I understand your comments. Dells can be decidedly average. The laptop I had in mind is called an "Elitebook" these days from Compaq/HP. They're expensive but pretty much top of the range. Usually their cost is quite high but there are so many model variants I have found out in the past (with forerunners to this series) that it is worth to keep looking, usually there will be a single model where the price goes from ridiculous to actually pretty good 'value' (still a bit expensive) and with great hardware. This used to be the Compaq "nw" series of mobile workstations (eg. the nw8530 was great for Ubuntu before I went to the Mac).
I kinda filter out the mediocre models you describe, and for the reasons you mention, since they don't really beat my current (although dated) MacBook Pro. I'm looking for something better (hence my lament that Apple hasn't really advanced laptop capabilities for several years in VRAM, GPU or max RAM limits).
Compaq still make high end laptops with matte displays, 4 GB video ram, fast GPUs etc. Apple's only pluses are high pixel density and OS X. The fact that Compaq still makes these means there is still a market for them. Sure, its not the bulk of the market but I'm sure it is still profitable given people will pay $US 3k and up for one of these performance laptops (I'm looking at getting one soon since Apple's hardware is so far behind now).
Those MacBooks have great pixel densities but are totally lame on the amount of video ramm behind the display. I want to replace my MacBook pro with the Retina one, I'd gain a large number of pixels for no increase in video ram and go backwards as I can't get a matte display for Retina. Apple dropped the ball here. They're not actually making what high-end users want. I don't care about the price I care about the specs, and apart from pixel density Apple are far far behind Compaq on desktop replacement laptops:( This is a shame as I rather like OS X.
Intel's Thunderbolt is at 10 Gb data rate per device (up to 20 total). Apple laptops now come with Thunderbolt as standard and its also making its way into high-end PC motherboards. You can drive pretty good screens that those rates.
Intel are pretty smart. They pretty much own both horses in the new interface standards race: USB3 and Thunderbolt.
A retina MacBook Pro has lots of pixels. Good.
Unfortunately they have only 1GB of video memory. Bad.
To support lots of graphics stuff (eg. FBO texture and renderbuffers, depth buffers, HDR etc etc) the limiting factor is video memory. Dumb ol' PC laptops have versions up to 4 GB of VRAM for 1080p displays. Yet Apple creates these beautiful machines and cripples then with fsck all video memory, when that is the single biggest factor in high performance graphics (I say this as an OpenGL/GLSL dev).
I really really want to replace my 3 year old 17" 1080p MacBook Pro (matte screen, of course) with a newer Apple model but the Retina machines are just not competitive. They lack lots of video ram. And lack matte screens. And lack 17" form factor. I don't care about the price, I'd just like the good hardware with OS X. Unfortunately Apple hates me (and real power users like me) and don't want to give me any good options. Looks like I'll have to get a Compaq brick with decent hardware and install Linux Mint on it (hoping that the video drivers can be beaten into submission).
As some other posters pointed out, laptop hardware is not really evolving at the power end (8 battery life? that's for people with iPads) and is actually regressing (in defiance of the Moore's Law general trend in IT).
Unfortunately even Apple is not immune to this lameness:(
You don't know how ASM code works, do you? It's absolutely MASSIVE until compiling down to an executable.
Untrue. By 'huge program' I mostly mean by feature count. ASM programs have a lot of source but usually a relatively low number of features. They do what they do very very efficiently, quickly and with minimal resources. However, they generally don't cover a lot of different areas of IT (networking, and UI, and user authentication/authorization/management, and persistent storage access, and webservices, and data analysis, and data visualization, and internationalization, and localization etc etc) that are expected by the majority of modern programs. So, your ASM source may be large (is it half a million lines like some of the Java team projects I've had to work on?) but the feature set is small (that's not a criticism of ASM, it is good for its purpose).
I don't need a team, you end up with the 'too many chiefs and not enough fucking indians' problem.
Ok. Well it turns out for huge problems a single person is simply not productive enough to complete the task. Hence, teams are required. Java is designed to make some parts of development consistent, which is important when working with teams. Your problem is not big enough to require more than a team of one, which means it is surprising you feel the need to dismiss Java when it is used by a developer who often works on projects that require teamwork (which was part of my original post and how the subject came up). Mind you, given the attitude which your statement is posted in, perhaps not working in a team is a good decision for you.
You don't work in any serious global industry, obviously.
Incorrect. You would have been correct if you had said, "You don't work in any *single* global industry". It turns out I've worked on many, many development project as a consulting developer and architect. Some of them have been global and for huge industry names (which I wish I could tell you about, but cannot disclose for NDA reasons - a great pity). So I kinda get to see across a lot of industries and see Java as a good enough solution for pretty much all of them (there are exceptions, but they are getting more and more rare).
Indicidentally, I've done a *lot* of device control work. I used to have to use C and C++ for memory constrained devices a decade and a half ago. For the last decade the cost of good embedded hardware is negligible compared to developer time, so now I my first recommendation is to use small form factor Single Board Computers and program them using Java (GCJ if I have to but most devices are relatively capacious and the Oracle/OpenJDK works without modification on them). So the economics of development are one of the factors I consider for my client.
