throw us a little dylan thomas, oscar wilde, lord byron, yeats, frost, akhmatova, t.s. eliot....this emily dickinson thing is cute, lets get some variety.
The simple point with Transmeta is this - can they make a better processor than Intel?
Better means many things, cooler, faster, cheaper...whatever the public is obsessing over at the moment. Customer service really isn't an issue for Transmeta (I presume you are simply parroting some drivel from Business 2.0 or some other rag here), no more than it is for AMD and Intel.
Every indiciation is that Transmeta has a cute product but Intel will be able to come within 10% of each of their quantifiable attributes. In the short term this means Transmeta needs to market directly to companies looking to get out from under Intel's thumb, and even then, this is only going to get them in the door. They need to be able to demonstrate that there is a real reason to have a Transmeta chip inside a unit instead of an Intel one. If Intel can beat the power consumption problem (they have indicated they can, and quickly), Transmeta could be in for a rought ride.
Well, if you are gonna run a server, running the latest and greatest is
a bad idea. With the long testing periods, when a release makes stable, you know damn well its stable.
Arguably the only valid testing is to get it out there and wait for problems to appear. They will anyway, regardless of how long Debian has taken.
On the other hand, the slow release cycle is slowly stripping debian marketshare to the tpoint where none of this will matter. I can't see debian being relevant in two years at this pace.
Banner ads, email affinity programs, tv spots...no one has ever really been able to quantitatively demonstrate that advertising "works", its just that everyone is too afraid to take the risk of not advertising.
Note that not all succesful companies heavily advertise - you'd be surprised. Ever see a Napster ad? Even coke from time to time will essentially stop or drastically reduce advertising and instead focus on packaging and product placement to increase sales (the former coke marketing guru was recently quoted as saying he essentially thought advertising was a huge waste of money and packaging was a far more impactful way to increase sales).
I'm sorry, but "IPO" money really never had anything to do with the freeness of services - its all about the business model.
Sites that are ad-driven will always be free - to not be free would be instant suicide for an ad-driven site.
If sites are not using an ad model, then its wide open. Admittedly, these models have tended not be very fruitful, and it simply reinforces the strengths of those few sites who can be profitable on ad-based revenue.
I would have thought it was obvious that the market for ad-driven websites is obviously winner-take-all (AOL is not in this category - they are a subscription service). The portals are a clear indication - within five years, Yahoo outlasted its competition, who have all signed on with partners through acquisitions.
While over time the amount of choice on the web will drop, the leaders in ad-driven sites will always be free services.
If you want to see a vendor snap-to, just place a fraud complaint with Visa or Mastercard.
Technically, what happened to you was credit card fraud. They charged you without sending you a product. Visa or Mastercard wil lsimply remove their vendor privileges and they won't be able to take credit card orders anymore.
No joke - this happened to me with Dell and Mastercard threatened them accordingly and it was fixed in a jiff.
They can ignore you but they won't ignore the card companies.
In the latest Linux Journal their is a performance evaluation of various JDKs for linux. It isn't pretty. Even Cygnus's gcj comes up well short of the stock windows JDK in terms of performance.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone is spending serious time tuning Java for linux.
I was pushed in this new direction by management and new Gurus that they hired.
I hope you have a list of projects that these "gurus" have completed in the past - my fear is that you'll end up with a gorgeous class hierarchy, with lovely UML diagrams, and then before your very eyes, the problem itself starts to move under your feet. All of a sudden your hierarchy may start to look very brittle. I've seen this before.
Reuse in future projects may also be a bugbear. Class hierarchies tend to have more dependencies than anyone thinks, and you end up copying the entire hierarchy anywhere you want to reuse any of the classes.
Nice post. Its unfortunate that even with Apple's backing, Objective C is probably off the radar for good. I can't see it regaining much mindshare with all the hype Java is getting, and with the vigorous interest in scripting. This isn't the first language tragedy.
As for JITC, prospective apostles of this technology should try it out with real programs and do extensive benchmarking - indications are that HotSpot is still two to four times slower than C++. Most claims I have seen for JIT code is based on in-memory operations with very little IO and/or user-interaction.
Don't take this as a flame, because I am not trolling. I am just surprized that someone with 6 years of C++ and Java. Maybe there is a lack of OOA
and OOD in your shop to benefit from OO implementations? Thoughts?
Well, I admit C++ is less of an offender than Java, as it isn't prompting you to use OO whether you want to or not.
As for a "lack of OOA and OOD" in my office, I'm sorry, but I've heard this one a thousand times. Typically, I find the worst offenders are the ones with the most books and training under their belt - they are even more likely to employ specious OO methods where they aren't needed. The problem is, most of the OO training and literature still isn't frank enough about the success rate of these methods, and what domains they handle adequately. The party line still seems to treat OO as a silver bullet that we could all use to save ourselves if we weren't so stupid.
