Actually I have been doing something similar to this. I use TextPad, but have used jEdit and other free editors that support configurable syntax coloring. I put triggers such as "TODO" and "URGENT" and such in the keywords listings so they show up bright red. I have a simple macro that creates (wrapped in comments so they stand out) a time and date stamp. I fill in the subject of the entry then.
It just called "logfile.txt" and I have a shortcut to it on my bar so I can run it quickly. The text edit launches and searches incredibly fast. My file is in the hundreds of kilobyte and it still screems (that is a lot of raw text.) Any time I think "when did I have that conversation about that" I click search and find it in 2 seconds.
It has drawbacks - I haven't found a good way to sync it with my palm pilot;) But when I get back to the office it is darn easy to copy and paste those notes back into the logfile.
You're debating licensing models, not backup policies. Even without copy protection, with some companies what you want to do is against their licensing policies (even if they legally don't mind if you do backups.)
I agree that software should be licensed to people, not machines, but that is separate to the issue of backing up.
I do like backups - don't get me wrong - especially since now there is no choice. My point is that the game industry is trying to take away one option without an alternative.
I agree that copy protection that has other negative impacts in a technical sense are bad - but that is an implementation detail. Much like the work done to localize DVDs, the industry could work out a copy protection mechanism without making it harmful. People would probably go along with it, as long as there was an alternative for backups.
Not saying it is a perfect plan, but today's implementations of copy protection shouldn't rule out the basic idea of protecting their property rights. It just sucks that I have to pay for those rights based on the life span of something worth less than a dollar.
Contrary to FSF beliefs and other moral pundits, I actually think copy protection should be totally legal, protected, and respected. A company should have the right to say "you have rights to ONE instance of this software and rights to use this ONE instance for every $40 you pay". You want it on two computers, you pay for running it on two computers (or you take the CD and bring it to the other CD.)
Here's the problem and why the game companies and other media companies are full of "stuff". Their argument is that the $40 for the game is due to the effort and IP contained on the CD. Totally true, and since that thought pays my salary, I love it. The problem is, if I scratch my CD or DVD, shouldn't I be able to replace it for the price of the media (like $1)? I still have rights to the value I paid $40 to own, right? The crappy media scratched or whatever, so the company should make it POSSIBLE for me to replace that media so I can continue to get my $40 value.
Companies need this policy: "send us your scratched CD and we'll replace it for shipping costs and $1" or "bring the CD to your game store and they will replace it for you for $1." The software company I work for sells software for up to millions of dollars - the last thing we would do if a customer's CD died is tell them "tough luck". Why do game companies think "tough luck" is an ok answer for a scratched $40 CD? And when someone tries to protect that $40 investment with a backup they want to stop it? Maybe they do think the CD itself is the value?
If they had this replacement policy, then this legal argument that these backup tools serve no purpose but piracy would be legit. As it stands right now, if I am paying $40 for "rights" to the contents of the CD, I should be able to back up those contents. Some people could use those for piracy, but until the industry comes up with a way to know the difference, then backup tools DO serve a legitimate purpose.
When I had to buy a replacement copy of an XBox game a year ago I sure wish I had a LEGAL backup DVD...
I think the statement that users of PVR's are thieves is rediculous for about a million reasons listed below. The fact is, "fair use" is sooo subjective that every argument like this guy's are quickly taken down a slippery slope that results in us never getting to change the channel or leave our couches, or probably even blink.
The thing that is funny is that the networks are upset largely because PVR's make THEM into thieves (or more accurately, liars.) Commercial time is priced based on predicted numbers of eyeballs watching it. They tell an advertiser "hey, we have a million people watching this show, you pay us X dollars." The problem is, if every one of those million people had a PVR, next thing you know, a million viewers may mean only 1000 watching the commercials (extreme I know.) But if you were that advertiser you'd say to the network "hey! that's not what I paid for!" So, the network has to square that with their advertisers - I don't see that the PVR user did anything wrong.
The trouble is, we can all scream about how we are "entitled" and agree that we are. But the networks are also entitled to go out of business as the advertisers are entitled to realize that their ad dollars aren't going very far... Its a kinda viscious cycle. Maybe we do have too many channels as it is. Maybe my $50/month for cable should just give me local, ESPN 1,2, and CNBC and they can split my $50 among them and stop doing commercials all together... But for those of us that want 200 channels for $50/mo - you have to understand you are getting them basically for free paid for by advertisers...
Not sure I read this right but doesn't the article say that governments can limits CHILDREN'S access to these video games? This doesn't sound like a free speach issue (no mention of adult limits) but a kiddie issue which is hardly breaking new ground. Children are limited from reading Hustler all the time so its not surprising they can'y buy Hustler:the video game.
ps: any misuse of the EULA for Hustler:the video game is purely an accident, sorry;)
This is a great point - MS shouldn't be able to sign these "use me to the exclusion of others or paythe price" deals anymore - they are too big for those to be fair. This is how the gov't should control MS, not by turning them into every other company's free distribution channel via lawsuit.
Yes and by your logic the government should force all companies to run Java, dedicate resources to keep them up to snuff (um, there is no JDK 1.4 for the Mac either - you want to legislate Steve Jobs into hiring more developers to make it available?)
