So with my admittedly meager research (reading Slashdot and other sites), I can't figure out if the Wikileaks people are good guys or bad guys. Which is it?
It's subjective, but in general when they reveal the cost of civilian life in the war that the government has tried to conceal that is generally viewed as them being the good guys. Conversely when they name informants/defectors within the enemy forces they would generally be viewed as bad.
Sometimes secrecy is necessary and other times it is not, it seems both sides want to for an absolute on this though.
It doesn't matter that he doesn't have ALL the knowledge in his brain to do this from scratch.
You'd think he'd at least made some kind of an effort, as opposed to asking 'can someone design my entire IT infrastructure'. Based on his questions he hasn't even done a proper requirements analysis yet.
A good gaming rig costs no more than $500 to assemble (not including monitor, just like a console.) Spend anything more than that and you are heavily into the diminishing returns region of the price curve.
Bullshit, at the time the PS3 was released you had to spend around that much - if not more - just on the graphics card to get visuals on par with the PS3.
All that matters is that it's open to third party hardware and third party developers in general.
The three major video game consoles are less open than even an iPhone, yet consoles beat PCs in sales in several genres.
Apples and Oranges. The console business model is different in that, break-even on the hardware, R&D costs and profit has to be made from game sales because the consoles are sold (at least at the beginning) at less than it costs just to make them, before even thinking about paying back R&D costs and making a profit. Apple makes a massive profit on the hardware as it is sold, they don't rely on iTunes/AppStore sales to break even or make a profit, the equivalent console would be the current lock-down status but with a ~$3500 upfront cost for the hardware, obviously not viable and people would go with gaming PCs instead.
As much as I hate to think this way, we really do need to have a random act of terror happen involving a plane and loss of life to show that these crazy TSA regulations are really just theater.
Look at how well terrorism has worked so far, the people that allowed it to work so well would just use that as justification for even more invasive security measures - full mandatory cavity searches? - and the public will take it just as they have taken the current invasive searches. 9/11 proved that terrorism works and that the full impact of that one act still hasn't been felt almost a decade later, they are still pushing more invasive security measures because of that one event. America needs to stand up to terrorism, at the moment terrorism is walking all over America.
The reason the 9/11 attacks worked so well was mainly because no one had ever tried it before.
Exactly! Nowadays even if a terrorist were able to hijack a plane with a makeshift knife he would be jumped by 1/2 the passengers.
And 'home of the brave'? The TSA is so shit-scared that they'll touch up a 3-year-old because he/she might be carrying nail clippers, doesn't that show just how successful the 9/11 terrorist attacks actually were?
But the fact that Windows and OS X and many other lesser OS have fixed this problem years ago could also be used to show that Open Source is not quite as up on the times as you would like to think.
How are they lesser OSs if you're toting them as being the ones that are 'with the times'? And scheduling in Windows and OSX isn't perfect by a long shot, though Vista and 7 are much improved over XP.
From what it sounds like, MeeGo might be a less than stellar MID or phone OS compared to say, Android,
If MeeGo can match or beat its predecessor, it will be better than Android.
- Maemo user
MeeGo needs to improve upon Maemo's basic functionality of supporting applications. Modest is just not good and the Application Manager is WAY too slow. I really like Maemo but the fact that some basic functionality lacks polish means widespread adoption is difficult to achieve.
Linux is a server OS that has been migrated to desktops, cell phones, set-top boxes, and tons of other devices.
Linux is just an operating system kernel, it is often customised for the target platform. It is not explicitly for Servers, Desktops, Mobile or Embedded devices.
Maybe I'm being naive, but right now C# looks fairly tempting.
Yes, you are incredibly naive. People are looking to flee Java because of the greedy and proprietary corporation behind it, Oracle, and you think they should run into the arms of Microsoft? Get a clue.
People want to get away from the petty bickering of multiple organisations that are willing to stall development to fulfill their own agendas. What exactly do you think MS is going to do?
As for objective-C. it's in the public domain so it's not anymore beholden to apple than C++ is.
The same as Java, C#, etc... But that's just the language.
