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Dvorak on "Winners and Duds of the Millennium"
erikaaboe wrote to us with yet-another-end-of-year round-up. This time around
Dvorak has taken a look at the past year. Winners include Linux, dot-com millionaires, while WinCE and DIVX are flops. Interesting commentary on the dot-com millionaries though.
why do people assume that if you're getting rich that you don't have a life?
people need to deal with the fact that its not a zero-sum game - those who have the guts to risk it on a great start-up may end up being wealthy AND happy, if they play their cards right.
not to sound catty, but so many programmers i know, who missed out on great chances to be rich, rationalize it by telling me they're happy and i'm not.
the United States Naval Observatory
the Royal Greenwich Observatory
It matters because you cannot arbitrarily drop years from centuries or millennia and still have a functional calendar everyone can use. We have thousands of books of history based on each century encompassing years 1-100 inclusive. If you decide the 20th Century ends at the end of 1999, then which past century loses the year? (Only 1999 years have passed in the Gregorian calendar.)
If you change something like the method that time is measured or counted by, without unilaterally implementing it as a standard, you cause pervasive problems. As far as i am aware, there has been no world-wide agreement or even a Papal Bull from the Vatican (who created the Gregorian calendar) to short the 20th Century one year.
Mr. Dvorak thinks that either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs should have been Person of the Year in Time?
He was being sarcastic.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Well, I'm about to find out. My new year/century/millennium resolution is to learn Java. I've down-loaded the latest JDK from Sun, the Forte'/Sun NetBeans IDE and Inprise's JBuilder IDE. Bought two books and am studying even now.
I plan to develop and deploy a couple of "test the water" cross-platform Enterprise apps based on Java and MySQL.
We'll see.
You're one of the few people on Slashdot that has the penis to use your real name. Most people here who are 'real' just go by their Hobbit-character handle like a bunch of kids on a BBS. Thats assuming, of course, your real name is Andrew Schaefer. No way any of us can know for sure.
Want to play with some one's head? Switch their KB properties to LEFT-HANDED Dvorak!
We have over 1500 PCs and servers. Not ONE KB other than straight or MS "wave" qwerty.
Of 20 IS/IT folks I asked, only one other had even heard of a Dvorak board.
How did that other Dvorak ever have enough juice to get it in as an option in Win?? or *nix anyway?
"The impossible just takes longer."
Every first person shooter is almost the same. Go and shoot everything you see. What fun can there be in that?
And can someone explain to me the difference between Quake 1 and Quake 3? What more monsters and better hardware acceleration? You pay money for this?
Ayee. No wonder the gaming industry makes so much money.
Yes I am with you there... it is not the first time this dude (if he is ONE dude) appears.
Usually comes up in discussions that have to do with Java and Linux (the two only things that make MS employee shit in there pants).
I never realized the palm, like Java and Linux is another market standard MS doesn't not own.
sig hell indeed
In this world, you get paid for
... errr ... venturers say, their job is to load up with bear on the best bets), guess which renumeration scheme is favored? Human nature is perverse in that if you make a task look easy (think of an experienced TV repairman coming in, taking one look and replacing the exact part that failed), you tend to underappreciate it. You can see the "effortless" basket scoring or the clever hack but how many people realise the years or decades of training that led to it?
a) time
b) task
c) talent
Time spent is aasy to measure, task-based performance requires some management competence (hah) in defining specifications and quality, and creative talent is more a wild-card in that you can't always predict the outcome.
Now in a risk adverse commercial environment (despite what capital vultures
LL
The only thing worse than a linux zealot is a microsoft zealot... sheesh.. at least the linux zealots have a cause to fight for... the ms zealots... well.. it just beats the hell out of me. Unless of course you subscribe to the conspiracy theory, in which case you would be a MS employee or an MS plant here on slashdot to try to make the case for those oppresive monopolistic bastards from seattle.
sieg heil little buddy...
I contracted at Yahoo.
Yahoo is almost all java, servlets to be precise.
The desktop is considered to be the only viable thing by people who are only aware of the desktop. Anything more complex than the desktop (anything else) is too complicated for them to consider.
I _am_ in the real world, and the real world runs on servers, not desktops. Desktops are only access points.
Linux' (and *BSD and Unix in general) success has been on _servers_, it is only because people liek Dvorak are aware of its existence that it is being considered for a clickety-clicky role - the only thing that matters to them.
Somebody _tried_ to make servers clickety clicky, it was called NT. Instead of making servers easier to manage it made for badly managed servers.
Maybe it's time for "corporate America" to realise that there is more to computers than desktops. But then again, in "corporate America" the lowest common denominator tends to rule.
Your response is evidence of this blindness.
-M
No, thats just what Sun would want you to believe.
And as for "using Java", I've usedit since version 0.9, so I can tell you I've probably dug deeper into its disgusting bowels than you would care to.
Don't forget Hitler _was_ Time's Man of the Year back in '36 (I think that year is right....)
I agree that innovation isn't the deciding factor in "Man of the Year" - making; rather it's _influence_ on the world. Gates has certainly influenced the world! Good or bad, you decide.
Hey - how about Alan Greenspan (Fed Chair) for Man of the Decade? Makes sense to me...
I think Time's selection of Bezos is more of the dot-com millionaire hype, as printed matter tries to assert validity in the Internet age.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
how come I make $400k/year contracting in java???
I have got so much demand, recruiter calling me every other day and I don't have more friends to send them too... And this is in NYC... I can imagine what it is in Silicon Valley.
You don't believe me??? try www.dice.com and see for yourselves.
matt b.
Sure it doesn't have the marketshare Bill was hoping to get, but for some specific task it is still the only kid in the block. PalmOS is more efficient for basic work (scheduling/notes/etc..) but when you want to make some specific apps or a little color/sound, there's nothing else that a good WinCE thing. Try making a good custom database with pictures on a palm V and its 2 MB of memory.... beside, having a stripped down Win32 API also helps porting.
Where? What sites? Enough BS, tell me what major sites are generated entirely with Java on the server side.
I know a little about java multithreaded servers. I know they run out of memory or the JVM crashes after at most 2 days of straight operation. This in contrast to my C++ multithreaded DB-connected servers that have been running for 6 months straight. I know that java cannot perform asynchronous IO unless you use 2 threads per socket. This forces your Java server to have at most 500 concurrent socket connections. You run out of threads long before the equivalent C++ server that checks IO on thousands of sockets via select() and using a thread pool. I know that java's core classes are needlessly over-synchronized (including String and StringBuffer) which penalizes performance by at least 20%. I know that Java thrashes the shit out of the heap due to the fact that every little object must be heap allocated. I know that a typical Java application needs four times as much in-process memory as an equivalent C++ program. I could keep going. Sure, C++ may take a little discipline and a little longer to write, but in the end you get a more solid and robust server that can run 10X as long in production (if not more). Use your brain - not your heart when talking about the usefulness of a programming language.
One of the things that I learned in my Industrial Engineering days is that people who work long hard hours every week are less productive in absolute terms. That is, they accomplish less work than people who put in a productive 40 hours per week. This isn't because they work less as they get tired, it's because more of their work is rework and the productivity of rework is always zero. Think how much programming time is spent fixing bugs that shouldn't have occurred in the first place. Now....I haven't meant a manager yet that believed that. I've always noticed that the hard workers who spend 70 hour weeks fixing the code that they didn't get right the first, second or third time generally have bright futures.
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knout (n) - A leather scourge used for flogging
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Most commercial licenses (like NT) explicitly tell you that it isn't designed to work in life-critical areas like managing a nuclear power plant, hospital life support equipment, etc.
Of course, they'd probably settle anyway, just to try to avoid the bad press ("NT kills premature babies on incubator!" what a PR nightmare that would be)
Name specific sites or quit telling me "Java is taking over the web".
Oh, and don't come back with javalobby.org, I mean a real site.
I used to use my old BBS handle, but figured that I did not need hide my identity. If you feel the need, I really don't care. I don't have anything to prove to you. No one really gives a rats ass if I use a handle or my real name, so I choose the latter.
