Yep. For years I've been making a living writing java applications - i.e. server code (wouldn't YOU rather write a server app in a language with huge networking libraries and some really sweet services already built for you?:) OTOH, pointing out on/. that Java's a great application language and the cheesy web stuff is a just a sidelight is kinda like peeing on a forest fire....
Over the last few years, I've spent a whole lot of (professional, mind you) time writing Java - all of it in server applications. Java's turned into a great platform to write server/network apps in. But even for java apps (let's not even *talk* about how pathetic applets still are), the GUI toolkit is still not really worth the trouble.
Java can drop off the face of web browsers everywhere, and it won't hurt the language's future in the slightest. Well, maybe it'll give sun an excuse to try yet again at putting together a UI toolkit....:)
robot's desire to understand humanity?
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
Didn't you guys love the symmetry of the robot's "human" desire to understand humanity? That he already had what he was looing for but didn't even know it? Well, it was probably just me
Actually, I just thought it was a really bad Star Trek: NG episode....:)
the monopoly case was bought off as of last November. check out opensecrets.org, click on George W. Bush's name, and do a donor search for "microsoft" and find out just how many MS execs "just happened" to donate large chunks of cash simultaneously (it's called bundling donations). Not that they didn't hedge their bets; there's a nice long list if you search for "Al Gore" as well, and all of this is just the hard, "official" donations.
What happens next is left as an exercise for the reader.
And, trust me, it's corporate customers that make microsoft their money. They could take or leave any home user (just so long as there's not a big trend) - but corporations that buy site licenses (at full price) for 100-100,000 copies of Windows, Office, etc, that's where the money is. And those are the people who, for fear of legal liability, have to at least try to stay in compliance with the licenses.
Microsoft isn't worried about "protecting" anything here. The whole intent is to use the license text as one more place to spread FUD (and in this case, FUD with legal overtones) about using anyting "open source" or "free".
I mean, come on; They'd love to make it so you must agree to use (and thus buy) only Microsoft tools to work with their stuff (and god knows they try, by obfuscating their APIs and then documenting them incorrectly), but they'll take what they can get.
Of course, gcc (egcs) is optimized for x86, and not powerpc.
Let alone Linux itself... the PPC ports of all this stuff are a bit behind the times. I'd be interested to see someone write/port some tests between *BSD on Intel and Darwin on Mac; that would be a more level comparison. Too bad I don't have much free time at the moment...
Since someone has to point it out, I guess I'll have a go and say that those tests were/would be apples-and-apples comparisons... IF GCC and the Linux kernel are equally optimized for Apple hardware as they are for Intel! He even mentions this in his benchmarks.
Trust me, if you've ever played with the PPC ports... they're definately behind the times, and I can only imagine how far they are from taking actual advantage of the hardware (a lot of stuff is barely supported, let alone clean and optimized); Intel is Linux's home platform so OF COURSE it performs better there.
Another, more interesting, benchmark would be to do some tests from a *BSD on intel and Darwin-only on Apple hardware. Those should be a bit more "at home" and put these tests on more level ground.
Just for reference, and to add a bit of fact to the flamewar, I just hit the site with Netscape 4.7 from my Linux box. The result? A page reading, to start,
Unsupported Browser
You cannot access the Government Gateway at the moment. This is because you are either using an old version of a browser, or the browser you are using does not have the correct settings. Read this page to find out which browsers are supported and which settings to use.
Supported Browsers
We have made the Government Gateway compatible with as many browsers as possible, on both PCs and Macintoshes. (snip)
BTW, for some reason I had to remove the whitespace from pasting to get this past the Lameness filter. No idea why.
And by the laws of most states, in situations where the corporation becomes a menace, the law often requires the states to take action and revoke the charter.
In practice, this virtually never happens, since a corporation that's dead can't lobby or donate to a re-election campaign. And the news media in the US (or its corporate owners) has no desire to point this fact out to most citizens who may not even know about it, including possibly/. editors and SiliconValley columnists. But it's still the law.
Legislation should be narrowly targeted to provide law enforcement with the tools
they need to combat abuses without opening the floodgates to frivolous litigation or
interfering with legitimate uses of e-mail for marketing purposes," said the [competing] bill's
sponsor, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
- (emphasis mine)
Yeah, that would make sense. That wasn't the first thing I though of, obviously. (And I'm assuming that you're not actually trolling with this one, 'cause that post accidentally made sense if you were.:)
In that context, I'd guess the "recall and/or destroy" that everyone went "huh?" about was likely just in there to get attention. Eh?
That'd be funny. The yahoo article did say "destruction of products owned by the defendants", though, so I wouldn't worry about your personal CDRW drive motor too much.
