and on the type of hardware that a decent server is run on, the largest of pages would take a couple of seconds (first hit after change only) tops
It was a Windows NT box. Sure, we all hate Windows, but it was a big, well-equipped production server and it was running version 1.0 of the original Sun Java Webserver (which has silently been stomped by now).
When was the last time you talked to this friend who loved Java?
Oh, yesterday. He develops huge applications in Java on a Solaris box. He likes the language, but hates the Sun compiler. However, he cannot get around it. Jikes is not an option for what he does.
Even the regular Sun JDK does nothing close to "slowing your system down to a halt."
You have your anecdote, I have mine. On my machine, it does. The Sun JDK requires huge amounts of memory and it is a slow compiler.
By the way, compiling "the whole fricking page" is desirable. This is what makes it so fast. Subsequent hits are precompiled and quite fast.
You are mixing up my argument. I don't question that the result of JSP and Servlets makes a fast application and I don't claim that a Java application is slow.
But *development* in Java is slow compared to the popular web scripting languages.
Trust me, I did not exaggerate when I claimed that it took me 30 to 60 seconds to wait for a rather simple JSP page to recompile. I used my watch on that, since I could not believe it myself.
True, with servlets, you have to re-compile (but this really has nothing to do with JSP/ASP/PHP) but you still don't have to restart your app server in most cases.
Yes, I talk about recompiling. Recompiling takes time, especially with Java. Rule of thumb by a fellow Java developer (who, btw, loves Java): No matter what kind of hardware you throw at it, the JDK will make your system slow down to a halt.
I remember waiting 30 to 60 seconds to the see the result of a single line of changed code in a JSP page. This is quite some time ago, but back then, we certainly did not use a slow machine.
And JSP, at least in the version that I used back when it was young, was just a text filter that transformed JSP pages into Java servlet source and then recompiled the whole fricking page. Again, change, wait, wait, wait, see, change again, wait, wait,...
With the exception of your Python recommendation (I prefer Perl, so let the holy wars begin:-), I second everything you just wrote.
Java Servlets and JSP is basically a "Slow Prototyping" environment and the long time it takes to just change a single line of code and then give that a try simply makes JSP a bad choice.
PHP has been good to me for small projects, but recently a PHP based application blew up in my face when our client started a cooperation major web site. Basically, we got slashdotted and PHP showed that it did not scale well, despite having a really big machine.
Friends have made me turn to Perl/FastCGI and we are currently moving the above-mentioned PHP-based site to this. Let's see if this serves our needs.
Hey, do you realize that this is just plain, simple fun?
It's Halloween, so the researchers checked their library of images and looked for an image that fits the occasion. I for one prefer scientific projects where the researchers enjoy their work so much that they can do something like this.
I'm sure that the same scientists will check their library again for Christmas and see if they can find some Christmas-related picture, too.
Seriously though, if you *do* know better, why don't you get together with the people you mentioned and fork your own version of the kernel? Nobody stops you from doing so.
I am not a kernel developer, I don't read the kernel mailing list, I make up my mind by reading lwn.net's summaries. Yes, it seems that there's a lot of ugly ego-clashes going on there. No, I don't agree with the decisions made by Linus all the time, from what I read on lwn.net about them.
Still, you sound a lot like a spoiled kid to me who complains a lot and wonders why he isn't taken seriously.
At this point in the 2.0 to 2.2 development process, it seemed like a majority of Slashdot readers were running a 2.1 kernel instead of a 2.0 version and were extremely happy with it
I don't know, anecdotical reference doesn't proove much. I remember that all system administrators I know, including myself, never touched a 2.1 kernel and only moved to 2.2 once it was officially released. This included home boxes for non-critical use.
For a long time, before Windows 2000 became a thing to advertise for, the "did you really license all of your software?" slogan was the only advertising by MS in Germany, too.
That is just a bad scan, the ad looks better. I have a magazine with the original ad in front of me. In fact, the photo montage is quite well done. No reason to call for Gimp.
But Koehntopp was faster. Yes, this ad is real, and yes, it' stupid. To paraphrase my (now obsolete) submission:
"While Linux isn't mentioned directly, the target of the ad is obvious. It seems silly that MS uses an argument that can so easily be refuted. While not being a Bill Gates Fanboy, I wonder why they don't target the actual Linux disadvantages where Windows is a better choice - which any level-headed Linux user will admit exist..."
