There are a number of JVMs available for Pocket PC devices, either as MIDP, J2ME Personal Profile, or its predecessor Personal Java, the latter two being Java 1.1.8 compatible and capable of running applets. The exact versions available depend on the underlying processor, but Creme, Jeode and IBM's J9 are ones I've encountered.
HP have a Java 2 implementation for Linux on Alpha, and older versions of 1.1.7 (which if you're targeting lowest common denominator applets is sufficient) have been available for years. Blackdown have a 1.3.1 JDK for Linux on PowerPC and 1.1.8 for ARM based devices, which is also supported by IBM's J9.
"Looking and behaving better" is partly a matter of what you are used to, and also a reflection on the poor quality of many Java UIs, which is more a reflection on the apps themselves rather than the platform (there are exceptions, demonstrating that Java is capable of being better). If you could have an app that looked and acted exactly the same on all desktop machines, and appropriately differently on palmtop devices (but the same across all such devices), would that be enough to make you want to avoid duplicating all those presentation layers? (I think you underestimate the amount of work involved in producing a good presentation layer, BTW).
Sounds nice, but why so many different versions of the presentation layer? A Java Applet and a Midlet should take care of most of those platforms, and would be a lot less work to develop and maintain.
I'm always wondering where you put the actual logic in this kind of setup. You write your business logic as XPCOM components in... what? C++? Java? Python? Javascript?
I was given to understand that Mozilla as application platform should be platform independent. But what about the actual code apart from GUI and the necessary wiring?
Java? But even with C or C++, once you've got the UI out of the way, and using a standard library for network and filesystem access (I assume Mozilla provides this), there aren't many portability problems left.
The Glade XML format is kind of strange (it looks like XML described in XML; a pointless scheme), but Glade simplifies GUI development to a point that I have yet to see anyone improve on
Then surely XUL improves on Glade, by being not so strange. On the otherhand, XUL's reliance on Javascript might give the lead back to Glade/GTK.
I use my mobile phone rather than my wallet. Like my wallet, I usually have it with me, but unlike my wallet I can PIN protect my phonebook in my phone, and back it up easily (to similarly secure storage on a PC).
You could get a job as a analyst with trolling like that. Watch out Enderle and Didio, here comes webword!
What is it about money that makes it magically produce reliable results? Why is development "free" time, but observing users or talking to people isn't?
VC6 was written before ISO C++ was finalized. I'm pretty sure I ran into the same sort of problem, and when I researched whether MS got it wrong, concluded that they didn't with the way the spec was written at the time.
I saw a similar effect on one of my brother's contraptions. Essentially, it was a roller skate wheel that had powerful magnets embedded in it. When it was spun, the magnetic field would act on a spool of wire underneath and create a charge that went into a capacitor.
A generator in other words.
When tinkering with the thing, I found that one could take a magnet and place it a small ways away and that magnet would repel the other magnets on the wheel, making the thing spin longer for the same amount of energy.
The reason you can do that is that the magnet probably interfered with the generator's ability to turn kinetic energy into electricity. The result would be that the wheel spins longer, but you end up with less charge stored in the capacitor.
What this guy is claiming is that he found a way to place the magnet so the wheel kept spinning forever, and there was plenty of energy left over to charge the capacitor. Sorry, but that just isn't possible.
Does the company care? The outsourcing company doesn't, they are getting paid per call.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. The fact that the government foots the bill for these calls is probably a disincentive for the Relay Centers to do anything about this, and probably why they will take disciplinary action against employees who think for themselves and refuse to handle obvious scams. A classic case of corporate greed. What it needs is for a fraud victim to sue a Relay Center for being an accessory to fraud, or for the FCC to regulate.
Okay, I've looked through a bunch of these messages and I guess I must be a little slow... I had Money 97, upgraded to 99...love it! However, when I installed it, it defaulted my currency to US dollar (why?) My regional settings are Canada.... when I use the "help" to change the base currency, absolutely nothing changes... not that I am against US money (it sure beats Canadian funds right now) but it is a little annoying! If anyone has comments, please let me know... mochamichelle@hotmail.com Thanks! Miche lle Levesque
This example is not isolated. As a non-US user, I've struck numerous examples of this sort of thing in proprietary software from major companies, and usually bug reports are met with silence, or a "this only affects a minority of our customers, so we might fix it one day, but don't hold your breath" response. Bugs like this are taken very seriously in the Open Source and Free Software communities, probably because the diverse nature of the development teams means that a developer somewhere cares about the same problem.