We all know why compatibility is important - not sure why it is the responsibility of MS to make every new portability initiative standard on Windows. Every scripting language should be installed on Windows too by your logic? What specifically about Java means IT should be the one that MS has to ship according to the courts? And who is supposed to fix the bugs when there are some because of the install? And should Sun stop porting it themselves or just sue Apple, Microsoft, etc until they have armies of developers keeping up with what Sun says is best for mankind? Geez...
No, first they sued MS because MS was trying to pull and "embrace and extend" on their language. MS is famous for this tactic, of embracing a standard, then extending it to be a MS only standard. If they hadn't sued then, Java wouldn't exist in a form we'd recognise today.
Now, they sue MS for removing Java from their OS because it's obviously meant as a way to destroy Java. MS is trying to displace Java using their.Net architecture and C#. Once again, if they don't sue, Java will not exist in a form we can recognise in the future.
Huh? So what should MS have done? Put the crappy old 1.1, non-complaint version of Java in XP? They have no Java2 license! Sounds like another lawsuit. I am not an MS fan, but geez, there is NOTHING they could have done that wouldn't have been construed as hurting Java. The fact that MS exists hurts Java. The best thing would have been if MS would have never done anything with Java, ignored it, and maybe Java wouldn't freaking exist at all.
Since when did the US start believing that if you were big enough it was your responsibility to spend your own money to sell your competitors products?
In my mind the only case that Sun has is that MS violated their Java license by making an incompatbile version. My understanding is that issue has long been resolved and that MS froze their Java version at 1.1 and can ship it for another year or so, then may ship no Java. They also had to remove the Java logo from everything. Microsoft is not obligated to ship out every product that might be useful to consumers, so how can Sun feel entitled to get their JVM on Windows XP?
What I don't understand is how the Sun and Microsoft "settlement" that resulted in Microsoft freezing their JVM to a 1.1 version has now turned into Sun suing MS again, this time for monopoly behavior? I'm not an MS fan, but geez, its not like Sun is the wonder child (they could have opened Java a thousand times, but they still use its little standards to push the market where they want - like J2EE, JMS, and other standards.) Sun is doing with Java exactly what MS did with the OS, its just that Sun's primary goal is to make money off hardware where MS wanted to make it off Windows and most importantly Office (those were in my mind the most nasty deals - forcing OEMs to buy Office to get a good rate on Windows.)
That being said, isn't the reason that the JVM isn't shipping in XP because Sun told MS that they aren't allowed to make a Java2 compliant version anyway? As such MS has pretty much just figured that people would get it if they wanted it. Hardly seems sneaky. Why would Sun *want* MS to ship out a version of Java that Sun themselves says they dislike? As far as requiring MS to ship Sun's JVM, that is utter crap. I can see forcing MS to open source code, to break exclusivity contracts, etc - but forcing them to ship a competitors product?! Might as well become a communist society - don't make your products good, just make them, and complain they aren't on the Microsoft CD for the betterment of mankind! Lets all campaign for Apache and Perl on Windows CD's too - we've been monopoly-whacked! How do you get on the list of products that MS must ship? Oooh, that would be a nice congressional council or ruling for a judge...
First: yes, it is possible to set the boundries where code is more and less safe. Scripting languages do that just as Java does. However, this stuff by Bill Joy is just nonsense. Yes, my "Hello World" application is more trusted in Java than C++ potentially. But Java doesn't run on Java, its runs in a native code implementation of a runner. From what I know there is no government agency ensuring that the JVM is absolutely secure (and even if they did - these people promised NT was too.)
Every single time you install most any application on most any system the code is unsafe to some degree. The issue is do you trust the vendor? Do you test deployments? And how do you get the code (just downloading from annonymous people is plain silly if security is your primary concern.)
Write the application in the language that does the job. If you are worried you have bad QC and are a bad developer, then maybe writing in Java will make you less worried about breaking someone else's OS. Hardly a ringing endorsement for Java or a horrible criticism for C#. All C# does is balance the security, independance, and similarity to C++ a bit differently than Java. Its not rocket science. Its like the owners of a 4 door and a 2 door Camry saying how horrible the other's car is - damn they are similar and the differences are a matter of taste, not absolutes.
Not to make a political statement, but I think this is the first time in human history (well, for the last couple hundred years - small scale historically) that the smartest humans aren't rewarded with great numbers of children.
While clearly, in animals, pure strength of physical body can greatly effect the ability to reproduce, it seems humans leave the job of reproduction largely in the hands of the dumbest and least fit of our species. In the past this wasn't true - not as neanderthals (sp?), not as early humans. But now, if you were to take an IQ and physical fitness survey of people with more than 1 or 2 children I'd wager that the results are much lower than those with small numbers, or no children. This is more obvious in the United States, but now other countries are throwing off the rules too. China keeps everyone from having lots of children, effectively evening things out.
Not saying the social policies are "wrong" politically or anything - its just hard to imagine that the species will get smarter when there are simply more of us being produced by the lesser intelligent of us. When a crocodile or hippo or whatever wild animal fights for the right to copulate, that ensures the stronger will make babies. We ensure the weaker will populate through social rules.
