Like I said, I haven't checked it in a while. I periodically read headlines about new milestones and none of teh new features impress me.
Please remember, my criticisms was intended to attack the parent poster's suggestion that everyone shoudl drop IE because of its security flaws and move to Mozilla. I simply listed many of the reaons I don't.
Now, that said, the biggest reason I hear people suggesting is tabbed windows. Personally, I think they're overrated. I don't need tabbed windows. ALT-TAB and the taskbar work perfectly fine for me. I used tabbed browsing in Opera and didn't like it in all cases. If I have several related web pages open, it's nice. BUt other than that, I have no reason to have unrelated sites open in the same window. Id' rather let my task switcher manage teh switching of my tasks.
What I did like from Opera was the mouse gestures. But, now I use Stroke It and that works not just in IE, but in any application. The only function it doesn't perform is opening a link in a new window by dragging it "down".
Now, as you mentioned dumbing things down, perhaps you should spend some time looking into cusotmizing IE before you imply that it is dumbed down. What it is is a simple, OS-consistent experience out-of-the-box. But it is easy to extend and use in ways that most people don't ever touch upon.
Franly, the last time I checked Mozilla, the UI sucked. My apologies if they've changed the fundamentally flawed UI since I've last checked.
But seriously, I've actually taken advantage of the IE/Windows integration, the fact that your FAvorites are acutally files in folders, the way I can embed HTML in my OS taskbar to provide useful functions, and I can REMOVE and COMBINE (not just collapse to fewer pixels) the toolbars to make the best use of my high resolution screen.
Despite the security problems which to date haven't actually affected be, I am not willign to give up IE because I would lose the convenience of everythign I've been able to do with IE.
And before anyone tries to call me lazy, I challenge any mouse-wheel addicted user to disable the wheel.
Mind you that I'm referring to U.S. law which may or may not impact the MPlayer/KISS problem, but didn't a high court recently decide that it is not copyright infringement to copy data from a database built from a compilation of data? That is, you can't just organize a bunch of readily available data and copyright it and prevent anyone else form using the same data.
The reason I ask is that the original Slashdot article stated that a big clue was "the KISS ROM includes the same list, in order, of subtitle formats as MPlayer (including their own format mpsub)". That sounds like it could be construed as a compiled set of data, akin to the case I cited above.
1. First, we noticed a couple of months ago that another, lesser-used intermediate certificate expired for a test server, and this led us to check all of them, including the one everyone else is hating today. We had ours fixed months ago by updating the keystore out Java applications use.
2. We had people we connect to complaining OUR intermediate certificate had expired, when in fact, the intermediate certificates on their server used to verify ours had actually expired. If I recall, one of the other products impacted today was the IBM HTTPD server -- based on Apache, right?
...republicans have turned it into an excuse to create a police state
Why would anyone want a police state? I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic. Why,f or example, would a Republic represnetative in congress want a police state? Philosophical belief that the masses are too dumb to govern themselves? Greed? Intimidated to do so by others?
"Not really big news, everyone knew if the companies offered a dollar per song, and this is years ago, napster-era stuff, that people would buy it..."
No, I don't believe the sweetspot is $1/song. Think about it, for $1/song and a typical 15-song album, that's $15. Not that different for what you'd pay in a store for a physical copy (which you can easily rip), cover art, lyrics, etc. I think the online sweetspot wil be around $0.50.
Maybe I've watched one too many movies, but am I the only one concerned about what happens when the bag guys get ahold of this and are able to shut down any hazardous truck they want?
You missed the point. While having Microsoft open their protocols anf file formats, yes, we would be a lot closer to havign competitive products. But this isn't necessary for all of them.
Go back to my Evolutione Example. If Evolution worked on Widnows, I would use it (provided I could still sync it with my PDA) instead of Outlook. I've also checked into Chandler which is still years off, and clevercactus which is missing basic features like repeating calendar entries (both of these last two are still not to release stages,t hough).
I'm not asking that Evolution read my data. If it can read vCard and vCal (those are pretty darn open), I could import a lot of my critical data. Or, if they supported a conduit to/from my PDA which also is in sync with that information in Outlook, I could import it all that way.
Just so long as I could try it on Windows first, and wean myself.
Well then how about the "open source guys" shoudl stop posting articles about how much better linux is than windows. After all,w e wouldn't want ot make any Windows user's life easier, even if it did mean liberating them from free software.
