What Is Python? Understanding Them : Pythons are relatively primitive snakes belonging to the subfamily Pythoninae within the family Boidae. Boidae, in turn, is one of 11 families in suborder Serpentes, The Snakes. Within the subfamily of pythons, arboreal pythons with heat-sensing pits along their lips (green tree pythons) are grouped seperately from terrestrial pythons that have heavy bodies and short tails
(blood pythons). Each different type of snake eventually ends up with two names, one for the genus and one for the species. When isolated population exits that are still identifiable as the same type of snake, a third name, the trinomial, is added.
The term primitive indicates that these snakes were some of the first snakes to evolve. Primitive snakes display features that link them to lizards. These features include a rudimentary pelvic girdle in the form
of cloacal spurs, and lungs of equal sizes . Advanced snakes, like the rat snakes and whip snakes, have only one functional lung and no cloacal spurs.
Pythons are divided into about 26 species, depending on which authority you accept. Pythons range in size from very big (Burmese and Reticulated pythons with the potential of over 20 feet and over 200
pounds) to small (Children's pythons do not get much bigger than 24 inches '61cm' in length) . No matter what the size , they are all constrictors . Some burrow-hunting species have developed novel ways of
using thei coils to catch prey within the confines of a burrow but they are still constrictors nonetheless . Most pythons are nocturnal hunters and some species have heat sensory pits along the edges of their lips
to aid in finding warm-blooded prey .
Pythons Versus Boas : Many people don't know the main difference between boas and pythons . Boas are termed ovoviviparous , this means their eggs inside the females are surrounded by a membrane
instead of a hard shell like pythons . So when the boa babies born , babies break through the membrane to crawl away . Pythons are oviparous , this means the eggs are surrounded by a thin , parchmentlike
shell . Female pythons will coil around their eggs and stay with them during the incubation period .
Life Span : Over 20 Years But Much More In Captivity .
Their Orginal Habitat : Africa , Asia and Australia , North America (A Little Amount) . All python snakes are tropical animals . They won't live under the temperature 22C (77F) . Under this fact the areas
that they live must be near the deserts or tropical places like amazon . But mainly you can find them Africa , Asia and Australia , North America (A Little Amount) .
Pythons As Pets : Pythons can be good pets if you care them enough . -- Floyd
Hey, don't forget the broken version of ncurses he released (3.something). Fortunately, more able people have since released a better version.
does anyone think that ESR still has a credible voice in the community? For me, he stopped having credibility shortly after the flurry of Linux-related IPOs.
You mean when he wrote self-promoting crap like his "Newfound Wealth" bitching-cause-i'm-rich or the "Take my Job please" bitching-cause-i'm-famous bit?
I, along with a lot of other people, interpreted his statements as arrogant, thinly-guised, and frankly insulting bragging (the exact stuff we love Linus for *not* doing).
You're hardly the only one.
In any event, it seems to me that his role as a community mouthpiece has been largely taken over
It's about time.
I know this is marginally off-topic, but I need to know if I'm alone amongst the serious/. inhabitants in not wanting to hear from this guy again
Not hardly. If a tree fell on ESR in a forest filled with Linux users, would anyone notice? The guy is, and always has been, all talk. Say what you will about RMS (a communist), Larry Wall (a pseudo-scientist babbler), or Theo deRaadt (a sociopathic cult leader), but they produce working code. Until ESR does more than a simple mail downloader (is he capable of it?), he is simply not needed.
(I already know what the trolls think),
Heh.
or am I just being too hard on a guy who still has something worthwhile to say despite letting the dollar-signs go to his head at one point?
Of course, Stalin and Pol Pot's regimes weren't really socialist, they were totalitarian.
Totalitarianism: The government tells you what to do.
Socialism: The goverment tells you what to do, and takes all your money to "redistribute".
For an example of a real socialist government, try the post-war Labour government in Britain. They introduced the National Health Service, which ensures proper medical care to the millions of people that could not afford it, and has saved an enourmous number of lives.
