Yeah, MachTen is the one I was thinking of, thanks. I agree that it wasn't a bad Unix, but it was still horribly expensive.:) I'd forgotten about A/UX completely, which may have been a merciful thing.
... is what niche this fills with OS X around. A year ago, there was simply no way to get MacOS functionality on a Unix (/Linux, etc.) system except with either MOL or that horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs (sorry, can't remember the name.) These days, OTOH, a powerful and MacOS-compatible Unix is, in fact, well, what you get when you buy a Mac.
To be fair, there are a lot of older Macs out there that don't have the horsepower for OS X but would do just fine as Linux boxes, and I can see MOL being useful for them. With new iMacs so cheap, though, how long will that be true?
"Should the school be allowed to own over 300 domain names
Why not? Why does the school need to follow any different rules than any other entity? If CmdrTaco had 300 domains, would we care?"
Because, in a world of limited domain names, we should care if any "entity" owns a bunch of names not being used. There are a limited number of meaningful, easy-to-remember names out there.
"how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them Why does it matter how many others do it? What bearing does it have on your school?"
Wow, I feel like I'm trying to explain Afghan politics to George W. Bush. Okay, moron, listen up, and try to follow along. I'll use small words.
What happens at one school is generally of interest to students at another school. Sometimes this is simply for the same reason that people are interested in the world around them (Wow! What a concept!) and sometimes it's because what happens at one school now might well be happening at other schools next year. Imagine that.
"And finally, should student tuition be used in this manner? How presumptuous to think you have any say in how your tuition is spent. You don't wonder aloud what McDonald's does with your cash after you buy a Happy Meal, do you? And if you don't like it, you don't give them the money."
Presumptuous? Go fuck yourself. First of all, yes, I do sometimes wonder where my consumer dollars go -- and if people didn't talk about it, I'd have no way of finding out and deciding if I wanted to spend my money there or not. Second, the connection between a school and a student is much more intimate than the connection between McDonald's and someone ordering a Happy Meal -- or at least it should be; I wonder where (or if) you went to college that you don't understand that.
[sigh] This is a borderline troll, and I probably shouldn't waste my time replying to it, but on the off-chance it's legitimate, I'll make an honest answer.
The "massive Apple layoffs" thing seems to be a massive rumor, and no more. In fact, all the legitimate news indicates that Apple is weathering the storm much better than PC makers such as Dell. If someone has information to the contrary, please let me know.
And where the hell were you pricing laptops (and if so, why were you looking at iMacs anyway?) IMO the iBook offers the absolute best price-performance ratio of any laptop on the market. Yes, the standard 64 MB RAM sucks, but you can bump that up cheaply enough. In every other way, the iBook is the best low- to mid-range laptop you'll find for your money.
Well, the only way for Microsoft to enforce this is... through the legal system. Congress makes the laws which allow enforcement of license agreements, after all.
I'm honestly not too concerned about this kind of hacking. I tend to take _anything_ I hear about any major incident like the Sept. 11 attacks with a grain of salt for a day or two. And I would hope to God that the people making important, irrevocable decisions -- e.g. the U.S. government -- aren't relying on Yahoo! News for information.
Consider it freedom of speech, and of the press, and of petition for redress of grievances, updated for the modern age...
Unfortunately I burned my latest round of mod points yesterday, on discussions much less interesting than this one.
Yes, this was almost certainly a religiously inspired attack. Either it was Islamic fundamentalists, or our own home-grown Christian fundamentalists a la Timothy McVeigh. I'm sorry, but I don't see any other possibilities. Anyone who mods the parent comment (or this one) down because they can't stand to face this fact is a coward.
Why anyone would pray for comfort to a God who would allow something like this to happen is beyond me.
Actually, it may be better that it's a low-key country artist with a fairly mature listener base... Courts are probably going to be a lot friendlier to a middle-aged Charly Pride fan than to a teenage Limp Bizkit fan. Let the grown-ups fight these battles; ultimately the kids will also benefit.
If the U.S. completely disarmed today, the Chinese government would be setting up shop in Washington D.C. tomorrow.
I'm no fan of war. I was in Desert Storm as a medic and I know up close and personal what war looks like. But the fact of the matter is that there are _bad people_ in the world, and some of those bad people have _big guns_, and the _only_ way to deal with them is by having bigger guns of your own.
