Since the US supplies most of the arms to Israel, now all an IDF trooper has to do is look at a doctor or a policeman or a mother holding her child, and *bang*, they've been ethnically cleansed! Ain't technology great? Ain't George just a paragon of virtue and moral strength?
Now this is also only a partial solution, the flip side of the coin from my earlier post in this thread. SSH is essential for network communication. It is the single cross-platform standard that interoperates perfectly, without any realistic competition (certainly not Kerberos, which has vast administrative overhead by comparison). Any solution that does not address SSH does not provide single or even uniform login, as far as I am concerned.
That's fine for remote logins. It doesn't address the central problem as posed, however, which is to gain access to a system via it's primary interface, not via network-only interfaces. You can't use ssh to authenticate for windows 2000 login, for example, nor to authenticate to a web page. I wish that you could. SSH is essential. Any system that doesn't address SSH authentication is partial at best -- as for example, LDAP.
I've heard of this culture, but I've never seen it in reality. I have always suspected it was a creation of the ooh-aah gawking tech press during the internet stock market bubble.
Is that what it's like in your neck of the woods, or is it just what you've read about in Wired? Most of the intelligent people I know are very interested in accomplishing things, and tend not to appreciate nerf arrows any more than sales meetings. They usually don't kick it out until they are stuck or wiped out or pissed off.
Rather than using static APIs, use a container architecture, with dynamic typing. Let each plugin describe its methods with a snippet of XML, and let the plugins communicate using XML method invocations. Implement the application as a plugin which obtains a thread of control from the container and scripts the other plugins. When the container starts up, it can load and initialize all the plugins, including the application logic plugin. By using XML interface descriptions, it becomes trivial to implement inheritance between plugins, and by using XML invokations, it becomes trivial to make the component architecture network transparent.
I have to agree with boltar. I would also make the point that using multiple languages always creates a maintenance problem. Good design simplifies code, rather than sucking in a vast body of unmaintainable spaghetti, and forcing you to hire botique language experts.
And really, if you write a plugin in SIOD or Python for MySQL, it's not going to do you any more good in Netscape than a native code plugin would do.
Generic object services is what the first poster is talking about, not plugins. Use IIOP or SOAP for that sort of thing.
Having said all of that, the state of practice in plugin architecture does lag the state of the art by quite a bit, so this thread may shed some very welcome light on the subject. I suggest moving it to a development site, such as advogato.
How many users of Windows XP understand how the NSA backdoor keys work in IE6? Maybe 100? Users accept this crap because Microsoft is a trusted brand. That's fine for them. It works. It may not be fine for you.
The situation with Brilliant Digital is exactly the same. People trust the Kazaa brand. They agree to the terms, and everyone is happy.
There's no scandal here. If you prefer not to use the software, by all means, don't use it. Brilliant isn't a monopoly, you know. You do have choice.
And if you don't want to trust brands, you can always fall back on peer-reviewed open source software.
I'm not a principal researcher. Get off the couch and go read the papers, man! The evidence is there. I'm just providing analysis and explanataion of the social problems that CF research faces, on the basis of my own reading and experience as a cog in the machine of academic science.
The evidence is there, but until it is pushed under the noses of the public and the policy makers, a few temperate rants are de rigeur. Without adequate advocacy, even the best of invention can languish, just as a poor business plan can doom a really good technology.
So you see, I don't mind one bit that you characterize my comment as a rant. As long as I don't err in the sense of making claims which are beyond the set of reasonable interpretations of the physical evidence, I feel it is worthwhile.
When last I tried Gnome, it was slow and featureless in comparison to KDE3rc3. I'm quite willing to switch over to Gnome, if it becomes a better productivity environment, and consumes less resources, but I'm concerned that until someone who is willing and able to leave their dull axes in the closet for a while can make a comprehensive feature and performance comparison, both Gnome and KDE users alike will have little practical choice but to continue in their current environment.
