One big thing Java needs is a multi-process VM. Think about it, how many processes does your machine run? Probably lots. How many does a Java virtual machine run? One. Each process has its own VM. While this might have some advantages when it comes to controlling crashes and security, it also means each process has the initial overhead of starting the VM and the continuing overhead of the same duplicated code running in memory for each VM.
Startup time is not only an actual problem, but its gives a very bad impression when just launching a program takes a while. jEdit, a popular Java text editor had to overcome this by attaching to an existing server process. Kludges like this shouldn't be necessary.
jabberd violates my definition of a Win32 solution. It requires Cygwin, which is like a Unix island on Win32. It's a kludge. Apache did a find job of porting their HTTP server to Win32 without restoring to such hacks.
Tipic is nice. I beta tested it. But its not free.
Now I'm sure I can be targeted for attacks for these complaints. But my mother uses AIM. My *grandmother* uses AIM. DO you think they'd install Cygwin or pay for Tipic? Why would they do that when AIM works fine for them and all of their "buddies" are there.
Got a free Jabber server that runs on Win32? If the only solution is to wipe the evil OS off my box and install Linux, then you can begin to see why setting up one's own Jabber server will ever catch on.
Just building a better protocol, client, etc. will not guarantee a monopoly shift. I consider myself a die hard IM user, and I've tried switching several times away from my mainstay IM provider, AIM. Until a critical mass switches, you're fighting a losing battle.
However, each time, it was derailed by AOL blocking the interoperability that allowed this new procotol or client to reach my existing buddies still on AIM. For Jabber, AOL first blocked the connections form Jabber's AIM-t, then just started blocking the Class C of Jabber servers. For Trillian, they started blocking users found using Trillian clients.
Fortunately, Trillian is working now, and has been for a few months. But if it gets blocked again, I'll have to switch back to AOL's (crappy) client.
What I need is for my buddies to switch to something (say, Jabber). But they won't switch until their buddies switch. And so-on.
Maybe someone should introduce a Burn-AIM day or Burn-ICQ day, much like the Burn GIF day. It would require a lot of pushing for it, and plenty of readily available and EASy materials for users to switch. Maybe even a latter cut-off day when people stop dual-IM'ing.
It wouldn't be *as* bad if AIM didn't suck so bad. The client is absolutely horrific! Everything but the kitchen sink is in it (and I think the sink is going to be in the next release). Rate your buddy, buddy icons, e-mail checker, stock ticker...
And then they don't add useful features like aliases for your buddies (so you can see FrogDog24 as "John Smith"), secure IM, etc.
Perhaps its better this way, though. If AIM were improving, there would be less of a base for revolt.
Jabber alone is NOT the answer. You need interoperability with existing protocols. What could does it do me to sit on Jabber and talk to myself when I can't communicate with my buddies on AIM (since aim-t was still broken last I checked due to IP blocks by AOL)? And they won't switch for the same reason. It's a Catch-22.
Trillian is only a temporary answer. Jabber could've been a better piece of the answer, but it got de-railed as far as IM interoperability. We truly need interoperable protocols. Or better yet, a standard protocol.
The road block to such a protocol, however, is AIM, and possibly the other IM providers. How do you get people to switch from one established, large IM provider such as AOL to a new protocol/provider? If you don't have interoperability (which AOL has demonstrate its resistance to in the past), you won't get people to switch.
But the point has nothing to do with the fact that it *can* track your history in its own greedy way. The point is, there is no way around it.
What I want to associate.java files so I can poen them in my favorite IDE, say Eclipse 2.0? That way, I can double-click ona file, click a hyper-link to source code, extract and view a.java file from a.ZIP file, etc. and veiw it in my IDE.
With Eclipse, this is a step harder, probablyr equiring some scripting. Therte is no reason for them to require that every file go through their BigBrogther Filter just for me to look at it. Its a nice idea to offer it, but a very BAD idea to require it.
Big Brither is back. Eclipse wants to control your source code for you. There is no way to even "open" a file. INstead, you have to "import" it into your project. As best as I can tell, "importing" a file drops it in some sort of single-monolithic-file repesenting your source code for a project. In it, they do things like versioning.
