Fight Club stinks. It hasn't a single redeeming feature. YMMV.
The Road Warrior is a metaphor for The Wizard of Oz. Think about it. Mel has a squeaky metal joint. He needs a heart, a heart he lost "in the roar of an engine." He comes to care about something other than himself again and he finds his heart. Watch the movie again and don't think Clint Eastwood. Think "The Tin Man." You'll be surprised how thoroughly The Wizard of Oz pervades the movie. Strange. Fun. Exciting. Surprisingly intellectual mayhem. One of my all-time faves.
Memento. A very good movie. Brilliantly original structure, although in many ways a routine noir, it manages to surprise through its unique structure and to say something very poignant about truth and memory. Very very good.
The Usual Suspects. Other than brilliant performances and photography, I thought this was one of the most routine movies I've heard otherwise intelligent people rave about. Violent and pointless. Saw the "surprise" coming from a million miles away. Damned fine acting and cinematography though. Worth seeing.
I don't know Hard Boiled. I'll check it out.
Shaolin Soccer sounds like one I'd like. I'll check it out too.
Enemy at the Gates? Huh? Why?!?
The Game. Again, other than a glossy look, WHY?!?
Schindler's List. Very good. A movie that pushes all the "greatness buttons" and still manages to be very good.
Blade Runner. Good. One of the best science fiction movies ever, although that is damning with faint praise.
Chunking Express. Solid good movie.
The Conversation. Good writing. Great actor.
The French Connection. Fair writing. Great actor.
Full Metal Jacket. The first 50 minutes may be the best movie I ever saw. Falls apart after that. Okay, okay. The guys being shot in the square are a metaphor for our involvement in the war. I got it already. I got it!
Cube. An object lesson on how to make a 90 minute movie out of a 30 minute Twilight Zone episode and do it all on the smallest budget possible. However, it manages to be better than any other movie I've seen with similar ambitions. Ultimately pointless.
Trainspotting. Brilliant. Tragic. Honest.
Band of Brothers. Good.
Enemy Mine. Another movie that starts brilliantly and then falls into routine mayhem. Good with flaws.
Quills. Great acting.
But what about:
Network Dr. Strangelove Rear Window North by Northwest Citizen Kane Fearless Witness Rashomon The Seven Samurai Greed Modern Times Duck Soup The General The Snapper Apollo 13 (I must be one of the few people who thinks this is a great film -- it must help to have lived through it the first time and to remember sitting on the stairs listening waiting for Neil to walk, just like the scene in this movie. I usually dislike Opie's movies for out Speilberging Speilberg, but this one worked for me. Don't ask me why.) The Quiet Man The Philidelphia Story The Manchurian Candidate The Sting Life of Brian The Searchers The Sea Hawk The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version of course) Forbidden Planet Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original version, not 70's remake) The Maltese Falcon The African Queen The Man Who Would Be King and so many more...
Stories like this bring out the neverending "Linux will never make it on the desktop" (which used to be the "Linux will never make it") debate.
In my home, which has five computers running more or less all the time, 80% of the desktops run Linux (for those of you new to elementary arithmetic, that means there is one Windows box). I am, however, a dedicated techie. My laptop runs Linux, and I much prefer it to running Windows.
Linux will "make it" on the desktop, but it depends on what you mean by "making it." I suspect Linux is running on hundreds of thousands of desktops, but the owners/operators of those desktops put it there themselves.
For the kind of people who want Linux on their desktops, this is just not that hard to do. For the people for whom this would be difficult, Linux is probably not something they want in the first place.
Most of the major OEMs have "per unit" licensing arrangements with the Redmond Behemoth. So, without a decent proce break for a Linux-only machine (in fact, in many cases no proce break at all), there isn't a lot of incentive to hunt down the machine preloaded with Linux. So you buy whatever is handy that has the features you want and you add to your collection of Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/xp restore CDs.
That means that in the narrow margin PC hardware business you have to set up production of Linux PCs (which has certain fixed costs) and then sell maybe 50 such machines a year. That doesn't make money.
I am a total Free Software guy, but that doesn't mean I want to lose money. Nor does IBM.
Do not underestimate the power of inertia. It will be hard to make people move to Linux from Windows without either substantial price savings or some sort of "killer app." Linux is great, but is not, itself, a killer app.
Correct. In fact, Windows 3.0 386 Enchanced Mode was the result of a Microsoft programmer and a friend (who wrote the softICE debugger) hacking the virtual 8086 code into Windows one late night "to see if they could." Microsoft's innovation was when they presented the results, it went all the way to Gates who said "go for it." If this had not happened, Microsoft would be just another vedor to IBM. Gates had the brains to see that he could turn their Windows, a lackluster poor performer that had made inroads pretty much only in desktop publishing, into a direct competitor to OS/2. Windows he owned and controlled. OS/2 was jointly owned by Microsoft and IBM (I have copy of Gordon Letwin's book "Inside OS/2" with a foreword by Bill Gates in which he declares OS/2 to be the OS for the 90's).
I'm a big MS hater, but let's face it: Gates' genius is in trusting the creativity of his people.
I have thought long and hard about why software doesn't get better. I have been down the same line of thought as this poster. It is certainly true that manufacturing improved when we began using standardized and interchangable parts in a regularized industrial process. I'm not preapred to say whether or not software design can be subjected to the same process -- that is, are software solutions actually unique to circumstance, or can they be regularized into "parts" -- but I can say that industrialization wouldn't have happened the way it did if company A owned the "intellectual property" of the #10 machine screw and company B owned the intellectual property of the lag bolt and company C owned the intellectual property of the spark plug. What if company A, B & C's profitability came solely from the fact that only they could produce those products, not because they were hard to make, but because they had a legal possession of an idea?
This is what the software industry is today. Companies owning screws, wheels, nails, and charging high prices because of the artificial shortage of technique. Why didn't manufacturing remain this way? Because patents expire. There is no doubt that patent system in the U.S.A. has gone nuts, giving out ridculous patents on absurd "non-inventions," but these patents still have the virtue of expiration. In "hardware" at least, patents give you the desire to innovate ("I can make mony before my idea is stolen") AND they "promote the useful arts" by making sure that the idea becomes public. If you patent, you must disclose. So, over time, every one of these basic parts became a commodity.
Look at Microsoft's (and the rest of the software industry, but Microsoft is far and away the largest remaining entity in the software industry) behavior in contrast: Hide, keep secret, protect intellectual property at all costs. Vigorously persue any infringement. Keep that #10 machine screw at $20 each instead of $0.02.
Now, I'll admit this may not be quite fair. An operating system or a word processor is certainly more complicated than a #10 machine screw, but switch to the internal combustion engine as the mataphor, and I think the argument holds up and is a bit more sound. If only one company had the rights to the ICE, we would not have the auto industry we have today.
I think the only hope of having interchangable software "parts" is Free Software (and obviously the GPL is the most powerful form of this, but any license that means the source I have today and my rights to modify and use it can never be taken away should have this effect to greater or lesser degree).
We also have to take an interest in politics. We have to fight the recent spate of laws that would extend the life of intellectual property. As Lawrence Lessig points out, intellectual property is not (presently) regarded in law like other property. All intellectual property is consitutionally required to expire -- to become part of the public domain. The trouble is IP holders have extended the life of copyright already, and are looking to do it again. Patents are being extended to algorithms and business methods, which I find startlingly unprecedented and it has led to ridiculous patents.
Commodity software. Interchangable software "parts." It will never happen in present legal environment. Expect software to continue to suck. Except, perhaps, for Free Software. (Plenty of which sucks, by the way, but I think the valuable and useful stuff doesn't, and that's the point. When I first downloaded Linux (in 1992) it sucked. It crashed all the time. None of it worked. That didn't last long. Apache couldn't do much more than serve static pages when I first used it. That didn't last long. Wine couldn't run solitaire when I first used it. Now, I run Quicken on it and I don't have to use Windows any more. Some obscure tools that are never taken up will continue to suck, but that's okay because they aren't used.)
