now.

For example, have a look at the following exchange:

|> Sometimes it gets stuck and just
|> stops loading in a dysfunctional state and a reload is required to
get
|> it to "work".
|
| No shit, Einstein.

I would expect such failure to be important as it seems to be related
to the slow loading issue, clearly the OP decided it wasn't. Also:

|> Freestyle section:
|> Seems dysfunctional and very slow. Selecting "Simplify" and
entering:
|> y = 2x + 3x
|
|(a) Another choice was solve. Duh.

I tried solve but it didn't work either, so I reported that (and got
no response about what it should do or how to make it work, if indeed
it did). If someone is to read the above some time in the future when
perpahs the entire application is working, they may not understand
that functionality did not work now if it isn't clearly stated. These
reports aren't just for the OP's benefit.

So, good luck with this. But please try not to insult all the nice folks
that have given you feedback.

He posted here to bait those reading this group, whether he got any
useful feedback appears to be irrelevant to him. He has stopped
getting responses because it just feeds the troll.

Now feedback on the algebra app: I'm usually somewhat weary of telling
kids that maths is easy, because that does not correspond to what their
experience with it will be. After a while, when they don't get it, they
not only feel frustrated, but also stupid (because you claimed it was
/soooo/ easy, remember?). In my experience, an important part of the
difference between people who do better in math and those who do not do
that good is the level of tolerance to frustration.

And the quality of the education.

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Human nature. I would do the same! It is impossible to look at something
broken and not point it out.


You are confused. I have had a couple of perfectly pleasant exchanges
with people offering bug reports by email and I thanked them and
reassured them they could relax on that, tho there was at least one case
where something I thought worked did not (because I had TeX fonts
installed and did not notice I had cocked up the fallback image fonts).
Other stuff as well, I think.

The flaming you are seeing is me making life miserable for the js
library haters, who yell about anything they can because things like
qooxdoo do work. We have had fun before in c.l.js when I made the
mistake of coming here looking for help and got attacked because I was
using jsQuery (my first try, on an unrelated project).

Can you imagine someone coming to c.l.lisp asking for help with ASDF or
Slime and being attacked for using.... oops.


I agree that forewarned is forearmed, but in what we USians call
"Algebra I" their experience is a function of the process, not the
content. I explained it here: http://www.stuckonalgebra.com , tho it
sounds like you read that.

Oh, no you just made it to the first screen. Forgot I had put that
there. That is inside joke for c.l.l'ers who right recall one of us
responding once to a nooby whining about some challenge with "Lisp is
hard! Let's go shopping." which I subsequently learned was first said by
a "Talking Barbie" doll about math.

Was that as far as your review got?

Try again: http://teamalgebra.com/ and try this:

Solve
OK
3x-6=12
Return
3x/3-6/3=12/3
Return

(a) wasn't it fun typing that?
(b) what do you think the software will say given the tortured approach
to the solution? Correct or incorrect?

btw, anyone mindlessly banging away at the tab key foaming at the mouth
screaming "dysfunctional!" must not understand much about software: the
site may be a train wreck, but it presents a one-of-a-kind wysiwyg math
editor as well as a one-of-a-kind automated tutor able to assess
intermediate steps in a problem.

I think a couple of things must be functional.

kt

ps. If I'm a troll, we need more trolls. k

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

Are you genuinely interested in feedback, or are "yes" and "correct" the
only answers you'll accept? If you think you can't learn anything from
critical feedback, please feel free to ignore the rest of this message.

(a) Was it fun to type it?

Not really. There was a quite noticeable lag here (25mbps connection,
central Europe, reasonably fast computer, FF3.0). I don't have the TeX
fonts installed, which is probably also the case for ~99% of your
prospective buyers. You may want to test your application without those
fonts on your system.

I doubt it's the fonts. One character per keystroke? Bah.

I just tried it and it was molasses. One thing I have not bothered with
is tossing data structures as sessions go away. I'll try to rememebr to
bounce the thing every so often until I get around to GC.

And with the next release I'll buy AWS instances in Europe and Cali and
leave them up for a day.

"Foaming at the mouth" critic that I am, I also dislike having to
relearn how to enter text.

Oh, you have used a math editor before that worked differently? Hint.

Most of the keys I usually use for this
purpose don't work in your editor (but still cause HTTP requests), like
End, Home, Delete, Shift+Arrow, etc. Copy/paste are right out of the
question, of course.

(a) complaining about the HTTP requests suggests you are coming up to
speed on this thread way too slowly
(b) Copy/paste have indeed been implemented before, and jsMath would
make highlighting the selection area easy, but it's pretty far down on
the triage list given that I doubt students learning Algebra will be
entering work and wanting cut/paste to do it. I might bring back the
"ditto" function that let's you recopy the preceding step when you want
to make one small change while still showing all the work.

