You can list stuff by brand name and chip. If enough people were to use the site, manufacturers would take notice, and perhaps try and avoid bad chips so as not to be listed.
In any case, people seem to think it's a useful service.
I think the 'freeness' issue is a lot clearer than you make it out to be. It means a freely licensed driver that can access the full range of functionality the device is capable of. Granted, there are some corner cases like wifi cards, but in general it's not so difficult to separate a binary-only driver from something that comes with full source code.
It may not be much, but it has the advantage that it points out what to avoid, and it's community maintained - with all the hardware out there these days, no one person can know about it all.
Sure, but the slashdot user population is big enough that for any given wierd niche, there are likely to be overlaps - in this case, geeks that know about hotels.
If you're willing to do some hacking, instead of paying money, this is worth looking into:
I'd like to suggest looking into OFBiz http://www.ofbiz.org/ - it's not meant precisely for what the OP wants, but it's sufficiently flexible to be programmed/configured to do that sort of work without problems. The database models it's based on are very well thought out, something that 'rolling your own' is likely to not get quite right the first few times.
it is perhaps less general-purpose than the poster might want, but I have different design considerations in mind:
Small, flexible, very dynamic, and concise - in other words, I want it to be a complement to Java, rather than simply a scriptable Java, ala Beanshell. This means that perhaps you wouldn't want to write the entire app in Hecl, but on the other hand, as a language to write quick extensions with, perhaps it's a bit faster/easier to work with.
The most interesting feature at this point is that Hecl is small enough to run on Java-enabled cell phones, even pretty basic ones like my Nokia 3100, which only accepts Java stuff - no symbian. This means that you can code apps with no recompiling, and also make them very dynamic (you could make an app that downloads code, stores it and runs it as needs be).
Astute observers will note that Hecl is similar to Jacl, but like the poster complaining about Jython getting a little bit out of date... it always seemed like a bit of a losing proposition to me to do a copy of a language in Java, because you miss out, if nothing else, on a *lot* of libraries, and the JRuby/Python/Tcl implementations have always seemed to be playing catch-up.
People who are too shallow to see past how some dork dresses get what they deserve, sheez..
On the other hand, people who don't care whether you wear sandles, have a ponytail, are black, white, asian, a woman, or whatever, will come out ahead, because they'll pick stuff that is best, rather than looking to see if it wears Armani suits.
It's an open source scripting language that's compact enough to run on cell phones. If you're the adventurous/hacker type, it's still in the early stages of development, but is far along enough to write real apps, such as this shopping list system:
n : something particularly smelly and disgusting that is so difficult to remove from your toilet drain that you must call a professional to extract it.
I think that 'convention over configuration' is more about "good defaults" rather than "not possible to do it any other way", although I don't know Rails well enough to be sure at this point. The idea being that you *can* configure stuff if you need to, but that most of the time you shouldn't have to - you only do it when it's necessary for the 'fine tuning'.
You might have a long wait if you wait for "the current gods to be superceded"... you could still be happily employed as a Cobol programmer thinking in those terms. Which isn't a bad thing, but it's not my cup of tea.
Due to the economics of programming languages, once something (Cobol, C++, Java) gets entrenched, it's just not going to disappear overnight.
Something like Ruby on Rails will see its market share grow primarily for new projects, where, if it is successful, it will comprise a larger and larger portion of them over time. Cobol isn't gone, but you don't see many brand new projects launched in it.
And, let's face it, it's very new, so of course you're not going to see banks running on it right now... duh:-)
Yes, something open source is definitely the solution. The problem is that Asterisk is not something that my parents can install and use, whereas Skype is.
The open source community really needs to come up with an alternative to Skype before the network effects are too great to overcome.
"The Tile Widget Set is a next-generation re-implementation of many of the core Tk widgets, along with the addition of several new widgets. With Tile, Tk applications can achieve an appearance much closer to native platform widgets, as well as take advantage of a modern, highly dynamic theme engine to produce a wide variety of alternative user interface styles. Tile widgets complement the existing Tk widgets, and Tile is currently being incorporated directly into Tk."