I'm baffled by most of Gosling's comments about RMS and the GPL.
It is no surprise to see Gosling attack the GPL. He is personally responsible for it's creation, and I don't mean that as a compliment. If it wasn't for him, RMS would have continued releasing his work into the public domain, at least until the next Gosling came along and demonstrated that freedom needs to be protected.
However if you're in a situation where you're fortunate to even have donated low-end computers, you're going to go with what your users know.
If you're in a situation where you're unfortunate enough to have to rely on donated low-end computers, then your users are going to be a blank slate. Or are underpriveldged children born with an inate ability to use Windows these days?
Ditch Gnome and KDE, and run WindowMaker. I used to run that on a P100 laptop with 32Mb of RAM and it flew compared with W95. Upgrading to 72Mb sped things up a lot though, both in W95 and WindowMaker.
There are a few intersections in the UK where pedestrians cross on their own phase (and hence can cross diagonally, though it is seldom advertised that you can), but the majority are more like:
North/South East/West . Peds N/S Peds E/W Red . . . . Green . . . Red Green Red . . . . Green . . . Red Red Red/Yellow. Yellow. . . Red Red Green . . . Red . . . . Green Red Green . . . Red . . . . Red Red Yellow. . . Red/Yellow. Red Red
the engine has to have a certain minimum amount of power to not stall with an automatic
In Japan, it is almost unheard of to drive a manual car, even if it's a 600cc microcar. All that's required to prevent stalling with an automatic is a clutch that's adjusted properly so it is disengaged (or slipping very close to it, for easier hill starts) at idle.
And as soon as I showed my New Zealand passport at the boarding gate in San Francisco, the security staff decided I needed to remove my shoes and empty my hand luggage for a third time.
The reasonable Brazilians petitioned to be removed from the list of countries who require visas and fingerprints.
Which might have looked like an option at the time, but now that Canada and some Mexicans are the only ones left on that list reciprocacy seems like the better option.
In light of recent events, how would immigration react to the situation described above? I'm about to go back to the states soon, and do not quite relish being dragged aside and questioned...
Since the US does not disallow dual citizenship (although some of the wording in immigration law appears to discourage it), if the immigration officer pulls you up on this, all you should need to do is show the other passport.
I don't know what the situation is with US authorities, but if you want to use your US passport to enter the UK, you'll need to get it endorsed with your UK nationality. Otherwise using your UK passport is not just more convenient for entering the UK, it is legally required.
Note though that the UK has no passport check on exit, so its unlikely that you'd ever be caught or declared an overstayer unless you used your US passport frequently enough to make them suspect you were more than just a visiting tourist.
Denmark spends 1.04% of GDP on economic aid, by comparison, the US spends only 0.06%.
Japan used to (in the 1990's) spend about 1.5 times as much on aid as the US (in absolute terms) despite having a smaller economy and population. Maybe that has changed more recently to make US the largest donor in absolute terms.
You can confirm all this in the CIA World Factbook, or on nationmaster.com (which lets you compare stats for nations more easily).
Slashdot Mirror
"Looking and behaving better" is partly a matter of what you are used to, and also a reflection on the poor quality of many Java UIs, which is more a reflection on the apps themselves rather than the platform (there are exceptions, demonstrating that Java is capable of being better). If you could have an app that looked and acted exactly the same on all desktop machines, and appropriately differently on palmtop devices (but the same across all such devices), would that be enough to make you want to avoid duplicating all those presentation layers? (I think you underestimate the amount of work involved in producing a good presentation layer, BTW).
Sounds nice, but why so many different versions of the presentation layer? A Java Applet and a Midlet should take care of most of those platforms, and would be a lot less work to develop and maintain.
I was given to understand that Mozilla as application platform should be platform independent. But what about the actual code apart from GUI and the necessary wiring?
Java? But even with C or C++, once you've got the UI out of the way, and using a standard library for network and filesystem access (I assume Mozilla provides this), there aren't many portability problems left.
