Just because he's a senator doesn't mean that he's managed to stay in the public eye. He's managed to stay a public figure, but for the most part he's been ignored by the public at large.
Just try doing a search on Clinton jokes vs. McCain jokes. You'll get a LOT more Clinton jokes. (Most of which are based on the idea that it was Hillary running the Presidency, not Bill.)
If you do a search on Krugle, you'll find that most of the references are in database files, not code. e.g. Public figures tend to show up in example data files. There were quite a few Clinton jokes back in the day, so Hillary shows up in a number of files. Paris Hilton is a common "adult" keyword, so you'll notice.htaccess files restricting it.
The fact that Hillary Clinton outstrips McCain and Obama should come as no surprise. She spent 8 years in the public eye, back when no one had even heard of the other two candidates. Expressing surprise that she is 'in the lead' as it were, is just silly.
Ballmer has been a complete failure in every single effort by Microsoft to create viable products outside of their core OS/office software/server software products.
And that is why Ballmer needs to stay in office. Gates would actually be able to drive the company toward success, which would be a bad thing for the market. (Considering that he does it through less-than-legal means.) Under Ballmer, Microsoft is forced to sink or swim on merits rather than monopoly position. That situation has allowed competitors to slowly chip away at the Microsoft monopoly.
Of course, the guy who eventually replaces Ballmer and Gates could be completely inept, but I wouldn't want to bet the market on it.
I stand by my original statements 100% (I'm a certified SAP basis engineer on Sun equipment).
I might believe you if I wasn't a professional Software Engineer with over a decade of experience with Java and access to the IPS source code on the OpenSolaris site. Alas, however, I am a professional Software Engineer with a decade of Java experience and I canread the source code. There is no Java visible in these tools. It's a completely Python-based system. I seriously doubt you'll find an OpenSolaris developer who will tell you otherwise.
You may believe what you're saying, but you're probably just confused. Don't worry about it. It happens to the best of us.
The high level parts of the system may be written in Python but the underlying tools it uses are Java. You can actually run some of the command line tools to save memory.
You use the term "underlying", but then refer to the ability to run command-line tools directly. I think you're confused. You're probably thinking of the Sun Management Center, a graphical tool that allows you to manage your Solaris-based system. It is based on Java, but it's also sitting ABOVE the command-line tools, not below them as you surmised.
As it happens, it's actually not a bad tool. From SMC you can manage users, track workloads, install patches, and do dozens of other day-to-day functions for all the servers on your network. The "slowness" you're talking about is just Solaris, not the tool. It takes just shy of forever to get a fresh Solaris system up to date with the latest patches. (I swear, Sun releases WAY too many patches.) A secret for you is that you don't actually have to install all of those patches. Pick the patches that apply to you and ignore the rest. (e.g. If you don't have a Sun Elite Graphics Card, why are you bothering to install patches for it? On occasion, some of the patches can even be exclusive to each other depending on your configuration!)
Of course, all of this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the new IPS system. Standard Solaris 10 installs include the tradition Solaris packaging system, not the updated IPS system. So you should really give back that mod point that was so kindly provided to your rant.
Sun is all about Java so many of the tools like IPS are written in it.
Except that IPS is written in Python, not Java. See the FAQ:
"The Image Packaging System (IPS) software is a network-centric packaging system written in Python."
That much is easy enough to find. What Sun isn't saying is how this differs from existing packaging systems. i.e. The rational for creating a new packaging system rather than adopting an existing packaging system. And why is it called the "Image Packaging System"? Using the term "image" brings concepts like OS X's DRGs to mind. Yet I see nothing published on the site that gives a good explanation of the naming scheme.
What this all tells me is that the info on this system is probably buried in the OpenSolaris forums and communiques between the developers. Given that such communications are not easy to track down, I decided to ask if anyone here was "in the know"? (Which one would think there'd be at least a couple people. I mean, they did list it as a major feature.)
