But this itch obviously is not powerful enough to cause the community to scratch.
The community has scratched: a lot of people have abandoned Java, and a lot of people have worked on creating third party Java implementations, albeit ones that haven't been certified.
There's no question that Java is useful to many people, just like there is no question that Windows is useful to many people. But neither Java nor Windows are open standards. And for Sun to proclaim compatibility of their own implementation with their own test suite is ridiculous and masturbatory.
Well, if those are your criteria for an "open standard", then Microsoft Windows and.NET are "open standards" as well: their default implementations are quite good as well, everything's documented, and there are billions of dollars of IT projects that depend on them.
To me, an "open standard" is one that other people can and do implement, so that I have a choice of vendors and security against any one vendor doing something stupid. That is what Sun promised, but they haven't delivered.
Those are JVM implementations, not complete Java implementations.
There are a few non-Sun implementations that have passed certification, but they are not independent implementations; they contain licensed code from Sun.
As I was saying: there are no independent implementations that have passed Sun's certification.
If, after a decade, nobody has managed to produce an independent, compliant, commercial implementation, then that suggests that doing so is too hard. Maybe Sun's specifications are incomplete, maybe the specs are so complex that they are too hard to implement, maybe Sun keeps changing the platform too quickly.
Why does it matter? If Sun were to go belly-up tomorrow, there would be no compliant commercial Java implementation left.
So, Sun's own codebase passes their own compatibility suite. BFD.
If after more than a decade, there is not a single, independent, compliant Java implementation, then there is evidently something wrong with the Java platform.
That sounds daft - how do you prove a negative? How, for example, would you go about disproving allegations of al Qaeda membership?
Doesn't sound daft to me. "Harry J is a member of Al Quaeda." shouldn't be libelous because it is so vague as to be meaningless. "Harry J is a member of Al Quaeda, as shown by his participation in training exercises on 9/1/2003 in Northern Afghanistan." might be libelous, but only if you can prove that (1) you didn't actually participate, and (2) the person making the statement should have known that.
On the other hand, I'd be happy to accept a "balance of probabilities" basis for a decision; isn't this usually the case in civil cases?
The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, but the burden of proof still rests on the accuser, not the defendant.
"re-implementing" from what exactly? Which state-of-the art transcendental function or encryption libraries should Apple be using instead of writing their own?
The standard Linux ones would be a good start. Heck, Apple might even contribute to them if they actually were doing anything interesting in the area (which they don't seem to be).
Do you have references for accuracy proofs of said libraries? What evidence do you have that said routines achieve (near-) optimal performance on Apple's current hardware?
Does Apple provide accuracy proofs for their libraries? No.
Does Apple provide evidence that their libraries achieve (near-) optimal performance on Apple's current hardware? No.
Does Apple provide any evidence that their hardware/software combo is higher performance than equivalent Linux machines? No.
Have Apple employees published any significant papers on mathematics, numerical algorithms, or statistics recently? No.
Apple is a dead end when it comes to mathematics or computer science; there is little that's interesting happening there. Apple is all about design and marketing fluff, with a little engineering thrown in.
and at the end of his plenary talk, he took a few minutes to bemoan the fact that in a room filled with PhDs in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, there were probably no more than one or two who could quickly and correctly implement the double-precision log function with good accuracy and performance
He can bemoan what he wants to, that doesn't make it relevant to anybody or anything.
So, yes, I'd say it requires a little mathematical knowledge and understanding.
Yes, but only a little, plus a bag of tricks and hacks that don't generalize to anything else.
Certainly more than the elementary statistical analysis necessary to sell Advertisements.
Well, you're entitled to your opinions. But whatever your opinion, fact is that knowledge of how to write a double precision log function won't get you a machine learning or statistics job. In fact, I doubt it will get you a job at all if implementation of transcendental functions is your primary skill.
the agency "is the best thing you can do for your career."
What career would that be? If you are a "geek", i.e., you actually like working with technology hands-on, then becoming a program manager at DARPA sounds dreadful. You don't get to work with technology, you just get to see lots of other people having fun. And you do get to hand out the money, but more often than not, you have to NOT hand out money and be a general PITA to other geeks. And after all that, if you're lucky, once you decide to leave DARPA, you'll be ready on a career path... as an administrator or financial manager at a university.