So, you have pointed out that you are a specialized ASM developer that sees no need for team development and hence disagrees with my point about the utility of Java for team-based projects. However, this topic was about gaming and I'm very interested to hear your experience in game development and why you think the choice of Java for my combat flight simulator in Java is a mistake (note also that the wildly popular Minecraft is written in Java, and Bohemia Interactive's Arma3 and Take On Helicopters have Java APIs). As far as I can see Java memory usage is on par with other big games and the frame rates are fantastic since the real work in modern games is done with shaders in the GPU. Plus I get the benefit of easy multi-threading and resource coordination to make use of all those half-dozen to dozen cores in new CPUs.
So I'd be interested to hear if there was a factor I had missed and a reason why you recommend ASM for this multi-platform project. Especially as ASM is very rarely used these days except for maintaining legacy systems (new systems usually start with C or C++ if their constraints mean they can't be developed in Java or C#). Otherwise, your first post sounds kinda like a dinosaur reminiscing about the old technology they have to maintain which is not really relevant to the discussion at hand or the majority of modern development scenarios.
Actually, it seems quite often the SC will use resolutions passed by the GA as a fig leaf for whatever they wanted to do. That's the danger of the UN, some part of it gets co-opted by an interest group and then some crazy result comes out under the umbrella of the "UN" (no matter which of its bodies actually came up with it). Then the players use this as a justification for whatever they want to do. If a co-opted ITU is popping out stuff there is no guarantee it will be for the common good. The ITU's track record is good because it makes standards and recommendations. Give them more authority and they *will* be corrupted and there is no recourse to change it.
Lol. I'm not American. I presumed you were since your a Microsoftie:)
Neither ITU nor UN in general pass laws. Pretty much the only organization that can pass anything binding would be UNSC, and it doesn't concern itself with mundane matters like this.
No, they pass resolutions and such. Not laws but the UN can acts to enforce them, backed by military force where it chooses (and that force is larger than the armies of most nations, if member states get upset enough). How long do you think UNSC will stay out of the game once the first cyberwar happens, or the second, etc etc. This change is for keeps.
And the iPad is twice the cost of a decent laptop.
In most of the world the inverse is true. Only the most low-end useless laptops are that cheap (the ones that spend considerable time in swap, as my mother-in-law's brand new budget laptop does).
That is true in theory. In practice all sorts of crazy stuff gets passed at the UN because delegates are away for various reasons, walking out in protest for some reason or another, or coerced in horse-trading. I expect the ITU to either follow this pattern or be so balkanized that nothing useful gets passed in any useful time frame (as happened with the old OpenGL ARB, for example).
At least with the current set-up ICANN is subject to some kind of laws, which one try and get action on (eg. engage their congress critter) if it is really important. With ITU who do you appeal to when some bizarre law gets passed? The worst case always has to be considered because some governments and especially multinational corps are very persistent at getting their pet agenda passed and we know crazy shit will happen - but now it'll affect us all and we have no real recourse to change it and even if we did we are unlikely to get all delegates to change their minds again. Perhaps I'm too conservative on this but at least ICANN is the devil we know and is subject to US law at least.
Having anyone from Putin's regime, the Chinese CCP, or Iran's fascist theocracy block useful things while promoting harmful ones gives me the willies (which is exactly what they did with regard to the Syrian situation - why would they not place sabots into the ITU when it suited them?).
Yes, but who wants the Internet to be subject to a similar fiasco to the OpenXML debacle, where special interests subverted the usual ISO process. That is, shills signing on for one vote, and chairmen (abnormally) dismissing the presentation of any dissenting views in several countries.
ITU does a good job with interoperability standards. There is no need for governance to be handed to it, it is not in the interest of the general public. Although it is in the interests of big companies (eg. your employer), oppressive regimes and theocracies to gain control - which is why they want to slip it out from the vigilant gaze of of the current US authorities.
If the ITU guaranteed Free Speech and non packet tampering on the Internet then cool, but they wont so it makes no sense (to me) for freedom-supporting individuals to support this move. Therefore I'm interested to hear the benefits you see in such a move.
Are you trying to say that the UN may only pass motions with unanimous votes? The League of Nations required unanimous voting but this rendered it ineffectual, hence the UN decided not to require unanimous voting for the General Assembly (there are different rules for the Security Council, and even these depend on what kind vote it is), see http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/United-Nations/Comparison-with-the-League-of-Nations-VOTING.html
So if we agree that the UN doesn't always require unanimous voting then we can get back to my original point.
Would you like the UN to control the Internet and its regulation? especially when it is clear that it is repressive regimes and the islamic bloc that really want this. They certainly would not upload the ideals of Free Speech, such as the freedom to make critical statements about religion, governments or anything else.
This is a factor when you see how stacked the UN has become when voting against Israel eg. the shamefully biased Goldstone Report, that Goldstone himself later said was incorrect as he was "played" by the propaganda of the fascist islamic dictatorship ruling Gaza.
I would be interested to hear your arguments for supporting the agenda of such people, since they would wield great influence over the ITU based on the number of countries.
