Can you point out why is that important and why deserve the 5 Insightful? Because I didn't know that the USA is at war with the Al Qaeda, with is an organization of some people, not a country. Please further explain how you can declare war on an organization.
The Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization, not a country. As such it have the full rights and their members shall be arrested and put on a trial. The "Drone Kills Top Al Qaeda Figure" is no different from "Drone Kills Top Bank Robber Gang".
Can I ask why not? Java is a pretty good language, the tools are all free, it have lots and lots free open source libraries, and it runs pretty sweet on millions of Android phones.
The only down site is JavaME, so it would be good to chose Android, the DalvikVM, Harmony, or OpenJDK. Nokia is big enough to make patent deals with Oracle, but if I were a shop in every other country but the USA, I would chose one of the 4 for my smartphone.
I don't know why AC was modded down. A kg is whatever you define as a kg. It could be the weight of my refrigerator, the weight of 1000 gold atoms, or as current "The kilogram is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram[1] (IPK),[Note 3] which is almost exactly equal to the mass of _one liter of water_.".
So now we define some other property as the kg. The important thing is, that you can measure the "lump" accurate.
That's all good, but I'm a regular person. I have a TV, a phone, cell phone, work, apartment. But besides that I get some menus from Asia restaurants in my mail box, I really do not get any ads.
Maybe I should have mentioned that I live in Germany, where we have privacy laws. Did you read anything about the trouble Google had in Germany with the Google Street View? It's true that even in Germany they trade private data, but consumer and civil rights in general are pretty big in Germany.
"Moving on to your ideas about making laws and regulations about the internet, I can only laugh. The internet was designed to be a communication system that cannot be stopped or shut down, and it is global. There are hundreds of nations that have internet access and presence, and getting more than a handful of them to agree to any particular policy is such a monumental undertaking that no one has succeeded in it yet. The problem is that the internet is available to almost anyone in the world, and some of those people do not know or do not care about laws anyway."
Yes, true. But most of the companies are located in Germany (for me) or in the USA (for you, assuming you are American). I don't think Google or Facebook will go to some random country if we pass some new privacy laws.
What GUI changes? My FF looks the same as FF3.0. I have my menu top, with the URL bar and the search bar. Then I have my bookmarks bar. Left are my tabs and down is my status bar. I'm using FF6.0.2.
Advertisers are just normal companies and have to confirm to the rule of law. A TV you can just turn off, mail ads are forbidden, telephone ads are forbidden, to track you with a camera is forbidden, to get your shopping list is forbidden, and a list where you shop is forbidden (all without your permission, of course).
Actually, I don't get any ads at all in real life if I don't want to. I don't use a credit card for every-day shopping and I don't get any catalogs or magazines. I really don't know where the advertisers have been invading my privacy for far longer than 10 years (or whatever).
Now we need the same privacy laws for the internet and for cookies in particular. How about "If the user is log-out you have to remove all your cookies on her computer". Now if you could have a willing politician to stand up for user privacy all would be well.
While it's not news, it is not anticipated and expected behavior. Why should it be, only because the advertisers are using it for 10 years? It's the cooperate brainwash so far that if you bend over for 10 years and they breach your privacy it's suddenly become "anticipated and expected behavior"?
If I log-out from a page I expect it to be gone for good. What right is there to track me forever, only because I visit and log-in in a site once? To still be on every page and track me, even if I clearly stated that I do not want it (because I log-out) is clearly a violation of my privacy rights.
To expect from every user to delete their coockies and use AdBlock is not acceptable. It is the responsibility of the politics to ensure my privacy rights and make such coockies illegal.
"While BIOS is fundamentally a solid piece of firmware, UEFI is a programmable software interface that sits on top a computer’s hardware and firmware (and indeed UEFI can and does sit on top of BIOS). "
The f*ck? I thought that thing is to replace the BIOS. Why they didn't just used a Linux distribution and skipped years of development time? So why do I need this UEFI again?
"UEFI, being a pseudo-operating system, can access all of the hardware on the computer — you can surf the internet from the UEFI interface, or backup your hard drives — and it even has a full, mouse-driven GUI"
Why do we need that? Why we can't have a "BIOS" that just boots the bootloader or the system itself and nothing else. Maybe an option from where it should boot (from harddisk, CDROM, network, etc). Just a thing, that don't have the limitations of the old BIOS, but with the sole purpose to boot the system/bootloader as fast as possible and then just go out of the way.