There are plenty of different kinds of business that a business owner can refuse to take, for all sorts of reasons. But there are some things a business owner cannot do when he acts in his capacity as a business owner. He can still do those things as a private citizen.
you are entitled to your opinion and me mine... however, nothing I said is factually incorrect.
You haven't said anything "factually incorrect" because you haven't said anything factual at all.
and I will be voting McCain in 2008 too. Lets see if that can get a few more expletives to come out of your mouth:D
Well, it is obviously pointless to try change your position. I'm just pointing out your hypocrisy to others. After eight years in power, two nations in ruins, a trillion dollars spent on war, and an economy in shambles, Republicans still fail to take responsibility for their actions and admit that they screwed up. After what you did and how you are trying to weasel out of it now, people have a right to be angry with Republicans and people like you.
You also don't know your history when you talk about "anti-war liberals" in reference to WWI and WWII. It was two liberal Democrats that caused the US to enter into WWI and WWII. They entered those wars for the right reasons, and they followed through correctly. Despite all the Republican lies and distortions, it is the liberals that cause the economy to flourish and bring prosperity to America, lead the nation into just and successful wars, and promote freedom around the world.
People like McCain and you lack values, you lack historical understanding, and you lack integrity. And the sooner people realize that, the sooner we can restore American values and American strength.
Almost every American would like to see other countries become free and democratic. The problem with Bush is not his intent, it is his incompetence, his lies, and the colossal waste of American tax payer dollars.
Bush has failed to deliver on his promises: he didn't bring democracy to Iraq, he didn't reduce government spending, he endangered the lives of Americans, he made terrorism worse, and he ruined the economy.
It boggles the mind that people like you are still talking about "freedom" and "pride" as if the people that dragged us into Iraq had a monopoly on that. Anybody who voted Bush into office should hold down their head in shame; this is your fault. You made a bad choice. Take responsibility for your own actions and stop blaming others.
And next time you want to follow the impulse of bringing freedom to the rest of the world, listen to the people who actually have demonstrable experience with that, not to incompetent hacks like Bush and his cronies.
A mayor of London, Ontario was fined by this court because she *didn't* mandate a taxpayer-funded celebration of Gay Pride Day, requested by an exceedingly small minority of citizens.
He is a public figure and needs to spend taxes equitably. If he mandates support for other minority events, he needs to do so for Gay Pride.
The owner of a printing shop in Mississagua, ON lost around $100,000 in revenue and fines when he chose to not print gay and lesbian promotional material
Businesses operate at the discretion of, and under the laws of, the community they operate in. If that community has anti-discrimination laws, the business must comply with them.
If you don't understand why, replace "gay and lesbian" with "Catholic" or "African American" and re-read it again.
In 2000, Kelowna, B.C. (the city) was dragged in front of the Canadian Kangaroo Court of "Human Rights" because they celebrated "Gay and Lesbian Day," in 1997 (yes, three years prior to the complaint). The complaint? They didn't include the word "pride" in the celebration. The Mayor of Kelowna was found guilty.
I suspect you're leaving out some pertinent facts here.
A chapter of the Knights of Columbus (a privately-funded, *clearly* Catholic organization) was fined for choosing to not rent their convention hall to a same-sex couple for their marriage celebration.
If they are a charity, they need to comply with non-discrimination policies for charities. If they are a business, they need to comply with non-discrimination policies for businesses.
Maybe you're forgetting why organizations like the Knights of Columbus were founded in the firrst place. To mainstream US society, Catholicism and homosexuality used to be comparably immoral and repulsive. Catholics were refused business because of their religious affiliation.
If you want to go back to the old days in which there was little minority protection, we can talk about that. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself discriminated against again because of your religion.
See the difference? Whether it's true or false doesn't even matter, that I can't prove it is.
In the US, in order to defend against libel, you don't have to prove that your statement is true, the other party has to show that your statement is false and that you can reasonably be expected to have known that it was false.
For example, I may (hopefully still, don't know to be honest) say that I think Bush is a threat to stability in this world. It could be considered slander if I said that he took bribes from corporations to start a war that killed thousands,
US law makes it nearly impossible to libel or slander a public figure, so you can pretty much say whatever you want to about Bush.