There are two songs "poisening the pigeons in the park", one by Austrian comedian Georg Kreisler (in German language) and one by Tom Lehrer (in English language). Compare them here:
There were both written around the same time in the 50s and the two songs are almost identicial.
Kreisler was a famous comedian in German speaking countries during the late 50s and through the 60s. He lived in the US before that as a Jewish emigrant, fleeing the Nazis. There, he performed English songs similar to Lehrer's and it is quite possible that one somehow heard the other's work.
It is unclear wether Tom stole from Georg or the other way round. Both wrote brilliant lyrics and anyone who understands German should listen Kreisler's music. It's a challenge.
"There is a philosophy that everything that is being thought [ / being invented] must be free for everyone; I do not share this view. It is nice when people can afford such behaviour because of their financial status, but I believe that intellectual achievements should be paid for. This is a position where we all are right on the side of the musicians, the licensing organisations and the music industry. Personally, I am not a friend of Napster and it is right that they are being challenged in court."
So, Slashdot is actually worshipping the wrong hero, I guess.
I just spent 40 minutes on their customer support hotline, waiting to be connected, to solve a problem that took 2 minutes to solve but wasn't documented on their web site (yes, I did a search). I called from Germany, international calls aren't cheap.
Guess what I heard a few dozen times? "Your call is important to us." Yeah right.
Here in Germany, the Internet is sometimes called Datenautobahn (data motorway).
In 1995, Helmut Kohl, then Chancellor of Germany, was asked by a German IBM manager during an interview: What's the government's take on the Datenautobahn?
His answer: The Autobahn system is an issue of the federal states.
Probably 99% of my unsolicited bulk email (also known as Spam) originates in the USA. It is a whole new dimension of fraud, chain letters and multi level marketing, thanks to the cheap mass mailing possibilities of the Internet.
While Anti-Spam regulation exists, US laws appear to be very weak on this issue. Here in Germany, laws are far stricter and the financial fines involved can make email spam a very expensive hobby for a spammer.
Most US spammers cite non-existant laws (the Murkowski bill is an example) as an excuse for their actions, trying to appear legal. Some of the most persistent spammers have been in action for years and are known by name and address, yet they still haven't been stopped, due to weak US laws.
Will there ever be more efficient laws against spammers and their usual snake oil line of fraud products?
Also: I see a disturbing trend of US-American political parties trying to use E-Mail spam for their campaigning. While not being an American citizen, I have already received such E-Mail by US-American parties and political or corporate lobbyists. What is your take on email bulk messaging as a political tool?
The people working are former long-time unemployed folks paid by the Hamburg community. They are now learning about IT-technology, thus improving their resume and their chances of getting a "real" job in the near future.
The computers you donate to them are given to organizations and people who cannot afford a new computer. (I wanted to buy some old hardware for a livingroom network router from them, but they didn't give it to me. Well, they're right and now that I know that, I have an even higher opinion of them.)
Anyway, Nutzmüll also accepts old software (think Windows95 CDRoms and licenses) that they use to install on the computers. I recently gave them a tip to have a look at Linux and linuxrouter.org and hope that they will find some use for them of the even more outdated hardware they get.
While I agree that ESR does use his visibility to promote his own personal agenda (but then again, doesn't anyone who has high visibility?)
There's a difference between "Now that you're here, Mr. Raymond, let me ask you about some other things besides software" and "Now that you're here, Mr. Journalist, let me tell you about some other things besides software".
I watched Conan O'Brian the other day and George Foreman was his guest. In case you haven't seen it - no matter what Conan asked, George found a way to mention the product he endorses, a grill. ESR is a little bit like that. Not that crass, but it reminds me of this behaviour.
Slashdot Mirror
and on the type of hardware that a decent server is run on, the largest of pages would take a couple of seconds (first hit after change only) tops
It was a Windows NT box. Sure, we all hate Windows, but it was a big, well-equipped production server and it was running version 1.0 of the original Sun Java Webserver (which has silently been stomped by now).
When was the last time you talked to this friend who loved Java?
Oh, yesterday. He develops huge applications in Java on a Solaris box. He likes the language, but hates the Sun compiler. However, he cannot get around it. Jikes is not an option for what he does.
Even the regular Sun JDK does nothing close to "slowing your system down to a halt."
You have your anecdote, I have mine. On my machine, it does. The Sun JDK requires huge amounts of memory and it is a slow compiler.
By the way, compiling "the whole fricking page" is desirable. This is what makes it so fast. Subsequent hits are precompiled and quite fast.
You are mixing up my argument. I don't question that the result of JSP and Servlets makes a fast application and I don't claim that a Java application is slow.