I mean it's at least once a week people tell me how linux is better, or this new plan to made a Windows-like free distribution that sucks ass.
All I'm doing is offering constructive criticism of these ideas. People aren't going to switch just to save money. It will cost them a lot more in time, effort and comfort to do a massive switch. I suggest it would work better to facilitate a gradual switch by making more cross-platform apps so "normal" people realize the the value of open source, become comfortable with non-MS apps a little at a time, and at the end can switch out the underlying OS to Linux and not find themselves in a totally alien world.
Have you ever read Plato's Allegory of the Cave?. One part of it is that a sudden change can be quite upsetting.
By your description, those Apache HTTP server folks are a bunch of seelouts, because I'm running their product on this very Windows XP box. Those bastdards! Who do they think they are making this Windows user's life easier? And they're not alone. Many Java, Python, Perl, etc. oppen source projects are also cross-platform. They're all readily cross-platform.
So I know you said you weren't trying to be rude. It's just that your point-of-view (windows users are evil and should be left to rot untilt hey take the leap of faith that is Linux) conflicts with other views (we need to hurt Microsoft by taking away their customers by any means necessary).
Yes, but gradually and comfortably. If open source guys could focus on cross-platform stuff, it would be a smoother transition. I could switch out my PIM now, for example, and take it with me when I'm ready for the Linux plunge. At least compatible data formats.
Apache is a good, but simple example. I mean simple in that they didn't have to tackle the whole user front end.
Step 1. Give me open source alternatives I can wean myself into one at a time on my current platform (Windows XP).
Step 2. Now that all of my apps are open source, give me an open source operating system alternative where I can run them all.
For example, I'm now running OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office. Well, almost. I still use Microsoft Outlook because I can't find a competitive PIM client (not e-mail client) for Windows. I had hopes for Evolution, but last I checked, it's *nix only.
If you really want to know how to get people to switch to open source, stop thinking people want to uproot their whole history and experience in one fell swoop. Its very disruptive and uncomfortable.
If you rip that "probe" out too quickly, it will hurt!
This slashdot story points out that some CD-Rs already break down in less than 2 years. Of course, that's more data-degradation than actual disentigration.
I'd rather see researchers working on a way to make cheap, long-lasting media.
Of course, you could say that China is only a bit ahead of the X-Prize contestants who are nearing the same goal. And since the X-Prize even has American citizens in it, one could argue that the U.S. is still far more evolved in its space usage for the common man to be able to participate where in China it is still a national effort.
(Obviously, this argument has holes, but it is an important facet)
You don't have to make a new file for a 'struct' in Java. You can make Inner or Nested classes. And as another poster replied, you can just use public members.
public class Outer {
public static class MyStruct {
public int x;
public int y;
}// Rest of Outer's body... }
Weeks's theory predicts six specific pairs of matching circles in the sky, but Spergel's team has had no luck finding them in WMAP data.
Would the circles be expected to match though? It would seem to me that the "view" of the "circle" might be travelling two different distances to the observer. If the "circle" is changing shape/location over time, you might be seeing two different looking incarnations of the same bit of background radiation ripple.
But, I'm an amateur and they ar eprofessionals, so surely they accounted for this.
I remember how long it took me to throw together some VB code to parse the command line arguments in a reliable wway (i.e. handles quotes, etc. consistently).
No, it didn't take long. But the fact that I even had to do it is the problem. C, C++, Java, etc. all give you pre-parsed command line arguments. VB just doesnn't.
VB.NET does, but it's just a syntax variant of other.NET languages.
In PHP, how do you define the function cut? What is it that it is cutting? Can I pass in a String? If so, what happens. How about an int. If so, what happens? How do you specify the type of knife handle and blade you wish to cut with? Since you deifned it in Java, I assume it was one of your requiremnts that you conveniently skipped in PHP to try and skew the passive reader's mind towards your point-of-view.
And in ASP, where did you get the bread object? I know of no standard Object types which behave like that. It must be a custom one. I once tried making a custom Object in-script in ASP. THen I Couldn't store it in a Session and it broke because the Obejct defition is repared every time. Then I tried VB and Windows Script Components to build an Objetc, but sticking such an Object in the Session starts binding up the threads in IIS. So then I found the only solution was to use VIsual C++ to develop an ActiveX comonent with the proper threading model. Again,. you coneventiently glossed over this as if you're hiding something.