In a democracy, you really don't want politicians to be able to go around suing people critical of them for libel.
He's explaining a difference in law to you. Under US law, truth is a defense. But you don't have to prove that your statement is true, the other party has to prove that your statement is false.
The judge is imprisoning him for not taking down the web page, and he is only imprisoning him until he does.
That's reasonable: the guy may have the opinion that he is justified in keeping the web page up, but if the court orders him to take it down, he must comply or face the consequences (imprisonment).
It's the courts that make the decision about what is right or wrong in our societies. You may be morally justified in defying a court, but that isn't without consequences. Given that he has dual citizenship, he can choose to defy the court order and simply stay out of NZ in the future.
Maybe these people actually just don't have a choice.
Being a desktop software develop or kernel hacker does not qualify you to "improve systems to sell ads". You need a lot more math and statistics for that, and much less low level hacking skills.
I don't see much potential for building a good Ph.D. thesis on that kind of fluff piece.
As a practical matter, getting a Ph.D. in software engineering or software design may be a good academic choice. It's a bit like getting a Ph.D. in art history or sociology, in that there there is a wide variety of approaches and no clear right/wrong; and if your math and science is a little weak, it doesn't matter. Unlike art history, with a Ph.D. in software engineering, you will have good employment prospects.
Still, as a Ph.D. choice, that kind of topic never made much sense to me. If your heart is in software development, you're better off just working as a software developer. And if your heart is with academia, then there are better and more interesting academic subjects.
This is probably going to be one of the best smart phones around. I may still get this instead of an iPhone.
Plusses: tons of functionality and third party applications, tons of built-in applications, good Google support, supports lots of standards (stereo Bluetooth, tethered 3.5G modem, microSD, etc.), good keyboard, real GPS navigation.
Minuses: small screen, charge cable costs extra, OS likely still more buggy than iPhone (yeah, I know, hard to believe), at times unresponsive UI.
I'll have to see what the 3G iPhone is actually capable of and what the gotchas are with it.
What I really want is an Android phone, instead of this Nokia and Apple bullshit. Even a buggy Android phone would be better than either of these.
And the speed with which some of my (female) friends can SMS using the shorthand method is simply amazing.
Nimble fingers like that are... desirable in a girlfriend. "Mmmm... can you show me again how you would text 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'? Oooh, yeah, baby."
Oh, wait, look who I'm talking to, this is Slashdot. Never mind, you wouldn't understand:-)
You are automatically granted a license to copy email by the sender, since that is the ONLY way for you to actually read the email.
When you watch a DVD or read a web page, you copy it as well; that doesn't mean you have generic a "license to copy" the contents.
On the question of physical letters the recipient owns them. If you later become famous and they then decide to acution them off, that's their right - since THEY own the letters now, not you
But the copyright (including the right to publish the contents) remains with the creator of those letters, just like with a DVD or a book. There's case law, go look it up.
Really, you should start separating what you believe to be true from what you know to be true.
Nope. Mail addressed to you becomes YOUR property. It is a gift from the sender to you.
You know, this is fascinating: are you (1) deliberately lying, (2) aware that you're making things up, or (3) simply confusing reality and fantasy that you yourself can't even tell the difference anymore?
Started what? Cheap computers? I don't think so. We had the Sinclair ZX80, the Commodore 64, the TRS80-100, the Apple eMate, and the Dana Alphasmart, all the ITX-based machines, to name just a few. (Some of them missed their price targets, but then so did the XO.)
This notion of cheap/easy-to-use computers for education/the masses comes back about once a decade. OLPC was a little ahead of the curve this time, but it's hardly ground breaking.
That's silly. Negroponte didn't invent cheap machines or cheap laptops, and when the conditions are right, they appear in the market, as they have done a number of times before. Furthermore, no OLPC technologies have actually made it into any of the low cost laptops. It's a shame, really, because Negroponte and his project really could have made a contribution in this area.
The Eee PC would exist without the OLPC, but both OLPC and the Eee owe their existence to FOSS.
Slashdot Mirror
But this itch obviously is not powerful enough to cause the community to scratch.
The community has scratched: a lot of people have abandoned Java, and a lot of people have worked on creating third party Java implementations, albeit ones that haven't been certified.
