...if Linux really is to blame (and I haven't seen any specifics on what problems they are having), then they can fix them themselves. If similar problems occured with Windows, then you would just have to beg Microsoft to fix them for you.
What about 0-Install? It is simple, elegant, doesn't require root to do an installation, seamlessly downloads libraries and other dependancies as they are needed, and integrates nicely into the filesystem. I really think 0Install could be the future of installers, if only they can get someone to build a distro around it.
A few years ago Freenet implemented something similar to this called "Silent Bob". The name comes from Alice and Bob, the names given to sender and receiver respectively when describing cryptographic protocols.
The idea was that you didn't want to disclose that you were running a Freenet node unless the person connecting to you already knew your node's public key.
So when someone wants to establish a connection to you, they must send some encrypted data providing they know your public key. Your node can receive this data and only respond if it is correct. Furthermore, you could let your Freenet node sit on port 25, for example, and forward invalid connection attempts to a mail server on a different port.
Through this mechanism, your Freenet node could quite effectively hide behind another server, only making itself known to those already part of the Freenet network.
IIRC this wasn't actually implemented in Freenet, but it is the intention to add it at some point. Still, it is amazing how many ideas were pioneered by Freenet years ago and are only showing up in the wider public conciousness now.
This article's entire premise is that advocates of the Linux operating system are responsible for the MyDoom virus. This allegation, which throughout most of the article is treated as fact, is totally unsubstantiated, on the contrary, it is contradicted by the available evidence.
It is now widely believed among the computer security community that this virus is the work of Russian "spammers" who use this virus to take over people's computers and use them as "spam relays".
The ploy to attack the SCO website was almost certainly an attempt to distract attention from the true purpose of this virus, a ploy your journalist enthusiastically fell for.
Even if this virus was the act of a Linux advocate, their misbehavior should not be used to tarnish an entire community, most of whom deplore the activities of virus writers and spammers. If I recall correctly, one of your presenters, Robert Kilroy, was recently suspended and later resigned from the BBC after making a similar generalization about the Muslim community based on the actions of a few Muslims.
Stephen Evans owes the Open Source community an apology.
Sorry, but weakly typed languages might be all well and good for toy projects, but for doing real work give me a strongly typed language like Java any day.
I don't. I want it to look the same on different platforms
Then you are a fool, I pity the users of your software.
As a user I expect apps running on Windows to have a L&F that is consistent with other apps on my platform, ditto for GTK, and OSX. IBM recognised this simple fact with SWT. Sun didn't quite get it with Swing but then tried to correct their mistake by reimplementing native L&F over their cross-platform widget set - which is nuts.
It is just amazing that some developers are still so incapable of looking at UI issues from their user's point of view.
I have tried each and every release of Eclipse and found it to be a terrible IDE. It's so unintutive that I could almost believe that Sun made their Solaris developers work on it in secret just to piss of Sun.
Since you haven't bothered to back up your opinion, I won't either - except to say that Eclipse is the best IDE I have ever used, and I have tried quite a few of them. I find it perfectly intuitive. The fact that it is free and has IBM behind it pumping money into its development is just the icing on the cake.
What's with SWT? It's horrible to code with. It has no really control over look and feel.
Which is what is great about it - look and feel is the platform's job - I want my apps to look like Windows apps when they run on Windows, and I want them to look and feel like Linux apps when they run on Linux. SWT achieves this perfectly.
You have to dispose of everything explicitly (al la C++) which completely goes against Javas garbage collection paradigm.
Yeah, which would be great argument if Swing didn't leak memory left right and center, SWT doesn't.
Personally I don't think Sun or IBM are particularly good at writing software and should stick to their Hardware and Consulting (IBM) core competancies.
Personally I don't think you have a clue what you are talking about.
...you find yourself even *thinking* of using the word "proactive" - just give up now.
Live in the EU? Don't just complain, take action!
on
All Encompassing Patents
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Over the next few months we in the EU have the opportunity to prevent the counter-productive dogma of software patents from inhibiting European software developer's ability to innovate and compete freely, but it won't be an easy fight and we need everyone that cares about this issue in the EU to contact their political representatives NOW!
Researchers yesterday announced the creation of the world's first
self-publicising scientist. "It was able to come up with a wild claim,
find a gullible journalist, and persuade him to write an article
proclaiming how wonderful it was all by itself!", Dr Friis of the
University of Abtzppkkkf in Wales. "Then, when real scientists
protested that such shameless self-publicity was damaging to the field
as a whole, it automatically stuck its fingers in its ears and sang 'la
la la' until those scientists went away".
When asked whether he was, in fact, the robot the scientists had
invented he replied "la la la" and hung up the phone.
CYC have been trying to collect all human knowledge for the last few decades and feed it into a knowledge base. They have even open sourced part of their database.
Despite the apparent promise of the project, it is difficult to find actual examples of it doing really cool stuff.
Bzzt. Run-time asserts are not the same as compile-time type checking and interface contracts. If you don't even understand this simple distinction then you really should avoid serious large-scale software development.
These types of errors are rare, and catched immediately.