As a non-CS major and software engineer ...
on
Software Aesthetics
·
· Score: 1
... I think you're being a bit harsh.:)
My degree is in Mathematics with Computer Science Emphasis, which means I got a CS minor and took math classes mostly relating to CS-y subjects (e.g. Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis.) I compare the code I write to that written by the CS majors in my classes, and I don't think it's any worse than theirs. Furthermore, my boss seems to think my software is just fine, since he pays me plenty of money to write it. And in fact, there are a lot of mathematical techniques underlying good software design which most CS majors don't seem to learn.
"Now it does not suprise me one bit that Hawking would come up with such cockamamie nonsense. This is the same guy who claims on his site that relativity does not forbid time travel. I think Hawking should stick to his Star-Trek voodoo physics..."
Actually, I doubt you know enough about the frontiers of physics to say whether Hawking's ideas on time travel are "voodoo" or not. (This isn't a personal insult; there are very, very few people in the world who have that level of knowledge. I know I don't.) I think the more important point is that being brilliant in one field (e.g. physics) doesn't necessarily qualify you to make judgements in another (e.g. A.I.)
For example, James Randi has often pointed out that scientists are easily deceived by paranormal fakers -- because as scientists, they expect to be able to uncover the truth about strange situations, but the fakers are operating in the realm of stage magic rather than science, and most scientists simply don't know anything about stage magic. It takes a stage magician to see through the tricks.
As computers become more important to everyone's daily lives (and as much of they've done so already, I'm firmly convinced that we ain't seen nothin' yet) everyone will weigh in with their opinions on What It All Means. People like Hawking, who are used to being right about some pretty heavy-duty things, will naturally tend to believe themselves right about W.I.A.M. as well. They've got a right to their opinions, of course; the important thing is for the rest of us to treat their opinions as just that, and not words from on high.
Sure, but in that case the fog is an abstract representation of something else happening -- whereas in a game, the purpose of fog effects is _actually to look like fog_. I think that may be _the_ fundamental difference between games and general-purpose apps, in fact. Games try to create a virtual world and put you into it; most other kinds of apps try to provide you with a useful metaphor through which you can manipulate the real world.
Well, okay; a good game designer is probably someone who has a good overall feel for how people interact with computers, and can apply that talent to the design of general-purpose UI's. But the paradigms involved in killing monsters and writing letters are _so_ different that I don't see much direct connection between one and the other... and of course if the industry starts thinking, "Game designs are good, we should put some of that goodness into our other products," it will inevitably manifest itself as direct (and utterly useless) transference of game UI elements into general-purpose apps, rather than trying to find some general principles of good human-computer interaction and applying those principles to designing applications of all kinds.
... I mean, I'm all for faster CPU's, more RAM, better video cards, higher bandwidth, etc.
But I don't see games pushing the UI envelope in a way that's useful to most user tasks. Sure, game developers put an enormous amount of effort into creating detailed, realistic virtual environments, and that's great -- for games. But attempts to introduce such elements into OS's in general, and into general-purpose applications like word processors, graphics programs, and browsers, will lead only to clutter and bloatware. You don't need realistic lighting and fog effects when you're writing a letter...
Browsers are an area that deserve special mention. I've seen a few attempts to use game-type visual metaphors to turn cyberspace into something Gibsonian (anyone remember Hotsauce?) and the effect is always ugly, pointless, and slow. Make the hardware fast enough, of course, and "slow" will go away, but "ugly" and "pointless" will remain.
When I'm playing a game, I want to be immersed in a virtual world. When I'm writing, or designing graphics for a Web site, or pounding out code, or looking for information on some obscure subject, I want a clean, simple interface that makes it as easy as possible for me to get, create, or manipulate my data. And that's it.
And in fact, Jackson showed no evidence whatsoever of any prejudice against Microsoft before the trial began. He was "prejudiced" against them in exactly the same way as Judge Matsch was "prejudiced" against Timothy McVeigh... Sorry if you think that's hyperbolic, but the simple fact is that Microsoft broke the law, and numerous Microsoft representatives perjured themselves in defending the indefensible. Jackson would have been well within his rights to throw the entire Microsoft power structure from Gates on down into prison for perjury and contempt of court -- only political pressure kept him from doing so.