There's no question that Java is useful to many people, just like there is no question that Windows is useful to many people. But neither Java nor Windows are open standards. And for Sun to proclaim compatibility of their own implementation with their own test suite is ridiculous and masturbatory.
Well, if those are your criteria for an "open standard", then Microsoft Windows and .NET are "open standards" as well: their default implementations are quite good as well, everything's documented, and there are billions of dollars of IT projects that depend on them.
To me, an "open standard" is one that other people can and do implement, so that I have a choice of vendors and security against any one vendor doing something stupid. That is what Sun promised, but they haven't delivered.
Those are JVM implementations, not complete Java implementations.
There are a few non-Sun implementations that have passed certification, but they are not independent implementations; they contain licensed code from Sun.
As I was saying: there are no independent implementations that have passed Sun's certification.
Sun claims that Java is an open "standard".
If, after a decade, nobody has managed to produce an independent, compliant, commercial implementation, then that suggests that doing so is too hard. Maybe Sun's specifications are incomplete, maybe the specs are so complex that they are too hard to implement, maybe Sun keeps changing the platform too quickly.
Why does it matter? If Sun were to go belly-up tomorrow, there would be no compliant commercial Java implementation left.
So, Sun's own codebase passes their own compatibility suite. BFD.
If after more than a decade, there is not a single, independent, compliant Java implementation, then there is evidently something wrong with the Java platform.
That sounds daft - how do you prove a negative? How, for example, would you go about disproving allegations of al Qaeda membership?
Doesn't sound daft to me. "Harry J is a member of Al Quaeda." shouldn't be libelous because it is so vague as to be meaningless. "Harry J is a member of Al Quaeda, as shown by his participation in training exercises on 9/1/2003 in Northern Afghanistan." might be libelous, but only if you can prove that (1) you didn't actually participate, and (2) the person making the statement should have known that.
On the other hand, I'd be happy to accept a "balance of probabilities" basis for a decision; isn't this usually the case in civil cases?
The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, but the burden of proof still rests on the accuser, not the defendant.
"re-implementing" from what exactly? Which state-of-the art transcendental function or encryption libraries should Apple be using instead of writing their own?
The standard Linux ones would be a good start. Heck, Apple might even contribute to them if they actually were doing anything interesting in the area (which they don't seem to be).
Do you have references for accuracy proofs of said libraries? What evidence do you have that said routines achieve (near-) optimal performance on Apple's current hardware?
Does Apple provide accuracy proofs for their libraries? No.
Does Apple provide evidence that their libraries achieve (near-) optimal performance on Apple's current hardware? No.
Does Apple provide any evidence that their hardware/software combo is higher performance than equivalent Linux machines? No.
Have Apple employees published any significant papers on mathematics, numerical algorithms, or statistics recently? No.
Apple is a dead end when it comes to mathematics or computer science; there is little that's interesting happening there. Apple is all about design and marketing fluff, with a little engineering thrown in.
and at the end of his plenary talk, he took a few minutes to bemoan the fact that in a room filled with PhDs in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, there were probably no more than one or two who could quickly and correctly implement the double-precision log function with good accuracy and performance
He can bemoan what he wants to, that doesn't make it relevant to anybody or anything.
So, yes, I'd say it requires a little mathematical knowledge and understanding.
Yes, but only a little, plus a bag of tricks and hacks that don't generalize to anything else.
Certainly more than the elementary statistical analysis necessary to sell Advertisements.
Well, you're entitled to your opinions. But whatever your opinion, fact is that knowledge of how to write a double precision log function won't get you a machine learning or statistics job. In fact, I doubt it will get you a job at all if implementation of transcendental functions is your primary skill.
the agency "is the best thing you can do for your career."
What career would that be? If you are a "geek", i.e., you actually like working with technology hands-on, then becoming a program manager at DARPA sounds dreadful. You don't get to work with technology, you just get to see lots of other people having fun. And you do get to hand out the money, but more often than not, you have to NOT hand out money and be a general PITA to other geeks. And after all that, if you're lucky, once you decide to leave DARPA, you'll be ready on a career path... as an administrator or financial manager at a university.
