There's lies, damned lies, statistics and then there are benchmarks. Oh yes, java can indeed run as fast as C, and even theoretically jump ahead of it, but only if you restrict yourself to that subset of Java that it has in common with C. So no structures, only primitive data type fiddling, using arrays of primitives only.
Why this? Simply for one reason given in the article: cache misses. A java class comes with a 8 byte per instance overhead (16 bytes if it can be serialized), which means that less stuff will fit in the cache. Yes, a non-conservative garbage collector can improve locality of the data by putting things together in ways that C never can, but especially for numerical stuff, it will effectively halve the cache size or worse by insisting on carrying runtime type information everywhere. Ever compared the speed/memory of a Complex class with manually fiddling with the real and imaginary parts? The difference is shocking.
Until Java gets some decent structure support (a collection of primitive data items without any overhead, plus preferably operator overloading on just such structures), Java for high-performance numerical computation will be stuck in the pre-C days of abstraction.
So you prefer to do it per country? Allow Luxembourg to produce as much pollution as the US? Or bring US down to the Andorra level? If you're considering limits (and actually, I don't think you are: free for all and who cares about next generations), you have to do it per something. So what would be your preferred way of quantifying the impact? Per country, per acre, per unit of economic output, or per capita? What would be the fairest way to make distinctions between various polluting entities?
In a Windows world where a reboot is considered a valid maintenance strategy, this might be the case. In a world of server applications,.NET is incapable, simply because it cannot unload its assemblies or its string pool cleanly. Typical Microsoft style engineering. C# and Windows don't scale, so they're not in the server room.
The niche for.NET is windows desktop applications, in which its closest competitor is MFC, not Java. So,.NET beats MFC. Big deal.
I think for many here the situation is simply that they are the ones that are called when problems arise, and the ones that will be asked what hardware to buy. I for one have simply said that I do not support Windows, as it costs too much of my time and I hate working with it. The people I support have to choose: Windows with no support from me, Linux or OSX. I now support one Ubuntu install, a macbook and an IMac. I've set everything up so that I can ssh/vnc into their systems if trouble arises. I only get occasionally asked if it's safe to install some thing or another, and everything is running smoothly. Two years ago these were three unhappy windows users.
As for your first statement about cartels, the EU commissioner of competition has last year alone fined companies for a grand total of 5 billion Euros (that's 8 billion dollars these days) for hurting customers for cartel formation. I'm sure you think Europe is on the wrong path here and should allow companies to determine prices together and should be free to create any barriers to entry they would like without any interference from government.
As for your other statement. Desktop machines without windows, maybe. Cheap desktop machines without Windows, harder. Laptops without windows? You can buy a mac, that's about it.
Unbundling serves to open the market. Many producers will choose to go Windows only, simply because 99% of their sales are windows machines, and they won't have the hassle. Some will try to open a new market venue by *also* supplying a cheaper Ubuntu solution for instance. This might work, but in the current situation, we'll never know, as the company trying this will get killed by Microsoft in the next OEM license round. They've done this, and they're doing this still.
Such situations have occurred many times in the past, and government has, for instance, unbundled cars and their radios. In the current closed market libertarian climate, that is apparently seen as unnecessary. The market will fix it, you can vote with your dollar. Repeat ad nauseam. History tells a different story.
There's definitely a way to unbundle windows from PCs against the will of the business owners if they violate trust law and engage in other predatory monopoly tactics. That they seldomly go to jail for that makes for a very poor deterrent.
Take a corporation, replace each and every individual slowly, and what are you left with? The same corporation.
Take a human being, replace each and every cell slowly, and what are you left with? The same human.
Corporations are entities that are not merely an organization of human beings. They tend to take on a life of their own, up to the point that any individual can be replaced without changing the corporate identity.
If they do it all, there is a cartel, and people should go to jail, or at least be fined heavily. This has already been established for this case, but the ideology of corporate welfare has led to no sanctions whatsoever.