I hardly think that a system which requires people to wait upwards of 10 months to see a doctor is something to be proud of. NHS is a failure, and even the Britons know it. People complain about healthcare in the US, but at least you can handle your own medical needs without the government's approval.
As another poster has already noted - your reply doesn't answer the question of why America brainwashes its schoolchildren against socialism,
Why does america "brainwash" it's students against getting AIDS? Because it's a horrible thing. Socialism is no better: a painful and slow economic death which will slowly spread to those around you. Tell me that people in socialist countries like China and France are better off now than they were before. Tell me that death camps are a positive benefit of a "people's revolution". Tell me that 19% unemployment is normal. Tell me that socialism is more than a sick joke.
Hopefully though before they die they release the source code to Wordperfect for DOS so maybe all us Linux/*BSD users out there will finally have a console Word Proccessor without having to learn latex or install dosemu
Older, text-based versions of WordPerfect were ported to Unix long ago. You might even still be able to buy them (not from Corel, but from the company that did the actual porting; I forget their name). For a number of years, WordPerfect's cross-platform abilities were touted as a major selling point.
...if this was actually an 'experiment', or if they thought they could get away with it? With all the bad press they recieved over this, I would assume the later.
Do you know what the purpose of a business is? Let me tell you: to maximize profits. If you can pay more, there is no reason why they shouldn't charge more. Ever buy a car? Some people pay more than others for the same vehicle. Yet no one on Slashdot gets upset.
Amazon's business practices are their own problem. If you don't like it, how difficult is it to buy your "The Professional: Director's Cut" DVD elsewhere? It's a free market.
And since the record industry sold more CDs
then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*.
The amount of CD's they have sold proves nothing. The only way to determine whether or not napster had an adverse efect would be to have an alternate universe in which Napster did not exist, measure CD sales there, and then compare it to our world. In absence of that, there is no rational reason to believe that Napster has caused CD sales to rise (by the same token, there is no reason to believe in the converse of that statement either).
While I think that Napster presents a great leap in freedom for computer users, akin to the signifigance of Open Source, it is far too early to declare any sort of victory.
Yes, one of the main reasons why I don't use OpenBSD on the matchine that is both server/workstation is the lack of apps.
Well, if the ports aren't enough, you can install the Linux and/or FreeBSD compatability(sp?) systems.
Though as an Internet server, I think most people will find any BSD to have more than enough available software. There's not so much desktop stuff available for OpenBSD pre-compiled, but there's nothing stopping anyone from compiling stuff themselves, though I certainly wouldn't want to recompile GNOME, KDE, XEmacs and mozilla on my P133:)
I also wonder what packaging systems it wil be based off of; will it be like RPM with lots of functionality but confusing or absent categorization (my RPM databases always turned into one package per category because I'd install mandrake or SuSE packages on top of RedHat), or will it be like.deb with a simpler style?
There is already a package system. It is something like Red Hat, but there are no categorizations (at least in the OpenBSD version; I really only have some experience with it). You can check out the (in no particular order) OpenBSD man pages and port info, the FreeBSD port section of the FreeBSD handbook, and the NetBSD pkgsrc info. Reading those pages should give you more information about BSD ports/packages.
It looks like there will be a single ports tree from which binaries for any of the BSDs can be built easily. (For those of you who don't know, ports are an automated way of downloading, compiling, and installing software).
I imagine that this will be a huge benefit to users of things like OpenBSD, which has 400-500 ports (I think), in comparison to FreeBSD's several thousand. Each of the free BSD's already have their own binary package system (which is basically the same), but their port systems are in very different states. This will be a huge boost to BSD, and make it even easier. I hope it succeeds.
Is VA Linux seriously going to sue some college kid in Texas because he stole their site design? Somehow I doubt it. Imagine the great publicity that would generate...
At any rate, think of it as "Open Souce": both web sites might look the same, but don't share the same content. A person looking for Linux informationis not going to be confused by "MyHobbes.com". And even if it was a Linux site, the readers would flock to the best site, regardless of design. Much like Open Source Software, projects can compete, but still share. Just think of the Invisible Hand of web site visitors.