There are plenty of different kinds of business that a business owner can refuse to take, for all sorts of reasons. But there are some things a business owner cannot do when he acts in his capacity as a business owner. He can still do those things as a private citizen.
you are entitled to your opinion and me mine ... however, nothing I said is factually incorrect.
:D
You haven't said anything "factually incorrect" because you haven't said anything factual at all.
and I will be voting McCain in 2008 too. Lets see if that can get a few more expletives to come out of your mouth
Well, it is obviously pointless to try change your position. I'm just pointing out your hypocrisy to others. After eight years in power, two nations in ruins, a trillion dollars spent on war, and an economy in shambles, Republicans still fail to take responsibility for their actions and admit that they screwed up. After what you did and how you are trying to weasel out of it now, people have a right to be angry with Republicans and people like you.
You also don't know your history when you talk about "anti-war liberals" in reference to WWI and WWII. It was two liberal Democrats that caused the US to enter into WWI and WWII. They entered those wars for the right reasons, and they followed through correctly. Despite all the Republican lies and distortions, it is the liberals that cause the economy to flourish and bring prosperity to America, lead the nation into just and successful wars, and promote freedom around the world.
People like McCain and you lack values, you lack historical understanding, and you lack integrity. And the sooner people realize that, the sooner we can restore American values and American strength.
Almost every American would like to see other countries become free and democratic. The problem with Bush is not his intent, it is his incompetence, his lies, and the colossal waste of American tax payer dollars.
Bush has failed to deliver on his promises: he didn't bring democracy to Iraq, he didn't reduce government spending, he endangered the lives of Americans, he made terrorism worse, and he ruined the economy.
It boggles the mind that people like you are still talking about "freedom" and "pride" as if the people that dragged us into Iraq had a monopoly on that. Anybody who voted Bush into office should hold down their head in shame; this is your fault. You made a bad choice. Take responsibility for your own actions and stop blaming others.
And next time you want to follow the impulse of bringing freedom to the rest of the world, listen to the people who actually have demonstrable experience with that, not to incompetent hacks like Bush and his cronies.
A mayor of London, Ontario was fined by this court because she *didn't* mandate a taxpayer-funded celebration of Gay Pride Day, requested by an exceedingly small minority of citizens.
He is a public figure and needs to spend taxes equitably. If he mandates support for other minority events, he needs to do so for Gay Pride.
The owner of a printing shop in Mississagua, ON lost around $100,000 in revenue and fines when he chose to not print gay and lesbian promotional material
Businesses operate at the discretion of, and under the laws of, the community they operate in. If that community has anti-discrimination laws, the business must comply with them.
If you don't understand why, replace "gay and lesbian" with "Catholic" or "African American" and re-read it again.
In 2000, Kelowna, B.C. (the city) was dragged in front of the Canadian Kangaroo Court of "Human Rights" because they celebrated "Gay and Lesbian Day," in 1997 (yes, three years prior to the complaint). The complaint? They didn't include the word "pride" in the celebration. The Mayor of Kelowna was found guilty.
I suspect you're leaving out some pertinent facts here.
A chapter of the Knights of Columbus (a privately-funded, *clearly* Catholic organization) was fined for choosing to not rent their convention hall to a same-sex couple for their marriage celebration.
If they are a charity, they need to comply with non-discrimination policies for charities. If they are a business, they need to comply with non-discrimination policies for businesses.
Maybe you're forgetting why organizations like the Knights of Columbus were founded in the firrst place. To mainstream US society, Catholicism and homosexuality used to be comparably immoral and repulsive. Catholics were refused business because of their religious affiliation.
If you want to go back to the old days in which there was little minority protection, we can talk about that. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself discriminated against again because of your religion.
See the difference? Whether it's true or false doesn't even matter, that I can't prove it is.
In the US, in order to defend against libel, you don't have to prove that your statement is true, the other party has to show that your statement is false and that you can reasonably be expected to have known that it was false.
For example, I may (hopefully still, don't know to be honest) say that I think Bush is a threat to stability in this world. It could be considered slander if I said that he took bribes from corporations to start a war that killed thousands,
US law makes it nearly impossible to libel or slander a public figure, so you can pretty much say whatever you want to about Bush.
In a democracy, you really don't want politicians to be able to go around suing people critical of them for libel.