Anyways, whether I'm right or wrong, technology hasn't been as exciting as this since the microprocessor first started being turned into computers by crazy hoobyists like my old man me in the mid-1970s. These are exciting times.
Um, not true. The findings of fact and conclusions of law are entered. They have survived appeal. It is only the "sentencing" (the remedy) that is in dispute. Microsoft does indeed stand convicted of violations of the Sherman Act.
"Cost" and "price" are not the same thing. It may cost less to produce an acoustically perfect digital recording than an imperfect analog one, but that doesn't mean it is wrong to charge more for it. It is perfectly legitimate to charge more for it because it is better, even if it is cheaper to make. I'm just saying that it is so damned much cheaper to make that they would still be making absolute bags of money more per unit even if they charged the same price as they do for the cassette tape.
My rant has nothing to do with "cost" and everything to do with "price." They are gouging their customers and then complaining about piracy. Piracy was (and is, IMHO) not only illegal but wrong. But so is price gouging. They could lower the price, still make money, and dramatically reduce piracy because, believe it or not, most people actually want to be honest and to obey the law. Sure, there always was piracy, and they always will be some. But draconian laws that punish the innocent with the guilty are not the answer.
The recording industry should have joined Napster, not tore it down. They should have started using some free songs as marketing tools and then sell some other songs at good low prices. They would have had bags of money out of it.
Instead they did what they did and they have had the worst two years they have ever had. They'll have more bad years until they wake up. Killing file sharing will not bring back the money. Offering file sharing WILL. If they would just realize that the market has been fundamentally changed, they would adapt and live.
They will. Or I should say, some will and they will survive. Some won't.
Read Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas." I think he's the sharpest non-techie thinker on these issues.
Hrm. Trotting out a series of philosophers and their worthy quotes doesn't a cogent argument make. I'm not sure what your point is here.
I think that all the dot-com bubble bursting proves is that the tech market always was like any other market. You know what? There is still huge demand for technical professionals with good fundamental skills. HTML/Javascript hackers, not so much. But people who can use software to engineer solutions to real business problems are still very much in demand. HTML and Javascript are actually still in demand, but those skills alone don't command 6-figure salaries any more. So what? They never should have. The invisible hand worked.
The dot-com bubble was tens of thousands of companies all in essence producing the same product. I don't think it took a rocket scientist to see that wasn't going to continue. I know I heard many people saying so the whole time it was happenning.
You know what, though? The "new economy" is still very much alive. The "hot" dot-com technologies are having their real effect in how "real" businesses organize themselves. Web technology's real economic impact is coming from enhancing the efficiency of business processes, just as all computer technology has from day one. It is all about more, faster, better, cheaper, and with less waste.
As for the drying up of the job market, sure, in No. Cal. there are queues of goateed unemployed programmers in designer sunglasses, but in the rest of the industry (and believe it or not, most of the jobs are outside Silicon Valley) the big fall-off in hiring followed Sept. 11, not the inevitable dot-com bubble. The only way in which that tragedy affected me was the disapperence of that sock-puppet dog (I thought it was funny).
Furthermore, I don't think some sort of "nationalistic" policy is the way to keep tech jobs. If they can be better done in India, they should be done in India. They might want to deal with that whole nuclear war thing first, however. Companies I work with have curtailed outsourcing plans to the subcontinent.
You left out an important thinker in your analysis: You ignored Keynes. Marx and Engels were living through the worst period of industrialization. A period of disequilibrium between the power of the bourgeois and the proliteriat. In industrial democracies, the public will is still consulted through democratic institutions (and, yes, I believe corporate money is distorting that process, but it can only go so far before voters actually do vote). I think Keynes' writing is the prism through which to view the present situation.
Moreover, "cost" is not the only component of "price." "Quality" enters in to it. The key to retaining a tech sector lead is to retain the educational and technological edge. As far as I can tell, we haven't lost that even yet, due, in no small part, to the infrastructure problems that exist in some of the other economies that seek to enter the tech economy.
I'm not sure, however, that there is anything to fear in programming shifting overseas. Some will. Some should. I think it is worthwhile to read two of Edward Yourdon's books: "Decline & Fall of the American Programmer" and "Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer" where he completely reverses the thesis of his first book. You will see that we've been here before and that the obvious conclusions are not necessarily the correct ones.
I, as an American Programmer, do not fear for my future emplyment or employability. I also welcome the participation of the rest of the world in the market of software ideas.
I see that others share my sentiment about this. The question is the wrong question. Learn and master the fundmentals. If you are into hardware, learn your electrical engineering. Master it. If it is software, learn the fundamentals of programming, systems design, algorithms, threading, etc. Learn a few fundamental languages (for the *nix world I'd say C, C++, Java, perl, shells, and then maybe some others that extend your world-view, such as lisp, scheme, and smalltalk). Learn how to express solutions for common problems in each of these languages.
I see so many programmers coming up these days whom I describe as "tool-junkies." They are programmers who know how to solve problems with one library collection, one integrated compiler suite, and nothing else (and, yes, I am referring mainly to Visual Studio, but there is a Java "tool-junkie" culture too -- Java programmers who can't work outside of their only IDE).
If you find yourself using a library without the slightest inkling of what must be happening in that library it should send warning flags up in your head. You should be able to write anything any other programmer could write. If you can't imagine how to even begin, you may be a tool-junkie. (Note that I am not saying you would have to write it as well as any other programmer -- obviously skills vary -- but you should have some idea how to tackle the problem, because you should have seen and solved something like it before. Genuinely new techniques are extremely rare. For the most part in programming you are making a symphony of familiar tropes, not breaking new ground.)
Learn fundamentals, not buzzwords, and maybe you won't find yourself looking for another job involuntarily.
Um, I believe this was my point. The music industry believes that their sales ARE going down. The solution they seek is protective legislation when the true remedy is a lower price.
Okay, now that we've descended into favorite Onion bits, I think their funniest work was in their fin-de-siecle book, Our Dumb Century.
I'm usually not a fan of scatalogical humor, but two of my favorite bits were:
FDR's Fireside Chat Last Night Just a Stream of Cuss Words.
And the huge headline: "HOLY FUCKING SHIT! MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON!" subheaded: "Armstrong's Historic First Words: 'Holy living fuck!'"
For some reason, the more swearing there was in the moon landing article, the funnier it became. I remember the moon landing and it was such a solemn thing. And yet, if anything in my entire lifetime merited this kind of "awestruck cussing" it was the moon landing. And nobody swore. Not on VOX anyways...
but if I'm going to spend $4.00 to rent a movie, why not spend $6.00 more to own it?
You have proverbially hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head. This is what the "entertainment industry" needs to realize. People pirate their stuff because it is too expensive. They are trying to maintain an imblanced market. Instead of spending money to cpoy protect and spending money to buy senators to pass bad social legislation to make petty theft a felony they should simply drop the proce to the point where people will not bother to pirate!
Personally, I've been furious with them since CDs came out costing twice as much as cassette tapes, despite the fact that they are many times cheaper to produce. I understand the theory that says I'm paying for the superior quality of CDs (yes, I agree that "quality" is a factor in price), but when the other major factor in "price" (that is: "cost to produce") is less than a thenth the cost to produce the other product, why am I paying two to three times as much?
I've pretty much stopped the legal practice of recording movies off of cable. I buy the damned things. And I like having them on my shelves. But just as with CDs, DVDs are much cheaper to produce than VHS cassettes. And don't hand me that guff about "special features." Even if we assume a ridiculous price for getting two people to sit in a studio for two hours and chatter inanely about how they rewrote the movie while they were making it (don't get me started!), a ridiculous price like $100,000, divide that over 1 million copies of a movie and that adds 10 cents. 10 godd--ned cents! Take a DVD with fancier special features (like a "MIB" or a "Harry Potter" for instance) and let's assume a million dollar proce tag on the special features. Those movies sell tens of millions of copies, so we are right back at 10 godd--ned cents! This is added on to the price of discs that cost pennies per unit to manufacture!
And then these greedy bastards have the guts to say the pimply-faced teenager who burns a few mp3 CD-Rs is a thief? Who is fleecing whom?