Obviously this is anecdotal evidence, but I still haven't heard of one shop who has gone totally OO and is better off for it.
...the quite useful fact that it is a multi-paradigm language.
Java is cute, but what do you do with it once OO becomes passe? (don't be shocked by this - there is actually a vocal constituent of clued in folks who are actively protesting the usefulness of OO).
I refuse to latch onto any language that forces me into one paradigm.
Its interesting - if you look at these languages in a detailed and discerning manner, you really get to see the genius of Stroustrup.
Read some of his papers on C++, perticularly his assumptions for the language, and you really see how far ahead his thinking was.
I think it's an unfortunate misconception that C is the ultimate "power language" because it gives you so much "control".
I would argue that efficiency and performance are more likely arguments for C.
(Eiffel, Haskell, ML come to mind)
Haskell in particular is cool, but I think you do these languages a disserive by mentioning them in the same post as Java - while they all require a new way of thinking, none of them has nearly as much mumbo-jumbo associated with them as Java. In fact, I see the simplicity of Haskell as its key advantage.
I agree completely that you can get by doing anything with C, perl, and maybe some shell scripting thrown in.
I've done extensive Java programming since it was v0.9, and C++ programming for about six years, and my opinion is that most of the OO stuff is complete mumbo-jumbo that only serves to confuse the core programmer and others who try using their code.
One rule that has served me well throughout the years is that one should never use a tool more complicated than the problem demands. Many OO programmers throw this rule out the window, and spend weeks playing with Factory patterns, polymorphism, huge inheritance hierarchies, and all sorts of other junk that creates bloated, useless code.
At the very least, C++ allows me to limit the amount of OO I introduce into programs. Java seems to be as retarded as Smalltalk when it comes to this.
Even for "internal" programs that don't require full-out performance, I can bang out a perl solution in half the code it takes a Java programmer do write. I have to wonder how Java programmers keep from going insane. The language and object hierarchy are so verbose that it takes at least twice as many lines of code to get anything done as any other language, and then the speed sucks. Rant off.
How do you figure? C++ templates are a hack to deal with the lack of a base class; other OO languages (Java, Objective-C, C#,Smalltalk...) let you do
generic things by operating on the base class, from which all objects inherit.
Casting from Object is not comparable to C++ templates. Firstly, you lose any compile time type checking (which C++ templates give you). On the contrary, the Java approach is the hack. Don't take my word for it, read interviews with Gosling where he admits as much.
Chris - I will compare my VA Linux experience to my experience with InfoQuest IQ - at the corner of San Antonio and El Camino in Los Gatos.
These people refer to me by name when I deal with them, are extremely forthcoming about errors/ommissions on their part, and whenever I have needed repair work done, it has been done for free while I wait.
They will install my choice of OS, and they are one of the few vendors who know that things like FreeBSD exist and what compatibility issues exist.
The PC was bought in 98 and they still support it with a smile - no questions asked, and no warranty expiration interrogation.
I am not mentioning this company as an endorsement, but as an example of what people look for in service and support (and friendliness).
I wish VA luck, but for my dollar, I'm continuing to go with family operations like Infoquest.
I ordered one of their laptops (a rebranded NEC) from them about a year ago, and had to threaten, cajole, and beg them simply to give me the hardware after over a month of hassles.
Not wanting to wait any longer, I offered to drive to their office to pick it up once it was ready, as I lived nearby. When I arrived, it was sitting in a box at the receptionist's desk. No one even bothered to wait with it or to meet me and at least thank me for shelling out $4k for their hardware.
VA doesn't need to hire any more linux gurus, they need to hire some customer satisfaction experts. They'll never see another dime from me.
1. I have to choose a desktop environemnt? GNOME or KDE? I'm supposed to know which has better Apps?
I agree that this probably doesn't provide maximum global utility, but in a free world you've got to live with people's choices. Also, your complaint is based upon the dubious assumption that all KDE/GNOME developers would be working on the other project if their's didn't exist.
2. Web Browser.
Agreed, linux is in big trouble here - but so is windows. We've basically got a one-browser world now. This is an amazingly bad situation to be in, considering how many people are browser users.
3. Mail Client.
Sorry, but you've got no defense here. Balsa, Mutt, even emacs will read mail. Gnome folks are even building an Outlook clone.
4. Editor. Uhh, I use vi and emacs when there is absolutely, positively, nothing else available. Don't get me wrong, I first learned emacs over 8 years
ago. But there are some basic functions which I rely upon that don't exist in emacs. Give me something like HomeSite on a linux box and you've got a
convert.
Try Screem.