Re:Best to hold off until the bugs are worked out.
on
Send out the Clones?
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I completely agree that human cloning is a bad idea until the bugs are worked out. Bringing a human being into the world with a high probability of a horribly poor quality of life is a bad idea (whether through cloning or any other circumstances.) Its not like there is a shortage of humans out there.
As far as cloning for parts or slavery - I think those are two totally different things. A clone that is an actual person - ie: has a brain - should have any and all rights as someone born through good ol' fashioned sex:) Just as invetro etc do... However, I am all for raising organs using cloning technology that are never the conscious organ of a human (ie: no brain grown then discarded or anything like that.) There is serious research in growing just organs that could be amazingly beneficial for humans...
Imagine discovering you have kidney disease, then having your insurance company pay for a new one EXACTLY LIKE YOURS (except healthy) to be grown and in a year or so you get the transplant and the insurance company saves the money of an alternate transplant, the failures and the blood cleaning machines...
Cool stuff but the kinks have to get worked out first. A unilateral "ban" is short sighted so hopefully it has the ability to be overridden.
There will always be someone that doesn't respect another person for reasons other than value or intellect (race, age, religion, ability to spell:) ) However, as someone that ran a fairly large network at a young age for the company I was at (I was 21) I've learned that maybe I was younger than I thought.
I hear it all the time, "they don't listen because I'm young." However, when looking back, I wasn't just "young" then, I wasn't as good of a listener, I wasn't as able to judge when to talk, and when not, and wasn't as good at defining value in what I did. I think I was ALOT better at those things than most people my age were too!:) Lets face it, alot of people that get really good at computer related things don't get very good at dealing with social and business areas at as young of an age. Their "abilities" in the field they are employed may be astounding, but their communication and teamwork abilities may leave much to be learned. We all know the old guy that kicks butt at the computer but is never in charge... He's the guy that never wanted to learn those non-computer skills, and maybe he's determined that he's happy without that respect (and associated responsibility.)
Saying "look at me! I did it!" doesn't mean everyone will applaud. Most often, your actions aren't appreciated until much later, as you build respect through your dealings with people. Learn to build respect by showing respect and your actions will get the attention they also deserve.
Um, I think everything I said implied exactly what you stated, except for not expressly pointing out that the product is not LGPL. I have no idea what you mean by "must prohibit software development use" and "no mainframe use". I gave the link to the website so he could make up his own mind based on the whitepapers. But the tool is a source code API just like pthreads is, and on Linux it uses pthreads as the implementation mechanism under the object-based API. The mainframe use I also don't understand as the Threads.h++ product has been ported to OS/390 and OS/400 as well as some custom ports for very unusual platforms.
I appologize for not mentioning the LGPL but I didn't think I even remotely implied that it wasn't a commercial product and, as always, do your own due dilligence. Sorry if I implied anything other than it was a commercial product that may, and only may, help solve the posters problem. It seemed like it might be a product to ease his debugging and if they ever need to port to another platform might aid in that transition as well.
btw: the original poster never mentioned anything about needing LGPL and also noted that all the other options they were looking at weren't free software either (Java, Solaris, other Unix, etc.)
First - a disclaimer - I work for Rogue Wave so feel free to do all your own research et al. Just wanted to make you aware of it.
Rogue Wave (www.roguewave.com) has a library that comes with source code called Threads.h++ that works on Linux (as well as Solaris, Windows, HP, AIX etc) designed for making threading programs easier. I invite you to look at the product but here's how this is related:
First, the API is totally portable and more C++ like. More importantly, there is a really cool little tracing package included with the product (sometimes traces are a better way to debug threads than pure debugger usage.) And finally, I've read people commenting that most C/C++ bugs are memory related (very true) - the Threads.h++ product includes smart pointer classes (reference counting, etc) to help eliminate that when used properly.
I appoligize for the shameless plug but it did seem related especially considering the platform switch as an option. Flame me if you must, just hope I helped.:)
The fact is at some basic level we have to acknowledge the concept of property. Intellectual property being EASIER to copy doesn't make it more RIGHT to copy. I hear people say that ideas should be free. So, should the code to turn off the security on my car be free? Do we pretend there are no criminals and give them all the tools necessary to bring the country to its knees? Of course noone here would be reading this message if ideas were all free because noone would step forward and invest in making a great microchip (their R&D would be stolen immediately and they'd go out of business.) Or should ideas only be free after a period of time (can you say evil patents and copyrights!) If music should be free should concert tickets cost money? If not should only the already wealthy make music? Should music makers produce cars during the day to pay the bills?
I fully agree that these days piracy is a fact of life on a HUGE scale and the music industry might as well face it and start using it as a marketing tool instead of attacking with lawyers. I do use Napster to listen to music from people I'm not really familiar with, and if I like it I buy it. I don't want the "method" of stealing made illegal any more than I want FTP sites turned off. But I do believe building a music library without paying money is wrong and illegal.