Then surely XUL improves on Glade, by being not so strange. On the otherhand, XUL's reliance on Javascript might give the lead back to Glade/GTK.
I use my mobile phone rather than my wallet. Like my wallet, I usually have it with me, but unlike my wallet I can PIN protect my phonebook in my phone, and back it up easily (to similarly secure storage on a PC).
It really fucks you if you travel around Europe though.
What is it about money that makes it magically produce reliable results? Why is development "free" time, but observing users or talking to people isn't?
Keep talking out of that hole in your arse. VC 6.0 was released near the beginning of 1998, just a few months after the first public draft of C99.
Presumably you rant against Netscape 3.0's (for compatibility reasons) XHTML compliance too?
VC6 was written before ISO C++ was finalized. I'm pretty sure I ran into the same sort of problem, and when I researched whether MS got it wrong, concluded that they didn't with the way the spec was written at the time.
A generator in other words.
When tinkering with the thing, I found that one could take a magnet and place it a small ways away and that magnet would repel the other magnets on the wheel, making the thing spin longer for the same amount of energy.
The reason you can do that is that the magnet probably interfered with the generator's ability to turn kinetic energy into electricity. The result would be that the wheel spins longer, but you end up with less charge stored in the capacitor.
What this guy is claiming is that he found a way to place the magnet so the wheel kept spinning forever, and there was plenty of energy left over to charge the capacitor. Sorry, but that just isn't possible.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. The fact that the government foots the bill for these calls is probably a disincentive for the Relay Centers to do anything about this, and probably why they will take disciplinary action against employees who think for themselves and refuse to handle obvious scams. A classic case of corporate greed. What it needs is for a fraud victim to sue a Relay Center for being an accessory to fraud, or for the FCC to regulate.
That was the first thing I thought too. I think they need to rename it to Sapphspire to avoid litigation.
This example is not isolated. As a non-US user, I've struck numerous examples of this sort of thing in proprietary software from major companies, and usually bug reports are met with silence, or a "this only affects a minority of our customers, so we might fix it one day, but don't hold your breath" response. Bugs like this are taken very seriously in the Open Source and Free Software communities, probably because the diverse nature of the development teams means that a developer somewhere cares about the same problem.
See here, under the heading "The Historical Impact of the GPL", or google for Gosling RMS GPL.
It is no surprise to see Gosling attack the GPL. He is personally responsible for it's creation, and I don't mean that as a compliment. If it wasn't for him, RMS would have continued releasing his work into the public domain, at least until the next Gosling came along and demonstrated that freedom needs to be protected.
If you're in a situation where you're unfortunate enough to have to rely on donated low-end computers, then your users are going to be a blank slate. Or are underpriveldged children born with an inate ability to use Windows these days?
Ditch Gnome and KDE, and run WindowMaker. I used to run that on a P100 laptop with 32Mb of RAM and it flew compared with W95. Upgrading to 72Mb sped things up a lot though, both in W95 and WindowMaker.
In Japan, it is almost unheard of to drive a manual car, even if it's a 600cc microcar. All that's required to prevent stalling with an automatic is a clutch that's adjusted properly so it is disengaged (or slipping very close to it, for easier hill starts) at idle.
And as soon as I showed my New Zealand passport at the boarding gate in San Francisco, the security staff decided I needed to remove my shoes and empty my hand luggage for a third time.
Which might have looked like an option at the time, but now that Canada and some Mexicans are the only ones left on that list reciprocacy seems like the better option.
Since the US does not disallow dual citizenship (although some of the wording in immigration law appears to discourage it), if the immigration officer pulls you up on this, all you should need to do is show the other passport.
Note though that the UK has no passport check on exit, so its unlikely that you'd ever be caught or declared an overstayer unless you used your US passport frequently enough to make them suspect you were more than just a visiting tourist.
Japan used to (in the 1990's) spend about 1.5 times as much on aid as the US (in absolute terms) despite having a smaller economy and population. Maybe that has changed more recently to make US the largest donor in absolute terms.
You can confirm all this in the CIA World Factbook, or on nationmaster.com (which lets you compare stats for nations more easily).