It does make you wonder how in the world everyone got to be using that magnet material without *realizing* it was under patent, though. There's gotta be a story there - maybe a "publish the method but forget to mention the patent" story a la LZW compression? Anyone have more info?
they're actually starting to make more noise about their PPC and Alpha versions - I've even seen 'em in a store here, which surprised me slightly. Yeah, SuSe is quite alive and well - they're still the top distro over in Europe, last I heard. Just don't be surprised by the odd bit of German in the docs that the translators missed.:)
I think more common still, from my past experience, are companies who say "we'll *try* to stay more-or-less compliant, but we're not going to devote the time and energy to make sure we're always 100% there". Given that a 100 person company can have twice that many systems - between desktops, sales laptops, extra systems, servers, etc - they'd end up tying IS to accounting and totally occupying people on both ends (if you're a 100 person company, you don't really have those people to spare, much less if you're smaller). So in practice, they'll periodically audit and buy "approximately" as many licenses as they're using.
The prospect with the subscriptions, as well as UCITA-esque "monitoring and self-help" shutdown is that it would require a lot of extra effort from these companies to stay 100% on top of it, not that they'd end up buying many more licenses. (well, at least not for 3 years:).
Most working musicians I know - myself included - are more than happy to provide access to their music, be it tracks in MP3 format or what have you. It's the record labels - the same ones that pay musicians $1 - $0.50 (if even that) per CD that hate the thought of anyone hearing something that they didn't get their $15 share for.
Come on,/. has posted no end of stories about RIAA abuses of musicians. Think before you post goes for editors too, guys...
This fact has found its way up here before, but every year over 2000 American kids under 19 years old are killed - by suicide.
Strangely, that doesn't seem to make the evening news. So they sensationalize the killings, but then they COMPLETELY IGNORE the fact that for each of these killers, there are a THOUSAND or so who give in to the same real pressures (which are not video games) but quietly take only their own lives?
Look, you don't want to kill yourself after playing a video game. Anyone who can't tell the difference between a video game and real life probably also should never have been promoted to high school in the first place. The point is - the real problem is systemic, and it's not entertainment or whatever passes for it. It's the fact that the high schools that I and my friends remember were damn inhumane places to be for four years.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here. But this is something that I wish would get noticed - these few killings almost make a red herring to the fact that a huge number of deaths occur in this country, and actually only a small number of these kids take action against anyone but themselves.
Facts about suicide: More people die from suicide than from homicide in the U.S. Every day approximately 86 Americans commit suicide, and 1500 people attempt it. Nationwide in 1997, 21 percent of high school students had seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 8 percent had attempted suicide. Females are more likely than males to attempt suicide; males are more likely to die in their first attempt.
Ummm... AsbestosRush.... I think he was being sarcastic, dude. No lawsuit like this is ever gonna be a good one.
But I still wouldn't blame the MPAA, RIAA, and much less, a gaming company.
I also think he's got a point in there too - I mean, watching a brutal murder vividly portrayed on HBO or whatever *I* find more disturbing than watching some pixels fly around - but that wasn't any kind of serious suggestion. It was more of "get a clue, everyone".
IBM's actually partnered with a number of distro vendors, including SuSe, for different ranges of hardware. I get the feeling that IBM's still trying to figure out which distros they want to offer for PCs and notebooks, where there are a lot of "mainstream" choices and they're not (yet) equipped to support/manage/ship all possible configurations.
The point, however, is to get submissions from people who aren't lawyers - and give them a bit of motivation to collect the stuff they might know about together for BQ.
Now, $10k isn't a huge sum of money to a software developer, either. But combine that with an interest in what BQ tries to do, and it's worth waking up for.
I haven't read the disputed submission yet - but obviously judging this particular entry has gotta be a delicate issue no matter what Jeff Bezos publicly says. Fortunately, as the article points out, BN.com already unearthed substantial prior art (enough for an appeals court to issue an injunction against amazon), so the point regarding this patent may fortunately be moot.
This isn't intended as flamebait, but is something that needs to be pointed out. It seems that Slash's editors have long since written off Java as "something for web browsers", but in fact (as those of us who do this stuff for a living know) Java these days is FAR AND AWAY most used in back-end software - enterprise applications, application servers, etc. Granted, these aren't tools that most websites use, or ever will - and that's the point; Java is NOT JUST A WEBSITE OR WEB-BROWSER LANGUAGE! It has great stuff for that, sure. But that's not it's strength.
Probably everyone to read this either (1) already knows that or (3) could care less and wants to get back to trolling. Well, fine. Have fun. But just keep that in the back of your mind.
Slashdot Mirror
The high-end PowerMacs have DVDR-CDRW drives too I believe. Not sure who makes the drives though.
