And Mosaic was Open Source, right? How about Netscape Navigator or Communicator, before IE started kicking its ass? How many of the original web servers were Open Source?
Unix wouldn't be dying without Linux, FreeBSD, or Darwin. Solaris and AIX and IRIX and other *NIX variants have all had their place in high-end servers and workstations for years. What Linux et. al. have done is allow Unix in low-end servers and workstations.
The importance of free software has been to bring the cost of high-end software down, but only certain kinds of high-end software. What it really shows is that a certain level or type of programming expertese has become a commodity. People who want to make a living as programmers need to consider the ramifications of this.
Free Software is almost invariably copycat software. They are clones of existing products. Sure, sometimes they become better than the original (Apache has passed the original HTTPd), but there's no innovation there. Linux users complaining about Microsoft's lack of innovation are the pot calling the kettle black.
You can make loony rantings about "transcending" the market, but the market isn't the issue. Pushing the state of art is. Free Software, by and large, does not push the state of the art.
There's a reason why LISP is a niche language and most Perl code is unmaintainable. I love LISP, but people like Paul Graham go overboard in promoting it. They just aren't software engineering-focused languages.
Sure, for J. Lone Hacker working on a project, a dynamic language is fine. You can keep track of your naming conventions. For real-world projects, there is a better than even chance that your great code is going to end up being maintained by a less than great (to be charitable) programmer, and that you are going to have to work with the code written by Mr. Not A. Hacker. Do you trust everyone to follow the same naming conventions?
This article was about why software sucks. Part of the reason is that practices that work for a single programmer tend to fail miserably when applied to a team. Yet virtually every programmer is trained in school to work alone, and is taught using languages that aren't designed for team work. The most admired programmers are the "lone guns" who can crank out something all by themselves, and everyone tries to emulate them. This is part of the reason why bugs creep in. And it's the main reason why dynamic languages are bad.
Untrue. RMI, for one thing, was removed from the MS JVM. To add RMI back in required FTPing the classes from a Microsoft server that changed week to week.
Remember Java? It found it's niche as a toy/teaching language and as a subititue for Perl (which got a bad rap!) for web middleware.
Um, no. You try to build Enterprise Java Beans in Perl. Or, if you don't like EJB, how about JDO? Messaging server? Web server?
Java is doing quite well as a non-toy language. The fact that it is also an excellent language for teaching OO programming is partially because it is not a toy.
"In my experience there is a tradeoff. Languages that tend to do more "static typing" do catch stuff that interpreted (dynamic) languages may not or not as early, but dynamically languages are often (potentially) easier to read because there is less code devoted to formalities and conversions. IOW, they reduce bugs by making the code smaller and easier to review by eye IMO."
This might be provably false with a not-too-difficult study. How is it easier to read a language that doesn't tell you the types of the variables up-front? How is it better for the compiler to not be able to flag invalid uses of type?
Less code doesn't make things more readable. Which is clearer for the AVERAGE programmer, looking at unfamiliar code:
a = (x==0)? 5 : 10;
or
if(x == 0) {
a = 5; } else {
a = 10; }
Dynamic, untyped (or weakly typed) languages are bad. Pre-processors are bad. Managing memory by hand is bad. And programmers with an "I am a genius" mentality are the worst problem of all.
So, you're shipping identical code on Win32 and *NIX? What's the installed base for your applications? What's the interface like? What networking API do you use?
Mozilla may thrill some tech-savvy users, "but it's not going to make a dent with the mainstream," said WebSideStory's Geoff Johnston, unless, that is, AOL Time Warner puts major marketing muscle behind it.
Like, oh, I don't know, having the news division of AOL Time Warner run stories on the browser?
You have just given two greedy reasons to write Open Source software: getting an Eternal Reward or getting $1,000,000 (which is what a Nobel Prize is worth).
(Also worth noting that the Licencing Act was also the first law that allowed government, and subsequently printing houses to censor works deemed against the Church or State.)
Right, because before 1722, people had nothing to fear from Church or State if they said or wrote something critical of them...it was just evil copyright law!
Anyone care to sing a rousing chorus of Mel Brooks' "The Inquisition"?