Anyone here know what's so special about the Image Packaging System? I found the homepage, but it didn't really explain how it differed from traditional packaging methods. (More annoyingly, it didn't even explain that intriguing name!) A quick check of Wikipedia doesn't offer much help, either. Anyone know the scoop on this (new?) system?
So is plastic, but there's nothing about it that requires life to have been present. Same with hydrocarbons. Just because the most common source for hydrocarbon chains in our biosphere is organic material doesn't mean that the radically different conditions of an environment like Titan couldn't produce such chains out of raw materials.
Maybe it's just me, but am I the only one who's sitting here thinking that using this hack is tantamount to stealing service? Hacks for stealing cable service have existed for decades now, and were very much illegal. And why shouldn't they be? Not everything has to be hacker proof. Sometimes it's just about putting a lock on the door and saying, "This doesn't belong to you."
To use a typical Slashdot analogy, the lock on my front door is pretty flimsy and could probably be picked or forced without much effort. Is that an invitation to walk into my house and use my computer?
This also differs from open WiFi points in that open WiFi points have no security. It's difficult for a passerby to tell the difference between an intentionally shared access point and an access point that has accidentally been misconfigured.
Which reminds me, WiFi security is not all that hard to crack. Does that give people a free license to crack their neighbor's WiFi and begin using it without permission?
Threads have been considered a "bad idea" by the CompSci profession for a little while now. So there is definitely nothing new about the author's statements. That being said, there is a fundamental difference between Dijkstra's paper 40 years ago and this summary: Dijkstra started his paper by holding up examples of better practices. Only after establishing their existence did he go on to suggest that the GOTO keyword was "too primitive" to be of practical use in software development.
The author of this "article" (and I use the term loosely) doesn't really present such options. He hand waves a few work-in-progress solutions at the end, compares threads to GOTO statements, then asks the readers to fill in the (rather sizable) blanks.
Long story short, it's a good topic of discussion, but the comparison to Dijkstra's famous paper is just an advertising point. Nothing more, nothing less.
Besides, the Wii CPU is on par with an iMac CPU from about 2002, with half the RAM.
Except the Mac didn't have four-player, motion-sensitive controls AND had the overhead of an OS/Desktop to worry about.
But more importantly, what's in it for Opera to write a new SWF player?
It's the #1 request they're hearing from their customers. A lot of the users on the Opera Wii forums on my.opera.com complain that a variety of Flash sites don't work for them. In addition, YouTube (which is the primary reason for the flash's existence in the browser) is moving toward the newer Flash standards and video features. They still supported Flash 7 last time I checked, but mucking around with some of their new, high-qual stuff shows that it isn't going to last.
But I do know that Nintendo doesn't often update existing software nearly as much as some other publishers do.
Are you kidding me? I've installed 6 or so updates since I got my Wii last year. Unless Sony and Microsoft are updating every other day, Nintendo is pretty competitive on that front. Which doesn't really matter, because the browser is a completely separate update. When it gets updated, the button in the WiiWare section says "Update". A message is usually sent out to inform users that the update is ready for download.
But Internet Channel can't be modded with a new SWF plug-in
Ok, you totally lost me. Why would Opera not be able to update their browser with a new version of the plugin? There have been several updates released already.
the Wii platform uses code signing with a fixed root CA to ensure that only executables approved by Nintendo can run.*
I think he was referring to the Opera browser for the Wii. Opera currently supports Flash 7, which is a few years behind the latest and greatest. If you have the Opera browser, you can go play some homebrew games on your Wii.
1) The Wii does not use the official Flash player. It uses a player coded by the Opera folks, which uses the latest specs released by Adobe: specs which correspond to Flash 7.0.
Incorrect. Adobe releases SDK kits to companies like Opera for the purpose of creating Flash Players. The SDK contains a bare-bones implementation of a Flash player that Opera is able to port to the Wii. The problem wasn't that the Flash 8 specs didn't exist (they did), it was that the SDK was never updated to Flash 8. Apparently, Adobe wanted everyone to wait for the new Flash 9 kit.
