I don't get your point about HTTPS and SSL. In what way have they failed Internet users? If you're referring to BEAST/CRIME exploits, they can be mitigated by disabling compression.
These are the very same people who do not understand that engineering programs can take years from start to finish. As these programs to not contribute to the quarterly bottom line until they are complete and shipping, you get the silly pressure from the top for engineers to cut corners and ship quicker! Long term viability just goes out the window.
What's wrong with a higher level language that interfaces with OpenCL? You're still writing OpenCL, you're just using Python for loading/storing datasets and initialisation. If you're starting out, something like PyOpenCL might be better as it'll allow you to focus on writing stuff in OpenCL.
One of the biggest problems in the rant is the comparison of pure computing performance and his claim that ARM will never be as fast as desktop. I'm going to again grant that this is true. However, this means crap-all for most apps. Tell me: How many apps do you have one your phone that are processor bound? None? One? Two?
The other issue you're not addressing it runtime memory requirements. From the GC performance chart, the best performing GC that provides near native performance does so by requiring 5x more memory. This is going to impact the number of concurrently running apps on your phone/tablet before things start slowing down. Users prize snappy interfaces and if their mobile device slows down then the knowledgable users will bring up a task manager to figure out what's going on.
Do you want to stick around to see what they'd write on your app's page in the App Store?
I would have thought that Microsoft's biggest problem at the moment is that all the different divisions are not separate enough. The biggest thing holding Microsoft back is their seemingly inexplicable need to make everything run on Windows only (Office is the notable exception).
This blind adherence to making everything run on Windows may have been a strategic move in the 90's but it's really doing them no favours today. Take SQL server for example. It's a very good database product, but it only runs on Windows. While Windows has a large share of the server market, Linux (and other flavours of *nix) is just as large if not larger. If they were serious about pushing SQL server, they'd do what other database companies do and release their product on multiple platforms. Oracle/Postgres/DB2/etc all run on Window and common flavours of *nix. It makes no sense to hold SQL server back unless it's to give Windows a unique selling point.
The same can be said of a lot of their other products. Visual Studio is IMHO the best IDE out there, yet it's Windows only. MS Office is the standard office suite, yet it's not available on the major mobile operating systems (Android and iOS). Not releasing MS Office for iOS/Android is as ridiculous as not releasing it for the Mac. They've clearly decided that the Mac market is targeting and it's worth noting that Microsoft's Mac Business unit is doing well financially.
Making their other products run on non-Windows platforms may jeopardise the sales of Windows licenses, but it's almost certain to improve the sales of everything else. The question is whether the increase in sales will offset the loss of Windows licenses, and I'm in no position to answer that. My gut feeling is that it will be better for the company in the long run as they will no longer be tied to the fortunes of Windows. This separation may also benefit Windows in the long term as it won't be able to use the other MS products "exclusives" as a crutch and will have to stand on its own merits.
This is the sort of shake-up of Microsoft that I think is necessary. Anything else is just a waste of time and akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as others have alluded to.
There seems to be a lot of posters on Slashdot who do not get just how useful it is that HTTP is text based. I rarely ever need to look at the raw TCP dumps. With the prevalence of REST APIs these days, viewing TCP dumps is overkill. You could argue that REST is a fad and we should all go back to binary RPC protocols, but HTTP is very nice because it allows you to debug so easily. Other posters have mentioned this ease of debugging only to be countered by the binary is just as easy crowd, so I'll go further and provide a worked example.
I use the following code snippet to debug HTTP. It's not the best example of code, but I use it regularly and it works. With it, I can write up the HTTP request in any text editor and shove it up the network and have the response printed out to console for inspection. An example of a HTTP request is like so. This returns a response that's human readable.
It's all nice and human readable. Could I do the same with a raw TCP frame? Sure. I could download it to disk and fire up some viewer like wireshark. Text is far more convenient as I could view it right in my terminal.
I think he's referring to the jet stream, which blows from West to East. That's the reason flights to the east are faster than flights to the west. The former benefits from a strong tail wind while the latter has to fly against a head wind.
Flying from NYC to SF is going to be a lot more difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't tell if you're trolling or sarcastic or just really really stupid....
I don't get your point about HTTPS and SSL. In what way have they failed Internet users? If you're referring to BEAST/CRIME exploits, they can be mitigated by disabling compression.
Alright. Fess up. You're that AC, and you've come back to post coherently once the alcohol/drugs wore off. Amirite? ;)
Anyhow, good post and very insightful and interesting post.
And then attacked the officers fist with your jaw.
Ah yes, the Zimmerman style of fighting. Attack your opponent's fist with your face.
What the hell did I just read?
Who's to say it's a guy?
Are you a student?
You know the answer to that... Page views. Publicity.