Brilliant. An automated update tool. An integrated browser and email client (with VB scripting, no less). A host of unresolved security issues. Is Miguel de Icaza really that excited about turning Linux into a complete Windoze clone?
What is there to stop a malicious hacker from penetrating Helix's servers and sending "updates" which reformat your root partition? Exisiting package formats (RPM, deb, etc) are already insecure (who knows what could be in those scripts they execute), but at least those require the used to actively search, download, and install. It looks like GNOME will be "updated" behind your back. Given the heated flamefests between KDE develpers and frothing GNOME advocates (including Miguel himself), it can't be discounted that the next Helix update will "disable" your pre-existing KDE install much the way Winblowz over-writes ext2 partitions.
"Ease of use" is not worth sacrificing Linux over. Let Windoze be insecure and "easy". Linux should stay the way it is.
Why is it that whenever [big internet site] is cracked, many 3 letter agancies "go after" the crackers with a great zeal and spend millions to try them, and sieze their hardware, and bar them forever from a career in computers....
Because they employ lots of people, have millions of credit card numbers, and take in more money in a day than you will in a year?
Yet when my box is cracked and my credit card numbers stolen, etc., calling anyone (police, FBI, etc.) gets a "why are you bothering us? You're lucky we don't prosecute *you* for wasting our time with such trivialities." attitude?
Because you are not wealthy, a big name, or important?
Is cracking illegal or isn't it?
Yes. And the great thing is that constitutional laws don't apply to cracking cases! Just ask Kevin Mitnick.
Who do I report it to when I'm hit?
A trained consultant, perhaps?
What gov't/state/municipal entity defends me as defends amazon or CNN?
None of them. That's where the private sector comes in. If you can't secure your Corel Linux box, it's not really the government's problem, now is it?
I not sure we should go around resurrecting whatever species we feel like.
But we are free to kill them off whenever we like? By your logic, we should bulldoze all hospitals and allow people with easily-treatable diseases to die.
I am all for the protection of endangered species, but something about bringing to life what was history through science gives me that "Don't mess with the time-space continuum, Marty" feeling.
For starters, this is science, not science-fiction. There is not time-travel involved. If humans killed a species off, why can't they bring it back?
A TotC happens when there is some finite resource that everyone exploits
Actually, it's just a strawman used to attack the ideals of Libertarianism by people with no understanding of it. In the real world, such a situation almost never arises.
Imagine if Linus had spent his time porting Bubble Bobble to his digital calculator instead of coding the Linux kernel
Imagine if he had spent his time improving BSD instead of going his own way.
We'd be so far ahead of where we are now, it makes me sick to think about it. I agree with you. When you can do something useful or something meaningless, you should work on what benefits the community most. Torvalds failed us miserably in that department, leaving Unix far more fragmented than it was before.
A shame, really. Too many bright young minds, wasting away on dead-end projects when they should be enjoying the sunshine and outdoors.
By exposing ourselves to high levels of radiation, we can rapidly increase the rate of genetic mutations in future generations. Sure most of them will be bad, and millions will die horrible deaths or lead lives as misshapen mutants, but those who survive will become an elite team of crime-fighting superheroes!
Kaffe also only supports JDK 1.1 If it were up to date with Sun's releases, the situation would be different. But it's not. Developers need the new features in 1.2, and they're not going to wait.
Free ("as in root beer") is good enough when GPL-free isn't available. How many people complain about Loki porting things to Linux?
No one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use Sun's tools.
Given that tools such as Kaffe are no longer needed on Linux now that we have a complete, official JDK from Sun (with a better JIT as well, see the August LJ for info), I think that Transvirtual was thrown into a situation in which there was no future for them in the Linux world. Rather than doing what they did in the past (ie, innovating), we know see that they are hawking a bizzare mixture of Linux and Java (with XML thrown in for buzzword compliance) at the PDA crowd, perhaps the last market in which flash and glitter is more important than real results.
