Yes, from a strictly bandwidth concern, CORBA or DCOM beat XML hands down, but when you remove that consideration, it's not that big a deal.
The advantage of distributed object systems like CORBA, DCOM or RMI over XML-RPC is a lot more than bandwidth. The problem is that distributed computing faces a lot of issues like transactional behavior, security, robust error recovery, object persistence plus a bunch of other issues that involvetracking state across sessions and I'm not sure how throwing in a bloated protocol into this mish mash is truly beneficial.
Now if it's just comparing regular RPC to XML_RPC then it can still be argued that adding the bloat of XML-RPC so that calls can work across systems or languages is not worth it considering how rarely real cross platform distributed computing is done.
Finagle's First Law
Why isn't XML-RPC considered bloat?
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I am a big fan of distributed computing, heck I wrote an article about it on K5, and have always wondered what the XML-RPC payoff is.
From what I can tell, XML-RPC is a way to replace the binary protocols that current distributed systems use (e.g. Corba's IIOP or DCOM's ORPC) with an XML based one. So when an object needs perform a remote method call, instead of just sending it's arguments in a compact efficient binary packet, it builds an XML string which has to be parsed on the other end. So with XML RPC, remote method calls now need the addition of an XML parser to their current bag of tricks.
On the surface it seems that this makes it easier to perform distributed computing since any shmuck can use an XML parser and call a few functions. But it means that an extra layer of abstraction has been added to operations that should be performed rather quickly for the dubious benefit of compatibility across platforms (which is yet to be realized) which seems to be more jumping on the XML hype bandwagon than reality. My biggest issue is that for XML-RPC to support things that are the biggest issues of distributed computing (e.g. keeping track of state) would add so much bloat to the XML parsing, string building, etc process for making a remote call as to make it unfeasible.
Contrary to popular belief on Slashdot, Microsoft has no major plans of becoming an Application Service Provider. Microsoft is primarily a software company and doesn't even handle a majority of its support (unlike, say Sun) but instead has an army of Microsoft Certified Solutions Providers who handle interaction with customers.
From talks with friends who have worked there, it is unlikely this strategy will change. Microsoft will primarily sell.NET servers to ASPs and corporate buyers who will then deal with the user issues. This can also be gleaned by reading Microsoft's ASP Services website instead of assuming the worst of those in Redmond. As for Dell, they've already formed an ASP known as DellHost, and thus it's very likely that once subscription software becomes the norm they will already have the infrastructure to provide software hosting solutions for their customers.
L4M3R:One who thinks he is l337 because he uses "make" to install software instead of RPM
If I was an investor, I'd want to know why Amazon is so intent on giving money to lawyers to protect a buisness model that isn't even making them any money.
The 1-click patent has always been part of a war between Barnes & Nobles and Amazon. The fact that it touched off so many passions on Slashdot is just an unexpected side effect.
Read my earlier post about the punches that B&N has thrown Amazon or even better do a search for Amazon, B&N and the words lawsuit or sue and you'll be rather surprised to see the amount of blows that have been thrown by both parties. The rivalry between both companies is similar to the irrational hatreds that run deep within the Sun and Microsoft camps. The reason few geeks know about is that it's been mainly news for the book industry and few else.
After all, you'll note that Amazon hasn't sued anyone else for violating their patent.
I think it's rather insulting for Taco to assume that there are no innovations going on in the world of PC components and simply lump these patents with the other crap we've seen on Slashdot (i.e. Altavista search engine patent, Amazon 1-click, etc). That said, I suggest reading the patents and deciding if they are frivolous or obvious to you (after all you make hardware right?).
Now it looks like they patented various iterations of a sensor element attached to a fan. To me it seems frivolous on the surface, but since I'm not into PC components I'm not a 100% sure since evrything seems obvious in hind sight.
I'm not counting my checkens yet. 'Stupid portalness' seems to be a disease that comes with age. AltaVista used to be pure, then went the portal route. The same goes for Lycos, Inktomi, and Infoseek.
I don't think your concerns are warranted. Google and Inktomi unlike the others you mentioned are primarily search engine technology companies. http://www.google.com is simply a way for Google to demonstrate and test their search engine technology. The website is not a major factor in their revenue model, licensing their technology is .
Secondly, portals are dead and have been so for a while. Besides AOL, Yahoo and MSN, nobody else is really successful as a portal. It would be extremely stupid of Google to jump on the portal bandwagon when so many people are jumping off.
In order to gain a patent, you have to disclose your design. That's the whole point of patents - in return for legal protection of your intellectual property, you have to disclose details of how the design works and mankind (is supposed to) benefit from this disclosure of knowledge. The alternative to patents and disclosure is to keep your design secret but have no legal protection of your design.