Then there's Java (I'll not lingeron your broken syntax). You use blatantly verbose syntax to try and make it look longer. Then you added error handling. There's a plus for Java. I assume your PHP and ASP would throw some sort of error that would end up as a HTTP 500 error confusing the poor user.
Man, you people are so black & white. Who cares if Java has been hyped? Has linux stopped being cool since it has been hyped? Did you turn away from Slashdot because every half-nerd talks about it as if its worth some cool points?
Just because alnaguage has been hyped DOES NOT mean its bad just as an unhyped language isn't necessarily good.
I'm sorry, it's just not a cause-and-effect, black-and-white relationship.
Re:Lies, statistics, and analysts
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
Java's big failing, IMHO, is Swing...
Nah, Swing ain't that bad. Well, maybe my opinion has shifted since I got a fatser computer, but then again JDK 1.4.2 Swing is far beyond the original release. It's faster, better supports the native LnFs, etc.
Java's biggest failing, IMHO, is it's startup cost and runtime footprint. The plans to imrpove this with 1.5 have been scrapped, last I heard. They coudl at least offer what Apple did in terms of shared resources. Ideally, we'd havethe isolate API and the Java Virtual Machine, like amodern physical machine, would run more than one program at a time.
As someone who once worked at a company that wrote software products in C targeting 8 platforms (6 Unices, x86 NT and Alpha NT), lemme just tellyou how easy it is to recompile you're code on another platform. The build processes we had were very intricate, handling the discrepencies between the compilers on different platforms and platform limitations. Then there were the code difference where we had to account for various differences that couldn't be handled the same on different platforms. All in all, it was a well orchestrated nightmare.
On the other hand, to take my Java EAR file from NT to AIX is a breeze.
Seriously, how do I go about finding them? I only have one local "college station" that plays less-mainstream music, and it only comes in through half of my 45-minute commute. I want to be able to sample some new, catchy music in a free form (i.e. radio) and then have a convenient (i.e. I'm lazy) way to purchase said music for a reasonable price.
I just don't know how to do that since I've only really ever been exposed to the RIAA's revenue-machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Like I said, I haven't checked it in a while. I periodically read headlines about new milestones and none of teh new features impress me.
Please remember, my criticisms was intended to attack the parent poster's suggestion that everyone shoudl drop IE because of its security flaws and move to Mozilla. I simply listed many of the reaons I don't.
Now, that said, the biggest reason I hear people suggesting is tabbed windows. Personally, I think they're overrated. I don't need tabbed windows. ALT-TAB and the taskbar work perfectly fine for me. I used tabbed browsing in Opera and didn't like it in all cases. If I have several related web pages open, it's nice. BUt other than that, I have no reason to have unrelated sites open in the same window. Id' rather let my task switcher manage teh switching of my tasks.
What I did like from Opera was the mouse gestures. But, now I use Stroke It and that works not just in IE, but in any application. The only function it doesn't perform is opening a link in a new window by dragging it "down".
Now, as you mentioned dumbing things down, perhaps you should spend some time looking into cusotmizing IE before you imply that it is dumbed down. What it is is a simple, OS-consistent experience out-of-the-box. But it is easy to extend and use in ways that most people don't ever touch upon.
Franly, the last time I checked Mozilla, the UI sucked. My apologies if they've changed the fundamentally flawed UI since I've last checked.
But seriously, I've actually taken advantage of the IE/Windows integration, the fact that your FAvorites are acutally files in folders, the way I can embed HTML in my OS taskbar to provide useful functions, and I can REMOVE and COMBINE (not just collapse to fewer pixels) the toolbars to make the best use of my high resolution screen.
Despite the security problems which to date haven't actually affected be, I am not willign to give up IE because I would lose the convenience of everythign I've been able to do with IE.
And before anyone tries to call me lazy, I challenge any mouse-wheel addicted user to disable the wheel.
I agree, I would like to see something like preference voting take us away from the compromise-forcing 2-party system we have now.
Well, I did, but the Slashdot virus scanner prevented me from posting it, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
Mind you that I'm referring to U.S. law which may or may not impact the MPlayer/KISS problem, but didn't a high court recently decide that it is not copyright infringement to copy data from a database built from a compilation of data? That is, you can't just organize a bunch of readily available data and copyright it and prevent anyone else form using the same data.