Someone once said that Europeans view time the way Americans view distance; 50 years is nothing to one, 50 miles is nothing to the other.
It's not always possible to cycle and still be productive at the other end.
So how does Apple do it? The iPhone 3gs released in 2009 can run the latest iOS 6.
These are the very same people who do not understand that engineering programs can take years from start to finish. As these programs to not contribute to the quarterly bottom line until they are complete and shipping, you get the silly pressure from the top for engineers to cut corners and ship quicker! Long term viability just goes out the window.
What's wrong with a higher level language that interfaces with OpenCL? You're still writing OpenCL, you're just using Python for loading/storing datasets and initialisation. If you're starting out, something like PyOpenCL might be better as it'll allow you to focus on writing stuff in OpenCL.
One of the biggest problems in the rant is the comparison of pure computing performance and his claim that ARM will never be as fast as desktop. I'm going to again grant that this is true. However, this means crap-all for most apps. Tell me: How many apps do you have one your phone that are processor bound? None? One? Two?
The other issue you're not addressing it runtime memory requirements. From the GC performance chart, the best performing GC that provides near native performance does so by requiring 5x more memory. This is going to impact the number of concurrently running apps on your phone/tablet before things start slowing down. Users prize snappy interfaces and if their mobile device slows down then the knowledgable users will bring up a task manager to figure out what's going on.
Do you want to stick around to see what they'd write on your app's page in the App Store?
How do you manage 200 tabs open at the same time? How do you easily get to the tab you want?
I did not know this. Thanks for enlightening me!
I knew it existed for SSDs, didn't know it also applied to hard drives too.
Why is /dev/random better? They should not be able to retrieve the data if the drive has been zeroed?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M
Or something equivalent. It's not hard to blank out a hard drive, just time consuming.
I would have thought that Microsoft's biggest problem at the moment is that all the different divisions are not separate enough. The biggest thing holding Microsoft back is their seemingly inexplicable need to make everything run on Windows only (Office is the notable exception).
This blind adherence to making everything run on Windows may have been a strategic move in the 90's but it's really doing them no favours today. Take SQL server for example. It's a very good database product, but it only runs on Windows. While Windows has a large share of the server market, Linux (and other flavours of *nix) is just as large if not larger. If they were serious about pushing SQL server, they'd do what other database companies do and release their product on multiple platforms. Oracle/Postgres/DB2/etc all run on Window and common flavours of *nix. It makes no sense to hold SQL server back unless it's to give Windows a unique selling point.
The same can be said of a lot of their other products. Visual Studio is IMHO the best IDE out there, yet it's Windows only. MS Office is the standard office suite, yet it's not available on the major mobile operating systems (Android and iOS). Not releasing MS Office for iOS/Android is as ridiculous as not releasing it for the Mac. They've clearly decided that the Mac market is targeting and it's worth noting that Microsoft's Mac Business unit is doing well financially.
Making their other products run on non-Windows platforms may jeopardise the sales of Windows licenses, but it's almost certain to improve the sales of everything else. The question is whether the increase in sales will offset the loss of Windows licenses, and I'm in no position to answer that. My gut feeling is that it will be better for the company in the long run as they will no longer be tied to the fortunes of Windows. This separation may also benefit Windows in the long term as it won't be able to use the other MS products "exclusives" as a crutch and will have to stand on its own merits.
This is the sort of shake-up of Microsoft that I think is necessary. Anything else is just a waste of time and akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as others have alluded to.
There seems to be a lot of posters on Slashdot who do not get just how useful it is that HTTP is text based. I rarely ever need to look at the raw TCP dumps. With the prevalence of REST APIs these days, viewing TCP dumps is overkill. You could argue that REST is a fad and we should all go back to binary RPC protocols, but HTTP is very nice because it allows you to debug so easily. Other posters have mentioned this ease of debugging only to be countered by the binary is just as easy crowd, so I'll go further and provide a worked example.
I use the following code snippet to debug HTTP. It's not the best example of code, but I use it regularly and it works. With it, I can write up the HTTP request in any text editor and shove it up the network and have the response printed out to console for inspection. An example of a HTTP request is like so. This returns a response that's human readable.
It's all nice and human readable. Could I do the same with a raw TCP frame? Sure. I could download it to disk and fire up some viewer like wireshark. Text is far more convenient as I could view it right in my terminal.
You don't always have an app handy, but you'll almost certainly have a text editor of some sort.
+1 If I had mod points. I've found the readability of HTTP crucial on numerous occasions.
You mean they don't just piss and shit out the window?
I think he's referring to the jet stream, which blows from West to East. That's the reason flights to the east are faster than flights to the west. The former benefits from a strong tail wind while the latter has to fly against a head wind. Flying from NYC to SF is going to be a lot more difficult.
I don't get this. I have curly braces on my Mac keyboard...