Apple just keeps it growing since they are the primary beneficiaries. As a result many ObjectivC libs are apple only, but that's also true of libraries written for any platform like windows or linux or solaris.
You mean the thing that makes it useful, like MS and the.Net Framework on Windows, the Java Standard Library on JVMs.
With Microsofts history over the past 20 years, I'd say they won't pull any strange tricks until enough people have adapted it and are locked in, then they will suddenly have a change of heart.
Predominantly because exceptions were meant for exceptional circumstances, as in 'holy shit something totally bad just happened, save what you can and bail out with an error' (in which case a memory leak is no issue) as opposed to basic error checking like 'whoops, couldn't open the file you wanted for because you didn't check to see if it existed first'.
C++ is every bit as portable as assembly. All you need to know is what parts fail on which platforms, compile 15 different ways, and pray it all works after someone upgrades something.
And of course all Java-language-supporting VMs (harmony, openjdk, dalvik, jRockit) will run your specific Java code.
Maybe I don't know enough about JCP's value to Oracle, but it seems to me that Oracle is the kind of company that would happily get rid of other people's input in their product, and then blame it on Apache.
That's my thought too, threatening Oracle with a 'give it to us or we'll go away and leave it to you' doesn't seem wise when factoring in Oracle's history.
Slashdot Mirror
So with my admittedly meager research (reading Slashdot and other sites), I can't figure out if the Wikileaks people are good guys or bad guys. Which is it?
It's subjective, but in general when they reveal the cost of civilian life in the war that the government has tried to conceal that is generally viewed as them being the good guys. Conversely when they name informants/defectors within the enemy forces they would generally be viewed as bad.
Sometimes secrecy is necessary and other times it is not, it seems both sides want to for an absolute on this though.
Well isn't that a given since since it is divided by 2?
Well done, you got the joke.
It's not totally obvious how to quit apps
And the task manager is an utterly pointless POS.
It doesn't matter that he doesn't have ALL the knowledge in his brain to do this from scratch.
You'd think he'd at least made some kind of an effort, as opposed to asking 'can someone design my entire IT infrastructure'. Based on his questions he hasn't even done a proper requirements analysis yet.
Android as a phone platform is outselling iOS as a phone platform.
Except it's not. iOS outsells Android.
just saying that doesn't make it true, to refute a claim you need to use a little thing called evidence
A good gaming rig costs no more than $500 to assemble (not including monitor, just like a console.) Spend anything more than that and you are heavily into the diminishing returns region of the price curve.
Bullshit, at the time the PS3 was released you had to spend around that much - if not more - just on the graphics card to get visuals on par with the PS3.
All that matters is that it's open to third party hardware and third party developers in general.
The three major video game consoles are less open than even an iPhone, yet consoles beat PCs in sales in several genres.
Apples and Oranges. The console business model is different in that, break-even on the hardware, R&D costs and profit has to be made from game sales because the consoles are sold (at least at the beginning) at less than it costs just to make them, before even thinking about paying back R&D costs and making a profit. Apple makes a massive profit on the hardware as it is sold, they don't rely on iTunes/AppStore sales to break even or make a profit, the equivalent console would be the current lock-down status but with a ~$3500 upfront cost for the hardware, obviously not viable and people would go with gaming PCs instead.
Tell me, exactly what does the US government have to do to its citizens for it to be newsworthy?
10 years ago it would have been a ridiculous and laughable to suggest 'publicly fondle them' as a response to that question.
As much as I hate to think this way, we really do need to have a random act of terror happen involving a plane and loss of life to show that these crazy TSA regulations are really just theater.
Look at how well terrorism has worked so far, the people that allowed it to work so well would just use that as justification for even more invasive security measures - full mandatory cavity searches? - and the public will take it just as they have taken the current invasive searches. 9/11 proved that terrorism works and that the full impact of that one act still hasn't been felt almost a decade later, they are still pushing more invasive security measures because of that one event. America needs to stand up to terrorism, at the moment terrorism is walking all over America.
The reason the 9/11 attacks worked so well was mainly because no one had ever tried it before.