The number that we use to represent years is completely arbitrary. So *what* if some christian sin-vessel was born a few years earlier than people originally thought? They didn't adjust the years, did they? The third thousand-year period since the beginning of The Big Reset in 1 AD will begin on January 1, 2001. *End of story.* The numbers are what they are. What are we, ancient Greeks? Why this need to attach senseless mythology to an arbitrary number? Especially when the number isn't even accurate?
I honestly don't care what monks screwed 3000 years ago. We live by Georgian Calendar system. But there are many others. Check this link out. http://www.unreality.org/ubb/ Forum13/HTML/001088.html BTW the "popular" is what bugs me. If everyone who sees a cat sais it's a dog but you know it's a cat , are you wrong?
Dvorak rated the internet as a fad not too many years ago. He (and ZDNet in general) ignored Linux until recently (and they STILL don't understand it). He's stated, at one time or another, that everything was dead and that everything was hot.
Dvorak is the computer world's version of a tabloid psychic. Make a zillion predictions and one or two of them is bound to be on target. Nevermind about the rest; people forget.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Dvorak: "Listen to the pundits, and you'd think the world began when the Web arrived. "
Didn't it? What did I miss?
>
Exactly the point. It's stupid to try and have exact accuracy on this point. Exact accuracy demands 1997, which no one will accept, so why not go with the round number, which is the most useful definition?
*sigh* Your exact accuracy is based on the assumption that the Christian religion is correct. Not only that, but also that the more accurate idea of when Christ was born is also correct. For that matter, we shouldn't have the year start in January, but rather closer to April. And what about that whole "Sabbath is the 7th day of the week" thing? Shouldn't we start the week off on Monday then?
Of course, that's why many scientists tend to use CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before the Common Era), instead of A.D. (Anno Domini) and B.C. (Before Christ) when they use dates. And in that respect, the Common Era began in 1 CE. This is a lot nicer to people of other religions (and there are a lot more non-Christians out there than Christians), providing an arbitrary break in the calendar.
As for the start of the millennium, I figure Jan. 1, 2000 is a good date. It will certainly be the first day of a millennium. You know, August 12, 1954 was also the start of a millennium. However, the 3rd Millennium (proper noun) will begin on Jan. 1, 2001. (As will the 21st Century, but no one seems to care about that.)
Some of those Silicon Valley startups expect you to work 16 hour days and sleep at work. I know some guys who have beds right above their desks. What do you think? is it worth it?
By the way, has anybody read "Dvorak Predicts : An Insider's Look at the Computer Industry" lately to see just how wrong John Dvorkak was? Seems like there was little mention of little things like, say, Open Source or the Internet in the book...
BRAVO! You're hired! Please report to $TECH_RAG tomorrow. Welcome aboard.
Hmm....I think he forgot "lots more users, lots more production servers, a few more paper millionaries, lots more code" and a bunch of other things. Dvorak has never been a friend of Linux, but his spin on this makes it look like Linux was just vaporware instead of something people are using all the time in production, at home, and at play.
If anything, I'd say the Dot-com millionaires is more hype then anything else.
He hit the nail on the head with DIVX though.
(Remember Beta Vs. VHS? By technology alone Betamax should have won, but do you own a Beta VCR?)
Still with this urban legend? C'mon people, grow up...
Beta failed because the tapes were too short. Putting a movie on a beta tape was too expensive compared to VHS, so the market moved to where the software was available.
I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to read Dvorak articles anymore. But I keep coming back and they keep getting worse and worse. He's just another media fraud that doesn't know a thing.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I think that the quick turnaround of game technologies was incredible this year. Unreal Tournament and the Q3 demos let us get hooked on the games, and then all of a sudden they were on the shelves, finished. This is not just a great way to develop their software, but a cool marketing thing as well.
It's the same. 6 pin connectors provide power to the device from the 1394 bus. 4 pin connectors provide the 1394 interface, but the device has to provide it's own power.
Mr. Dvorak thinks that either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs should have been Person of the Year in Time? I mean, c'mon, Jeff Beezos (sorry if spelled wrong) isn't worthy, but in all honesty, he's more worthy than either of those two. *puts on asbestos clothing* At least he did something innovative. To my admittedly limited knowledge, Amazon helped kick off the e-commerce revolution. I still don't agree with his being chosen as Person of the Year, but c'mon, John...Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? You've got to be kidding me...
Well said.
We are all too focused on the "whizbang" aspects of new technology and of course, the potential to make obscene amounts of money. What no one seems to notice that there are social implications, often bad ones. The mainstream public is completely uneducated on these issues since they get there news from the mainstream media, which is completely clueless.
Folks, this is not a good thing. Technology is not going to solve our basic problems. It is not going to make us all rich. It is no substitute for real life interaction and experience.
I'm so burned out on the hype, that technology has started to bore me. It might be more fun to trash my TV and computer and go live in a log cabin in the middle of the woods. That would be REAL living , much better than an "e-whatever" simulation.
Directory Services - Once you are done with your st00p1d (come on, if you're going to pretend to be l33t, g0 4ll th3 w4y) OS wars then you can read up on things such as LDAP and X.500
/.
There are more to computers than operating systems and games, but don't tell anyone at
If you don't understand how objects are created, you're going to be a worthless Java programmer.
slashdot is a fucking joke.
Really funny :)
The fact that this is an ITALIAN company, selling their product in the ITALIAN market, where you can buy their CE phone in the ITALIAN stores is beside the point, right?
Agreed, that #5 should be "cutting the cord" re cell phones and palms. Maybe it should be even higher. Back about July, I began noticing Palm Pilots in the hands of individuals I knew to be rather techno-cautious, maybe even techno-phobic. It's one thing to see geeks with a new tech goodie, it's quite another to see Junior League types turning up with Palm Pilots in their purses. Very, very interesting, I thought, as we exchanged business cards in a most enlightened fashion.
OK, now what?
The November 1999 medium Palo Alto home purchase
price was $899,000.
Many issues have two sides, Dovark considers them both.
I was not basing my appraisal of him on his Microsoft or Linux opinions. I was also more speaking about his articles in general, not this particular piece. If anything, this makes him even more of a simple media darling, as Linux is the wonderful media darling of the moment. Besides, all he needs to do is get /. to link to him consistently and he's all set.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I spell it "Jeff Bozo". I mean honestly, how long does he think it will take him to become the latest high profile exec behind bars pulling what is clearly a scam such as he is?
I agree, I'm certainly not insightful, but my little comment was also definitely not redundant. If I remember correctly (which I probably don't), I was the first one to post my drivel. But if they keep giving Dvorak airtime, why not me? ;)
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
actually sun has opened up a lot of java. I forget everything that they did, but I think that they are basically going to manage the standards and let others create implementations of it. I beleive that they also abolished many if not all of their royalty policies so it will open up many opurtunities for some companies.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
You're correct, standard of living should NOT be measured in terms of absolute dollars, but rather in terms of salary/cost of living well...
I'll leave out the obvious things like users learning/reading something a little before calling tech support or ask on IRC/Usenet, the media doing actual journalism, blaming everything on global warming, or AC dumb posts becasue those will never go away.
Feel free to add more. It's therapeutic to let it all out before we all die in a blaze of nuclear weapons and script kiddies...
actually sun has opened up a lot of java. I forget everything that they did, but I think that they are basically going to manage the standards and let others create implementations of it. I beleive that they also abolished many if not all of their royalty policies so it will open up many oportunities for some companies.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I'm telling you now, on behalf of everyone on the planet bright enough to spell "Millennium", we get it. Let it go.
the LCD screens were something out of this world.
I am starting to believe the guys that say that java is everywhere behind the scenes... are other people seeing that as well?
IEEE-1394 is FireWire AND iLink. Those names are just marketing blather from Apple and Sony, respectively. The license fee for all parties is only $.25 per system.
The 6-pin and 4-pin ends of a 1394 cable are part of the same spec. The 6-pin ended cables are capable of running bus-powered devices using the 12VDC supplied by the port on the host system, while the 4-pin ended ones are data only. If you use a 6-pin to 4-pin cable, the bus power is ignored. A Sony DV camera w/iLink works great with a G4 or iMac w/FireWire, BTW.
Hope this clears some things up,
Marc
- Semper Ubi Sub Ubi!
I think he knows that, he's just exaggerating to make a point. When someone says something like "everyone has x" do they really mean everyone? Of course not.
