Slashdot Mirror

Well, you can. It's actually dead simple: CORBA is RPC, just that you don't address some particular service, you invoke a method on an object reference, which contains the servers address. Add in an interoperable binary protocol, a standard language to define interfaces and some standard mappings to common programming languages, that's all there is to it. Services are completely optional, the ORB, commonly depicted as an all encompassing cloud with mystic abilities, is just a support library to decode object references and speak the wire protocol. For the long version, here's CORBA in 5 Minutes.

Now why the confusing websites? Well, what would you do as a vendor? Tell your clients (managers!) that you're selling them an RPC library? No way! It has to be Object Oriented Middleware, it must be Enterprise, and everything ties into the mystic ORB. You absolutely need an ORB! Well, you didn't in the 80's, but this is the 21st century and there you need an ORB! Oh, and what a remarkable conincidence... we are just selling ORBs!

Anyway, have a look at ORBit. CORBA can actually be simple. It's commercial software that cannot.

That's too expensive. The machines came with XP Pro, so what I do is use an Unattended + WPKG setup to reinstall all computers every other week (automated through scripting and WakeOnLan).

Yeah I've been using ndiswrapper when I was on Kernel 2.6.12 and 2.6.13 but I can't get it working properly with 2.6.14 and above. It compiles and everything and appears to load the drivers I give it but there is no device created. I've also found it to be unstable in that too much fiddling around with the wireless settings, even switching networks too many times sometimes, will freeze the machine and force a hard reboot. Also the signal strength indicator doesn't work - it always stays on low.

So far Linuxant seems stable and the signal strength works properly and it works fine on the newer kernels. Hopefully the new bcm43xx driver will be good enough to dump both Linuxant and ndiswrapper. If I'm successful I'll post it here: http://linuxonacer5020.sf.net/

don't write code which needs several month to get accustomed! That's the same mistake as is usually done in science. This isn't limited to science or computers, it's all over the world.

Yet computer code is more sensitive to this kind of miss interpretation since neider coders nor their bosses know all the necessary "things" making their code more understandable for others. That's one important reason I still stick to the sample code within the wyoGuide guidelines (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) even if it gets rated biased towards wxWidgets. IMO it's incredible important for OpenSource as for ClosedSource to make code as readable as possible and nothing is better suited to show how than sample code.

Sure enough it would make a lot sense to have sample code for other frameworks or environments but sorry, as a spare time developer I don't have that much time.

O. Wyss

Insightful? How about Kino or Cinelerra or Lives or Mainactor?

What, like the mplayer plug-in? It's free, but it relies (obviously) on mplayer, which is far from perfect IMHO.

You want to know the latest trends for Java-based web development? Fewer and fewer people are going to be doing Java-based web development in the future.

Fuck trends. They're wrong. Every day the industry continues to stay with its current ridiculous technologies when vastly superior ones were invented decades ago infuriates me further. If it doesn't infuriate you, you're not paying close enough attention.

My advice: read Lambda the Ultimate and Steve Yegge's blog. Endeavor to learn what the lambda calculus and referential transparency are. If you are sincerely interested in bettering yourself as a programmer and don't go find out who Alonzo Church was then so help me God I will kick you in the balls. Learn about SML and type inference. Learn about Haskell and monads. Learn about process calculi and Erlang. Learn about Lisp and code generation and domain-specific languages. Learn about Scheme and lexical closures and continuations. Learn about Smalltalk and what OO was really supposed to be. Learn about type theory and formalism and the Curry-Howard correspondence. Learn about Forth and Joy and how you can have a powerful, expressive language without even so much as a grammar. Learn about Intercal and Befunge and just how badly your choice of programming language can torture you. Learn about UML and Ruby on Rails and Seaside and agile programming and Java generics and Python generators. Learn about aspect-oriented programming, context-oriented programming and concept programming. Learn about multi-paradigm languages like OCaml or Oz. Learn about weird Lisp dialects with syntax like Rebol or Dylan.