The details of patents are not released while they are still pending. RAMBUS's patents were still pending during the JEDEC meetings, so the only way for JEDEC to know about them was for RAMBUS to disclose them which they didn't even though they were supposed to as part of the conditions for joining JEDEC.
So the lying snakes joined JEDEC and steered the entire hardware industry in the direction of using technology they were in the process of patenting so that the entire hardware industry would owe them royalty fees.
IMO, JEDEC are just as guilty as Rambus for creating this whole situation
Why? Because they aren't psychic and read RAMBUS's executives minds or because they didn't make all members undertake a lie detector test?
Grabel's Law
Bullshit, Here's An African's Perspective
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Even though I am 99% sure that the Urban Existentialist is a troll based on previous posts, I have to respond to this one since it currently rated + 5 insightful implying that this is what the Slashdot community thinks of Geekcorps and Geekhalla.
It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. I've looked at the projects page at Geekhalla and I am impressed by what they hope to achieve. Instead of being like most Westerners whose only thoughts of Africa occur when they guiltily switch the channel whenever one of those commercials asking for money to feed starving children who can be fed for less than $1 a day shows up, these people are contributing something. It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need.
Frankly I'm glad they're doing this, with the advent of the Net I've kept in touch with friends I left behind via ICQ and email whom I thought I'd never talk to again due to the prohibitive costs of calling or locating them after they moved. Anyone who is helpingwith the proliferation of the Net in Africa has my thanks and undying appreciation. Oh by the way, for all the other people who are bashing them for going to Africa to make web pages and teach OO programming What the fuck are you doing for the poor and starving of the Earth.
PS: I just spoke got an email from a friend I haven't seen since 1997 who lives in Nigeria and he told me he has a job writing VBA applications for a local company and he is brushing up on his COM and C++. Hope that makes some you guys think before you rate this kind of jingoistic claptrap up.
All I have to say is that if you think Java is insecure
Java is rather secure as can be seen by reading any of the numerousarticleson the web about it. Javascript on the other hand is a disaster which was foisted on us by Netscape and excarberated by Microsoft.
PS: You do realize that the NY Times article is discussing a Javascript exploit and not a Java one, right?
But you're only safe if everyone else uses Pine, and everything they know uses, etc. Just need one java-enabled mail program in the link and everything's compromised
Javascript isn't Java, they aren't even related in any way. Java is the architecture-neutral, object-oriented, portable, distributed, robust and secure programming language created by Sun Microsystems that can be used to create applets or standalone applications. Javascript is a scripting language originally designed for embedding in browsers which was created by Netscape in a braindead attempt to win the browser wars which instead fragmented the HTML and brought major insecurity to the web.
Finally I doubt that any email clients are actually Java enabled (i.e. can launch applets, etc).
Err, Napster has spread and has shown no sign of slowing down. And, in spite of this, sales of CDs are still rising! The irony of all this is that Napster probably would have remained a small thing if the RIAA hadn't come down on it with its hysterical, overblown overreaction (we gotta protect ourselves--err, the artists rights!), basically giving Napster a huge spotlight and an incredible amount of free advertising.
As I stated my original post, the threat of Napster wasn't to immediate CD sales but the future sales. Eventually when I can download music of the 'Net direct to my Aiwa, Sony, Bose or Kenwood CD player then store that on a personal recorder when I ride the train or in a car stereo, what is the incentive to buy CDs?
Believe me, the RIAA is not stupid, they aren't fighting over a few million CDs sales now but over the survival of a multibillion dollar industry.
And to those who consistently point to the French revolution and the lack of copyright at that time leading only to the production of dreck, that hardly an airtight counterexample. What you imply is that the only way high quality creative works get made is when there is a copyright system in place (and, by extension, that an author of such a work gets paid), and I don't believe that's the case at all. You will be hard pressed to prove that the only motivation for creation of high quality works is monetary.
Now you are being illogical. The only known example of abolishing copyright lead to a dearth in the quantity and quality of music and literature being produced yet you brush this off as being inconsequential. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
Frankly, it's common sense, if less people can make a living doing something, less people will do it. Secondly most artists cannot maintain the high quality of their work if they have to work day jobs to make ends meet or even worse have to tour just to put food on the table. Of course, when we include books in the equation, you realize you are stating that authors simply do not deserve to eat since they don't tour.
Unlike most people on Slashdot, I am neither pro-Napster nor anti-copyright. IMHO, it would have been disastrous in the long term if Napster had been allowed to spread unchecked because once technology to transfer music easily from PCs to Home Audio Systems to Cars to Personal Devices was perfected [5 to 10 years], no one would ever buy music again and it would kill music as a profession except for a few heavily marketed superstars (Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc) and truly talented groups (Pink Floyd, U2, Metallica, etc) in certain genres who could still make money touring. Similarly with eBooks, a serious disincentive for books being published has been the copyright issues and the creation of a growing underground of book pirates who trade eBooks similar to how MP3s were traded until Napster, Gnutella and Scour.net opened it up for the masses. Few authors are comfortable with spending months or years writing a book just for others to distribute it for free and prevent them from putting food on the table.
