What does "nicer" have to do with anything? Sure, if all other factors are equal, people will use the nicest tool. But AOF rarely are equal. In this case there are a lot of factors: legacy code, the hassle of learning to use a new set of tools, etc, etc.
Programmer's may want to switch tools when better ones become available. (Or may not: people often prefer the tools they know to the ones they don't, regardless of the technical superiority of the latter.) But that doesn't mean they can. Retooling is not free.
Ask yourself, what's keeping Linux from taking over? All those Windows applications that people need to be able to run. If Linux ever displaces Windows, most of its users will be running software on top of WINE. And developers will be able to target Linux without learning a new API.
WINE could easily outlive the platform it was designed to emulate. Emulators often do.
Do you have any idea how difficult that would be? Emulating Windows down to the last undocumented quirk amounts to re-creating the OS from scratch. It's just not practical. If it were, we'd have already seen a version of WINE that ran all Windows apps without any fancy configuration.
...if I had asked the question in a different manner (ac+troll warning), I would have been modded down for troll anyways, and I actually did care.
Except if you deliberately post as AC, most people will just filter you out. I would have, except that the filtering in the new system seems to be broken.
Also, you seemed to be posing as somebody technically less clueful than you actually are. Or maybe I just stereotyped you. Either way, I wrote a response that was a little more patronizing than it should have been.
Everything I have ever used that ran in java was horridly cludgey and just plain annoying to use. Insight please?
Technical point: if you really want insight, you're not a troll.
Hard to give you an insight, since you're obviously not a programmer: your criticism of Java is based on bad experience using Java programs, not creating them. It would be like explaining the fine points of carpentry to somebody who's never picked up a saw or hammer.
That said, most GUI Java programs are pretty awful, and those are the programs somebody like you is going to base your judgment on. It's a lot harder than it should be to write a good GUI application in Java. Too many fundamental mistakes in the GUI libraries early on, and too many weird kludges created to fix them and still maintain backward compatibility.
But Java works much better on in other kinds of applications, and you've probably used such without realizing it. If you own a Blu Ray player, than you've used Java software. It's embedded in a lot of other devices. It's also moderately successful as a sever-side application, especially on the web. Ever browsed a web page that ended in ".jsp"? The page was generated by Java software.
So why is it "better"? It's not, really. No successful programming language is. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and the argument really isn't between the languages, it's between the programmers who favor them. Java is popular with programmers who don't want to do their own memory management and who thank that deliberately restricting the idioms you can use makes for cleaner, more maintainable code. C++ is popular with exactly the opposite kind of programmer, who values both the ability to manage low-level details, and to use and create complex, often arcane idioms.
Small example: in C++, you can define what operators like "+" mean with any kind of object; Java also has the power to define what you can do with an object, but deliberate omits the ability to express complex actions with simple operators.
Yeah, that was a really lame comment. Does Rob think the programming world consists of Perl hackers like him? Thousands of programmers make a living writing Java code.
BTW Rob, when is the new browsing system going to handle scores correctly? I just started writing a response to a Score 0 AC post, something I never do intentionally. Maybe if you rewrote Slashdot in Java...
But here's why opening Java matters. When people talk about "opening Java" they really mean "opening Sun's implementation of Java". There have always been open-source implementations of Java, but they've had a hard time keeping up with the latest spec. So if you're distributing open-source software that depends on Java, you really want Sun's Java implementation in the bundle.
Re:Get Over Yourselves People!
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
It isn't just terminals and flight scheduling. I'd pay extra for a seat that that I can sit in comfortably for 8 hours. How much is actually having your luggage with you when you go on vacation worth? If it were possible to pay a little extra and get guarantees for stuff like this, a lot of people would do so. But apparently not enough, because no airline says "we cost a little more, but we're worth it". It's all price competition.
Get Over Yourselves People!
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
OK, air travel has become a horror. But "criminal neglect"? It's not "criminal" that passengers are miserable. "Criminal" would be planes falling out of the sky. But in fact you're safer flying across the country than you are driving to work. Or, if you believe some statistics, brushing your teeth.
I used to love flying; now you couldn't get me on a plane without putting a gun to my head. But as long as people make their travel decisions based primarily on price, airlines have no incentive to make things better. I wouldn't argue with a few protective laws and regulations, but airlines' failure to unilaterally improve things in a hypercompetitive market is a matter of economics, not "criminal neglect".