Yep. For years I've been making a living writing java applications - i.e. server code (wouldn't YOU rather write a server app in a language with huge networking libraries and some really sweet services already built for you? :) OTOH, pointing out on /. that Java's a great application language and the cheesy web stuff is a just a sidelight is kinda like peeing on a forest fire....
Over the last few years, I've spent a whole lot of (professional, mind you) time writing Java - all of it in server applications. Java's turned into a great platform to write server/network apps in. But even for java apps (let's not even *talk* about how pathetic applets still are), the GUI toolkit is still not really worth the trouble.
:)
Java can drop off the face of web browsers everywhere, and it won't hurt the language's future in the slightest. Well, maybe it'll give sun an excuse to try yet again at putting together a UI toolkit....
Didn't you guys love the symmetry of the robot's "human" desire to understand humanity? That he already had what he was looing for but didn't even know it? Well, it was probably just me
:)
Actually, I just thought it was a really bad Star Trek: NG episode....
the monopoly case was bought off as of last November. check out opensecrets.org, click on George W. Bush's name, and do a donor search for "microsoft" and find out just how many MS execs "just happened" to donate large chunks of cash simultaneously (it's called bundling donations). Not that they didn't hedge their bets; there's a nice long list if you search for "Al Gore" as well, and all of this is just the hard, "official" donations.
What happens next is left as an exercise for the reader.
And, trust me, it's corporate customers that make microsoft their money. They could take or leave any home user (just so long as there's not a big trend) - but corporations that buy site licenses (at full price) for 100-100,000 copies of Windows, Office, etc, that's where the money is. And those are the people who, for fear of legal liability, have to at least try to stay in compliance with the licenses.
Good job pointing out interix, btw - I keep forgetting about it, and it's a *wonderful* example...
Microsoft isn't worried about "protecting" anything here. The whole intent is to use the license text as one more place to spread FUD (and in this case, FUD with legal overtones) about using anyting "open source" or "free".
I mean, come on; They'd love to make it so you must agree to use (and thus buy) only Microsoft tools to work with their stuff (and god knows they try, by obfuscating their APIs and then documenting them incorrectly), but they'll take what they can get.
Of course, gcc (egcs) is optimized for x86, and not powerpc.
Let alone Linux itself... the PPC ports of all this stuff are a bit behind the times. I'd be interested to see someone write/port some tests between *BSD on Intel and Darwin on Mac; that would be a more level comparison. Too bad I don't have much free time at the moment...
Since someone has to point it out, I guess I'll have a go and say that those tests were/would be apples-and-apples comparisons... IF GCC and the Linux kernel are equally optimized for Apple hardware as they are for Intel! He even mentions this in his benchmarks.
Trust me, if you've ever played with the PPC ports... they're definately behind the times, and I can only imagine how far they are from taking actual advantage of the hardware (a lot of stuff is barely supported, let alone clean and optimized); Intel is Linux's home platform so OF COURSE it performs better there.
Another, more interesting, benchmark would be to do some tests from a *BSD on intel and Darwin-only on Apple hardware. Those should be a bit more "at home" and put these tests on more level ground.
Just for reference, and to add a bit of fact to the flamewar, I just hit the site with Netscape 4.7 from my Linux box. The result? A page reading, to start,
Unsupported Browser
You cannot access the Government Gateway at the moment. This is because you are either using an old version of a browser, or the browser you are using does not have the correct settings. Read this page to find out which browsers are supported and which settings to use.
Supported Browsers
We have made the Government Gateway compatible with as many browsers as possible, on both PCs and Macintoshes. (snip)
BTW, for some reason I had to remove the whitespace from pasting to get this past the Lameness filter. No idea why.
And by the laws of most states, in situations where the corporation becomes a menace, the law often requires the states to take action and revoke the charter.
/. editors and SiliconValley columnists. But it's still the law.
In practice, this virtually never happens, since a corporation that's dead can't lobby or donate to a re-election campaign. And the news media in the US (or its corporate owners) has no desire to point this fact out to most citizens who may not even know about it, including possibly
Legislation should be narrowly targeted to provide law enforcement with the tools they need to combat abuses without opening the floodgates to frivolous litigation or interfering with legitimate uses of e-mail for marketing purposes," said the [competing] bill's sponsor, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. - (emphasis mine)
:)
Um. Excuse me. I thought that was the point?
Yeah, that would make sense. That wasn't the first thing I though of, obviously. (And I'm assuming that you're not actually trolling with this one, 'cause that post accidentally made sense if you were. :)
In that context, I'd guess the "recall and/or destroy" that everyone went "huh?" about was likely just in there to get attention. Eh?
That'd be funny. The yahoo article did say "destruction of products owned by the defendants", though, so I wouldn't worry about your personal CDRW drive motor too much.
It does make you wonder how in the world everyone got to be using that magnet material without *realizing* it was under patent, though. There's gotta be a story there - maybe a "publish the method but forget to mention the patent" story a la LZW compression? Anyone have more info?