Therefore, I ask: Can anyone recommend a reasonably thorough and objective comparison of Gnome 2 and KDE 3?
If you think the Ecole Polytechnic in Lausanne, the American Physical Society, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, and UIUC are going to participate in an April fool's joke by publishing such an elaborately constructed body of scientific literature and conference proceedings in collusion, well... I guess it was a pretty effective joke, because it sure made you look foolish.
Academic orthodoxy and political correctness has blinded the physics community to the accumulation of evidence in favor of some sort of CF process, from excess neutrons, to impeccable calorimetry. The bottom line is that the hot fusion industry is big money for big science, and CF is percieved as a threat to a lot of grants.
Really, the only respectable excuse for this blindness is the subtlety of the materials aspect: The reproducibility of CF experiments is amazingly sensitive to the origin and process application of the Pd electrodes. This makes it genuinely difficult to generate consistent results, in the absence of consistent experimental apparatus. Those who discount CF on this basis have retained some credibility.
The greatest lesson of the CF saga is simply that press releases are a double-edged sword, because popular press sensationalism created an enormous antipathetic backlash against CF.
It seems most likely at this point that classical CF is some sort of lattice-distributed analog of sonoluminescent fusion, which also has been demonstrated to produce excess neutrons.
I think that if Pons and Fleischman had chosen not to release their results publically, progress in this area would have been much more rapid. I don't blame them for feeling obligated to make such a fundamental breakthrough public knowledge, but in retrospect, it was an enormous tactical mistake. Even if (and it is by no means a given that this will ever happen) one day a practically useful powersource can be developed from CF or sonoluminescent fusion, it will be a huge uphill struggle to reverse the entrenched biases of even the public, let alone the well-heeled hot fusion lobby.
In point of fact, I was wrong. I fumble-fingered the URL, and the license I saw was the old WinCE license that prohibited any use with virally licensed software, i.e. GPL.
With reflective LCDs, decent demand throttling, and magnetic RAM, you should be able to make a competitive lap that runs on it's case paint. Reaching even deeper, imagine it was running an SOI/copper self-clocked reversible CPU. The thing could probably run on hand warmth. (That's hyperbole.)
There's absolutely no reason why a post can't be both offtopic and interesting. It's fair moderation. However, both your post and mine, being niggling meta-content, are (while still offtopic) entirely uninteresting.
Actually, Dave Winer beat them to the punch by two years.
According to analyst reports, 40% of web services will be microsoft-owned over the next 5 years, 40% will be Java-backed SOAP/XML-RPC, and 20% will be also-ran.
As regards Sun's stock values, while there is a correlation with server market share, it's really surprisingly low. Sun can save it's butt one of two (and probably by a mix of both) ways: The burgeoning embedded Java business, and putting out really butt-kicking CPUs and interconnects for their large SMP and NUMA boxes. The volumes on the first of those are huge, and the margins on the second of those are similarly huge.
Sun looks bad right now because they were a primary bubble stock. In fact, their P/E ratios and prospectus are quite sane and robust now.
Vitriol gets press. Vitriol directed at microsoft is also a moral imperative. Why tone it down? But it doesn't deserve a slashdot story, that's for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
> /.CONTRADICTION:
Dissing the rule of Satan, only to advocate the
rule of a loving God.
reductio ad absurdum
Since the US supplies most of the arms to Israel,
now all an IDF trooper has to do is look at a
doctor or a policeman or a mother holding her
child, and *bang*, they've been ethnically
cleansed! Ain't technology great? Ain't George
just a paragon of virtue and moral strength?
Now this is also only a partial solution, the flip
side of the coin from my earlier post in this
thread. SSH is essential for network
communication. It is the single cross-platform
standard that interoperates perfectly, without
any realistic competition (certainly not Kerberos,
which has vast administrative overhead by
comparison). Any solution that does not address
SSH does not provide single or even uniform login,
as far as I am concerned.