Would my Linux box be worth a sh** if it wasn't playing feature catch up with commercial products? What if there were no contributors with future hopes of dollar signs working on the projects? Stop pretending people, intellectual property is the very blood that drives music, art and especially the computer industry. Even free things owe their success to commercial use of ideas. Even before there was money, the guy who knew how to do something special received benefits. Its only fair that people that make our lives better should have their lives improved too. If what they make (intellecual property) isn't worth much, they won't make much.
Oh well, just sounds like socialism to me and I like the idea of working hard so I can retire early:)
I agree that there are many things about the Linux (Unix) style development process that is very appealing compared to Windows. However, I sit at my Windows box with most of these tools working just fine for me. I have the MKS toolkit for instance (and now MSDN members get a nearly equivilant toolkit as part of their CD subscription.) I get bash, gmake, grep and alot of the other necessary tools. First: lets get over the complexities of MFC. Yes, it sucks. Lets move on. Not everyone wrights graphical code and lets be honest here - Unix isn't exactly the best programming envinronment for GUI coding etc. Saying "hey, great, look at all these GUI toolkits you can choose from" seem to imply this has no drawback. Code for one and go somewhere else on the same apaprent platform and you get to learn a new API again. I don't do much GUI coding (mostly CORBA, XML, database, scalability etc) so I won't claim superior knowledge in this but ignoring the complexities involved in the flexibility is to see the day without the night. Next, the issue of Microsoft selling products and inherently making a moving target. I can't believe someone would say this is a negative toward MS. I hate it when MS does this as much as anyone but HELLO! How many times have people in Linux development been asked to DL all the newest libraries, do builds of them, figure out the order and then retest their own build process? Geez, this is BETTER than installing a patch to Visual Studio (which by the way is not a fast moving platform by any stretch for C++ and since Linux doesn't even have VB why complain about VB? - you don't HAVE to use it.) Suffices to say that yes, the Unix tools available on Linux or more consistently maintained, more source is available and the low level API's are better than Microsoft's. But there are significany prices to pay for that too and starting a workspace, copying my projects to work on a new one in VC is kinda nice. And tracking down tabs vs. spaces in a makefile are hell on earth while still trying to make your files look readable. I do both programming frequently as I work for a cross platforms tools company but Windows is pleasant at times after debugging a build process on Linux for a day. ~Tim Triemstra
Boy I hope I never make something so useful I'm forced to buy, maintain and upgrade a large network of servers so OTHER people can profit from it and effectively lose the reason why I built it in the first place. I'd be tempted to let it fail accidentally under the load. And you guys think this is a good idea? Those of you that don't understand the technology - when you "login" to the service, you have to hit a VERY BIG server someone paid ALOT OF MONEY to create and maintain. If someone came up with a protocol that didn't require a server (don't see how) then great - otherwise, if AOL pays for the network they should do what they like. If the FCC or IETC or whomever doesn't like that - tell THEM to pay for the servers.
"If a standard was created then MS would just come in and load an IM client on every WindowsXX box" - this is a reason to be AGAINST a standard? What? So what you're basically saying is that you'd like for everyone to be able to talk to everyone else, but if Microsoft helped make that possible it would somehow be a BAD thing? Geez, not everything Microsoft does is bad! If my mom and girlfriend that don't have the ability to go out and find an open source tool were still able to chat with me that would be a "good" thing. If it were by a standard, you could always go get your open sourced version, what difference does it make?
I've heard this crap before for why people don't want to use some of the XML standards. Who cares if MS uses the standard too!? Its published, can't be closed back up, and interportable. If you don't want to use MS products, that's fine. That's great actually - I'm moving away from it too. But why is it bad if MS wants to support the standard too? It just makes it more quickly adopted so the rest of us can get more use of our standards implementations too. Might as well face it, standards are good and once they are set, MS has the same right as everyone else to use them.
You're right it is about servers. But c'mon people, computers are where they are based on corporate greed. They would be back in the punchcard area still without the corporate influence. And, thinking of that, why would a company invest huge amounts of money to provide a messaging server that you can access without paying them any homage. Yahoo, AIM and the rest provide instant messaging capabilities because they can lure people to their services. If they let you write your own client that can subscribe and work without ever visiting their site they are essentially spending real money for no real benefit. As much as people may wish that computers were part of a socialist state, you might as well face the fact that you wouldn't HAVE any computer at all to use if that's the way things got done.
I'd like to see the companies get together and form a standard. They could each get 25% of the advert time on the client they distribute or something to make their investments pay off. But, if the client is open, then people will pull out the ads. If people pull out the ads, then the instant messenger people will stop investing in their servers.
I've heard people argue about this as if there weren't many thousands of dollars in servers running out there to serve their chatting needs. Like somehow AOL has found these servers growing in a field and simply put them in a cage.
I like the idea of peer-to-peer, but that only limits the need for servers, it doesn't eliminate it. You still need a central server for name resolution. Sure, I have a fixed IP I could give to my friends, but most people don't. So, even if the communication is peer to peer (which is still very tough to do if both people are behind proxies) the naming requires a server. Maybe an open source group like VA or RedHat would sponsor it, but I doubt ANY company with enough money to do it would want to do it if they couldn't control having their adds on the client.
