All I can think about is the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley when Steve Jobs is about to call out Bill Gates to speak at the Mac product release and the new versions of Windows are showing up over seas. The one guy says to Bill that Steve always thought IBM was the enemy, but Microsoft was really who the enemy was.
Linux is sort of like democracy. As users and developers of Linux, we have both a say and a responsible in the future of Linux. Alan Cox is making a responsible decision that I have a great deal of respect for. This is the moment when we see who is going to sell their souls for a chance at making money.
Is beating Microsoft really worth selling out Linux? Besides, since when was Linux about beating anyone?
AOL aquiring RedHat doesn't mean anything to Linux. What will matter, is if the Linux community supports this buyout by continuing to purchase and develop for RedHat if AOL takes it in a negative direction.
I guarentee that you will see a bunch of closed source software be released if AOL acquires RedHat. RedHat may even feel pressure to insert copyright protection software which is something that goes against the fundamental beliefs of Free Software.
So, the devils here offering to buy your soul, what's your asking price?
GPS has an accuracy of around ~5 feet so in order to ensure that a message was delivered to any particular spot, one would need to broadcast the message for a radius of 5 ft around the destination spot. This means that at most, messages would have to have a 5 ft buffer. In order to make it give atleast, a 50-50 chance of encounter the message within the buffer space, the message would need to be broadcast for a space with a radius of about 12.5 ft. Add the 5 ft buffer and you end up with a circle with a diameter of 35 ft.
So, I don't think you'll see a new message every couple feet. 35ft blocks are pretty big, and statistically, that would still only give you a 50-50 chance of actually hearing the message.
Emacs offers syntax highlighting, integrated debugger support, keyboard macros, next error jumping, etc.
Emacs the most powerful IDE out there. It integrates real nicely with GCC. The only down side is that there isn't a GUI oriented 'project' builder but that's what Make is for:)
I mean, it's easier to make a Makefile containing:
SRCS=File1.c File2.c
OBJS=$(SRCS:.c=.o)
all: ProjectName
ProjectName: $(OBJS)
$(CC) -o ProjectName $(OBJS)
Than to putz around with all that silly wizard stuff. I'll never understand why programmers need GUIs to generate code to compile their code.
I gather from your responses that this is for a school, and the simple fact of the matter is that most production environments (and consequently, most programming jobs) are Unix based so learning about Makefiles and how to use Emacs has to be incredible valuable (I know I wish that the new hirers we get would have been taught this stuff in school...).
libXML supports a built in compression method using libz. It may not be the most efficent method of compression, but it will get the job done and it will work seemlessly with any app that uses libXML.
I've compressed a 1.5MB XML document down to the tens of KB range. That was definitely good enough for me:)
I work as a government contractor for the DoD. Their is a little bit of misinformation going around though. First of all, government contractors are not necessarily doing fantastic right now. The Bush administration has been doing a lot of cutting in the DoD and some pretty big important contracts have been postponed (DD-21, Deepwater). Right now, the government is re-evaluating the future of the military which means things are a bit chaotic.
Government work is almost always stable though. I personally love it. There is an extremely high concentration on quality of robustness. It's one of the few places that you can really test your skills.
Dot-com'ers definitely don't fit in though in this environment. A lot of people who left the goverment and went to dot-com companies are coming back know though. A security clearance is very important. It's not difficult to get one if your qualified (it usually only takes about 2 weeks to a month). If your not qualified though, it can take upwards of a year. Two of my co-workers just go laid-off because they had not received their clearances after a year and a half and probably, would never receive them.
Despite what some people are saying though, having skills is really important in government work.
The better question is, should public funds be used to finance research to be used by a private company?
The answer to that is absolutely not. Remember though, that a lot of publicly funded research is related to the Department of Defense. Making code that may eventually become part of a classified system GPL'd is obviously a bad idea.
It is odd though, because if I write software, then the copyright is owned by my employer. Since we, the taxpayers, are the employers of public researchers, the copyright for their work should belong to the taxpayers.