So, while this crusty old curmudgeon has never downloaded a song, or attempted to defeat the copy protection on a VCR, while I actually believe in and support limited IP law (you remember, copyright law before it was made perpetual for corporate owners?), I still say the "entertainment industry" is screaming because they aren't finding as much as they want when they break into our piggy banks. "They took the money before we could steal it! Waaa! Waaa!"
They simply fail to realize that the market has changed and they can't make people want to pay too much anymore. If they don't wake up and simply adjust the price to remove the WILL to pirate, they will find the need for their services disappearing. It will happen with music first, because musicians and bands can afford the means of production. We are still a few decades away from every home being a motion picture studio, but that day is coming too.
If they want their industry, it is time for defensive pricing, not aggressive criminalization of the use of tools that have legitimate creative (and perfectly legal) uses.
As much as I love another opportunity to demagogue the issues of the trial and Microsoft's behavior, based on my admittedly limited knowledge of the law, this isn't a big deal. It is pretty much pro forma to file a motion to dismiss at every opportunity. The denial of such motions is pretty common also when there is ANY appearence of merit to the case. A conclusion of law from a federal judge and the upholding of that conclusion by an appelate court pretty much ensures that motions to dismiss will not fly. That really has nothing to do with what the ultimate sanction will be.
In other words, this is just the normal grinding of the legal wheels. I am a dyed-in-the-wool MS hater (just so you know my prejudices), but when I sit back and really try to be objective about it, I'm not sure that I can think of a remedy that would be effective that would not also represent a fairly egregious exercise of state power. The best one I can think of would be a mammoth fine (and I mean mammoth). Breakup actually worked for me, but it seems clear the appeals court wasn't going for it (and I'd have had a 3-way split: OS, apps, and media holdings). Forced opening of code seems to me to be a seizure of property which, again given my limited knowledge, seems unprecedented in a case like this. Besides, John Locke would come back and haunt us...
No, I'm thinking a mammoth fine. Something that really devalues the company. Something that will make shareholders spank MS management if they behave this way ever again.
Yeah, I know (and agree with) everything you are saying, but you haven't made a compelling case for me. I would never want C++ to go away, but the number of situations in which I would use it has gone way, way down.
I actually wish Java wasn't so focused on the VM concept, which is nice, but I would rather have true native code compilers for Java that produced solid, fast code. My biggest gripes with Java are the slow VMs and outright bugs in the VM that cause lock-ups and runaway resource consumption in production cases.
Separate rant: Sun should just GPL the whole JVM and JDK. I've had problems in production Java systems that I *know* are in the implementation of the VM itself, and there is NOTHING I ca do about it. When you write in C++, you can generate assembly source and you can see every byte of code your application executes (okay, maybe not the libraries -- which is why I use gcc, then I can if I want to). In Java, you've got a black box VM that you have no idea about. Most of the time that's fine, but if there is something broken in the VM, too bad. You're on your own.
I guess it all boils down to there is no One True Language, One True Platform, or One True Operating System (or even One True License). It is all about freedom of choice.
I've been programming in C++ for, cripes, it must be ten years now and I've been doing Java on paying basis for three years. This is an honest and sincere question. Can anyone give me examples of where multiple inheritance is a) necessary, and b) superior to the Java trick of interfaces?
In my experience, multiple inheritance kills reuse, and is somtimes so overused that you get a complex, rootless graph of classes. I actually dislike multiple inheritance. Now, I freely admit that this could be product of ignorance of the the intelligent use of the feature.
By contrast, I genuinely like the Java system of interfaces. It adds a "works-like" or "can-do" semantic to the traditional object semantics of "is-a" and "has-a." In my experience, it is easier to keep clean and extend, and it doesn't really overcomplicate the class heirarchy.
Mind you, I've programmed in C for nearly 20 years, so it took a long time to really become an OO programmer instead of a C programmer who uses class libraries -- which is what I believe about 60% of C++ programmers really are. I think C++ took off because of the relatively easy transition from C, but I think all of my complaints about C++ come from the holdover baggage of C.
Things I dislike in C++ o "virtual" Sure, high efficiency, but can make for real confusion. "Which method got called?" I like Smalltalk and Java better on this.
o Multiple inheritance. I like interfaces. Please tell me why I'm wrong (the ony cure for ignorance is confession).
o Operator overloading (this is also something I like). Here my complaint is bad use of operator overloading. How am I supposed to know what it means to increment an Employee?
o Memory management. Being an old C and later C++ man I was highly dubious about Java's garbage collection model. One month of Java and I totally changed my tune. An entire class of bugs simply disappears. With Java "It compiles, therefore it works" became almost true. Never in C++.
o Pointers and instances. I don't like (and its just for cleanliness reasons -- not on principle) that you can instantiate an object both by declaration and allocation. In practice, I've ended up using object pointers all the time. When I mix object pointers (read references) and declared objects I end up confusing programmers who must maintain my code in the future. (Should "payment" be deleted or just go out of scope?)
o No root class. In Smalltalk and Java you get many advantages from having a root class that at some point every other class inherits from. In fact, it gets rid of many of the cases where templates are required in C++ (but not all -- I do like templates!)
Things I really like about C++:
o Templates. You can't beat 'em.
o Operator overloading. When you use it well, it's nice. One bit of code I wrote a long time ago that I use over and over again is a file-backed array class. Overload the subcript operator and your go right to line "n" of a text file. It works so well I haven't had to change a bit of code in it in five years.
o Speed. Java sucks on speed. It just does.
o Destructors. I really miss destructors in Java. Even though I consider it a small price to pay for losing the memory management/pointer bugs that are so easy to make in C/C++, it is nice (REALLY nice) to have a method that is ALWAYS called when the object is destroyed (no longer used), as opposed to when it happens to get garbage collected. This is especially noticed when dealing with resources outside of the language, like DB connections and sockets to external services. Sure, you code around this, but a destructor is really nice.
So, set me straight!
(No holy war intended here -- I love almost all the languages I've programmed in for one reason or another. They all have their uses.)
To me, the most exciting thing about this is that it may be the first example of what I believe is a coming shift in the economics of software. Right now, software is treated as a product like almost any other manufactured product. Programmers are laborers and they produce product for consumption.
Free Software turns this around. Programmers become professionals more like engineers, architects, and doctors. They are paid for the quality of their practice, not as units of production in a manufacturing enterprise. One of the most common complaints about Open Source and Free Software is that it is anti-capital and that it will put programmers out of work (or at least out of pay). I think that is just plain wrong. Most programmers working today do not work for software companies. Most work in MIS making systems of hardware and software fit the needs of specific businesses.
This is the first case I know of where a company that is not at all in the software industry is paying programmers to develop software that they need that will directly benefit them AND anyone else who wants to use it. (Several companies like RedHat and Mandrake have done the same over the last few years, but they are, at least in some hybrid sense, in the software industry).
I think this will happen more and more. This is happening right now only because Free Software and Open Source software must be being used at the Weather Channel widely enough that they need these drivers. Once Free Software reaches critical mass (I know: It's an abused term and I'm abusing it right now) this will happen more and more. Eventually it will make almost all kinds of software available for "free" (and Free) and programmers will be paid well for doing it. Instead of 21st century robber barons amassing gigantic fortunes for herding programmers together, thousands of programmers around the world will make more money than they do now developing software for "Free."
Why? Bcause computers and software have no inherent value. Their value comes only in how they improve the efficiency of other processes, or enable processes that could not be done without them. They are tools. They are used to make and do other things. It is this economic "amplification" effect that makes them valuable. Sure, there is some value in the software economy, but the efficiency boom that gave us the longest post-war economic expansion without substantial inflation wasn't entirely based on Microsoft's profits (or even slightly based on them. As rich as Microsoft is, they are just a drop in the bucket of the economy). No, it was the way the technology tools improved productitivty throughout the economy. They whole software industry (and by that I mean people who develop code industrially and keep it closed, raising the price by creating an artificial shortage) could vanish and be replaced by free software and programmers and the economy as a whole would get richer.
