Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 1
> If java is outdated, then what is C/C++?
Not existing? There never was a language called C/C++. There are two quite different languages called C and C++. Both gives access to low level programming, something none of the languages in the article does. The run-time support (and sometimes the compiler) of each of those languages are typically written in C or C++ for that reason. C++ additionally support object oriented and generic programming better than Java. It does not support rapid prototyping as good as any of the mentioned languages.
Perl and Python are older than Java
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Perl significantly so, as it is from 1987 compared to Pyhton from 1990 and Java from 1991. Perl was probably the first significant "web application" programming language, so hearing it mentioned as a new breed of languages is kind of weird.
Perl was always a programmers tool, and never had the mainstream hype that surrounded Java from the start, so I kind understand why a journalist could get it mixed up.
The popular definition is that it should pass the Turing test. We did that more than 20 years ago. It is just a question of selecting the right environment and audience. On Usenet there are enough kooks that a simple Markov chain based text analysing program could pass. Today there are bots on chat rooms and web boards that at least fool some of the people, some of the time. Heck, even the original Eliza fooled people at a time where computers were mostly unknown to the public.
In general, if we set the standard for passing the Turing-test sufficiently high that the bots won't pass, a lot of real humans will fail as well.
My guess is that there won't be any "first" true AI. The most intelligent programs will never be considered AI by the public, as they will be designed to do a task, or assist a human in doing a task, and not have any will beside that. Why should they?
Toys like the Tamgotchi and the AIBO may be designed to mimic a will, and will to some degree. But more likely, they will be designed to (and become increasingly better at) pushing emotional buttons of their owners. This may lead to robot rights movement, similar to the more emotionally driven part of the animal rights movement.
Thus, true AI won't come from a laboratory, but from a law prompted by some lobbyist group consisting of concerned citizens.
It should be obvious that the/. meanstream has no sense of humor. Unless something is explicitly marked as humor, they will never realize it. The troll subpopulation is no better, there endless repetition is considered the high point of humor.
I am a strong advocate of free software (free as in FSF, not OSF).
However, as has already been stated, that does not mean this is the end of free Nessus -- it will still be free, except we no longer will be able to look under the hood.
You are an advocate of free, as in FSF, software and you still consider software free in any meaningful way when you no longer can look under the hood? I think you need to learn a bit more about what the Free Software Foundation stands for.
The first I heard about them was through their BASIC interpreter, which ran on most of the early home computers. Even for a BASIC, it was rather poor, and in any case, it was always more exciting with those that had their own like Sinclair or BBC (a very good one).
Then there was the MSX line of "standardized" home computers. Again, a rather boring design.
Then there was MS-DOS, which took the throne away from CP/M, without adding anything new. Much later we learned that the reason it looked like CP/M was that it was an unauthorized and modified copy of CP/M.
Then I became excited about Unix, and MS seemed be the evil one since MS-DOS was so primitive in comparison, yet ran on more computers. And even when MS tried to make Unix, they screwed up (aka Xenix).
The only good thing I remember from the early days of Microsoft, was the word processor they sold for the Mac. It was actually pretty good, and far superior to any of the CP/M or MS-DOS word processors I had tried. It couldn't compete with LaTeX of course, but then again, it didn't try to.
Actually, FUD works well for free software, but in another way than you imply. FUD used to mean something, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. In particular, it refered to the practice of IBM to discourage competition, back in their monopoly days. "Sure, you could by it from our competitors for half the price. But will they be around tomorrow? And where will you get maintainance then? With IBM, you *known* we will be there for the long run."
The problem with FUD is that it is the true. The average life expectancy for a proprietary vendor that goes up against the market leader is very low.
But this works to the advantage of free software is the same. "Sure, you can buy a solution from a proprietary vendor. It may even have a lower TCO than our product today, But what will the price be tomorrow? Will they even be around tomorrow? Even if they are still around, will you be their focus? Or will they concentrate on the latest shining thing in the busniness world? If so, you may end up with a dead end product, which you can't change, and can't hire someone else to maintain. Not so with us. With our solution based on free software, you can always choose another vendor, should we fail to deliver satisfying performance. And even if we go down, our engineers will still exists, and they (like everybody else) will have the right to modify and distribute the software. So there will always be someone, and control of this ressource will be in your hands, not in the hands of another company."