So my question is this: Is there a middle ground?. On the one hand I am opposed to piracy and "Information Wants to Be Free" has always been a poor justification for piracy in my opinion (whether software or music) but on the other hand it is clear that something has to be done soon about the way in which consumer rights are constantly being eroded. Basically I believe that until advocacy against the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright cartels begins to counter their arguments with reasonable points that can benefit both sides, we are doomed to continue in this downward spiral. As long as our arguments boil down to "I want free shit" or "No encryption can't be hacked", we will constantly be at war with the RIAA & MPAA and since they have more money (and thus better lawyers) than us, they will win.
I was really hoping that proper foreign key support would be added by know but was dissappointed to see it missing from the list. I decided to see if it was in the TODO list and was surprised to see full foreign key support in the Things that have to be done sometime section instead of the Things that should be in 4.0 or the Things that must done in the real near future sections. So it looks like full foreign key support won't be around till 5.0 or later. *sigh*
Lack of full foreign key support (and maybe transactions) is the only reason I don't consider mySQL a proper relational database management system as it claims sinceit doesn't enforce relationships via referential integrity checks. In many large complex applications, having referential checks built into the DB is very useful and it would be a great boon if mySQL had this functionality.
This Cisco exec should then be sued by the shareholders of Cisco for not making a business decision with solely the interests of Cisco the company and its shareholder value in mind. If someone is employed/appointed to the board of a company it is their responsibility to act solely in their interests with respect to his/her authority in the company.
I feel the same way but the truth is that dotcomm boards have been getting away with things that would seem unethical in traditional companies for quite a while. Here's an article on Fortune about some more weird dealings by the board of a dotcomm, most of these seem like fraud or at least seem unethical but so far not that many people seem to be getting punished.
You are quite right. What is particularly interesting is that this was actually a common practice with hot technology IPOs , VA Linux is simply getting the short end of the stick from investors who are pissed of by the stock's massive drop, most companies that drop that far are usually hit by lawsuits from shark's masquearading as lawyers and it's actually a surprise that it took this long. Unfortunately what this means is that if this lawsuit sticks ta lot more tech companies that IPOed in 1999/2000 may face heat for what was at the time a common practice.
PS: Another questionable practice that was quite common in 1999/2000 was giving away lots of shares by CEOs of IPO-track tech companies to executives of potential customers. These executives then made sure the IPO-track company won whatever contract was being vied for which would then make the pre-IPO company a hot stock when it burst on the market.
E.g. www.routerparts.com gives Cisco exec a few shares before their IPO and places him on their board. Cisco exec then makes sure routerparts.com gets a large order from Cisco and tells all his friends about them. routerparts.com now has good buzz since it has made deals with Cisco and other companies and becomes a hot IPO stock. Finally, the Cisco exec unloads the shares and makes several hundred to a few million dollars.
What I would like to know is, how does the free software community work on making Linux work on big expensive machines like this? I mean, its mostly a network of volunteers, and presumably they can't all have a supercomputer each to work on, so how do they do it? Is most of the work on Linux at this level done by big companies that can afford it like IBM, or is there a place for the smaller Linux developer and enthusiast?
Considering the fact that it is very unlikely that there are several hackers (heck, even one) who can afford to buy a $100,000 to $1,000,000 piece of hardware and invalidate the warranty simply to test the viability of porting Linux, I doubt that anyone outside of commercial developers are working on Linux on mainframes.
A quick search on Google for "supercomputer" & "linux" pulls up the IBM machines and a bunch of Beowulf style clusters and not much else. Interestingly most of the IBM links are to Los Lobos, IBM's clustered supercomputer.
Oops, I just did a search for "linux" & "mainframe" and found better links which look like they may point to some enthusiast sites after all, such as ROAM. There are also links to Suse's and IBM's mainframe linux products to be found.
.. Just a very few examples of OSS that has done quite well for themselves for years w/o much/any support from the comerical sector.
I think you are slightly off. Most successful Open Source projects benefit in one way or the other from corporate sponsorship either from developers being hired to hack the kernel full-time (like RedHat does with Alan Cox and a bunch of other Linux kernel hackers or like Netscape does for Mozilla) or contibuting code and/or advice (like IBM and Sun have done for the Apache project or Sun does with GNOME). Once most projects get large enough, there is usually positive corporate involvement.
I have never taken a particular interest in the GIMP project so I'm not sure if it bucks the trend or not.
Eric Raymond in his seminal work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, stated that one of the ways to create a successful Open Source project is to release something that developers can use and find useful. As a developer it is easy for me to run a program and decide if I think it has potential or not, on the other hand it's a pain for me to look at 10 - 100 source files trying to figure it if the design is good and why I can't compile it.