I have a theory that it's witches that are causing global warming. Notice that global warming is getting worse JUST as Pagan movements are picking up worldwide.
Furthermore, I hypthosize that burning witches will solve the problem of global warming.
Now, my evidence is only circumstantial but there is SUCH A DANGER from global warming, that how could we NOT start buring witches?
Ugh. Sorry, but this one is a bit hard to swallow.
Ugh. Sorry, but you must be a youngin'. C has called "high-level assembly language" for years. As it says in the Jargon File:
"C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as 'a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language'. "
This whole "war on terror" would not likely be happening without our (the US's) incredible appetite for oil.
This is irrelevant to the discussion for two reasons:
Point 1: Oil isn't used to generate all that much electricity in the US. Most US electrical power comes from Coal, Natural Gas, and Nuclear. So light bulbs don't mean didly in the fight against terror. Those 8MPG SUVs, on the other hand...
Point 2: The US doesn't get terribly much oil from the Middle East. Most of the US' oil comes from the US (last time I checked the numbers, we were still the #2 producer of oil on the planet, but Russia's output has gone up quite a lot recently), Venezuela, and Mexico. Oil from Arab countries is less than 20% of US consumption.
It's the Japanese and Europeans who are proping up the dictators in the Middle East, which explains their reluctance to do anything but kowtow to these tyrants.
Except that the price of 2nd phone line + dialup is within spitting distance of DSL or Cable. The added convenience of getting vastly better performance (I went from about 5K/s downloads to 160K/s) make the price difference worth it.
Capping DSL/Cable downloads is probably going to be just fine for most people. I am a heavy user, and I would be surprised if I was passing 1GB/month.
Yes, you're right. This is something that America needs to be careful with. But so far, it's not a problem.
Besides, if the government wanted to "get" you, I doubt that a jury trial would help. If you're paranoid about such things, you'd probably believe that the government would rig the trial, jury or not. The American system works because, by and large, Americans believe their government will do the right thing. Aside from the insane nut-jobs who think that Jews and/or the CIA destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon so the US could get oil from Central Asia, I don't think too many people think the US government has overstepped its bounds.
Quite seriously, I think the government is the least of anyone's worries. If Palestinian-style suicide bombing (or Tamil-style, as they were the ones who really perfected the technique) becomes common in the US (as many people are predicting will happen), Muslims in the US are going to be begging the government for protection from mobs.
You are right; he is a citizen. However, I bet he was pretty darned surprised to find out that he was one; most countries don't have automatic citizenship just because you were born there. Kuwait gave the world a good example of this last week. When the US revealed the name of the person who the government thinks masterminded 9/11 and said he was Kuwaiti, the Kuwaiti government said that just because he was born and raised in Kuwait doesn't make him Kuwaiti. To Americans, this is head-scratching. To most of the world, it's common sense.
And do you really think the government is arresting people because they went to Egypt on vacation? Are you a troll or paranoid?
The sky isn't falling, we aren't being invaded.
Tell that to the families of the 3,000 people killed in New York. When they kick your ass, I'll be smiling.
No, I don't mean internment camps, you uneducated troll. I'm talking about the Supreme Court decision in 1942 that allowed the US Government during WW II to execute US citizens after a military tribunal found them guilty of helping Nazis.
As for the rest of your paranoid rantings, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact," as Justice Arthur Goldberg once said. Lincoln was the president who suspended the most civil liberties. Last time I checked, the US survived, and quite possibly did so because he played so fast and loose with civil liberties.
I trust the government to do the right thing because in the US, the people are the government. If the awful day arrives where that is no longer the case, then we can hope that the gun "nuts" are still well armed...because they're our only hope.
Of course the government isn't infallible. Infallibility doesn't enter into it. Shall we get rid of all police because they sometimes arrest the wrong man?
Political gender has everything to do with the nitwits who seem to think that the Bush (or any Republican) administration is the reincarnation of the Third Reich. Just because you don't think so doesn't invalidate the point.