It's part of the core system. I recently created a coin operated internet system driven entirely with Tcl/Tk. I thought I'd have to do the serial port portion in C for speed reasons, but Tcl proved plenty fast - even a scripting language operates much, much faster than someone can shove coins into a slot.
I'll second the Tcl/Tk recommendation. It's super easy to get an application up and running in no time. What's even better is that you can do most of the development on Linux if it's not an app that requires a lot of windows specific services, and then switch to windows to put the final touches on. I've even had it happen that I didn't need to change any code at all (but it's usually recommended, just to give your app that extra polish).
I started a wiki to help out those who, like myself, are Linux users who for some reason or another (mostly work-related) need to do some work on Windows:
(although my hosting provider's networking seems a bit slow at the moment... might be slow to load:-( )
Widely used languages don't die quickly
on
Demise of C++?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Perhaps C++ has passed its apex, but programming languages do not die quickly. Fortran and Lisp are from, what, the 1950's? Cobol? Still with us. If it's in widespread use, it won't die quickly. I discuss this some in an article on the economics of programming languages:
After living through the dot-com era, I always ask about the business - how their financials are, what kind of funding they have, how the company is run, and so forth, as well as questions about what they really do to make a living. Meaning - that except for some rare cases like Google, people don't really give a shit about computers - they are just the best solution to their problems, but not something they get particularly excited about. Show an interest in how you and your skills can help their business. Ask about what makes the company tick. Ask about how the company got started. At worst, you'll learn something interesting, and most likely, you'll make a good impression by conveying the message that you have broader interests than just the geeky side of things.
I'm not sure where you worked or for who, but let's see, just off the top of my head:
Andrew Tridgell (Samba, Rsync) Paul Mackerraas (Linux on PPC) Rusty Russel (iptables and lots of other kernel stuff) Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP)
in Italy, we had Alessandro Rubini, Paolo Molaro (now doing some really good stuff with Mono), and a bunch of other talented guys. The group in Canada also had some very good hackers. In short, there were a lot of smart people there - I doubt I'll ever see anything like it again.
2) Not really coordinating all that talent. That was bound to be hard, especially given the times, when all the companies were fighting over bright people, but there wasn't really a focal point like Redhat had with their distribution.
Not that I buy the point of the article - Linux services are big business and are only going to get bigger. And...guess what? No one person owns Linux. Covalent does services for Apache Software Foundation software without owning it. It's open source, so it's not really a problem if your business model doesn't conflict (as in the Mysql case).
In any case, I got a good deal out of it - I came over to Italy to work with that group, where I still live with my Italian wife (as of this summer:-).
Normally, it's kind of useless to complain about "I submitted it first", but... this was months ago. I don't think sites like reddit are perfect, but I notice that I get a lot of the same items faster than on slashdot.
As a long time Debian user and contributor, it's good to see a system that has all the advantages of Debian, plus the financial backing and willpower to take off some of the rough edges that a volunteer-only structure isn't really suited to deal with. I installed Ubuntu on my new computer at work the other day. My boss was so impressed that he installed it himself on another computer, and he's not really a technical guy.
Slashdot Mirror
You can list stuff by brand name and chip. If enough people were to use the site, manufacturers would take notice, and perhaps try and avoid bad chips so as not to be listed.
In any case, people seem to think it's a useful service.
I think the 'freeness' issue is a lot clearer than you make it out to be. It means a freely licensed driver that can access the full range of functionality the device is capable of. Granted, there are some corner cases like wifi cards, but in general it's not so difficult to separate a binary-only driver from something that comes with full source code.
A couple of years ago, the 'Linux Incompatibility List' was created to track stuff that doesn't work with Linux:
http://www.leenooks.com/
It may not be much, but it has the advantage that it points out what to avoid, and it's community maintained - with all the hardware out there these days, no one person can know about it all.
Sure, but the slashdot user population is big enough that for any given wierd niche, there are likely to be overlaps - in this case, geeks that know about hotels.