"The fact that all of this boot data is stored on NAND flash or on a hard drive means that there’s a lot more space for things like language localization, boot-time diagnostics (begone meaningless POST beeps!), utilities (backup, restore, malware scanners), and so on."
If the graphic card or the motherboard is broken, all the computer can do is to beep, with UEFI or without. If I need diagnostics and utilities I just use my Linux live-CD or live-USB-stick (like Knoppix or SystemRescueCD). They are easy to use and much more sophisticated.
UEFI sounds like the shiny new GUI interface that nobody will use, but it was developed because the old boring program was too old fashion. Like Nero, with was 50MB and then later became a 1GB full blown suite.
For some of the people like me the year of the Linux Desktop is already a thing of the past. I run now on every laptop I can get Linux and I didn't touched Windows for years. Windows runs as a VirtualBox system only because I need to develop some low level stuff in C and some of my clients using Windows.
For years now I have a Windows free life and I didn't miss anything. The few games I play I have a Xbox360 and Wine.
Why is that all not enabled by default? I thought Windows is not the hobby OS where you need to spend hours to tweak it until it works. But thanks for the tips, I can use them the next time I open VirtualBox with Windows XP from my Fedora Linux.
Can anyone please explain to me why there are no alternatives to the Windows "command prompt" aka cmd.exe? I know about Cygwin, but it's the same ugly cmd.exe window. I don't mean a bash or the powershell, I mean an alternative to the ugly window, that is black and you just have two scrollbars right and bottom.
This ugly window lacks many of the "advanced" features, like simple copy&past (right click copy, right click past), better fonts (why I can't choose from all the true-type fonts available?), maybe some tabs?
I don't know why MS took the effort and time to develop the powershell if it's still running in the 1991 cmd.exe window.
> VS is effectively free. You only pay for the professional version which isn't needed by most people. There's also MonoDevelop though it's not at the same level.
Yes most stuff from MS is "effectively free". But you are always a second class citizen if you use the free stuff. With Java and Linux I have the first class software for free, the same software that Google, Amazon and FB is using.
For me it's more psychology. If I use the crippled versions, I always feel that I'm missing something and always to bend to some rules imposed by others really it's just crazy in today software world. It's really liberating don't bother with an EULA anymore ever again.
> Hmm? C# has these.
You didn't read what I wrote. In my opinion is C# a mess of a language with many features that are not good. Like no checked exceptions, struct/class, string/String, op-overloading, delegates, the generics, XML for code documentation, #region, the jagged arrays (really WTF are jagged arrays for. In every other language you have one kind of arrays and you can do everything you like. If you need more dynamic, why not using a List anyway). Properties are implemented terrible, too. Then C# have so many keywords. 77 keywords, you got to be kidding me (Java have 50 keywords).
> Boo/Scala/IronRuby/IronPython/Javascript.net
I think all the popular languages for the JVM are way more active, both in development and usage than the CLI counterpart. For example IronPython have download rate of 500/week, but Jython have a download rate of 3500/week.
Instead of get a 50$ graphics card and play Doom3 on it, we need now 8 cores CPU to play JavaScript games in the browser? That is the bright future we can look for with ChromeOS and "the browser is the OS" future?
My feeling with MS stuff was always that I'm a second class citizen, only because I don't have money to buy the full version. Yes, the limitations are not "unreasonably" but they are in place. You always have the feeling in the back "and if I build something awesome, I have to buy the full version". Or "in the end I have to buy the full version anyway".
What me struck with Linux was that I have all the enterprise ready tools and all are free and without any limitations. Lampp server, email server, Java EE server, all are free and they are used by the big guys, like Google, the banks, Facebook. I don't see any advantage to stick with the limited free "bones" from MS if I can have it all without limitations.
I think the only reason MS can survive, is that they bought all education institutes. Everywhere it's MS ASP.NET, VS, SQLServer. That the majority of web servers are run on free Linux, Apache and MySQL is not tough, because they don't have the marketing department and the deals with the institutes.
I saw it in TAFE Australia, for example. Java and Eclipse was tough for only one semester. The rest was only the MS way.