The reason I ask is that the original Slashdot article stated that a big clue was "the KISS ROM includes the same list, in order, of subtitle formats as MPlayer (including their own format mpsub)". That sounds like it could be construed as a compiled set of data, akin to the case I cited above.
I'm certainly not supporting KISS
Yes we have. It looks like a computer virus.
At work, we had two impacts from this problem.
1. First, we noticed a couple of months ago that another, lesser-used intermediate certificate expired for a test server, and this led us to check all of them, including the one everyone else is hating today. We had ours fixed months ago by updating the keystore out Java applications use.
2. We had people we connect to complaining OUR intermediate certificate had expired, when in fact, the intermediate certificates on their server used to verify ours had actually expired. If I recall, one of the other products impacted today was the IBM HTTPD server -- based on Apache, right?
Why would anyone want a police state? I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic. Why,f or example, would a Republic represnetative in congress want a police state? Philosophical belief that the masses are too dumb to govern themselves? Greed? Intimidated to do so by others?
"Not really big news, everyone knew if the companies offered a dollar per song, and this is years ago, napster-era stuff, that people would buy it..."
No, I don't believe the sweetspot is $1/song. Think about it, for $1/song and a typical 15-song album, that's $15. Not that different for what you'd pay in a store for a physical copy (which you can easily rip), cover art, lyrics, etc. I think the online sweetspot wil be around $0.50.
Maybe I've watched one too many movies, but am I the only one concerned about what happens when the bag guys get ahold of this and are able to shut down any hazardous truck they want?
You missed the point. While having Microsoft open their protocols anf file formats, yes, we would be a lot closer to havign competitive products. But this isn't necessary for all of them.
Go back to my Evolutione Example. If Evolution worked on Widnows, I would use it (provided I could still sync it with my PDA) instead of Outlook. I've also checked into Chandler which is still years off, and clevercactus which is missing basic features like repeating calendar entries (both of these last two are still not to release stages,t hough).
I'm not asking that Evolution read my data. If it can read vCard and vCal (those are pretty darn open), I could import a lot of my critical data. Or, if they supported a conduit to/from my PDA which also is in sync with that information in Outlook, I could import it all that way.
Just so long as I could try it on Windows first, and wean myself.
Well then how about the "open source guys" shoudl stop posting articles about how much better linux is than windows. After all,w e wouldn't want ot make any Windows user's life easier, even if it did mean liberating them from free software.
I mean it's at least once a week people tell me how linux is better, or this new plan to made a Windows-like free distribution that sucks ass.
All I'm doing is offering constructive criticism of these ideas. People aren't going to switch just to save money. It will cost them a lot more in time, effort and comfort to do a massive switch. I suggest it would work better to facilitate a gradual switch by making more cross-platform apps so "normal" people realize the the value of open source, become comfortable with non-MS apps a little at a time, and at the end can switch out the underlying OS to Linux and not find themselves in a totally alien world.
Have you ever read Plato's Allegory of the Cave?. One part of it is that a sudden change can be quite upsetting.
By your description, those Apache HTTP server folks are a bunch of seelouts, because I'm running their product on this very Windows XP box. Those bastdards! Who do they think they are making this Windows user's life easier? And they're not alone. Many Java, Python, Perl, etc. oppen source projects are also cross-platform. They're all readily cross-platform.
So I know you said you weren't trying to be rude. It's just that your point-of-view (windows users are evil and should be left to rot untilt hey take the leap of faith that is Linux) conflicts with other views (we need to hurt Microsoft by taking away their customers by any means necessary).
Yes, but gradually and comfortably. If open source guys could focus on cross-platform stuff, it would be a smoother transition. I could switch out my PIM now, for example, and take it with me when I'm ready for the Linux plunge. At least compatible data formats.
Apache is a good, but simple example. I mean simple in that they didn't have to tackle the whole user front end.
On the contrary:
Step 1. Give me open source alternatives I can wean myself into one at a time on my current platform (Windows XP).
Step 2. Now that all of my apps are open source, give me an open source operating system alternative where I can run them all.
For example, I'm now running OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office. Well, almost. I still use Microsoft Outlook because I can't find a competitive PIM client (not e-mail client) for Windows. I had hopes for Evolution, but last I checked, it's *nix only.
If you really want to know how to get people to switch to open source, stop thinking people want to uproot their whole history and experience in one fell swoop. Its very disruptive and uncomfortable.
If you rip that "probe" out too quickly, it will hurt!