When can I get one? When can I run five different apps in console windows? Huh? Can I get one please? Huh? Can I? Can I?
I didn't say NT was crap. I said its "clickety-click" approach to server management made for badly managed servers.
If your sysadmins aren't draftees from the desktop helpdesk, then NT can indeed be run well and crash much less than NT run by recycled end-users.
As for the tired old "can't sue Linux" BS, go read your commercial license agreement. You can't sue MS or Sun or HP or any other vendor if you lose your data. Maybe you can sue a VAR but you can't sue the big guys, they have protected themeselves from product liability suits in their product licenses.
What's the matter, can't you read?
> That, in a nutshell, is why Linux is not making headway into the corporate market.
My God it amazes me how out of touch some people are!
-M
What's really great is seeing all those people who just can't shut up about something that nobody cares about...
Q: If everyone decides that the word "gay" means homosexual, but you refuse to accept it, and continue to believe it only means "happy" is it did originally, are you wrong?
A: Yes. Language is a non-static, evolving entity. Words mean what society decides they mean. If Century/Millennium means "00", then that's what they mean. Note that there is nothing wrong with this; definitions generally change because they become more useful. In this case, "00" is a more useful definition, and thus it has been adopted.
---
I'm glad YOU get it. But why wouldn't everyone else? BTW I'm bright enought even if I can't spell "Millennium". "Let it go"???? Why? People's ignorance or acceptance of what media sais is what drives me really mad. Russian.
> If you decide the 20th Century ends at the end of 1999, then which past century loses the year?
it would obviously have to be this century, because the end of the 19th century was celebrated on dec 31st of the year 1900. 1901 was therefore officially recognized as the beginning of the 20th century. of course now that we've decided that the 20th century gets the shaft, we have to pick which decade of the 20th century only has 9 years....
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Why be crammed in a city anymore?
It's a good way get experience. Once I've done that I would like to move to somewhere like Nevada (while retaining roughly the same salary).
I also have to pay off my student loan so raw $ is important for that.
BTW I hear 2/3 neighbor's toilets flushing.
John Dvorak is related to the creator of the Dvorak keyboard and has mentioned this before.
and you know what? there's someone making more than me using some godawful language. its meaningless.
When I read comments like the ones Dvorak made on Java I really have to wonder about his accuracy in other areas. He seems to equate Javas obvious failures with the failure of Java itself. Applets, while they have some niche applications, were a flop. JavaOS and the Java based NC were also flops. Why? Because the idea was to force a technology into an area where it really did not fit very well. What does this have to do with Java itself failing? Very little really.
Java is very good for some things and its use is exploding in those areas. The reason most people seem to think it has failed is that these areas fall into an end user blind spot. People could see applets (and later the lack thereof), but the areas where Java is now primarily being used are not nearly as visible to your average person. Java is now being used for middleware. It lives on the server side these days in the form of servlets and beans. Just because you don't see it does not mean it is not there. The number of Java programmers and the use of Java in development is swiftly growing.
As for Jini, it is still relatively new and its fate has yet to be determined. For my part I suspect it will catch on, but not in its incarnation as an interface to hardware devices (despite the hype, this is not its only use).
Ultimately I think it would be far more accurate to say that Sun was a flop this year. The technology they created is prospering, the companies standing in the industry is not.
As an aside, if you are a Java programmer and are looking for work (in NYC), the company I work for is now hiring. If you're interested send me a resume at: jkeck@finansys.com
USB was also a bit slow to start after iMacs made it the standard, but it picked up. Firewire is a bit behind USB, but the paths are the same.
Firewire will be ubiquitous, as will USB.
Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky... Dvorak.... Icky...
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure. Mark Twain
I am in the middle of getting my BS (a little over it I think) in CS (that little play on acronyms was not intentional) and work for a foriegn owned yet independent american company (I am a CS major so I have no real idea what that means but I am sure it has something to do with taxes) and I make a damn good salary as a UN*X and Linux admin. I am not uncommon (despite what I try to tell myself), I started out in electronics, got into UN*X and here I am. Granted, I spent some time doing some really low paying work, but I have never worked at any place for less than 2 years, I have always paid the bills and I have always liked my job. If one person can do it (especially a joe like me) anyone can do it.
Do I think busting my balls in SV is worth it? NO. I would prefer to settle into a scenario - gee exactly like the one I have now - where I do support as an admin and spend spare time working cool UN*X stuff I like. Makes more sense to someone like me. As time goes on I will most likely examine changing fields, but always managing to get job A that you like so you can twiddle your thumbs looking for job B is very important. I think that SV is far too volatile for most people and agree that talent is being both exploited and wasted (to a degree) in the green rush.
" -- ow my brain hurts again -- "
We could have eliminated all of this argument if we HAD a year 0 (counting 0-999, 100-1999). Why didn't we? In programming, we store 16 items in an array [0.15].
:)
It would have made things much easier. How many years between 5 and 15? 10. How many years between -5 and 5 (5 B.C. to 5 A.D.)? 9. Does that make sense? NO!
Too bad we can't define one now - that would renumber this year to 1998.
First, yea im one dude. So I like Anonymous Coward, aparently I'm not the only one.
Second - zealots suck. period. They provide no rational and only cloud the discusion. But hey, that's just my opinion.
Third - Why is it that everytime I (or anyone) says anything other than "Linux ownzzzzz ur 4zz" we are called MS zealots. You know, I have actually left two positions in the last 24 months because of the companies blind and ignornat commitment to NT. One where I was arguing for Unix (SCO/AIX combo to be exact), the other of Netware/NDS. I won both technical arguments (in short I WAS RIGHT!), too bad that means that kaka. I am not an MS zealot, Im not even a fan. I use NT when it is the correct tool for the job. That isn't too often, but guess what it does happen. Honestly I am just glad that I am out of the server crap (religious wars NT, Linux, BSD, Netware, OS/2, "real" Unix, etc.) and into networking. Cisco and Nortel, makes me a happy man.
Fourth - I don't watch x-files...sorry...plant thing makes little sense to me..but in all honesty I just dont believe that Microsoft fears Slashdot...I could be wrong though..
So does your logic make a kilobyte contain 1000 bytes instead of 1024? Just because it's easy to count? heh
Uh, no. The Ce phone was announced in February, manufactured during the summer and in the stores by October.
It's December, now. That is, two months AFTER October...
..is, is that people in certian media outlets have been told NOT to tell the correct date by thre sponsers. Because they want to make payola from the hype this year, and they have planes to hype it again next year. I post AC because I work at one of these outlets, and I like my job.
sig hell, that's funny, are you going to sing It's Christmas Time in Hell next?
You know the Linux crowd may not like it, but I still believe in directories (NDS) and Java. This means Novell to me. It's pretty damn near impossible to be a MS zealot and rooting for Novell. But that's okay, don't let reality rain on your parade. Don't let the idea that someone could actually say something in favor of Microsoft and not be a flaming idiot zealot sink in. Don't take off the rose-colored glasses, they make the penguin look so sweet.
When the discussion comes up on Java my only response is that I don't care if it has been sent to a standards board or not.
Get over yourself.
jhartzell
The idea was started by a a law firm.Isn't that wierd?
you monkey, can't even go to the sun site
Really, come on, what is this drivel? Workers are exploited, period. Most "geeks", as you call them (and by which I suppose you to mean young introverted males (becuase it is mostly guys, isn't it?) with an interest in technology, particularly computers, bordering on the obssessive) work in well-paid hi-tech jobs, and are a hell of a lot better of than, say, a Uranium miner in South Africa or a textile worker in the Philipines. Yes, they are exploited; of course they are; but have a bit of perspective.
Because of the current attitude of the net I feel the following information is needed. Mostly because people can't take info on face value, so here goes:
I have programmed in C, C++,VB,Java,Perl/tk, Tcl/tk.
If I was given a choice, at this moment, what I would use to create a 'GUI' web ap. It would be Perl/Tk. that is my opinion based on MY experience.
Remeber when you could have a discussion about this and the insightfull, intelligent comments that you could learn from, outnumbered the flames?