To spell it out, if you, as a simple computer manufacturer, want to get a decent deal with Microsoft that will keep you competitive, you need to offer Windows only. If not, and you're not as big as Dell of HP, you'll pay more for your OEM license and subsequently are less competitive on the largest part of the market. This is how MS has kept a stranglehold on the market place for a long time. They have been found out, sentenced for it, and they currently do it less blatantly than before. They're still at it though. The choice for a blank PC at reduced price is almost non-existant, simply because few sellers can bare the higher cost for OEM licenses they must suffer for that. Again simple economics: the monopolist sets the prices.
Yes, we will overturn a lot of long-held beliefs in the next decade. It is however exceedingly unlikely that we will overturn the general notion of natural selection. We will get deeper insights in how it actually *has* worked. We will also gain deeper insight how it *can* work, but it is highly unlikely that it will be thrown out.
If for some reason you desire to believe that some concept named God has created evolution, so be it. Keep it out of a discussion based on reason instead of superstition however.
So I repeat: "Advertisements in general have no value?". Sponsoring a tv show by showing an obnoxious message during it has, as I can see it, less value than giving away the keys to obsolete past products. Both have the value of increased brand recognition. The latter might actually lead to brand loyalty. Opening up your past accomplishments definitely has advertisment value.
Reading the OP, the thing they really wanted was a file dialog that could select more than 100 files without starting to truncate filenames. The MS one wasn't up to that, and that was a show-stopper for their application. All the other stuff are nice-to-haves, being able to select 100s of files was however important. So they provide both, one that works with the application, one that's from MS. MS might provide lots of background features, but given their track record, they all are expected to break when things need to scale. Toy software.
It also has to do with mindshare. For some reason, it's perfectly acceptable that an office document from one version of office doesn't render perfectly on another version of office. It is however completely unprofessional to send an ooffice exported document that doesn't render perfectly on whatever random version of msoffice.
What you should be doing at this point is to port your results (not the full code, just the main, verified results) to one of the open source EA libraries. If you're using java, try ECJ, if it's C++, try EO (or Beagle, if GP). The developers might help you with the port. It will help you with gaining a better understanding on how your work relates to mainstream research in EA, it will give people a chance to use your new incredible improvements to ML and EAs, and it will give your research a longer halflife than usual.
But in effect, I don't know of many businesses that actually need to have Photoshop or AutoCAD installed from secretary level to boardroom. For those people that actually need Photoshop or AutoCAD, a separate windows machine could be provided.
There's one really important feature in Win2K, which is lacking in XP. They managed to get rid of the XP activation bug in Win2K. Not sure how they did that, but it's really cool: you can install Win2K on a machine, and it will not ask you to provide a product activation key. You install: it works! Revolutionary! It also seems that with Win2K, the bug that some random site called microsoft.com on the web later on decides that you shouldn't be allowed to use your system has been eliminated. These are great and important features, and I hope that the makers of Win2K will backport these features to XP.
China wouldn't care about that debt if they could gain something. What about Taiwan, or, from a Chinese perspective, the rogue island of Taipei? If the US would refrain from defending Taiwan, we, China, will keep you economy afloat till next elections by holding on to those bonds of yours? What will the average POTUS do on confronted with such a deal?
I'm pretty sure this scenario will play out in the next five years.
'Never get involved in a land war in Asia'
--The Princess Bride
After the immense success of Iraq, are you sure you can conquer China and/or Russia, and hold on to it?.
Russia is not broke, they have recaptured control of their immense oil reserves and are back on the international playing field. They've kicked out Shell, BP, and Exxon, and are now a force to reckon with. They are far from broke. The US is broke however.
If I understand you correctly, I, as a Dutch citizen, when I come to your country (which I will do again in three weeks time), should be happy to come back alive, as I don't have rights to a fair trial? I'd probably be better of travelling to Burman, at least that country is civilized.
So, when the US acts outside of its own borders as a military power, the rights of the people it captures are not guaranteed in any way? How very reassuring. I'm sure many flock to the theory of the US as a stabilizing police force right at this minute.