I'd rather see researchers working on a way to make cheap, long-lasting media.
Of course, you could say that China is only a bit ahead of the X-Prize contestants who are nearing the same goal. And since the X-Prize even has American citizens in it, one could argue that the U.S. is still far more evolved in its space usage for the common man to be able to participate where in China it is still a national effort.
(Obviously, this argument has holes, but it is an important facet)
You don't have to make a new file for a 'struct' in Java. You can make Inner or Nested classes. And as another poster replied, you can just use public members.
// Rest of Outer's body...
public class Outer {
public static class MyStruct {
public int x;
public int y;
}
}
Perhaps your frustration with Java is misplaced?
Would the circles be expected to match though? It would seem to me that the "view" of the "circle" might be travelling two different distances to the observer. If the "circle" is changing shape/location over time, you might be seeing two different looking incarnations of the same bit of background radiation ripple.
But, I'm an amateur and they ar eprofessionals, so surely they accounted for this.
Yeah, ha ha! That is funny.
.NET languages.
I remember how long it took me to throw together some VB code to parse the command line arguments in a reliable wway (i.e. handles quotes, etc. consistently).
No, it didn't take long. But the fact that I even had to do it is the problem. C, C++, Java, etc. all give you pre-parsed command line arguments. VB just doesnn't.
VB.NET does, but it's just a syntax variant of other
Wait, wait, wait...
In PHP, how do you define the function cut? What is it that it is cutting? Can I pass in a String? If so, what happens. How about an int. If so, what happens? How do you specify the type of knife handle and blade you wish to cut with? Since you deifned it in Java, I assume it was one of your requiremnts that you conveniently skipped in PHP to try and skew the passive reader's mind towards your point-of-view.
And in ASP, where did you get the bread object? I know of no standard Object types which behave like that. It must be a custom one. I once tried making a custom Object in-script in ASP. THen I Couldn't store it in a Session and it broke because the Obejct defition is repared every time. Then I tried VB and Windows Script Components to build an Objetc, but sticking such an Object in the Session starts binding up the threads in IIS. So then I found the only solution was to use VIsual C++ to develop an ActiveX comonent with the proper threading model. Again,. you coneventiently glossed over this as if you're hiding something.
Then there's Java (I'll not lingeron your broken syntax). You use blatantly verbose syntax to try and make it look longer. Then you added error handling. There's a plus for Java. I assume your PHP and ASP would throw some sort of error that would end up as a HTTP 500 error confusing the poor user.
Come back when you have a legitimate post.
1. Java has been hyped.
Man, you people are so black & white. Who cares if Java has been hyped? Has linux stopped being cool since it has been hyped? Did you turn away from Slashdot because every half-nerd talks about it as if its worth some cool points?
Just because alnaguage has been hyped DOES NOT mean its bad just as an unhyped language isn't necessarily good.
I'm sorry, it's just not a cause-and-effect, black-and-white relationship.
For an enterprise app, java is the WORST choice.
I've never used it for server side stuff
Need I say more?
Nah, Swing ain't that bad. Well, maybe my opinion has shifted since I got a fatser computer, but then again JDK 1.4.2 Swing is far beyond the original release. It's faster, better supports the native LnFs, etc.
Java's biggest failing, IMHO, is it's startup cost and runtime footprint. The plans to imrpove this with 1.5 have been scrapped, last I heard. They coudl at least offer what Apple did in terms of shared resources. Ideally, we'd havethe isolate API and the Java Virtual Machine, like amodern physical machine, would run more than one program at a time.
As someone who once worked at a company that wrote software products in C targeting 8 platforms (6 Unices, x86 NT and Alpha NT), lemme just tellyou how easy it is to recompile you're code on another platform. The build processes we had were very intricate, handling the discrepencies between the compilers on different platforms and platform limitations. Then there were the code difference where we had to account for various differences that couldn't be handled the same on different platforms. All in all, it was a well orchestrated nightmare.
On the other hand, to take my Java EAR file from NT to AIX is a breeze.
Seriously, how do I go about finding them? I only have one local "college station" that plays less-mainstream music, and it only comes in through half of my 45-minute commute. I want to be able to sample some new, catchy music in a free form (i.e. radio) and then have a convenient (i.e. I'm lazy) way to purchase said music for a reasonable price.
I just don't know how to do that since I've only really ever been exposed to the RIAA's revenue-machine.