So, I guess all results of publicly funded research should be copyrighted in the public domain.
Of course, what is then the incentive for an individual to pursue research at all?
I am hardly trying to knock the immense efforts of the XFree86 team, and I am trying to do more than just "bitching". I am hoping to rally people who feel the same way I do and engage in intelligent discourse. Perhaps I'll be convinced otherwise, but it hasn't happened yet. Anybody else's effort at making a working windowing system would invariably involve borrowing a lot of ideas, code, or other stuff from the XFree86 team. I use XFree86, and I don't blame the XFree86 team for the problems endemic to the X11 protocol itself, since they didn't design it. I just think that X11 is long in the tooth. It was great at the time it came about, XFree86 made Linux a usable modern operating system. That doesn't mean we should look no further and deny the problems that have cropped up over the years and the shortcomings of the architecture of an old system.
People always seem to be able to criticism a system until they actually try to sit down and write one. X has evolved to be capable of so many things. Instead of just complaining about what it doesn't do, try either creating something better or fixing it.
Just complaining is a waste of bandwidth (and you wonder why there is non left for X to use).
There are a lot of people commenting that the GPL should remove it's no warranty clause if MS should. There is a fundamental difference though between the two licenses.
The GPL allows others to fix problems that occur, MS's license doesn't. More importantly, GPL software is traditionally not being sold. There should probably be a GPL license with a quality assurance that is specificially for selling GPL'd software.
It is obsurd to think that a programmer would enter a binding contract to work for free. It's funny though because every other industry has to stick by some sort of warranty. I don't know how the computer industry gets away with it...
Re:News for nerds? Can a STORY be modded Offtopic?
on
Review: Orange County
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· Score: 1
I sort of prefer reading the comments on the movie reviews over the actual review because the/. community tends to feel the same way I do about things. So when a majority of/.'ers think a movie is good, it usually turns out to be good.
It's not like/. isn't getting enough M$ bashing in so I think its cool. It would help if Jon Katz wasn't such a prick but oh well.
Hahhaa, that was a joke, right? I think the reason Jon does these reviews is because it's his only excuse to goto the movies by himself since god knows that's the only way he's getting there.
I've been on the internet since the early 90's and have had the same email address since day one. I have always valued the fact that I do not receive a great deal of spam.
So I've always taken particular offense to people who include me in mass forwards. I am right on with this guy in his comments. People just don't listen when you are polite. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "Please don't forward me these things, they are junk mail." or, "I get about 40 emails a day so if everyone decided to forward all these things, that number would jump to 400."
Usually, I end up having to get a bit nasty before people stop. It is really annoying though as some people get like one real email every month or so and therefore, just can't understand why forwarding all this nonsense is so bad. It pisses me off to no end.
To stay on topic though, I have found that in a professional setting, requesting formats other than word can be quite cumbersome. The best thing though is to simply lead by example. Delivering by PDF will usually be much more impressive to people and before you know it, people start sending out PDF memos instead of word memos.
Why is X written for network transparent operation when 99% of the usage of a desktop windowing system is local (I'm not knocking the feature, just saying it shouldn't be the central assumption of a desktop windowing system)?
99% of X-Window terminals don't run on desktops. They run on Workstations, that are usually connected to very fast LANS. You may not thing transparent network operation is important at home on a 28.8k modem, but when your using it in a highly distributed production network, the fact that you can make Emacs come up on the display of a Sun from an HP since Emacs isn't installed on the Sun is one of the most useful things in the world.
While everyone agrees that diversity and choice are good, do we really need so many different widget set and toolkits, all of which are separately themeable, resulting in the most heinous looking clash of aesthetics when Qt, Gtk, and Xaw apps are used simultaneously?
So monopoly is good? People like different things. Let the desktop evolve.
Why is transparency and alpha blending on the client end totally impossible in X windows? Why is X Windows so damned chatty that it blows over the internet anyway?
LBX == Low Bandwidth X. It started as the Broadway project. When X was first designed, the chattiness wasn't a problem because there were no low bandwidth networks so this wasn't even a concern.