A Flash 9 kit now exists, but it is significantly different from the Flash 7 kit that Opera currently uses. It's unclear when (if ever) Opera for the Wii will upgrade to the latest revision. Being associated with WiiCade and all, I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later.;-)
It doesn't seem likely that one generic item would be better at something than many specific ones.
Combined items rarely are. However, they do provide a great deal of convenience as well as cost savings. If the difference between dedicated items and combined items is negligent, then the combined item is a better deal. The problem is, you can't shortcut the economic process by which two items become similar enough to combine.
e.g. Combining VCR and Cassette Tape Player: Not very effective Combining DVD Player and CD Player: Very effective
CPUs and GPUs are moving in the right direction to eventually merge (in much the same way as FPUs and SSE units merged with CPUs), but they simply aren't there yet.:-)
I would never have expected nVidia's chief scientist to say that nVidia's products would not soon be obsolete.
Moving to a combined CPU/GPU wouldn't obsolete NVidia's product-line. Quite the opposite, in fact. NVidia would get to become something called a Fabless semiconductor company. Basically, companies like Intel could license the GPU designs from NVidia and integrate them into their own CPU dies. This means that Intel would handle the manufacturing and NVidia would see larger profit margins. NVidia (IIRC) already does this with their 3D chips targeted at ARM chips and cell phones.
The problem is that the GPU chipset looks nothing like the CPU chipset. The GPU is designed for massive parallelism, while CPUs have traditionally been designed for single-threaded operation. While CPUs are definitely moving in the multithreaded direction and GPUs are moving in the general-purpose direction, it's still too early to combine them. Attempting to do so would get you the worst of both worlds rather than the best. (i.e. Shared Memory Architecture )
So I don't think NVidia's chief scientist is off on this. (If he was, we'd probably already see GPU integration in the current generation of game consoles; all of which are custom chips.) The time will come, but it's not here yet.:-)
Is anyone here clear on the actual amount of processing power necessary to run a game of Tetris? Hint: It's not a lot. Especially if you're not using a fancy blitter with alpha-transparencies and pipelined transforms.
Type safety and "safe" data types are two different things. One is a language construct intended to prevent errors in code through compile-time checking (though you pay in flexibility), the other is types of data that theoretically can be used in a database without doing validation checks.
I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which one is which.
On a related note: people still take benchmarks seriously? Seriously?! After all this time? Do we never learn?
Actually, I do. But it's hard to explain to people that Java performs BETTER than C and C++ in the real world because Real-World Programmers(TM) suck. Even the best programmer lacks the time to write his code as efficiently as he wants unless the difference makes a huge impact on performance. As a result, both Java and C programmers write inefficient code. The key is that the Virtual Machine makes inefficient code fast through runtime analysis and optimization, while the C compiler just takes a best-guess up front.
I made no claims about the virtual machine - I only made claims about the compiler:
If you're looking at the JavaC compiler, you're going to be sadly disappointed. The Java compiler is nothing. It literally does nothing except turn the source code into a binary representation of the class file. The REAL compiler is the Just In Time compiler in the Virtual Machine. And that virtual machine gets to pay Assembler Guru and sit there and tweak your code like only the best Assembler Masters can do.
Has nothing to do with my post you responded to. Find a single instance of me mentioning C++.
*I* mentioned C++ and C. But it was inconsistent of me not to mention C in my second post, sooo... THAT is why Java can approach and even exceed the performance of C code. Happy?;-)
Correct. This smacks of being an entirely reactive maneuver to counter Google's new App Engine feature.
Not to say that Yahoo! doesn't have a real platform to offer. They've been working hard to keep up with Google, and even manage to surpass them in some areas. (Though sadly, we're primarily talking about areas that Google doesn't compete.) It would be an interesting task to do a side-by-side comparison of the two platforms. Sadly, I don't think anyone will take Yahoo! seriously even if it is superior, just because they seem to be chasing Google's tail. Until they start making the big announcements before Google, they're going to always be in second place.