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Actually I have been doing something similar to this. I use TextPad, but have used jEdit and other free editors that support configurable syntax coloring. I put triggers such as "TODO" and "URGENT" and such in the keywords listings so they show up bright red. I have a simple macro that creates (wrapped in comments so they stand out) a time and date stamp. I fill in the subject of the entry then.
;) But when I get back to the office it is darn easy to copy and paste those notes back into the logfile.
It just called "logfile.txt" and I have a shortcut to it on my bar so I can run it quickly. The text edit launches and searches incredibly fast. My file is in the hundreds of kilobyte and it still screems (that is a lot of raw text.) Any time I think "when did I have that conversation about that" I click search and find it in 2 seconds.
It has drawbacks - I haven't found a good way to sync it with my palm pilot
Just a suggestion~
You're debating licensing models, not backup policies. Even without copy protection, with some companies what you want to do is against their licensing policies (even if they legally don't mind if you do backups.)
I agree that software should be licensed to people, not machines, but that is separate to the issue of backing up.
I do like backups - don't get me wrong - especially since now there is no choice. My point is that the game industry is trying to take away one option without an alternative.
I agree that copy protection that has other negative impacts in a technical sense are bad - but that is an implementation detail. Much like the work done to localize DVDs, the industry could work out a copy protection mechanism without making it harmful. People would probably go along with it, as long as there was an alternative for backups.
Not saying it is a perfect plan, but today's implementations of copy protection shouldn't rule out the basic idea of protecting their property rights. It just sucks that I have to pay for those rights based on the life span of something worth less than a dollar.
Contrary to FSF beliefs and other moral pundits, I actually think copy protection should be totally legal, protected, and respected. A company should have the right to say "you have rights to ONE instance of this software and rights to use this ONE instance for every $40 you pay". You want it on two computers, you pay for running it on two computers (or you take the CD and bring it to the other CD.)
Here's the problem and why the game companies and other media companies are full of "stuff". Their argument is that the $40 for the game is due to the effort and IP contained on the CD. Totally true, and since that thought pays my salary, I love it. The problem is, if I scratch my CD or DVD, shouldn't I be able to replace it for the price of the media (like $1)? I still have rights to the value I paid $40 to own, right? The crappy media scratched or whatever, so the company should make it POSSIBLE for me to replace that media so I can continue to get my $40 value.
Companies need this policy: "send us your scratched CD and we'll replace it for shipping costs and $1" or "bring the CD to your game store and they will replace it for you for $1." The software company I work for sells software for up to millions of dollars - the last thing we would do if a customer's CD died is tell them "tough luck". Why do game companies think "tough luck" is an ok answer for a scratched $40 CD? And when someone tries to protect that $40 investment with a backup they want to stop it? Maybe they do think the CD itself is the value?
If they had this replacement policy, then this legal argument that these backup tools serve no purpose but piracy would be legit. As it stands right now, if I am paying $40 for "rights" to the contents of the CD, I should be able to back up those contents. Some people could use those for piracy, but until the industry comes up with a way to know the difference, then backup tools DO serve a legitimate purpose.
When I had to buy a replacement copy of an XBox game a year ago I sure wish I had a LEGAL backup DVD...
~Tim
I think the statement that users of PVR's are thieves is rediculous for about a million reasons listed below. The fact is, "fair use" is sooo subjective that every argument like this guy's are quickly taken down a slippery slope that results in us never getting to change the channel or leave our couches, or probably even blink.
The thing that is funny is that the networks are upset largely because PVR's make THEM into thieves (or more accurately, liars.) Commercial time is priced based on predicted numbers of eyeballs watching it. They tell an advertiser "hey, we have a million people watching this show, you pay us X dollars." The problem is, if every one of those million people had a PVR, next thing you know, a million viewers may mean only 1000 watching the commercials (extreme I know.) But if you were that advertiser you'd say to the network "hey! that's not what I paid for!" So, the network has to square that with their advertisers - I don't see that the PVR user did anything wrong.
The trouble is, we can all scream about how we are "entitled" and agree that we are. But the networks are also entitled to go out of business as the advertisers are entitled to realize that their ad dollars aren't going very far... Its a kinda viscious cycle. Maybe we do have too many channels as it is. Maybe my $50/month for cable should just give me local, ESPN 1,2, and CNBC and they can split my $50 among them and stop doing commercials all together... But for those of us that want 200 channels for $50/mo - you have to understand you are getting them basically for free paid for by advertisers...
and please don't kill me because I can't spell - been awake far too long ;)
Not sure I read this right but doesn't the article say that governments can limits CHILDREN'S access to these video games? This doesn't sound like a free speach issue (no mention of adult limits) but a kiddie issue which is hardly breaking new ground. Children are limited from reading Hustler all the time so its not surprising they can'y buy Hustler:the video game.
;)
ps: any misuse of the EULA for Hustler:the video game is purely an accident, sorry
This is a great point - MS shouldn't be able to sign these "use me to the exclusion of others or paythe price" deals anymore - they are too big for those to be fair. This is how the gov't should control MS, not by turning them into every other company's free distribution channel via lawsuit.