5. Word and Excel.
Linux has no programs to match these. If you really need a good office suite, you should stick to windows.
I don't understand this argument that you can't offer and opinion if you aren't a core developer of Mozilla. Mozilla is a mass-market product, and in the mass market, the rule is that you listen to your users, not flip them off because they aren't coding. Arguably, IE is where its at because this is what they did.
I see your entire post as sour grapes - you know Mozilla is late and bloated, but somehow you've determined that users no longer have a say in the product, only developers, and somehow this has given you some small consolation.
You can shallack whatever veneer you want over your post, essentially you are trumpeting the same old tired tune: (hard == elite) => good.
Having tools like this wouldn't even really push linux into the future - they would just bring linux up to where most commercial OSs (unix and non) were four or five years ago.
HelixCode is doing a damn fine job and I say we let them continue to work on usability
Who the fuck put you in charge? They need neither your consent nor suport to go into work every morning and do this stuff. Isn't it enough that they're giving you the product and the code for free?
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throw us a little dylan thomas, oscar wilde, lord byron, yeats, frost, akhmatova, t.s. eliot....this emily dickinson thing is cute, lets get some variety.
The simple point with Transmeta is this - can they make a better processor than Intel?
Better means many things, cooler, faster, cheaper...whatever the public is obsessing over at the moment. Customer service really isn't an issue for Transmeta (I presume you are simply parroting some drivel from Business 2.0 or some other rag here), no more than it is for AMD and Intel.
Every indiciation is that Transmeta has a cute product but Intel will be able to come within 10% of each of their quantifiable attributes. In the short term this means Transmeta needs to market directly to companies looking to get out from under Intel's thumb, and even then, this is only going to get them in the door. They need to be able to demonstrate that there is a real reason to have a Transmeta chip inside a unit instead of an Intel one. If Intel can beat the power consumption problem (they have indicated they can, and quickly), Transmeta could be in for a rought ride.
Arguably the only valid testing is to get it out there and wait for problems to appear. They will anyway, regardless of how long Debian has taken.
On the other hand, the slow release cycle is slowly stripping debian marketshare to the tpoint where none of this will matter. I can't see debian being relevant in two years at this pace.
More precisely, its a winner-take-all market. The leading ad-driven site stands to make piles of cash.
Its entirely possible that within a few years, a well-placed ad on a the leading ad-driven site will command superbowl-like fees.
Note that not all succesful companies heavily advertise - you'd be surprised. Ever see a Napster ad? Even coke from time to time will essentially stop or drastically reduce advertising and instead focus on packaging and product placement to increase sales (the former coke marketing guru was recently quoted as saying he essentially thought advertising was a huge waste of money and packaging was a far more impactful way to increase sales).
Sites that are ad-driven will always be free - to not be free would be instant suicide for an ad-driven site.
If sites are not using an ad model, then its wide open. Admittedly, these models have tended not be very fruitful, and it simply reinforces the strengths of those few sites who can be profitable on ad-based revenue.
I would have thought it was obvious that the market for ad-driven websites is obviously winner-take-all (AOL is not in this category - they are a subscription service). The portals are a clear indication - within five years, Yahoo outlasted its competition, who have all signed on with partners through acquisitions.
While over time the amount of choice on the web will drop, the leaders in ad-driven sites will always be free services.
Technically, what happened to you was credit card fraud. They charged you without sending you a product. Visa or Mastercard wil lsimply remove their vendor privileges and they won't be able to take credit card orders anymore.
No joke - this happened to me with Dell and Mastercard threatened them accordingly and it was fixed in a jiff.
They can ignore you but they won't ignore the card companies.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone is spending serious time tuning Java for linux.
I hope you have a list of projects that these "gurus" have completed in the past - my fear is that you'll end up with a gorgeous class hierarchy, with lovely UML diagrams, and then before your very eyes, the problem itself starts to move under your feet. All of a sudden your hierarchy may start to look very brittle. I've seen this before.
Reuse in future projects may also be a bugbear. Class hierarchies tend to have more dependencies than anyone thinks, and you end up copying the entire hierarchy anywhere you want to reuse any of the classes.
I hope it works out for you.
As for JITC, prospective apostles of this technology should try it out with real programs and do extensive benchmarking - indications are that HotSpot is still two to four times slower than C++. Most claims I have seen for JIT code is based on in-memory operations with very little IO and/or user-interaction.
Well, I admit C++ is less of an offender than Java, as it isn't prompting you to use OO whether you want to or not.
As for a "lack of OOA and OOD" in my office, I'm sorry, but I've heard this one a thousand times. Typically, I find the worst offenders are the ones with the most books and training under their belt - they are even more likely to employ specious OO methods where they aren't needed. The problem is, most of the OO training and literature still isn't frank enough about the success rate of these methods, and what domains they handle adequately. The party line still seems to treat OO as a silver bullet that we could all use to save ourselves if we weren't so stupid.