People buy PDA's to jot little notes or as an address book. Anything else is just another feature to list on the box (and listing Linux is guaranteed to make geeks drool). How many people use PDAs to run Java-enabled distributed applications? Not many, I'm guessing. Worse still is the use of Java. Why bog down an already slow processor and waste precious battery lifetime running a bloated JVM when native code would work just as well? For small systems like PDAs, speed is a much more important factor than portability. Client-side Java is dead on the desktop, and I'm guessing it will have a short life on PDAs as well.
All in all, this seems to be YA Linux PDA: loaded with features no one wants, no one needs, and no one will use. But hey, it's got a penguin on it, so that's guarenteed sales to the geek demographic.
But there's no way Companies could be polluting! It's in their Enlightened Self Interest not to!
Thank god the Libertarians will put an end to this nonsense. We need a president to allow Big Corp to fill our air with the lucious smell of Industrial Smog and our sees with old-fashioned, American Toxic Waste.
How do we know what the earth's normal weather cycles are in THE LONG TERM?!
1) Find several old trees in an area.
2) Get core samples of them (ie, cut a small bit out)
3) Check the rings. Are they close together at one point? Means there wasn't much growth, which in turns means there wasn't much rain. If the rings arr far apart, the opposite could be true.
4) Match this up with data from the other trees.
5) Repeat for other areas you're interested in.
Slashdot Mirror
What Is Python? Understanding Them : Pythons are relatively primitive snakes belonging to the subfamily Pythoninae within the family Boidae. Boidae, in turn, is one of 11 families in suborder Serpentes, The Snakes. Within the subfamily of pythons, arboreal pythons with heat-sensing pits along their lips (green tree pythons) are grouped seperately from terrestrial pythons that have heavy bodies and short tails
(blood pythons). Each different type of snake eventually ends up with two names, one for the genus and one for the species. When isolated population exits that are still identifiable as the same type of snake, a third name, the trinomial, is added.
The term primitive indicates that these snakes were some of the first snakes to evolve. Primitive snakes display features that link them to lizards. These features include a rudimentary pelvic girdle in the form
of cloacal spurs, and lungs of equal sizes . Advanced snakes, like the rat snakes and whip snakes, have only one functional lung and no cloacal spurs.
Pythons are divided into about 26 species, depending on which authority you accept. Pythons range in size from very big (Burmese and Reticulated pythons with the potential of over 20 feet and over 200
pounds) to small (Children's pythons do not get much bigger than 24 inches '61cm' in length) . No matter what the size , they are all constrictors . Some burrow-hunting species have developed novel ways of
using thei coils to catch prey within the confines of a burrow but they are still constrictors nonetheless . Most pythons are nocturnal hunters and some species have heat sensory pits along the edges of their lips
to aid in finding warm-blooded prey .
Pythons Versus Boas : Many people don't know the main difference between boas and pythons . Boas are termed ovoviviparous , this means their eggs inside the females are surrounded by a membrane
instead of a hard shell like pythons . So when the boa babies born , babies break through the membrane to crawl away . Pythons are oviparous , this means the eggs are surrounded by a thin , parchmentlike
shell . Female pythons will coil around their eggs and stay with them during the incubation period .
Life Span : Over 20 Years But Much More In Captivity .
Their Orginal Habitat : Africa , Asia and Australia , North America (A Little Amount) . All python snakes are tropical animals . They won't live under the temperature 22C (77F) . Under this fact the areas
that they live must be near the deserts or tropical places like amazon . But mainly you can find them Africa , Asia and Australia , North America (A Little Amount) .
Pythons As Pets : Pythons can be good pets if you care them enough .
-- Floyd
Accomplishments from the fetchmail project aside,
/. inhabitants in not wanting to hear from this guy again
Hey, don't forget the broken version of ncurses he released (3.something). Fortunately, more able people have since released a better version.
does anyone think that ESR still has a credible voice in the community? For me, he stopped having credibility shortly after the flurry of Linux-related IPOs.
You mean when he wrote self-promoting crap like his "Newfound Wealth" bitching-cause-i'm-rich or the "Take my Job please" bitching-cause-i'm-famous bit?