It looks like you don't understand what "deprecated" actually means. Especially not in the context of Java.
Are you insane?
No. I'm very rational thank you very much. All software has vulnerabilities and Java is no exception. Java is not particularly more vulnerable, although there have been a few *in-browser* java applet exploits lately. For my game I'm using a Java application, this is a world of difference. Sounds like you are scared of Java based on media and don't really understand the issue. The choice of Java makes complete sense if you want your market to be as wide as possible (which I do). Note: your argument is a little insane, you suggest not to use Java because of vulnerabilities yet you are happy to use Windows, or Linux, or mac, or C++ or C# or whatever - all of which also have vulnerabilities found from time to time. You don't have to propagate poorly informed scaremongering about Java, especially if you don't actually understand what the details of the issues are.
The company I work for (global horticulture research) won't use Java for ANYTHING because every new revision/incremental update breaks something.
Sounds like you need a CIO who has a clue and has a realistic view of computing. Also, it sounds like you are developing applications in-house, yeah? In that case your organization gets to dictate what platforms, versions and tech to use. You can use any old junk and get away with it. When you are selling software you don't get to choose what your customer uses. If you want to reach the widest audience you need to be cross-platform, and be prepared to adapt as platforms come and go.
Enjoy your constant updating of an unstable and insecure platform.
I could say the same thing if I make some basic/wild assumptions about the technology you are using.
Do you oppose putting braces on people's teeth as "mutilation" ?
There are legitimate orthodontic reasons for braces. This is not mutilation and irrelevant to this discussion.
How about Piercings?
If the parents enforce piercing on children then it is mutilation. If piercings are taken as an older child (eg. past some age, such as 12 in Netherlands, 16 in the civilized world, 18 in USA) then it is self-mutilation and irrelevant to the discussion.
You do know there are Health Benefits to Circumcision, right?
In a desert culture without modern medical treatment then there are health benefits. In this century there is a minor benefit of slightly decreasing the risk of HIV, at considerable loss of sensation due to the removal of the foreskin. In short, circumcision is an old tribal custom that has negligible benefit in the modern world and plenty of downside for many who have it done to them (without choice).
Okay, where do you draw the line?
When an individual is old enough to make a decision about their self-mutilation then they can go for it. Note that circumcision is performed either on babies or young men. It is not performed on individuals who are strong/old enough to stand up for themselves and refuse it. In most cases this procedure is not a choice, and I've shown it has no health benefit in the modern world. It is simply a barbaric tribal custom that is imposed on those who are unable to refuse it, and it should be condemned as such.
Give me an x-term/SSH term and I'm productive enough. Sure I like a GUI but if the effort to develop through the GUI and then transfer to a device is too much hassle then I'll simply whip up an x-term and develop directly on the device so that the edit/test cycle is minimized. That is not being a "tool" or showing off old-skool skillz but a statement of how I'm used to working. My lovely 17" MacBook Pro has a wonderful GUI that I enjoy but the best feature is with its display and an external monitor I can get lots of x-terms up to move stuff between different machines (or devices) all over the intertubes.
Without a keyboard it is very hard. But as I said, connect a nice bluetooth keyboard and you can log in and get real development done directly on the device if you want (at least on Android devices).
According to the great wit Christopher Hitchens Jesus' teachings were indeed bad (check out his reasoning on YouTube, if you want to be enlightened as to why and are interested in challenging your own view). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE
He compares Jesus to Socrates and if even if both never existed that Socrates' teachings still stand due to the reasoning whereas Jesus teachings require that you believe in him because his mother "never went to bed with anyone".
Example: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow", this means no saving, no investment, no preparation for the future, no point in being educated, no point in long term construction or social programs etc. The directive wasn't, "don't worry about the future", which would have been cool, but basically part of the "if you want eternal life drop everything you are doing and follow me". As Christopher Hitchens says, this is an evil preachment. There are more such things in Jesus' teachings.
Aha! but in order to make someone innately morally good (and that is nearly all of us) do bad things you need religion. Christopher Hitchens saw this and points it out. Here is a clip where he points out that mutilation of children too young to make the decision for himself is bad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx_ov2NiNo4
Clearly the rabbi he is addressing is innately morally good, but his religion compels him to multilate his son (without his son's consent) in the same way that African Muslims will mutilate the clitoris of their daughters.
These people are innately good yet teachings that may have served a purpose in the past (eg. for hygene reasons in the desert before we had modern medicine) but are now anti-social and anti-individual. Plus, because these barbarous tribal traditions take on the mystique of "divine teaching" you are not permitted to reason about them or question them (well, you can try on pain of death).
Yes there are people innately good and bad. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. However if you want to make good people consistently do bad things (slaughter their neighbouring tribes, etc) only religion will convince them to do it (since it can't be reasoned against). This is what makes religion a negative thing. Without religion we would simply have human morality but without the superstition and control. Now we also have to guard against new "religions" such as Marxism/Communism and fascism too. A secular democracy (whether capitalist or not) seems to be the best option so far.