Why do the features necessary end up getting strapped on like XRender in a way that leaves us with two parallel font management systems for different types of X Windows apps?
The reason Linux has support for so many Window drivers is because of the XFree86 development team. They have done an incredible amount of work so that you can sit here and bitch. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to support it, but for god sakes, so atleast a little bit of respect for it.
An MIS degree is almost worthless IMHO. You can't go to school to learn management. You can get to school to improve management abilities, but it's something you have to have a knack for.
A CS degree is watered down enough as it is. In fact, I would suggest doubling majoring in some sort of applied science (either some sort of engineering, or applied physics). Of course, if you plan to work on spreadsheet programs for the rest of your life, the extra degree is pointless, but if you work in the aerospace industry, or any kind of interdisciplinary job, you'll find the extra degree will make you that much more valuable because you are able to bridge the gap between the programmers and the scientists.
Yadda Yadda!. So they produce low quality software? Which titles? MS Excel? SQL Server? Excel is a top notch program, which is by far the most usable and bugless application in the MS Office suit.
Yeah but compare SQL Server to Oracle and then what do you have? A crappy product. Let's not even start with Office because we all know that the internet has almost come to it's knees many a time because of how buggy it is.
This one really made me laugh:) Ask the KDE guys how great the C++ compiler is in GCC. True, it's free and fully functional, but please... so much better? Oh, don't feel obligated to provide facts to proof your point!
Well, let's face the true facts here. The problems that people most commonly bitch about the GCC C++ compiler are due to the C++ specificiations themselves. Now, pair that up with the number of architectures it supports and forget about it.
Working in a production environment, going from one Unix system to another, and then to an x86 system, using _any_ other compiler than GCC is painful because there are very few that will run on the above.
As mentioned before, with the way the C++ spec is, the C++ language between compilers is so much different that it makes it quite difficult to port code.
BTW, I wouldn't take how the KDE guys feel about G++ with more than a grain of salt... KDE and GNU don't get along very well so their just looking for excuses to bitch.
An email virus will never be able to spread through linux because all email virii require the receiver of the virus to actually have communicated with people before.
We all know linux users are social inept so I don't think it's very likely that one of these virii will get very far.
But gcc is not the Holy Grail of code generation. Not anymore. IBM and CodeWarrior both beat it senseless on PowerPC; Intel has something that apparently does better on x86, and a lot better on Itanium; DEC has kicked its butt on Alpha for years.
(Of course, gcc probably has more CPU backends than any other C compiler out there - but within a single architecture it often is not the best.)
Well, that's really the trade off one makes. The difference is speed of generated code is not extreme though and in comparision with other main stream compilers (what would/. be without bashing MS) such as MSVC, it just blows the competition away.
GCC's nice because it tends to be more standards compliant then alot of compilers. It's funny that you mention the HP-UX compiler because that is what we were formerly using and when we started a new project, I insisted on using a version of GCC-2.95.2 that just happened to be laying around.
I can't even begin to tell you how much hassle it saved. Pair it with GDB and the other utilities (such as gprof) and it's just incredible.
The best part is, to get the GCC installed on a machine, all it takes is a phone call since there are no licensing issues. I definitely have to give you some credit if you take care of Licensing, because that is definitely a bitch. I would do anything to avoid having to deal with it.
Unfortunately, I have to say I have encountered quite a bit of bugs in GCC:) That's ok though, it's not with the C compiler it's with the C++ compiler and the C++ specs suck so much, how can anyone blame GCC for messing up a bit;-)
Well, I have to disagree with you on some parts of what you are saying.
My largest problem with MS is not that they do not produce low-cost or even free software, but rather they that produce high-cost low-quality software.
A good example of where the quality of open source software overrides the lack of support is with GCC. GCC is commonly used in production environments over other Unix compilers because it is such a better compiler than most other compilers.
The fact that it's free also means that you can always get the latest version without having to relicense or upgrade. That's a big advantage for most projects.