Well, I certainly very often disagree with him, and there are times when he is just plain wrong or misinformed, but the truth is, that many people "out there" listen to him, and I get the impression that many people agree with him. So, knowing what he has to say, and getting a feeling for what people are thinking is worth it. Does it make a big difference that /. is giving him airtime? I think it's OK. Besides, I'm not sure there is such a thing as an intelligent anti-open source antagonist.
Sure it is. It demosntrates how Java is so absurdly verbose.
Sun could have really gone places with language design, but I understand why they made it as verbose as they did - the bottom line is that Java is being pushed at the people who use VB, who tend to have very little exposure to alternative languages, and prefer to have things spelled out, even if it is painful.
Note that I didn't say they were stupid or ignorant...just typically not experienced in alternatives. I have found this to be overwhelmingly true dealing with posters on JavaLobby. They typically haven't seen any Lisp, ML, Scheme, or any of the other wacky an ingenious languages out there.
Anybody who expects two and two to add up to four tomorrow cares about not letting popular idiocies change math into a voting contest.
you proved my point for me.
C++ has "holes" that allow programmers to violate encapsulation and change types dangerously, with only subtle hints in the code.
Replace "Java" with "C++" and then "C++" with "Java" in the above statements and you will obtain statements that are equally true.
GNU Eiffel compiles to Java byte code.
This anonymous coward is a Sun Certified Java Programmer.
i'm not trying to start a flame war, but i've noticed on javalobby.org in particular, most posters don't even know what dynamic binding is.
listening to their advocacy is painful.
And while we're at it, were you born in the 19th or the 20th century? If you say 20th, but you pretend that the 21st century starts in a few days, then you are an inconsistent idiot.
LEARN TO FUCKING COUNT, WHY DON'T YOU?
I am not saying Java is or isn't dead/dying, but that the money you make is the short sighted way of doing things.
you may be unaware that there are various interperted lang available for the platform. ie Pocket C and personalJava
Where are we supposed to discuss an article like this, that already has it's own discussion forum?
On Slashdot?
On Zdnet?
I guess it all just ends up on who you want your audience to be (or what your audience's OS is..)
Screw this shit, I've had it/I ain't no mister cool./I'm a pig, I'm a dog/Excuse me if I drool./stm
Sun has driven it into the ground. They won't open it, which is too bad. It'll be just another VB soon.
although it must be also admitted that an education focused purely into high tech might find such nicities as "The Lays of Ancient Rome" as unimportant, or ignorantly read into it a suggestive title where nothing of the sort exists.
Cluelessness has many guises, and it is probably a wise person who knows their blind spots.
That's not the point. FireWire is a high-speed high-bandwidth data transfer technology and it's doing quite well exactly where it was originally aimed: digital content capture/creation. There's a reason the iMacDV has FireWire: content users demanded it. I'm less clear on why they're using iMacs, but what the hey, I'm sure they know what they need better than I do. He's not slamming USB for the time it took to take off, and it's much more consumer oriented and had a much greater push for adoption from MS. Bit of a double standard, that.
Perhaps the only good reason to keep Firewire off Linux is that it is too easy to use. Plug in a drive and it is automaticaly mounted, self powered and terminated?
:-)
No "real" Linux machine could ever suffer the indignity of such a device!
Where's the killer Java applications Sun boasted about 5 years ago? My fridge and toaster still do not speak JINI. My word processor and spreadsheet is still written in C++. Sun did a 180 degree turn 2 years ago when they realized Java was too slow for GUI applications and then they are now trying to claim the server space. So, is Java just a better perl?
After four years of marketing and hype, C/C++ still is the tool of choice for systems/platforms, and Perl is still the king of scripting and CGI.
Sun never really seemed to recover from the death of applets.
In the video world, Firewire is available in almost every cool DV camcorders, including the Sony VX-1000, the most used DV camcorder for broadcast uses (interviewing people living in trees, or for use in Kosovo without sticking out like a BetaCam would).
The benchmarks I have seen comparing Java Servlets with mod_perl show a similar results - Perl faster at some things and Java faster others - depending on the platform and task.
// form variables, etc. // methods for providing output
// set content type of HTTP header
// create an output object and send our response
What more important for myself and my customers is program productivity. As an illustration:
Hello world in Java:
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
public class HelloWorld extends HttpServlet {
public void doGet (
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response )
throws ServletException, IOException {
response.setContentType ( "text/html" );
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter ();
out.println ( "Hello World\n" +
"Hello World!" );
out.close ();
}
}
Hello world in Perl
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello World\n";
print "Hello World!";
In practice I use html templates with Perl such as:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
$title = "Hello World";
$body_str = "Hello World!";
process_template("hello_world_blue.html");
where the function process_template reads in the argument file and replaces the embedded strings "$title$" and "$body_str$" with the values of the variables. This way the code is seperate from the presentation and a single code base can be used to call several different sets of templates and provide a different look and feel per template set.
Time Magazine is owned by Time-Warner, the same company that owns CNN.
Apple is owned by Apple Computers Inc. Steve Jobs has way closer ties to Disney through Pixar than he does Time-Warner.
The millennium ends this year. No question about it. You are absolutely wrong. Jan 1, 2000 is the beginning of the 3rd millennium.
Sure. Every day is the beginning of a new millenium. Come to think of it, every day is the end of one too. Ain't that a bitch?
However, if you say that Jan 1, 2000 is the beginning of the 3rd millenium since Jan 1, 1 AD, then you are in fact wrong.
More importantly, everyone damn well knows it. It been in the press and the news so much that everyone understands it. It's a simple concept.
Even more importantly, it's not going to interfere with the party. I'm not celebrating a new millenium, I'm gonna be there for the party, man... Time to kick back and drink myself stupid. I sure won't let the fact that the next millenium is a year later screw up my buzz, that's for sure.
Oh, and the 1997 thing: Who cares? The majority of the world doesn't believe in Christ, so piss off already.
Just my $2E-2...
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
According to Dvorak, "Linux: Lots of hype. Lots of hope" ...of I see. So this desktop that I'm typing this message in here doesn't exist? This GNOME desktop I configured is all vaporware? Who that's impressive. I must be running some kind of background process that makes me think I'm connected to the Internet all day since this Linux stuff I thought I was using really doesn't exist. Wow I'm suprised.
Bill Gates should be Time's Person of the Year? Well, yeah if you believe Microsoft's PR machine that mascot Bill has anything to do with what goes on at Microsoft. You may as well nominate this inanimate carbon rod for being repsonsible for nuclear power.
uh...dude...Fruity Pebbles is like way overrated. There is just toooo much stuff going on at the same time. It's just not possible to have a positive breakfast experience with all those fruit flavors trying to gain the attention of my taste buds all at the same time. nope...no thanks.
The mark of a great breakfast cereal is a singleness of purpose.. and for my mind there can only be one that pulled that off...Cocoa Puffs.
3. FireWire. This technology will be the fiasco of the decade if it doesn't appear soon on something other than a Macintosh and a camcorder.
You mean like the playstation two, or my high-end Dell? Or maybe something like a computer belonging to someone who wants really neato toys? SCSI didn't die either, and that wasn't for lack of competition. Good lord, man, how long do you need to work in an industry to learn that standards that cost an end-user more than a buck fifty american don't spring up overnight?
BTW, that that camcorder supports FireWire is one of my main reasons for considering buying it. If I can use a FireWire hard drive and camcorder to connect to my PlayStation, which has more than enough graphic horsepower to do realtime video editing, I think I might just be a fairly happy man. 'Specially since I can then just pump it out through S-Video to my S-Video capable VCR, and tape something right cleanly.
This, of course, after I have enough money to buy myself a disposable razor, but that's another story.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Why didnt someone tell me that DIVX died? :)
:)
mitemouse
Ohwell.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Ok, here's a real world case. We use Java everywhere, 100%, on our site. We ban Perl - unmaintainable. We have a complex e-commerce site. From nothing to deloyment, two and half months, with only 4 developers. I know of a sort of competiting site doing things in Perl and CGI. They have more than double of the developers. They have a much simpler business model, much less functionality. Took them three months to finish. And the site is UNMAINTAINABLE and CAN'T BE EXTENDED! They are in the process of scratching the site and re-write it. And what are they going to write it in? Java! Hah. While they are redoing their site, we are applying our model to new additional markets, adding new functionalities. Java is a joy to work with.