In the XP, 32-bit world each process is limited to 2GB
Not only that, but the physical RAM you can use is limited to a little less than 3GB. (Right now I'm using a 4GB system, 1+GB of which is just sitting there.) So even a couple of processes that run up against that 2GB limit are going to cause your system to thrash.
But you seem to be assuming that 64-bit Vista is your only option. Note that there's a 64-bit version of XP as well. My experience with it says that driver support is horrible, but I'd be surprised if 64-bit Vista were much better.
I don't think the parent was concerned with simple demographics. He's dredging up this obsession many people have with the LDS church: Is it really Christian? Do they really think that heaven is another planet? Have they really given up polygamy?
As a serious unbeliever, I look at Mormons as slightly stodgy but basically likable people who do a lot of home canning. I could care less about their theological quirks, but passionately believe in their right to worship as they choose. I have little use for people who drag "Mormonism" into this kind of conversation, where it's relevant only to the terminally paranoid.
I do wonder, though, if Bill's going to marry that Serbian lady. But that's just TV.
But do remember that there's an element of self-interest in this open-sourcing strategy. It's all part of our fiendish plot to sell people hardware and services.
Take Solaris, for example. By opening it up, we do lose the income we would have had from selling it to people. But that's been dwindling anyway, as Solaris loses ground against Linux and Windows. By opening up the OS, we make it a better product through user contributions, and encourage its spread. More Solaris users means more people who will seriously consider out products and services.
Of course, even Linux and Windows people should be looking at us anyway, since we are now serious about products that run those OSs. (I work on documenting severalofthem.) But if you're already a Solaris user, then your options go beyond our x64 systems to the systems that are still the core of our business: the SPARC machines.
There are many reasons SPARC systems have been losing ground. But a big one is that they don't run "standard" operating systems. Promoting Solaris through open-sourcing (and through other means, such as supporting it on other vendor's hardware) drastically changes that particular equation.
I'm confused here. You quote a sentence from my post, but you don't seem to be really responding to it.
If your point is that the Vista debacle represents a big opening for Linux, I certainly agree. Indeed, I would not at all be surprised if one more more major vendors was qualifying a Linux/Wine/MSOffice bundle as we speak.
Perhaps I'm mistaken (most businesses I've worked for have been in the computer industry, so our IT practices are not typical), but I don't think businesses are any different from ordinary consumers in this respect. If their IT department tightly controls the kinds of systems employees can use, then they're going to avoid in-place OS upgrades, because that's another machine-software combination to qualify and support.
And if the IT department lets users buy whatever they want, then the users are going to have the same replace-the-whole-thing mentality that home users have.
I think "OEM XP" will still be around for a few months, at least XP Pro will be.
I'm sure you're right, but there's a problem with that. Getting XP is one thing, getting XP supported is quite another. If computer vendors choose to sell XP systems after the cutoff, they are totally on their own when the user calls up with technical problems — they can't turn around and ask for things like new drivers or patches from Microsoft.
This is actually the main reason Microsoft is always trying to EOL its old OSs: it costs money to continue to support them.
Who, if they have not already, would install Vista now?
Typical, clueless geek-centric comment. We geeks install a new OS every other month, but almost everybody else just uses whatever came with their system. When they begin to feel out of date, they don't upgrade the OS, they get a whole new system.
So nobody's outside geekworld is saying "Should I install Vista". If they think about OS issues at all, they're thinking, "Hey, I hear Vista really sucks. Maybe I should get an XP system while I still can."
It may take an archivist's mindset to preserve a complete history of Lego or other manufactured product. But software? All you need are regular backups. The problem is that when geeks start a new enterprise, they try to do their own IT, and the boring stuff, like backups, doesn't get done.
Also, before the Internet came along and made everybody need to be online and IP-compatible, most computers weren't networked, and those that were used a lot of different technologies. So basically there was no way a machine was going to get backed up unless the department it belonged thought to take care of it.
Small wonder that so much old software has just disappeared.
Ooh, bigoted against Muslims, liberals, and now gays. I find that really sexy in a guy. Would it make you more pissed off if I told you I was a Jewish black from Puerto Rico?
Sorry, you can't hide from me. Your pissed-off illogic will be easy to find with the right pattern-matching software. Unless you never go online again, you're stuck with me forever.
Slashdot Mirror
What does "nicer" have to do with anything? Sure, if all other factors are equal, people will use the nicest tool. But AOF rarely are equal. In this case there are a lot of factors: legacy code, the hassle of learning to use a new set of tools, etc, etc.