Java can never give C a run for its money. C takes in C files and outputs assembly code. Java takes in java files and outputs java bytecode, which is interpreted by a virtual machine. It can never approach C in terms of speed.
This statement shows an extreme ignorance of how the Virtual Machine functions. The bytecode is only an intermediary format, similar to the P-Code that GCC outputs before converting it into a native program. When the Hotspot VM gets ahold of it, it does the following:
1. Interprets the code. 2. If the code is run more than once, compile it to a native module and execute. 3. If the code is identified as a performance-critical area, do a runtime analysis to optimize the living hell out of the code.
Step 3 is quite interesting, as the hotspot compiler can remove all kinds of bounds checks, dynamically unroll loops, inline methods, and perform other optimizations that can only be proven to be correct at runtime, but not at compile-time. In addition, hotspot has the opportunity to tune the compiled code to match the CPU rather than compiling for the lowest-common denominator. Something that C/C++ compilers can't do without creating a massively bloated executable. (i.e. A separate code path for each CPU. Something that the Intel compiler actually does do on a limited basis to provide higher performance levels for their latest processors.)
THAT is why hotspot is capable of kicking C++ up between its ears.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because he's a senator doesn't mean that he's managed to stay in the public eye. He's managed to stay a public figure, but for the most part he's been ignored by the public at large.
Just try doing a search on Clinton jokes vs. McCain jokes. You'll get a LOT more Clinton jokes. (Most of which are based on the idea that it was Hillary running the Presidency, not Bill.)
If you do a search on Krugle, you'll find that most of the references are in database files, not code. e.g. Public figures tend to show up in example data files. There were quite a few Clinton jokes back in the day, so Hillary shows up in a number of files. Paris Hilton is a common "adult" keyword, so you'll notice .htaccess files restricting it.
:-)
Here are a few examples:
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Hillary%20Clinton
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Paris%20Hilton
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Barack%20Obama
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Tooth%20fairy
Even if you search for just code files, you sometimes find data inlined into a unit test:
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Tooth%20fairy&lang=java
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Hillary%20Clinton&lang=java
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Paris%20Hilton&lang=java
So there you go. A whole lot of non-news.
The fact that Hillary Clinton outstrips McCain and Obama should come as no surprise. She spent 8 years in the public eye, back when no one had even heard of the other two candidates. Expressing surprise that she is 'in the lead' as it were, is just silly.
And that is why Ballmer needs to stay in office. Gates would actually be able to drive the company toward success, which would be a bad thing for the market. (Considering that he does it through less-than-legal means.) Under Ballmer, Microsoft is forced to sink or swim on merits rather than monopoly position. That situation has allowed competitors to slowly chip away at the Microsoft monopoly.
Of course, the guy who eventually replaces Ballmer and Gates could be completely inept, but I wouldn't want to bet the market on it.
You may believe what you're saying, but you're probably just confused. Don't worry about it. It happens to the best of us.
That actually sounds like a pretty decent system. A bit heavyweight for non-enterprise users, but pretty smart none the less. Thanks for the info!
As it happens, it's actually not a bad tool. From SMC you can manage users, track workloads, install patches, and do dozens of other day-to-day functions for all the servers on your network. The "slowness" you're talking about is just Solaris, not the tool. It takes just shy of forever to get a fresh Solaris system up to date with the latest patches. (I swear, Sun releases WAY too many patches.) A secret for you is that you don't actually have to install all of those patches. Pick the patches that apply to you and ignore the rest. (e.g. If you don't have a Sun Elite Graphics Card, why are you bothering to install patches for it? On occasion, some of the patches can even be exclusive to each other depending on your configuration!)
Of course, all of this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the new IPS system. Standard Solaris 10 installs include the tradition Solaris packaging system, not the updated IPS system. So you should really give back that mod point that was so kindly provided to your rant.