Another good thing about releasing binaries is that it gives the developers more incentive to fix bugs and create milestones than if they just released source and makefiles at random because it means they have to make the software run as smoothly as possible and tackle usability/configuration problems early.
In my opinion screenshots are not as useful but still serve a purpose such as enticing people who are just browsing through projects at Sourceforge to take a closer look at your project.
Are you saying that when the U.S. government made slavery illegal, that the former slaves were not actually free because they were "freed" by force?
Arguments like yours are exactly why I dislike the GPL and RMS's attempts to use his position
in the community to unduly influence (some would say force) people to GPL their programs if
released under competing "Open Source" as opposed to "Free Software" licenses.
The situation of blacks in the southern U.S. was practically unchanged for decades after they
were "freed". They couldn't vote, own property, obtain a decent education, live in safety,
obtain bank loans, or do several other things that most "free" white people take for granted.
There are many who believe that in several parts of the U.S., black people are still second
class citizens that can be killed by the police with impunity and are undeserving of basic human
rights. Would this situation have been averted if instead of the South being forced to free the
slaves by "those damned Yankees", the south reached a collective epiphany and realized that slavery
was evil, willingly freed the slave and welcomed them into society? Maybe, maybe not. I
personally think that in the long run it would have been better if the slaves were willingly freed
instead of forcibly liberated.
As to what this has to do with Free Software and Open Source, I believe that if the GPL wins
out because it was forced on the community instead of because the community and the software
industry as a whole wants to use it, less will benefit. Some versions of Windows currently uses a TCP/IP stack
obtained from *BSD which is only possible due to the nature of the BSD license. Windows would never
have benefitted from BSDs superior TCP/IP stack if it was GPLed because microsoft would have never
used GPLed code in their OS and risk having to GPL Windows.
The way I see it is if all Open Source software is GPLed without it being the will of the people we will
see more stealing of GPLed code in closed source products, less involvement by people who are technically adept but also apolitical
such as nyself and others who support the BSD style licenses, and less adoption of Open Source software by closed source
companies.
Basically I'm trying to say; You can't force people to be good, kind-hearted and generous, and any attempts to do so are
usually met with hostility and resentment.
Disclaimer: I am a black youth who lives in the southern U.S.
In the true open source mind, it would be be better to say: You are changing a debugger because it misses a feature? THEN IMPLEMENT IT
Comments like this make me wonder exactly whether Slashdot is read by programmers or simply people who have heard about programming and think it's cool. Multithreaded applications are hard to design correctly and difficult to debug from an application writer's point of view. Your simplistic statements belie the fact that you must be an inexperienced programmer because in the real world people don't have time to start om mammoth projects simply to help with a medium sized one. Adding threading support to gdb is more difficult than writing a multithreaded application that uses the pthread library unless the application is very complex like a compiler, relational database management system or a web browser.
Your comment is like telling someone to hack garbage collection into C when they complain about memory leaks instead of simply pointing the person to Purify or BoundsChecker.
Obviously you have no idea what the poster of the "Ask Slashdot" is talking about.
He is asking for a good debugger for multi-threaded programming such as dbx on Solaris because gdb cannot handle threaded debugging. Instead you respond with an uninformative post that describes the worst way to debug multithreaded programs. printf isn't thread safe so it's use in multithreaded programming as a debugging tool is frowned upon unless you are using additional mutexes for logging (adding complexity) or you are using a thread safe print function such as OutputDebugString in the Win32 API.
think it's not really an OS, just a shell. Whoever said "OS" was simply slightly misguided
Inferno is an OS which can be gleaned by checking the Overview papers on Inferno, Limbo is the scripting/programming language for the inferno OS. The plugin merely allows you to run Limbo programs in a browser which is exactly what Java plugins enable one to do with applets.
The plugin allows you to run applications written in a specific language(Limbo) for the Inferno OS on your browser but isn't an OS in your browser from what I can see.
This is more akin to being able to run Java applets in your browser via the Java Virtual Machine than any OS in the browser crap.
From the Inferno plugin page The Inferno Internet Explorer plug-in allows a Limbo program to run inside a web page when displayed by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or 5. The plug-in executes Dis within a sandbox in the Inferno Dis virtual machine which provides the execution environment for all programs running under the Inferno Operating System
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, from a strictly bandwidth concern, CORBA or DCOM beat XML hands down, but when you remove that consideration, it's not that big a deal.
The advantage of distributed object systems like CORBA, DCOM or RMI over XML-RPC is a lot more than bandwidth. The problem is that distributed computing faces a lot of issues like transactional behavior, security, robust error recovery, object persistence plus a bunch of other issues that involvetracking state across sessions and I'm not sure how throwing in a bloated protocol into this mish mash is truly beneficial.