For many people who are forced to do spreadsheets and get tired of using Excel because of constant bugs, having an alternative will make a big difference. Good software has a tendency to spread like a virus too and before you know it, all projects are using that software and here some company has come along and repackaged that open source software with support so that everyone is happy.
And I've seen this happen with GCC so it does happen.
What's most important about the price tag, is that HP is backing a secure version of Linux. It's not really 3K for some fancy GUI tools, but 3K for the tools and for HPs guarentee that this is actually going to work.
It's not really that expensive. In fact, I'll probably recommend it to the company I work for. If your company is security conscious, and you don't want to have to maintain something, then this seems like a great option.
This is probably one of the first really good business plans I've seen with Linux. The greatest part is that HP didn't try to mess around and not release the kernel stuff. So, they've helped out the community by adding a cool concept (I always hated that Linux does have jails) and they also are delivering a good, reasonably price, product.
I am of course assuming that this software works:)
If you do the math though for a server running Windows NT plus an email server, web server, and remote admin package that would be as robust as what Linux has, then it's a no brainer which one is cheaper.
Especially since alot of software is based on the number of users (especially email suites). So you kind of end up getting screwed when you hire more people.
The concepts of intellegence don't necessarily mix with concepts of brains. There are species that do _not_ have brains of any kind and function totally off of reflex (i.e. many invertebrates, bacteria, etc.). Intellegences comes in many forms. Having a machine that knows to take to inputs and give a certain output is similiar to a reflex of a lesser species.
Intellegences does not define life, or atleast, our definition of life does not parallal our definition of intellegence. If it did, then computers are already living things since they are just as intellegent as bacteria;-)
I know. Well... that's not entirely true. Right now development is on Windows for the POC. It's all java though so I imagine they will port it to something else when it becomes tactical. It's very political right now.
It's not uncommon for things to be prototyped on one system and then ported to another system for the tactical environment. There is some pretty harsh requirements for tactical equipment. It's a hardware thing so there's not many choices for tactical platforms.
They obviously aren't going to put a dell laptop on the ship but it's a hell of a lot cheaper to develop on 2k dell laptops than it is to go out and get a bunch of HP workstations.
That's actually the page of the Blue Team (Lockheed Martin & Bathe Iron Works). The Gold Team has a page too http://www.dd21goldteam.com which is composed of Raytheon and Ingels Shipyard.
Two teams are designing ships in order to produce the best one. It's pretty late in the phase though and the contract was actually supposed to be awarded a while ago. Who knows what will happen know since 9/11 though and Bush's plans to restructure everything.
So what if Russia has a "stealth" ship being designed. Do not forget, no other nation has ever proven stealth technology other than the US.
And we are already building a fleet of stealth ships. DD-21 is our program to build new stealth ships. Our ships seem to have all the capabilities plus more. The difference is that we are very far in the development of the ships. The site has lots of cool PDFs include some cool artist renditions. The program was originally going to just create one class of ships but very recently was changed to create a whole new fleet of ships. The overall design goal is to increase lateral capabilities (ability to assist ground war by approaching shore and traveling down rivers). The program has recently been renamed to DD-X to reflect this goal.
As far as not being able to stop their missiles, that again is just not true. Aegis ships - a program I'm proud to be a part of - have been working on TBMD (Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense) for quite some time. This is different from NTW (National Theatre Wide) or what is common referred to as national missile defense. TBMD is not effected at all by the ABM treaty so that has been being developed for quite some time.
There are a lot of posts about Norway having stealth ships or other countries having stealth ships. The greatest part of the Norwegian Navy is their new frigates which runs Aegis. We sell alot of our technologies to other countries. Our Naval program is just so much better than any other countries. That's one of the benefits of having so many warm water ports.
This article is not even Russian government hype but just some newspaper trying to make a story that's just not there.
Slashdot Mirror
All I can think about is the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley when Steve Jobs is about to call out Bill Gates to speak at the Mac product release and the new versions of Windows are showing up over seas. The one guy says to Bill that Steve always thought IBM was the enemy, but Microsoft was really who the enemy was.