First off, these are not the rights of citizens, these are the rights of people. At least, as far as I understand your constitution, this is the case. Just imagine the following scenario, and see if you find something wrong with this. In the Netherlands, where I am from, we suddenly start to pick of all these US citizens that are frequenting the red light district in this capitol of ours. These are thousands of Americans. We will deny them any rights according to Dutch law, because, after all, they are not Dutch citizens. We will detain them without any recourse. We might torture them, if we feel like it. Hey, they're not Dutch citizens, so we can do with them what we want.
Is this a world you want to live in? A world where you are only guaranteed rights if you stay within your own borders? Your distinction between US citizens and 'aliens' is very troubling, and I've heard this tune a bit too much to my liking. There can be a backlash.
I'm not sure if quantum computing can truly exhibit general computation properties better than the digital computer. QC is great for solving some problems that are intractable for digital machines, but computers that are only capable of computing something that with 99.9% probability is the right result will not easily drive the next generation of OS(*).
I personally think there is a world-wide demand for 5 quantum computers, max. [grin]
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Why this? Simply for one reason given in the article: cache misses. A java class comes with a 8 byte per instance overhead (16 bytes if it can be serialized), which means that less stuff will fit in the cache. Yes, a non-conservative garbage collector can improve locality of the data by putting things together in ways that C never can, but especially for numerical stuff, it will effectively halve the cache size or worse by insisting on carrying runtime type information everywhere. Ever compared the speed/memory of a Complex class with manually fiddling with the real and imaginary parts? The difference is shocking.
Until Java gets some decent structure support (a collection of primitive data items without any overhead, plus preferably operator overloading on just such structures), Java for high-performance numerical computation will be stuck in the pre-C days of abstraction.
So you prefer to do it per country? Allow Luxembourg to produce as much pollution as the US? Or bring US down to the Andorra level? If you're considering limits (and actually, I don't think you are: free for all and who cares about next generations), you have to do it per something. So what would be your preferred way of quantifying the impact? Per country, per acre, per unit of economic output, or per capita? What would be the fairest way to make distinctions between various polluting entities?
In a Windows world where a reboot is considered a valid maintenance strategy, this might be the case. In a world of server applications, .NET is incapable, simply because it cannot unload its assemblies or its string pool cleanly. Typical Microsoft style engineering. C# and Windows don't scale, so they're not in the server room.
The niche for .NET is windows desktop applications, in which its closest competitor is MFC, not Java. So, .NET beats MFC. Big deal.
I think for many here the situation is simply that they are the ones that are called when problems arise, and the ones that will be asked what hardware to buy. I for one have simply said that I do not support Windows, as it costs too much of my time and I hate working with it. The people I support have to choose: Windows with no support from me, Linux or OSX. I now support one Ubuntu install, a macbook and an IMac. I've set everything up so that I can ssh/vnc into their systems if trouble arises. I only get occasionally asked if it's safe to install some thing or another, and everything is running smoothly. Two years ago these were three unhappy windows users.
As for your other statement. Desktop machines without windows, maybe. Cheap desktop machines without Windows, harder. Laptops without windows? You can buy a mac, that's about it.
Unbundling serves to open the market. Many producers will choose to go Windows only, simply because 99% of their sales are windows machines, and they won't have the hassle. Some will try to open a new market venue by *also* supplying a cheaper Ubuntu solution for instance. This might work, but in the current situation, we'll never know, as the company trying this will get killed by Microsoft in the next OEM license round. They've done this, and they're doing this still.
Such situations have occurred many times in the past, and government has, for instance, unbundled cars and their radios. In the current closed market libertarian climate, that is apparently seen as unnecessary. The market will fix it, you can vote with your dollar. Repeat ad nauseam. History tells a different story.
There's definitely a way to unbundle windows from PCs against the will of the business owners if they violate trust law and engage in other predatory monopoly tactics. That they seldomly go to jail for that makes for a very poor deterrent.
You're wrong. Competition only works when there's no pre-existing monopoly. Period. how it got there is irrelevant.
Take a human being, replace each and every cell slowly, and what are you left with? The same human.