* Better tooling support (ant, maven, grandle, open source plugins), * free IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, for C# you only have VS), * more open source libraries, and more active open source community * simpler language that doesn't change with each version, - checked exceptions - no struct/class - no op-overloading * it's cross-platform (I can run my applications on all Windows versions, all Linux distributions, on MacOS and on the BSDs if need to, while developing exclusively on Linux). * support for multiple languages, that are already very stable and mature - groovy - scala - JRuby - Jython - JS - some more * no need to install a whole DVD of stuff to start developing - I'm not sure if that's true, but last time I needed C# and VS to develop a web application I had to download a whole DVD full of stuff and install multiple gigabytes on my computer. Even if I'm going to install the whole LAMPP stack on my laptop, with JEE support, that's no way multiple gigabytes. The whole LAMPP stack is 416MB, plus Tomcat 7MB, plus the JDK it's about 50MB, plus Eclipse EE 210MB. That's just a little over 500MB.
That is typical for the whole entertainment industry. Don't take any risks in any form.
Syndicate was so good because it was a new idea, a strategy game with cyber-agents, with mixed some RPG elements, like equipment, where you had the freedom to do anything you like. Syndicate didn't had any story, it was just a very good game play and a novel idea. Either you are good guys and pick your targets with snipers/lasers or you are the bad guy who just kills everything, it's up to you. In addition there were some strategy involved.
So instead to make a real good game, with novel ideas, they just take the name beloved by many fans, make the no-risks-genre (FPS) and spend some 100M$ for special effects. The sad part it that it will sell, just like the SW prequels.
Why don't they start their own digitization project? I mean, iTunes and Netfix should be of some example here. How much money do Apple make off of iTunes? Why can't the Authors' Guild and its equivalents in Australia, Quebec, and the UK just come together and start their own iBookStore? They have the books, they have the money and they would be swimming in money like Apple with iTunes.
Are they really enjoy being the asses they are, or are they really that backward? That puzzles me for a long time, even before there was Netflix or iTunes. Why are copyright holding groups not coming together and distributing their stuff online. The technology is there, they have the content, why is there no mean to embrace the new technology and make a lot of money of it?
Does it so? The last news I have is that Wal-Mart is like the slave factory in China, with no health benefits, no over work money, managers spying on their workers, workers are still get social help because of low wages, etc.
Are you for real? In what world do you life, or what do you smoke? Workers can just leave and start a new company?
Oh, that is why we have such a rich middle class, because everyone can just build a factory that produces TVs and computers. Yeah you right, I hate my job at Sony, tomorrow I just build a new laptop factory from the ground, together with my buddy from work.
Self correcting system? Except the billions and billions we have to pump in to failing businesses, like gambling banks, General Motors? If only with the politicians would believe in "free capitalism" if it would involve their golf-buddies.
How can a system that involves only the greed be self-correcting? It is the best system, not because every other is worse, but because there was never ever capitalism. There were always a partnership between the state and the free market, and the state had always got the playing field right so that all playing nice together. The state also always protected the system and corrected it.
The state always set the interest rate, redistributed wealth, protected the weak players (like children, sick and old people), invested in infrastructure, created new markets and industries, and much more. The state was always the correcting force in capitalism, and that is why you can have a computer and a TV, and you children can go to school and not have to work.
Humans are neither greedy bastards nor selfless angels. Humans are all different and are motivated by a very wide range of things, some are motivated by wealth, some are motivated by doing a useful job and some just want do science or math.
But in the "free market capitalism" only the people who are greedy bastards are going to win. Also as the decline of the American economy is showing, it's not a good thing for everyone. All the people which are motivated by other things (like doing a useful job, helping others, science, math, philosophy, etc.) are now expect to pay off the debts of the greedy bastards (the big banks).
That is why such "pure" models like capitalism and communism just don't work. China tried the communism route, now they are pretty much free market. The USA is going down the capitalism route, now the banks own everything and people dying because of bad tooth (yes that is in the USA 24-Year-Old Dad Dies Of Tooth Infection, and you think you live in a first world country?). http://www.wlwt.com/r/29044524/detail.html
"Do you also refuse to watch movies because you don't get the files used in production? Or refuse to listen to a CD unless it also comes with sheet music?"