Linux is sort of like democracy. As users and developers of Linux, we have both a say and a responsible in the future of Linux. Alan Cox is making a responsible decision that I have a great deal of respect for. This is the moment when we see who is going to sell their souls for a chance at making money.
Is beating Microsoft really worth selling out Linux? Besides, since when was Linux about beating anyone?
AOL aquiring RedHat doesn't mean anything to Linux. What will matter, is if the Linux community supports this buyout by continuing to purchase and develop for RedHat if AOL takes it in a negative direction.
I guarentee that you will see a bunch of closed source software be released if AOL acquires RedHat. RedHat may even feel pressure to insert copyright protection software which is something that goes against the fundamental beliefs of Free Software.
So, the devils here offering to buy your soul, what's your asking price?
GPS has an accuracy of around ~5 feet so in order to ensure that a message was delivered to any particular spot, one would need to broadcast the message for a radius of 5 ft around the destination spot. This means that at most, messages would have to have a 5 ft buffer. In order to make it give atleast, a 50-50 chance of encounter the message within the buffer space, the message would need to be broadcast for a space with a radius of about 12.5 ft. Add the 5 ft buffer and you end up with a circle with a diameter of 35 ft.
So, I don't think you'll see a new message every couple feet. 35ft blocks are pretty big, and statistically, that would still only give you a 50-50 chance of actually hearing the message.
Emacs offers syntax highlighting, integrated debugger support, keyboard macros, next error jumping, etc.
:)
Emacs the most powerful IDE out there. It integrates real nicely with GCC. The only down side is that there isn't a GUI oriented 'project' builder but that's what Make is for
I mean, it's easier to make a Makefile containing:
SRCS=File1.c File2.c
OBJS=$(SRCS:.c=.o)
all: ProjectName
ProjectName: $(OBJS)
$(CC) -o ProjectName $(OBJS)
Than to putz around with all that silly wizard stuff. I'll never understand why programmers need GUIs to generate code to compile their code.
I gather from your responses that this is for a school, and the simple fact of the matter is that most production environments (and consequently, most programming jobs) are Unix based so learning about Makefiles and how to use Emacs has to be incredible valuable (I know I wish that the new hirers we get would have been taught this stuff in school...).
libXML supports a built in compression method using libz. It may not be the most efficent method of compression, but it will get the job done and it will work seemlessly with any app that uses libXML.
:)
I've compressed a 1.5MB XML document down to the tens of KB range. That was definitely good enough for me
Oh, this is not a good idea :)
Every space is relavant in XML. It does not follow the same rules as HTML.
Does not equal
I work as a government contractor for the DoD. Their is a little bit of misinformation going around though. First of all, government contractors are not necessarily doing fantastic right now. The Bush administration has been doing a lot of cutting in the DoD and some pretty big important contracts have been postponed (DD-21, Deepwater). Right now, the government is re-evaluating the future of the military which means things are a bit chaotic.
Government work is almost always stable though. I personally love it. There is an extremely high concentration on quality of robustness. It's one of the few places that you can really test your skills.
Dot-com'ers definitely don't fit in though in this environment. A lot of people who left the goverment and went to dot-com companies are coming back know though. A security clearance is very important. It's not difficult to get one if your qualified (it usually only takes about 2 weeks to a month). If your not qualified though, it can take upwards of a year. Two of my co-workers just go laid-off because they had not received their clearances after a year and a half and probably, would never receive them.
Despite what some people are saying though, having skills is really important in government work.
The better question is, should public funds be used to finance research to be used by a private company?
The answer to that is absolutely not. Remember though, that a lot of publicly funded research is related to the Department of Defense. Making code that may eventually become part of a classified system GPL'd is obviously a bad idea.
It is odd though, because if I write software, then the copyright is owned by my employer. Since we, the taxpayers, are the employers of public researchers, the copyright for their work should belong to the taxpayers.
So, I guess all results of publicly funded research should be copyrighted in the public domain.
Of course, what is then the incentive for an individual to pursue research at all?