It sounds like a nice idea to use in some case, but it should not be a requirement! What if I just downloaded some source code and want to view it in the same color-syntax-highlightng IDE I program in?
Now, this was the experience my co-workers and had when we looked at 2.0 beta -- and this thread is about 2.0 final. Maybe they fixed it?
...most people reconcile the concepts of morality, and what is "right" or "wrong"
I submit that "morality" is the concept of doing what is good, or even 'not bad', for a society. A society in which things that are bad for the society are prevalent won't be around long.
How many societes do you know of wheremurder is ok, or, in fact, encouraged, between members of that society? I don't thing would be around long enough o put a dent in the historical record before every member wa dead.
Morality isn't some intelligent creation of a God. Its simply a side effect of our species' evolution. It so happens we are more "fit" to survive as members of a society, so any members who are anti-social, and thus didn't form a society, were less it. The result is a society, which by nature of it coming into existence, is moral.
Sure, there's deviots who murder, rape, etc. But its not the norm. Its just noise in the signal.
As I understand it, the father who brought this suit didn't want his daughter to have to choose between feeling like an outcast and reciting something she din't believe in. Yes, he was an atheist. But even if the term "...under God..." were not in the pledge, she would still have to decide between reciting the pledge and feeling like an outcast if all the other classmates did participate.
Now the older Supreme Court ruling said that students can't be explicitly required to recite the pledge (or other items, I believe). I understand the official complaint i this new suit to be that there is still an implicit compulsion to participate for fear of bein viewed as an outsider by your peers.
Now, from reading comments under this story, I see many Slashdotters also have a problem with indoctrinating children with this pledge at all, regardless of the inclusion of a theistic phrase. But would this case have been brought without that phrase?
Is this case about implicit compulsion or separation of church and state?
I don't see too many people giving up money because of the statement on the bills and coins.
And the man who brought the suit didn't want ot give up the Pledge of Allegiance. He just didn't want his daughter to have to choose between reciting it and feeling like an outcast.
To follow your analogy, you see people fighting the inclusion of "In God We Trust" on our monies *instead* of refusing to use money.
I completely agree with the atheists point. But I think just considering that will be fighting a losing battle in a country where the majority are monotheists.
The bigger reason to remove the "under God" clause is to enforce the separation of church and state for secular reasons. Does anyone remember from history class when governments and churches were merged. In such entanglements, religious persecution is possible, and historically, unavoidable. These little creepings of religion back into government ("...under God...", "In God We Trust", 10 commandments, etc.) are the beginnings of a slipperly slope.
Heh, but why wouldwe want to learn a lesson from history when we can repeat it ourselves!
So most Icelanders use geothermal energy to heat their homes, and mroe is on the way with the plan to kick the oil habit. But where does this energy come from?
As I understand it, it comes from the warmth of the earth, which in turn is created by the gravitational pressure cooking our core and the sun. If we start depleting this energy, what could be the side effects? Maybe Iceland alone isn't enough to have a noticable effect, but neither would Iceland have a big effect if they were the only fossil-fuel-exhaust producing nation.
Would rampant geothermal use (say as high as our current fossil fuel usage) cool the earth to some damaging end?
Re:Missing PIM Functionality
on
StarOffice 6.0
·
· Score: 1
Ahh, my hopes are dashed. I went to Ximian's site to see if this really could work for me, with hopes of throwing MIcrosoft Outlook in the cirular file. Alas, the last item on their features page only lists variants of UNIX. As you may have guessed from the fact that I use Outlook, I'm on a Windows box. Not just for Outlook, but for a whole slew of programs and habits that I'm not ready to give up.
Don't get me wrong -- I use Apache. They did it right, playing niceily in a Windows environment as well as the expected way in Linux. Its just too bad Evolution isn't there (yet) from what their site suggests.
I still say they're missing PIM functionality. Figure out a way to get Evolution to work with it seamlessly. I run Windows and would glady switch away from Office if I could read/write Word documents, Excel spreadsheets -- and duplicate my Outlook PIM/e-mail functionality (and still synchronize it to my PDA).