How will programmers get paid? Like this case.
So a company has to pay $150,000 to get something developed. If all the other software they use is both Free and free (libre and free? Free speech and Free beer?), they may well end up spending less on software while programmers get that reduced amount of money with little or no corporate overhead.
It becomes a profession, not an industrial enterprise.
The guy's long post above is dead on. Yes, MOSFETs are transistors (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors, in fact: MOSFETs), but the point is that MOSFETs, like vacuum tubes are voltage amplification devices, while all other transistors are current amplification devices. This has huge consequences when the resulting signal goes through subsequent reactive loads (like the coils of the speakers, or the capacitors of filters).
None of this of course has anything directly to do with the original article, which simply must be a joke.
BTW, Even farther off-topic: know anyone who wants a professional tube tester? This thing is a classic, which changable modules of tube sockets, a scroll of tube types with test settings, vernier pots for setting the filiment and plate voltages, locking resettable push buttons that configure test signals, oscillators, reactances, etc. It belonged to my father, who was an electrical engineer for AT&T in the 60's and Control Data in the 70's and 80's. He had a commercial RT license (he did microwave transmitter maintenence for AT&T) and he was a ham. When I waqs kid he had a home business for Hi-fi and TV repair in his home. He had a complete electronics lab and parts shop down there. He died a few years ago and we're parting with the stuff we can stand to part with. The tub tester is way cool, but I have hardly any devices with tubes. Contact me if you are interested.
Oh, malarkey! The oversampling rate and the application of filter caps on the analog outputs makes discernable distortion practically non-existent. Sure, if you look at the raw analog output of the D/A converter, you see all sorts of harmonics introduced by the "squaring" of the wave, but these are all odd multiples of the fundamental, and well beyond the pass band of my admittedly aging ears. Also, this distortion is nothing compared to analog recording methods in which such high frequency signals cannot be discerned through the incredible amounts of noise (whether the imperfect surface of the lp producing random white noise all over the place, or the familiar "tape hiss").
So I would agree with you that distortion is audible at above 16kHz. Probably fewer that 10% of males over the age of 30 can hear anything above 16kHz (I bet you could do a quick Google search and get the exact number). I can't hear any distortion in anything below that. I certainly can't hear any when compared to any analog recording method.
Before the RIAA become reviled for asking people to pay for music and then going beyond that to assuming everyone is a criminal, they did some things like the standard RIAA recording curves for LPs and various tape formats to compensate for these noises (and so record grooves would not become a quarter of an inch wide when the music gets loud). You know our old friends Dolby? Their big thing was pre-emphasis of signals that are in the noisy frequencies of the media, so they could "turn down" those frequencies on playback to cut the noise.
So, while I can and do believe that I will hear some improvement in audio quality in, say, recordings of soft cymbals, I can't believe that any new format will make as big a difference as the coming of digital music itself was.
I spent hundreds of dollars on things to get every little bit more fidelity out of my stereo. Not all of it added together improved my music listening experience as much as my first CD player did. I simply can't conceive how any technological improvement short of a direct brain interface could make as great an improvement.
My old man was an eletrical engineer at Control Data for many years. He brought home doezens of things like this. I remember specifcations for the Write-Only Memory. I remember the FED (Flame-Emitting Diode; a cover photo from EDN magazine), the NED (Noise-Emitting Diode), alternative logic gates like the "DON'T" gate (no matter what two bits are input, the output is zero). I remeber even linear components like the IN-OP AMP. I loved this stuff. My dad was also a radio amateur and he and friend wrote an article proposing solving the spectrum shortage by using the negative freqeuncy spectrum. They included diagrams showing you how to bury your antenna and stick the ground rod up in the air.
Who says engineers aren't funny (at least to each other)?
Come and meet me. I have never illegally downloaded a single tune. I have, however, converted many of my CDs to mp3 format and burned CD-Rs of those files for my mp3 capable CD player.
That said, I hate what the recording and movie industry are trying to do. I haven't given a single such copy to another party. Ever. At all. I have broken no law in the US (at least no pre DMCA law) and I do not see why I should lose this perfectly non-infringing freedom. I have broken no law, so why do they want to punish me? For paying them for every movie and album I own?
So, just because I agree with the recording industry that stealing copyrighted material is wrong DOES NOT mean that I agree with anything they propose to stop it. Everything they propose is, IMHO, prior restraint because I could very legitimately want to copy or format convert the material for my own use.
The law will, as usual, take years to catch up with the technology. And I hope this hotbutton issue makes it clear to "generation Y" or whatever sociologists are calling people under 30 these days that law and politics are of vital interest to us all.
Another thing: Based on my understanding of the capabilities of the human ear, any improvement in quality over "CD quality" couldn't be discerned anyways, so what is the advantage of this proposed "improved" format? The only thing I can imagine is more than 2 channels of audio so you can use your suuround speakers. Of course, nobody is recording music in more than 2 channels right now, so would even that make a big difference? I'm not trying to be a Luddite here -- someone enlighten me!
I know you didn't coin the term "penguinista." I used to know who did -- I know I engaged in on-line discussions with the person who coined it. I hated the word then. I hate it now.
I certainly agree that Slashdot is not journalism.
I'm rather surprised that you consider the judgement of a U.S. Court to be Argumentum Ad Verecundiam. I must concede that this is tecnically so, if I were trying to clinch a logical proof. However, I was attempting to demonstrate that Microsoft was acting outside of the bounds of an abstract social convention. I guess I would have considered the law to be the ultimate expression of social convention. Maybe not.
As for a two-minute hate, I think it is a product of the feelings of the majority of the technical community. In other words, Slashdot follows opinion. It does not lead it. For example, I hate Microsoft for at least 27 minutes each day.
I've been hating Microsoft ever since the DR-DOS AARD code fiasco and the "Works with Windows95" label marketing program. Their (sccuessful) efforts to dominate ISVs and OEMs by leveraging their control of the OEM OS distribution channel has been sticking in my craw for 8 years.
I didn't hate them before that. I even happily owned a few products of theirs like their "m80" assembler for CP/M. It was the best one. I didn't like a lot of their crummy products, like multiplan and the early versions of Word, but that was on their merits, not on an instutionalized hate.
Eight years later, it is institutionalized. I admit it.
I'll go even further. It is Microsoft's stance that is anti-capitalist. They are screaming for restrictions and policies to prevent the use of Free Software. They want to have intervention and maipulation of the market.
They have used the fact that compilation is tanatmount to encryption to artificially restrict the supply of software, thus inflating its price. They are price fixing monopolists and behaving as a cartel.
Now, if they would simply continue to do business their way and let Free Software continue to do business their way, we would have a free market and a competition. That would be capitalism at work. We have seen this before. When disruptive technologies come along, business that depend on the old way of doing things always struggle in exactly this way.
I hate the term "penguinista." It is insulting to people who advocate Linux because they believe it serves their needs better. It is insulting to people who fought and died in South American civil wars (on both sides). This is not meant to be a personal attack on scrytch. It is complaint I tend to lodge whenever this hateful word springs up.
What does amaze me about this post, however, is the implicit assumption that any news critical of MS is inherently biased and non-factual. I'm not sure this conclusion can be drawn.
Those of us who mistrust Microsoft are backed up by Federal District Court and a Circuit Court of Appeals. I'm not sure what backs up MS's advocates.
As for the fact that a community tends to be self-congratulatory, well, I grant you that. Of course, I cannot immediately think of a single counter-example in human history...
IANAL, but if my service agreement with customers didn't spell out who was responsible for this, I would get a clause saying "The ISP is not responsible for unquthorized account access by any party that has the account password, no matter how that password was obtained" added to the agreement right away. To me, this is not something you want ambiguous.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay. Justa have to...
Fight Club stinks. It hasn't a single redeeming feature. YMMV.
The Road Warrior is a metaphor for The Wizard of Oz. Think about it. Mel has a squeaky metal joint. He needs a heart, a heart he lost "in the roar of an engine." He comes to care about something other than himself again and he finds his heart. Watch the movie again and don't think Clint Eastwood. Think "The Tin Man." You'll be surprised how thoroughly The Wizard of Oz pervades the movie. Strange. Fun. Exciting. Surprisingly intellectual mayhem. One of my all-time faves.