Now if it's just comparing regular RPC to XML_RPC then it can still be argued that adding the bloat of XML-RPC so that calls can work across systems or languages is not worth it considering how rarely real cross platform distributed computing is done.
Finagle's First Law
I am a big fan of distributed computing, heck I wrote an article about it on K5, and have always wondered what the XML-RPC payoff is.
From what I can tell, XML-RPC is a way to replace the binary protocols that current distributed systems use (e.g. Corba's IIOP or DCOM's ORPC) with an XML based one. So when an object needs perform a remote method call, instead of just sending it's arguments in a compact efficient binary packet, it builds an XML string which has to be parsed on the other end. So with XML RPC, remote method calls now need the addition of an XML parser to their current bag of tricks.
On the surface it seems that this makes it easier to perform distributed computing since any shmuck can use an XML parser and call a few functions. But it means that an extra layer of abstraction has been added to operations that should be performed rather quickly for the dubious benefit of compatibility across platforms (which is yet to be realized) which seems to be more jumping on the XML hype bandwagon than reality. My biggest issue is that for XML-RPC to support things that are the biggest issues of distributed computing (e.g. keeping track of state) would add so much bloat to the XML parsing, string building, etc process for making a remote call as to make it unfeasible.
Anyone see any errors in this thinking?
Finagle's First Law
Contrary to popular belief on Slashdot, Microsoft has no major plans of becoming an Application Service Provider. Microsoft is primarily a software company and doesn't even handle a majority of its support (unlike, say Sun) but instead has an army of Microsoft Certified Solutions Providers who handle interaction with customers.
.NET servers to ASPs and corporate buyers who will then deal with the user issues. This can also be gleaned by reading Microsoft's ASP Services website instead of assuming the worst of those in Redmond. As for Dell, they've already formed an ASP known as DellHost, and thus it's very likely that once subscription software becomes the norm they will already have the infrastructure to provide software hosting solutions for their customers.
From talks with friends who have worked there, it is unlikely this strategy will change. Microsoft will primarily sell
L4M3R:One who thinks he is l337 because he uses "make" to install software instead of RPM
If I was an investor, I'd want to know why Amazon is so intent on giving money to lawyers to protect a buisness model that isn't even making them any money.
The 1-click patent has always been part of a war between Barnes & Nobles and Amazon. The fact that it touched off so many passions on Slashdot is just an unexpected side effect. Read my earlier post about the punches that B&N has thrown Amazon or even better do a search for Amazon, B&N and the words lawsuit or sue and you'll be rather surprised to see the amount of blows that have been thrown by both parties. The rivalry between both companies is similar to the irrational hatreds that run deep within the Sun and Microsoft camps. The reason few geeks know about is that it's been mainly news for the book industry and few else.
After all, you'll note that Amazon hasn't sued anyone else for violating their patent.
- US5967763: Positioning devices for a sensor element of a miniature fan
- US6109892: Positioning device for a sensor element of a miniature fan
- US6114785: Positioning device for a sensor element of a miniature fan
Now it looks like they patented various iterations of a sensor element attached to a fan. To me it seems frivolous on the surface, but since I'm not into PC components I'm not a 100% sure since evrything seems obvious in hind sight.I'm not counting my checkens yet. 'Stupid portalness' seems to be a disease that comes with age. AltaVista used to be pure, then went the portal route. The same goes for Lycos, Inktomi , and Infoseek.
I don't think your concerns are warranted. Google and Inktomi unlike the others you mentioned are primarily search engine technology companies. http://www.google.com is simply a way for Google to demonstrate and test their search engine technology. The website is not a major factor in their revenue model, licensing their technology is .
Secondly, portals are dead and have been so for a while. Besides AOL, Yahoo and MSN, nobody else is really successful as a portal. It would be extremely stupid of Google to jump on the portal bandwagon when so many people are jumping off.
Grabel's Law
In order to gain a patent, you have to disclose your design. That's the whole point of patents - in return for legal protection of your intellectual property, you have to disclose details of how the design works and mankind (is supposed to) benefit from this disclosure of knowledge. The alternative to patents and disclosure is to keep your design secret but have no legal protection of your design.
The details of patents are not released while they are still pending. RAMBUS's patents were still pending during the JEDEC meetings, so the only way for JEDEC to know about them was for RAMBUS to disclose them which they didn't even though they were supposed to as part of the conditions for joining JEDEC.
So the lying snakes joined JEDEC and steered the entire hardware industry in the direction of using technology they were in the process of patenting so that the entire hardware industry would owe them royalty fees.
IMO, JEDEC are just as guilty as Rambus for creating this whole situation
Why? Because they aren't psychic and read RAMBUS's executives minds or because they didn't make all members undertake a lie detector test?