It's also not possible to open a new tab with
Ctrl-T when the editor has focus. It intercepts the key combination and
prints a "t" character instead.

I will continue to dissuade folks from being so picayune, but thanks for
the "heads up". And don't blame me: FireFox kept jumping into search
mode when I typed a "/", so I stopped all event bubbling.

Entering "3x/3-x" yields "(3x/3)-x",
whereas entering "3x/x-3" gives "3x/(x-3)". Unexpected, but that may
have been explained in the typing tutorial section, which I was unable
to complete for technical reasons (which you don't want to hear about).

Yeah, that is problematic. What I had before was a so-called
"quick-fractions" option which one would turn on only if one was working
only with numeric fractions. Otherwise that feature gets in the way.

Okay. I guess I can live with that, if it's the price for an interactive
algebra tutor app. But is it *fun* to type like that? Hell no.

What math editor do you like better? Hint.

On to your second question.

(b) what do I think of the solver's reaction to my input?

Is its reaction "correct" or not? All the solver had to say was
"Hmmmmm....". I don't think a student would consider that very helpful.

Kids are smarter than you know. And I am disappointed you did not notice
that the math engine was able to analyze intermediate steps, let alone
even accept them. Most other "tutorial" math software makes you do the
whole problem and type in only the answer.

Playing some more with this example:

3x-6=12
Return
3x-7=11
Return

The solver's comment for this development is now "Sweet".

Yeah, I have to err on the side of /not/ expressing doubt: the last
thing we want to do is be discouraging about good work. Otoh, you have a
good point: "Sweet" is a bit much. I'll add "mute the approval when
borderline ok-but-screwy" to the do-list.

I am also often tempted to take out the feature altogether. It's one of
those deals that seems like a good idea but probably adds little
difference to the educational value, adds a bit of complexity to the
app, and even risks doing more harm than good.

otoh, students /do/ make this kind of mistake and it's worth heading off
if possible. we'll see.

I tried the "3x/3 ..." example a few more times with the same input, and
it looks like the responses are randomized. Sometimes you get "Whoa" or
"Unusual" or "That's different" instead of "Hmmmmm...".
Here's a suggestion: these responses may look funny to you, but they're
going to annoy people who are struggling with their task. Don't just say
"Hmmmmm...", tell them what's wrong or unusual. They're kids, not
idiots. Yes, I do work with kids, and I know what I'm talking about.

You may work with kids, but if you think telling what they did wrong
will make a good educational product you do not know much about how
anyone (kid or not) learns. The learning comes from the head-scratching,
and from figuring things out with the absolute minimum of help. An
upcoming feature will be to let kids clone a problem to see how the
engine solves it, but we will never help them with their problems.

In the Practice Room (coming soon) kids can give up on a problem and see
a solution, but in Homework or Mastery mode (where they earn
certification) never.

Just in case I haven't landed in your killfile yet, and you've made it
to this point without throwing me in your imaginary "library haters"
pot, here are a few more observations:

No, I just have you in the "persistently negative and unable to notice
anything positive" pile, but you were in the Humanity pile anyway.

You asked Gildas why he was watching HTTP requests. Your application
automatically includes Firebug Lite, which just about screams "debug me"
to all developers (i.e. most of the people reading c.l.javascript and
c.l.lisp). The only way I can stop Firebug Lite from opening and
obscuring most of the visible area is by activating the real Firebug
extension for your site, and then, yes, I will see the HTTP requests.

Oh, calm down. I left that in the index.html by mistake.

The only requests I see sail by are my server application being chatty.

Which brings me to another point: with Firebug Lite open, the usable
vertical space in the content area is 70px on my screen, barely enough
to see the huge headline.

Gee, maybe when I take firebug light out that will stop happening.

Even without FB Lite, the area occupied by the
equation editor is about the same size as the app's header area on my
screen. I'm currently on a laptop with an 800px vertical resolution. I
think it's safe to assume that many of your prospective users will also
be on laptops or even netbooks. There's no need to load a 512x512px clip
art image which serves no purpose at all (it's rendered as 200x200px,
but that doesn't exactly improve things). If the header is only used for
this image and "Whoa" comments, make it smaller.

Hmmm, even being fully aware that there was no need to pore over the
thing with a magnifying glass, wow, that is what you are doing. Cool!

The right mouse button is disabled on your site, which is something I
absolutely, positively loathe. It serves no purpose at all except to
annoy your users.

Someone needs an anger management refresher.

Anybody who really wants to copy/view anything will be
able to do so anyway.

Also a bit paranoid. There was no intent behind that. I might be
inadvertently overusing the "prevent default" thing. See above on how
FireFox made me do it.