Yes and by your logic the government should force all companies to run Java, dedicate resources to keep them up to snuff (um, there is no JDK 1.4 for the Mac either - you want to legislate Steve Jobs into hiring more developers to make it available?)
We all know why compatibility is important - not sure why it is the responsibility of MS to make every new portability initiative standard on Windows. Every scripting language should be installed on Windows too by your logic? What specifically about Java means IT should be the one that MS has to ship according to the courts? And who is supposed to fix the bugs when there are some because of the install? And should Sun stop porting it themselves or just sue Apple, Microsoft, etc until they have armies of developers keeping up with what Sun says is best for mankind? Geez...
No, first they sued MS because MS was trying to pull and "embrace and extend" on their language. MS is famous for this tactic, of embracing a standard, then extending it to be a MS only standard. If they hadn't sued then, Java wouldn't exist in a form we'd recognise today.
.Net architecture and C#. Once again, if they don't sue, Java will not exist in a form we can recognise in the future.
Now, they sue MS for removing Java from their OS because it's obviously meant as a way to destroy Java. MS is trying to displace Java using their
Huh? So what should MS have done? Put the crappy old 1.1, non-complaint version of Java in XP? They have no Java2 license! Sounds like another lawsuit. I am not an MS fan, but geez, there is NOTHING they could have done that wouldn't have been construed as hurting Java. The fact that MS exists hurts Java. The best thing would have been if MS would have never done anything with Java, ignored it, and maybe Java wouldn't freaking exist at all.
Since when did the US start believing that if you were big enough it was your responsibility to spend your own money to sell your competitors products?
In my mind the only case that Sun has is that MS violated their Java license by making an incompatbile version. My understanding is that issue has long been resolved and that MS froze their Java version at 1.1 and can ship it for another year or so, then may ship no Java. They also had to remove the Java logo from everything. Microsoft is not obligated to ship out every product that might be useful to consumers, so how can Sun feel entitled to get their JVM on Windows XP?
What I don't understand is how the Sun and Microsoft "settlement" that resulted in Microsoft freezing their JVM to a 1.1 version has now turned into Sun suing MS again, this time for monopoly behavior? I'm not an MS fan, but geez, its not like Sun is the wonder child (they could have opened Java a thousand times, but they still use its little standards to push the market where they want - like J2EE, JMS, and other standards.) Sun is doing with Java exactly what MS did with the OS, its just that Sun's primary goal is to make money off hardware where MS wanted to make it off Windows and most importantly Office (those were in my mind the most nasty deals - forcing OEMs to buy Office to get a good rate on Windows.)
That being said, isn't the reason that the JVM isn't shipping in XP because Sun told MS that they aren't allowed to make a Java2 compliant version anyway? As such MS has pretty much just figured that people would get it if they wanted it. Hardly seems sneaky. Why would Sun *want* MS to ship out a version of Java that Sun themselves says they dislike? As far as requiring MS to ship Sun's JVM, that is utter crap. I can see forcing MS to open source code, to break exclusivity contracts, etc - but forcing them to ship a competitors product?! Might as well become a communist society - don't make your products good, just make them, and complain they aren't on the Microsoft CD for the betterment of mankind! Lets all campaign for Apache and Perl on Windows CD's too - we've been monopoly-whacked! How do you get on the list of products that MS must ship? Oooh, that would be a nice congressional council or ruling for a judge...
First: yes, it is possible to set the boundries where code is more and less safe. Scripting languages do that just as Java does. However, this stuff by Bill Joy is just nonsense. Yes, my "Hello World" application is more trusted in Java than C++ potentially. But Java doesn't run on Java, its runs in a native code implementation of a runner. From what I know there is no government agency ensuring that the JVM is absolutely secure (and even if they did - these people promised NT was too.)
Every single time you install most any application on most any system the code is unsafe to some degree. The issue is do you trust the vendor? Do you test deployments? And how do you get the code (just downloading from annonymous people is plain silly if security is your primary concern.)
Write the application in the language that does the job. If you are worried you have bad QC and are a bad developer, then maybe writing in Java will make you less worried about breaking someone else's OS. Hardly a ringing endorsement for Java or a horrible criticism for C#. All C# does is balance the security, independance, and similarity to C++ a bit differently than Java. Its not rocket science. Its like the owners of a 4 door and a 2 door Camry saying how horrible the other's car is - damn they are similar and the differences are a matter of taste, not absolutes.
Not to make a political statement, but I think this is the first time in human history (well, for the last couple hundred years - small scale historically) that the smartest humans aren't rewarded with great numbers of children.
While clearly, in animals, pure strength of physical body can greatly effect the ability to reproduce, it seems humans leave the job of reproduction largely in the hands of the dumbest and least fit of our species. In the past this wasn't true - not as neanderthals (sp?), not as early humans. But now, if you were to take an IQ and physical fitness survey of people with more than 1 or 2 children I'd wager that the results are much lower than those with small numbers, or no children. This is more obvious in the United States, but now other countries are throwing off the rules too. China keeps everyone from having lots of children, effectively evening things out.