Exactly! Nowadays even if a terrorist were able to hijack a plane with a makeshift knife he would be jumped by 1/2 the passengers.
And 'home of the brave'? The TSA is so shit-scared that they'll touch up a 3-year-old because he/she might be carrying nail clippers, doesn't that show just how successful the 9/11 terrorist attacks actually were?
But the fact that Windows and OS X and many other lesser OS have fixed this problem years ago could also be used to show that Open Source is not quite as up on the times as you would like to think.
How are they lesser OSs if you're toting them as being the ones that are 'with the times'? And scheduling in Windows and OSX isn't perfect by a long shot, though Vista and 7 are much improved over XP.
From what it sounds like, MeeGo might be a less than stellar MID or phone OS compared to say, Android,
If MeeGo can match or beat its predecessor, it will be better than Android.
- Maemo user
MeeGo needs to improve upon Maemo's basic functionality of supporting applications. Modest is just not good and the Application Manager is WAY too slow. I really like Maemo but the fact that some basic functionality lacks polish means widespread adoption is difficult to achieve.
Linux is a server OS that has been migrated to desktops, cell phones, set-top boxes, and tons of other devices.
Linux is just an operating system kernel, it is often customised for the target platform. It is not explicitly for Servers, Desktops, Mobile or Embedded devices.
People want to get away from the petty bickering of multiple organisations that are willing to stall development to fulfill their own agendas.
No, people want to get away from Oracle because they're a bunch of greedy, corporate assholes. Just like Microsoft.
The JCP was fine until different members - mainly Oracle and ASF - started pushing their own conflicting agendas, C# does not have this problem.
In the past, they pretended to be multi-platform when IE came out by having a version for Linux.
That was over a decade ago, and they dropped it because no-one used it.
Before Mono, all their language and development tools were based around the Windows operating system.
So in the past they were Windows-only, now not. Great.
Maybe I'm being naive, but right now C# looks fairly tempting.
Yes, you are incredibly naive. People are looking to flee Java because of the greedy and proprietary corporation behind it, Oracle, and you think they should run into the arms of Microsoft? Get a clue.
People want to get away from the petty bickering of multiple organisations that are willing to stall development to fulfill their own agendas. What exactly do you think MS is going to do?
As for objective-C. it's in the public domain so it's not anymore beholden to apple than C++ is.
The same as Java, C#, etc... But that's just the language.
Apple just keeps it growing since they are the primary beneficiaries. As a result many ObjectivC libs are apple only, but that's also true of libraries written for any platform like windows or linux or solaris.
You mean the thing that makes it useful, like MS and the .Net Framework on Windows, the Java Standard Library on JVMs.
Plus, C# is 4 TIMES slower than Java:
http://trustleap.com/
That link doesn't show that at all.
With Microsofts history over the past 20 years, I'd say they won't pull any strange tricks until enough people have adapted it and are locked in, then they will suddenly have a change of heart.
Specifically what makes you think that?
Opting out of the body scanner is opting in to the invasive pat-down.
I would LOVE to see what happens if a group of school children decided 'opt-out'.
C++'s exception support is hilariously broken.
Predominantly because exceptions were meant for exceptional circumstances, as in 'holy shit something totally bad just happened, save what you can and bail out with an error' (in which case a memory leak is no issue) as opposed to basic error checking like 'whoops, couldn't open the file you wanted for because you didn't check to see if it existed first'.
C++ is every bit as portable as assembly. All you need to know is what parts fail on which platforms, compile 15 different ways, and pray it all works after someone upgrades something.
And of course all Java-language-supporting VMs (harmony, openjdk, dalvik, jRockit) will run your specific Java code.
Actually I think you'll find that, by and large, terrorists aren't attacking anything in the USA.
Actually I think you'll find that, by and large, terrorists aren't just islamic extremists.
Maybe I don't know enough about JCP's value to Oracle, but it seems to me that Oracle is the kind of company that would happily get rid of other people's input in their product, and then blame it on Apache.
That's my thought too, threatening Oracle with a 'give it to us or we'll go away and leave it to you' doesn't seem wise when factoring in Oracle's history.