I've been using Microsoft Office for years. That being entrenched, I wonder how it is Star Office, Open Office, and perhaps others, are coming out with supposedly compettive offerings with less features. Here's the pieces of MIcrosoft Office that have come bundled with one version or another, in the frequency that I use, or have used, them:
Microsoft Outlook (PIM)
MIcrosoft Word (Word Processor)
Microsoft Excel (Spreadsheet)
MIcrosoft Access (RDBMS)
Microsoft PowerPoint (Presentation)
Before anyone slams me on Access, it was my first introduction to an RDBMS and served as a proof-of-concept learning tool -- light-years ahead of no DB offering at all
So, for me at least, both Star Office and Open Office appear to be missing the PIM (not just e-mail!) functionality thus eliminating them from consideration. I suspect from my peer's reactions that I'm nearly alone in actually using a PIM.
I know there are open source PIMs out there. Why they haven't been integrated is beyond me. Is there anything else people feel are missing from these office suites? Perhaps something that exists and could be integrated?
Re:oh, my first chance at seeing the dumb Katz
on
Review: Panic Room
·
· Score: 2
the cell phone in the movie doesn't work in the panic room, which is true to life due to the shielding.
I had wondered, would it have been possible to use the landline phone's wires to fashion a crude antenna extension to attach to the cell phone with its plastic case removed? Would having that antenna hang out the pipe achievbed a signal?
a net connection is a stupid thing to rant about it lacking since it isn't clear when this is set
In one scene the camera pans passed a 900MHz cordless phone box as Whittakker is realizing that Junior probably screwed up cutting the phone line, so that sets the movie fairly recently. Still, I agree that any net connection could've been just as easily 'not connected' as that second phone line.
so the ventalation is shared with the house - who cares?!
Well, I care as that is a fairly bad oversight for a panic room. However, there is nothing that states the ventilation is attached to the rest of the house -- only that its duct work was outside of the panic room's walls (which is probably still an oversight.) In fact, the duct work probably wasn't connected because the propane would've also leaked into the master bedroom.
*note to self* ignore Jon Katz from now on - the guy is annoying and waste of time.
A friend of mine just came back with a Sharp Zarus 5000 from Java One. Being a PDA fan (I have a Sony Clie), I was curious to investigate.
At first glance, it was impressive. Opera browser, terminal, slide-out keyboard, etc. However, I ultimately got turned off.
1. The keyboatd is very difficult to use because it is so tiny (and I have big hands). This is just a personal turn-off, though.
2. The apps arenot very responsive. They have to be "launched". Some can be cached, but not all of them can be at once. This is because the Embedix (the embedded Linux) does the same thing a PocketPC does. It parititons the RAM into storage and runtime RAM.
3. Its just a miniaturized computer, not a PDA. (This is another Personal turn-off, though, because I believe a PDA should be more of a PDA, not necessarily a computer)
This is sure to start another flame war, but I was really hoping Linux-based PDAs could do more to breaktha paradigm that a PDA should be a small computer. So far, only the Sharp Wizards and PalmOS devices have managed to do this, though (i.e. no partitioned RAM, etc.)
c) There is some effect similar to the X-ray "emissions" from black holes, whereby the particles appear to come from the black hole but actually never cross its event horizon
But (I think) the X-ray emmisions come from the "poles" of the black hole, whereas gravity is experienced spherically around the black hole.
I read an article (can't even remember if it was electronic or paper, whuch less where it was) on this same subject a month or so ago. In it, I recall that the 'repulsive force' inside the 'black shell' was said to be akin to the expansion of the universe like a giant set of Russian nesting dools.
The porblem I have with implementing copyrights in hardware is that it will probably be an indefinite lock on the content whereas copyrights do, eventually, expire.
Some copyrights expire relative to the authors death. How would the hardware/content know when the author has died? Will it be connected to ssome central copyright database?
Of course, no one in the government can think that far into the future. Who cares if content is locked down for eternity because it secures it authors a monopoly on the content for a meager 70 years.
Won't they be in for a surprse when they find out it doesn't fly? Flying is a myth, just like that government-sponsored tale about men walking on the moon.