There is a huge difference between giving a volume discount, and an "exclusive supplier discount". The first is standard practice. The second is not, and is often illegal (as well as always unethical) if you are in a monopoly position. You demonstrate either ignorance or malice by mixing the two up.
Also, "the other kids are doing it" wasn't a good excuse in kindergarden, and still isnt a good excuse in the world of grown up ethics.
The one thing that is correct is that the official gcc was growing stagnant. But that was due to the official maintainer, who was (and is, he still contribute to gcc) a great compiler engineer, but a poor free software project leader. The majority of the work was done by Cygnus Support, whose customers were mostly in the embedded arena. Cygnus then decided to open up development based on their own branch, under the name egcs (and with an understanding from FSF), in order to involve more people in the development. It became a huge sucess, and the egcs branch became the official FSF branch.
The biggest contribution from Linux may be that Linux (together with the favorite/. hate-object, ESR's, Cathedral and Bazaar paper), served as an inspiration to move away from the traditional relatively closed FSF style of maintainership.
Today, SUSE makes good contributions. So does Red Hat, although it is hard to see which part of those contributions come from the old Cygnus part of the company (Red Hat bought Cygnus during the.com boom, and showed their first profit right after, most of their listed "wins" were in the old Cygnus business area). But the maintainer is from CodeSourcery, who does contract compiler work in a rather wide area. And the main contributor may, somewhat ironically, be Apple, it is certainly their email adress I see most on the developer list. Other than that, HP, IBM and Intel contribute a lot.
It is surprisingly hard to find out what the current release is from the GCC webpages. The front page has a misleading 4.1. Press "Releases", and you get a misleading 3.4.4. You have to go on to the "Development plan", under Future timeline, to find the actual latest and greatest 4.0.2 somewhere down the ASCII art tree.
Re:Know and love GCC
on
GCC 4.1 Released
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· Score: 4, Informative
Eh, GCC was the default compiler for several platforms before Linux existed, and was the prefered compiler for cross-compilation to embedded platforms, and for software that ran on a wide range of platforms. It was also the preferred compiler for ANSI C (GCC got support for ANSI C very early).
In other words, GCC would be exactly where it is today, had it not been for Linux.
There are sound economic reasons to subsidise infrastructure, as the level of infrastructure that is profitable to create is less than the optimal level for a society. Mostly because a cheap or free infrastructure promotes free trade.
One could argue that at least some kind of software is infrastructure, more specifically, communication software in a broad sense, and the theoretical economic arguments for government involvement apply there as well.
Software that only works on Microsoft Windows does not get a lot of respect by users of other operating systems. That is hardly surprising.
Microsoft Windows users in general doesn't understand free software, so you don't get a lot of respect from that side.
The last group is people who use and care for free software on Microsoft Windows. If that group doesn't respect you for producing free software for Microsoft Windows, then it is a surpise.
Finally, the GNU project has no interest in free software that only works on non-free platforms. Which again is no surpise given that the pupose of the GNU project is to create an entirely free software platform.
Patents don't "protect" novel ideas, they *prevent* ideas from being used for the benefit of society. They are evil and harmful, the only saving grace for patents is that secrecy may be even more harmful than a time limited patent.
To defend software patents, you must find a software patent that has expired, is useful today, and is unlikely to have been invented independently during the patent period.
That the Research Unix guys didn't add it to Plan9 doesn't have to mean anything else than they suffer from the NIH syndrome. I don't believe symbolic links were ever a part of Research Unix.
The commercial product, SysV, got symbolic links, but they had to compete in the real world.
If the SK FTC gives in, they have demonstrated the power Microsoft wields by having a virtual monopoly. And politicians everywhere understand power, and will try to regain it. They would prefer software they control, but that is too expensive to develop. However, software nobody controls, that is free software, is a viable alternative.
If Microsoft gives in, presumably competititors in SK will benefit, including free software.
If neither part gives in, competititors in SK will benefit, including free software.
I guess some kind of compromise will be found which share the power between SK politicians and Microsoft, and keep the public out:-(
My guess is that this will speed up the transition to subscription services. Advertisement financed television is already economically a poor deal for almost all viewers. You get in average US$ 2 worth of content for each hour of advertisement you watch, which is not an hourly rate most people would work for.