Memento. A very good movie. Brilliantly original structure, although in many ways a routine noir, it manages to surprise through its unique structure and to say something very poignant about truth and memory. Very very good.
The Usual Suspects. Other than brilliant performances and photography, I thought this was one of the most routine movies I've heard otherwise intelligent people rave about. Violent and pointless. Saw the "surprise" coming from a million miles away. Damned fine acting and cinematography though. Worth seeing.
I don't know Hard Boiled. I'll check it out.
Shaolin Soccer sounds like one I'd like. I'll check it out too.
Enemy at the Gates? Huh? Why?!?
The Game. Again, other than a glossy look, WHY?!?
Schindler's List. Very good. A movie that pushes all the "greatness buttons" and still manages to be very good.
Blade Runner. Good. One of the best science fiction movies ever, although that is damning with faint praise.
Chunking Express. Solid good movie.
The Conversation. Good writing. Great actor.
The French Connection. Fair writing. Great actor.
Full Metal Jacket. The first 50 minutes may be the best movie I ever saw. Falls apart after that. Okay, okay. The guys being shot in the square are a metaphor for our involvement in the war. I got it already. I got it!
Cube. An object lesson on how to make a 90 minute movie out of a 30 minute Twilight Zone episode and do it all on the smallest budget possible. However, it manages to be better than any other movie I've seen with similar ambitions. Ultimately pointless.
Trainspotting. Brilliant. Tragic. Honest.
Band of Brothers. Good.
Enemy Mine. Another movie that starts brilliantly and then falls into routine mayhem. Good with flaws.
Quills. Great acting.
But what about:
Network
Dr. Strangelove
Rear Window
North by Northwest
Citizen Kane
Fearless
Witness
Rashomon
The Seven Samurai
Greed
Modern Times
Duck Soup
The General
The Snapper
Apollo 13 (I must be one of the few people who thinks this is a great film -- it must help to have lived through it the first time and to remember sitting on the stairs listening waiting for Neil to walk, just like the scene in this movie. I usually dislike Opie's movies for out Speilberging Speilberg, but this one worked for me. Don't ask me why.)
The Quiet Man
The Philidelphia Story
The Manchurian Candidate
The Sting
Life of Brian
The Searchers
The Sea Hawk
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version of course)
Forbidden Planet
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original version, not 70's remake)
The Maltese Falcon
The African Queen
The Man Who Would Be King
and so many more...
Stories like this bring out the neverending "Linux will never make it on the desktop" (which used to be the "Linux will never make it") debate.
In my home, which has five computers running more or less all the time, 80% of the desktops run Linux (for those of you new to elementary arithmetic, that means there is one Windows box). I am, however, a dedicated techie. My laptop runs Linux, and I much prefer it to running Windows.
Linux will "make it" on the desktop, but it depends on what you mean by "making it." I suspect Linux is running on hundreds of thousands of desktops, but the owners/operators of those desktops put it there themselves.
For the kind of people who want Linux on their desktops, this is just not that hard to do. For the people for whom this would be difficult, Linux is probably not something they want in the first place.
Most of the major OEMs have "per unit" licensing arrangements with the Redmond Behemoth. So, without a decent proce break for a Linux-only machine (in fact, in many cases no proce break at all), there isn't a lot of incentive to hunt down the machine preloaded with Linux. So you buy whatever is handy that has the features you want and you add to your collection of Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/xp restore CDs.
That means that in the narrow margin PC hardware business you have to set up production of Linux PCs (which has certain fixed costs) and then sell maybe 50 such machines a year. That doesn't make money.
I am a total Free Software guy, but that doesn't mean I want to lose money. Nor does IBM.
Do not underestimate the power of inertia. It will be hard to make people move to Linux from Windows without either substantial price savings or some sort of "killer app." Linux is great, but is not, itself, a killer app.
I don't read too much into this announcement.
Correct. In fact, Windows 3.0 386 Enchanced Mode was the result of a Microsoft programmer and a friend (who wrote the softICE debugger) hacking the virtual 8086 code into Windows one late night "to see if they could." Microsoft's innovation was when they presented the results, it went all the way to Gates who said "go for it." If this had not happened, Microsoft would be just another vedor to IBM. Gates had the brains to see that he could turn their Windows, a lackluster poor performer that had made inroads pretty much only in desktop publishing, into a direct competitor to OS/2. Windows he owned and controlled. OS/2 was jointly owned by Microsoft and IBM (I have copy of Gordon Letwin's book "Inside OS/2" with a foreword by Bill Gates in which he declares OS/2 to be the OS for the 90's).
I'm a big MS hater, but let's face it: Gates' genius is in trusting the creativity of his people.
Experience is the first essential, so like others, I say: Hack! (In the original sense, not the crack sense).
Beyond that, I've found:
The Art of Computer Programming, Knuth
Internetworking with TCP/IP, Comer (3 vols.)
Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, Tannenbaum
these are essentials. Every other dog-eared book on my shelf is product or language specific, and thus, I would say, non-essential.
I have thought long and hard about why software doesn't get better. I have been down the same line of thought as this poster. It is certainly true that manufacturing improved when we began using standardized and interchangable parts in a regularized industrial process. I'm not preapred to say whether or not software design can be subjected to the same process -- that is, are software solutions actually unique to circumstance, or can they be regularized into "parts" -- but I can say that industrialization wouldn't have happened the way it did if company A owned the "intellectual property" of the #10 machine screw and company B owned the intellectual property of the lag bolt and company C owned the intellectual property of the spark plug. What if company A, B & C's profitability came solely from the fact that only they could produce those products, not because they were hard to make, but because they had a legal possession of an idea?
This is what the software industry is today. Companies owning screws, wheels, nails, and charging high prices because of the artificial shortage of technique. Why didn't manufacturing remain this way? Because patents expire. There is no doubt that patent system in the U.S.A. has gone nuts, giving out ridculous patents on absurd "non-inventions," but these patents still have the virtue of expiration. In "hardware" at least, patents give you the desire to innovate ("I can make mony before my idea is stolen") AND they "promote the useful arts" by making sure that the idea becomes public. If you patent, you must disclose. So, over time, every one of these basic parts became a commodity.
Look at Microsoft's (and the rest of the software industry, but Microsoft is far and away the largest remaining entity in the software industry) behavior in contrast: Hide, keep secret, protect intellectual property at all costs. Vigorously persue any infringement. Keep that #10 machine screw at $20 each instead of $0.02.
Now, I'll admit this may not be quite fair. An operating system or a word processor is certainly more complicated than a #10 machine screw, but switch to the internal combustion engine as the mataphor, and I think the argument holds up and is a bit more sound. If only one company had the rights to the ICE, we would not have the auto industry we have today.
I think the only hope of having interchangable software "parts" is Free Software (and obviously the GPL is the most powerful form of this, but any license that means the source I have today and my rights to modify and use it can never be taken away should have this effect to greater or lesser degree).
We also have to take an interest in politics. We have to fight the recent spate of laws that would extend the life of intellectual property. As Lawrence Lessig points out, intellectual property is not (presently) regarded in law like other property. All intellectual property is consitutionally required to expire -- to become part of the public domain. The trouble is IP holders have extended the life of copyright already, and are looking to do it again. Patents are being extended to algorithms and business methods, which I find startlingly unprecedented and it has led to ridiculous patents.
Commodity software. Interchangable software "parts." It will never happen in present legal environment. Expect software to continue to suck. Except, perhaps, for Free Software. (Plenty of which sucks, by the way, but I think the valuable and useful stuff doesn't, and that's the point. When I first downloaded Linux (in 1992) it sucked. It crashed all the time. None of it worked. That didn't last long. Apache couldn't do much more than serve static pages when I first used it. That didn't last long. Wine couldn't run solitaire when I first used it. Now, I run Quicken on it and I don't have to use Windows any more. Some obscure tools that are never taken up will continue to suck, but that's okay because they aren't used.)