Realize that library design is language design. Realize that asynchronous programming with callbacks and explicit state in a world where lightweight coroutines were around in the days of fucking Simula in the 60s for Christ's sake is cruel and unusual torture. (Sorry, pet programming construct.) Realize that the programming language research community, while considering systems programming a solved problem and generally not interested in talking about human factors, is doing some genuinely promising work. Did you know that there are conc

I'm probably much biased but IMO the future trend in software development is "cross-platform". So far for many years you could do resonable cross-platform development only with Java. Today you can equally well do cross-plaform development with AJAX or with wyoGuide (binary applications, http://wyoguide.sf.net/). So regardless which of the different technology takes the lead, cross-platform development will increase to the point where single-platform development won't be accepted.

Ok, so call me an un-trendy old-fart. Let's see ..... a quick review of my resume since 1980, when I first became a programmer .....

Fortran and Cobol that would run on IBM, Amdahl, CDC, and Dec computers with only a recompile

C Code that in some cases I originally wrote on CP/M, still in my libraries, that I still use on Linux today.

Many, many applications I've written over the years on one platform that I have also run on many, many OTHER platforms.

A portability library I wrote years ago for a company I worked for so that their unix applications could be compiled on windows without having to make source code changes

An application I'm in the middle of developing now that builds and runs identically on both windows and linux

All of this is in C. No, I'm not the old dog that can't be taught new tricks - I've probably got 30 or 40 languages on my resume. But I have found that over the years, in spite of the language de jour, the reality is that languages are not, nor have they ever been, nor will they EVER be, a magic bullet.

There is still no substitute for competence, and knowing what you're doing.

Read Slashdot of course!

Yes. Slashdot has quite a reputation for attracting knowledgeable people, yet be aware that some are rather biased towards OpenSource. And don't forget that people who do OpenSource (me including) have a rather absolute opinion. So as long as you are a little sceptic you should be able extract the trends.

As you mention Java you may well notice that currently any Java discussion always tends toward flame wars. Flame wars are always signs that something isn't good, that the there isn't an uphill trend. Flame wars always arises when the future (a trend) isn't going as wished.

I'm probably much biased but IMO the future trend in software development is "cross-platform". So far for many years you could do resonable cross-platform development only with Java. Today you can equally well do cross-plaform development with AJAX or with wyoGuide (binary applications, http://wyoguide.sf.net/). So regardless which of the different technology takes the lead, cross-platform development will increase to the point where single-platform development won't be accepted.

O. Wyss

This or even thison one of the following phones can do that kind of thing. SSH over EDGE, GPRS, or 802.11(9300i/9500) - even with the cameraless models. Full keyboard on those three and not terribly large, and looks like an older phone when folded. If you can live with the camera, go with the 9500 and a large media card, otherwise the 9300i is the best bet.

The only real thing missing from these is the SIP client that Nokia has in testing for these phones that they cant seem to release. After that, you can have all the calls you want without a conventional endpoint as well as a remote client. Other than that they might not want the Series 80 to compete with the E series, there really doesnt seem to be much of a reason to hold it back. Even then, that reason doesnt hold terribly well.

the Free driver really isn't worth much.

While for developers code may count it doesn't for users. If native code dies is only a questions if developers are able to build easily native code as if none-native code. As long as there are useful tools around. An these days this can be safely answered with yes.

On the other side users care at lot for native GUIs. As long as users are able to distinct e.g. a Java application from a binary (native code) application within 5 min. of using, vendors selling SW have to care for native code which produces far better native GUIs than none-native code.

Yet the SW industry does not work as in other branches. Since development costs is the driving force other considerations have to be taken into account. So for inhouse development, where users complains don't matter that much, none-native Java is favored and forced. On the other side in the free world and the commercial vendors there's no alternative to native GUIs therefore native code.

Yet the future of native versus not native isn't decided so far. With the hyped AJAX there's a none-native technique on the rise while with wxWidgets/wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) there's a now superb cross-platform native technique available. So it might be that in the end there's a draw between native and none-native going along very well.

O. Wyss

I use Unattended for the OS installation and WPKG for applications/updates/configuration/policies (w/ secedit and ActivePerl).