As more financially secure viewers swicth to advertisment free subscription services, the remaining viewers become less attractive for advertisers, and subscription services will have even more money to produce quality content.
My guess is that advertisement financed television will basically be TV-Shop in a few years. Maybe with a bit more variation in target audience.
Meanwhile, the basic work of building an encyclopedia, like researching obscure historical subjects and even basic fact-checking, is largely neglected.
Actually, Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) is an unsuited place for research.
I don't see any problem with Wikipedia being particularily strong on pop culture, It is not like there is a limited amount of possible content, and adding to one area will limit other areas.
Right. Because everybody would just assume Bill Gates actually would claim to be evil in an interview.
It is the obvious interpretation, and it is also obviously the wrong interpretation, a contradiction designed to raise the curiosity of an intelligent audience.
PS: The first paragraph was sarcasm. I usually don't state that, but you are obvioulsy unable to recognize humor. At least any humor that require your IQ to be larger than your shoe size.
PPS: And yes, that was a flame. Feel free to moderate accordingly. I'm tired of morons getting moderated as insightful, whenever they flame an/. editor who makes the mistake of assuming his audience is capable of independent thought.
Microsoft has never been an OS company. They have always been an application company, and most of the time made most of their money on applications. Their Mac application was at one point their largest cash cow.
I believe part of the answer lies in editorial control. If you delete comments on your blog, you may be conisderet an editor rather than a common carrier, and become responsible for the content.
Another case is if you refuse to remove illegal material from your blog, when pointed out to you, you may become responsible.
Of course, if you do remove the material, it may be viewer as editorial control, so it is damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
OSDL is a development laboratory, has no products to sell, and thus no interest in participating in such marketing stunts. Microsoft should ask Red Hat instead.
See their developer page, in particular the section about server choice. Apparently, they are creating a system so users can communicate with each others across servers, and use that system together with anyone else who believe in server choice. They have two partners right now.
For winzip, I find the build in funcitonality in XP way superior. It doesn what I need, and nothing else.
For winamp, I loathe Media Player. It has a totally bloated and confusing interface. I just never have gotten around to exploring the market for alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
> If java is outdated, then what is C/C++?
Not existing? There never was a language called C/C++. There are two quite different languages called C and C++. Both gives access to low level programming, something none of the languages in the article does. The run-time support (and sometimes the compiler) of each of those languages are typically written in C or C++ for that reason. C++ additionally support object oriented and generic programming better than Java. It does not support rapid prototyping as good as any of the mentioned languages.
Perl significantly so, as it is from 1987 compared to Pyhton from 1990 and Java from 1991. Perl was probably the first significant "web application" programming language, so hearing it mentioned as a new breed of languages is kind of weird.
Perl was always a programmers tool, and never had the mainstream hype that surrounded Java from the start, so I kind understand why a journalist could get it mixed up.
The popular definition is that it should pass the Turing test. We did that more than 20 years ago. It is just a question of selecting the right environment and audience. On Usenet there are enough kooks that a simple Markov chain based text analysing program could pass. Today there are bots on chat rooms and web boards that at least fool some of the people, some of the time. Heck, even the original Eliza fooled people at a time where computers were mostly unknown to the public.
In general, if we set the standard for passing the Turing-test sufficiently high that the bots won't pass, a lot of real humans will fail as well.
My guess is that there won't be any "first" true AI. The most intelligent programs will never be considered AI by the public, as they will be designed to do a task, or assist a human in doing a task, and not have any will beside that. Why should they?
Toys like the Tamgotchi and the AIBO may be designed to mimic a will, and will to some degree. But more likely, they will be designed to (and become increasingly better at) pushing emotional buttons of their owners. This may lead to robot rights movement, similar to the more emotionally driven part of the animal rights movement.
Thus, true AI won't come from a laboratory, but from a law prompted by some lobbyist group consisting of concerned citizens.
It should be obvious that the /. meanstream has no sense of humor. Unless something is explicitly marked as humor, they will never realize it. The troll subpopulation is no better, there endless repetition is considered the high point of humor.