Slashdot Mirror
One big thing Java needs is a multi-process VM. Think about it, how many processes does your machine run? Probably lots. How many does a Java virtual machine run? One. Each process has its own VM. While this might have some advantages when it comes to controlling crashes and security, it also means each process has the initial overhead of starting the VM and the continuing overhead of the same duplicated code running in memory for each VM.
Startup time is not only an actual problem, but its gives a very bad impression when just launching a program takes a while. jEdit, a popular Java text editor had to overcome this by attaching to an existing server process. Kludges like this shouldn't be necessary.
jabberd violates my definition of a Win32 solution. It requires Cygwin, which is like a Unix island on Win32. It's a kludge. Apache did a find job of porting their HTTP server to Win32 without restoring to such hacks.
Tipic is nice. I beta tested it. But its not free.
Now I'm sure I can be targeted for attacks for these complaints. But my mother uses AIM. My *grandmother* uses AIM. DO you think they'd install Cygwin or pay for Tipic? Why would they do that when AIM works fine for them and all of their "buddies" are there.
Got a free Jabber server that runs on Win32? If the only solution is to wipe the evil OS off my box and install Linux, then you can begin to see why setting up one's own Jabber server will ever catch on.
Just building a better protocol, client, etc. will not guarantee a monopoly shift. I consider myself a die hard IM user, and I've tried switching several times away from my mainstay IM provider, AIM. Until a critical mass switches, you're fighting a losing battle.
However, each time, it was derailed by AOL blocking the interoperability that allowed this new procotol or client to reach my existing buddies still on AIM. For Jabber, AOL first blocked the connections form Jabber's AIM-t, then just started blocking the Class C of Jabber servers. For Trillian, they started blocking users found using Trillian clients.
Fortunately, Trillian is working now, and has been for a few months. But if it gets blocked again, I'll have to switch back to AOL's (crappy) client.
What I need is for my buddies to switch to something (say, Jabber). But they won't switch until their buddies switch. And so-on.
Maybe someone should introduce a Burn-AIM day or Burn-ICQ day, much like the Burn GIF day. It would require a lot of pushing for it, and plenty of readily available and EASy materials for users to switch. Maybe even a latter cut-off day when people stop dual-IM'ing.
BUt I'm not even sure if I'd participate!
It wouldn't be *as* bad if AIM didn't suck so bad. The client is absolutely horrific! Everything but the kitchen sink is in it (and I think the sink is going to be in the next release). Rate your buddy, buddy icons, e-mail checker, stock ticker...
And then they don't add useful features like aliases for your buddies (so you can see FrogDog24 as "John Smith"), secure IM, etc.
Perhaps its better this way, though. If AIM were improving, there would be less of a base for revolt.
Jabber alone is NOT the answer. You need interoperability with existing protocols. What could does it do me to sit on Jabber and talk to myself when I can't communicate with my buddies on AIM (since aim-t was still broken last I checked due to IP blocks by AOL)? And they won't switch for the same reason. It's a Catch-22.
Trillian is only a temporary answer. Jabber could've been a better piece of the answer, but it got de-railed as far as IM interoperability. We truly need interoperable protocols. Or better yet, a standard protocol.
The road block to such a protocol, however, is AIM, and possibly the other IM providers. How do you get people to switch from one established, large IM provider such as AOL to a new protocol/provider? If you don't have interoperability (which AOL has demonstrate its resistance to in the past), you won't get people to switch.
But the point has nothing to do with the fact that it *can* track your history in its own greedy way. The point is, there is no way around it.
.java files so I can poen them in my favorite IDE, say Eclipse 2.0? That way, I can double-click ona file, click a hyper-link to source code, extract and view a .java file from a .ZIP file, etc. and veiw it in my IDE.
What I want to associate
With Eclipse, this is a step harder, probablyr equiring some scripting. Therte is no reason for them to require that every file go through their BigBrogther Filter just for me to look at it. Its a nice idea to offer it, but a very BAD idea to require it.
Big Brither is back. Eclipse wants to control your source code for you. There is no way to even "open" a file. INstead, you have to "import" it into your project. As best as I can tell, "importing" a file drops it in some sort of single-monolithic-file repesenting your source code for a project. In it, they do things like versioning.