Would be nice if they come with the files, but it's unpractical. But the nice thing about videos and music is that is always have the "source code" available, you can always take the video or song and remix it. That is why we have such a booming culture of remixes on Youtube, despite every effort to kill it; and the fan-dubs and fan-subs of anime shows; and fan-translations of manga.
Isn't it nice what people have done with the "source code" available of music, videos and images (remixes, fan-dubs, subs and translations)? Now think what we could do if we had the source code of games.
"This is by no means unique to RAII, but is a general problem with resource management. In Java 6, suppose you have a try-finally, and you call close() explicitly in finally - And that throws. What do you intend to do in that case, considering that there may still be a pending exception thrown from try? You can either suppress the one from close(), or let it override the one from try. You are arguing that the first is bad because it loses an exception; but so does the second, and it loses a far more important one!"
In Java it's very easy (and in C++ if not using the RAII). You just re-throw the exception to a higher level, maybe up to the View layer and show the exception to the user in a nice error dialog. With RAII that is not possible, because the destructor cannot throw an exception. So either you call a method to the outside in the destructor, or you just ignore the exception.
try-with-resource is not like RAII, because there the close() method of the AutoClosable/Closeable interface is called, which can throw an exception. The exception can be then retrieved and logged/presented to the user.
That is the nature of resources, they can fail at any time and with all resources you can recover from it in a graceful way. Except of course for memory resources, that is why RAII is only useful for memory, but in Java I have the GC.
"Really? Do you often have failures while releasing resources? How come that numerous C++ programs (to remind, still the vast majority of desktop apps are that) use the "useless" RAII heavily to manage all resouces?"
That is my personal opinion about destructors and RAII in C++. Of course you can use it, like you can use templates to calculate the fibonaci numbers at compiler time. But my personal opinion is that mixing memory management and resources management (what RAII is all about) is just stupid because of the fact that you cannot throw an exception from the destructor.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you point out why is that important and why deserve the 5 Insightful? Because I didn't know that the USA is at war with the Al Qaeda, with is an organization of some people, not a country. Please further explain how you can declare war on an organization.
The Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization, not a country. As such it have the full rights and their members shall be arrested and put on a trial. The "Drone Kills Top Al Qaeda Figure" is no different from "Drone Kills Top Bank Robber Gang".
"I don't want to develop in Java, goddamnit."
Can I ask why not? Java is a pretty good language, the tools are all free, it have lots and lots free open source libraries, and it runs pretty sweet on millions of Android phones.
The only down site is JavaME, so it would be good to chose Android, the DalvikVM, Harmony, or OpenJDK. Nokia is big enough to make patent deals with Oracle, but if I were a shop in every other country but the USA, I would chose one of the 4 for my smartphone.
I don't know why AC was modded down. A kg is whatever you define as a kg. It could be the weight of my refrigerator, the weight of 1000 gold atoms, or as current "The kilogram is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram[1] (IPK),[Note 3] which is almost exactly equal to the mass of _one liter of water_.".
So now we define some other property as the kg. The important thing is, that you can measure the "lump" accurate.
That's all good, but I'm a regular person. I have a TV, a phone, cell phone, work, apartment. But besides that I get some menus from Asia restaurants in my mail box, I really do not get any ads.
Maybe I should have mentioned that I live in Germany, where we have privacy laws. Did you read anything about the trouble Google had in Germany with the Google Street View? It's true that even in Germany they trade private data, but consumer and civil rights in general are pretty big in Germany.
"Moving on to your ideas about making laws and regulations about the internet, I can only laugh. The internet was designed to be a communication system that cannot be stopped or shut down, and it is global. There are hundreds of nations that have internet access and presence, and getting more than a handful of them to agree to any particular policy is such a monumental undertaking that no one has succeeded in it yet. The problem is that the internet is available to almost anyone in the world, and some of those people do not know or do not care about laws anyway."
Yes, true. But most of the companies are located in Germany (for me) or in the USA (for you, assuming you are American). I don't think Google or Facebook will go to some random country if we pass some new privacy laws.
What GUI changes? My FF looks the same as FF3.0. I have my menu top, with the URL bar and the search bar. Then I have my bookmarks bar. Left are my tabs and down is my status bar. I'm using FF6.0.2.