Some comments below this one indicate that CVD (chemical vapour deposition) is used to grow the nanotubes. A link in the article to some information about a British effort along the same lines indicates that they grow the carbon nanotubes to build the basic hair-like structure. After this, they deposit a layer of conductive material (the first plate) onto the nanotubes. After this, a layer of dielectric (insulating material) is deposited. Finally, another layer of conductive material (the second plate) is deposited.

This is just what I have picked up.
Please note, I am not an electrical engineer or a physicist.
I just code 3D modelling software (http://gsculpt.sf.net/) for fun.

Also worth mentioning (and related) is the Java Development Environment for Emacs, which makes analysing and traversing a large Java project a whole lot easier, with integrated class management, wizards, skeletons for creating classes and javadoc comments. You can get JDEE from its homepage.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

We had something like that at home for a year or so, and I'd have to say, it was horrible. The one access point was located on one side of the house, while most of the machines were on the other side – it was only after we got a second one and hardwired in most of the machines that it was tolerable. Even if the machine's right next to the access point, the reliability of the connection can be pretty bad, and trust me, I would know... I'd hate to see what it would be like for an entire office.

(For the record – two NETGEAR wireless-G routers, linked together; right now, four hard-wired machines, plus three or four more wireless ones. Most of them are running Linux, the wireless ones with NdisWrapper. Your mileage may vary.)

cscope! Mod parent up! :)

I've simply got tired of all this ideologic stuff.

Folks, this is coming from a guy who wrote:
Just imagine that if every application and every game were coded cross-platform everybody just could go into any shop and buy any computer they like.

Tired of ideologic stuff indeed.

Well, it'd not be complete without saying that they sued their competition into submission. Although they got something out of it, it really served to drive more people to a more tolerant game of third party servers.

Well, it'd not be complete without saying that they sued their competition into submission. Although they got something out of it, it really served to drive more people to a more tolerant game of third party servers.

Many people have often tried to hack web stuff into doing shared 3D. For example, the Open Source Metaverse Project uses an SQL database to store stuff and web servers to serve it.

It really doesn't make a ton of sense once you start trying to do it, other than the fact that web technology is already deployed. Just getting the initial data to people is not hard. Its how to implement changes, interaction, etc.

SL is build both technically and socially on the idea of real estate. The scalability of that is one aspect in which it doesn't work right. But this kind of thing is a hard problem. It's something we have thought about in designing another open source shared virtual environment based on the Virtual Object System but have not yet implemented anything to solve it in our servers. (Though the tools are there for it to be added in the future.)

And that is why I've been developing my own spreadsheet app. It's far from being a finished product and it's not targeted at Joe-the-accountant, but it does address maintainability by using XML for persistence. As such it lends itself very nicely to things like source control. It also blends features of traditional spreadsheets with object orientation and scripting to allow more sophisticated data modeling. I do admit that spreadsheets can expose too much to the user. But I look at it the same way I look at Perl allowing people to write unmanagable code -- you just have to put more thought into it and things will be okay. And of course, as others have pointed out, no one tool is right for every job. Use spreadsheets for modeling, reporting and such. Don't use it for huge data mining jobs. Not sure how I feel about complex apps though. I believe, if properly designed and tested, a spreadsheet can be a great way of representing complex relationships.

Now available for free as The Ur-Quan Masters, downloadable from http://sc2.sf.net/ or your distributions packages.

Truecrypt does what you want.

http://truecrypt.sf.net/

There are no OSS nVidia drivers at all. None. Nope.
Stuck with the binary-only drivers.

ATI's binary driver may be pure shit (as far as I've heard from other users) but :
- there's some opensource DRI support.
- there're some reverse engeneering efforts done to support more recent cards.

So, monomaniac opensrouce zealot, like myself, are more likely to be happy from a merger between those to companies.

Also didn't ATI have plans to use HyperTransport for their graphic chips as opposed to nVidia only using it for chipset and implementing their own protocol for SLI ? I'm not sure, I'm only trying very hard to remember what I've read. Can anyone help ?

I would argue not using VB on the basis that it is not cross platform. ...

I second that, if you become successful with your product sooner or later you'll be confronted with this question. As soon as you want to sell your product to governments or city administrations you'll be faced with this question.