Actually, this push is not by Big Media so much. This is mostly by repressive regimes that want to censor the Internet and stop those pesky leaks from showing up their bad behaviour. Oh yeah, not only would they run the Internet they'd also get to set the UN rulings that decide what can and can't be said (no criticising the Prophet in any way, thank you very much; or the Iranian regime, or Tsar Putin; or the Chinese Politburu etc etc).
The UN is a thoroughly corrupt and immoral organization. It should not be allowed to run our Internet!
Name one country that would be better than the USA that has Free Speech enshrined in law. Possible candidates are UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc but as a New Zealander I would say we're not a good candidate, our politicians are too easily bullied by US big media and we have no Free Speech protection in law (it is only customary), and probably most of the other countries I named are just as bad. The US has a lot of flaws, but at least they have Free Speech as a primary law.
Furthermore there is a bloc of 57 islamic countries that can outvote just about any secular democracy on any matter. Let the UN run the show and these turkeys get to control what constitutes and what are the consequences of 'hate' speech (ya know, things like pointing out that Islam permits treating women like possessions, shooting of Pakistani girls that stand up for education, killing of homosexuals, killing anyone who opposes the Party line [eg. Hamas throwing Fatah supporters off buildings once Hamas got into power], or daring to ask for free and fair elections etc).
Huh? there is one input model for Linux (plenty of libraries to access it), OpenAL (which is now recommended by Microsoft), OpenGL (which has been there forever), standard networking etc.
I'm writing a modern jet combat flight simulator and use Java, JInput, JoGL etc etc and find I can run on Windows, Linux and Mac with vary little customization for each platform required (just a little for the GLSL implementation differences for Nvidia vs ATI on each platform). Linux is less hassle than Windows in many respects and I get better performance too (just like Valve) do. Java 1.6 U10 and later also kick ass for performance (I sit there with the JDK's JVisualVM and watch what goes on in real-time; this is an awesome [free!] tool).
We cross-platform devs have been trying to tell the DirectX guys for ages that it is completely possible to write cross-platform games for *less* effort than it is to write around the MS APIs (due to their cruft and version churn). However, the MS devs don't listen, won't listen and when they do finally listen they resist for ages.
So, even though Windows has a majority of the market share, it is definitely not the best OS. It's simply the most popular OS, for now.
Windows is the most popular *desktop* OS, this is true. However, it is not dominant on the server (eg enterprise and web serving spaces), consoles (PS3 and XBox are fairly even) or mobile devices (where the revenue growth is; Android [which is a customized Java+Linux]) has installs of 1.3 million new devices *each day*.
So, it makes economic sense to develop for Windows if you could only develop for one platform exclusively. However, if you are smart you can develop cross-platform applications that work on Windows *and* Linux *and* Mac *and* Android *and* PS3 without too much hassle (Xbox and iOS are kinda in siloes). The economics has been against developing for Windows only. The smart money has always been using the right tools to do cross-platform work. That way, when the IT landscape changes (eg. the advent of mobile, and one day whatever becomes the new hotness) your code will be able to quickly ported to the new platform. All because you chose the strategic (cross-platform) over the tactical (eg. DirectX ease of use but Windows-only).
Here's a case study I like to quote of someone who chose cross-platform technologies which allowed him to personally make $US 3.5 million dollars when the IPad and iPhone came out. He says if he had put himself in the Microsoft straightjacket with DirectX then he couldn't have done this (and this is why DirectX was invented, to keep you on Windows, and that has been a very successful strategy so far for MS, but it about to marginalize them in the coming heterogenous computing world): http://techhaze.com/2010/03/interview-with-x-plane-creator-austin-meyer/
Hopefully this is a bit informative for you, and why the "develop for Windows only" mentality is wrong (and in fact has always been wrong; it suits Microsoft's purposes to keep you on the desktop, not the game developers who needs to adapt to future trends). Now here I have to give credit to the *new* Microsoft, they finally seemed to have grokked that there are other platforms out there and are starting to play nicely. This is very very good, but there is still a lot of MS stuff from the bad old days to be overcome (including indoctrination of its users, such as your mistaking Windows desktop popularity as a reason to develop using Windows-only technology:) ).
Why the insult? Being able to remote in to more powerful resources was the essence of client-server, web, and now cloud computing (predated by things such as X11's network transparent model). Just because you don't mash the bits on the iPad's CPU doesn't mean it won't allow you to get your specific task done, whether that is compute PI, or start a thermonuclear war, or do image processing using a gang of remote servers.
Personally I don't like the default input modes of iPad and Android devices (and MS Surface is still vaporware in my part of the World). The simple addition of a Bluetooth keyboard and your productivity goes up. You need a Net connection to be useful but it is getting more and more rare to be out of range of a 3G network in my part of the World.
So, IMHO, your statements show a mindset stuck in somewhat dated concepts about what constitutes a useful device or not. The iPad/Android etc are no less powerful that a web browser with access to the Net (where the millions of Google's Linux boxen will crunch all sorts of stuff for you; search; map, translate etc).