Not saying the social policies are "wrong" politically or anything - its just hard to imagine that the species will get smarter when there are simply more of us being produced by the lesser intelligent of us. When a crocodile or hippo or whatever wild animal fights for the right to copulate, that ensures the stronger will make babies. We ensure the weaker will populate through social rules.
I completely agree that human cloning is a bad idea until the bugs are worked out. Bringing a human being into the world with a high probability of a horribly poor quality of life is a bad idea (whether through cloning or any other circumstances.) Its not like there is a shortage of humans out there.
:) Just as invetro etc do... However, I am all for raising organs using cloning technology that are never the conscious organ of a human (ie: no brain grown then discarded or anything like that.) There is serious research in growing just organs that could be amazingly beneficial for humans...
As far as cloning for parts or slavery - I think those are two totally different things. A clone that is an actual person - ie: has a brain - should have any and all rights as someone born through good ol' fashioned sex
Imagine discovering you have kidney disease, then having your insurance company pay for a new one EXACTLY LIKE YOURS (except healthy) to be grown and in a year or so you get the transplant and the insurance company saves the money of an alternate transplant, the failures and the blood cleaning machines...
Cool stuff but the kinks have to get worked out first. A unilateral "ban" is short sighted so hopefully it has the ability to be overridden.
There will always be someone that doesn't respect another person for reasons other than value or intellect (race, age, religion, ability to spell :) ) However, as someone that ran a fairly large network at a young age for the company I was at (I was 21) I've learned that maybe I was younger than I thought.
:) Lets face it, alot of people that get really good at computer related things don't get very good at dealing with social and business areas at as young of an age. Their "abilities" in the field they are employed may be astounding, but their communication and teamwork abilities may leave much to be learned. We all know the old guy that kicks butt at the computer but is never in charge... He's the guy that never wanted to learn those non-computer skills, and maybe he's determined that he's happy without that respect (and associated responsibility.)
I hear it all the time, "they don't listen because I'm young." However, when looking back, I wasn't just "young" then, I wasn't as good of a listener, I wasn't as able to judge when to talk, and when not, and wasn't as good at defining value in what I did. I think I was ALOT better at those things than most people my age were too!
Saying "look at me! I did it!" doesn't mean everyone will applaud. Most often, your actions aren't appreciated until much later, as you build respect through your dealings with people. Learn to build respect by showing respect and your actions will get the attention they also deserve.
Um, I think everything I said implied exactly what you stated, except for not expressly pointing out that the product is not LGPL. I have no idea what you mean by "must prohibit software development use" and "no mainframe use". I gave the link to the website so he could make up his own mind based on the whitepapers. But the tool is a source code API just like pthreads is, and on Linux it uses pthreads as the implementation mechanism under the object-based API. The mainframe use I also don't understand as the Threads.h++ product has been ported to OS/390 and OS/400 as well as some custom ports for very unusual platforms.
I appologize for not mentioning the LGPL but I didn't think I even remotely implied that it wasn't a commercial product and, as always, do your own due dilligence. Sorry if I implied anything other than it was a commercial product that may, and only may, help solve the posters problem. It seemed like it might be a product to ease his debugging and if they ever need to port to another platform might aid in that transition as well.
btw: the original poster never mentioned anything about needing LGPL and also noted that all the other options they were looking at weren't free software either (Java, Solaris, other Unix, etc.)
First - a disclaimer - I work for Rogue Wave so feel free to do all your own research et al. Just wanted to make you aware of it.
:)
Rogue Wave (www.roguewave.com) has a library that comes with source code called Threads.h++ that works on Linux (as well as Solaris, Windows, HP, AIX etc) designed for making threading programs easier. I invite you to look at the product but here's how this is related:
First, the API is totally portable and more C++ like. More importantly, there is a really cool little tracing package included with the product (sometimes traces are a better way to debug threads than pure debugger usage.) And finally, I've read people commenting that most C/C++ bugs are memory related (very true) - the Threads.h++ product includes smart pointer classes (reference counting, etc) to help eliminate that when used properly.
I appoligize for the shameless plug but it did seem related especially considering the platform switch as an option. Flame me if you must, just hope I helped.