Obviously this is anecdotal evidence, but I still haven't heard of one shop who has gone totally OO and is better off for it.
Java is cute, but what do you do with it once OO becomes passe? (don't be shocked by this - there is actually a vocal constituent of clued in folks who are actively protesting the usefulness of OO).
I refuse to latch onto any language that forces me into one paradigm.
Its interesting - if you look at these languages in a detailed and discerning manner, you really get to see the genius of Stroustrup.
Read some of his papers on C++, perticularly his assumptions for the language, and you really see how far ahead his thinking was.
I would argue that efficiency and performance are more likely arguments for C.
(Eiffel, Haskell, ML come to mind)
Haskell in particular is cool, but I think you do these languages a disserive by mentioning them in the same post as Java - while they all require a new way of thinking, none of them has nearly as much mumbo-jumbo associated with them as Java. In fact, I see the simplicity of Haskell as its key advantage.
I've done extensive Java programming since it was v0.9, and C++ programming for about six years, and my opinion is that most of the OO stuff is complete mumbo-jumbo that only serves to confuse the core programmer and others who try using their code.
One rule that has served me well throughout the years is that one should never use a tool more complicated than the problem demands. Many OO programmers throw this rule out the window, and spend weeks playing with Factory patterns, polymorphism, huge inheritance hierarchies, and all sorts of other junk that creates bloated, useless code.
At the very least, C++ allows me to limit the amount of OO I introduce into programs. Java seems to be as retarded as Smalltalk when it comes to this.
Even for "internal" programs that don't require full-out performance, I can bang out a perl solution in half the code it takes a Java programmer do write. I have to wonder how Java programmers keep from going insane. The language and object hierarchy are so verbose that it takes at least twice as many lines of code to get anything done as any other language, and then the speed sucks. Rant off.
Casting from Object is not comparable to C++ templates. Firstly, you lose any compile time type checking (which C++ templates give you). On the contrary, the Java approach is the hack. Don't take my word for it, read interviews with Gosling where he admits as much.
These people refer to me by name when I deal with them, are extremely forthcoming about errors/ommissions on their part, and whenever I have needed repair work done, it has been done for free while I wait.
They will install my choice of OS, and they are one of the few vendors who know that things like FreeBSD exist and what compatibility issues exist.
The PC was bought in 98 and they still support it with a smile - no questions asked, and no warranty expiration interrogation.
I am not mentioning this company as an endorsement, but as an example of what people look for in service and support (and friendliness).
I wish VA luck, but for my dollar, I'm continuing to go with family operations like Infoquest.
Not wanting to wait any longer, I offered to drive to their office to pick it up once it was ready, as I lived nearby. When I arrived, it was sitting in a box at the receptionist's desk. No one even bothered to wait with it or to meet me and at least thank me for shelling out $4k for their hardware.
VA doesn't need to hire any more linux gurus, they need to hire some customer satisfaction experts. They'll never see another dime from me.
I agree that this probably doesn't provide maximum global utility, but in a free world you've got to live with people's choices. Also, your complaint is based upon the dubious assumption that all KDE/GNOME developers would be working on the other project if their's didn't exist.
2. Web Browser.
Agreed, linux is in big trouble here - but so is windows. We've basically got a one-browser world now. This is an amazingly bad situation to be in, considering how many people are browser users.
3. Mail Client.
Sorry, but you've got no defense here. Balsa, Mutt, even emacs will read mail. Gnome folks are even building an Outlook clone.
4. Editor. Uhh, I use vi and emacs when there is absolutely, positively, nothing else available. Don't get me wrong, I first learned emacs over 8 years ago. But there are some basic functions which I rely upon that don't exist in emacs. Give me something like HomeSite on a linux box and you've got a convert.
Try Screem.
5. Word and Excel.
Linux has no programs to match these. If you really need a good office suite, you should stick to windows.
I see your entire post as sour grapes - you know Mozilla is late and bloated, but somehow you've determined that users no longer have a say in the product, only developers, and somehow this has given you some small consolation.
precisely my point - ethereal make sense of the data, tethereal's interface is largely a mess.
The reason for using perl is obvious - its ubiquotous and has a shedload of modules for system adminsitration.
Having tools like this wouldn't even really push linux into the future - they would just bring linux up to where most commercial OSs (unix and non) were four or five years ago.
Who the fuck put you in charge? They need neither your consent nor suport to go into work every morning and do this stuff. Isn't it enough that they're giving you the product and the code for free?
So you're essentially advocating that they volunteer to go out of business??
Look at Ethereal - is there an equivalent useful product than can work in a terminal?