Oh yeah - for the curious:
d ex.html
http://www.suse.com/us/products/susesoft/alpha/in
they're actually starting to make more noise about their PPC and Alpha versions - I've even seen 'em in a store here, which surprised me slightly. Yeah, SuSe is quite alive and well - they're still the top distro over in Europe, last I heard. Just don't be surprised by the odd bit of German in the docs that the translators missed. :)
I think more common still, from my past experience, are companies who say "we'll *try* to stay more-or-less compliant, but we're not going to devote the time and energy to make sure we're always 100% there". Given that a 100 person company can have twice that many systems - between desktops, sales laptops, extra systems, servers, etc - they'd end up tying IS to accounting and totally occupying people on both ends (if you're a 100 person company, you don't really have those people to spare, much less if you're smaller). So in practice, they'll periodically audit and buy "approximately" as many licenses as they're using.
:).
The prospect with the subscriptions, as well as UCITA-esque "monitoring and self-help" shutdown is that it would require a lot of extra effort from these companies to stay 100% on top of it, not that they'd end up buying many more licenses. (well, at least not for 3 years
just my $00.015.
Most working musicians I know - myself included - are more than happy to provide access to their music, be it tracks in MP3 format or what have you. It's the record labels - the same ones that pay musicians $1 - $0.50 (if even that) per CD that hate the thought of anyone hearing something that they didn't get their $15 share for.
/. has posted no end of stories about RIAA abuses of musicians. Think before you post goes for editors too, guys...
Come on,
Obviously you're living in a fantasy slashdot. Can I come too?
This fact has found its way up here before, but every year over 2000 American kids under 19 years old are killed - by suicide.
Strangely, that doesn't seem to make the evening news. So they sensationalize the killings, but then they COMPLETELY IGNORE the fact that for each of these killers, there are a THOUSAND or so who give in to the same real pressures (which are not video games) but quietly take only their own lives?
Look, you don't want to kill yourself after playing a video game. Anyone who can't tell the difference between a video game and real life probably also should never have been promoted to high school in the first place. The point is - the real problem is systemic, and it's not entertainment or whatever passes for it. It's the fact that the high schools that I and my friends remember were damn inhumane places to be for four years.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here. But this is something that I wish would get noticed - these few killings almost make a red herring to the fact that a huge number of deaths occur in this country, and actually only a small number of these kids take action against anyone but themselves.
Facts about suicide: More people die from suicide than from homicide in the U.S. Every day approximately 86 Americans commit suicide, and 1500 people attempt it. Nationwide in 1997, 21 percent of high school students had seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 8 percent had attempted suicide. Females are more likely than males to attempt suicide; males are more likely to die in their first attempt.
Quotes from the Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/safeusa/suicide.htm
Ummm... AsbestosRush.... I think he was being sarcastic, dude. No lawsuit like this is ever gonna be a good one.
But I still wouldn't blame the MPAA, RIAA, and much less, a gaming company.
I also think he's got a point in there too - I mean, watching a brutal murder vividly portrayed on HBO or whatever *I* find more disturbing than watching some pixels fly around - but that wasn't any kind of serious suggestion. It was more of "get a clue, everyone".
IBM's actually partnered with a number of distro vendors, including SuSe, for different ranges of hardware. I get the feeling that IBM's still trying to figure out which distros they want to offer for PCs and notebooks, where there are a lot of "mainstream" choices and they're not (yet) equipped to support/manage/ship all possible configurations.
You're right, $10k is peanuts to a patent lawyer.
The point, however, is to get submissions from people who aren't lawyers - and give them a bit of motivation to collect the stuff they might know about together for BQ.
Now, $10k isn't a huge sum of money to a software developer, either. But combine that with an interest in what BQ tries to do, and it's worth waking up for.
I haven't read the disputed submission yet - but obviously judging this particular entry has gotta be a delicate issue no matter what Jeff Bezos publicly says. Fortunately, as the article points out, BN.com already unearthed substantial prior art (enough for an appeals court to issue an injunction against amazon), so the point regarding this patent may fortunately be moot.
This isn't intended as flamebait, but is something that needs to be pointed out. It seems that Slash's editors have long since written off Java as "something for web browsers", but in fact (as those of us who do this stuff for a living know) Java these days is FAR AND AWAY most used in back-end software - enterprise applications, application servers, etc. Granted, these aren't tools that most websites use, or ever will - and that's the point; Java is NOT JUST A WEBSITE OR WEB-BROWSER LANGUAGE! It has great stuff for that, sure. But that's not it's strength.
Probably everyone to read this either (1) already knows that or (3) could care less and wants to get back to trolling. Well, fine. Have fun. But just keep that in the back of your mind.