That's fine for remote logins. It doesn't address
the central problem as posed, however, which is
to gain access to a system via it's primary
interface, not via network-only interfaces. You
can't use ssh to authenticate for windows 2000
login, for example, nor to authenticate to a web
page. I wish that you could. SSH is essential.
Any system that doesn't address SSH authentication
is partial at best -- as for example, LDAP.
The most effective way to stop DRM is to kill
the right people.
I've heard of this culture, but I've never seen
it in reality. I have always suspected it was a
creation of the ooh-aah gawking tech press during
the internet stock market bubble.
Is that what it's like in your neck of the woods,
or is it just what you've read about in Wired?
Most of the intelligent people I know are very
interested in accomplishing things, and tend not
to appreciate nerf arrows any more than sales
meetings. They usually don't kick it out until
they are stuck or wiped out or pissed off.
Indeed, I'm quite pleased if I get a manager who
can *read*.
Maybe *you* will, but I telecommute or I don't
take the job. Skills and talents determine
the perks you can demand.
Rather than using static APIs, use a container
architecture, with dynamic typing. Let each plugin
describe its methods with a snippet of XML, and
let the plugins communicate using XML method
invocations. Implement the application as a plugin
which obtains a thread of control from the
container and scripts the other plugins. When the
container starts up, it can load and initialize
all the plugins, including the application logic
plugin. By using XML interface descriptions, it
becomes trivial to implement inheritance between
plugins, and by using XML invokations, it becomes
trivial to make the component architecture network
transparent.
Hmmm.... this sounds familiar....
I have to agree with boltar. I would also make the
point that using multiple languages always creates
a maintenance problem. Good design simplifies
code, rather than sucking in a vast body of
unmaintainable spaghetti, and forcing you to hire
botique language experts.
And really, if you write a plugin in SIOD or
Python for MySQL, it's not going to do you any
more good in Netscape than a native code plugin
would do.
Generic object services is what the first poster
is talking about, not plugins. Use IIOP or SOAP
for that sort of thing.
Having said all of that, the state of practice
in plugin architecture does lag the state of
the art by quite a bit, so this thread may shed
some very welcome light on the subject. I
suggest moving it to a development site, such
as advogato.
It's really all they do anyhow. I suggest that
they open their source.
How many users of Windows XP understand how the
NSA backdoor keys work in IE6? Maybe 100?
Users accept this crap because Microsoft is a
trusted brand. That's fine for them. It works.
It may not be fine for you.
The situation with Brilliant Digital is exactly the
same. People trust the Kazaa brand. They agree to
the terms, and everyone is happy.
There's no scandal here. If you prefer not to
use the software, by all means, don't use it.
Brilliant isn't a monopoly, you know. You do
have choice.
And if you don't want to trust brands, you can
always fall back on peer-reviewed open source
software.
Actually, this rocks. It's like Akamai from your
desktop. It's Swarmcast
with a 10-million node mesh. It means things get
better for *everyone*.
And Windows XP is different.... how?
That's why you should run open source software.
If you agree to terms that permit them
to do this, you don't have much to complain about.
I'm not a principal researcher. Get off the couch
and go read the papers, man! The evidence is
there. I'm just providing analysis and
explanataion of the social problems that CF
research faces, on the basis of my own reading
and experience as a cog in the machine of academic
science.
The evidence is there, but until it is pushed
under the noses of the public and the policy
makers, a few temperate rants are de rigeur.
Without adequate advocacy, even the best of
invention can languish, just as a poor business
plan can doom a really good technology.
So you see, I don't mind one bit that you
characterize my comment as a rant. As long as
I don't err in the sense of making claims which
are beyond the set of reasonable interpretations
of the physical evidence, I feel it is worthwhile.