But *development* in Java is slow compared to the popular web scripting languages.
Trust me, I did not exaggerate when I claimed that it took me 30 to 60 seconds to wait for a rather simple JSP page to recompile. I used my watch on that, since I could not believe it myself.
------------------
True, with servlets, you have to re-compile (but this really has nothing to do with JSP/ASP/PHP) but you still don't have to restart your app server in most cases.
...
Yes, I talk about recompiling. Recompiling takes time, especially with Java. Rule of thumb by a fellow Java developer (who, btw, loves Java): No matter what kind of hardware you throw at it, the JDK will make your system slow down to a halt.
I remember waiting 30 to 60 seconds to the see the result of a single line of changed code in a JSP page. This is quite some time ago, but back then, we certainly did not use a slow machine.
And JSP, at least in the version that I used back when it was young, was just a text filter that transformed JSP pages into Java servlet source and then recompiled the whole fricking page. Again, change, wait, wait, wait, see, change again, wait, wait,
------------------
With the exception of your Python recommendation (I prefer Perl, so let the holy wars begin :-), I second everything you just wrote.
Java Servlets and JSP is basically a "Slow Prototyping" environment and the long time it takes to just change a single line of code and then give that a try simply makes JSP a bad choice.
PHP has been good to me for small projects, but recently a PHP based application blew up in my face when our client started a cooperation major web site. Basically, we got slashdotted and PHP showed that it did not scale well, despite having a really big machine.
Friends have made me turn to Perl/FastCGI and we are currently moving the above-mentioned PHP-based site to this. Let's see if this serves our needs.
------------------
Hey, do you realize that this is just plain, simple fun?
It's Halloween, so the researchers checked their library of images and looked for an image that fits the occasion. I for one prefer scientific projects where the researchers enjoy their work so much that they can do something like this.
I'm sure that the same scientists will check their library again for Christmas and see if they can find some Christmas-related picture, too.
It's a cute joke, that's it. Got it?
------------------
Check out the Flat Earth Society's Mars Project - it's hilarious. :-)
------------------
Seriously though, if you *do* know better, why don't you get together with the people you mentioned and fork your own version of the kernel? Nobody stops you from doing so.
I am not a kernel developer, I don't read the kernel mailing list, I make up my mind by reading lwn.net's summaries. Yes, it seems that there's a lot of ugly ego-clashes going on there. No, I don't agree with the decisions made by Linus all the time, from what I read on lwn.net about them.
Still, you sound a lot like a spoiled kid to me who complains a lot and wonders why he isn't taken seriously.
------------------
At this point in the 2.0 to 2.2 development process, it seemed like a majority of Slashdot readers were running a 2.1 kernel instead of a 2.0 version and were extremely happy with it
I don't know, anecdotical reference doesn't proove much. I remember that all system administrators I know, including myself, never touched a 2.1 kernel and only moved to 2.2 once it was officially released. This included home boxes for non-critical use.
So you have your anecdote, I have mine.
------------------
That used to be true, but not anymore. If your ad contains a factual claim about your competitor's product, you can now mention that product.
------------------
Of course C'T also said that OS/2 Warp was by far the dominant OS in Germany and would kill Windows.
Well, I am sure you can give me the source for that quote. I read this magazine since 1990 and haven't read any such claim in it.
They've got a history of "Anything But Microsoft" even longer than Peterely.
Again, give me the quote. If c't was anti-Microsoft, it wouldn't have that many Windows-related articles, don't you think?
------------------
Hmm. Your alternative scan shows two seperate pages. I have also tried to do another scan and it looks a bit better than yours:
http://www.geocities.com/msadscan/
------------------
I will sacrifice a boxfull of Microsoft cd's at the gun range if you can scan in your copy.
Here you are. Enjoy:
http://www.geocities.com/msadscan/
------------------
It's real, on page 58 of the current edition of c't magazine. c't doesn't have a history of publishing fake ads.
------------------
Even better, I will call up the advertising agency on Monday (I work quite close to them) and ask them for a digital copy.
------------------
For a long time, before Windows 2000 became a thing to advertise for, the "did you really license all of your software?" slogan was the only advertising by MS in Germany, too.
------------------
Hey, I like that idea. :-)
------------------
That is just a bad scan, the ad looks better. I have a magazine with the original ad in front of me. In fact, the photo montage is quite well done. No reason to call for Gimp.
