Don't forget the power of juries. They have the power to decide against bad law. Since I just learned that today (thank you Slashdot), I'm now wondering if serving on a jury is generally more important than voting (though both are important).
Well, here in East Texas, we get $6 a day (w00t w00t!). I just appeared last week in response to a summons. I wasn't chosen, though (bummer, man I'm out like $60 or something). Unlike most of the other potentials, I did want to serve. Of course, I didn't have much better to do at the time and I'm genuinely interested in particpating in government.
That has to be the most informative post I've ever read on slashdot. I'm especially interested in the power of juries, since I just appeared in response to a jury summons last week. I wasn't one of the ones chosen to serve, but the process is much more real to me now. I had been under the assumption that it was a jury's responsibility to render a verdict based only on the facts and actual law. I had no idea a jury could decide against a bad law. Now, I'm thinking that serving on juries may be a more important responsibility for citizens than voting.
I'd certainly go with one of the Sun based Java implementations over anything from Microsoft any day. The only way I'd consider writing C# or anything.Netish would be using Mono or DotGNU.
Yes, Kaffe and GCJ and Jikes and Classpath are great, but typical Java projects (even Free Software ones) do depend on the Java libraries. More to the point, how could you write any Java program without them? System.out.println is a library function, just like printf is in C. Projects like Kaffe and GCJ and Classpath implement the interfaces and functionality of the Sun libraries as much as possible, but they never quite keep up with the latest.
Kaffe is great. So are GCJ and Classpath. However, none of them yet provides all of the libraries or functionality of the Sun based implementations, so you wouldn't necessarily be able to easily switch between Sun based (including the licensed ones from other vendors) and the Free Software ones.
I'm not saying that using Java is a bad idea; I've done it myself and may again in the future. I'm just pointing out that Sun does own it. It's not standardized and vendor independent in the same way that C, C++, Fortran, Common Lisp, or Ada is. Unless one is careful to only use the subset of the Java platform provided by the Free Software implementations, one will be somewhat dependent on Sun. However, I would trust Sun to steward their ownership a lot more than Microsoft.
I find those companies on this list of Java Licensees, so I doubt their implementations are independent. Neither is Blackdown, according to their FAQ. I would be a lot less wary of using one of the listed implementations of Java than using Microsoft's.Net, but Sun does still own Java and I'm still not aware of any completely independent implementations that are not way behind the official one.
I sure hope future languages aren't modeled on Java. That will retard language development like too much reliance on C has retarded it over the last couple of decades. But Java isn't even as original as C was. The language design is purely derivative, a cleaned-up, restricted C++ with some features added from other languages, according to Jim.
I'm not saying Java is a bad language, but that it would be a bad one to base others on.
Re:I doubt that Java will succeed.
on
Preview of Java 1.5
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
I chose to live in the real world and use what everyone else is using and that is java.
Now that's really thinking for yourself. What will you do when.Net dominates, just become another Microsoft mindslave? Besides, you've already got your loathed lock-in with Sun. How many independent implementations can compete directly with Sun's? If I write something in Java, I'll try hard to use all Free Software tools, but I'll miss a lot of features from Java 2 1.4.x.
Well, I believe it was designed for embedded consumer multimedia electronics devices. You're right, though: it was not designed for teaching. The main thing has disappointed me about Java is its lack of expressive power and flexibility, so if language extensions improve that, they can't be all bad.
And, as people have been mentioning, Scheme is a far better example of simplicity and power in a small package. It has far simpler syntax than any other language I know, but is more extensible than all of them. One would be hard pressed to find a language feature or programming style that can't be well expressed in this 28 year old language.
It seems there isn't a whole lot of interesting stuff happening with language design, at least that's very visible. Others have mentioned (I haven't learned it yet) the simplicity and power of Smalltalk, a language of similar vintage to Scheme. Is there anything new under the sun (no pun intended) in language design? If there is, it's probably in something like Eiffel (another one I should learn sometime) or one of the pure functional languages like OCaml (there's another one for the list). Meanwhile, most of the world continues to use languages descended from a portable assembler.