1. It's two citizens. One of whom hasn't lived here since he was a small child (child of Saudi nationals who happened to be born while parents were in the US. Yes, he's a citizen, but I bet he never thought of himself as an American until he found out that he could use that detail to get himself out of the pokey). The other sounds like he meets even an idiot's definition of traitor.
2. Precedent was established in 1942 during WW II. Democratic president, even.
Except that the investigation hasn't been pulled, tin foil hat boy.
Of course, since you know everything, you can just tell us all the name of the person who sent out the anthrax letters, show us your proof (or is your word proof enough?), and show up the FBI.
Second, the nutjobs I am referring to are the ones who think they are god's chosen people. In strict Jewish law this is taken to mean that it is ok for a jew to rob a non jew, for a jew to cheat a non jew, for a jew to kill a non jew, and essentially that non jews are animals.
How is this different than the Arabs attitude to the jews? It really is a simple pot kettle black case in these circumstances.
This is a standard anti-Semitic libel. There is no such anything in Jewish law. In fact, the exact opposite is true; Jewish law commands Jews to treat non-Jews who live among them well, "for you were strangers in a land not yours." Other laws speak of making sure not to do ill to non-Jews, lest it reflect poorly on Jews in general.
Anything else you'd care to make up? Or would you just like to quote from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Slashdot Mirror
-jon
The importance of free software has been to bring the cost of high-end software down, but only certain kinds of high-end software. What it really shows is that a certain level or type of programming expertese has become a commodity. People who want to make a living as programmers need to consider the ramifications of this.
-jon
You can make loony rantings about "transcending" the market, but the market isn't the issue. Pushing the state of art is. Free Software, by and large, does not push the state of the art.
-jon
Sure, for J. Lone Hacker working on a project, a dynamic language is fine. You can keep track of your naming conventions. For real-world projects, there is a better than even chance that your great code is going to end up being maintained by a less than great (to be charitable) programmer, and that you are going to have to work with the code written by Mr. Not A. Hacker. Do you trust everyone to follow the same naming conventions?
This article was about why software sucks. Part of the reason is that practices that work for a single programmer tend to fail miserably when applied to a team. Yet virtually every programmer is trained in school to work alone, and is taught using languages that aren't designed for team work. The most admired programmers are the "lone guns" who can crank out something all by themselves, and everyone tries to emulate them. This is part of the reason why bugs creep in. And it's the main reason why dynamic languages are bad.
-jon
-jon
Um, no. You try to build Enterprise Java Beans in Perl. Or, if you don't like EJB, how about JDO? Messaging server? Web server?
Java is doing quite well as a non-toy language. The fact that it is also an excellent language for teaching OO programming is partially because it is not a toy.
-jon
"In my experience there is a tradeoff. Languages that tend to do more "static typing" do catch stuff that interpreted (dynamic) languages may not or not as early, but dynamically languages are often (potentially) easier to read because there is less code devoted to formalities and conversions. IOW, they reduce bugs by making the code smaller and easier to review by eye IMO."
This might be provably false with a not-too-difficult study. How is it easier to read a language that doesn't tell you the types of the variables up-front? How is it better for the compiler to not be able to flag invalid uses of type?
Less code doesn't make things more readable. Which is clearer for the AVERAGE programmer, looking at unfamiliar code:
a = (x==0)? 5 : 10;
or
if(x == 0) {
a = 5;
} else {
a = 10;
}
Dynamic, untyped (or weakly typed) languages are bad. Pre-processors are bad. Managing memory by hand is bad. And programmers with an "I am a genius" mentality are the worst problem of all.
-jon
-jon
Mozilla may thrill some tech-savvy users, "but it's not going to make a dent with the mainstream," said WebSideStory's Geoff Johnston, unless, that is, AOL Time Warner puts major marketing muscle behind it.
Like, oh, I don't know, having the news division of AOL Time Warner run stories on the browser?
-jon
-jon
Right, because before 1722, people had nothing to fear from Church or State if they said or wrote something critical of them...it was just evil copyright law!
Anyone care to sing a rousing chorus of Mel Brooks' "The Inquisition"?
-jon
Furthermore, I hypthosize that burning witches will solve the problem of global warming.