In case you're interested, the application took about 20 seconds to load
with a blank cache, and 15 seconds after the external assets were
cached. I didn't have any gray screens of death this time, but a
"loading" indicator would be a nice touch. Usually, if a page doesn't
load in 10 seconds, I'll close the tab, but I do make exceptions for
more specialized applications like yours.

Yeah, I'll put up a dancing bear animated GIF while it loads. I had one
in there but it was loading so fast for me it never actually appeared so
I yanked it.

I finally found the message about your application being a work in
progress. You have to double click some text (not a link) reading
"Help!!!!!". Did you expect everybody to find and read that?

No. Most of the disclaimers are in the emails announcing the site. The
one on the typing tab is more prominent, and the welcome page has it
prominently. I just arrange for the newest tab to appear first.

Your site may be one of a kind. I didn't check.

Then I can imagine you with the first Mac in 1984 complaining that there
was no hard drive. That's OK, I am here talking about qooxdoo and
qooxlisp, but surprisingly none of the JS and Lisp programmers want to
talk about that. I suppose this has to do with none of you doing
anything but surf Usenet looking for parades to rain on.

qooxlisp: http://wiki.github.com/kennytilton/qooxlisp/
qooxdoo: http://qooxdoo.org/

It may be a valuable
product, and I can certainly see how an interactive approach to algebra
can help students. But you're posting to a JavaScript newsgroup here
(and to c.l.lisp for some reason).

Dude, it is a Lisp application. Even the JS gets sent over bit by bit.

As for the c.l.js purpose: the subject is not really algebra, it is to
show by example a great way to deliver RIAs using at least qooxdoo and
at best qooxlisp, a way to program RIAs with a serious language (unlike JS).

Now I realize programming the web is not something the loudmouths around
here do, but I am sure many lurkers would benefit from discovering qooxdoo.

btw, I learned about that splendid JS project on c.l.lisp. I'll go back

If you want to promote your product,
this is not the right place; try alt.algebra or alt.algebra.help
instead.

Have the moderator of this group tell me that. Hint.

Besides, the software is not ready for alt.algebra. All we really have
is a successful melding of Lisp and qooxdoo, so these are the only
groups I am spamming.

You posted a self-described "train wreck" prototype to this
group, so what the hell did you expect? If you did it on purpose to
annoy somebody here, that's classic troll behavior.

No, the purpose is sharing about qooxdoo and qooxlisp. I only say I am
doing it to annoy the bullies to annoy the bullies.

The only reason we ended up talking about algebra is because one of the
bullies dragged my sig into the flamewar, then another tried to say I
was just a troll so I decided to point out what I had produced in the
way of real work.

Thanks for the time you spent on the feedback.

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

I noticed a problem with your layout and suggested an improvement.

And you persist in trying to talk about layout issues! When the app has
now been clearly advertised to be a train wreck in progress!! Good for
you. Never say die!

If
you think the best way to handle this is a sarcastic reply, I hope
you'll hire somebody else to do customer support. I won't make the
mistake of commenting on your application again.

I supported the desktop version back in the 90s, that was a lot of fun.
Folks flipped when they realized they were talking to the author.

They were calling for help with a finished product, and every call went
well, thanks so much for asking.

Then it's an irritating bug instead of an intentional nuisance.

What?! A bug in a train wreck?!

The
global "prevent default thing" you have going at the moment is not the
right way to deal with your problem in Firefox.

Uh, nothing else defeated the beast. I'll just be more selective about
what I do not let bubble.

Remember what I said about antagonizing people?

Sorry I spoiled the fun for you.

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

My first DoS attack!! That is so cool! I've hit the big time, I can see.
Not in the mood yet for all that login/security stuff, so if the
site's not up it's because I am not up. Not that I pay for bandwidth,
but it did make the site unreachable.

Coincidence, I am sure....PWUAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

kt

 

[Kenneth Tilton]

What exactly are you implying here? That somebody sent a botnet against
your site, and that person was me?

Why would it be you? I was careful to remove all quoted text when
responding to my own post. This is a long thread, I've made a lot of
friends. Could be anyone. It could indeed also be a coincidence. I am
sure there are lots of bots out there looking for trouble.

You are clearly insane.

This is news?

kt

 

[Erwin Moller]

Kenneth Tilton schreef:

My first DoS attack!! That is so cool! I've hit the big time, I can see.
Not in the mood yet for all that login/security stuff, so if the site's
not up it's because I am not up. Not that I pay for bandwidth, but it
did make the site unreachable.

Coincidence, I am sure....PWUAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

kt

You credit yourself too much.
Even though you behaved like a horny baboon in here, I seriously doubt
you triggered anybody in here enough to explain the DDOS attack.
(As if we all have zombienets at our command...)

You mostly got yourself plonked I think...

Erwin Moller

--
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
-- C.A.R. Hoare