If you're willing to do some hacking, instead of paying money, this is worth looking into:
http://www.opentravelsystem.org/
It's based on OFBiz: http://www.ofbiz.org/
I'd like to suggest looking into OFBiz http://www.ofbiz.org/ - it's not meant precisely for what the OP wants, but it's sufficiently flexible to be programmed/configured to do that sort of work without problems. The database models it's based on are very well thought out, something that 'rolling your own' is likely to not get quite right the first few times.
Blog \Blog\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Blogged} (bl[o^]gd); p. pr. &
n.
1) A foul, smelly obstruction of the sewer pipes connected to a residence. For example, "We'd better call a plumber, this blog is really bad".
Hecl: http://www.hecl.org/
it is perhaps less general-purpose than the poster might want, but I have different design considerations in mind:
Small, flexible, very dynamic, and concise - in other words, I want it to be a complement to Java, rather than simply a scriptable Java, ala Beanshell. This means that perhaps you wouldn't want to write the entire app in Hecl, but on the other hand, as a language to write quick extensions with, perhaps it's a bit faster/easier to work with.
The most interesting feature at this point is that Hecl is small enough to run on Java-enabled cell phones, even pretty basic ones like my Nokia 3100, which only accepts Java stuff - no symbian. This means that you can code apps with no recompiling, and also make them very dynamic (you could make an app that downloads code, stores it and runs it as needs be).
Also, for the folks who like this stuff, Hecl is still young, so there's lots of room to fiddle with the language itself, and learn about how a scripting language is built.
Astute observers will note that Hecl is similar to Jacl, but like the poster complaining about Jython getting a little bit out of date... it always seemed like a bit of a losing proposition to me to do a copy of a language in Java, because you miss out, if nothing else, on a *lot* of libraries, and the JRuby/Python/Tcl implementations have always seemed to be playing catch-up.
People who are too shallow to see past how some dork dresses get what they deserve, sheez..
On the other hand, people who don't care whether you wear sandles, have a ponytail, are black, white, asian, a woman, or whatever, will come out ahead, because they'll pick stuff that is best, rather than looking to see if it wears Armani suits.
Proof here!
http://www.bushorchimp.com/pics.html
Sorry...but someone had to do it!
In a bit of blatant self promotion...
The Hecl Programming Language: http://www.hecl.org/
It's an open source scripting language that's compact enough to run on cell phones. If you're the adventurous/hacker type, it's still in the early stages of development, but is far along enough to write real apps, such as this shopping list system:
http://www.dedasys.com/shopping_list/
It's a great time to get involved in the project because it's in its early stages, and there is a lot of fun to be had!
blog
n : something particularly smelly and disgusting that is so difficult to remove from your toilet drain that you must call a professional to extract it.
Interesting...
I think that 'convention over configuration' is more about "good defaults" rather than "not possible to do it any other way", although I don't know Rails well enough to be sure at this point. The idea being that you *can* configure stuff if you need to, but that most of the time you shouldn't have to - you only do it when it's necessary for the 'fine tuning'.
That's my philosophy, at least.
You might have a long wait if you wait for "the current gods to be superceded"... you could still be happily employed as a Cobol programmer thinking in those terms. Which isn't a bad thing, but it's not my cup of tea.
Due to the economics of programming languages, once something (Cobol, C++, Java) gets entrenched, it's just not going to disappear overnight.
Something like Ruby on Rails will see its market share grow primarily for new projects, where, if it is successful, it will comprise a larger and larger portion of them over time. Cobol isn't gone, but you don't see many brand new projects launched in it.
And, let's face it, it's very new, so of course you're not going to see banks running on it right now... duh:-)
"As far as ruby on rails... who in the business world uses that?"
Mostly people who you won't notice until they pass you like you're standing still:-)
Yes, something open source is definitely the solution. The problem is that Asterisk is not something that my parents can install and use, whereas Skype is.
The open source community really needs to come up with an alternative to Skype before the network effects are too great to overcome.
If you don't like Tk's default look and feel, it's time to look at Tile:
http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/
"The Tile Widget Set is a next-generation re-implementation of many of the core Tk widgets, along with the addition of several new widgets. With Tile, Tk applications can achieve an appearance much closer to native platform widgets, as well as take advantage of a modern, highly dynamic theme engine to produce a wide variety of alternative user interface styles. Tile widgets complement the existing Tk widgets, and Tile is currently being incorporated directly into Tk."