I am hardly trying to knock the immense efforts of the XFree86 team, and I am trying to do more than just "bitching". I am hoping to rally people who feel the same way I do and engage in intelligent discourse. Perhaps I'll be convinced otherwise, but it hasn't happened yet. Anybody else's effort at making a working windowing system would invariably involve borrowing a lot of ideas, code, or other stuff from the XFree86 team. I use XFree86, and I don't blame the XFree86 team for the problems endemic to the X11 protocol itself, since they didn't design it. I just think that X11 is long in the tooth. It was great at the time it came about, XFree86 made Linux a usable modern operating system. That doesn't mean we should look no further and deny the problems that have cropped up over the years and the shortcomings of the architecture of an old system.
People always seem to be able to criticism a system until they actually try to sit down and write one. X has evolved to be capable of so many things. Instead of just complaining about what it doesn't do, try either creating something better or fixing it.
Just complaining is a waste of bandwidth (and you wonder why there is non left for X to use).
And since when desktop != workstation?
A desktop machine is a PC.
A workstation is a Unix box (usually RISC based).
People do real work on a workstation, and silly desktop stuff on a desktop (such as browsing the internet and making silly powerpoint presentations).
Do not forget, X != XFree86. Just because Linux and BSDs run it, doesn't mean that this is the only implementation of X.
X is much more widely used on other Unices since there are more HP & Sun workstations than Linux workstations out there.
There are a lot of people commenting that the GPL should remove it's no warranty clause if MS should. There is a fundamental difference though between the two licenses.
The GPL allows others to fix problems that occur, MS's license doesn't. More importantly, GPL software is traditionally not being sold. There should probably be a GPL license with a quality assurance that is specificially for selling GPL'd software.
It is obsurd to think that a programmer would enter a binding contract to work for free. It's funny though because every other industry has to stick by some sort of warranty. I don't know how the computer industry gets away with it...
I sort of prefer reading the comments on the movie reviews over the actual review because the /. community tends to feel the same way I do about things. So when a majority of /.'ers think a movie is good, it usually turns out to be good.
/. isn't getting enough M$ bashing in so I think its cool. It would help if Jon Katz wasn't such a prick but oh well.
It's not like
Hahhaa, that was a joke, right? I think the reason Jon does these reviews is because it's his only excuse to goto the movies by himself since god knows that's the only way he's getting there.
I've been on the internet since the early 90's and have had the same email address since day one. I have always valued the fact that I do not receive a great deal of spam.
So I've always taken particular offense to people who include me in mass forwards. I am right on with this guy in his comments. People just don't listen when you are polite. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "Please don't forward me these things, they are junk mail." or, "I get about 40 emails a day so if everyone decided to forward all these things, that number would jump to 400."
Usually, I end up having to get a bit nasty before people stop. It is really annoying though as some people get like one real email every month or so and therefore, just can't understand why forwarding all this nonsense is so bad. It pisses me off to no end.
To stay on topic though, I have found that in a professional setting, requesting formats other than word can be quite cumbersome. The best thing though is to simply lead by example. Delivering by PDF will usually be much more impressive to people and before you know it, people start sending out PDF memos instead of word memos.
People are just silly like that.
Why is X written for network transparent operation when 99% of the usage of a desktop windowing system is local (I'm not knocking the feature, just saying it shouldn't be the central assumption of a desktop windowing system)?
99% of X-Window terminals don't run on desktops. They run on Workstations, that are usually connected to very fast LANS. You may not thing transparent network operation is important at home on a 28.8k modem, but when your using it in a highly distributed production network, the fact that you can make Emacs come up on the display of a Sun from an HP since Emacs isn't installed on the Sun is one of the most useful things in the world.
While everyone agrees that diversity and choice are good, do we really need so many different widget set and toolkits, all of which are separately themeable, resulting in the most heinous looking clash of aesthetics when Qt, Gtk, and Xaw apps are used simultaneously?
So monopoly is good? People like different things. Let the desktop evolve.
Why is transparency and alpha blending on the client end totally impossible in X windows? Why is X Windows so damned chatty that it blows over the internet anyway?