Except that IPS is written in Python, not Java. See the FAQ:
"The Image Packaging System (IPS) software is a network-centric packaging system written in Python."
That much is easy enough to find. What Sun isn't saying is how this differs from existing packaging systems. i.e. The rational for creating a new packaging system rather than adopting an existing packaging system. And why is it called the "Image Packaging System"? Using the term "image" brings concepts like OS X's DRGs to mind. Yet I see nothing published on the site that gives a good explanation of the naming scheme.
What this all tells me is that the info on this system is probably buried in the OpenSolaris forums and communiques between the developers. Given that such communications are not easy to track down, I decided to ask if anyone here was "in the know"? (Which one would think there'd be at least a couple people. I mean, they did list it as a major feature.)
Anyone here know what's so special about the Image Packaging System? I found the homepage, but it didn't really explain how it differed from traditional packaging methods. (More annoyingly, it didn't even explain that intriguing name!) A quick check of Wikipedia doesn't offer much help, either. Anyone know the scoop on this (new?) system?
Maybe it's just me, but am I the only one who's sitting here thinking that using this hack is tantamount to stealing service? Hacks for stealing cable service have existed for decades now, and were very much illegal. And why shouldn't they be? Not everything has to be hacker proof. Sometimes it's just about putting a lock on the door and saying, "This doesn't belong to you."
To use a typical Slashdot analogy, the lock on my front door is pretty flimsy and could probably be picked or forced without much effort. Is that an invitation to walk into my house and use my computer?
This also differs from open WiFi points in that open WiFi points have no security. It's difficult for a passerby to tell the difference between an intentionally shared access point and an access point that has accidentally been misconfigured.
Which reminds me, WiFi security is not all that hard to crack. Does that give people a free license to crack their neighbor's WiFi and begin using it without permission?
Threads have been considered a "bad idea" by the CompSci profession for a little while now. So there is definitely nothing new about the author's statements. That being said, there is a fundamental difference between Dijkstra's paper 40 years ago and this summary: Dijkstra started his paper by holding up examples of better practices. Only after establishing their existence did he go on to suggest that the GOTO keyword was "too primitive" to be of practical use in software development.
The author of this "article" (and I use the term loosely) doesn't really present such options. He hand waves a few work-in-progress solutions at the end, compares threads to GOTO statements, then asks the readers to fill in the (rather sizable) blanks.
Long story short, it's a good topic of discussion, but the comparison to Dijkstra's famous paper is just an advertising point. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ok, you totally lost me. Why would Opera not be able to update their browser with a new version of the plugin? There have been several updates released already.
I think he was referring to the Opera browser for the Wii. Opera currently supports Flash 7, which is a few years behind the latest and greatest. If you have the Opera browser, you can go play some homebrew games on your Wii.
Incorrect. Adobe releases SDK kits to companies like Opera for the purpose of creating Flash Players. The SDK contains a bare-bones implementation of a Flash player that Opera is able to port to the Wii. The problem wasn't that the Flash 8 specs didn't exist (they did), it was that the SDK was never updated to Flash 8. Apparently, Adobe wanted everyone to wait for the new Flash 9 kit.
A Flash 9 kit now exists, but it is significantly different from the Flash 7 kit that Opera currently uses. It's unclear when (if ever) Opera for the Wii will upgrade to the latest revision. Being associated with WiiCade and all, I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later.
Combined items rarely are. However, they do provide a great deal of convenience as well as cost savings. If the difference between dedicated items and combined items is negligent, then the combined item is a better deal. The problem is, you can't shortcut the economic process by which two items become similar enough to combine.
e.g.
Combining VCR and Cassette Tape Player: Not very effective
Combining DVD Player and CD Player: Very effective
CPUs and GPUs are moving in the right direction to eventually merge (in much the same way as FPUs and SSE units merged with CPUs), but they simply aren't there yet.