Anyways, whether I'm right or wrong, technology hasn't been as exciting as this since the microprocessor first started being turned into computers by crazy hoobyists like my old man me in the mid-1970s. These are exciting times.
Um, not true. The findings of fact and conclusions of law are entered. They have survived appeal. It is only the "sentencing" (the remedy) that is in dispute. Microsoft does indeed stand convicted of violations of the Sherman Act.
"Cost" and "price" are not the same thing. It may cost less to produce an acoustically perfect digital recording than an imperfect analog one, but that doesn't mean it is wrong to charge more for it. It is perfectly legitimate to charge more for it because it is better, even if it is cheaper to make. I'm just saying that it is so damned much cheaper to make that they would still be making absolute bags of money more per unit even if they charged the same price as they do for the cassette tape.
My rant has nothing to do with "cost" and everything to do with "price." They are gouging their customers and then complaining about piracy. Piracy was (and is, IMHO) not only illegal but wrong. But so is price gouging. They could lower the price, still make money, and dramatically reduce piracy because, believe it or not, most people actually want to be honest and to obey the law. Sure, there always was piracy, and they always will be some. But draconian laws that punish the innocent with the guilty are not the answer.
The recording industry should have joined Napster, not tore it down. They should have started using some free songs as marketing tools and then sell some other songs at good low prices. They would have had bags of money out of it.
Instead they did what they did and they have had the worst two years they have ever had. They'll have more bad years until they wake up. Killing file sharing will not bring back the money. Offering file sharing WILL. If they would just realize that the market has been fundamentally changed, they would adapt and live.
They will. Or I should say, some will and they will survive. Some won't.
Read Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas." I think he's the sharpest non-techie thinker on these issues.
Hrm. Trotting out a series of philosophers and their worthy quotes doesn't a cogent argument make. I'm not sure what your point is here.
I think that all the dot-com bubble bursting proves is that the tech market always was like any other market. You know what? There is still huge demand for technical professionals with good fundamental skills. HTML/Javascript hackers, not so much. But people who can use software to engineer solutions to real business problems are still very much in demand. HTML and Javascript are actually still in demand, but those skills alone don't command 6-figure salaries any more. So what? They never should have. The invisible hand worked.
The dot-com bubble was tens of thousands of companies all in essence producing the same product. I don't think it took a rocket scientist to see that wasn't going to continue. I know I heard many people saying so the whole time it was happenning.
You know what, though? The "new economy" is still very much alive. The "hot" dot-com technologies are having their real effect in how "real" businesses organize themselves. Web technology's real economic impact is coming from enhancing the efficiency of business processes, just as all computer technology has from day one. It is all about more, faster, better, cheaper, and with less waste.
As for the drying up of the job market, sure, in No. Cal. there are queues of goateed unemployed programmers in designer sunglasses, but in the rest of the industry (and believe it or not, most of the jobs are outside Silicon Valley) the big fall-off in hiring followed Sept. 11, not the inevitable dot-com bubble. The only way in which that tragedy affected me was the disapperence of that sock-puppet dog (I thought it was funny).
Furthermore, I don't think some sort of "nationalistic" policy is the way to keep tech jobs. If they can be better done in India, they should be done in India. They might want to deal with that whole nuclear war thing first, however. Companies I work with have curtailed outsourcing plans to the subcontinent.
You left out an important thinker in your analysis: You ignored Keynes. Marx and Engels were living through the worst period of industrialization. A period of disequilibrium between the power of the bourgeois and the proliteriat. In industrial democracies, the public will is still consulted through democratic institutions (and, yes, I believe corporate money is distorting that process, but it can only go so far before voters actually do vote). I think Keynes' writing is the prism through which to view the present situation.
Moreover, "cost" is not the only component of "price." "Quality" enters in to it. The key to retaining a tech sector lead is to retain the educational and technological edge. As far as I can tell, we haven't lost that even yet, due, in no small part, to the infrastructure problems that exist in some of the other economies that seek to enter the tech economy.
I'm not sure, however, that there is anything to fear in programming shifting overseas. Some will. Some should. I think it is worthwhile to read two of Edward Yourdon's books: "Decline & Fall of the American Programmer" and "Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer" where he completely reverses the thesis of his first book. You will see that we've been here before and that the obvious conclusions are not necessarily the correct ones.
I, as an American Programmer, do not fear for my future emplyment or employability. I also welcome the participation of the rest of the world in the market of software ideas.
I see that others share my sentiment about this. The question is the wrong question. Learn and master the fundmentals. If you are into hardware, learn your electrical engineering. Master it. If it is software, learn the fundamentals of programming, systems design, algorithms, threading, etc. Learn a few fundamental languages (for the *nix world I'd say C, C++, Java, perl, shells, and then maybe some others that extend your world-view, such as lisp, scheme, and smalltalk). Learn how to express solutions for common problems in each of these languages.
I see so many programmers coming up these days whom I describe as "tool-junkies." They are programmers who know how to solve problems with one library collection, one integrated compiler suite, and nothing else (and, yes, I am referring mainly to Visual Studio, but there is a Java "tool-junkie" culture too -- Java programmers who can't work outside of their only IDE).
If you find yourself using a library without the slightest inkling of what must be happening in that library it should send warning flags up in your head. You should be able to write anything any other programmer could write. If you can't imagine how to even begin, you may be a tool-junkie. (Note that I am not saying you would have to write it as well as any other programmer -- obviously skills vary -- but you should have some idea how to tackle the problem, because you should have seen and solved something like it before. Genuinely new techniques are extremely rare. For the most part in programming you are making a symphony of familiar tropes, not breaking new ground.)
Learn fundamentals, not buzzwords, and maybe you won't find yourself looking for another job involuntarily.
Um, I believe this was my point. The music industry believes that their sales ARE going down. The solution they seek is protective legislation when the true remedy is a lower price.
Okay, now that we've descended into favorite Onion bits, I think their funniest work was in their fin-de-siecle book, Our Dumb Century.
I'm usually not a fan of scatalogical humor, but two of my favorite bits were:
FDR's Fireside Chat Last Night Just a Stream of Cuss Words.
And the huge headline: "HOLY FUCKING SHIT! MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON!" subheaded: "Armstrong's Historic First Words: 'Holy living fuck!'"
For some reason, the more swearing there was in the moon landing article, the funnier it became. I remember the moon landing and it was such a solemn thing. And yet, if anything in my entire lifetime merited this kind of "awestruck cussing" it was the moon landing. And nobody swore. Not on VOX anyways...
You have proverbially hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head. This is what the "entertainment industry" needs to realize. People pirate their stuff because it is too expensive. They are trying to maintain an imblanced market. Instead of spending money to cpoy protect and spending money to buy senators to pass bad social legislation to make petty theft a felony they should simply drop the proce to the point where people will not bother to pirate!
Personally, I've been furious with them since CDs came out costing twice as much as cassette tapes, despite the fact that they are many times cheaper to produce. I understand the theory that says I'm paying for the superior quality of CDs (yes, I agree that "quality" is a factor in price), but when the other major factor in "price" (that is: "cost to produce") is less than a thenth the cost to produce the other product, why am I paying two to three times as much?
I've pretty much stopped the legal practice of recording movies off of cable. I buy the damned things. And I like having them on my shelves. But just as with CDs, DVDs are much cheaper to produce than VHS cassettes. And don't hand me that guff about "special features." Even if we assume a ridiculous price for getting two people to sit in a studio for two hours and chatter inanely about how they rewrote the movie while they were making it (don't get me started!), a ridiculous price like $100,000, divide that over 1 million copies of a movie and that adds 10 cents. 10 godd--ned cents! Take a DVD with fancier special features (like a "MIB" or a "Harry Potter" for instance) and let's assume a million dollar proce tag on the special features. Those movies sell tens of millions of copies, so we are right back at 10 godd--ned cents! This is added on to the price of discs that cost pennies per unit to manufacture!
And then these greedy bastards have the guts to say the pimply-faced teenager who burns a few mp3 CD-Rs is a thief? Who is fleecing whom?