~Tim
The fact is at some basic level we have to acknowledge the concept of property. Intellectual property being EASIER to copy doesn't make it more RIGHT to copy. I hear people say that ideas should be free. So, should the code to turn off the security on my car be free? Do we pretend there are no criminals and give them all the tools necessary to bring the country to its knees? Of course noone here would be reading this message if ideas were all free because noone would step forward and invest in making a great microchip (their R&D would be stolen immediately and they'd go out of business.) Or should ideas only be free after a period of time (can you say evil patents and copyrights!) If music should be free should concert tickets cost money? If not should only the already wealthy make music? Should music makers produce cars during the day to pay the bills? I fully agree that these days piracy is a fact of life on a HUGE scale and the music industry might as well face it and start using it as a marketing tool instead of attacking with lawyers. I do use Napster to listen to music from people I'm not really familiar with, and if I like it I buy it. I don't want the "method" of stealing made illegal any more than I want FTP sites turned off. But I do believe building a music library without paying money is wrong and illegal. Would my Linux box be worth a sh** if it wasn't playing feature catch up with commercial products? What if there were no contributors with future hopes of dollar signs working on the projects? Stop pretending people, intellectual property is the very blood that drives music, art and especially the computer industry. Even free things owe their success to commercial use of ideas. Even before there was money, the guy who knew how to do something special received benefits. Its only fair that people that make our lives better should have their lives improved too. If what they make (intellecual property) isn't worth much, they won't make much. Oh well, just sounds like socialism to me and I like the idea of working hard so I can retire early :)
I agree that there are many things about the Linux (Unix) style development process that is very appealing compared to Windows. However, I sit at my Windows box with most of these tools working just fine for me. I have the MKS toolkit for instance (and now MSDN members get a nearly equivilant toolkit as part of their CD subscription.) I get bash, gmake, grep and alot of the other necessary tools. First: lets get over the complexities of MFC. Yes, it sucks. Lets move on. Not everyone wrights graphical code and lets be honest here - Unix isn't exactly the best programming envinronment for GUI coding etc. Saying "hey, great, look at all these GUI toolkits you can choose from" seem to imply this has no drawback. Code for one and go somewhere else on the same apaprent platform and you get to learn a new API again. I don't do much GUI coding (mostly CORBA, XML, database, scalability etc) so I won't claim superior knowledge in this but ignoring the complexities involved in the flexibility is to see the day without the night. Next, the issue of Microsoft selling products and inherently making a moving target. I can't believe someone would say this is a negative toward MS. I hate it when MS does this as much as anyone but HELLO! How many times have people in Linux development been asked to DL all the newest libraries, do builds of them, figure out the order and then retest their own build process? Geez, this is BETTER than installing a patch to Visual Studio (which by the way is not a fast moving platform by any stretch for C++ and since Linux doesn't even have VB why complain about VB? - you don't HAVE to use it.) Suffices to say that yes, the Unix tools available on Linux or more consistently maintained, more source is available and the low level API's are better than Microsoft's. But there are significany prices to pay for that too and starting a workspace, copying my projects to work on a new one in VC is kinda nice. And tracking down tabs vs. spaces in a makefile are hell on earth while still trying to make your files look readable. I do both programming frequently as I work for a cross platforms tools company but Windows is pleasant at times after debugging a build process on Linux for a day. ~Tim Triemstra
Boy I hope I never make something so useful I'm forced to buy, maintain and upgrade a large network of servers so OTHER people can profit from it and effectively lose the reason why I built it in the first place. I'd be tempted to let it fail accidentally under the load. And you guys think this is a good idea? Those of you that don't understand the technology - when you "login" to the service, you have to hit a VERY BIG server someone paid ALOT OF MONEY to create and maintain. If someone came up with a protocol that didn't require a server (don't see how) then great - otherwise, if AOL pays for the network they should do what they like. If the FCC or IETC or whomever doesn't like that - tell THEM to pay for the servers.
"If a standard was created then MS would just come in and load an IM client on every WindowsXX box" - this is a reason to be AGAINST a standard? What? So what you're basically saying is that you'd like for everyone to be able to talk to everyone else, but if Microsoft helped make that possible it would somehow be a BAD thing? Geez, not everything Microsoft does is bad! If my mom and girlfriend that don't have the ability to go out and find an open source tool were still able to chat with me that would be a "good" thing. If it were by a standard, you could always go get your open sourced version, what difference does it make?
I've heard this crap before for why people don't want to use some of the XML standards. Who cares if MS uses the standard too!? Its published, can't be closed back up, and interportable. If you don't want to use MS products, that's fine. That's great actually - I'm moving away from it too. But why is it bad if MS wants to support the standard too? It just makes it more quickly adopted so the rest of us can get more use of our standards implementations too. Might as well face it, standards are good and once they are set, MS has the same right as everyone else to use them.
You're right it is about servers. But c'mon people, computers are where they are based on corporate greed. They would be back in the punchcard area still without the corporate influence. And, thinking of that, why would a company invest huge amounts of money to provide a messaging server that you can access without paying them any homage. Yahoo, AIM and the rest provide instant messaging capabilities because they can lure people to their services. If they let you write your own client that can subscribe and work without ever visiting their site they are essentially spending real money for no real benefit. As much as people may wish that computers were part of a socialist state, you might as well face the fact that you wouldn't HAVE any computer at all to use if that's the way things got done.
I'd like to see the companies get together and form a standard. They could each get 25% of the advert time on the client they distribute or something to make their investments pay off. But, if the client is open, then people will pull out the ads. If people pull out the ads, then the instant messenger people will stop investing in their servers.
I've heard people argue about this as if there weren't many thousands of dollars in servers running out there to serve their chatting needs. Like somehow AOL has found these servers growing in a field and simply put them in a cage.
I like the idea of peer-to-peer, but that only limits the need for servers, it doesn't eliminate it. You still need a central server for name resolution. Sure, I have a fixed IP I could give to my friends, but most people don't. So, even if the communication is peer to peer (which is still very tough to do if both people are behind proxies) the naming requires a server. Maybe an open source group like VA or RedHat would sponsor it, but I doubt ANY company with enough money to do it would want to do it if they couldn't control having their adds on the client.