Yet VB definitely has no long time future and you have to switch anytime. If you surely know you always stay in the Windows environment you might choose C# but I wouldn't advice that. You can equally well choose to switch to C++/MFC (as somebody else advised) and still have the road open to anything. From C++/MFC it's quite easy to switch to C++/wxWidgets which you should target in any case in the long run. With wxWidgets your code almost instantly becomes cross-platform without much extra work. All you have to do is keep an eye on wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/), it advises you how to code so your product becomes cross-platform even if you never actually try it out.

So before you switch design your development strategy first. Since development always needs time, sometimes years, and you have to support your product even longer. So IMO moving slowly towards C++/wxWidgets pays off in any case. Any good developer knows C++ and wxWidgets is quite a full featured framework.

There are more ways to develop good products but I simply can't advise them. Java with all its addins isn't easier to code than C++ anymore, faster development time has become a joke and Java applications are easily spotted by the users and definitely not liked. The QT framework is another alternative but there seems to be no free cross-platform applications and when you look how long it takes to port GoogleEarth to Linux I'm loosing fait. Yet the GTK+ framework, forgive me if I say it so blunt, might be useful for free SW but in no case for commercial development.

O. Wyss

try using them sometime rather than listening to your tech gods at the local geek squad....

try using them sometime rather than listening to your tech gods at the local geek squad....

It might be that the LSB makes life easier for distribution but does it also have an effect for developers and users? I don't remember I ever have looked into the LSB when designing and coding an application nor when distributing source files. And I'm quite sure most users don't even know that the LSB exist. While the LSB is very important for the binary distribution, it's influence on a Linux system is rather limited. Yet the FSG only cares for the LSB and therefore it's importance is also rather limited.

A useful Linux system needs some user's GUI guidelines, more specific a single set of guidelines. A set of guidelines which are usable anywhere not just on a single desktop, best if usable cross-platform, something like wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/). IMO the FSG should not only standardize the binary interface but also delve into standardizing the GUI interface. This would IMO give the FSG much more importance.

O. Wyss

As with most things, it's not really that one package is "better" than another so much as that one might be more useful to you at any given time.

I use my own package when a Web site is smaller (say, below a million hits per month) because I would rather sample some actual sessions and see where people went and what they were searching for than get an overview. If you see people are searching for Argyle Socks and are finding your page about the Duke of Argyll, you might want to add an extra page and link to it, "if you were looking for...".

The statistic you most want is the things people looked for that might have reached your Web site and didn't, and that's the one you can't easily find!

For a site getting under 1,000 hits per day, look at the server logs in detail at least once a week, and make navigation easier, add more content where it looks promising, think about why some areas don't get traffic, etc etc.

When you're getting 10,000 hits/day, unless most of them are for graphics, the data can become overwhelming. And if you're over 100,000 hits per day you probably need to go to the sorts of reports that give you a very broad overview.

A link checker and a 404 report can be useful -- Cool URIs don't change!

Oh -- for anyone interested, although I do have hololog set up on for example my words and pictures from old books Web site (in a private directory, sorry), the sourceforge page doesn't have a download, mea culpa. If it looks useful to anyone I've shared copies of "hololog" in the past. It could do with some cleaning up, alas!

Liam

I'm no expert, but to me, cross-platform development is taking a lowest common denominator approach...

I think I am a cross-platform expert and I can assure you that cross-platform doesn't mean lower that native these days. Just look into wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) to find out how cross-platform development is done, in many cases it's even simpler than single-platform and less error prone.

See also http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186741&cid=154 08818

O. Wyss

Doesn't Google employees read Slashdot? I've multiple times told what I think is the best way to develop software albeit other might think different. Yet probably everybody agrees that wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) is by far better than Wine. wyoGuide is IMHO the only way how to do cross-platform development and the only way for OpenSource and ClosedSource. It seems to me that it's exactly perfectly suited for Google.

> which can be used to find and fix common forms of previous bugs

And there are open source versions of those code analysis tools, too!

See http://wyoguide.sf.net/, it can be used with any programming language with any framework on any platform. So far it's the only guide which gives advice in a cross-platform fashion, has sample code and if you happen to use C++ a demo sample for use as your starting code base.