Dvorak didn't say that Windows CE was a flop, he said that Windows CE handheld computers were a flop. That's a huge difference, as anyone who read the Slashdot article "386 Based Linux Powered Telephone" can tell you. You know, the one where Slashdot told us of this wonderful phone that supposedly ran Linux, when everyone who actually looked at the company's site could see that it ran Windows CE and that Linux wasn't even mentioned. (Needless to say, another black eye for Slashdot reporting.)
But hey, don't let simple fact-checking and journalistic integrity get in the way of your anti-Microsoft zealotry, right?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Next, hire a real programmer--a competent professional instead of a CGI kiddie--who writes real code, be it in Perl or anything else.
End of problem.
Until you admit are the idiot who hired a baboon instead of a programmer, you will never fix it.
Dvorak rules, I can type over 1000 words per minute on it, I just need to see if I can make a beuwulf cluster of them. Oh.. you mean the other Dvorak... sorry. :)
This is another MYTH. "Windows Powered" is simply the term that is going to be used for ALL devices powered by Windows. The Windows CE name is still the name for the OS.
The next version of the development tools for Windows CE will include the ability to produce a single binary for every processor that Windows CE runs on.
One of the things that came out in the MS anti-trust trial is that Ms stopped Intel form including a Java coprocessor on their chips or at least with them.
Before you respond, "Takes one to know one," I suggest you read my sig line. :-)
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
There is no concept of "zero" in the RN set. Therefore, no 0 year.
I wish someone in the media knew when the millennium ended...
...you are a dumb hick with no culture. I hope you enjoy your go-kart track!
Funny, Windows CE has 30 million installations. I wish I could create a flop like that!
I have met so many C++ pompous asses that I fall asleep counting them. I am sick and tired of any programmer believing he is hot shit because he knows some C++ and understands a few features on the language. Like the old fart above going "you would be crazy to ignore the heap problem", reminds of the Dilbert joke where the C++ COM consultant dies when you show him real code ..
"And the site is UNMAINTAINABLE and CAN'T BE EXTENDED!"
This is not a language issue but a design issue.
Anyway, I your a full-of-shit AC and you know it.
That's the purpose of XML, to give Java something to do. We're starting to see most of the XML apps written in Java. I hope the landscape changes next year, with XML apps written in other languages. I hate Java!
3. FireWire. This technology will be the fiasco of the decade if it doesn't appear soon on something other than a Macintosh and a camcorder.
Compaq had it on their machines as an option in summer of '98, if I recall correctly. Sony has it standard on the Vaio line, and last time I checked Compaq and Sony didn't make Macs.
This is just another example of Dvorak bashing something because of platform prejuidce and letting the facts fend for themselves. I am surprised he didn't say USB2 is one of the greatest successes of the past 1,000 years.
Programmers with your attitude keep me gainfully employed. Keep up the bad work!
It strikes me that Dvorak missed many of the most important events and/or people of the year by ignoring the advances in technology and science that took place this year. By focusing nearly entirely on the 'biz' side of things, he has a myopic view, especially for importance. Although I'll be the first to admit that the business side of a company is critical, when one looks at the past and attempts to judge importance, inventions and discoveries seem to rank right up there with savvy business dealings.
What about the first realization of a quantum computer (here)? Or IBM's advances in chip technology? Or any of a number of similar advances that are almost certainly important for the future direction of technology?
For that matter, I think leaving out the continued successful rise and development of cellular phones and the like is quite a mistake. When he puts network PCs and ubiquitous computing on the 'flop' list, he misses the most successful of the network ed appliances, the cell phone. The important future of cell phones (which I already had some good ideas about) was made utterly clear to me when, on Christmas this year, I ordered a book from Amazon on my new Sanyo-4000 using the mini-browser on the phone. Took about 4 minutes (including searching for a few things), and was amazingly easy.
Cheers,
David Andre
Its slower on the server, and its syntax is so verbose that its only useful as a teaching language.
It is in stores? Gah, my memory must be going. I can still remember the Carter Administration, (which wasn't memorable. Poor peanut farmer my ass!) so it hasn't slipped terribly far. However, I seem to have forgotten where I put my pants, and the name of the young lady next to me, so it definitly isn't what it used to be!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
>>Beta failed because the tapes were too short.
After Sony created the BII and BIII speeds, there was pleanty of room to record a couple of movies on a tape. Sony lost more because they only licensed the system to a couple of companys while JVC licensed to anybody. Even at the slowest speeds, Beta had a longer track that produced a greater head to tape speed, resulting in a better picture. Sony was also first to innovate things like "Super Beta", "Beta HiFi", "ED Beta"(Extended Definition). All of these things were followed by VHS-HQ, VHS-HiFi and SuperVHS.
In or around 1982, Sony took the Beta cassette shell and oxide tape and created a pro/broadcast format called Betacam. What was a L750 Tape that recorded for an hour in BI became a broadcast quality 30Min tape. This was done not only by the faster tape speed, but also from the fact that the Chrominance and Luminance channels were recorded on their own tracks. At about the same time, Panasonic released a format with a similar background. M-Format was based on the VHS cassette and tape path and a standard tape would record for 20 or 30 minutes of component video just like the Betacam. M-Format was a complete flop. In my entire life, I've only seen one M-Format tape deck, and it wasn't being used. In contrast, I've used hundreds of Betacam machines and their offspring. Panasonic went back to the drawing board and created MII. NBC adopted it partialy and a few TV stations bought it. A mild success but they lost too much ground to Betacam.
OK, For extra credit. From what did Betamax's name come from? Where did the name M-Format come from?
Scottgfx
TV and Media slut
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
Hemos screwed up again... Dvorak didn't say WinCE was a flop, he said WinCE handhelds were. He made no mention of cable boxes, the Sega Dreamcast or other WinCE devices.
. Dot-com paper millionaires. You have to live in the San Francisco Bay Area to appreciate fully how these folks have changed the way things work. It's amazing what money will do, especially when it falls into the hands of a 20-something with no taste. San Francisco, the capital of dot-com mania, is transforming itself into a menagerie of so-called live/work renovated loft environments. What's interesting to me is that the new construction of live/work housing is fashioned in minimum-security prison style, with cameras, metal gates, cement stairways, and uninspired architecture. 100% True I thought SOMA was a drug in a sci fi book .
Most SlashDot editors are decent, even if hopelessly biased in favor of certain things. Hemos is the only one that's a total disaster.
sometimes, if you happen to manufacture disk drives, 1000 bytes = 1 kbyte such that you can market your drive as having more bytes of storage than it really does.
I would say is this entire year. The so-called revolutions in e-commerce and communication have only lead to breakdowns in our social contacts with one another. I'm not necessarily a Luddite but I think before everyone jumps on the bandwagon of "oh how technology enriches our lives" they ought to take a logical look at how that technology affects them. E-commerce is nice and for the most part quick, but it has many inherent problems. If I'm sitting on my ass ordering WidgetPluses from ewidget.com I may be saving a dollar or two on gas but the ass I'm sitting on is also getting fatter because I never walk anywhere. Woe is to me if I dared think about returned my e-purchase not to mention woe is to me when I get my credit card statement. I'd really rather go to a discount store, outlet mall, or swap meat to find the big deal. I'm exercising, haggling on the price, and paying cash. Another biggie of this year which didn't make Dvorak's list were the mass media website outlet superstore commercial clusterfucks. The Go network is a great example, people are enticed to surf these huge mego-sites because they offer a ton of content, a ton of commercials and a big brand name. It's a matter of choice I suppose but it adds way too much of a commercial presence in a place that a handful of years ago was just for fun. Another point that made this year a giant flop was blatant journalistic sensationalism (big words, wow). Every tiny story was blown way out of preportion, especially when it had to do with schools and any kind of violence. Here in California it's been so bad I can't watch the news anymore. Everything seems to be a tool of the devil in the eyes of the media, they go around acting like evangelical patriots rooting the evil out of every story. No one tells you what happened anymore, no it's all commentary on how good or bad you ought to feel about a particular event. KCAL news I don't think I need to be told when something is "indeed a tragedy". Look at the hubub surrounding Y2K if you're skeptical of this. Back to the point of social contacts breaking down, it seems every business in the world wants to turn everyone into an overweight couch potato. You're sposed to start an e-business, buy everything through e-commerce, enjoy e-entertainment, and when that all gets boring plan an e-vacation by looking at some e-tropical island photos on someone's e-vacation website. Being able to communicate with the rest of the world is great, I get to rant on /. and e-mail my friends I don't get to see every day. But when I start staying home to do some low down e-living please jumpkick me in the face. This year was a flop because everyone seems to be caught up in the digital revolution the same way the Frenchies got caught up in their revolution in the 18th century, they ran around screaming things no one could understand and cut off anyone's heads who got in the way.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Is that slashdot keeps giving this fool airtime! I am not one to normally criticize slashdot's choices of articles to link to, but links to this guy's idiocy show up here on a fairly regular basis. I've yet to see any content in a single Dvorak column to justify this, particularly in light of slashdot's open-source emphesis.