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I understand your comments. Dells can be decidedly average. The laptop I had in mind is called an "Elitebook" these days from Compaq/HP. They're expensive but pretty much top of the range. Usually their cost is quite high but there are so many model variants I have found out in the past (with forerunners to this series) that it is worth to keep looking, usually there will be a single model where the price goes from ridiculous to actually pretty good 'value' (still a bit expensive) and with great hardware. This used to be the Compaq "nw" series of mobile workstations (eg. the nw8530 was great for Ubuntu before I went to the Mac).
I kinda filter out the mediocre models you describe, and for the reasons you mention, since they don't really beat my current (although dated) MacBook Pro. I'm looking for something better (hence my lament that Apple hasn't really advanced laptop capabilities for several years in VRAM, GPU or max RAM limits).
Compaq still make high end laptops with matte displays, 4 GB video ram, fast GPUs etc. Apple's only pluses are high pixel density and OS X. The fact that Compaq still makes these means there is still a market for them. Sure, its not the bulk of the market but I'm sure it is still profitable given people will pay $US 3k and up for one of these performance laptops (I'm looking at getting one soon since Apple's hardware is so far behind now).
Those MacBooks have great pixel densities but are totally lame on the amount of video ramm behind the display. I want to replace my MacBook pro with the Retina one, I'd gain a large number of pixels for no increase in video ram and go backwards as I can't get a matte display for Retina. Apple dropped the ball here. They're not actually making what high-end users want. I don't care about the price I care about the specs, and apart from pixel density Apple are far far behind Compaq on desktop replacement laptops :( This is a shame as I rather like OS X.
Apple have high pixel densities, but their hardware is crippled by very little video ram (1 GB is not enough these days for serious 3D graphics work).
Intel's Thunderbolt is at 10 Gb data rate per device (up to 20 total). Apple laptops now come with Thunderbolt as standard and its also making its way into high-end PC motherboards. You can drive pretty good screens that those rates.
Intel are pretty smart. They pretty much own both horses in the new interface standards race: USB3 and Thunderbolt.
A retina MacBook Pro has lots of pixels. Good.
Unfortunately they have only 1GB of video memory. Bad.
To support lots of graphics stuff (eg. FBO texture and renderbuffers, depth buffers, HDR etc etc) the limiting factor is video memory. Dumb ol' PC laptops have versions up to 4 GB of VRAM for 1080p displays. Yet Apple creates these beautiful machines and cripples then with fsck all video memory, when that is the single biggest factor in high performance graphics (I say this as an OpenGL/GLSL dev).
I really really want to replace my 3 year old 17" 1080p MacBook Pro (matte screen, of course) with a newer Apple model but the Retina machines are just not competitive. They lack lots of video ram. And lack matte screens. And lack 17" form factor. I don't care about the price, I'd just like the good hardware with OS X. Unfortunately Apple hates me (and real power users like me) and don't want to give me any good options. Looks like I'll have to get a Compaq brick with decent hardware and install Linux Mint on it (hoping that the video drivers can be beaten into submission).
As some other posters pointed out, laptop hardware is not really evolving at the power end (8 battery life? that's for people with iPads) and is actually regressing (in defiance of the Moore's Law general trend in IT).
Unfortunately even Apple is not immune to this lameness :(
You don't know how ASM code works, do you? It's absolutely MASSIVE until compiling down to an executable.
Untrue. By 'huge program' I mostly mean by feature count. ASM programs have a lot of source but usually a relatively low number of features. They do what they do very very efficiently, quickly and with minimal resources. However, they generally don't cover a lot of different areas of IT (networking, and UI, and user authentication/authorization/management, and persistent storage access, and webservices, and data analysis, and data visualization, and internationalization, and localization etc etc) that are expected by the majority of modern programs. So, your ASM source may be large (is it half a million lines like some of the Java team projects I've had to work on?) but the feature set is small (that's not a criticism of ASM, it is good for its purpose).
I don't need a team, you end up with the 'too many chiefs and not enough fucking indians' problem.
Ok. Well it turns out for huge problems a single person is simply not productive enough to complete the task. Hence, teams are required. Java is designed to make some parts of development consistent, which is important when working with teams. Your problem is not big enough to require more than a team of one, which means it is surprising you feel the need to dismiss Java when it is used by a developer who often works on projects that require teamwork (which was part of my original post and how the subject came up). Mind you, given the attitude which your statement is posted in, perhaps not working in a team is a good decision for you.
You don't work in any serious global industry, obviously.
Incorrect. You would have been correct if you had said, "You don't work in any *single* global industry". It turns out I've worked on many, many development project as a consulting developer and architect. Some of them have been global and for huge industry names (which I wish I could tell you about, but cannot disclose for NDA reasons - a great pity). So I kinda get to see across a lot of industries and see Java as a good enough solution for pretty much all of them (there are exceptions, but they are getting more and more rare).
Indicidentally, I've done a *lot* of device control work. I used to have to use C and C++ for memory constrained devices a decade and a half ago. For the last decade the cost of good embedded hardware is negligible compared to developer time, so now I my first recommendation is to use small form factor Single Board Computers and program them using Java (GCJ if I have to but most devices are relatively capacious and the Oracle/OpenJDK works without modification on them). So the economics of development are one of the factors I consider for my client.