Advertisers are just normal companies and have to confirm to the rule of law. A TV you can just turn off, mail ads are forbidden, telephone ads are forbidden, to track you with a camera is forbidden, to get your shopping list is forbidden, and a list where you shop is forbidden (all without your permission, of course).
Actually, I don't get any ads at all in real life if I don't want to. I don't use a credit card for every-day shopping and I don't get any catalogs or magazines. I really don't know where the advertisers have been invading my privacy for far longer than 10 years (or whatever).
Now we need the same privacy laws for the internet and for cookies in particular. How about "If the user is log-out you have to remove all your cookies on her computer". Now if you could have a willing politician to stand up for user privacy all would be well.
While it's not news, it is not anticipated and expected behavior. Why should it be, only because the advertisers are using it for 10 years? It's the cooperate brainwash so far that if you bend over for 10 years and they breach your privacy it's suddenly become "anticipated and expected behavior"?
If I log-out from a page I expect it to be gone for good. What right is there to track me forever, only because I visit and log-in in a site once? To still be on every page and track me, even if I clearly stated that I do not want it (because I log-out) is clearly a violation of my privacy rights.
To expect from every user to delete their coockies and use AdBlock is not acceptable. It is the responsibility of the politics to ensure my privacy rights and make such coockies illegal.
With software in the state that it is now, why would you run shoe-horned windows, when you can have a proper POSIX system running on your computer?
"While BIOS is fundamentally a solid piece of firmware, UEFI is a programmable software interface that sits on top a computer’s hardware and firmware (and indeed UEFI can and does sit on top of BIOS). "
The f*ck? I thought that thing is to replace the BIOS. Why they didn't just used a Linux distribution and skipped years of development time? So why do I need this UEFI again?
"UEFI, being a pseudo-operating system, can access all of the hardware on the computer — you can surf the internet from the UEFI interface, or backup your hard drives — and it even has a full, mouse-driven GUI"
Why do we need that? Why we can't have a "BIOS" that just boots the bootloader or the system itself and nothing else. Maybe an option from where it should boot (from harddisk, CDROM, network, etc). Just a thing, that don't have the limitations of the old BIOS, but with the sole purpose to boot the system/bootloader as fast as possible and then just go out of the way.
"The fact that all of this boot data is stored on NAND flash or on a hard drive means that there’s a lot more space for things like language localization, boot-time diagnostics (begone meaningless POST beeps!), utilities (backup, restore, malware scanners), and so on."
If the graphic card or the motherboard is broken, all the computer can do is to beep, with UEFI or without. If I need diagnostics and utilities I just use my Linux live-CD or live-USB-stick (like Knoppix or SystemRescueCD). They are easy to use and much more sophisticated.
UEFI sounds like the shiny new GUI interface that nobody will use, but it was developed because the old boring program was too old fashion. Like Nero, with was 50MB and then later became a 1GB full blown suite.
For some of the people like me the year of the Linux Desktop is already a thing of the past. I run now on every laptop I can get Linux and I didn't touched Windows for years. Windows runs as a VirtualBox system only because I need to develop some low level stuff in C and some of my clients using Windows.
For years now I have a Windows free life and I didn't miss anything. The few games I play I have a Xbox360 and Wine.
Why is that all not enabled by default? I thought Windows is not the hobby OS where you need to spend hours to tweak it until it works. But thanks for the tips, I can use them the next time I open VirtualBox with Windows XP from my Fedora Linux.
Can anyone please explain to me why there are no alternatives to the Windows "command prompt" aka cmd.exe? I know about Cygwin, but it's the same ugly cmd.exe window. I don't mean a bash or the powershell, I mean an alternative to the ugly window, that is black and you just have two scrollbars right and bottom.
This ugly window lacks many of the "advanced" features, like simple copy&past (right click copy, right click past), better fonts (why I can't choose from all the true-type fonts available?), maybe some tabs?
I don't know why MS took the effort and time to develop the powershell if it's still running in the 1991 cmd.exe window.
Like that project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ (it's GPL and free of course)
> VS is effectively free. You only pay for the professional version which isn't needed by most people. There's also MonoDevelop though it's not at the same level.