He's explaining a difference in law to you. Under US law, truth is a defense. But you don't have to prove that your statement is true, the other party has to prove that your statement is false.
The judge is imprisoning him for not taking down the web page, and he is only imprisoning him until he does.
That's reasonable: the guy may have the opinion that he is justified in keeping the web page up, but if the court orders him to take it down, he must comply or face the consequences (imprisonment).
It's the courts that make the decision about what is right or wrong in our societies. You may be morally justified in defying a court, but that isn't without consequences. Given that he has dual citizenship, he can choose to defy the court order and simply stay out of NZ in the future.
Maybe these people actually just don't have a choice.
Being a desktop software develop or kernel hacker does not qualify you to "improve systems to sell ads". You need a lot more math and statistics for that, and much less low level hacking skills.
I don't see much potential for building a good Ph.D. thesis on that kind of fluff piece.
As a practical matter, getting a Ph.D. in software engineering or software design may be a good academic choice. It's a bit like getting a Ph.D. in art history or sociology, in that there there is a wide variety of approaches and no clear right/wrong; and if your math and science is a little weak, it doesn't matter. Unlike art history, with a Ph.D. in software engineering, you will have good employment prospects.
Still, as a Ph.D. choice, that kind of topic never made much sense to me. If your heart is in software development, you're better off just working as a software developer. And if your heart is with academia, then there are better and more interesting academic subjects.
This is probably going to be one of the best smart phones around. I may still get this instead of an iPhone.
Plusses: tons of functionality and third party applications, tons of built-in applications, good Google support, supports lots of standards (stereo Bluetooth, tethered 3.5G modem, microSD, etc.), good keyboard, real GPS navigation.
Minuses: small screen, charge cable costs extra, OS likely still more buggy than iPhone (yeah, I know, hard to believe), at times unresponsive UI.
I'll have to see what the 3G iPhone is actually capable of and what the gotchas are with it.
What I really want is an Android phone, instead of this Nokia and Apple bullshit. Even a buggy Android phone would be better than either of these.
And the speed with which some of my (female) friends can SMS using the shorthand method is simply amazing.
:-)
Nimble fingers like that are... desirable in a girlfriend. "Mmmm... can you show me again how you would text 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'? Oooh, yeah, baby."
Oh, wait, look who I'm talking to, this is Slashdot. Never mind, you wouldn't understand
You are automatically granted a license to copy email by the sender, since that is the ONLY way for you to actually read the email.
When you watch a DVD or read a web page, you copy it as well; that doesn't mean you have generic a "license to copy" the contents.
On the question of physical letters the recipient owns them. If you later become famous and they then decide to acution them off, that's their right - since THEY own the letters now, not you
But the copyright (including the right to publish the contents) remains with the creator of those letters, just like with a DVD or a book. There's case law, go look it up.
Really, you should start separating what you believe to be true from what you know to be true.
Nope. Mail addressed to you becomes YOUR property. It is a gift from the sender to you.
You know, this is fascinating: are you (1) deliberately lying, (2) aware that you're making things up, or (3) simply confusing reality and fantasy that you yourself can't even tell the difference anymore?
Your question is a non-sequitur, but apparently one made in an attempt to score rhetorical points. I'm not going to debate with you on that level.
If you sends bits to MY computer, using MY libraries, and running MY kernel, those bits are mine to do with as I wish,
The copyright still remains with the sender, so, no, they are not yours. Furthermore, you cannot legally do with them as you wish.
Very valid point. It was XO that started it all,
Started what? Cheap computers? I don't think so. We had the Sinclair ZX80, the Commodore 64, the TRS80-100, the Apple eMate, and the Dana Alphasmart, all the ITX-based machines, to name just a few. (Some of them missed their price targets, but then so did the XO.)
This notion of cheap/easy-to-use computers for education/the masses comes back about once a decade. OLPC was a little ahead of the curve this time, but it's hardly ground breaking.
That's silly. Negroponte didn't invent cheap machines or cheap laptops, and when the conditions are right, they appear in the market, as they have done a number of times before. Furthermore, no OLPC technologies have actually made it into any of the low cost laptops. It's a shame, really, because Negroponte and his project really could have made a contribution in this area.
The Eee PC would exist without the OLPC, but both OLPC and the Eee owe their existence to FOSS.