If you work around the less than ideal formatting, you can find information about dealing with serial ports here:
http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.4/TclCmd/open.htm
It's part of the core system. I recently created a coin operated internet system driven entirely with Tcl/Tk. I thought I'd have to do the serial port portion in C for speed reasons, but Tcl proved plenty fast - even a scripting language operates much, much faster than someone can shove coins into a slot.
If it's a starpack, they won't know what it is. They download one executable file that is smaller than 2 megs, and run it.
http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html
I'll second the Tcl/Tk recommendation. It's super easy to get an application up and running in no time. What's even better is that you can do most of the development on Linux if it's not an app that requires a lot of windows specific services, and then switch to windows to put the final touches on. I've even had it happen that I didn't need to change any code at all (but it's usually recommended, just to give your app that extra polish).
"What's different about "click stream analysis" than simply grabbing lists of requests from a given user out of the server logs?"
It's more "Web 2.0"!
I started a wiki to help out those who, like myself, are Linux users who for some reason or another (mostly work-related) need to do some work on Windows:
http://win4.leenooks.com/
(although my hosting provider's networking seems a bit slow at the moment... might be slow to load:-( )
Perhaps C++ has passed its apex, but programming languages do not die quickly. Fortran and Lisp are from, what, the 1950's? Cobol? Still with us. If it's in widespread use, it won't die quickly. I discuss this some in an article on the economics of programming languages:
a ge_economics.html
http://www.dedasys.com/articles/programming_langu
( although my hosting provider's network seems to be running a bit slow:-/ )
I wrote about the economics (as I understand them) of the market for web hosting, and why it's a market with problems:
_ lemons.html
http://www.dedasys.com/articles/webhosting_market
In short, you're right - anyone can get set up, and it's difficult to tell which ones are any good before signing up!
After living through the dot-com era, I always ask about the business - how their financials are, what kind of funding they have, how the company is run, and so forth, as well as questions about what they really do to make a living. Meaning - that except for some rare cases like Google, people don't really give a shit about computers - they are just the best solution to their problems, but not something they get particularly excited about. Show an interest in how you and your skills can help their business. Ask about what makes the company tick. Ask about how the company got started. At worst, you'll learn something interesting, and most likely, you'll make a good impression by conveying the message that you have broader interests than just the geeky side of things.
I'm not sure where you worked or for who, but let's see, just off the top of my head:
Andrew Tridgell (Samba, Rsync)
Paul Mackerraas (Linux on PPC)
Rusty Russel (iptables and lots of other kernel stuff)
Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP)
in Italy, we had Alessandro Rubini, Paolo Molaro (now doing some really good stuff with Mono), and a bunch of other talented guys. The group in Canada also had some very good hackers. In short, there were a lot of smart people there - I doubt I'll ever see anything like it again.
The problems were twofold:
1) The upper management. In particular: http://www.advogato.org/proj/DougNassaurWatch/
2) Not really coordinating all that talent. That was bound to be hard, especially given the times, when all the companies were fighting over bright people, but there wasn't really a focal point like Redhat had with their distribution.
Not that I buy the point of the article - Linux services are big business and are only going to get bigger. And...guess what? No one person owns Linux. Covalent does services for Apache Software Foundation software without owning it. It's open source, so it's not really a problem if your business model doesn't conflict (as in the Mysql case).
In any case, I got a good deal out of it - I came over to Italy to work with that group, where I still live with my Italian wife (as of this summer:-).
Normally, it's kind of useless to complain about "I submitted it first", but... this was months ago. I don't think sites like reddit are perfect, but I notice that I get a lot of the same items faster than on slashdot.
As a long time Debian user and contributor, it's good to see a system that has all the advantages of Debian, plus the financial backing and willpower to take off some of the rough edges that a volunteer-only structure isn't really suited to deal with. I installed Ubuntu on my new computer at work the other day. My boss was so impressed that he installed it himself on another computer, and he's not really a technical guy.