------------------
But Koehntopp was faster. Yes, this ad is real, and yes, it' stupid. To paraphrase my (now obsolete) submission:
"While Linux isn't mentioned directly, the target of the ad is obvious. It seems silly that MS uses an argument that can so easily be refuted. While not being a Bill Gates Fanboy, I wonder why they don't target the actual Linux disadvantages where Windows is a better choice - which any level-headed Linux user will admit exist..."
------------------
Well, Microsoft Germany used the word mutate. But hey, they are MS employees.
That doesn't actually speak against Germans in general, I guess.
------------------
Just in case you care:
There are two songs "poisening the pigeons in the park", one by Austrian comedian Georg Kreisler (in German language) and one by Tom Lehrer (in English language). Compare them here:
Similarities of Tom Lehrer and Georg Kreisler
There were both written around the same time in the 50s and the two songs are almost identicial.
Kreisler was a famous comedian in German speaking countries during the late 50s and through the 60s. He lived in the US before that as a Jewish emigrant, fleeing the Nazis. There, he performed English songs similar to Lehrer's and it is quite possible that one somehow heard the other's work.
It is unclear wether Tom stole from Georg or the other way round. Both wrote brilliant lyrics and anyone who understands German should listen Kreisler's music. It's a challenge.
------------------
As translated from Heise Newsticker (forgive my bad English):
"There is a philosophy that everything that is being thought [ / being invented] must be free for everyone; I do not share this view. It is nice when people can afford such behaviour because of their financial status, but I believe that intellectual achievements should be paid for. This is a position where we all are right on the side of the musicians, the licensing organisations and the music industry. Personally, I am not a friend of Napster and it is right that they are being challenged in court."
So, Slashdot is actually worshipping the wrong hero, I guess.
------------------
I just spent 40 minutes on their customer support hotline, waiting to be connected, to solve a problem that took 2 minutes to solve but wasn't documented on their web site (yes, I did a search). I called from Germany, international calls aren't cheap.
Guess what I heard a few dozen times? "Your call is important to us." Yeah right.
------------------
Here in Germany, the Internet is sometimes called Datenautobahn (data motorway).
In 1995, Helmut Kohl, then Chancellor of Germany, was asked by a German IBM manager during an interview: What's the government's take on the Datenautobahn?
His answer: The Autobahn system is an issue of the federal states.
------------------
Probably 99% of my unsolicited bulk email (also known as Spam) originates in the USA. It is a whole new dimension of fraud, chain letters and multi level marketing, thanks to the cheap mass mailing possibilities of the Internet.
While Anti-Spam regulation exists, US laws appear to be very weak on this issue. Here in Germany, laws are far stricter and the financial fines involved can make email spam a very expensive hobby for a spammer.
Most US spammers cite non-existant laws (the Murkowski bill is an example) as an excuse for their actions, trying to appear legal. Some of the most persistent spammers have been in action for years and are known by name and address, yet they still haven't been stopped, due to weak US laws.
Will there ever be more efficient laws against spammers and their usual snake oil line of fraud products?
Also: I see a disturbing trend of US-American political parties trying to use E-Mail spam for their campaigning. While not being an American citizen, I have already received such E-Mail by US-American parties and political or corporate lobbyists. What is your take on email bulk messaging as a political tool?
------------------
If you happen to live in Northern Germany, there is a very similar project called
Nutzmüll
(See this article in the newspaper DIE WELT)
The people working are former long-time unemployed folks paid by the Hamburg community. They are now learning about IT-technology, thus improving their resume and their chances of getting a "real" job in the near future.
The computers you donate to them are given to organizations and people who cannot afford a new computer. (I wanted to buy some old hardware for a livingroom network router from them, but they didn't give it to me. Well, they're right and now that I know that, I have an even higher opinion of them.)
Anyway, Nutzmüll also accepts old software (think Windows95 CDRoms and licenses) that they use to install on the computers. I recently gave them a tip to have a look at Linux and linuxrouter.org and hope that they will find some use for them of the even more outdated hardware they get.
------------------
While I agree that ESR does use his visibility to promote his own personal agenda (but then again, doesn't anyone who has high visibility?)
There's a difference between "Now that you're here, Mr. Raymond, let me ask you about some other things besides software" and "Now that you're here, Mr. Journalist, let me tell you about some other things besides software".
I watched Conan O'Brian the other day and George Foreman was his guest. In case you haven't seen it - no matter what Conan asked, George found a way to mention the product he endorses, a grill. ESR is a little bit like that. Not that crass, but it reminds me of this behaviour.
------------------