Comments on: Links from May 22nd http://rc3.org/2009/05/23/links-from-may-22nd/ Strong opinions weakly held Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:46:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Patrick Nielsen Hayden http://rc3.org/2009/05/23/links-from-may-22nd/comment-page-1/#comment-5635 Patrick Nielsen Hayden Sat, 23 May 2009 22:08:45 +0000 http://rc3.org/?p=9544#comment-5635 <p>The posters are indeed brilliant. It's a pity that they're immediately followed by photographs of the cover for a book entitled I WAS DRAWN TO THIS BOOK BECAUSE OF IT'S DESIGN.</p> The posters are indeed brilliant. It’s a pity that they’re immediately followed by photographs of the cover for a book entitled I WAS DRAWN TO THIS BOOK BECAUSE OF IT’S DESIGN.

]]> By: Jacob Davies http://rc3.org/2009/05/23/links-from-may-22nd/comment-page-1/#comment-5634 Jacob Davies Sat, 23 May 2009 21:17:32 +0000 http://rc3.org/?p=9544#comment-5634 <p>My guess (maybe just "hope") is that all downloadable executable code will be verboten by, say, 2019. Javascript is convenient but extremely dangerous. And the embedded scripting languages in Flash etc are no better (let alone Java).</p> <p>What I think we will see to replace it are plugins that read purely declarative languages that define applications. (Not coincidentally, this is exactly what I am working on.) In those case extensibility can be done using components that implement standardized interfaces and can be either included in the plugin or signed and then downloaded from secure servers. The idea that some random website can download executable code to your computer and run it will seem like pure craziness. (And it is. It fundamentally takes away control over what you see and do. This is a really bad model to continue with, despite being convenient.)</p> My guess (maybe just “hope”) is that all downloadable executable code will be verboten by, say, 2019. Javascript is convenient but extremely dangerous. And the embedded scripting languages in Flash etc are no better (let alone Java).

What I think we will see to replace it are plugins that read purely declarative languages that define applications. (Not coincidentally, this is exactly what I am working on.) In those case extensibility can be done using components that implement standardized interfaces and can be either included in the plugin or signed and then downloaded from secure servers. The idea that some random website can download executable code to your computer and run it will seem like pure craziness. (And it is. It fundamentally takes away control over what you see and do. This is a really bad model to continue with, despite being convenient.)

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