Corporations are entities that are not merely an organization of human beings. They tend to take on a life of their own, up to the point that any individual can be replaced without changing the corporate identity.
To spell it out, if you, as a simple computer manufacturer, want to get a decent deal with Microsoft that will keep you competitive, you need to offer Windows only. If not, and you're not as big as Dell of HP, you'll pay more for your OEM license and subsequently are less competitive on the largest part of the market. This is how MS has kept a stranglehold on the market place for a long time. They have been found out, sentenced for it, and they currently do it less blatantly than before. They're still at it though. The choice for a blank PC at reduced price is almost non-existant, simply because few sellers can bare the higher cost for OEM licenses they must suffer for that. Again simple economics: the monopolist sets the prices.
If for some reason you desire to believe that some concept named God has created evolution, so be it. Keep it out of a discussion based on reason instead of superstition however.
So I repeat: "Advertisements in general have no value?". Sponsoring a tv show by showing an obnoxious message during it has, as I can see it, less value than giving away the keys to obsolete past products. Both have the value of increased brand recognition. The latter might actually lead to brand loyalty. Opening up your past accomplishments definitely has advertisment value.
Reading the OP, the thing they really wanted was a file dialog that could select more than 100 files without starting to truncate filenames. The MS one wasn't up to that, and that was a show-stopper for their application. All the other stuff are nice-to-haves, being able to select 100s of files was however important. So they provide both, one that works with the application, one that's from MS. MS might provide lots of background features, but given their track record, they all are expected to break when things need to scale. Toy software.
Hmm, ok. So advertisements in general are a no-no for investors? If this were only the case!
It also has to do with mindshare. For some reason, it's perfectly acceptable that an office document from one version of office doesn't render perfectly on another version of office. It is however completely unprofessional to send an ooffice exported document that doesn't render perfectly on whatever random version of msoffice.
What you should be doing at this point is to port your results (not the full code, just the main, verified results) to one of the open source EA libraries. If you're using java, try ECJ, if it's C++, try EO (or Beagle, if GP). The developers might help you with the port. It will help you with gaining a better understanding on how your work relates to mainstream research in EA, it will give people a chance to use your new incredible improvements to ML and EAs, and it will give your research a longer halflife than usual.
But in effect, I don't know of many businesses that actually need to have Photoshop or AutoCAD installed from secretary level to boardroom. For those people that actually need Photoshop or AutoCAD, a separate windows machine could be provided.
There's one really important feature in Win2K, which is lacking in XP. They managed to get rid of the XP activation bug in Win2K. Not sure how they did that, but it's really cool: you can install Win2K on a machine, and it will not ask you to provide a product activation key. You install: it works! Revolutionary! It also seems that with Win2K, the bug that some random site called microsoft.com on the web later on decides that you shouldn't be allowed to use your system has been eliminated. These are great and important features, and I hope that the makers of Win2K will backport these features to XP.
I'm pretty sure this scenario will play out in the next five years.
--The Princess Bride
After the immense success of Iraq, are you sure you can conquer China and/or Russia, and hold on to it?.
Russia is not broke, they have recaptured control of their immense oil reserves and are back on the international playing field. They've kicked out Shell, BP, and Exxon, and are now a force to reckon with. They are far from broke. The US is broke however.
If I understand you correctly, I, as a Dutch citizen, when I come to your country (which I will do again in three weeks time), should be happy to come back alive, as I don't have rights to a fair trial? I'd probably be better of travelling to Burman, at least that country is civilized.
Stay in the country, move out of the cities, go in again once the winner is known in five years time. Keep Iran out. It's all not that difficult.
So, when the US acts outside of its own borders as a military power, the rights of the people it captures are not guaranteed in any way? How very reassuring. I'm sure many flock to the theory of the US as a stabilizing police force right at this minute.
Is this a world you want to live in? A world where you are only guaranteed rights if you stay within your own borders? Your distinction between US citizens and 'aliens' is very troubling, and I've heard this tune a bit too much to my liking. There can be a backlash.
I personally think there is a world-wide demand for 5 quantum computers, max. [grin]
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