Proper stateful firewall rules can be just as effective in protecting a private network whether there is or isn't NAT going on. I've used Linux IP Masquerading a lot, as it's necessary in many cases, but it is a nasty kludge.
Linus is a leader, though not the only one. He may not have asked to be a leader, but he became one and has accepted the role, at least in the development of Linux itself. Not everyone is a philosopher, but everyone has a philosophy, whether he realizes it or not. It seems Linus' philosophy is one of hedonism and apathy, which is a little irresponsible, IMHO, since so many people depend on his leadership. He does have a responsibility to those he leads. RMS needs to become less abrasive and offensive, and Linus needs to care a little more.
Perhaps SCO's threats so far are silly enough to be ignored, but it would be foolish of Linus to pay no attention at all. I assume he is paying some attention.
I credit my vocabulary, grammar, and spelling to reading good old fashioned books, which I've been reading since I was about six. Of course, one hazard of learning vocabulary from novels is that it may take a while to learn how to pronounce the words. It took me years to realize that the "b" is silent in subtle.
OK, now I understand. I thought you were saying you wanted to avoid any software associated with the US.
I've installed OpenBSD before, but I'm just too comfortable with GNU/Linux and its superior hardware support. The Free Software community owes much to the project, especially in OpenSSH and OpenSSL.
I'm now using Gentoo because I wanted even more freedom than the likes of Mandrake and Debian, which I have used before. It takes more time to and effort to learn and tweak, but packages can be compiled with optional features and libraries, which allows greater flexibility. It's also easy to write a new ebuild, which is essential, since Gentoo still lacks many packages compared to the more mature Debian. Of course Gentoo's Portage owes much to *BSD ports, so that's another example of cross-pollination between Free Software projects.
Gentoo, though it is mostly US based, may be able to avoid the patent ambiguities, since it mainly consists of ebuilds, which are meta-pacakges or instructions of how to get and build a package, rather than pre-compiled binaries. Perhaps the Gentoo developers don't about such things since it's not yet a commercial distribution. I'm not sure how Debian deals with those issues.
Read Genesis 3 for the details. God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate from the tree. The serpent told Eve that she wouldn't die, but would gain wisdom and be like God. It turned out he was wrong on the first point and right on the second. I can see why he is called the father of lies. The most effective deceptions use just enough truth to be enticing.
That's one moral of the story. Another moral is that rebelling against God brings pain, suffering, and death. Perhaps Adam and Eve had to make the choice in order to learn both. I guess ignorance is bliss.
However, it wasn't necessary to rebel in order to be free. God provided the oportunity for freedom in the garden. When they rejected it, He took away that opportunity, but provided another. Regardless of whether we rebel or obey, He is still in control.
Well, I did my part: I listened to the ASF stream in real time (thanks MPlayer). I was disappointed that there was no lossage. Wow, that CEO sure can blather on without saying much. I guess that's one of the required skills. Suddenly the PHB isn't so funny any more.
I doubt they'd sue themselves, and I don't see how they'd be required to do so, but it would be a clear GPL violation and would garner the ire of the entire Free/Open Source software world. It would provide the long-anticipated legal test of GPL validity, since the FSF or EFF would probably sue them. As many have pointed out, this is probably one of the reasons SCO has stopped distributing Linux, though it seems a little late.
As a minor point, remember that code under the GPL is just as copyrighted as SCO's. It's released under a license with different goals from that of SCO's but it is the copyright which gives the license strength.
I don't know where the Torvalds family lives, but Linus seems to work in the state of California according to his home page, though it be hosted in Finland.
No, I also find it hilarious. Just more proof that some people never grow up. Of course, I never want to grow up in some ways, but petty grabbiness isn't one of them.
It does contradict the Christian interpretation. The Christian view is that they already had choice in the garden. How could they have chosen to disobey without it?
The Biblical reference is clear enough. Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and the rest of Zion have rejected God's Garden of Eden where all their needs are taken care of in favor of a hard, scrabbling existence where at least they have free will."