Grabel's Law
Even though I am 99% sure that the Urban Existentialist is a troll based on previous posts, I have to respond to this one since it currently rated + 5 insightful implying that this is what the Slashdot community thinks of Geekcorps and Geekhalla.
It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. I've looked at the projects page at Geekhalla and I am impressed by what they hope to achieve. Instead of being like most Westerners whose only thoughts of Africa occur when they guiltily switch the channel whenever one of those commercials asking for money to feed starving children who can be fed for less than $1 a day shows up, these people are contributing something. It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need.
Frankly I'm glad they're doing this, with the advent of the Net I've kept in touch with friends I left behind via ICQ and email whom I thought I'd never talk to again due to the prohibitive costs of calling or locating them after they moved. Anyone who is helpingwith the proliferation of the Net in Africa has my thanks and undying appreciation. Oh by the way, for all the other people who are bashing them for going to Africa to make web pages and teach OO programming What the fuck are you doing for the poor and starving of the Earth.
PS: I just spoke got an email from a friend I haven't seen since 1997 who lives in Nigeria and he told me he has a job writing VBA applications for a local company and he is brushing up on his COM and C++. Hope that makes some you guys think before you rate this kind of jingoistic claptrap up.
Grabel's Law
All I have to say is that if you think Java is insecure
Java is rather secure as can be seen by reading any of the numerous articles on the web about it. Javascript on the other hand is a disaster which was foisted on us by Netscape and excarberated by Microsoft.
PS: You do realize that the NY Times article is discussing a Javascript exploit and not a Java one, right?
Grabel's Law
But you're only safe if everyone else uses Pine, and everything they know uses, etc. Just need one java-enabled mail program in the link and everything's compromised
Javascript isn't Java, they aren't even related in any way. Java is the architecture-neutral, object-oriented, portable, distributed, robust and secure programming language created by Sun Microsystems that can be used to create applets or standalone applications. Javascript is a scripting language originally designed for embedding in browsers which was created by Netscape in a braindead attempt to win the browser wars which instead fragmented the HTML and brought major insecurity to the web.
Finally I doubt that any email clients are actually Java enabled (i.e. can launch applets, etc).
Grabel's Law
Err, Napster has spread and has shown no sign of slowing down. And, in spite of this, sales of CDs are still rising! The irony of all this is that Napster probably would have remained a small thing if the RIAA hadn't come down on it with its hysterical, overblown overreaction (we gotta protect ourselves--err, the artists rights!), basically giving Napster a huge spotlight and an incredible amount of free advertising.
As I stated my original post, the threat of Napster wasn't to immediate CD sales but the future sales. Eventually when I can download music of the 'Net direct to my Aiwa, Sony, Bose or Kenwood CD player then store that on a personal recorder when I ride the train or in a car stereo, what is the incentive to buy CDs? Believe me, the RIAA is not stupid, they aren't fighting over a few million CDs sales now but over the survival of a multibillion dollar industry.
And to those who consistently point to the French revolution and the lack of copyright at that time leading only to the production of dreck, that hardly an airtight counterexample. What you imply is that the only way high quality creative works get made is when there is a copyright system in place (and, by extension, that an author of such a work gets paid), and I don't believe that's the case at all. You will be hard pressed to prove that the only motivation for creation of high quality works is monetary.
Now you are being illogical. The only known example of abolishing copyright lead to a dearth in the quantity and quality of music and literature being produced yet you brush this off as being inconsequential. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
Frankly, it's common sense, if less people can make a living doing something, less people will do it. Secondly most artists cannot maintain the high quality of their work if they have to work day jobs to make ends meet or even worse have to tour just to put food on the table. Of course, when we include books in the equation, you realize you are stating that authors simply do not deserve to eat since they don't tour.
Grabel's Law
Unlike most people on Slashdot, I am neither pro-Napster nor anti-copyright. IMHO, it would have been disastrous in the long term if Napster had been allowed to spread unchecked because once technology to transfer music easily from PCs to Home Audio Systems to Cars to Personal Devices was perfected [5 to 10 years], no one would ever buy music again and it would kill music as a profession except for a few heavily marketed superstars (Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc) and truly talented groups (Pink Floyd, U2, Metallica, etc) in certain genres who could still make money touring. Similarly with eBooks, a serious disincentive for books being published has been the copyright issues and the creation of a growing underground of book pirates who trade eBooks similar to how MP3s were traded until Napster, Gnutella and Scour.net opened it up for the masses. Few authors are comfortable with spending months or years writing a book just for others to distribute it for free and prevent them from putting food on the table.
On the one hand the "Digital Rights Management" technologies being created to combat these threats to copyright are ominous. Microsoft plans to support digital rights management at the OS level very soon and has started making moves in that direction while hard drive manufacturers have considering adding hard drive copy protection to all systems built in future and Intel has flirted with copy protection for monitors and other display devices. All of the aforementioned technologies are invasive, distasteful and prevent users from exercising their rights to fair use of copyrighted or non-copyrighted works.