So, while this crusty old curmudgeon has never downloaded a song, or attempted to defeat the copy protection on a VCR, while I actually believe in and support limited IP law (you remember, copyright law before it was made perpetual for corporate owners?), I still say the "entertainment industry" is screaming because they aren't finding as much as they want when they break into our piggy banks. "They took the money before we could steal it! Waaa! Waaa!"
They simply fail to realize that the market has changed and they can't make people want to pay too much anymore. If they don't wake up and simply adjust the price to remove the WILL to pirate, they will find the need for their services disappearing. It will happen with music first, because musicians and bands can afford the means of production. We are still a few decades away from every home being a motion picture studio, but that day is coming too.
If they want their industry, it is time for defensive pricing, not aggressive criminalization of the use of tools that have legitimate creative (and perfectly legal) uses.
As much as I love another opportunity to demagogue the issues of the trial and Microsoft's behavior, based on my admittedly limited knowledge of the law, this isn't a big deal. It is pretty much pro forma to file a motion to dismiss at every opportunity. The denial of such motions is pretty common also when there is ANY appearence of merit to the case. A conclusion of law from a federal judge and the upholding of that conclusion by an appelate court pretty much ensures that motions to dismiss will not fly. That really has nothing to do with what the ultimate sanction will be.
In other words, this is just the normal grinding of the legal wheels. I am a dyed-in-the-wool MS hater (just so you know my prejudices), but when I sit back and really try to be objective about it, I'm not sure that I can think of a remedy that would be effective that would not also represent a fairly egregious exercise of state power. The best one I can think of would be a mammoth fine (and I mean mammoth). Breakup actually worked for me, but it seems clear the appeals court wasn't going for it (and I'd have had a 3-way split: OS, apps, and media holdings). Forced opening of code seems to me to be a seizure of property which, again given my limited knowledge, seems unprecedented in a case like this. Besides, John Locke would come back and haunt us...
No, I'm thinking a mammoth fine. Something that really devalues the company. Something that will make shareholders spank MS management if they behave this way ever again.
Complicated stuff...
Yeah, I know (and agree with) everything you are saying, but you haven't made a compelling case for me. I would never want C++ to go away, but the number of situations in which I would use it has gone way, way down.
I actually wish Java wasn't so focused on the VM concept, which is nice, but I would rather have true native code compilers for Java that produced solid, fast code. My biggest gripes with Java are the slow VMs and outright bugs in the VM that cause lock-ups and runaway resource consumption in production cases.
Separate rant: Sun should just GPL the whole JVM and JDK. I've had problems in production Java systems that I *know* are in the implementation of the VM itself, and there is NOTHING I ca do about it. When you write in C++, you can generate assembly source and you can see every byte of code your application executes (okay, maybe not the libraries -- which is why I use gcc, then I can if I want to). In Java, you've got a black box VM that you have no idea about. Most of the time that's fine, but if there is something broken in the VM, too bad. You're on your own.
I guess it all boils down to there is no One True Language, One True Platform, or One True Operating System (or even One True License). It is all about freedom of choice.
I've been programming in C++ for, cripes, it must be ten years now and I've been doing Java on paying basis for three years. This is an honest and sincere question. Can anyone give me examples of where multiple inheritance is a) necessary, and b) superior to the Java trick of interfaces?
In my experience, multiple inheritance kills reuse, and is somtimes so overused that you get a complex, rootless graph of classes. I actually dislike multiple inheritance. Now, I freely admit that this could be product of ignorance of the the intelligent use of the feature.
By contrast, I genuinely like the Java system of interfaces. It adds a "works-like" or "can-do" semantic to the traditional object semantics of "is-a" and "has-a." In my experience, it is easier to keep clean and extend, and it doesn't really overcomplicate the class heirarchy.
Mind you, I've programmed in C for nearly 20 years, so it took a long time to really become an OO programmer instead of a C programmer who uses class libraries -- which is what I believe about 60% of C++ programmers really are. I think C++ took off because of the relatively easy transition from C, but I think all of my complaints about C++ come from the holdover baggage of C.
Things I dislike in C++
o "virtual" Sure, high efficiency, but can make for real confusion. "Which method got called?" I like Smalltalk and Java better on this.
o Multiple inheritance. I like interfaces. Please tell me why I'm wrong (the ony cure for ignorance is confession).
o Operator overloading (this is also something I like). Here my complaint is bad use of operator overloading. How am I supposed to know what it means to increment an Employee?
o Memory management. Being an old C and later C++ man I was highly dubious about Java's garbage collection model. One month of Java and I totally changed my tune. An entire class of bugs simply disappears. With Java "It compiles, therefore it works" became almost true. Never in C++.
o Pointers and instances. I don't like (and its just for cleanliness reasons -- not on principle) that you can instantiate an object both by declaration and allocation. In practice, I've ended up using object pointers all the time. When I mix object pointers (read references) and declared objects I end up confusing programmers who must maintain my code in the future. (Should "payment" be deleted or just go out of scope?)
o No root class. In Smalltalk and Java you get many advantages from having a root class that at some point every other class inherits from. In fact, it gets rid of many of the cases where templates are required in C++ (but not all -- I do like templates!)
Things I really like about C++:
o Templates. You can't beat 'em.
o Operator overloading. When you use it well, it's nice. One bit of code I wrote a long time ago that I use over and over again is a file-backed array class. Overload the subcript operator and your go right to line "n" of a text file. It works so well I haven't had to change a bit of code in it in five years.
o Speed. Java sucks on speed. It just does.
o Destructors. I really miss destructors in Java. Even though I consider it a small price to pay for losing the memory management/pointer bugs that are so easy to make in C/C++, it is nice (REALLY nice) to have a method that is ALWAYS called when the object is destroyed (no longer used), as opposed to when it happens to get garbage collected. This is especially noticed when dealing with resources outside of the language, like DB connections and sockets to external services. Sure, you code around this, but a destructor is really nice.
So, set me straight!
(No holy war intended here -- I love almost all the languages I've programmed in for one reason or another. They all have their uses.)
To me, the most exciting thing about this is that it may be the first example of what I believe is a coming shift in the economics of software. Right now, software is treated as a product like almost any other manufactured product. Programmers are laborers and they produce product for consumption.
Free Software turns this around. Programmers become professionals more like engineers, architects, and doctors. They are paid for the quality of their practice, not as units of production in a manufacturing enterprise. One of the most common complaints about Open Source and Free Software is that it is anti-capital and that it will put programmers out of work (or at least out of pay). I think that is just plain wrong. Most programmers working today do not work for software companies. Most work in MIS making systems of hardware and software fit the needs of specific businesses.
This is the first case I know of where a company that is not at all in the software industry is paying programmers to develop software that they need that will directly benefit them AND anyone else who wants to use it. (Several companies like RedHat and Mandrake have done the same over the last few years, but they are, at least in some hybrid sense, in the software industry).
I think this will happen more and more. This is happening right now only because Free Software and Open Source software must be being used at the Weather Channel widely enough that they need these drivers. Once Free Software reaches critical mass (I know: It's an abused term and I'm abusing it right now) this will happen more and more. Eventually it will make almost all kinds of software available for "free" (and Free) and programmers will be paid well for doing it. Instead of 21st century robber barons amassing gigantic fortunes for herding programmers together, thousands of programmers around the world will make more money than they do now developing software for "Free."
Why? Bcause computers and software have no inherent value. Their value comes only in how they improve the efficiency of other processes, or enable processes that could not be done without them. They are tools. They are used to make and do other things. It is this economic "amplification" effect that makes them valuable. Sure, there is some value in the software economy, but the efficiency boom that gave us the longest post-war economic expansion without substantial inflation wasn't entirely based on Microsoft's profits (or even slightly based on them. As rich as Microsoft is, they are just a drop in the bucket of the economy). No, it was the way the technology tools improved productitivty throughout the economy. They whole software industry (and by that I mean people who develop code industrially and keep it closed, raising the price by creating an artificial shortage) could vanish and be replaced by free software and programmers and the economy as a whole would get richer.