Yes most stuff from MS is "effectively free". But you are always a second class citizen if you use the free stuff. With Java and Linux I have the first class software for free, the same software that Google, Amazon and FB is using.
For me it's more psychology. If I use the crippled versions, I always feel that I'm missing something and always to bend to some rules imposed by others really it's just crazy in today software world. It's really liberating don't bother with an EULA anymore ever again.
> Hmm? C# has these.
You didn't read what I wrote. In my opinion is C# a mess of a language with many features that are not good. Like no checked exceptions, struct/class, string/String, op-overloading, delegates, the generics, XML for code documentation, #region, the jagged arrays (really WTF are jagged arrays for. In every other language you have one kind of arrays and you can do everything you like. If you need more dynamic, why not using a List anyway). Properties are implemented terrible, too. Then C# have so many keywords. 77 keywords, you got to be kidding me (Java have 50 keywords).
> Boo/Scala/IronRuby/IronPython/Javascript.net
I think all the popular languages for the JVM are way more active, both in development and usage than the CLI counterpart. For example IronPython have download rate of 500/week, but Jython have a download rate of 3500/week.
Instead of get a 50$ graphics card and play Doom3 on it, we need now 8 cores CPU to play JavaScript games in the browser? That is the bright future we can look for with ChromeOS and "the browser is the OS" future?
My feeling with MS stuff was always that I'm a second class citizen, only because I don't have money to buy the full version. Yes, the limitations are not "unreasonably" but they are in place. You always have the feeling in the back "and if I build something awesome, I have to buy the full version". Or "in the end I have to buy the full version anyway".
What me struck with Linux was that I have all the enterprise ready tools and all are free and without any limitations. Lampp server, email server, Java EE server, all are free and they are used by the big guys, like Google, the banks, Facebook. I don't see any advantage to stick with the limited free "bones" from MS if I can have it all without limitations.
I think the only reason MS can survive, is that they bought all education institutes. Everywhere it's MS ASP.NET, VS, SQLServer. That the majority of web servers are run on free Linux, Apache and MySQL is not tough, because they don't have the marketing department and the deals with the institutes.
I saw it in TAFE Australia, for example. Java and Eclipse was tough for only one semester. The rest was only the MS way.
* Better tooling support (ant, maven, grandle, open source plugins),
* free IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, for C# you only have VS),
* more open source libraries, and more active open source community
* simpler language that doesn't change with each version,
- checked exceptions
- no struct/class
- no op-overloading
* it's cross-platform (I can run my applications on all Windows versions, all Linux distributions, on MacOS and on the BSDs if need to, while developing exclusively on Linux).
* support for multiple languages, that are already very stable and mature
- groovy
- scala
- JRuby
- Jython
- JS
- some more
* no need to install a whole DVD of stuff to start developing
- I'm not sure if that's true, but last time I needed C# and VS to develop a web application I had to download a whole DVD full of stuff and install multiple gigabytes on my computer. Even if I'm going to install the whole LAMPP stack on my laptop, with JEE support, that's no way multiple gigabytes. The whole LAMPP stack is 416MB, plus Tomcat 7MB, plus the JDK it's about 50MB, plus Eclipse EE 210MB. That's just a little over 500MB.
Would I ever heard anything from the game if Apply did not ban it from their phones?
That is typical for the whole entertainment industry. Don't take any risks in any form.
Syndicate was so good because it was a new idea, a strategy game with cyber-agents, with mixed some RPG elements, like equipment, where you had the freedom to do anything you like. Syndicate didn't had any story, it was just a very good game play and a novel idea. Either you are good guys and pick your targets with snipers/lasers or you are the bad guy who just kills everything, it's up to you. In addition there were some strategy involved.
So instead to make a real good game, with novel ideas, they just take the name beloved by many fans, make the no-risks-genre (FPS) and spend some 100M$ for special effects. The sad part it that it will sell, just like the SW prequels.
Why don't they start their own digitization project? I mean, iTunes and Netfix should be of some example here. How much money do Apple make off of iTunes? Why can't the Authors' Guild and its equivalents in Australia, Quebec, and the UK just come together and start their own iBookStore? They have the books, they have the money and they would be swimming in money like Apple with iTunes.