That may be one intrepretation of Genesis, but it is entirely different from the any Christian one. I believe that Adam and Eve lost their freedom when they chose (notice the free will already in place) to rebel against God. God gave people a second chance to have freedom in his Son.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget the power of juries. They have the power to decide against bad law. Since I just learned that today (thank you Slashdot), I'm now wondering if serving on a jury is generally more important than voting (though both are important).
Wow, and I thought there were silly patents here in the US!
Well, here in East Texas, we get $6 a day (w00t w00t!). I just appeared last week in response to a summons. I wasn't chosen, though (bummer, man I'm out like $60 or something). Unlike most of the other potentials, I did want to serve. Of course, I didn't have much better to do at the time and I'm genuinely interested in particpating in government.
That has to be the most informative post I've ever read on slashdot. I'm especially interested in the power of juries, since I just appeared in response to a jury summons last week. I wasn't one of the ones chosen to serve, but the process is much more real to me now. I had been under the assumption that it was a jury's responsibility to render a verdict based only on the facts and actual law. I had no idea a jury could decide against a bad law. Now, I'm thinking that serving on juries may be a more important responsibility for citizens than voting.
I'd certainly go with one of the Sun based Java implementations over anything from Microsoft any day. The only way I'd consider writing C# or anything .Netish would be using Mono or DotGNU.
Yes, Kaffe and GCJ and Jikes and Classpath are great, but typical Java projects (even Free Software ones) do depend on the Java libraries. More to the point, how could you write any Java program without them? System.out.println is a library function, just like printf is in C. Projects like Kaffe and GCJ and Classpath implement the interfaces and functionality of the Sun libraries as much as possible, but they never quite keep up with the latest.
Kaffe is great. So are GCJ and Classpath. However, none of them yet provides all of the libraries or functionality of the Sun based implementations, so you wouldn't necessarily be able to easily switch between Sun based (including the licensed ones from other vendors) and the Free Software ones.
I'm not saying that using Java is a bad idea; I've done it myself and may again in the future. I'm just pointing out that Sun does own it. It's not standardized and vendor independent in the same way that C, C++, Fortran, Common Lisp, or Ada is. Unless one is careful to only use the subset of the Java platform provided by the Free Software implementations, one will be somewhat dependent on Sun. However, I would trust Sun to steward their ownership a lot more than Microsoft.
I find those companies on this list of Java Licensees, so I doubt their implementations are independent. Neither is Blackdown, according to their FAQ. I would be a lot less wary of using one of the listed implementations of Java than using Microsoft's .Net, but Sun does still own Java and I'm still not aware of any completely independent implementations that are not way behind the official one.
Which one of those doesn't use code licensed from Sun?
I sure hope future languages aren't modeled on Java. That will retard language development like too much reliance on C has retarded it over the last couple of decades. But Java isn't even as original as C was. The language design is purely derivative, a cleaned-up, restricted C++ with some features added from other languages, according to Jim.
I'm not saying Java is a bad language, but that it would be a bad one to base others on.
Now that's really thinking for yourself. What will you do when
Well, I believe it was designed for embedded consumer multimedia electronics devices. You're right, though: it was not designed for teaching. The main thing has disappointed me about Java is its lack of expressive power and flexibility, so if language extensions improve that, they can't be all bad.
And, as people have been mentioning, Scheme is a far better example of simplicity and power in a small package. It has far simpler syntax than any other language I know, but is more extensible than all of them. One would be hard pressed to find a language feature or programming style that can't be well expressed in this 28 year old language.
It seems there isn't a whole lot of interesting stuff happening with language design, at least that's very visible. Others have mentioned (I haven't learned it yet) the simplicity and power of Smalltalk, a language of similar vintage to Scheme. Is there anything new under the sun (no pun intended) in language design? If there is, it's probably in something like Eiffel (another one I should learn sometime) or one of the pure functional languages like OCaml (there's another one for the list). Meanwhile, most of the world continues to use languages descended from a portable assembler.
Don't forget that 70.77% of statistics are faked.