LBX == Low Bandwidth X. It started as the Broadway project. When X was first designed, the chattiness wasn't a problem because there were no low bandwidth networks so this wasn't even a concern.
Why do the features necessary end up getting strapped on like XRender in a way that leaves us with two parallel font management systems for different types of X Windows apps?
The reason Linux has support for so many Window drivers is because of the XFree86 development team. They have done an incredible amount of work so that you can sit here and bitch. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to support it, but for god sakes, so atleast a little bit of respect for it.
An MIS degree is almost worthless IMHO. You can't go to school to learn management. You can get to school to improve management abilities, but it's something you have to have a knack for.
A CS degree is watered down enough as it is. In fact, I would suggest doubling majoring in some sort of applied science (either some sort of engineering, or applied physics). Of course, if you plan to work on spreadsheet programs for the rest of your life, the extra degree is pointless, but if you work in the aerospace industry, or any kind of interdisciplinary job, you'll find the extra degree will make you that much more valuable because you are able to bridge the gap between the programmers and the scientists.
Yadda Yadda!. So they produce low quality software? Which titles? MS Excel? SQL Server? Excel is a top notch program, which is by far the most usable and bugless application in the MS Office suit.
:) Ask the KDE guys how great the C++ compiler is in GCC. True, it's free and fully functional, but please... so much better? Oh, don't feel obligated to provide facts to proof your point!
Yeah but compare SQL Server to Oracle and then what do you have? A crappy product. Let's not even start with Office because we all know that the internet has almost come to it's knees many a time because of how buggy it is.
This one really made me laugh
Well, let's face the true facts here. The problems that people most commonly bitch about the GCC C++ compiler are due to the C++ specificiations themselves. Now, pair that up with the number of architectures it supports and forget about it.
Working in a production environment, going from one Unix system to another, and then to an x86 system, using _any_ other compiler than GCC is painful because there are very few that will run on the above.
As mentioned before, with the way the C++ spec is, the C++ language between compilers is so much different that it makes it quite difficult to port code.
BTW, I wouldn't take how the KDE guys feel about G++ with more than a grain of salt... KDE and GNU don't get along very well so their just looking for excuses to bitch.
An email virus will never be able to spread through linux because all email virii require the receiver of the virus to actually have communicated with people before.
We all know linux users are social inept so I don't think it's very likely that one of these virii will get very far.
But gcc is not the Holy Grail of code generation. Not anymore. IBM and CodeWarrior both beat it senseless on PowerPC; Intel has something that apparently does better on x86, and a lot better on Itanium; DEC has kicked its butt on Alpha for years.
/. be without bashing MS) such as MSVC, it just blows the competition away.
:) That's ok though, it's not with the C compiler it's with the C++ compiler and the C++ specs suck so much, how can anyone blame GCC for messing up a bit ;-)
(Of course, gcc probably has more CPU backends than any other C compiler out there - but within a single architecture it often is not the best.)
Well, that's really the trade off one makes. The difference is speed of generated code is not extreme though and in comparision with other main stream compilers (what would
GCC's nice because it tends to be more standards compliant then alot of compilers. It's funny that you mention the HP-UX compiler because that is what we were formerly using and when we started a new project, I insisted on using a version of GCC-2.95.2 that just happened to be laying around.
I can't even begin to tell you how much hassle it saved. Pair it with GDB and the other utilities (such as gprof) and it's just incredible.
The best part is, to get the GCC installed on a machine, all it takes is a phone call since there are no licensing issues. I definitely have to give you some credit if you take care of Licensing, because that is definitely a bitch. I would do anything to avoid having to deal with it.
Unfortunately, I have to say I have encountered quite a bit of bugs in GCC
Well, I have to disagree with you on some parts of what you are saying.
My largest problem with MS is not that they do not produce low-cost or even free software, but rather they that produce high-cost low-quality software.
A good example of where the quality of open source software overrides the lack of support is with GCC. GCC is commonly used in production environments over other Unix compilers because it is such a better compiler than most other compilers.