Programmer's may want to switch tools when better ones become available. (Or may not: people often prefer the tools they know to the ones they don't, regardless of the technical superiority of the latter.) But that doesn't mean they can. Retooling is not free.
Ask yourself, what's keeping Linux from taking over? All those Windows applications that people need to be able to run. If Linux ever displaces Windows, most of its users will be running software on top of WINE. And developers will be able to target Linux without learning a new API.
WINE could easily outlive the platform it was designed to emulate. Emulators often do.
And I thought the first lame joke would have something to do with the grape beverage...
Do you have any idea how difficult that would be? Emulating Windows down to the last undocumented quirk amounts to re-creating the OS from scratch. It's just not practical. If it were, we'd have already seen a version of WINE that ran all Windows apps without any fancy configuration.
Gee, now that you point it out, I feel so stupid.
No, wait a minute, that's not an argument, that's just a contradiction. What is this, a Monty Python sketch?
You mean you sat through the John Hurt/Richard Burton version? Wouldn't have reading the book been easier?
If you're talking about any of the other versions, then you still don't know what the book was about.
...if I had asked the question in a different manner (ac+troll warning), I would have been modded down for troll anyways, and I actually did care.Except if you deliberately post as AC, most people will just filter you out. I would have, except that the filtering in the new system seems to be broken.
Also, you seemed to be posing as somebody technically less clueful than you actually are. Or maybe I just stereotyped you. Either way, I wrote a response that was a little more patronizing than it should have been.
Technical point: if you really want insight, you're not a troll.
Hard to give you an insight, since you're obviously not a programmer: your criticism of Java is based on bad experience using Java programs, not creating them. It would be like explaining the fine points of carpentry to somebody who's never picked up a saw or hammer.
That said, most GUI Java programs are pretty awful, and those are the programs somebody like you is going to base your judgment on. It's a lot harder than it should be to write a good GUI application in Java. Too many fundamental mistakes in the GUI libraries early on, and too many weird kludges created to fix them and still maintain backward compatibility.
But Java works much better on in other kinds of applications, and you've probably used such without realizing it. If you own a Blu Ray player, than you've used Java software. It's embedded in a lot of other devices. It's also moderately successful as a sever-side application, especially on the web. Ever browsed a web page that ended in ".jsp"? The page was generated by Java software.
So why is it "better"? It's not, really. No successful programming language is. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and the argument really isn't between the languages, it's between the programmers who favor them. Java is popular with programmers who don't want to do their own memory management and who thank that deliberately restricting the idioms you can use makes for cleaner, more maintainable code. C++ is popular with exactly the opposite kind of programmer, who values both the ability to manage low-level details, and to use and create complex, often arcane idioms.
Small example: in C++, you can define what operators like "+" mean with any kind of object; Java also has the power to define what you can do with an object, but deliberate omits the ability to express complex actions with simple operators.
Yeah, that was a really lame comment. Does Rob think the programming world consists of Perl hackers like him? Thousands of programmers make a living writing Java code.
BTW Rob, when is the new browsing system going to handle scores correctly? I just started writing a response to a Score 0 AC post, something I never do intentionally. Maybe if you rewrote Slashdot in Java...
But here's why opening Java matters. When people talk about "opening Java" they really mean "opening Sun's implementation of Java". There have always been open-source implementations of Java, but they've had a hard time keeping up with the latest spec. So if you're distributing open-source software that depends on Java, you really want Sun's Java implementation in the bundle.
It isn't just terminals and flight scheduling. I'd pay extra for a seat that that I can sit in comfortably for 8 hours. How much is actually having your luggage with you when you go on vacation worth? If it were possible to pay a little extra and get guarantees for stuff like this, a lot of people would do so. But apparently not enough, because no airline says "we cost a little more, but we're worth it". It's all price competition.
OK, air travel has become a horror. But "criminal neglect"? It's not "criminal" that passengers are miserable. "Criminal" would be planes falling out of the sky. But in fact you're safer flying across the country than you are driving to work. Or, if you believe some statistics, brushing your teeth.
I used to love flying; now you couldn't get me on a plane without putting a gun to my head. But as long as people make their travel decisions based primarily on price, airlines have no incentive to make things better. I wouldn't argue with a few protective laws and regulations, but airlines' failure to unilaterally improve things in a hypercompetitive market is a matter of economics, not "criminal neglect".
Not only that, but the physical RAM you can use is limited to a little less than 3GB. (Right now I'm using a 4GB system, 1+GB of which is just sitting there.) So even a couple of processes that run up against that 2GB limit are going to cause your system to thrash.