O. Wyss

Microsoft has a market share of above 90%? It's no wonder that computer illiterate people think it synonym with computer understanding. Most people don't see a computer as a gadget but as a tool which helps them doing their tasks. People want to write simple letters, sometimes a full resume or to look up some information or schedules in the internet or maybe get some music or play a game. People don't want to install a system or an application and they definitely don't want to work around annoyances and bugs. So as long as Microsoft cares for these people but none of the OpenSource developers, computer literacy is synonym with knowing Microsoft.

To counter this one way behavior I've created wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/). It just shows to developers how to code their applications so all these people can use and like them. But it only makes a sense if developers make wyoGuide conformant applications and users ask for wyoGuide conformant applications.

O. Wyss

File Edit Blah Blah Blah Help

CTRL X
CTRL C
CTRL V

CTRL S

Well first of all OpenSource developers should code alike. Here http://wyoguide.sf.net/, any developer can see how it canbe done correctly, how it can be done efficiently on any platform.

O. Wyss

As others have already asked, what environment you currently use is critical for any development strategy. Simply switching from C++ to Java will gain you nothing, what counts is what better framework you want to use. Since you only mentioned Windows I guess you just use plain MFC but since you also mentioned Java I guess you need to divert to a cross-platform solution.

In case your future environment has to produce binary applications you are IMHO best of if you switch to the wxWidgets framework (http://www.wxwidgets.org/). Since you already have C++ knowledge and wxWidgets is quite easy for Windows developer it shouldn't be a big problem to become familiar. I'm quite sure with wxWidgets you are equally efficient as with any Java framework but don't have the disavantages of Java.

You can use wxWidgets regardless of any platform consideration, if you just want to stick to Windows or to Linux or whatever, it doesn't matter. But if you also follow the guidelines of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) you can move your code anytime to another supported platform and just release it. As long as you just use the features of wxWidgets there's no need to recode anything on other platforms ever.

If you want to see how well this approach works try out my samples (wyoEditor http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/, wyoFiler http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/) or look into Audacity. Or look out for the commercial application Xara. There's probably no alternatives for cross-platform development as if you do single-platform development as with wxWidgets/wyoGuide. And keep in mind, no Java disadvantages.

O. Wyss

Azureus. http://azureus.sf.net/link

Microsoft is welcomed to support cross-platform development (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) so OpenSource developers can easily port their applications to Windows but Microsoft may consider that cross-platform also works in the other direction so commercial vendors are able to port to Linux. Maybe this is a win-win solution for everybody ;-)

O. Wyss

K3b

Burn At Once

Ardour

Out of luck there.

audacity

Audacity is written with wxWidgets and runs on Linux, *BSD, Mac, and Windows.

TerminatorX

Out of luck.

K9copy

DVDFab Decryptor + DVD Shrink . This solution works under Wine, too, and unlike my many experiences with K9copy, does more than segfault.

Avidemux

VirtualDub. It's GPL'd and works quite well under Wine. Unlike my experiences with Avidemux, the audio and video actually sync (wtf is it with that? transcode and DVDRip do it to, forcing me to use windows apps under wine).

Diva

Is that 3ivx? Just use XVID (gpl'd for Linux and Windows). It's activley maintained and very high quality.

K3b

Burn At Once

Ardour

Out of luck there.

audacity

Audacity is written with wxWidgets and runs on Linux, *BSD, Mac, and Windows.

TerminatorX

Out of luck.

K9copy

DVDFab Decryptor + DVD Shrink . This solution works under Wine, too, and unlike my many experiences with K9copy, does more than segfault.

Avidemux

VirtualDub. It's GPL'd and works quite well under Wine. Unlike my experiences with Avidemux, the audio and video actually sync (wtf is it with that? transcode and DVDRip do it to, forcing me to use windows apps under wine).

Diva

Is that 3ivx? Just use XVID (gpl'd for Linux and Windows). It's activley maintained and very high quality.

Telepathy is great... idea, http://tapioca-voip.sf.net/ is a great, working software, you can run on your system now and will be able to run it on your 770 as soon as you have GStreamer 0.10 running there, and this is the next version of maemo!

Really, try it out, it's really cool so far. Jabber and GTalk support is exposed in GUI, but SIP and others does work with underlying framework, just need some GUI work to make it available to users.