I, along with a lot of other people, interpreted his statements as arrogant, thinly-guised, and frankly insulting bragging (the exact stuff we love Linus for *not* doing).
You're hardly the only one.
In any event, it seems to me that his role as a community mouthpiece has been largely taken over
It's about time.
I know this is marginally off-topic, but I need to know if I'm alone amongst the serious
Not hardly. If a tree fell on ESR in a forest filled with Linux users, would anyone notice? The guy is, and always has been, all talk. Say what you will about RMS (a communist), Larry Wall (a pseudo-scientist babbler), or Theo deRaadt (a sociopathic cult leader), but they produce working code. Until ESR does more than a simple mail downloader (is he capable of it?), he is simply not needed.
(I already know what the trolls think),
Heh.
or am I just being too hard on a guy who still has something worthwhile to say despite letting the dollar-signs go to his head at one point?
One word: no.
-- Floyd
Of course, Stalin and Pol Pot's regimes weren't really socialist, they were totalitarian.
Totalitarianism: The government tells you what to do.
Socialism: The goverment tells you what to do, and takes all your money to "redistribute".
For an example of a real socialist government, try the post-war Labour government in Britain. They introduced the National Health Service, which ensures proper medical care to the millions of people that could not afford it, and has saved an enourmous number of lives.
I hardly think that a system which requires people to wait upwards of 10 months to see a doctor is something to be proud of. NHS is a failure, and even the Britons know it. People complain about healthcare in the US, but at least you can handle your own medical needs without the government's approval.
As another poster has already noted - your reply doesn't answer the question of why America brainwashes its schoolchildren against socialism,
Why does america "brainwash" it's students against getting AIDS? Because it's a horrible thing. Socialism is no better: a painful and slow economic death which will slowly spread to those around you. Tell me that people in socialist countries like China and France are better off now than they were before. Tell me that death camps are a positive benefit of a "people's revolution". Tell me that 19% unemployment is normal. Tell me that socialism is more than a sick joke.
No one will believe you.
-- Floyd
Hopefully though before they die they release the source code to Wordperfect for DOS so maybe all us Linux/*BSD users out there will finally have a console Word Proccessor without having to learn latex or install dosemu
Older, text-based versions of WordPerfect were ported to Unix long ago. You might even still be able to buy them (not from Corel, but from the company that did the actual porting; I forget their name). For a number of years, WordPerfect's cross-platform abilities were touted as a major selling point.
-- Floyd
MP3.com is being sued by just about everyone right now. Do you really think that they're going to risk a confrontation with the MPAA as well?
Taking down that "song" was common sense, and nothing else.
-- Floyd
...if this was actually an 'experiment', or if they thought they could get away with it? With all the bad press they recieved over this, I would assume the later.
Do you know what the purpose of a business is? Let me tell you: to maximize profits. If you can pay more, there is no reason why they shouldn't charge more. Ever buy a car? Some people pay more than others for the same vehicle. Yet no one on Slashdot gets upset.
Amazon's business practices are their own problem. If you don't like it, how difficult is it to buy your "The Professional: Director's Cut" DVD elsewhere? It's a free market.
-- Floyd
And since the record industry sold more CDs
then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*.
The amount of CD's they have sold proves nothing. The only way to determine whether or not napster had an adverse efect would be to have an alternate universe in which Napster did not exist, measure CD sales there, and then compare it to our world. In absence of that, there is no rational reason to believe that Napster has caused CD sales to rise (by the same token, there is no reason to believe in the converse of that statement either).
While I think that Napster presents a great leap in freedom for computer users, akin to the signifigance of Open Source, it is far too early to declare any sort of victory.
-- Floyd
Yes, one of the main reasons why I don't use OpenBSD on the matchine that is both server/workstation is the lack of apps.
:)
Well, if the ports aren't enough, you can install the Linux and/or FreeBSD compatability(sp?) systems.