But you seem to be assuming that 64-bit Vista is your only option. Note that there's a 64-bit version of XP as well. My experience with it says that driver support is horrible, but I'd be surprised if 64-bit Vista were much better.
I don't think the parent was concerned with simple demographics. He's dredging up this obsession many people have with the LDS church: Is it really Christian? Do they really think that heaven is another planet? Have they really given up polygamy?
As a serious unbeliever, I look at Mormons as slightly stodgy but basically likable people who do a lot of home canning. I could care less about their theological quirks, but passionately believe in their right to worship as they choose. I have little use for people who drag "Mormonism" into this kind of conversation, where it's relevant only to the terminally paranoid.
I do wonder, though, if Bill's going to marry that Serbian lady. But that's just TV.
Speaking as a Sun employee: you're welcome.
But do remember that there's an element of self-interest in this open-sourcing strategy. It's all part of our fiendish plot to sell people hardware and services.
Take Solaris, for example. By opening it up, we do lose the income we would have had from selling it to people. But that's been dwindling anyway, as Solaris loses ground against Linux and Windows. By opening up the OS, we make it a better product through user contributions, and encourage its spread. More Solaris users means more people who will seriously consider out products and services.
Of course, even Linux and Windows people should be looking at us anyway, since we are now serious about products that run those OSs. (I work on documenting several of them.) But if you're already a Solaris user, then your options go beyond our x64 systems to the systems that are still the core of our business: the SPARC machines.
There are many reasons SPARC systems have been losing ground. But a big one is that they don't run "standard" operating systems. Promoting Solaris through open-sourcing (and through other means, such as supporting it on other vendor's hardware) drastically changes that particular equation.
Well if by "spot on" you mean "true", then yeah. But in the context at hand — Microsoft's plans for shrink-wrap and OEM OSs — it's kind of clueless.
I'm confused here. You quote a sentence from my post, but you don't seem to be really responding to it.
If your point is that the Vista debacle represents a big opening for Linux, I certainly agree. Indeed, I would not at all be surprised if one more more major vendors was qualifying a Linux/Wine/MSOffice bundle as we speak.
Perhaps I'm mistaken (most businesses I've worked for have been in the computer industry, so our IT practices are not typical), but I don't think businesses are any different from ordinary consumers in this respect. If their IT department tightly controls the kinds of systems employees can use, then they're going to avoid in-place OS upgrades, because that's another machine-software combination to qualify and support.
And if the IT department lets users buy whatever they want, then the users are going to have the same replace-the-whole-thing mentality that home users have.
I'm sure you're right, but there's a problem with that. Getting XP is one thing, getting XP supported is quite another. If computer vendors choose to sell XP systems after the cutoff, they are totally on their own when the user calls up with technical problems — they can't turn around and ask for things like new drivers or patches from Microsoft.
This is actually the main reason Microsoft is always trying to EOL its old OSs: it costs money to continue to support them.
Typical, clueless geek-centric comment. We geeks install a new OS every other month, but almost everybody else just uses whatever came with their system. When they begin to feel out of date, they don't upgrade the OS, they get a whole new system.
So nobody's outside geekworld is saying "Should I install Vista". If they think about OS issues at all, they're thinking, "Hey, I hear Vista really sucks. Maybe I should get an XP system while I still can."
Hey, I'm not pissed off. In fact, I think I'm in love!
I haven't seen the "special edition", but I don't recall any problems making sense of ST:TMP. Nausea, however, was something of an issue.
And everybody else knows that the even numbered films suck too!
It may take an archivist's mindset to preserve a complete history of Lego or other manufactured product. But software? All you need are regular backups. The problem is that when geeks start a new enterprise, they try to do their own IT, and the boring stuff, like backups, doesn't get done.
Also, before the Internet came along and made everybody need to be online and IP-compatible, most computers weren't networked, and those that were used a lot of different technologies. So basically there was no way a machine was going to get backed up unless the department it belonged thought to take care of it.
Small wonder that so much old software has just disappeared.
So biology is another subject we can add to your ignorances.
Ooh, bigoted against Muslims, liberals, and now gays. I find that really sexy in a guy. Would it make you more pissed off if I told you I was a Jewish black from Puerto Rico?
Sorry, you can't hide from me. Your pissed-off illogic will be easy to find with the right pattern-matching software. Unless you never go online again, you're stuck with me forever.