Yep. Until M$ and AOL and Yahoo! actually make it impossible for individual users and small companies to put up their own Web sites, e-mail and Usenet servers, etc. -- which I don't think is going to happen -- the Net is still "free" in a meaningful sense.
Developers on small Web sites can help with this a lot, simply by making sure that their sites are truly part of a _Web_ rather than an "information superhighway." IOW, create an extensive and well-maintained "links" section that connects primarily to other small, cool sites. Maybe I'm turning into an old fogey, but it seems to be that once upon a time, that's what the Web was all about, and now people have fewer and less interesting links even on their personal home pages. I'd like to get back to the way things used to be. Ultimately, we need to spin our own Web; let the corporate sites do what they will...
"If your software sells then obviously people do find it useful and beneficial.
If it does not then, well, you get the picture... "
This, of course, assumes that people only make rational buying decisions, based on which product offers the best value for the money and best meets their needs, rather than being influenced by advertising, peer pressure, brand recognition, etc. (The fundamental flaw of pure capitalism is that it operates on this obviously false assumption. The fundamental flaw of pure socialism is that it assumes the government will always make rational decisions, which is equally false. This is why pure capitalism and pure socialism both inevitably lead to Bad Things, and why every industrial country on Earth has found a balance somewhere in the middle.) The governments which encourage the use of free software are, in fact, benefiting their societies in a very clear way, one that can't be bought on the free market. And that's what governments are _for_, to do things that private citizens can't or won't pay for.
"methods similar to those used in nazi germony by that insane doctor"
What the hell are you talking about? Mengele didn't do his experiments on a few cells taken from an embryo; he used living human beings. If you genuinely think there's no difference between the two... well, that's your problem.
... that by the time stem cell products are ready for human clinical trials, Duh-bya will be out of office, and we'll have someone in office who can make decisions based on rational thought, not on what a bunch of religious fanatics tell him in between his golf game and his afternoon nap.
And to all the right-wingers who will no doubt jump on this post saying "The Democrats aren't any better George W. Bush made a carefully thought-out decision blah blah blah," I say: BULLSHIT. Your anointed princeling has made an off-the-cuff decision that will condemn millions of people suffering from terrible diseases to an early and unpleasant death.
Well, if as the author recommends we store metadata somewhere else on the disk, then the answer depends on the structure of the metadata file(s). One absurdly simple solution for the size problem is to decree that no files will ever be bigger than, say, 1 GB, and then always use (I think, off the top of my head) a thirty-bit number to encode file size. (Actually, thirty-two bits, i.e. four bytes, is a more likely choice in this situation. Eight bytes will get you file sizes considerably bigger than any hard disk we're likely to see any time in the near future...) Alternately, since file size is intrinsic, you can calculate the size of file-size records on the fly as long as you use consistent end-of-record markers. There are a host of other solutions -- most of these aren't just issues for metadata, but for the design of all files.
There were also Indian slave owners -- in fact, probably more than there were black slave owners. White slave owners vastly outnumbered both, of course.
I don't see number of developers as being all that meaningful a measurement. I'd guess that the vast bulk of Java development is for relatively small applets and servelets, and since that sort of programming is considerably easier than serious application and OS development, the bar for being a Java developer is lower than for being a C/C++ developer. Developer hours, though harder to measure, would probably provide a more meaningful representation of how "big" a language has become.
That being said, unlike a lot of posters here, I don't see speed as being a permanent impediment to Java's growth. We're already at the point where some serious Java apps are fast enough for everyday use, and I expect that to be more true over time as a) hardware continues to get faster and b) OS support for Java gets faster and more integrated. Mac OS X does a truly beautiful job of integrating Java support into the OS (ironically, better than anything from Sun itself) and some Linux solutions aren't far behind.
And it's nice to hear that it's taking market share from VB. Java may never live up to Sun's early visions of taking over the desktop, but if it helps slow down or even stop the progression of VB/C#/.NET (and yes, I know these are three different things, but they're all clearly connected as elements of Kaiser Bill's Evil Plan) then that's a good thing.