It sounds like a nice idea to use in some case, but it should not be a requirement! What if I just downloaded some source code and want to view it in the same color-syntax-highlightng IDE I program in?
Now, this was the experience my co-workers and had when we looked at 2.0 beta -- and this thread is about 2.0 final. Maybe they fixed it?
...most people reconcile the concepts of morality, and what is "right" or "wrong"
I submit that "morality" is the concept of doing what is good, or even 'not bad', for a society. A society in which things that are bad for the society are prevalent won't be around long.
How many societes do you know of wheremurder is ok, or, in fact, encouraged, between members of that society? I don't thing would be around long enough o put a dent in the historical record before every member wa dead.
Morality isn't some intelligent creation of a God. Its simply a side effect of our species' evolution. It so happens we are more "fit" to survive as members of a society, so any members who are anti-social, and thus didn't form a society, were less it. The result is a society, which by nature of it coming into existence, is moral.
Sure, there's deviots who murder, rape, etc. But its not the norm. Its just noise in the signal.
As I understand it, the father who brought this suit didn't want his daughter to have to choose between feeling like an outcast and reciting something she din't believe in. Yes, he was an atheist. But even if the term "...under God..." were not in the pledge, she would still have to decide between reciting the pledge and feeling like an outcast if all the other classmates did participate.
Now the older Supreme Court ruling said that students can't be explicitly required to recite the pledge (or other items, I believe). I understand the official complaint i this new suit to be that there is still an implicit compulsion to participate for fear of bein viewed as an outsider by your peers.
Now, from reading comments under this story, I see many Slashdotters also have a problem with indoctrinating children with this pledge at all, regardless of the inclusion of a theistic phrase. But would this case have been brought without that phrase?
Is this case about implicit compulsion or separation of church and state?
I don't see too many people giving up money because of the statement on the bills and coins.
And the man who brought the suit didn't want ot give up the Pledge of Allegiance. He just didn't want his daughter to have to choose between reciting it and feeling like an outcast.
To follow your analogy, you see people fighting the inclusion of "In God We Trust" on our monies *instead* of refusing to use money.
I doubt seriously that all Christians or even monotheistic theologists agree on all tenants of what God is.
Perhaps, but I bet most atheists agree that there isn't a God. Why let that option stand as an asterisk instead of part of the embedded expression?
I completely agree with the atheists point. But I think just considering that will be fighting a losing battle in a country where the majority are monotheists.
The bigger reason to remove the "under God" clause is to enforce the separation of church and state for secular reasons. Does anyone remember from history class when governments and churches were merged. In such entanglements, religious persecution is possible, and historically, unavoidable. These little creepings of religion back into government ("...under God...", "In God We Trust", 10 commandments, etc.) are the beginnings of a slipperly slope.
Heh, but why wouldwe want to learn a lesson from history when we can repeat it ourselves!
So most Icelanders use geothermal energy to heat their homes, and mroe is on the way with the plan to kick the oil habit. But where does this energy come from?
As I understand it, it comes from the warmth of the earth, which in turn is created by the gravitational pressure cooking our core and the sun. If we start depleting this energy, what could be the side effects? Maybe Iceland alone isn't enough to have a noticable effect, but neither would Iceland have a big effect if they were the only fossil-fuel-exhaust producing nation.
Would rampant geothermal use (say as high as our current fossil fuel usage) cool the earth to some damaging end?
Ahh, my hopes are dashed. I went to Ximian's site to see if this really could work for me, with hopes of throwing MIcrosoft Outlook in the cirular file. Alas, the last item on their features page only lists variants of UNIX. As you may have guessed from the fact that I use Outlook, I'm on a Windows box. Not just for Outlook, but for a whole slew of programs and habits that I'm not ready to give up.
Don't get me wrong -- I use Apache. They did it right, playing niceily in a Windows environment as well as the expected way in Linux. Its just too bad Evolution isn't there (yet) from what their site suggests.
I still say they're missing PIM functionality. Figure out a way to get Evolution to work with it seamlessly. I run Windows and would glady switch away from Office if I could read/write Word documents, Excel spreadsheets -- and duplicate my Outlook PIM/e-mail functionality (and still synchronize it to my PDA).