So, you have pointed out that you are a specialized ASM developer that sees no need for team development and hence disagrees with my point about the utility of Java for team-based projects. However, this topic was about gaming and I'm very interested to hear your experience in game development and why you think the choice of Java for my combat flight simulator in Java is a mistake (note also that the wildly popular Minecraft is written in Java, and Bohemia Interactive's Arma3 and Take On Helicopters have Java APIs). As far as I can see Java memory usage is on par with other big games and the frame rates are fantastic since the real work in modern games is done with shaders in the GPU. Plus I get the benefit of easy multi-threading and resource coordination to make use of all those half-dozen to dozen cores in new CPUs.
So I'd be interested to hear if there was a factor I had missed and a reason why you recommend ASM for this multi-platform project. Especially as ASM is very rarely used these days except for maintaining legacy systems (new systems usually start with C or C++ if their constraints mean they can't be developed in Java or C#). Otherwise, your first post sounds kinda like a dinosaur reminiscing about the old technology they have to maintain which is not really relevant to the discussion at hand or the majority of modern development scenarios.
Actually, it seems quite often the SC will use resolutions passed by the GA as a fig leaf for whatever they wanted to do. That's the danger of the UN, some part of it gets co-opted by an interest group and then some crazy result comes out under the umbrella of the "UN" (no matter which of its bodies actually came up with it). Then the players use this as a justification for whatever they want to do. If a co-opted ITU is popping out stuff there is no guarantee it will be for the common good. The ITU's track record is good because it makes standards and recommendations. Give them more authority and they *will* be corrupted and there is no recourse to change it.
For Americans, yes. What about the rest of us?
Lol. I'm not American. I presumed you were since your a Microsoftie :)
Neither ITU nor UN in general pass laws. Pretty much the only organization that can pass anything binding would be UNSC, and it doesn't concern itself with mundane matters like this.
No, they pass resolutions and such. Not laws but the UN can acts to enforce them, backed by military force where it chooses (and that force is larger than the armies of most nations, if member states get upset enough). How long do you think UNSC will stay out of the game once the first cyberwar happens, or the second, etc etc. This change is for keeps.
And the iPad is twice the cost of a decent laptop.
In most of the world the inverse is true. Only the most low-end useless laptops are that cheap (the ones that spend considerable time in swap, as my mother-in-law's brand new budget laptop does).
Lol. You don't write huge programs do you? I mean, require a big team over a year or two. Doing that would change your mind.
but only if they all agree.
That is true in theory. In practice all sorts of crazy stuff gets passed at the UN because delegates are away for various reasons, walking out in protest for some reason or another, or coerced in horse-trading. I expect the ITU to either follow this pattern or be so balkanized that nothing useful gets passed in any useful time frame (as happened with the old OpenGL ARB, for example).
At least with the current set-up ICANN is subject to some kind of laws, which one try and get action on (eg. engage their congress critter) if it is really important. With ITU who do you appeal to when some bizarre law gets passed? The worst case always has to be considered because some governments and especially multinational corps are very persistent at getting their pet agenda passed and we know crazy shit will happen - but now it'll affect us all and we have no real recourse to change it and even if we did we are unlikely to get all delegates to change their minds again. Perhaps I'm too conservative on this but at least ICANN is the devil we know and is subject to US law at least.
Having anyone from Putin's regime, the Chinese CCP, or Iran's fascist theocracy block useful things while promoting harmful ones gives me the willies (which is exactly what they did with regard to the Syrian situation - why would they not place sabots into the ITU when it suited them?).
Yes, but who wants the Internet to be subject to a similar fiasco to the OpenXML debacle, where special interests subverted the usual ISO process. That is, shills signing on for one vote, and chairmen (abnormally) dismissing the presentation of any dissenting views in several countries.
ITU does a good job with interoperability standards. There is no need for governance to be handed to it, it is not in the interest of the general public. Although it is in the interests of big companies (eg. your employer), oppressive regimes and theocracies to gain control - which is why they want to slip it out from the vigilant gaze of of the current US authorities.
If the ITU guaranteed Free Speech and non packet tampering on the Internet then cool, but they wont so it makes no sense (to me) for freedom-supporting individuals to support this move. Therefore I'm interested to hear the benefits you see in such a move.
A Bluetooth keyboard is an order of magnitude cheaper than a laptop, and in combination with an iPad is more portable too.
You should look up what "unanimous" means...
Are you trying to say that the UN may only pass motions with unanimous votes? The League of Nations required unanimous voting but this rendered it ineffectual, hence the UN decided not to require unanimous voting for the General Assembly (there are different rules for the Security Council, and even these depend on what kind vote it is), see http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/United-Nations/Comparison-with-the-League-of-Nations-VOTING.html
So if we agree that the UN doesn't always require unanimous voting then we can get back to my original point.
Would you like the UN to control the Internet and its regulation? especially when it is clear that it is repressive regimes and the islamic bloc that really want this. They certainly would not upload the ideals of Free Speech, such as the freedom to make critical statements about religion, governments or anything else.