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Yeah, MachTen is the one I was thinking of, thanks. I agree that it wasn't a bad Unix, but it was still horribly expensive. :) I'd forgotten about A/UX completely, which may have been a merciful thing.
... is what niche this fills with OS X around. A year ago, there was simply no way to get MacOS functionality on a Unix (/Linux, etc.) system except with either MOL or that horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs (sorry, can't remember the name.) These days, OTOH, a powerful and MacOS-compatible Unix is, in fact, well, what you get when you buy a Mac.
To be fair, there are a lot of older Macs out there that don't have the horsepower for OS X but would do just fine as Linux boxes, and I can see MOL being useful for them. With new iMacs so cheap, though, how long will that be true?
"Should the school be allowed to own over 300 domain names
Why not? Why does the school need to follow any different rules than any other entity? If CmdrTaco had 300 domains, would we care?"
Because, in a world of limited domain names, we should care if any "entity" owns a bunch of names not being used. There are a limited number of meaningful, easy-to-remember names out there.
"how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them
Why does it matter how many others do it? What bearing does it have on your school?"
Wow, I feel like I'm trying to explain Afghan politics to George W. Bush. Okay, moron, listen up, and try to follow along. I'll use small words.
What happens at one school is generally of interest to students at another school. Sometimes this is simply for the same reason that people are interested in the world around them (Wow! What a concept!) and sometimes it's because what happens at one school now might well be happening at other schools next year. Imagine that.
"And finally, should student tuition be used in this manner?
How presumptuous to think you have any say in how your tuition is spent. You don't wonder aloud what McDonald's does with your cash after you buy a Happy Meal, do you? And if you don't like it, you don't give them the money."
Presumptuous? Go fuck yourself. First of all, yes, I do sometimes wonder where my consumer dollars go -- and if people didn't talk about it, I'd have no way of finding out and deciding if I wanted to spend my money there or not. Second, the connection between a school and a student is much more intimate than the connection between McDonald's and someone ordering a Happy Meal -- or at least it should be; I wonder where (or if) you went to college that you don't understand that.
[sigh] This is a borderline troll, and I probably shouldn't waste my time replying to it, but on the off-chance it's legitimate, I'll make an honest answer.
The "massive Apple layoffs" thing seems to be a massive rumor, and no more. In fact, all the legitimate news indicates that Apple is weathering the storm much better than PC makers such as Dell. If someone has information to the contrary, please let me know.
And where the hell were you pricing laptops (and if so, why were you looking at iMacs anyway?) IMO the iBook offers the absolute best price-performance ratio of any laptop on the market. Yes, the standard 64 MB RAM sucks, but you can bump that up cheaply enough. In every other way, the iBook is the best low- to mid-range laptop you'll find for your money.
Well, the only way for Microsoft to enforce this is ... through the legal system. Congress makes the laws which allow enforcement of license agreements, after all.
I'm honestly not too concerned about this kind of hacking. I tend to take _anything_ I hear about any major incident like the Sept. 11 attacks with a grain of salt for a day or two. And I would hope to God that the people making important, irrevocable decisions -- e.g. the U.S. government -- aren't relying on Yahoo! News for information.
...
Consider it freedom of speech, and of the press, and of petition for redress of grievances, updated for the modern age
Unfortunately I burned my latest round of mod points yesterday, on discussions much less interesting than this one.
Yes, this was almost certainly a religiously inspired attack. Either it was Islamic fundamentalists, or our own home-grown Christian fundamentalists a la Timothy McVeigh. I'm sorry, but I don't see any other possibilities. Anyone who mods the parent comment (or this one) down because they can't stand to face this fact is a coward.
Why anyone would pray for comfort to a God who would allow something like this to happen is beyond me.
Actually, it may be better that it's a low-key country artist with a fairly mature listener base ... Courts are probably going to be a lot friendlier to a middle-aged Charly Pride fan than to a teenage Limp Bizkit fan. Let the grown-ups fight these battles; ultimately the kids will also benefit.
If the U.S. completely disarmed today, the Chinese government would be setting up shop in Washington D.C. tomorrow.
I'm no fan of war. I was in Desert Storm as a medic and I know up close and personal what war looks like. But the fact of the matter is that there are _bad people_ in the world, and some of those bad people have _big guns_, and the _only_ way to deal with them is by having bigger guns of your own.