Proper stateful firewall rules can be just as effective in protecting a private network whether there is or isn't NAT going on. I've used Linux IP Masquerading a lot, as it's necessary in many cases, but it is a nasty kludge.
Linus is a leader, though not the only one. He may not have asked to be a leader, but he became one and has accepted the role, at least in the development of Linux itself. Not everyone is a philosopher, but everyone has a philosophy, whether he realizes it or not. It seems Linus' philosophy is one of hedonism and apathy, which is a little irresponsible, IMHO, since so many people depend on his leadership. He does have a responsibility to those he leads. RMS needs to become less abrasive and offensive, and Linus needs to care a little more.
Perhaps SCO's threats so far are silly enough to be ignored, but it would be foolish of Linus to pay no attention at all. I assume he is paying some attention.
Well, being forced to play any game for ten hours straight would likely have that effect. If someone chose to do so, that'd be different.
I credit my vocabulary, grammar, and spelling to reading good old fashioned books, which I've been reading since I was about six. Of course, one hazard of learning vocabulary from novels is that it may take a while to learn how to pronounce the words. It took me years to realize that the "b" is silent in subtle.
OK, now I understand. I thought you were saying you wanted to avoid any software associated with the US.
I've installed OpenBSD before, but I'm just too comfortable with GNU/Linux and its superior hardware support. The Free Software community owes much to the project, especially in OpenSSH and OpenSSL.
I'm now using Gentoo because I wanted even more freedom than the likes of Mandrake and Debian, which I have used before. It takes more time to and effort to learn and tweak, but packages can be compiled with optional features and libraries, which allows greater flexibility. It's also easy to write a new ebuild, which is essential, since Gentoo still lacks many packages compared to the more mature Debian. Of course Gentoo's Portage owes much to *BSD ports, so that's another example of cross-pollination between Free Software projects.
Gentoo, though it is mostly US based, may be able to avoid the patent ambiguities, since it mainly consists of ebuilds, which are meta-pacakges or instructions of how to get and build a package, rather than pre-compiled binaries. Perhaps the Gentoo developers don't about such things since it's not yet a commercial distribution. I'm not sure how Debian deals with those issues.
Read Genesis 3 for the details. God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate from the tree. The serpent told Eve that she wouldn't die, but would gain wisdom and be like God. It turned out he was wrong on the first point and right on the second. I can see why he is called the father of lies. The most effective deceptions use just enough truth to be enticing.
That's one moral of the story. Another moral is that rebelling against God brings pain, suffering, and death. Perhaps Adam and Eve had to make the choice in order to learn both. I guess ignorance is bliss.
However, it wasn't necessary to rebel in order to be free. God provided the oportunity for freedom in the garden. When they rejected it, He took away that opportunity, but provided another. Regardless of whether we rebel or obey, He is still in control.
Well, I did my part: I listened to the ASF stream in real time (thanks MPlayer). I was disappointed that there was no lossage. Wow, that CEO sure can blather on without saying much. I guess that's one of the required skills. Suddenly the PHB isn't so funny any more.
I doubt they'd sue themselves, and I don't see how they'd be required to do so, but it would be a clear GPL violation and would garner the ire of the entire Free/Open Source software world. It would provide the long-anticipated legal test of GPL validity, since the FSF or EFF would probably sue them. As many have pointed out, this is probably one of the reasons SCO has stopped distributing Linux, though it seems a little late.
As a minor point, remember that code under the GPL is just as copyrighted as SCO's. It's released under a license with different goals from that of SCO's but it is the copyright which gives the license strength.
I don't know where the Torvalds family lives, but Linus seems to work in the state of California according to his home page, though it be hosted in Finland.
No, I also find it hilarious. Just more proof that some people never grow up. Of course, I never want to grow up in some ways, but petty grabbiness isn't one of them.
It does contradict the Christian interpretation. The Christian view is that they already had choice in the garden. How could they have chosen to disobey without it?
That may be one intrepretation of Genesis, but it is entirely different from the any Christian one. I believe that Adam and Eve lost their freedom when they chose (notice the free will already in place) to rebel against God. God gave people a second chance to have freedom in his Son.