Now, my evidence is only circumstantial but there is SUCH A DANGER from global warming, that how could we NOT start buring witches?
-jon
Ugh. Sorry, but you must be a youngin'. C has called "high-level assembly language" for years. As it says in the Jargon File:
"C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as 'a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language'. "
-jon
This is irrelevant to the discussion for two reasons:
Point 1: Oil isn't used to generate all that much electricity in the US. Most US electrical power comes from Coal, Natural Gas, and Nuclear. So light bulbs don't mean didly in the fight against terror. Those 8MPG SUVs, on the other hand...
Point 2: The US doesn't get terribly much oil from the Middle East. Most of the US' oil comes from the US (last time I checked the numbers, we were still the #2 producer of oil on the planet, but Russia's output has gone up quite a lot recently), Venezuela, and Mexico. Oil from Arab countries is less than 20% of US consumption.
It's the Japanese and Europeans who are proping up the dictators in the Middle East, which explains their reluctance to do anything but kowtow to these tyrants.
-jon
Capping DSL/Cable downloads is probably going to be just fine for most people. I am a heavy user, and I would be surprised if I was passing 1GB/month.
-jon
Besides, if the government wanted to "get" you, I doubt that a jury trial would help. If you're paranoid about such things, you'd probably believe that the government would rig the trial, jury or not. The American system works because, by and large, Americans believe their government will do the right thing. Aside from the insane nut-jobs who think that Jews and/or the CIA destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon so the US could get oil from Central Asia, I don't think too many people think the US government has overstepped its bounds.
Quite seriously, I think the government is the least of anyone's worries. If Palestinian-style suicide bombing (or Tamil-style, as they were the ones who really perfected the technique) becomes common in the US (as many people are predicting will happen), Muslims in the US are going to be begging the government for protection from mobs.
-jon
And do you really think the government is arresting people because they went to Egypt on vacation? Are you a troll or paranoid?
The sky isn't falling, we aren't being invaded.
Tell that to the families of the 3,000 people killed in New York. When they kick your ass, I'll be smiling.
-jon
-jon
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs _history/02_c12.html
As for other examples, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War; it was restored in 1866.
http://www.civil-liberties.com/pages/did_lincoln.h tm
And repugnant or not, the Supreme Court did uphold the decision to intern Japanese-Americans (mentioned in the above supreme court link).
-jon
As for the rest of your paranoid rantings, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact," as Justice Arthur Goldberg once said. Lincoln was the president who suspended the most civil liberties. Last time I checked, the US survived, and quite possibly did so because he played so fast and loose with civil liberties.
I trust the government to do the right thing because in the US, the people are the government. If the awful day arrives where that is no longer the case, then we can hope that the gun "nuts" are still well armed...because they're our only hope.
-jon
Political gender has everything to do with the nitwits who seem to think that the Bush (or any Republican) administration is the reincarnation of the Third Reich. Just because you don't think so doesn't invalidate the point.
-jon
2. Precedent was established in 1942 during WW II. Democratic president, even.
-jon
Of course, since you know everything, you can just tell us all the name of the person who sent out the anthrax letters, show us your proof (or is your word proof enough?), and show up the FBI.
-jon
Right. So all of the following companies are just about to fall down:
CIBC
Bank of America
Standard Bank
Sallie Mae
And that was just part of the client list from the first hit that came back when I typed in "Java Banking."
Bunch of failing loser companies, aren't they?
-jon
Second, the nutjobs I am referring to are the ones who think they are god's chosen people. In strict Jewish law this is taken to mean that it is ok for a jew to rob a non jew, for a jew to cheat a non jew, for a jew to kill a non jew, and essentially that non jews are animals. How is this different than the Arabs attitude to the jews? It really is a simple pot kettle black case in these circumstances.
This is a standard anti-Semitic libel. There is no such anything in Jewish law. In fact, the exact opposite is true; Jewish law commands Jews to treat non-Jews who live among them well, "for you were strangers in a land not yours." Other laws speak of making sure not to do ill to non-Jews, lest it reflect poorly on Jews in general.
Anything else you'd care to make up? Or would you just like to quote from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
-jon