Are they really enjoy being the asses they are, or are they really that backward? That puzzles me for a long time, even before there was Netflix or iTunes. Why are copyright holding groups not coming together and distributing their stuff online. The technology is there, they have the content, why is there no mean to embrace the new technology and make a lot of money of it?
Does it so? The last news I have is that Wal-Mart is like the slave factory in China, with no health benefits, no over work money, managers spying on their workers, workers are still get social help because of low wages, etc.
Are you for real? In what world do you life, or what do you smoke? Workers can just leave and start a new company?
Oh, that is why we have such a rich middle class, because everyone can just build a factory that produces TVs and computers. Yeah you right, I hate my job at Sony, tomorrow I just build a new laptop factory from the ground, together with my buddy from work.
Self correcting system? Except the billions and billions we have to pump in to failing businesses, like gambling banks, General Motors? If only with the politicians would believe in "free capitalism" if it would involve their golf-buddies.
How can a system that involves only the greed be self-correcting? It is the best system, not because every other is worse, but because there was never ever capitalism. There were always a partnership between the state and the free market, and the state had always got the playing field right so that all playing nice together. The state also always protected the system and corrected it.
The state always set the interest rate, redistributed wealth, protected the weak players (like children, sick and old people), invested in infrastructure, created new markets and industries, and much more. The state was always the correcting force in capitalism, and that is why you can have a computer and a TV, and you children can go to school and not have to work.
"Balance"? BS. What you end up is that 10% owns 80% of the wealth and the tendency is increasing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
Humans are neither greedy bastards nor selfless angels. Humans are all different and are motivated by a very wide range of things, some are motivated by wealth, some are motivated by doing a useful job and some just want do science or math.
But in the "free market capitalism" only the people who are greedy bastards are going to win. Also as the decline of the American economy is showing, it's not a good thing for everyone. All the people which are motivated by other things (like doing a useful job, helping others, science, math, philosophy, etc.) are now expect to pay off the debts of the greedy bastards (the big banks).
That is why such "pure" models like capitalism and communism just don't work. China tried the communism route, now they are pretty much free market. The USA is going down the capitalism route, now the banks own everything and people dying because of bad tooth (yes that is in the USA 24-Year-Old Dad Dies Of Tooth Infection, and you think you live in a first world country?).
http://www.wlwt.com/r/29044524/detail.html
"Do you also refuse to watch movies because you don't get the files used in production? Or refuse to listen to a CD unless it also comes with sheet music?"
Would be nice if they come with the files, but it's unpractical. But the nice thing about videos and music is that is always have the "source code" available, you can always take the video or song and remix it. That is why we have such a booming culture of remixes on Youtube, despite every effort to kill it; and the fan-dubs and fan-subs of anime shows; and fan-translations of manga.
Isn't it nice what people have done with the "source code" available of music, videos and images (remixes, fan-dubs, subs and translations)? Now think what we could do if we had the source code of games.
"This is by no means unique to RAII, but is a general problem with resource management. In Java 6, suppose you have a try-finally, and you call close() explicitly in finally - And that throws. What do you intend to do in that case, considering that there may still be a pending exception thrown from try? You can either suppress the one from close(), or let it override the one from try. You are arguing that the first is bad because it loses an exception; but so does the second, and it loses a far more important one!"
In Java it's very easy (and in C++ if not using the RAII). You just re-throw the exception to a higher level, maybe up to the View layer and show the exception to the user in a nice error dialog. With RAII that is not possible, because the destructor cannot throw an exception. So either you call a method to the outside in the destructor, or you just ignore the exception.
try-with-resource is not like RAII, because there the close() method of the AutoClosable/Closeable interface is called, which can throw an exception. The exception can be then retrieved and logged/presented to the user.
That is the nature of resources, they can fail at any time and with all resources you can recover from it in a graceful way. Except of course for memory resources, that is why RAII is only useful for memory, but in Java I have the GC.
"Really? Do you often have failures while releasing resources? How come that numerous C++ programs (to remind, still the vast majority of desktop apps are that) use the "useless" RAII heavily to manage all resouces?"
That is my personal opinion about destructors and RAII in C++. Of course you can use it, like you can use templates to calculate the fibonaci numbers at compiler time. But my personal opinion is that mixing memory management and resources management (what RAII is all about) is just stupid because of the fact that you cannot throw an exception from the destructor.