This is a factor when you see how stacked the UN has become when voting against Israel eg. the shamefully biased Goldstone Report, that Goldstone himself later said was incorrect as he was "played" by the propaganda of the fascist islamic dictatorship ruling Gaza.
I would be interested to hear your arguments for supporting the agenda of such people, since they would wield great influence over the ITU based on the number of countries.
deprecated every month
It looks like you don't understand what "deprecated" actually means. Especially not in the context of Java.
Are you insane?
No. I'm very rational thank you very much. All software has vulnerabilities and Java is no exception. Java is not particularly more vulnerable, although there have been a few *in-browser* java applet exploits lately. For my game I'm using a Java application, this is a world of difference. Sounds like you are scared of Java based on media and don't really understand the issue. The choice of Java makes complete sense if you want your market to be as wide as possible (which I do). Note: your argument is a little insane, you suggest not to use Java because of vulnerabilities yet you are happy to use Windows, or Linux, or mac, or C++ or C# or whatever - all of which also have vulnerabilities found from time to time. You don't have to propagate poorly informed scaremongering about Java, especially if you don't actually understand what the details of the issues are.
The company I work for (global horticulture research) won't use Java for ANYTHING because every new revision/incremental update breaks something.
Sounds like you need a CIO who has a clue and has a realistic view of computing. Also, it sounds like you are developing applications in-house, yeah? In that case your organization gets to dictate what platforms, versions and tech to use. You can use any old junk and get away with it. When you are selling software you don't get to choose what your customer uses. If you want to reach the widest audience you need to be cross-platform, and be prepared to adapt as platforms come and go.
Enjoy your constant updating of an unstable and insecure platform.
I could say the same thing if I make some basic/wild assumptions about the technology you are using.
Do you oppose putting braces on people's teeth as "mutilation" ?
There are legitimate orthodontic reasons for braces. This is not mutilation and irrelevant to this discussion.
How about Piercings?
If the parents enforce piercing on children then it is mutilation. If piercings are taken as an older child (eg. past some age, such as 12 in Netherlands, 16 in the civilized world, 18 in USA) then it is self-mutilation and irrelevant to the discussion.
You do know there are Health Benefits to Circumcision, right?
In a desert culture without modern medical treatment then there are health benefits. In this century there is a minor benefit of slightly decreasing the risk of HIV, at considerable loss of sensation due to the removal of the foreskin. In short, circumcision is an old tribal custom that has negligible benefit in the modern world and plenty of downside for many who have it done to them (without choice).
Okay, where do you draw the line?
When an individual is old enough to make a decision about their self-mutilation then they can go for it. Note that circumcision is performed either on babies or young men. It is not performed on individuals who are strong/old enough to stand up for themselves and refuse it. In most cases this procedure is not a choice, and I've shown it has no health benefit in the modern world. It is simply a barbaric tribal custom that is imposed on those who are unable to refuse it, and it should be condemned as such.
ps: I like your username :)
Give me an x-term/SSH term and I'm productive enough. Sure I like a GUI but if the effort to develop through the GUI and then transfer to a device is too much hassle then I'll simply whip up an x-term and develop directly on the device so that the edit/test cycle is minimized. That is not being a "tool" or showing off old-skool skillz but a statement of how I'm used to working. My lovely 17" MacBook Pro has a wonderful GUI that I enjoy but the best feature is with its display and an external monitor I can get lots of x-terms up to move stuff between different machines (or devices) all over the intertubes.
Without a keyboard it is very hard. But as I said, connect a nice bluetooth keyboard and you can log in and get real development done directly on the device if you want (at least on Android devices).
According to the great wit Christopher Hitchens Jesus' teachings were indeed bad (check out his reasoning on YouTube, if you want to be enlightened as to why and are interested in challenging your own view).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE
He compares Jesus to Socrates and if even if both never existed that Socrates' teachings still stand due to the reasoning whereas Jesus teachings require that you believe in him because his mother "never went to bed with anyone".
Example: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow", this means no saving, no investment, no preparation for the future, no point in being educated, no point in long term construction or social programs etc. The directive wasn't, "don't worry about the future", which would have been cool, but basically part of the "if you want eternal life drop everything you are doing and follow me". As Christopher Hitchens says, this is an evil preachment. There are more such things in Jesus' teachings.
Clearly the rabbi he is addressing is innately morally good, but his religion compels him to multilate his son (without his son's consent) in the same way that African Muslims will mutilate the clitoris of their daughters.
These people are innately good yet teachings that may have served a purpose in the past (eg. for hygene reasons in the desert before we had modern medicine) but are now anti-social and anti-individual. Plus, because these barbarous tribal traditions take on the mystique of "divine teaching" you are not permitted to reason about them or question them (well, you can try on pain of death).
Yes there are people innately good and bad. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. However if you want to make good people consistently do bad things (slaughter their neighbouring tribes, etc) only religion will convince them to do it (since it can't be reasoned against). This is what makes religion a negative thing. Without religion we would simply have human morality but without the superstition and control. Now we also have to guard against new "religions" such as Marxism/Communism and fascism too. A secular democracy (whether capitalist or not) seems to be the best option so far.