If slashdot feels the need to have an anti-opensource antagonist, they should at least find an intelligent one to link to (if there is such a thing). The last thing an open-source forum should be doing is encouraging this sort of vapid tripe by increasing its undeserved readership even further by giving it broader exposure.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If they can't shut up about it then obviously THEY care. So your statement that nobody cares is wrong. Of course you probably meant a subject that YOU don't care about, and obviously what YOU care about is what really matters.
All this talk about what is important reminds of a question on the first test I took as a computer science student in 1984: "True or False -- Knowledge of computers is a necessity in today's society." I stopped and thought about it. Nobody in my family knew anything about computers. None of my friends knew anything about computers. None of the people where I worked knew anything about computers. Yet they were all surviving just fine. Furthermore, a large portion of the world didn't even have the opportunity to know about computers, and they were surviving. So I answered, "False." Guess what the makers of the standardized test thought the answer was! It's almost funny the way people can get blinded by their narrow little worlds. Ask a child what the biggest event of the past century was and they'll tell you, "the making of Pokemon cards." And they would be as much right as a lot of these so-called pundits.
it doesn't matter (in this case) because we don't
know WHEN Jesus was born exactly BECAUSE His
arrival is of less importance than his resurrection.
Typical of the world to miss the point entirely.
And we are not counting His age, but the ARRIVAL
of a year AFTERWARDS. Like when you start
your 22nd year on your 21st birthday.
We do like to celebrate big round numbers, don't
we? So if we counted the years after our birth,
we'd celebrate the start of our 10th year I'm sure,
regardless of whether we'd only completed 9.
Also, isn't it a bit odd to say "I'm nine" when
you're a day away from being ten? At least the
term "10th year" applies logically for the whole
year! No wonder kids give their age with fractions
involved.
And anyway, the year 2000 means a new decade to
me. I detest the way some people think 1990 was
part of the 80s, and 1980 itself wasn't!
+bah!+
Merry Millennium
Now, my rant: I think societies treatment of social outcasts has not improved one bit. Instead of geeks being singled out and taunted, often outright ignored by schools... they go off to college and go through alittle culture shock because people care about their ideas and treat them as equals. What a shame that they go off into the workplace with this utopian view that "it's all better now". No, it's not. Many geeks are exploited - paid far less than they should be, minimal benefits, often hired as "temps" or given "excempt" status to limit vacation options and whatnot. They put in 16 hour days - but get paid only for 8.
No, it isn't worth it. The question is, what are we going to do about it? It's the same in most technically-oriented work environments. Shall we revolt? Pitch our Suns into the river and dump cat5 overboard because of the "Microsoft tax" and the unfair treatment our employers have given us? I don't know. But it was mighty nice imagery, anyway.
In the words of the tshirt worn by the ne'er-do-well irish geezer on Brookside (a british soap) -- "A new millennium starts every second".
Can't we celebrate new year 2001, though -- when all this y2k problem nonsense is ovre with?
Ta.
--
it doesn't matter (in this case) because we don't
know WHEN Jesus was born exactly BECAUSE His
arrival is of less importance than his resurrection.
Typical of the world to miss the point entirely.
And we are not counting His age, but the ARRIVAL
of a year AFTERWARDS. Like when you start
your 22nd year on your 21st birthday.
We do like to celebrate big round numbers, don't
we? So if we counted the years after our birth,
we'd celebrate the start of our 10th year I'm sure,
regardless of whether we'd only completed 9.
Also, isn't it a bit odd to say "I'm nine" when
you're a day away from being ten? At least the
term "10th year" applies logically for the whole
year! No wonder kids give their age with fractions
involved.
And anyway, the year 2000 means a new decade to
me. I detest the way some people think 1990 was
part of the 80s, and 1980 itself wasn't!
+Bah!+
Happy Y2K!
I like the article... it was amusing. But I'm scratching my head here. Why was the Yahoo! version of this story linked instead of the original ZDNN version?
Well, it won't be considered by the home market OR corporate America as a desktop option until they get "clickety-clicky no brainer desktop".
Welcome to the real world.
Dude, you weren't paying attention!
The new, yet-to-be-released 486 uberphone runs WinCE
The phone they do produce, based on a 386, runs Linux.
.sig: Now legally binding!
4. Microsoft Windows CE hand-held computers. When will Microsoft and its friends learn that building a lot of little computers around a portable OS that results in incompatibility from machine to machine for various reasons is not the road to success?
Sounds pretty anti-Microsoft to me. Hemos's take on this statement seems pretty accurate to me.
The fact is that Microsoft CE is not a good operating system for handheld devices. While the hardware also has problems (like short battery life because most WinCE machines, IMHO, try to do too much (256 Colors, MP3 playing, etc.)), the Windows GUI is just completely out of place in a handheld.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Lots of talk, lots of hype. That pretty much covers 99% of what Linux is. Don't believe me, just read the /. postings.
Talk and hype, hype and talk. Deliveries on those promises are years away, if at all.
Dvork was right. Again.
The solution is... uh, don't do it. Revolt against what? Are they chaining you to your desk? It's not as if it isn't a pro-worker environment right now.
I can just see you during the Great Depression, with your sign out saying, "Hey! I just got out of college! Where's my $70K/year job? Where are my stock options? I thought I was supposed to be a millionaire in my twenties!"
This perspective brought to you by the Clue Stick. Workers today are so incredibly spoiled.
---
Dvorak is correct. Since you say this uuberphone is yet to be release, it is out of the scope of events in the past year.
I was under the impression that while the underlying technology of Sony's iLink was IEEE-1394, it uses a different pin layout than FireWire (4-pin vs. 6-pin). I'm actually glad that they called it something else besides FireWire, and not just because it screws Apple out of their screwball "royalty for using the name" fee. Just look at how much confusion there still is about the different types of SCSI -- now think about how much more confusion there would be from one of FireWire/iLink's biggest targets: home users. <shudder>
FWIW, I'd say that FireWire's been a bust so far when you consider all the hype.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Unless you are in Management, there is no big payout. Wake up and smell the cofee. It's just like any other job. They will use you and abuse as much as they can. Get as much work for as little money as possible.
Any network engineer who does that is a fool.
Everyone is discussing their "winners of 1999", so I thought I'd add my two cents worth. I know that the focus tends to be on technological advancements that make us all go oooh and ahhh, but here's something for us to keep in mind: WE are the real winners in 1999. Thanks to Linux going even more "mainstream" than before, the Linux gurus that were until recently looked at as wasting their time on an OS that would never go anywhere are suddenly a marketable commodity. People are starting to joing the Linux bandwagon in droves, bringing with them media attention and a newfound focus on Linux from some fairly big name companies. The added support, more applications, increased interest, and sudden desire to find people with Linux skills to work fo r you helps make everyone associated with Linux, from the kernel hackers to vocal and written advocates the real winners of this year, and hopefully it will carry over to the next as well
I may "only" make 65K writing code, but here in Nevada, it lets me live like a king. I've got enough land to build a go-kart race track. I don't hear the neighbor's toilet flush next door. I have room for all the toys I buy. What's the point of a great paying job if all you can afford is a $2500/month studio apt and a Honda Civid (because the parking lots in SF can't accomodate a big comfy SUV). I'm not the one *really* making less. And with the spread of high-speed internet connections, satellite TV, and web stores, living in "the boonies" isn't anywhere as limiting as it used to be. Why be crammed in a city anymore?