Also recent legal wranglings aimed at protecting copyright have robbed consumers of rights that they have had or should have such as the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In the same vein certain rulings against opponents of the RIAA and MPAA such as the $118 million dollar ruling against MP3.com or the ruling against 2600.com are ridiculous.
So my question is this: Is there a middle ground?. On the one hand I am opposed to piracy and "Information Wants to Be Free" has always been a poor justification for piracy in my opinion (whether software or music) but on the other hand it is clear that something has to be done soon about the way in which consumer rights are constantly being eroded. Basically I believe that until advocacy against the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright cartels begins to counter their arguments with reasonable points that can benefit both sides, we are doomed to continue in this downward spiral. As long as our arguments boil down to "I want free shit" or "No encryption can't be hacked", we will constantly be at war with the RIAA & MPAA and since they have more money (and thus better lawyers) than us, they will win.
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...if they have automated products that can convert an existing Java project to .NET/C# project.
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I was really hoping that proper foreign key support would be added by know but was dissappointed to see it missing from the list. I decided to see if it was in the TODO list and was surprised to see full foreign key support in the Things that have to be done sometime section instead of the Things that should be in 4.0 or the Things that must done in the real near future sections. So it looks like full foreign key support won't be around till 5.0 or later. *sigh*
Lack of full foreign key support (and maybe transactions) is the only reason I don't consider mySQL a proper relational database management system as it claims sinceit doesn't enforce relationships via referential integrity checks. In many large complex applications, having referential checks built into the DB is very useful and it would be a great boon if mySQL had this functionality.
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This Cisco exec should then be sued by the shareholders of Cisco for not making a business decision with solely the interests of Cisco the company and its shareholder value in mind. If someone is employed/appointed to the board of a company it is their responsibility to act solely in their interests with respect to his/her authority in the company.
I feel the same way but the truth is that dotcomm boards have been getting away with things that would seem unethical in traditional companies for quite a while. Here's an article on Fortune about some more weird dealings by the board of a dotcomm, most of these seem like fraud or at least seem unethical but so far not that many people seem to be getting punished.
Here's an expose on the shadiest dealing of the New Economy entitled MISADVENTURES IN THE ME-FIRST ECONOMY: Four tales from the ethical gray zone of the Internet economy from Fortune.
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You are quite right. What is particularly interesting is that this was actually a common practice with hot technology IPOs , VA Linux is simply getting the short end of the stick from investors who are pissed of by the stock's massive drop, most companies that drop that far are usually hit by lawsuits from shark's masquearading as lawyers and it's actually a surprise that it took this long. Unfortunately what this means is that if this lawsuit sticks ta lot more tech companies that IPOed in 1999/2000 may face heat for what was at the time a common practice.
PS: Another questionable practice that was quite common in 1999/2000 was giving away lots of shares by CEOs of IPO-track tech companies to executives of potential customers. These executives then made sure the IPO-track company won whatever contract was being vied for which would then make the pre-IPO company a hot stock when it burst on the market.
E.g. www.routerparts.com gives Cisco exec a few shares before their IPO and places him on their board. Cisco exec then makes sure routerparts.com gets a large order from Cisco and tells all his friends about them. routerparts.com now has good buzz since it has made deals with Cisco and other companies and becomes a hot IPO stock. Finally, the Cisco exec unloads the shares and makes several hundred to a few million dollars.
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What I would like to know is, how does the free software community work on making Linux work on big expensive machines like this? I mean, its mostly a network of volunteers, and presumably they can't all have a supercomputer each to work on, so how do they do it? Is most of the work on Linux at this level done by big companies that can afford it like IBM, or is there a place for the smaller Linux developer and enthusiast?
Considering the fact that it is very unlikely that there are several hackers (heck, even one) who can afford to buy a $100,000 to $1,000,000 piece of hardware and invalidate the warranty simply to test the viability of porting Linux, I doubt that anyone outside of commercial developers are working on Linux on mainframes.
A quick search on Google for "supercomputer" & "linux" pulls up the IBM machines and a bunch of Beowulf style clusters and not much else. Interestingly most of the IBM links are to Los Lobos, IBM's clustered supercomputer.
Oops, I just did a search for "linux" & "mainframe" and found better links which look like they may point to some enthusiast sites after all, such as ROAM. There are also links to Suse's and IBM's mainframe linux products to be found.
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I think you are slightly off. Most successful Open Source projects benefit in one way or the other from corporate sponsorship either from developers being hired to hack the kernel full-time (like RedHat does with Alan Cox and a bunch of other Linux kernel hackers or like Netscape does for Mozilla) or contibuting code and/or advice (like IBM and Sun have done for the Apache project or Sun does with GNOME). Once most projects get large enough, there is usually positive corporate involvement.