Moving to a combined CPU/GPU wouldn't obsolete NVidia's product-line. Quite the opposite, in fact. NVidia would get to become something called a Fabless semiconductor company. Basically, companies like Intel could license the GPU designs from NVidia and integrate them into their own CPU dies. This means that Intel would handle the manufacturing and NVidia would see larger profit margins. NVidia (IIRC) already does this with their 3D chips targeted at ARM chips and cell phones.
The problem is that the GPU chipset looks nothing like the CPU chipset. The GPU is designed for massive parallelism, while CPUs have traditionally been designed for single-threaded operation. While CPUs are definitely moving in the multithreaded direction and GPUs are moving in the general-purpose direction, it's still too early to combine them. Attempting to do so would get you the worst of both worlds rather than the best. (i.e. Shared Memory Architecture )
So I don't think NVidia's chief scientist is off on this. (If he was, we'd probably already see GPU integration in the current generation of game consoles; all of which are custom chips.) The time will come, but it's not here yet.
Is anyone here clear on the actual amount of processing power necessary to run a game of Tetris? Hint: It's not a lot. Especially if you're not using a fancy blitter with alpha-transparencies and pipelined transforms.
Hey, don't blame me for Slashdot's code! I've been a vocal opponent of the new comment system for a while now!
Type safety and "safe" data types are two different things. One is a language construct intended to prevent errors in code through compile-time checking (though you pay in flexibility), the other is types of data that theoretically can be used in a database without doing validation checks.
I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which one is which.
Actually, I do. But it's hard to explain to people that Java performs BETTER than C and C++ in the real world because Real-World Programmers(TM) suck. Even the best programmer lacks the time to write his code as efficiently as he wants unless the difference makes a huge impact on performance. As a result, both Java and C programmers write inefficient code. The key is that the Virtual Machine makes inefficient code fast through runtime analysis and optimization, while the C compiler just takes a best-guess up front.
If you're looking at the JavaC compiler, you're going to be sadly disappointed. The Java compiler is nothing. It literally does nothing except turn the source code into a binary representation of the class file. The REAL compiler is the Just In Time compiler in the Virtual Machine. And that virtual machine gets to pay Assembler Guru and sit there and tweak your code like only the best Assembler Masters can do.
*I* mentioned C++ and C. But it was inconsistent of me not to mention C in my second post, sooo... THAT is why Java can approach and even exceed the performance of C code. Happy?
Correct. This smacks of being an entirely reactive maneuver to counter Google's new App Engine feature.
Not to say that Yahoo! doesn't have a real platform to offer. They've been working hard to keep up with Google, and even manage to surpass them in some areas. (Though sadly, we're primarily talking about areas that Google doesn't compete.) It would be an interesting task to do a side-by-side comparison of the two platforms. Sadly, I don't think anyone will take Yahoo! seriously even if it is superior, just because they seem to be chasing Google's tail. Until they start making the big announcements before Google, they're going to always be in second place.
This statement shows an extreme ignorance of how the Virtual Machine functions. The bytecode is only an intermediary format, similar to the P-Code that GCC outputs before converting it into a native program. When the Hotspot VM gets ahold of it, it does the following:
1. Interprets the code.
2. If the code is run more than once, compile it to a native module and execute.
3. If the code is identified as a performance-critical area, do a runtime analysis to optimize the living hell out of the code.
Step 3 is quite interesting, as the hotspot compiler can remove all kinds of bounds checks, dynamically unroll loops, inline methods, and perform other optimizations that can only be proven to be correct at runtime, but not at compile-time. In addition, hotspot has the opportunity to tune the compiled code to match the CPU rather than compiling for the lowest-common denominator. Something that C/C++ compilers can't do without creating a massively bloated executable. (i.e. A separate code path for each CPU. Something that the Intel compiler actually does do on a limited basis to provide higher performance levels for their latest processors.)
THAT is why hotspot is capable of kicking C++ up between its ears.