Compaq and Sony are still a small percentage of OEMs for computer parts. Until Apple lowers their license fee for Firewire and it shows up on motherboards like USB does, it'll be heading down the dark path to oblivion. It's not Dvorak's fault Apple makes greedy business decisions too.
Firewire is a beautiful technology that could easily unseat SCSI for high speed transfer devices if only Apple would share it.
C is still king!
Since some people are willing to put up with the conditions you describe, it clearly is worth it to them. Maybe they genuinely enjoy what they do, or maybe in their opinion the chance of becoming insanely rich is worth the short-term sacrifice. Whatever their reasons, don't assume they're wrong because you don't agree. There are plenty of jobs out there (like mine) that pay well and don't require 70-hour weeks. But then I won't be making millions in an IPO anytime soon. It's all about tradeoffs.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Just shows you can't get good moderators anymore.
"Man is not a rational animal. He is a rationalizing one"
Not to mention the fact that not ten lines later his "biggest event #3" is "E-commerce shows no signs of stopping."
Hello? Anybody home?
Yeesh. I'm seriously beginning to think ZD keeps this guy around either for comedy relief or flamage generation, under the assumption that there's no such thing as bad attention.
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
He only listed Linux as #3 on a list of 5. OF THE WINNERS!!! He didn't come out foaming at the mouth screaming that everyone must convert to Linux now, so obisously he's evil, part of the media know-nothings, probably in cahoots with Microsoft (nevermind #1 was pointing out the monopoly).
Dvorak is one of the few impartial reporters working in the media today. Any media.
He pointed out a simple truth. At this moment, Linux is more hype that anything. It has potential, but it's certainly not there. Only the most rabid and arrogant, most concieted and ignorant Linux zealot could possibly interpret that Dvorak was not being favorable towards Linux. And to be quiet honest, that rabid ingornace is what is going to kill Linux. Personally I'm so tired of it that it makes me sick.
jhartzell
good enough??
Sometimes I'd really like to give them man an open handed, forward slap to the head of some kind.
No, Java was created as a server language and marketed as a client wonder. You bought the hype wich shows how little you know about multithreaded servers.
Java has quietly taken over the API work, where do you see DCOM for distributed apps?? huh??? I'll even tell you another story. I was working in this startup shop in SV. We rewrote a C++ piece of cow dung a team of 5 clueless developers could not finish. Put them on java and even though they still sucked as developers they finished the job. The really interesting part is that then we looked at what platform to deploy on... Linux? Windows? Windows won because the SUN VM was fastest on Windows. But the moment the LInux VM is good enough... they will switch...get it???? Linux and windows are fighting equal to equal in teh server space thanks to Java. Windows has lost the API war for web development.
First of all, I do think that Dvorak blows smoke way too often, but he's interesting even when he's been using the ol' crack pipe. At least he has real opinions that were formulated by actual experience, unlike the average smarmy .com reporter who parrots the "corporate line". If ZD had more Dvoraks I'd respect them more.
.com millionaires have made that much of a splash (other than in a few ZIP codes). Yes, we're conscious of them, but more in the general sense of "hey! People are getting rich selling nothing!" than in the "CmdrTaco is a media mogul" sense. I don't think they were really that significant for the most part - just a side effect of the "Rise Of The Internet".
That said, I'm right with him on his first four picks for the big events (Linux may be proven to us, but most of the world seems to see it as "the latest Microsoft challenger", and Apple's return from the grave helps ensure that there will always be a "Pepsi" to Microsoft's Coke - regardless of Linux's future), but I don't think
No, I think number 5 should have been called "cutting the cord". The explosion of cellular phones, laptop computers, beepers, and Palm handhelds (and the coming 2-way pager boom) has been enormous this past year - cell phones and Palms are everywhere and people have accepted them as a normal part of society. Have any of you Palm people noticed that people don't look at you funny any more when you whip a Palm III out in the middle of a meeting and start taking notes? They're just part of the landscape now, along with the requisite micro-phone from Nokia, Motorola, or Qualcomm. Cellular, and digital/PCS cellular in particular, finally has the size, battery life, and pricing to be everywhere. So much so that the backlash has already started. The coming "no cell phone" railroad cars and restaurants are indicating that cellular is no longer for the so-called "elite" but for everyone.
As for the flops list - the jury's still out on Firewire. I think 2000 will be the "make or break" year for the technology, at least in the mass-market consumer end of the business. But the new digital camcorders are so cool and so cheap that I think Firewire will be just fine. But it's a niche technology until Intel puts it into PC chipsets. Firewire as standard on Macs, Sonys, and a few other small brands (PC-wise) just isn't enough.
Java is rapidly becoming "just another language", mainly because of Sun's incompetent stewardship. Soon it'll be thought of as "C++ with garbage collection" unless Sun loosens up the death grip. Stick a fork in Larry Ellison - he's done and doesn't know it yet. Microsoft's going to kill him on the low end and IBM will kill him on the high-end. CE was a dead man walking when it first shipped - as son as it became clear that a CE device would have the battery life of a bad laptop. Give up a hard drive for that? I don't think so. The fundamental crappiness of the Windows interface in a handleld form factor just made it worse.
And as for DIVX? I've forgotten it already. Although now that DVD's won, they're trying to get the horse back in the barn...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
He put Linux on the winner list (which was his first mistake) for christs sake. Does he have to tatoo a penguin on his keister. What he said is true, Linux is more hype that anything. Deal with it.
I'm sorry, but just because Windows 98 has poor support for IEEE-1394 doesn't say spit about whether the technology's good or not. I've used a VST Firewire hard drive at my office and I must say that is is the sweetest thing to come along in a long time. I plug it in and voila! The hard drive is automatically installed with no SCSI-ID crap to fiddle with, no extra power cable, no nothing. I can copy stuff from my computer to the Firewire HDD and if I pull out the cable while it's copying, it pauses and tells me to please reconnect the drive. I even played a Quicktime movie off the Firewire HDD and it did the same thing when I disconnected it. Plug it back in and it picks up where it left off.
Sony makes iLink/Firewire CDRW drives, which would probably be nice because as a rule of thumb they say to keep your source drive and your CDRW on separate chains. There's other stuff like printers and speakers that use Firewire, so it's not all just video cameras... although I must say that video editing with Firewire and MiniDV is sweet too.
I went to my friendly neighborbood CompUSA (Columbia, MD) and bought something. While I was waiting I noticed their IBM cash registers were running... Java apps! My jaw almost hit the floor (it did go pretty low). That was the first time I actually saw Java used to make something practical.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Where you live is at least as important as how much you make.
Silicon Valley is no place to have any sort of life. The cost of living is just too prohibitive, unless you are a CEO type. I think it is just trendy to say you live out there.
You Nevada gig sounds fantastic. I hope they don't start moving in on you next.
mille + annus = millennium, or a thousand years, as in anniversary and annual and perennial and centennial
mille + anus = millenium, or a thousand arses, as in anal and analingus and anal-retentive
Asus seems to make at least one.
/ index.html
http://www. asus.com/products/motherboard/Pentiumpro/P3b-1394
The millennium ends this year. No question about it. You are absolutely wrong. Jan 1, 2000 is the beginning of the 3rd millennium.
And yes-- everybody knows that there was no year zero. Nobody cares, because 1) zeroes feel psychologically like a milestone, and milestones are about psychology, and 2) the monk screwed up the date of the birth of Christ. Most scholars believe the 3rd M' began around 1997 anyway.
Bottom line: You can't have it both ways. If you want to be pedantic, then say the millennium has already started. If you don't, then embrace the popular (and sensical) redefinition.
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You can just as effectively use C or Python to work with XML, and once the perl folks get their house in order, it will certainly take over due to its natural text handling abilities.
And you have no problem with the Linux propaganda. Personally I am so tired of seing Linus in his kaki shorts that it make me sick. The fact that any monthly publication writes about this mediocere OS and it's small "locked in caves" techie installed base must mean that said publications are just part of the Linux conspiracy.
See how ridiculous you sound? Wakko wouldn't talk like that! Even though you are so wrong regarding Apple, Animaniacs Rock. Maybe we could change the whole discussion over to Yakko Wakka and Dot. At least then it would be interesting and worth reading.