I've been using Microsoft Office for years. That being entrenched, I wonder how it is Star Office, Open Office, and perhaps others, are coming out with supposedly compettive offerings with less features. Here's the pieces of MIcrosoft Office that have come bundled with one version or another, in the frequency that I use, or have used, them:
- Microsoft Outlook (PIM)
- MIcrosoft Word (Word Processor)
- Microsoft Excel (Spreadsheet)
- MIcrosoft Access (RDBMS)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (Presentation)
Before anyone slams me on Access, it was my first introduction to an RDBMS and served as a proof-of-concept learning tool -- light-years ahead of no DB offering at allSo, for me at least, both Star Office and Open Office appear to be missing the PIM (not just e-mail!) functionality thus eliminating them from consideration. I suspect from my peer's reactions that I'm nearly alone in actually using a PIM.
I know there are open source PIMs out there. Why they haven't been integrated is beyond me. Is there anything else people feel are missing from these office suites? Perhaps something that exists and could be integrated?
I had wondered, would it have been possible to use the landline phone's wires to fashion a crude antenna extension to attach to the cell phone with its plastic case removed? Would having that antenna hang out the pipe achievbed a signal?
a net connection is a stupid thing to rant about it lacking since it isn't clear when this is set
In one scene the camera pans passed a 900MHz cordless phone box as Whittakker is realizing that Junior probably screwed up cutting the phone line, so that sets the movie fairly recently. Still, I agree that any net connection could've been just as easily 'not connected' as that second phone line.
so the ventalation is shared with the house - who cares?!
Well, I care as that is a fairly bad oversight for a panic room. However, there is nothing that states the ventilation is attached to the rest of the house -- only that its duct work was outside of the panic room's walls (which is probably still an oversight.) In fact, the duct work probably wasn't connected because the propane would've also leaked into the master bedroom.
*note to self* ignore Jon Katz from now on - the guy is annoying and waste of time.
Nah, he gives you a chance to gain karma!
A friend of mine just came back with a Sharp Zarus 5000 from Java One. Being a PDA fan (I have a Sony Clie), I was curious to investigate.
At first glance, it was impressive. Opera browser, terminal, slide-out keyboard, etc. However, I ultimately got turned off.
1. The keyboatd is very difficult to use because it is so tiny (and I have big hands). This is just a personal turn-off, though.
2. The apps arenot very responsive. They have to be "launched". Some can be cached, but not all of them can be at once. This is because the Embedix (the embedded Linux) does the same thing a PocketPC does. It parititons the RAM into storage and runtime RAM.
3. Its just a miniaturized computer, not a PDA. (This is another Personal turn-off, though, because I believe a PDA should be more of a PDA, not necessarily a computer)
This is sure to start another flame war, but I was really hoping Linux-based PDAs could do more to breaktha paradigm that a PDA should be a small computer. So far, only the Sharp Wizards and PalmOS devices have managed to do this, though (i.e. no partitioned RAM, etc.)
c) There is some effect similar to the X-ray "emissions" from black holes, whereby the particles appear to come from the black hole but actually never cross its event horizon
But (I think) the X-ray emmisions come from the "poles" of the black hole, whereas gravity is experienced spherically around the black hole.
I read an article (can't even remember if it was electronic or paper, whuch less where it was) on this same subject a month or so ago. In it, I recall that the 'repulsive force' inside the 'black shell' was said to be akin to the expansion of the universe like a giant set of Russian nesting dools.
The porblem I have with implementing copyrights in hardware is that it will probably be an indefinite lock on the content whereas copyrights do, eventually, expire.
Some copyrights expire relative to the authors death. How would the hardware/content know when the author has died? Will it be connected to ssome central copyright database?
Of course, no one in the government can think that far into the future. Who cares if content is locked down for eternity because it secures it authors a monopoly on the content for a meager 70 years.
Won't they be in for a surprse when they find out it doesn't fly? Flying is a myth, just like that government-sponsored tale about men walking on the moon.
It says so in my 1962 Soviet Encyclopedia.