I have never taken a particular interest in the GIMP project so I'm not sure if it bucks the trend or not.
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Eric Raymond in his seminal work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, stated that one of the ways to create a successful Open Source project is to release something that developers can use and find useful. As a developer it is easy for me to run a program and decide if I think it has potential or not, on the other hand it's a pain for me to look at 10 - 100 source files trying to figure it if the design is good and why I can't compile it.
Another good thing about releasing binaries is that it gives the developers more incentive to fix bugs and create milestones than if they just released source and makefiles at random because it means they have to make the software run as smoothly as possible and tackle usability/configuration problems early.
In my opinion screenshots are not as useful but still serve a purpose such as enticing people who are just browsing through projects at Sourceforge to take a closer look at your project.
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Are you saying that when the U.S. government made slavery illegal, that the former slaves were not actually free because they were "freed" by force?
Arguments like yours are exactly why I dislike the GPL and RMS's attempts to use his position in the community to unduly influence (some would say force) people to GPL their programs if released under competing "Open Source" as opposed to "Free Software" licenses.
The situation of blacks in the southern U.S. was practically unchanged for decades after they were "freed". They couldn't vote, own property, obtain a decent education, live in safety, obtain bank loans, or do several other things that most "free" white people take for granted. There are many who believe that in several parts of the U.S., black people are still second class citizens that can be killed by the police with impunity and are undeserving of basic human rights. Would this situation have been averted if instead of the South being forced to free the slaves by "those damned Yankees", the south reached a collective epiphany and realized that slavery was evil, willingly freed the slave and welcomed them into society? Maybe, maybe not. I personally think that in the long run it would have been better if the slaves were willingly freed instead of forcibly liberated.
As to what this has to do with Free Software and Open Source, I believe that if the GPL wins out because it was forced on the community instead of because the community and the software industry as a whole wants to use it, less will benefit. Some versions of Windows currently uses a TCP/IP stack obtained from *BSD which is only possible due to the nature of the BSD license. Windows would never have benefitted from BSDs superior TCP/IP stack if it was GPLed because microsoft would have never used GPLed code in their OS and risk having to GPL Windows.
The way I see it is if all Open Source software is GPLed without it being the will of the people we will see more stealing of GPLed code in closed source products, less involvement by people who are technically adept but also apolitical such as nyself and others who support the BSD style licenses, and less adoption of Open Source software by closed source companies.
Basically I'm trying to say; You can't force people to be good, kind-hearted and generous, and any attempts to do so are usually met with hostility and resentment.
Disclaimer: I am a black youth who lives in the southern U.S.
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In the true open source mind, it would be be better to say:
You are changing a debugger because it misses a feature? THEN IMPLEMENT IT
Comments like this make me wonder exactly whether Slashdot is read by programmers or simply people who have heard about programming and think it's cool. Multithreaded applications are hard to design correctly and difficult to debug from an application writer's point of view. Your simplistic statements belie the fact that you must be an inexperienced programmer because in the real world people don't have time to start om mammoth projects simply to help with a medium sized one. Adding threading support to gdb is more difficult than writing a multithreaded application that uses the pthread library unless the application is very complex like a compiler, relational database management system or a web browser.
Your comment is like telling someone to hack garbage collection into C when they complain about memory leaks instead of simply pointing the person to Purify or BoundsChecker.
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Obviously you have no idea what the poster of the "Ask Slashdot" is talking about.
He is asking for a good debugger for multi-threaded programming such as dbx on Solaris because gdb cannot handle threaded debugging. Instead you respond with an uninformative post that describes the worst way to debug multithreaded programs. printf isn't thread safe so it's use in multithreaded programming as a debugging tool is frowned upon unless you are using additional mutexes for logging (adding complexity) or you are using a thread safe print function such as OutputDebugString in the Win32 API.
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think it's not really an OS, just a shell. Whoever said "OS" was simply slightly misguided
Inferno is an OS which can be gleaned by checking the Overview papers on Inferno, Limbo is the scripting/programming language for the inferno OS. The plugin merely allows you to run Limbo programs in a browser which is exactly what Java plugins enable one to do with applets.
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After reading the information on the plugin, I fail to see how this is an OS in a browser.
The plugin allows you to run applications written in a specific language(Limbo) for the Inferno OS on your browser but isn't an OS in your browser from what I can see.
This is more akin to being able to run Java applets in your browser via the Java Virtual Machine than any OS in the browser crap.
From the Inferno plugin page
The Inferno Internet Explorer plug-in allows a Limbo program to run inside a web page when displayed by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or 5. The plug-in executes Dis within a sandbox in the Inferno Dis virtual machine which provides the execution environment for all programs running under the Inferno Operating System
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Download the E-book from Adobe's site.
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