"Client" and "server" are both maya. What is the sound of one computer clientserving?
Apple changed their royalty policy. They formed a patent pool with Sony, Panasonic, Compaq and a bunch of other companies and made Firewire free for all of them. Anyone not in the pool gets charged a quarter per machine, IIRC.
Interesting. Is that a Nevada job, or are you working remotely? Salaried or contract?
complex issues he sums up in simple words. he's right linux has not reached it's full potential and is no where near what it has been hyped as yet. when he says hope, i think he really means hope, he wants oss develepment to succeed, or at least challege microsoft. he's also right in pointing out that bill gates would be a better man of the year than jeff bezos. ecommerce is not really that new, its like catalog shopping on the internet, with a couple bells and whistles in the grand scheme of things i dont believe its that important. but if we are to give a man credit for it, give it to bill gates the man that turned a computer, albeit unintentionally, into a consumer tool. his company if anything made computers accessible to the masses. ;)
i believe in oss develepment, but if for all the bad things that bill gates and steve jobs have done to the industry, we have to at sometime notice their contribution.
all men have evil in them, some more than others, these guys lucked out and used their evil for good too.
"Are you satisfied with fucking?" - Dave Matthews from "Halloween"
What would I do without Mr. John Dvorak to provide me with a non-stop source of ultra-brown-nosing sound bites to complain about? Here's my side of the story: Mr. Dvorak's "sincerity" is as transparent as the icy, uncaring look in his eyes. Although a thorough discussion of insensitive solipsism is beyond the scope of this letter, debate with him or a search for common ground is both a fruitless exercise and a suicidal strategy. The largest problem, however, is that I doubtlessly maintain that we need to do more to dispense justice. Lastly, I shall return to this point in particular.
In one of his recent columns, John C. Dvorak, in his usual uninformed manner, says: "3. FireWire. This technology will be the fiasco of the decade if it doesn't appear soon on something other than a Macintosh and a camcorder." Well, maybe if Mr.Dvorak would take some time out from being a 'pundit' and were to actually research his ill-informed statements, he'd know that FireWire is available on quite a few consumer products, besides Macs and CamCorders. The Replay TV box has FireWire, as do several DVD players so far. There are other FireWire devices as well, like DVD jukeboxes, hard drives, CD-Burners, etc that come in FireWire versions. Of coure, I highly doubt Mr. Dvorak is aware of any of this, since he seems to be too busy watching himself write about how important he thinks he is. Harry
Why do you people all over talking about X of the Millenium. The Millenium is not yet finished and the new Millenium starts on January 1, 2001. Duh...
Divx. A failed idea.
Originally started by Circuit City, this idea was insane. The whole idea, was that you could lease DVD movies from Circuit City, and then, if you liked them, you could purchase them from your home player. Most good ideas, just don't work when executed in the real world. This, wasn't even a good idea to start off with, at least from a consumers point of view.
First of all, you'd have to goto a circuit city to get a DIVX disc. For some people who live nearby a circuit city, its ok, but otherwise this doesn't work. There was a push by circuit city, to get DIVX into grocery stores... etc, but that didn't work either. Most grocery stores sell movies anyways, so this would be a threat to their business.
Second, DIVX isn't worth it. You can rent a DIVX disc for more than the cost of renting something from your local movie store. And, they mention this is great because you can buy the movie if you like it. Well, I don't know about you, but if i've just rented a movie and seen in it, i'm not always in a hurry to buy it, seeing i just watched it.
Also, you pay for DIVX, for the first few days, at ciruit city. Then, you can keep it as long as you want. This, is better than most movies since you have to return them. On the other hand, you can only view it for the time you payed for. Then, you have to pay for it, via CREDIT CARD, on your DIVX player. This, is more of a hassle. If you ask me, renting A DVD is less of a hassle then going to circuit city and having to go through the hassle of the whole DIVX prcoess.
Not to mention, DIVX does not offer subtitles and any other add-ons.
I guess, the whole market agrees with me, seeing that DIVX failed, and circuit city discontinued it. This was an attempt by Circuit City to get money. People.... =P
I agree. Linux should have been on the LOSER list.
I am always amused when people talk about Java's failure and rabid monkeys go "hear! hear!" with it. The revolution has gone past mr dvorak.
Around me I see NOTHING but java and it has taken over the web world for server programming.
Let's face it, and go buy "teach yourself java in 21 days" shall we?
--The revolution has not been televised--
Yea, you have to have 7-8 million instalations, divided amoung 20 distros before you can be a weiner like Linux
In a battle to the death, which one would win?
This confusion about what century and millennium that 2000 pertains to is really great. It separates the innumerate from the competent. It makes it easier when it comes time to go shoot all those who can't count.
You obviously haven't done any serious work with java.
I work for a small outfit that does e-commerce work (db, app server the whole 9)
We use Perl in very specialized situations only. Java covers 90% of our needs and is a superior development environment now. 3 years ago? i don't know..applets? what are applets?.
Please use the language before posting something as outlandish a claim as "perl is faster than Java".. ouch nonono
Like it or not, Java is the defacto standard for web applications development.
You'll never see prevasive hardware acceleration unless Java is completely opened and standardized.
Do you think IBM, Dell, Compaq, HP, etc. are going to relinquish control of their hardware to a closed standard?
No hardware vendor is going to allow itself to be backed into a corner where they have to pay Sun a tax.
After the Microsoft fiasco, you can be sure that vendors are never going to let someone with a closed standard (like the Win32 API) get them over a barrel.
As it stands, most of them can't even stomach dealing with Sun's current mangling of Java.
I haven't read Dvorak's article yet, but it's incomplete if he doesn't list himself in it. Sadly the once widely-respected columnist started to go after quantity, not quality, when he started writing a number of articles which were famous both for their lack of intelligent content and their propensity to blindly attack Mac users. Sometimes the columns seemed to come forth from a bigot, and not someone whose name once meant something in the industry. I can understand "whoring for eyeballs" from newcomers to the opinion game. When they are produced by people who should know better it just irritates the hell out of me. Then again, the best retort to the various inflammatory anti-Mac nonsense which Dvorak has poured forth is this: the iMac and the "girly" iBook are selling faster than Apple can make them. In your face Johnny! If you want to write a decent article, pro- or anti-Mac, put intelligent observations in it and you won't quite get so much negative press. TAE
My sig is too lon
And as that's 48 years away (by which time I'll be retired) I'm not going to worry about it.
I write code. Writing code is slow. Why do I need an optomized keyboard? Anyone coding at 75WPM just hasn't been fired yet.
I was trying to buy a van thru carorder.com which appears to be using jsp (at least every page served had a .jsp extension). I tried on several occasions over a period of a week and kept receiving "Server timed out", "Page not available", etc errors as I tried to configure and buy a car. I sent several e-mails to customer service to no avail.
Perhaps you should ask how many generate with Java and are successful and are cost effective. That would be a much smaller list.
The new Millennium began around 1997, because the monk screwed up the date of Christ. Face it: The true pedantic start is 1997. The popular start is 2000. Whatever it is, it's not 2001.
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If you're so overworked and mistreated, how do you find time to post on Slashdot so damn much?
That must mean I'm wrong. I mean if Asus makes one, who cares if Tyan, ECS, EFA, IWill, Gigabyte, ABIT, MSI, VIA, or any of the others don't. BTW, EFA makes a IEEE-1394 PCI add in board, but no one will buy it because the FireWire hard drives are kept in the Mac section of the store and Billy Bob (who got his free PC yesterday!) doesn't want the expensive card and software when he can get a Snappy for 100 bucks! Seriously though, things will change soon.
few things really irritate me, but being a java purist (even more so than linux) I really can't stand java being called a flop, it isn't gone, it hasn't receeded, it is growing and getting more useful and even more universal all the time. I think that java is an incredible key technology that is getting overlooked. I think that in a few years java will have hardware acceleration, native compilation and will have a whole lot more developers. I don't think that there are many non-proprietary programs written in java now, but that will change when programmers find out how easy it is, and there are more JRE (java runtime environments). I seems like such an incredible tool with incredible potential but right now all it is getting used for is applets.
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