Though as an Internet server, I think most people will find any BSD to have more than enough available software. There's not so much desktop stuff available for OpenBSD pre-compiled, but there's nothing stopping anyone from compiling stuff themselves, though I certainly wouldn't want to recompile GNOME, KDE, XEmacs and mozilla on my P133
-- Floyd
I also wonder what packaging systems it wil be based off of; will it be like RPM with lots of functionality but confusing or absent categorization (my RPM databases always turned into one package per category because I'd install mandrake or SuSE packages on top of RedHat), or will it be like .deb with a simpler style?
There is already a package system. It is something like Red Hat, but there are no categorizations (at least in the OpenBSD version; I really only have some experience with it). You can check out the (in no particular order) OpenBSD man pages and port info, the FreeBSD port section of the FreeBSD handbook, and the NetBSD pkgsrc info. Reading those pages should give you more information about BSD ports/packages.
-- Floyd
It looks like there will be a single ports tree from which binaries for any of the BSDs can be built easily. (For those of you who don't know, ports are an automated way of downloading, compiling, and installing software).
I imagine that this will be a huge benefit to users of things like OpenBSD, which has 400-500 ports (I think), in comparison to FreeBSD's several thousand. Each of the free BSD's already have their own binary package system (which is basically the same), but their port systems are in very different states. This will be a huge boost to BSD, and make it even easier. I hope it succeeds.
-- Floyd
Is VA Linux seriously going to sue some college kid in Texas because he stole their site design? Somehow I doubt it. Imagine the great publicity that would generate...
At any rate, think of it as "Open Souce": both web sites might look the same, but don't share the same content. A person looking for Linux informationis not going to be confused by "MyHobbes.com". And even if it was a Linux site, the readers would flock to the best site, regardless of design. Much like Open Source Software, projects can compete, but still share. Just think of the Invisible Hand of web site visitors.
-- Floyd
Brilliant. An automated update tool. An integrated browser and email client (with VB scripting, no less). A host of unresolved security issues. Is Miguel de Icaza really that excited about turning Linux into a complete Windoze clone?
What is there to stop a malicious hacker from penetrating Helix's servers and sending "updates" which reformat your root partition? Exisiting package formats (RPM, deb, etc) are already insecure (who knows what could be in those scripts they execute), but at least those require the used to actively search, download, and install. It looks like GNOME will be "updated" behind your back. Given the heated flamefests between KDE develpers and frothing GNOME advocates (including Miguel himself), it can't be discounted that the next Helix update will "disable" your pre-existing KDE install much the way Winblowz over-writes ext2 partitions.
"Ease of use" is not worth sacrificing Linux over. Let Windoze be insecure and "easy". Linux should stay the way it is.
-- Floyd
Why is it that whenever [big internet site] is cracked, many 3 letter agancies "go after" the crackers with a great zeal and spend millions to try them, and sieze their hardware, and bar them forever from a career in computers....
Because they employ lots of people, have millions of credit card numbers, and take in more money in a day than you will in a year?
Yet when my box is cracked and my credit card numbers stolen, etc., calling anyone (police, FBI, etc.) gets a "why are you bothering us? You're lucky we don't prosecute *you* for wasting our time with such trivialities." attitude?
Because you are not wealthy, a big name, or important?
Is cracking illegal or isn't it?
Yes. And the great thing is that constitutional laws don't apply to cracking cases! Just ask Kevin Mitnick.
Who do I report it to when I'm hit?
A trained consultant, perhaps?
What gov't/state/municipal entity defends me as defends amazon or CNN?
None of them. That's where the private sector comes in. If you can't secure your Corel Linux box, it's not really the government's problem, now is it?
-- Floyd
I not sure we should go around resurrecting whatever species we feel like.
But we are free to kill them off whenever we like? By your logic, we should bulldoze all hospitals and allow people with easily-treatable diseases to die.
I am all for the protection of endangered species, but something about bringing to life what was history through science gives me that "Don't mess with the time-space continuum, Marty" feeling.
For starters, this is science, not science-fiction. There is not time-travel involved. If humans killed a species off, why can't they bring it back?