... I think you're being a bit harsh. :)
My degree is in Mathematics with Computer Science Emphasis, which means I got a CS minor and took math classes mostly relating to CS-y subjects (e.g. Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis.) I compare the code I write to that written by the CS majors in my classes, and I don't think it's any worse than theirs. Furthermore, my boss seems to think my software is just fine, since he pays me plenty of money to write it. And in fact, there are a lot of mathematical techniques underlying good software design which most CS majors don't seem to learn.
"Now it does not suprise me one bit that Hawking would come up with such cockamamie nonsense. This is the same guy who claims on his site that relativity does not forbid time travel. I think Hawking should stick to his Star-Trek voodoo physics ..."
Actually, I doubt you know enough about the frontiers of physics to say whether Hawking's ideas on time travel are "voodoo" or not. (This isn't a personal insult; there are very, very few people in the world who have that level of knowledge. I know I don't.) I think the more important point is that being brilliant in one field (e.g. physics) doesn't necessarily qualify you to make judgements in another (e.g. A.I.)
For example, James Randi has often pointed out that scientists are easily deceived by paranormal fakers -- because as scientists, they expect to be able to uncover the truth about strange situations, but the fakers are operating in the realm of stage magic rather than science, and most scientists simply don't know anything about stage magic. It takes a stage magician to see through the tricks.
As computers become more important to everyone's daily lives (and as much of they've done so already, I'm firmly convinced that we ain't seen nothin' yet) everyone will weigh in with their opinions on What It All Means. People like Hawking, who are used to being right about some pretty heavy-duty things, will naturally tend to believe themselves right about W.I.A.M. as well. They've got a right to their opinions, of course; the important thing is for the rest of us to treat their opinions as just that, and not words from on high.
Actually, I use BBEdit on a Mac.
Sure, but in that case the fog is an abstract representation of something else happening -- whereas in a game, the purpose of fog effects is _actually to look like fog_. I think that may be _the_ fundamental difference between games and general-purpose apps, in fact. Games try to create a virtual world and put you into it; most other kinds of apps try to provide you with a useful metaphor through which you can manipulate the real world.
Well, okay; a good game designer is probably someone who has a good overall feel for how people interact with computers, and can apply that talent to the design of general-purpose UI's. But the paradigms involved in killing monsters and writing letters are _so_ different that I don't see much direct connection between one and the other ... and of course if the industry starts thinking, "Game designs are good, we should put some of that goodness into our other products," it will inevitably manifest itself as direct (and utterly useless) transference of game UI elements into general-purpose apps, rather than trying to find some general principles of good human-computer interaction and applying those principles to designing applications of all kinds.
... I mean, I'm all for faster CPU's, more RAM, better video cards, higher bandwidth, etc.
...
But I don't see games pushing the UI envelope in a way that's useful to most user tasks. Sure, game developers put an enormous amount of effort into creating detailed, realistic virtual environments, and that's great -- for games. But attempts to introduce such elements into OS's in general, and into general-purpose applications like word processors, graphics programs, and browsers, will lead only to clutter and bloatware. You don't need realistic lighting and fog effects when you're writing a letter
Browsers are an area that deserve special mention. I've seen a few attempts to use game-type visual metaphors to turn cyberspace into something Gibsonian (anyone remember Hotsauce?) and the effect is always ugly, pointless, and slow. Make the hardware fast enough, of course, and "slow" will go away, but "ugly" and "pointless" will remain.
When I'm playing a game, I want to be immersed in a virtual world. When I'm writing, or designing graphics for a Web site, or pounding out code, or looking for information on some obscure subject, I want a clean, simple interface that makes it as easy as possible for me to get, create, or manipulate my data. And that's it.
... and the answer is, "Yes, she is." :)
Yep.
... Sorry if you think that's hyperbolic, but the simple fact is that Microsoft broke the law, and numerous Microsoft representatives perjured themselves in defending the indefensible. Jackson would have been well within his rights to throw the entire Microsoft power structure from Gates on down into prison for perjury and contempt of court -- only political pressure kept him from doing so.