The fact that it's free also means that you can always get the latest version without having to relicense or upgrade. That's a big advantage for most projects.
For many people who are forced to do spreadsheets and get tired of using Excel because of constant bugs, having an alternative will make a big difference. Good software has a tendency to spread like a virus too and before you know it, all projects are using that software and here some company has come along and repackaged that open source software with support so that everyone is happy.
And I've seen this happen with GCC so it does happen.
What's most important about the price tag, is that HP is backing a secure version of Linux. It's not really 3K for some fancy GUI tools, but 3K for the tools and for HPs guarentee that this is actually going to work.
:)
It's not really that expensive. In fact, I'll probably recommend it to the company I work for. If your company is security conscious, and you don't want to have to maintain something, then this seems like a great option.
This is probably one of the first really good business plans I've seen with Linux. The greatest part is that HP didn't try to mess around and not release the kernel stuff. So, they've helped out the community by adding a cool concept (I always hated that Linux does have jails) and they also are delivering a good, reasonably price, product.
I am of course assuming that this software works
If you do the math though for a server running Windows NT plus an email server, web server, and remote admin package that would be as robust as what Linux has, then it's a no brainer which one is cheaper.
Especially since alot of software is based on the number of users (especially email suites). So you kind of end up getting screwed when you hire more people.
Ok, now back into reality.
;-)
The concepts of intellegence don't necessarily mix with concepts of brains. There are species that do _not_ have brains of any kind and function totally off of reflex (i.e. many invertebrates, bacteria, etc.). Intellegences comes in many forms. Having a machine that knows to take to inputs and give a certain output is similiar to a reflex of a lesser species.
Intellegences does not define life, or atleast, our definition of life does not parallal our definition of intellegence. If it did, then computers are already living things since they are just as intellegent as bacteria
I know. Well... that's not entirely true. Right now development is on Windows for the POC. It's all java though so I imagine they will port it to something else when it becomes tactical. It's very political right now.
It's not uncommon for things to be prototyped on one system and then ported to another system for the tactical environment. There is some pretty harsh requirements for tactical equipment. It's a hardware thing so there's not many choices for tactical platforms.
They obviously aren't going to put a dell laptop on the ship but it's a hell of a lot cheaper to develop on 2k dell laptops than it is to go out and get a bunch of HP workstations.
Should of preview'd! It's http://www.dd21.com.
That's actually the page of the Blue Team (Lockheed Martin & Bathe Iron Works). The Gold Team has a page too http://www.dd21goldteam.com which is composed of Raytheon and Ingels Shipyard.
Two teams are designing ships in order to produce the best one. It's pretty late in the phase though and the contract was actually supposed to be awarded a while ago. Who knows what will happen know since 9/11 though and Bush's plans to restructure everything.
So what if Russia has a "stealth" ship being designed. Do not forget, no other nation has ever proven stealth technology other than the US.
And we are already building a fleet of stealth ships. DD-21 is our program to build new stealth ships. Our ships seem to have all the capabilities plus more. The difference is that we are very far in the development of the ships. The site has lots of cool PDFs include some cool artist renditions. The program was originally going to just create one class of ships but very recently was changed to create a whole new fleet of ships. The overall design goal is to increase lateral capabilities (ability to assist ground war by approaching shore and traveling down rivers). The program has recently been renamed to DD-X to reflect this goal.
As far as not being able to stop their missiles, that again is just not true. Aegis ships - a program I'm proud to be a part of - have been working on TBMD (Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense) for quite some time. This is different from NTW (National Theatre Wide) or what is common referred to as national missile defense. TBMD is not effected at all by the ABM treaty so that has been being developed for quite some time.
There are a lot of posts about Norway having stealth ships or other countries having stealth ships. The greatest part of the Norwegian Navy is their new frigates which runs Aegis. We sell alot of our technologies to other countries. Our Naval program is just so much better than any other countries. That's one of the benefits of having so many warm water ports.
This article is not even Russian government hype but just some newspaper trying to make a story that's just not there.
Feeling better already ;-)