The VoIP component has already been ported to Linux. Its called Libjingle and its open source. There are working implementations on Linux (Psi and tapioca voip) and even a bare bones window client (MyJingle). Google have done more than enough. With some luck the Summer of Code should bring about some good progress in this department.

When I was working on the PMD plugin for JDeveloper I had some problems getting it up to date for JDev 10.1.3. But a couple of Oracle guys monitor the JDev forums and were quite helpful in sorting through the updates.

End result was that I was able to get rid of a bunch of my old JList hackery and just use their built in CompilerPage component; good times. Screenshots are here...

ffmpeg -i inputfile.flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy outputfile.asf

SQL variations ... While SQL is a standard, there seems to be some very relaxed definitions of full adherence to that standard...

Or, as Jim Starkey said: 'SQL isn't a standard but a theme'. For a book, it means list 5 different dialects. For regular developers (not database specialists) it means knowing only one dialect really well. For an application it means, running only with one database (mostly). It would be really cool the industry could get together and define a 'real' standard. Could be a subset of SQL (http://ldbc.sf.net/) or a new language (http://newsql.sf.net/). Things would get simpler then.

(Side note: LDBC and NewSQL are both projects I started, but interest was quite low; currently I'm working on a new database engine http://www.h2database.com/ where I try to be compatible as much as possible with existing databases)

Or is there some other solution? I don't think that that O/R mapping tools will solve the problem completely, as there is always the need interactive database queries. Maybe the Microsoft extension to C# (forgot the name) could be a solution? Other ideas?

SQL variations ... While SQL is a standard, there seems to be some very relaxed definitions of full adherence to that standard...

Or, as Jim Starkey said: 'SQL isn't a standard but a theme'. For a book, it means list 5 different dialects. For regular developers (not database specialists) it means knowing only one dialect really well. For an application it means, running only with one database (mostly). It would be really cool the industry could get together and define a 'real' standard. Could be a subset of SQL (http://ldbc.sf.net/) or a new language (http://newsql.sf.net/). Things would get simpler then.

(Side note: LDBC and NewSQL are both projects I started, but interest was quite low; currently I'm working on a new database engine http://www.h2database.com/ where I try to be compatible as much as possible with existing databases)

Or is there some other solution? I don't think that that O/R mapping tools will solve the problem completely, as there is always the need interactive database queries. Maybe the Microsoft extension to C# (forgot the name) could be a solution? Other ideas?

Get a market share above 10% and vendors with consider to release on Linux. Get a market share above 20% and vendors will release on Linux. Get a market share above 30% and vendors can't afford not to release on Linux!

How to get a higher market share? Fix the first top inhibitor of the Linux adoption (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf). How to fix this inhibitor? One important action (IMHO the most important) is to declare the guidelines of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) as the Linux application standard!

There might be other actions to fix this inhibitor but I don't know any. Just voice them here and now. But be sure unless this inhibitor isn't fix fast, the market share of Linux will stay low, too low for any significance.

IMHO it's essential that anybody (maybe O'Reilly) starts a Linux conference about this subject to discuss any possibility.

O. Wyss

Notice any difference? In the kernel, everything is pretty much either some long-standing standard or developed by some large corporation

Yes I notice a difference: The filesystems in the kernel tree are general-purpose, performance-critical filesystems, meanwhile a fuseftp filesystem is quite the contrary.

Noticed how FUSE is a linux thing that allows people to write filesystems in userspace *despite of being a monolithic kernel*, giving users all the advantages of a microkernel without any of the disadvantages? Did you already noticed how this same approach is already used for some driver, like all the usb drivers implemented in userspace in top of libusb, X.org 2D drivers or CUPS printing drivers?

Just to mention that DOSBox, the full DOS-on-PC emulation software recommended by another slashdotter, can throttle how much CPU instruction are emulated per second, so it can be an additionnal way to throttle speed to avoid bugs-that-only-appear-above-1Ghz.

Also, note that this emulator can map real ports to ports inside emulator (like com ports). It is possible to use your legacy hardware (modems, etc...) with drivers running inside the emulator.