You are an advocate of free, as in FSF, software and you still consider software free in any meaningful way when you no longer can look under the hood? I think you need to learn a bit more about what the Free Software Foundation stands for.
At least not as I recall it.
The first I heard about them was through their BASIC interpreter, which ran on most of the early home computers. Even for a BASIC, it was rather poor, and in any case, it was always more exciting with those that had their own like Sinclair or BBC (a very good one).
Then there was the MSX line of "standardized" home computers. Again, a rather boring design.
Then there was MS-DOS, which took the throne away from CP/M, without adding anything new. Much later we learned that the reason it looked like CP/M was that it was an unauthorized and modified copy of CP/M.
Then I became excited about Unix, and MS seemed be the evil one since MS-DOS was so primitive in comparison, yet ran on more computers. And even when MS tried to make Unix, they screwed up (aka Xenix).
The only good thing I remember from the early days of Microsoft, was the word processor they sold for the Mac. It was actually pretty good, and far superior to any of the CP/M or MS-DOS word processors I had tried. It couldn't compete with LaTeX of course, but then again, it didn't try to.
Actually, FUD works well for free software, but in another way than you imply. FUD used to mean something, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. In particular, it refered to the practice of IBM to discourage competition, back in their monopoly days. "Sure, you could by it from our competitors for half the price. But will they be around tomorrow? And where will you get maintainance then? With IBM, you *known* we will be there for the long run."
The problem with FUD is that it is the true. The average life expectancy for a proprietary vendor that goes up against the market leader is very low.
But this works to the advantage of free software is the same. "Sure, you can buy a solution from a proprietary vendor. It may even have a lower TCO than our product today, But what will the price be tomorrow? Will they even be around tomorrow? Even if they are still around, will you be their focus? Or will they concentrate on the latest shining thing in the busniness world? If so, you may end up with a dead end product, which you can't change, and can't hire someone else to maintain. Not so with us. With our solution based on free software, you can always choose another vendor, should we fail to deliver satisfying performance. And even if we go down, our engineers will still exists, and they (like everybody else) will have the right to modify and distribute the software. So there will always be someone, and control of this ressource will be in your hands, not in the hands of another company."
There is a huge difference between giving a volume discount, and an "exclusive supplier discount". The first is standard practice. The second is not, and is often illegal (as well as always unethical) if you are in a monopoly position. You demonstrate either ignorance or malice by mixing the two up.
Also, "the other kids are doing it" wasn't a good excuse in kindergarden, and still isnt a good excuse in the world of grown up ethics.
The one thing that is correct is that the official gcc was growing stagnant. But that was due to the official maintainer, who was (and is, he still contribute to gcc) a great compiler engineer, but a poor free software project leader. The majority of the work was done by Cygnus Support, whose customers were mostly in the embedded arena. Cygnus then decided to open up development based on their own branch, under the name egcs (and with an understanding from FSF), in order to involve more people in the development. It became a huge sucess, and the egcs branch became the official FSF branch.
/. hate-object, ESR's, Cathedral and Bazaar paper), served as an inspiration to move away from the traditional relatively closed FSF style of maintainership.
.com boom, and showed their first profit right after, most of their listed "wins" were in the old Cygnus business area). But the maintainer is from CodeSourcery, who does contract compiler work in a rather wide area. And the main contributor may, somewhat ironically, be Apple, it is certainly their email adress I see most on the developer list. Other than that, HP, IBM and Intel contribute a lot.
The biggest contribution from Linux may be that Linux (together with the favorite
Today, SUSE makes good contributions. So does Red Hat, although it is hard to see which part of those contributions come from the old Cygnus part of the company (Red Hat bought Cygnus during the
It is surprisingly hard to find out what the current release is from the GCC webpages. The front page has a misleading 4.1. Press "Releases", and you get a misleading 3.4.4. You have to go on to the "Development plan", under Future timeline, to find the actual latest and greatest 4.0.2 somewhere down the ASCII art tree.
Eh, GCC was the default compiler for several platforms before Linux existed, and was the prefered compiler for cross-compilation to embedded platforms, and for software that ran on a wide range of platforms. It was also the preferred compiler for ANSI C (GCC got support for ANSI C very early).