Actually, this push is not by Big Media so much. This is mostly by repressive regimes that want to censor the Internet and stop those pesky leaks from showing up their bad behaviour. Oh yeah, not only would they run the Internet they'd also get to set the UN rulings that decide what can and can't be said (no criticising the Prophet in any way, thank you very much; or the Iranian regime, or Tsar Putin; or the Chinese Politburu etc etc).
The UN is a thoroughly corrupt and immoral organization. It should not be allowed to run our Internet!
Name one country that would be better than the USA that has Free Speech enshrined in law. Possible candidates are UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc but as a New Zealander I would say we're not a good candidate, our politicians are too easily bullied by US big media and we have no Free Speech protection in law (it is only customary), and probably most of the other countries I named are just as bad. The US has a lot of flaws, but at least they have Free Speech as a primary law.
Furthermore there is a bloc of 57 islamic countries that can outvote just about any secular democracy on any matter. Let the UN run the show and these turkeys get to control what constitutes and what are the consequences of 'hate' speech (ya know, things like pointing out that Islam permits treating women like possessions, shooting of Pakistani girls that stand up for education, killing of homosexuals, killing anyone who opposes the Party line [eg. Hamas throwing Fatah supporters off buildings once Hamas got into power], or daring to ask for free and fair elections etc).
Huh? there is one input model for Linux (plenty of libraries to access it), OpenAL (which is now recommended by Microsoft), OpenGL (which has been there forever), standard networking etc.
I'm writing a modern jet combat flight simulator and use Java, JInput, JoGL etc etc and find I can run on Windows, Linux and Mac with vary little customization for each platform required (just a little for the GLSL implementation differences for Nvidia vs ATI on each platform). Linux is less hassle than Windows in many respects and I get better performance too (just like Valve) do. Java 1.6 U10 and later also kick ass for performance (I sit there with the JDK's JVisualVM and watch what goes on in real-time; this is an awesome [free!] tool).
We cross-platform devs have been trying to tell the DirectX guys for ages that it is completely possible to write cross-platform games for *less* effort than it is to write around the MS APIs (due to their cruft and version churn). However, the MS devs don't listen, won't listen and when they do finally listen they resist for ages.
So, even though Windows has a majority of the market share, it is definitely not the best OS. It's simply the most popular OS, for now.
Windows is the most popular *desktop* OS, this is true. However, it is not dominant on the server (eg enterprise and web serving spaces), consoles (PS3 and XBox are fairly even) or mobile devices (where the revenue growth is; Android [which is a customized Java+Linux]) has installs of 1.3 million new devices *each day*.
So, it makes economic sense to develop for Windows if you could only develop for one platform exclusively. However, if you are smart you can develop cross-platform applications that work on Windows *and* Linux *and* Mac *and* Android *and* PS3 without too much hassle (Xbox and iOS are kinda in siloes). The economics has been against developing for Windows only. The smart money has always been using the right tools to do cross-platform work. That way, when the IT landscape changes (eg. the advent of mobile, and one day whatever becomes the new hotness) your code will be able to quickly ported to the new platform. All because you chose the strategic (cross-platform) over the tactical (eg. DirectX ease of use but Windows-only).
Here's a case study I like to quote of someone who chose cross-platform technologies which allowed him to personally make $US 3.5 million dollars when the IPad and iPhone came out. He says if he had put himself in the Microsoft straightjacket with DirectX then he couldn't have done this (and this is why DirectX was invented, to keep you on Windows, and that has been a very successful strategy so far for MS, but it about to marginalize them in the coming heterogenous computing world):
http://techhaze.com/2010/03/interview-with-x-plane-creator-austin-meyer/
Hopefully this is a bit informative for you, and why the "develop for Windows only" mentality is wrong (and in fact has always been wrong; it suits Microsoft's purposes to keep you on the desktop, not the game developers who needs to adapt to future trends). Now here I have to give credit to the *new* Microsoft, they finally seemed to have grokked that there are other platforms out there and are starting to play nicely. This is very very good, but there is still a lot of MS stuff from the bad old days to be overcome (including indoctrination of its users, such as your mistaking Windows desktop popularity as a reason to develop using Windows-only technology :) ).
Why the insult? Being able to remote in to more powerful resources was the essence of client-server, web, and now cloud computing (predated by things such as X11's network transparent model). Just because you don't mash the bits on the iPad's CPU doesn't mean it won't allow you to get your specific task done, whether that is compute PI, or start a thermonuclear war, or do image processing using a gang of remote servers.
Personally I don't like the default input modes of iPad and Android devices (and MS Surface is still vaporware in my part of the World). The simple addition of a Bluetooth keyboard and your productivity goes up. You need a Net connection to be useful but it is getting more and more rare to be out of range of a 3G network in my part of the World.
So, IMHO, your statements show a mindset stuck in somewhat dated concepts about what constitutes a useful device or not. The iPad/Android etc are no less powerful that a web browser with access to the Net (where the millions of Google's Linux boxen will crunch all sorts of stuff for you; search; map, translate etc).