Only if you are writing relatively trivial code. In real software development you might be developing a component of a wider application, in which case you want the contract for your component to specify what types your functions take and return. Python doesn't have type contracts, this makes it unsuitable for serious Object Orientated programming.
Yes, it's slightly better. The difference is insignificant compared to the way static typing (as done in Java and C++) cripples your productivity.
It might cripple the productivity of a poor programmer, but type-safe programming is second nature to an experienced developer, and it gives invaluable compile-time guarantees about what your code will and won't do.
You can cite your personal experience, I can cite mine. The only way to settle the debate is to give skilled Python programmers and skilled Java programmers the same task to solve and see who finishes first.
Call f with an object that can quack, and it quacks.
And if you call f with an object that can't quack, do you find out at compile time or run time?
Experienced software engineers quickly learn that any perceived benefit from weak typing is quickly lost in debugging. In general, it is better to find bugs at compile time than run time.
It is for this reason that generics were one of the most demanded features for Java 1.5.
Do you base this assertion to actual experience, or just a hunch that "it surely must be so"?
I base it on actual experience, I used to swear by Python until I started using Java, now I would never consider writing anything non-trivial in Python.
If both languages are used to solve the same problem, the Python program is much more concise.
Even if this rediculously general statement were true, most development time is spent debugging code, not typing it in. If you follow your argument to its logical conclusion you should be using Perl, since Perl is much more concise than Python.
Not to mention the difference in semantic complexity, which determines how fast you can churn out that code (assuming nonzero brain latency).
Just because you find Java complicated doesn't mean a good programmer would.
It's not physically possible to create the Java program as quickly, given the same typing speed.
What a silly statement. The speed at which code can be physically typed into a keyboard is not the limiting factor for development time.
Slashdot Mirror
...if Linux really is to blame (and I haven't seen any specifics on what problems they are having), then they can fix them themselves. If similar problems occured with Windows, then you would just have to beg Microsoft to fix them for you.
To those who might be concerned that Free Software is a North American thing, be assured that Europeans are taking a leading role.
What about 0-Install? It is simple, elegant, doesn't require root to do an installation, seamlessly downloads libraries and other dependancies as they are needed, and integrates nicely into the filesystem. I really think 0Install could be the future of installers, if only they can get someone to build a distro around it.
JFace is pretty central to SWT - but you aren't forced to use it. How does forcing the developer to use JFace help anyone?
The idea was that you didn't want to disclose that you were running a Freenet node unless the person connecting to you already knew your node's public key.
So when someone wants to establish a connection to you, they must send some encrypted data providing they know your public key. Your node can receive this data and only respond if it is correct. Furthermore, you could let your Freenet node sit on port 25, for example, and forward invalid connection attempts to a mail server on a different port.
Through this mechanism, your Freenet node could quite effectively hide behind another server, only making itself known to those already part of the Freenet network.
IIRC this wasn't actually implemented in Freenet, but it is the intention to add it at some point. Still, it is amazing how many ideas were pioneered by Freenet years ago and are only showing up in the wider public conciousness now.
It is now widely believed among the computer security community that this virus is the work of Russian "spammers" who use this virus to take over people's computers and use them as "spam relays".
The ploy to attack the SCO website was almost certainly an attempt to distract attention from the true purpose of this virus, a ploy your journalist enthusiastically fell for.
Even if this virus was the act of a Linux advocate, their misbehavior should not be used to tarnish an entire community, most of whom deplore the activities of virus writers and spammers. If I recall correctly, one of your presenters, Robert Kilroy, was recently suspended and later resigned from the BBC after making a similar generalization about the Muslim community based on the actions of a few Muslims.
Stephen Evans owes the Open Source community an apology.
I find it hard to imagine that anyone is still using Swing these days unless they are locked in to it, SWT is the future of Java GUIs.
As a user I expect apps running on Windows to have a L&F that is consistent with other apps on my platform, ditto for GTK, and OSX. IBM recognised this simple fact with SWT. Sun didn't quite get it with Swing but then tried to correct their mistake by reimplementing native L&F over their cross-platform widget set - which is nuts.
It is just amazing that some developers are still so incapable of looking at UI issues from their user's point of view.
...you find yourself even *thinking* of using the word "proactive" - just give up now.
For more information please look here.
I am doing my part - are you?
Ah, using hashes to identify files, isn't that patented by that great P2P innovator, Altnet?
I know, I know - I was more making fun of journalists that give a platform to people like Kevin Warwick.
When asked whether he was, in fact, the robot the scientists had invented he replied "la la la" and hung up the phone.
Despite the apparent promise of the project, it is difficult to find actual examples of it doing really cool stuff.
You can cite your personal experience, I can cite mine. The only way to settle the debate is to give skilled Python programmers and skilled Java programmers the same task to solve and see who finishes first.
Experienced software engineers quickly learn that any perceived benefit from weak typing is quickly lost in debugging. In general, it is better to find bugs at compile time than run time.
It is for this reason that generics were one of the most demanded features for Java 1.5.
So you have found one example where Python is more efficient, I could easily provide examples which demonstrate the opposite, it proves nothing.