How will programmers get paid? Like this case.
So a company has to pay $150,000 to get something developed. If all the other software they use is both Free and free (libre and free? Free speech and Free beer?), they may well end up spending less on software while programmers get that reduced amount of money with little or no corporate overhead.
It becomes a profession, not an industrial enterprise.
My bit of pie-in-the-sky thinking for today...
The guy's long post above is dead on. Yes, MOSFETs are transistors (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors, in fact: MOSFETs), but the point is that MOSFETs, like vacuum tubes are voltage amplification devices, while all other transistors are current amplification devices. This has huge consequences when the resulting signal goes through subsequent reactive loads (like the coils of the speakers, or the capacitors of filters).
None of this of course has anything directly to do with the original article, which simply must be a joke.
BTW, Even farther off-topic: know anyone who wants a professional tube tester? This thing is a classic, which changable modules of tube sockets, a scroll of tube types with test settings, vernier pots for setting the filiment and plate voltages, locking resettable push buttons that configure test signals, oscillators, reactances, etc. It belonged to my father, who was an electrical engineer for AT&T in the 60's and Control Data in the 70's and 80's. He had a commercial RT license (he did microwave transmitter maintenence for AT&T) and he was a ham. When I waqs kid he had a home business for Hi-fi and TV repair in his home. He had a complete electronics lab and parts shop down there. He died a few years ago and we're parting with the stuff we can stand to part with. The tub tester is way cool, but I have hardly any devices with tubes. Contact me if you are interested.
Oh, malarkey! The oversampling rate and the application of filter caps on the analog outputs makes discernable distortion practically non-existent. Sure, if you look at the raw analog output of the D/A converter, you see all sorts of harmonics introduced by the "squaring" of the wave, but these are all odd multiples of the fundamental, and well beyond the pass band of my admittedly aging ears. Also, this distortion is nothing compared to analog recording methods in which such high frequency signals cannot be discerned through the incredible amounts of noise (whether the imperfect surface of the lp producing random white noise all over the place, or the familiar "tape hiss").
So I would agree with you that distortion is audible at above 16kHz. Probably fewer that 10% of males over the age of 30 can hear anything above 16kHz (I bet you could do a quick Google search and get the exact number). I can't hear any distortion in anything below that. I certainly can't hear any when compared to any analog recording method.
Before the RIAA become reviled for asking people to pay for music and then going beyond that to assuming everyone is a criminal, they did some things like the standard RIAA recording curves for LPs and various tape formats to compensate for these noises (and so record grooves would not become a quarter of an inch wide when the music gets loud). You know our old friends Dolby? Their big thing was pre-emphasis of signals that are in the noisy frequencies of the media, so they could "turn down" those frequencies on playback to cut the noise.
So, while I can and do believe that I will hear some improvement in audio quality in, say, recordings of soft cymbals, I can't believe that any new format will make as big a difference as the coming of digital music itself was.
I spent hundreds of dollars on things to get every little bit more fidelity out of my stereo. Not all of it added together improved my music listening experience as much as my first CD player did. I simply can't conceive how any technological improvement short of a direct brain interface could make as great an improvement.
My old man was an eletrical engineer at Control Data for many years. He brought home doezens of things like this. I remember specifcations for the Write-Only Memory. I remember the FED (Flame-Emitting Diode; a cover photo from EDN magazine), the NED (Noise-Emitting Diode), alternative logic gates like the "DON'T" gate (no matter what two bits are input, the output is zero). I remeber even linear components like the IN-OP AMP. I loved this stuff. My dad was also a radio amateur and he and friend wrote an article proposing solving the spectrum shortage by using the negative freqeuncy spectrum. They included diagrams showing you how to bury your antenna and stick the ground rod up in the air.
Who says engineers aren't funny (at least to each other)?
Come and meet me. I have never illegally downloaded a single tune. I have, however, converted many of my CDs to mp3 format and burned CD-Rs of those files for my mp3 capable CD player.
That said, I hate what the recording and movie industry are trying to do. I haven't given a single such copy to another party. Ever. At all. I have broken no law in the US (at least no pre DMCA law) and I do not see why I should lose this perfectly non-infringing freedom. I have broken no law, so why do they want to punish me? For paying them for every movie and album I own?
So, just because I agree with the recording industry that stealing copyrighted material is wrong DOES NOT mean that I agree with anything they propose to stop it. Everything they propose is, IMHO, prior restraint because I could very legitimately want to copy or format convert the material for my own use.
The law will, as usual, take years to catch up with the technology. And I hope this hotbutton issue makes it clear to "generation Y" or whatever sociologists are calling people under 30 these days that law and politics are of vital interest to us all.
Another thing: Based on my understanding of the capabilities of the human ear, any improvement in quality over "CD quality" couldn't be discerned anyways, so what is the advantage of this proposed "improved" format? The only thing I can imagine is more than 2 channels of audio so you can use your suuround speakers. Of course, nobody is recording music in more than 2 channels right now, so would even that make a big difference? I'm not trying to be a Luddite here -- someone enlighten me!
How do the various PVRs work with a direct broadcast satellite system (DishTV, DirecTV, etc.)?
Are they digital satellite receivers themselves? Do they act as "remotes" for, say, a Phillips or RCA satellite receiver?
Basically, how do the damned things "change the channel" on a satellite TV system?
I know you didn't coin the term "penguinista." I used to know who did -- I know I engaged in on-line discussions with the person who coined it. I hated the word then. I hate it now.
I certainly agree that Slashdot is not journalism.
I'm rather surprised that you consider the judgement of a U.S. Court to be Argumentum Ad Verecundiam. I must concede that this is tecnically so, if I were trying to clinch a logical proof. However, I was attempting to demonstrate that Microsoft was acting outside of the bounds of an abstract social convention. I guess I would have considered the law to be the ultimate expression of social convention. Maybe not.
As for a two-minute hate, I think it is a product of the feelings of the majority of the technical community. In other words, Slashdot follows opinion. It does not lead it. For example, I hate Microsoft for at least 27 minutes each day.
I've been hating Microsoft ever since the DR-DOS AARD code fiasco and the "Works with Windows95" label marketing program. Their (sccuessful) efforts to dominate ISVs and OEMs by leveraging their control of the OEM OS distribution channel has been sticking in my craw for 8 years.
I didn't hate them before that. I even happily owned a few products of theirs like their "m80" assembler for CP/M. It was the best one. I didn't like a lot of their crummy products, like multiplan and the early versions of Word, but that was on their merits, not on an instutionalized hate.
Eight years later, it is institutionalized. I admit it.
I'll go even further. It is Microsoft's stance that is anti-capitalist. They are screaming for restrictions and policies to prevent the use of Free Software. They want to have intervention and maipulation of the market.
They have used the fact that compilation is tanatmount to encryption to artificially restrict the supply of software, thus inflating its price. They are price fixing monopolists and behaving as a cartel.
Now, if they would simply continue to do business their way and let Free Software continue to do business their way, we would have a free market and a competition. That would be capitalism at work. We have seen this before. When disruptive technologies come along, business that depend on the old way of doing things always struggle in exactly this way.
I hate the term "penguinista." It is insulting to people who advocate Linux because they believe it serves their needs better. It is insulting to people who fought and died in South American civil wars (on both sides). This is not meant to be a personal attack on scrytch. It is complaint I tend to lodge whenever this hateful word springs up.
What does amaze me about this post, however, is the implicit assumption that any news critical of MS is inherently biased and non-factual. I'm not sure this conclusion can be drawn.
Those of us who mistrust Microsoft are backed up by Federal District Court and a Circuit Court of Appeals. I'm not sure what backs up MS's advocates.
As for the fact that a community tends to be self-congratulatory, well, I grant you that. Of course, I cannot immediately think of a single counter-example in human history...
IANAL, but if my service agreement with customers didn't spell out who was responsible for this, I would get a clause saying "The ISP is not responsible for unquthorized account access by any party that has the account password, no matter how that password was obtained" added to the agreement right away. To me, this is not something you want ambiguous.