When last I tried Gnome, it was slow and
featureless in comparison to KDE3rc3. I'm
quite willing to switch over to Gnome, if
it becomes a better productivity environment,
and consumes less resources, but I'm concerned
that until someone who is willing and able to
leave their dull axes in the closet for a while
can make a comprehensive feature and performance
comparison, both Gnome and KDE users alike will
have little practical choice but to continue in
their current environment.
Therefore, I ask: Can anyone recommend a
reasonably thorough and objective comparison of
Gnome 2 and KDE 3?
If you think the Ecole Polytechnic in Lausanne,
the American Physical Society, the Space and
Naval Warfare Systems Command, and UIUC are
going to participate in an April fool's joke
by publishing such an elaborately constructed
body of scientific literature and conference
proceedings in collusion, well... I guess
it was a pretty effective joke, because it sure
made you look foolish.
Academic orthodoxy and political correctness
has blinded the physics community to the
accumulation of evidence in favor of some sort
of CF process, from excess neutrons, to impeccable
calorimetry. The bottom line is that the hot
fusion industry is big money for big science, and
CF is percieved as a threat to a lot of grants.
Really, the only respectable excuse for this
blindness is the subtlety of the materials aspect:
The reproducibility of CF experiments is amazingly
sensitive to the origin and process application of
the Pd electrodes. This makes it genuinely
difficult to generate consistent results, in the
absence of consistent experimental apparatus.
Those who discount CF on this basis have retained
some credibility.
The greatest lesson of the CF saga is simply
that press releases are a double-edged sword,
because popular press sensationalism created an
enormous antipathetic backlash against CF.
It seems most likely at this point that classical
CF is some sort of lattice-distributed analog of
sonoluminescent fusion, which also has been
demonstrated to produce excess neutrons.
I think that if Pons and Fleischman had chosen
not to release their results publically, progress
in this area would have been much more rapid.
I don't blame them for feeling obligated to make
such a fundamental breakthrough public knowledge,
but in retrospect, it was an enormous tactical
mistake. Even if (and it is by no means a given
that this will ever happen) one day a practically
useful powersource can be developed from CF or
sonoluminescent fusion, it will be a huge uphill
struggle to reverse the entrenched biases of
even the public, let alone the well-heeled hot
fusion lobby.
Every time you spend a dollar on a Disney film
or buy something advertised on ABC, you are
placing a vote in favor of the DMCA.
In point of fact, I was wrong. I fumble-fingered the URL, and the license I saw was the old WinCE
license that prohibited any use with virally
licensed software, i.e. GPL.
Oh my aching Karma:)) Sorry for the red herring.
With reflective LCDs, decent demand throttling,
and magnetic RAM, you should be able to make a
competitive lap that runs on it's case paint.
Reaching even deeper, imagine it was running an
SOI/copper self-clocked reversible CPU. The thing
could probably run on hand warmth. (That's
hyperbole.)
There's absolutely no reason why a post can't be
both offtopic and interesting. It's fair
moderation. However, both your post and mine,
being niggling meta-content, are (while still
offtopic) entirely uninteresting.
suggestion: instead, remember winston in 1984:
if (required) {
assert (2 + 2 == 5);
}
Actually, Dave Winer beat them to the punch by two
years.
According to analyst reports, 40% of web services
will be microsoft-owned over the next 5 years,
40% will be Java-backed SOAP/XML-RPC, and 20% will
be also-ran.
As regards Sun's stock values, while there is a
correlation with server market share, it's really
surprisingly low. Sun can save it's butt one of
two (and probably by a mix of both) ways:
The burgeoning embedded Java business, and putting
out really butt-kicking CPUs and interconnects for
their large SMP and NUMA boxes. The volumes on
the first of those are huge, and the margins on
the second of those are similarly huge.
Sun looks bad right now because they were a
primary bubble stock. In fact, their P/E ratios
and prospectus are quite sane and robust now.
Vitriol gets press. Vitriol directed at microsoft
is also a moral imperative. Why tone it down?
But it doesn't deserve a slashdot story, that's
for sure.