In other words, GCC would be exactly where it is today, had it not been for Linux.
There are sound economic reasons to subsidise infrastructure, as the level of infrastructure that is profitable to create is less than the optimal level for a society. Mostly because a cheap or free infrastructure promotes free trade.
One could argue that at least some kind of software is infrastructure, more specifically, communication software in a broad sense, and the theoretical economic arguments for government involvement apply there as well.
Software that only works on Microsoft Windows does not get a lot of respect by users of other operating systems. That is hardly surprising.
Microsoft Windows users in general doesn't understand free software, so you don't get a lot of respect from that side.
The last group is people who use and care for free software on Microsoft Windows. If that group doesn't respect you for producing free software for Microsoft Windows, then it is a surpise.
Finally, the GNU project has no interest in free software that only works on non-free platforms. Which again is no surpise given that the pupose of the GNU project is to create an entirely free software platform.
Patents don't "protect" novel ideas, they *prevent* ideas from being used for the benefit of society. They are evil and harmful, the only saving grace for patents is that secrecy may be even more harmful than a time limited patent.
To defend software patents, you must find a software patent that has expired, is useful today, and is unlikely to have been invented independently during the patent period.
Internet polls?
That the Research Unix guys didn't add it to Plan9 doesn't have to mean anything else than they suffer from the NIH syndrome. I don't believe symbolic links were ever a part of Research Unix.
The commercial product, SysV, got symbolic links, but they had to compete in the real world.
This can only be good for free software:
:-(
If the SK FTC gives in, they have demonstrated the power Microsoft wields by having a virtual monopoly. And politicians everywhere understand power, and will try to regain it. They would prefer software they control, but that is too expensive to develop. However, software nobody controls, that is free software, is a viable alternative.
If Microsoft gives in, presumably competititors in SK will benefit, including free software.
If neither part gives in, competititors in SK will benefit, including free software.
I guess some kind of compromise will be found which share the power between SK politicians and Microsoft, and keep the public out
My guess is that this will speed up the transition to subscription services. Advertisement financed television is already economically a poor deal for almost all viewers. You get in average US$ 2 worth of content for each hour of advertisement you watch, which is not an hourly rate most people would work for.
As more financially secure viewers swicth to advertisment free subscription services, the remaining viewers become less attractive for advertisers, and subscription services will have even more money to produce quality content.
My guess is that advertisement financed television will basically be TV-Shop in a few years. Maybe with a bit more variation in target audience.
Actually, Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) is an unsuited place for research.
I don't see any problem with Wikipedia being particularily strong on pop culture, It is not like there is a limited amount of possible content, and adding to one area will limit other areas.
Right. Because everybody would just assume Bill Gates actually would claim to be evil in an interview.
/. editor who makes the mistake of assuming his audience is capable of independent thought.
It is the obvious interpretation, and it is also obviously the wrong interpretation, a contradiction designed to raise the curiosity of an intelligent audience.
PS: The first paragraph was sarcasm. I usually don't state that, but you are obvioulsy unable to recognize humor. At least any humor that require your IQ to be larger than your shoe size.
PPS: And yes, that was a flame. Feel free to moderate accordingly. I'm tired of morons getting moderated as insightful, whenever they flame an
Microsoft has never been an OS company. They have always been an application company, and most of the time made most of their money on applications. Their Mac application was at one point their largest cash cow.
I believe part of the answer lies in editorial control. If you delete comments on your blog, you may be conisderet an editor rather than a common carrier, and become responsible for the content.
Another case is if you refuse to remove illegal material from your blog, when pointed out to you, you may become responsible.
Of course, if you do remove the material, it may be viewer as editorial control, so it is damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
OSDL is a development laboratory, has no products to sell, and thus no interest in participating in such marketing stunts. Microsoft should ask Red Hat instead.
See their developer page, in particular the section about server choice. Apparently, they are creating a system so users can communicate with each others across servers, and use that system together with anyone else who believe in server choice. They have two partners right now.
I don't use winzip and winamp.
For winzip, I find the build in funcitonality in XP way superior. It doesn what I need, and nothing else.
For winamp, I loathe Media Player. It has a totally bloated and confusing interface. I just never have gotten around to exploring the market for alternatives.
I do use FireFox though.