-- Floyd
If Borland opened it's Object Pascal compiler (independent of Delphi), I'd switch to it for many development projects
Have you tried Free Pascal? It supports Object Pascal and Delphi code. And it's already free, so there's no waiting.
-- Floyd
A TotC happens when there is some finite resource that everyone exploits
Actually, it's just a strawman used to attack the ideals of Libertarianism by people with no understanding of it. In the real world, such a situation almost never arises.
-- Floyd
If I want BSD news, I'd just head to BSD Today, Daily Daemon News, or the OpenBSD User's Journal, rather than waiting a month for new stuff.
Granted, BSD doesn't move quite as fast as Linux, but one issue every four weeks? That's just not enough any more.
-- Floyd
Imagine if Linus had spent his time porting Bubble Bobble to his digital calculator instead of coding the Linux kernel
Imagine if he had spent his time improving BSD instead of going his own way.
We'd be so far ahead of where we are now, it makes me sick to think about it. I agree with you. When you can do something useful or something meaningless, you should work on what benefits the community most. Torvalds failed us miserably in that department, leaving Unix far more fragmented than it was before.
A shame, really. Too many bright young minds, wasting away on dead-end projects when they should be enjoying the sunshine and outdoors.
-- Floyd
By exposing ourselves to high levels of radiation, we can rapidly increase the rate of genetic mutations in future generations. Sure most of them will be bad, and millions will die horrible deaths or lead lives as misshapen mutants, but those who survive will become an elite team of crime-fighting superheroes!
I saw it in X-Men, so it must be true.
-- Floyd
Kaffe also only supports JDK 1.1 If it were up to date with Sun's releases, the situation would be different. But it's not. Developers need the new features in 1.2, and they're not going to wait.
Free ("as in root beer") is good enough when GPL-free isn't available. How many people complain about Loki porting things to Linux?
No one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use Sun's tools.
-- Floyd
Given that tools such as Kaffe are no longer needed on Linux now that we have a complete, official JDK from Sun (with a better JIT as well, see the August LJ for info), I think that Transvirtual was thrown into a situation in which there was no future for them in the Linux world. Rather than doing what they did in the past (ie, innovating), we know see that they are hawking a bizzare mixture of Linux and Java (with XML thrown in for buzzword compliance) at the PDA crowd, perhaps the last market in which flash and glitter is more important than real results.
People buy PDA's to jot little notes or as an address book. Anything else is just another feature to list on the box (and listing Linux is guaranteed to make geeks drool). How many people use PDAs to run Java-enabled distributed applications? Not many, I'm guessing. Worse still is the use of Java. Why bog down an already slow processor and waste precious battery lifetime running a bloated JVM when native code would work just as well? For small systems like PDAs, speed is a much more important factor than portability. Client-side Java is dead on the desktop, and I'm guessing it will have a short life on PDAs as well.
All in all, this seems to be YA Linux PDA: loaded with features no one wants, no one needs, and no one will use. But hey, it's got a penguin on it, so that's guarenteed sales to the geek demographic.
-- Floyd
But there's no way Companies could be polluting! It's in their Enlightened Self Interest not to!
Thank god the Libertarians will put an end to this nonsense. We need a president to allow Big Corp to fill our air with the lucious smell of Industrial Smog and our sees with old-fashioned, American Toxic Waste.
Any one who says otherwise is a goddam commaie.
-- Floyd
Basically this map was allegedly drawn in the 14th century
If you give credence to European maps drawn in the 14th century, you really shouldn't debating in a scientific discussion. Come off it.
-- Floyd
Do you know where 0 degrees N is?
I'll give you a hint: it's not very cold.
-- Floyd
How do we know what the earth's normal weather cycles are in THE LONG TERM?!
1) Find several old trees in an area.
2) Get core samples of them (ie, cut a small bit out)
3) Check the rings. Are they close together at one point? Means there wasn't much growth, which in turns means there wasn't much rain. If the rings arr far apart, the opposite could be true.
4) Match this up with data from the other trees.
5) Repeat for other areas you're interested in.
-- Floyd