And in fact, Jackson showed no evidence whatsoever of any prejudice against Microsoft before the trial began. He was "prejudiced" against them in exactly the same way as Judge Matsch was "prejudiced" against Timothy McVeigh
Yep. Until M$ and AOL and Yahoo! actually make it impossible for individual users and small companies to put up their own Web sites, e-mail and Usenet servers, etc. -- which I don't think is going to happen -- the Net is still "free" in a meaningful sense.
...
Developers on small Web sites can help with this a lot, simply by making sure that their sites are truly part of a _Web_ rather than an "information superhighway." IOW, create an extensive and well-maintained "links" section that connects primarily to other small, cool sites. Maybe I'm turning into an old fogey, but it seems to be that once upon a time, that's what the Web was all about, and now people have fewer and less interesting links even on their personal home pages. I'd like to get back to the way things used to be. Ultimately, we need to spin our own Web; let the corporate sites do what they will
"If your software sells then obviously people do find it useful and beneficial.
If it does not then, well, you get the picture... "
This, of course, assumes that people only make rational buying decisions, based on which product offers the best value for the money and best meets their needs, rather than being influenced by advertising, peer pressure, brand recognition, etc. (The fundamental flaw of pure capitalism is that it operates on this obviously false assumption. The fundamental flaw of pure socialism is that it assumes the government will always make rational decisions, which is equally false. This is why pure capitalism and pure socialism both inevitably lead to Bad Things, and why every industrial country on Earth has found a balance somewhere in the middle.) The governments which encourage the use of free software are, in fact, benefiting their societies in a very clear way, one that can't be bought on the free market. And that's what governments are _for_, to do things that private citizens can't or won't pay for.
Offtopic, I know, but ... somehow I doubt you're any kind of badass, "ultimate" or not.
"methods similar to those used in nazi germony by that insane doctor"
... well, that's your problem.
What the hell are you talking about? Mengele didn't do his experiments on a few cells taken from an embryo; he used living human beings. If you genuinely think there's no difference between the two
... that by the time stem cell products are ready for human clinical trials, Duh-bya will be out of office, and we'll have someone in office who can make decisions based on rational thought, not on what a bunch of religious fanatics tell him in between his golf game and his afternoon nap.
And to all the right-wingers who will no doubt jump on this post saying "The Democrats aren't any better George W. Bush made a carefully thought-out decision blah blah blah," I say: BULLSHIT. Your anointed princeling has made an off-the-cuff decision that will condemn millions of people suffering from terrible diseases to an early and unpleasant death.
Well, if as the author recommends we store metadata somewhere else on the disk, then the answer depends on the structure of the metadata file(s). One absurdly simple solution for the size problem is to decree that no files will ever be bigger than, say, 1 GB, and then always use (I think, off the top of my head) a thirty-bit number to encode file size. (Actually, thirty-two bits, i.e. four bytes, is a more likely choice in this situation. Eight bytes will get you file sizes considerably bigger than any hard disk we're likely to see any time in the near future ...) Alternately, since file size is intrinsic, you can calculate the size of file-size records on the fly as long as you use consistent end-of-record markers. There are a host of other solutions -- most of these aren't just issues for metadata, but for the design of all files.
There were also Indian slave owners -- in fact, probably more than there were black slave owners. White slave owners vastly outnumbered both, of course.
I don't see number of developers as being all that meaningful a measurement. I'd guess that the vast bulk of Java development is for relatively small applets and servelets, and since that sort of programming is considerably easier than serious application and OS development, the bar for being a Java developer is lower than for being a C/C++ developer. Developer hours, though harder to measure, would probably provide a more meaningful representation of how "big" a language has become.
That being said, unlike a lot of posters here, I don't see speed as being a permanent impediment to Java's growth. We're already at the point where some serious Java apps are fast enough for everyday use, and I expect that to be more true over time as a) hardware continues to get faster and b) OS support for Java gets faster and more integrated. Mac OS X does a truly beautiful job of integrating Java support into the OS (ironically, better than anything from Sun itself) and some Linux solutions aren't far behind.
And it's nice to hear that it's taking market share from VB. Java may never live up to Sun's early visions of taking over the desktop, but if it helps slow down or even stop the progression of VB/C#/.NET (and yes, I know these are three different things, but they're all clearly connected as elements of Kaiser Bill's Evil Plan) then that's a good thing.